24th November, 1906.

DISGUISE the fact as they may, there is religious persecution in France. Never since the days of Julian the Apostate has any war been waged against Christianity more malign, more insidious. The ancient Faith was crushed out, by sheer force, in England and in many parts of the Continent, in the sixteenth century. In France, too, it seemed, in the eighteenth century, as though Christianity had received its quietus by the same brutal means. But methods have greatly altered. Masonic Jacobins, to-day, shudder at the mere suggestion of blood. A senator of the Right warned the Government that the Separation might lead to bloodshed. Thereupon the minister Briand made a gesture of deprecation. “Pray do not speak of blood,” he cried. One man was killed during the inventories; and immediately they were stopped, and the Rouvier Ministry fell. Yesterday again in the Chambers M. Briand exclaimed, “Du sang, quelle parole atroce!” (“Blood, what an atrocious word!”).

They have pondered the words of the Divine Master, “Fear not them that kill the body”; and they are determined that there shall be no more martyrs in the usual sense, no more guillotines, no more noyades as in 1790. But they mean to choke out every germ of Christianity by casting the minds of the rising generation in a mould of atheism, and to quench every divine spark in the adult by degrading him in his own eyes to the level of a mere animal, that must seize every fleeting advantage, by fair means or foul, because there is no hereafter.

“We have combated the religious chimera, and by a magnificent gesture we have put out all the lights in heaven, which will never more be rekindled.... But what then shall we say to the man whose religious beliefs we have destroyed?” Thus spoke on November 8th, 1906, M. Viviani, Socialist Minister of Labour. At the same tribune, the very next day, M. Briand declared that his Government was not anti-religious, but only irreligious, or neutral. Meanwhile both this Minister of Public Instruction and M. Clemenceau, in public speeches all over the country, have been reviling and calumniating the religion of the nation, and congratulating public instructors on their zeal in emancipating the minds of their pupils from all religious superstition, thus training up “true men whose brains are not obstructed by mystery and dogma,” whose “consciences and reason are emancipated.”

In December 1905, this same M. Briand declared that the Government would never suffer that its hundreds of thousands of public functionaries send their children to any but state schools, and to make assurance doubly sure, a law is deposed, and will soon be passed, establishing a state monopoly of instruction. Disconcerted by the attitude of the Papacy and the splendid unity of the clergy and their flocks, the one contingency for which they were not prepared, the French atheocracy has decided to content itself with spoliation for the present. A receiver is to be appointed for all the holdings of the Church, menses episcopales, pious and charitable foundations, libraries, etc. The Left clamoured for the immediate attribution of the property to the communes, as the law requires. But M. Briand declared that it would be for them “a nest of vipers” and “poison their budgets”!

M. Lassies summed up M. Briand’s discourse by these unparliamentary words: “Vous avez du toupet, vous——” (“You have brass enough, you——”).

Not daring to close the churches at present, they have resorted to a subterfuge (cousu de blanc) in order to avoid doing so. The Republic having promised religious liberty, they say the faithful and their priests may come together “accidentally” and “individually” in the churches. Now the text of the law is formal. Art. I says: “The Republic guarantees the free exercise of public worship, under the following restrictions.” Then follow the restrictions, i.e. articles regarding the associations; in other words, the constitution of the new by-law-established churches, which were to inherit all the patrimony of the ancient Church and take its place.

M. Briand himself, before the encyclical, had openly proclaimed that there could be no public worship without these associations. The efforts made by M. des Houx of the Matin (alias “Mirambeau”), M. Decker David (a deputy mayor), and other agents of the lodges or of the Republic, to form these associations have been ludicrously pathetic. Failing these, the Government has decided to leave the churches open for another year, nevertheless. To storm them, and hold them after they had been stormed, would be too perilous an enterprise, judging by the troubles caused by the inventories. Therefore they have resolved to reduce the clergy by famine, by military conscription, the suppression of seminaries, and other vexatory measures. Moreover, the closing of the churches is the one measure that would convince the masses that something had happened, and that their religion was really persecuted. To the extreme Left, clamouring for the immediate confiscation of Church edifices and property, M. Briand said, “You want to strangle the Catholics right away; we do not wish to do so” (November 9th, 1906). Precisely. What they do wish is to empty the churches by every means, then close them, one by one.

On December 11th, 1906, state receivers are to be appointed for all Church property, movable and immovable. The very sacred vessels and ornaments, chasubles, etc., are all appropriated, and merely lent to the Catholics, temporarily, at the Government’s good pleasure. There has been of late years a dearth of treasures of ancient religious art in the Salles Drouots of Paris, Frankfort, Munich, etc. But soon Jew brocanteurs will be in clover. All that escaped the revolutionists of 1790 will be scattered to the four winds ere long. This is one of the by-products, duly discounted, of this “law of liberty” called “Separation.”

But they still have a latent hope that the inextricable difficulties will force Catholics to capitulate and form associations. M. Briand’s circular, 31st August, 1906, ordered his prefects to report to him any subreptice associations not in conformity with the law of 1905. Cardinal Lecot’s society for the support of aged priests (their old age pension fund being taken like everything else) is certainly of this category. It conforms to none of the requirements of the law of 1905, nevertheless M. Briand gives it a clean bill of health (November 9th). His speech in the Chambers is a complete repudiation of his circular of August 31st, and is a tissue of misrepresentation and tergiversation. He harps upon Article 4 (“the associations must be formed according to the general rules of worship”), which he declares “places all the associations under the control of the bishops and of the Holy See.” Article 8 of the law provides, it is true, for endless schisms, all subject to the decisions of the Conseil d’Etat, alone competent to judge if an association is or is not orthodox, i.e. “formed according to the general rules of worship.” In this Article 8, also, he finds a guarantee which should satisfy all reasonable Catholics!

Now this same M. Briand, as Minister and reporter of the law, combated (April 6th, 1905) in the Chambers a proposed amendment tending to safeguard ecclesiastical authority in this matter. “You wish to turn over to the Pope, by means of the bishops (la haute discipline), the government of these associations. We cannot subject the faithful to this discipline.”

In the Senate, too, this same minister declared “that even after one association had been legally formed, dissensions might arise, not only in matters of dogma, but also of administration; we must allow those, who do not wish to submit, to form another independent association if they wish to use the same church.”[21]

If the intentions of the Government were so benevolent as M. Briand pretends, why did they not accept the insertion of the word “bishop” in Article 4? It would have rendered the associations tolerable; but this they strenuously opposed, and the keystone of their law was demolished by the non possumus of Pius X, August 15th. In the Chambers (November 9th) M. Briand admitted that “the law had been made in view of the organization of Associations cultuelles.” This I have affirmed since nearly two years, and it is in vain that, elsewhere, M. Briand seeks to make-believe that the law has accomplished its purpose, which, in reality, it has just missed.

Even to-day, if the intentions of the Government are as candid and benignant as M. Briand pretends, why do they not insert one little amendment in the text of the law which would make it possible for the Church to form these associations? No, not so. They wish the Holy See to accept the word of some irresponsible minister, or some declaration of the Conseil d’Etat, equally valueless.

In 1901 Waldeck Rousseau solemnly declared in the Chambers that Article 13 of the Associations Bill in no wise affected the parochial schools, and two days after the law was voted three thousand of these schools were summarily closed. He had also assured the Vatican that authorized Congregations had nothing to fear. Even M. DelcassÉ and the Ambassador at Rome had given similar assurances to the Vatican before the law of 1901 was deposed in the Chambers. With these and similar precedents it would be idle indeed to attach any faith to M. Briand’s dulcet, fair, feline, fallacious utterances in the Chambers (November 9th). They are merely “words, words,” and verba volant. Moreover, how long will M. Briand and the Clemenceau Cabinet be able to resist the Socialist impact of the advance guard?

More than a year ago, I wrote that any interpretation could be given to some of the ambiguous terms in which the law was couched, and that this ambiguity was deliberate and intentional.

By his own authority. M. Briand (Chambers, November 12th, 1906) has offered the Catholics one year more in which to form associations under the Separation Bill. Thereupon M. Puech, a deputy of the Left, flung these biting words at the Government: “The law without the associations is void ... it has fallen to pieces.... And you have no associations. In 1907 you will not have them any more than in 1906.... Void, nothingness, chaos, behold your law.” “In 1790,” said the same deputy, “as to-day, the struggle was engaged between two principles, between dogma and science.... The Constituante was not firm. Camille Desmoulins spoke like M. le Ministre Briand.... Three succeeding assemblies were forced logically to extreme measures—death and transportation.”

The astute guile that characterizes M. Briand’s declarations in the Chambers can only be compared to that of Julian the Apostate, who began his reign by a grand edict of toleration. Or rather it recalls those deliberations of that council in Pandemonium (Book II, Paradise Lost): “Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood, the fiercest spirit, now fiercer by despair, spoke thus: My sentence is for open war of wiles I boast not.” But he was overruled by Beelzebub, who “pleaded devilish counsel first devised by Satan,” and which consisted in “seducing the puny habitants of Paradise to our party” by guile and fraud.

These associations of the law of 1905, which ignorant or malevolent writers continue to represent as being the same as those of Prussia and other half-Protestant countries, were a most ingenious device for inducing the Church to commit suicide by the repudiation of her divinely given constitution.

The point, that essentially differentiates associations for public worship in Prussia and elsewhere from those of the law of 1905, is that, in the former, the Catholic hierarchy was respected. In them the curate is by right president, episcopal authority is paramount, and the State cannot intervene if dissensions arise. Now Articles 8, 9, etc., of the French law are the very antipodes of all this.[22]

The fact is that there can be no real accord between the Church and the French atheocracy, whose openly avowed object is the radical destruction of the religious idea, even of natural religion.

Never perhaps, in the history of humanity, has there been such a monstrosity as a distinctly atheistic state. Pagan antiquity, even the Grecian Republics, had a cult of some kind. The First Republic, under Robespierre, having decreed the abolition of Christianity, immediately substituted theo-philanthropy. But the Third Republic proclaims itself atheist, and insists that the nation shall be made atheist by means of public schools.

Hitherto the words lay, layman, meant in French as in English, simply, not of the clergy; to-day, laÏque in France means atheist. L’École laÏque means, not a school taught by laymen, but a school of infidelity. Catholic lay or secular schools are still holding their own against the state schools, which are nearly empty in some communes.

Not satisfied with having suppressed twenty-seven thousand religious or congregational schools, the annual September convent of the Grand Orient has decided that all these Christian lay schools, primary and secondary, must disappear. It also finds that the State lycÉes de filles “are not sufficiently laicized,” meaning of course not sufficiently atheized and depraved. Yet the work seems to be well under way, if we are to judge by the following extracts from the discourse pronounced on the grave of a child of twelve by one of her companions of an École laÏque near Allevard, in presence of the whole school. “For thee infinite nothingness has begun, as it will begin for all of us. Thy death, or rather the supposed Being who caused it, must be very wicked or very stupid.... He made thee the victim of a society refractory to society solidarity.... We really cannot excuse this celestial iniquity.” I transcribe from the anti-clerical DÉpÊche Dauphinoise. The spectacle of this free-thought funeral, and of a little schoolgirl blaspheming over the grave of a playmate, is simply hideous. Poor hapless victims of a pagan state, that nevertheless enlists the sympathies of Christians who spend millions on missions to the heathen Chinese!

This Masonic convent has also decided “that the means of production and exchange must be restituted to the collectivity.” Therefore we know in advance what the new Chambers will accomplish: State monopoly of instruction, and State Socialism prepared and accomplished as rapidly as possible.

Under these circumstances it really does not matter very much if the churches remain open or not, for the present. As an English ecclesiastic recently observed, “We can do without our churches, but we cannot do without our schools.”

It is by means of Christian schools that Europe was redeemed from barbarism, and preserved from relapsing into its first estate. Each generation, in turn, must be redeemed from barbarism, as were our forefathers, by the Christian upbringing of the young, otherwise retrogression must inevitably ensue. Every gardener understands this. It is natural law in the spiritual world. To descend and retrograde is so much easier than to ascend.

To-day, the eternal enemy of God and man seeks to wrest from the Church the great fulcrum by which Christendom was upraised from barbarism, and to use her own arms against the Church, by converting schools into nurseries of infidelity and immorality.

In vain secularists would tell us that history, geography, and grammar are neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Mohammedan. The venom of infidelity and vice can be conveyed by the conjugation of a verb. Physical geography may be used as a catapult against the very notion of right and wrong. As to the misuse of history, its possibilities are unlimited. Moreover, the Church, that has received the divine commission to “teach all nations,” needs the aid of all the arts and sciences to accomplish this mission. The Catholic Church, that is essentially, and jure divino, Ecclesia docens, will never forego her right to teach them all, as she has been doing for two thousand years. In the sixteenth century China seemed hopelessly closed against Christian missionaries. But where apostles failed to penetrate, a man of science, who was also a saint, succeeded. Mathew Ricci, the Jesuit savant, was welcomed by mandarin literati, and founded the first Christian mission in China in 1581.

All the old universities of Europe were founded by the Church. The arts and sciences grouped themselves around the Chair of Theology, as hand-maidens around their mistress. Religion is, indeed, the aromat which alone preserves them from becoming corrupt and corrupting. Already, society is beginning to discover the evil effects of separating religion from learning. The knowledge and uses of fire form one of the main lines of demarcation that separate us from animals. Monkeys appreciate the kindly blaze, but the smartest of them has never attempted to light a fire.

When men, with this distinctive and dangerous knowledge of fire, shall have degraded their mentality to that of the simian by atheism or secularism, and its concomitant materialism, the social order will no longer be possible. A few rudely constructed, diminutive bombs can lay the proudest city in ruins.

To-day, as in 1790, France is the field on which another great battle is to be fought between Christianity and paganism, and its results will be far-reaching. The French atheocracy has “said unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways” (Job XXI. 14). Churches, here and there, have already been profaned by Masonic revelry, the cross has been demolished on every highway, and removed from every school and hospital. The State, disposing of all the power and all the riches of the nation, is at the command of a secret society that is the sworn and avowed enemy of religion. If the Church again come forth victorious from the struggle, stronger and purer through poverty and persecution, “if the Christian Hercules uplift AntÆus, son of the earth, into the air and stifle him there, then—patuit Deus.”