The War Upon Religion Part 21

_M. Chauvin:_ "The country will understand that the Government has become clerical."

M. Spuller replied:

I shall certainly be understood without, and when I a.s.sert that in a new situation we have need of a new policy, a new spirit, I am sure of being understood by everyone who is not blinded by his pa.s.sions. That new spirit of which I speak, I do not wish you to think it ought under any pretext to be a spirit of weakness, of condescension, of abandonment, of abdication; on the contrary it ought to be a lofty and large spirit of tolerance, of intellectual and moral renovation, altogether different from that which has prevailed heretofore. Such is my profound conviction.... Yes, gentlemen, and mark it well the Church must not any longer pretend, as she has so long contended, that she is tyrannized, persecuted, hunted, shut out and kept out of the social life of the country.

I will say to M. Goblet, who has done me the honor of interrupting me, and of crying out as they cry out to me in the public reunions: "Confess that you are with the Pope;" I will say to him that it would be no more unworthy of me than of him to recognize in the present Pope a man who merits the grandest respect, because he is invested with the highest moral authority.

These words, in the very Chamber itself, and uttered by a man who professed himself bound by no religion, found many echoes in the same quarter. Not the least important and significant were those of M.

Casimir Perier, President of the Council. The Government had spoken its _mea culpa_ with full consciousness of its fault.

There was another cause also which at this time awoke the country to the necessity of that moral teaching which only the Church can afford.

Socialism in its rankest form had begun a campaign of a.s.sa.s.sination and terror which struck all hearts with consternation. The noise of anarchistic bombs was heard from one end to the other of France. In 1892, it was those of Ravachol and his accomplices; on December 3, 1893, Vaillant exploded a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies; Emile Henri cast another in the cafe of the Hotel Terminus on February 12, 1894; there was another in the Rue Saint-Jaques on February 20, 1894, and another in the Church of the Madeleine on March 15. These evidences of a social derangement recalled the necessity of religion with its moral power.

This was all the more accentuated when on June 24, 1894, in revenge for the death of the anarchist, Henri, an Italian a.s.sa.s.sinated M. Sadi Carnot, President of the Republic, at Lyons. The result of the reflections aroused by these revolting crimes was the election on June 27, 1894, of that Casimir Perier who had joined M. Spuller in his demand for tolerance toward the Church.

It was under the comparative mildness of the rule thus inaugurated that the Catholics of the country could begin to breathe a little the air of freedom. From 1894 to 1900, the beneficent works of the Church made progress; her schools and colleges were filled; the religious orders, dispossessed in 1880, began to rebuild their houses, open their chapels, and to undertake publicly the direction of houses of education.

Throughout the whole French Church a development was noticeable, to the great comfort of many who had groaned for fifteen years under the iron yoke of anti-Christian legislation.

_SPIRIT OF CONCILIATION._

Through the efforts of Leo XIII., followed by those of the French cardinals and bishops, a new spirit, a spirit of conciliation, had indeed grown up in France, to which even the representatives of a Government hitherto hostile had lent their prestige. Nevertheless, it is difficult to define the reasons why these common aspirations of peace, instead of developing into a true religious pacification, ended in a war on religion the most terrible in its significance that France has ever known. Nevertheless it can be stated without temerity that the realization of true and definite peace was hindered through the efforts of men and circ.u.mstances.

The men of France stood in its way. In this matter we can distinguish three cla.s.ses of men, the sectaries, the liberals and the Catholics. It was only natural that the sectaries, whose highest ambition was the destruction of Christianity, should repulse from evil principle every convincing argument in favor of peace. It mattered little to them that Catholics declared their adhesion to the Republican form of government; they sneered at the distinction made by Leo XIII. between the form of government and legislation.

The Catholic in combating unjust legislation was p.r.o.nounced by them a peril to the Republic, and by the Republic they understood, not a form of government for the good of the people, but the concrete spirit of revolution, the glorification of free thought, anti-Christianism and irreligion. From the sectaries, therefore, nothing could be hoped for in the way of religious pacification.

The liberals, on the other hand, if they entered into the _new spirit_ and dictated its methods, were nevertheless, at the best, only opportunists. Their att.i.tude was merely political; at the depth of their ideas and sentiments they were always hostile to the Church. They feared Catholicism because it meant the restraints of virtue; they feared its light, lest it betray the evil of the ways they were treading. There was thus no real sincerity in their false liberalism towards the Church.

They were, moreover, trimmers, ever on guard lest a false move betray their position and lead them into parties to which they were averse.

They feared to favor the Right lest the Left call them clerical; they guarded themselves against the Left, lest the respectable element of the country should accuse them of excess. When their ministers spoke of the _new spirit_, they made plain that they looked upon the Church as a vanquished enemy, which they continued to hold in leash, desiring only to let out a little more of the rope. They were, moreover, under the full influence of Masonry. At the very time when the ministry of the _new spirit_ was const.i.tuted, out of the eleven ministers, seven were Freemasons, a preponderance which the sects have not lost in the succeeding ministries.

With regard to the Catholics, themselves, it must be confessed that their want of unity proved as great a hindrance to any effectual pacification. There were many who refused in a more or less open way to enter into the movement indicated by the Sovereign Pontiff. They argued, quarrelled, and remained militant monarchists to the end. Of those who showed a desire to follow the directions of Leo XIII. some lagged behind in the movement, uncertain, timid, and nervous; others rushed to the front with an ardor that proved more bravery than prudence; others, neither timid nor rash, effected nothing through a want of understanding among themselves. Thus divided, scattered, disputing among themselves, they gave the vantage ground to the enemy. With a compact, organized army of workers, united upon one single line of policy the Catholics of France could have gained immense advantages.

_THE DREYFUS AFFAIR._

Among the circ.u.mstances which contributed to the continuance of the anti-Christian spirit must be reckoned the Dreyfus affair. Dreyfus was condemned on December 22, 1894. The affair in itself was entirely a matter between him and the French army. Yet it served as a pretext for war against the majority of the French nation as comprised within the Catholic Church. Whether the defendant were innocent or guilty mattered little; his condemnation brought with it the humiliation of three orders of men who had acquired much power in France, and who determined to obtain revenge not upon the army, which had exposed them to the scorn of public opinion, but upon a force entirely outside the question, but easily attainable because of its weakness, the Church.

The Jews, pointed out by press and public speech as rapacious money-seekers and place-hunters, were only too happy that the circ.u.mstance gave them an opportunity of revenge. Freemasonry still quivered under the lash of Leo XIII. who had stigmatized them as the powers of darkness, the enemies of religion and the social order; the bishops of France had adhered to the word of the Sovereign Pontiff; a pet.i.tion of the _League of Patriots_ was gotten up against Masonry; books and pamphlets were scattered broadcast exposing their illegality and international character; throughout the whole of France the anti-masonic movement was spreading day by day. It was to the Church that the sects attributed their growing unpopularity, and thus Masonry determined that the Church must be punished. Socialism, also, found in the Dreyfus affair, a pretext for the solidification of its forces. It had recognized that the Church alone disputed with it for the guidance of human souls, and in the Church alone could be found remedies for social evils incomparably more apt and human than any Socialism could put forth.

The Dreyfusards arranged themselves under these three banners and, uniting against the common enemy, began their campaign by laying the whole affair at the door of the Jesuits, intending through them to strike down eventually every inst.i.tution of the Church existing in France. Hence the words of M. Jaures in the Chamber, March 23, 1903: "Now that the country, now that the honest people of this country have seen the depths of the corruption, the perjury, falsehood and treason, when it can say that this policy of falsehood was the product of a long _Jesuitical_ education ... we can see the immense political character of the battle which has begun." From 1894 to the end of the century the anti-Jesuitical campaign went on, increasing every year in bitterness and intensity. In June and July, 1899, seven or eight journals of Paris every day demanded the expulsion of the Jesuits. Freemasonry, through the columns of the _Siecle_, circulated a pet.i.tion against the Jesuits, laying at their door all recent crimes, especially Boulangism and the affair of Dreyfus. The Masonic congress held in Paris during the days of June 22, 23 and 24, 1899, placed at the head of its programme the dissolution of the Inst.i.tute of the Jesuits and of all Congregations not authorized.

[Decoration]

CHAPTER VII.

The War on the Religious Orders.

The twentieth century dawned with black and lowering skies, presage of storms to come. Even while the hymns of thanksgiving were echoing among the vaulted roofs of cathedral and chapel, the powers of darkness were a.s.sembling in high places to formulate plans of destruction. The word had gone forth that Catholicity must die, the oath had been taken in the secret lodges, the generals of the campaign were chosen, and work began in earnest.

The war with the Church was on. It had its skirmishes ever since 1879.

Any president or minister who dared to favor the cause of Catholicity must fall. "They must temporize, resign, or die." MacMahon was forced to resign; Carnot was a.s.sa.s.sinated; Casimir Perier resigned; Felix Faure, for having steadfastly opposed the revision of the Dreyfus case, died almost immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soiree, and the Dreyfus case was made out against the Catholics. President Loubet was elected on February 18, 1899. In taking up the reins of government he was made to understand unmistakably that he must follow out the directions of a party whose slogan was: "Death to the Church!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALDECK-ROUSSEAU.]

One fact which shows that the spirit of the Government, which followed upon the accession of Loubet, was born for persecution, was the case of the a.s.sumptionist Fathers. The latter were accused of interfering in the elections of 1898. A case was made out against them "for violation of the Penal Code interdicting gatherings of more than twenty persons." The real accusation brought against them, however, was to the effect that they had favored the _wrong_ candidates, that is, candidates not agreeable to the dominant powers. The prosecutor, Bulot, in his arraignment, cited the names of thirty-one deputies who, he declared, owed their election to the influence of the a.s.sumptionists. The a.s.sumptionists were condemned, and their congregation dissolved as illicit.

_ANTI-CHRISTIAN GOVERNMENT._

The complexion of the new Government which ruled from 1899 to 1902 may be seen from the following extract taken from the revelations of Madame Sorgues, sub-editor, a few years ago--of Jaures' Socialist organ, _La Pet.i.te Republique_:

In fighting the battles of Dreyfus, Jaures and his friends brought about a singular meeting of the two most irreconcilable camps.... The first service rendered was to restore the tottering Socialist press.... All the advanced (i. e. anti-clerical) dailies have pa.s.sed into the hands of the great barons of finance; they are their journals now, not the journals of the workers.... They cast their eyes on Waldeck-Rousseau, the clever rescuer of the Panama people....

The agent of the Dreyfus politics had the happy thought of introducing into the Cabinet, Millerand, the Socialist leader, with the consent of his party. Socialism by becoming ministerial would be domesticated and rendered inoffensive against capital.

The Cabinet was thus in the hands of men little disposed to show fairness towards anything Catholic. In the Chamber of Deputies of that term there were four hundred Freemasons out of five hundred members; in the Cabinet out of eleven ministers, ten were Freemasons. This was the ill.u.s.trious band which was to make laws for the guidance of thirty-seven million Catholics.

At the head of this ministry stood Waldeck-Rousseau, President of the Council. Waldeck-Rousseau personified the policy which obtained during the two first years of the century, that is, the policy of duplicity and deception. It was necessary, in the beginning of the campaign, to entice the Catholics into a trap, after which their annihilation must follow as a matter of course. In the art of deception Waldeck-Rousseau was an adept.

_a.s.sOCIATIONS LAW._

The instrument by which the deception was exercised was the infamous a.s.sociations Law of 1901. The Congregations had ever been the _bete-noir_ of the anti-clericals. They represented Religion in its perfection. In 1892, when the Fallieres-Constans bill against the religious congregations was broached, and M. Carnot, its spokesman, had presented it before the Chamber, the _Temps_ remarked: "Its purpose was to resolve the difficult problem of according the right of a.s.sociation to everyone, with such reserves, however, that the Catholics might not benefit by it, and that the Congregations might by it be destroyed." In the bill of Waldeck-Rousseau-Trouillot, prepared in June, 1900, such embarra.s.sments were simply set aside. It was determined "to take the bull by the horns." The new project was, therefore, twofold; the first part a.s.sured a large liberty to a.s.sociations _non-suspected_; the second part gave the Government a means of suppressing all religious orders. It read as follows: "No religious congregation can be formed without an authorization given by a law which shall determine the conditions of its workings. It cannot found any new establishment except in virtue of a decree emanating from the Council of State.--The dissolution of a congregation, or the closing of an establishment can be p.r.o.nounced by a decree rendered by the Council of the ministers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: EX-PRESIDENT LOUBET.]

The project which bore the names of Trouillot and Waldeck-Rousseau began by declaring all religious congregations "illicit," under the pretext that the members of these a.s.sociations live in community, that they make the vows of poverty, chast.i.ty and obedience, and that Article 1118 of the Civil Code declares that "only such things as enter into commerce can be made the object of a convention," and that poverty, chast.i.ty and obedience are things which do not enter into commerce.

M. Emile f.a.guet in his _L'Anticlericalism_ (Paris, 1905) scourges this method of persecution:

This argumentation was seething with sophisms. In the first place it transposes into the Penal Code a disposition of the Civil Code and it makes a crime of that which is only a judiciary incapacity: the party who makes a contract upon something which does not enter into commerce cannot judicially exact the execution of that contract if his co-contractor should refuse. That is all that is meant by Article 1118, and there is no penalty against a man who makes a contract not conformable to Article 1118 of the Civil Code.

Indeed, if such were the case, marriage would be illicit, for it is a convention of obedience, fidelity and protection between two persons, and obedience, fidelity and protection are not matters of trade; hence marriage would be contrary to Article 1118.

But, it will be said, we must count as illicit every convention which is contrary to good morals. Without doubt; but it is difficult to conceive how living in common, and taking the vows of poverty, chast.i.ty, and obedience are opposed to good morals.

Finally this position of the question betrays a voluntary confusion of the terms "convention" and "vow." A vow is not a contract, it is a resolution which one takes and in which one persists. Thus in no way does Article 1118 affect the question of a.s.sociations and congregations.

It is strange indeed that these sapient legislators, after declaring religious a.s.sociations illicit or criminal, contradict themselves by inviting these same "criminal"

a.s.sociations to seek authorization; which amounts to saying that the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry wished to sanction some things which it considered as essentially wrong. Thus the new law stultifies itself almost in its opening sentences, while it makes it quite plain that the subversive intentions of its author were to affect all religious congregations without exception.

Waldeck-Rousseau belonged to the same school as Jules Ferry; he believed in maintaining _provisorily_ the Concordat, but he made it plain that he intended to laicise all the public service, and especially that of teaching, in which the congregations held so large a part. In a speech at Toulouse, October 28, 1900, after arguing that the development of the monastic possessions ought to be arrested, he declared:

Two cla.s.ses of youth, less separated by their social condition than by the education they receive, are growing up without any mutual acquaintance, until the day comes when they shall meet and find themselves so unlike that they will not be able to understand one another. Little by little two different societies are being prepared--one of them, becoming more and more democratic as it is borne on by the great current of the Revolution, and the other, more and more imbued with doctrines which one would not have believed able to survive the great movement of the eighteenth century.

In this sentence was contained his plea for compelling the teachers of the second cla.s.s of youth, the congregations, to seek authorization, while at the same time he made it evident that none should be authorized whose methods should not be in accordance with the principles of the French Revolution.