6th June, 1903.

THE true character and scope of the Associations Bill can no longer be dissimulated. It should have been labelled “An Act for the suppression of religious congregations and Christian education preparatory to the suppression of Catholicism in France.”

Nor is this all. It looks as if this Trouillot or Associations Bill, with its numerous articles, was merely a vulgar trap set by the Government to extract from the doomed unauthorized Congregations accurate information regarding their property and members, in order to seize the former and see to it that the latter are for ever debarred from teaching. These inventories were a necessary part of all demands for authorization, without which no Congregation could henceforth exist. I say “seize,” for every one knows that “liquidation” means purely and simply spoliation and confiscation.

I have in previous articles dwelt on the bad faith of the Combes ministry in closing by simple decree some three thousand free parochial schools, in spite of the solemn assurance given by M. Waldeck Rousseau, on behalf of the State, that these schools were in no wise affected by the new law of 1901 (Associations Bill). At the last session of the Chambers a more monstrous illegality was committed.

“Both the letter and the spirit of the law of 1901 were violated.” These are the words pronounced at Bordeaux recently by M. Decrais, an ex-minister, who was thereupon elected senator by an imposing majority.

The law distinctly provided that the demand for authorization of each religious order be submitted to the vote of the Chambers, but M. Combes just bunched them all into three categories—preaching, teaching, contemplative—and they were sent to execution by cartloads, like the victims of 1793.

In vain the Right protested against the illegality of this proceeding. “What do we care for legality? We have the majority,” were some of the cynical utterances of the Left, who banged their desks, stamped their feet, and vociferated to drown the voices of speakers of the Right. Worst of all, M. Combes produced, and used with much effect, a document purporting to bear the signature of many Superiors of Congregations, urging all to sell out their government bonds.

In vain the Right demanded that the authenticity of this document be proven before taking the final vote. This act of M. Combes speaks for itself.

The wholesale suppression of all preaching and teaching orders is, moreover, a distinct violation of Art. I of the Concordat, which is an organic law of the French State. This article provides, “that the Catholic religion shall be freely exercised in France.”

The allegation that this Concordat does not mention religious Congregations is a mere quibble.

“No church,” declares Guizot, “is free that may not develop according to its genius and history,” and every one knows that preaching and teaching Congregations have always formed an integral part of the Catholic Church, her most important organs of expansion in fact.

This wholesale suppression of preaching and teaching Congregations is a violation not only of the law of 1901 and of the Concordat, but also of the law Falloux, 1850, which entitles all persons duly qualified to teach and open schools. It was then that the great preacher and teacher, the Dominican Lacordaire, speaking in the Chambers as deputy, pointed to his white robe, exclaiming, “I am a liberty.”

The Charter of 1830 (under the Monarchie de Juillet, as the reign of Louis Philippe of Orleans was called) conferred this liberty, in theory; but it remained ineffective until the law Falloux finally abolished the state monopoly of education, which Napoleon had centred in the University of Paris.

But the Third Republic brushes aside Art. I of the Concordat, the loi Falloux, 1850, the scholar laws of 1885, and its own new-fledged law of 1901, all with the utmost unconcern.

“What do we care for liberty,” as the Left cynically exclaimed. Quite as little as they care for the wishes of the whole country, expressed by innumerable petitions, and the votes of 1500 Municipal Councils of Communes, whom the Government condescended to consult. One thousand and seventy-five of these voted for the Congregations; about four hundred voted against them; the others abstained. The attitude of the people in every place where Congregations were dispersed, with the aid of the regular army and the police, leaves not the slightest doubt that if a referendum had been taken as in Switzerland, more than two-thirds of the nation would have voted for Liberty and the Congregations.

With the astute hypocrisy that characterizes him, Waldeck Rousseau professed intense devotion to the secular clergy and declared that the law of 1901 (Associations Bill) was devised to protect them from the encroachments of the regular clergy or monks. He thought to divide and conquer. Now that seventy-two bishops have sent a combined petition to Parliament on behalf of the Congregations, and the whole secular clergy have openly identified their cause with that of the Congregations, this ministerial fiction can no longer be upheld.

The Left or “bloc” are clamouring already for the suppression of the secular or parochial clergy, who they say “are all in connivance with the CongrÉganists.”

M. Combes has sent a circular to the bishops requiring that all churches and chapels non concordataires be closed, and threatening to close even the parish churches which existed already in 1808, if any member of a dispersed Congregation preached in it.

Only four bishops, I am happy to say, “had the courage to submit,” to use the words of a ministerial organ.

The language in which the French prelates have expressed their non possumus is worthy of the best traditions of the Church, and when these sectarian persecutors shall have completely thrown off the mask, another glorious page will be added to her history, I trust.

Jealous, no doubt, of M. Trouillot’s laurels, M. de PressensÉ, son of a Protestant pastor, and some others have attached their names to projects of law for what is mendaciously and hypocritically called “the Separation of Church and State,” meaning a law for the complete shackling of the Church in France in view to its suppression.

I think it is very desirable that the lodges should do their worst here and now. But it is just possible that Waldeck Rousseau may return and a halt be called.

M. Combes and his employers the “Grand Orient” must see that they have gone a little too far. Civil war on a small scale has been raging on many points of France for two or three weeks; and they would be running blood if French Catholics carried concealed weapons as people do in South Carolina and Kentucky. As it is, there have only been innumerable broken limbs and heads and no end of arrests. M. de Dion, a deputy wearing his insignia of office, which offered him no immunity, appeared handcuffed before the police court, and was there and then condemned to three days’ imprisonment for “manifesting.” A young lady of twenty was condemned to eight days’ imprisonment for having cried “Capon” to a justice of the peace, who beat a hasty retreat when he found himself confronted by a few hundred men in the hall of a convent into which he had forced an entrance with the aid of state locksmiths, or crocheteurs. Here on my boulevard, Cimiez Nice, two squadrons of cavalry and numerous infantry were called out to aid the police at 4 a.m. in beating back the crowds who were “manifesting” against the expulsion of the Franciscans. At Marseilles, Avignon, etc., the main streets had to be barricaded, and cavalry charged the crowds, wounding great numbers. Of course all these grand manifestations of popular indignation are carefully belittled or suppressed by foreign correspondents of English and American papers. In the Evening Post, August 25th, M. Othon Guerlac, with lofty affectation of impartiality, echoes all the commonplaces of ministerial calumnies against the Congregations, but he has not one word to say about the monstrous illegalities committed by the Government from first to last.

The indignant protestations of the foreign colony have suspended for a time the closing of churches and convents on this Riviera.

The Ministerials have not even the courage to do evil logically and consistently, with equal injustice to all.

Two years ago Waldeck Rousseau, in his famous political speech at Toulouse, declared religious vows to be contrary to public law; and in the same breath he introduced the law of 1901, inviting all Congregations to apply for authorization. His colleague, M. Brisson, at the session in which fifty-four Congregations of men were executed in globo, loftily declared “that the Republic would never put its signature to an act alienating human liberty.” And at that very moment, three or four of these Congregations were nestling, securely, under the protecting wing of M. Combes. That of St. Jean de Dieu has a first-rate establishment for men in need of surgical treatment, similar to the one conducted by Augustine nuns, at which Madame Waldeck Rousseau was operated on recently. None of these will be interfered with, no matter how heinous their vows may be.

It would be foolish, I repeat, for Catholics to rejoice at the possible return of Waldeck Rousseau, or at any machine en arriÈre policy.

M. Combes has been hired to do an odious job, when it is done he, too, will retire or fall. But the well-matured plans of the Grand Orient will be carried out with long-drawn, unrelenting, satanic astuteness. This is the peril I noted in my first article from France, March 17th, 1900.