25th April, 1902.

I HESITATE to write anything more on religious conditions at the present time, because I shall have to repeat what I have written in these columns since two years. My worst previsions have been realized. The Budget of Cults which I had hoped would be thrown as another sop to Cerberus, has been voted by a compact Ministerial majority.

If the clergy of France, with the Holy See, do not themselves reject all connexion with a distinctly pagan government, and hold their own as the Church did in the first three centuries, I fear this fair land may revive the experiences of the Byzantine or Bas Empire, as it is aptly called, for there is a distinct determination to enslave or to destroy the Church.

The French are an optimistic people. From year to year they keep repeating that matters will soon improve, that the next elections will make everything right and restore liberty.

France’s great misfortune is, I repeat, that respectable people will not, as a rule, touch politics, or soon give them up in disgust, while denaturalized Frenchmen and naturalized foreigners do nothing else for a living.

In 418 the Emperor Honorius wished to establish a representative government in Southern Gaul. “But,” writes Guizot, “no one would send representatives, no one would go to Arles.” This same state of mind is working the ruin of France to-day.

On March 17th, 1900, I wrote: “Thus the bad element captures the votes of the labouring masses by the circulation of vile newspapers and brilliant promises of the Social Utopia that is coming. Consequently both Houses are packed with this element, whose war cry is Vive la Sociale, and whose emblem is the red flag of anarchy which was waved under the very nose of President Loubet at a recent Republican fÊte. With a parliament and a ministry like this any legislation is possible. If other means fail, all the Congregations engaged in teaching will be suppressed.... But Waldeck Rousseau is no fool,” I added. “He and his Freemason employers know that there are some thirty odd millions of French Catholics.... The Government cannot afford to rouse them from their political lethargy by violent measures.... Religious liberty must be destroyed by degrees.”

Two years have elapsed since the notorious Associations or Trouillot Bill has been passed; and the law Falloux (1850), which guarantees liberty of teaching, may already be considered as abrogated in favour of a state monopoly of education.

Never since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), strongly reproved by Pope Innocent, has so great a blow been dealt at liberty of conscience and the rights of free citizens. The pendulum of progress has been set back at least two hundred years; nay, we witness an odious reversion to LacedÆmonian state tyranny. And this crime against liberty, this liberticide, is committed in the twentieth century, amid the plaudits of all sectarian haters of the Catholic Church, and in a country which unceasingly flaunts its catchwords of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

The general elections of May, 1902, will not, I fear, modify the situation. I doubt, indeed, if any efforts, however earnest and well-concerted, could now retrieve the political situation.

Waldeck Rousseau, whose wily effrontery is something more than human, knows this, and begins to throw off his mask of Liberalism.

His recent political speech in the mining centres near Lyons was bold enough, judging by a stenographic report, for the Officiel and Havas toned it down somewhat.

He gave it to be understood that only those congregations who relieved the State in caring for the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the insane were to be tolerated. In other words, the souls of her children are to become the prey of a pagan State, but their diseased bodies are to be left to the care of the Church!

Eight Jesuits are being prosecuted for preaching Advent sermons, though they have closed their establishments and dispersed. The proper course, apparently, would be to arraign the bishops and curÉs who had invited these Jesuits to occupy their pulpits. Waldeck Rousseau is too wily for that. His policy is to make a fine distinction between the secular and regular clergy—to divide and conquer.

Three other Jesuits, who profess theology at the Institut Catholique, obtained from Rome dispensation of their vows, in order to be able to retain their chairs at the Institut. They, too, are being prosecuted for alleged violation of the Associations Bill.

I think the situation is clear, and that if any Catholics here or elsewhere still misapprehend the true purport and scope of this law of 1901, their purblindness is no longer admissible.