Part 11

The discussion raised by M. Combes with the Vatican, regarding the words _nobis nominavit_ in the canonical investiture of French bishops presented by the Government as candidates, and then the affair of the deposition of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, 1894, convinced them that a national schismatic church was impossible, so they fell back on this alternative scheme of _Associations cultuelles_, destined to set in motion a process of slow disintegration and gradual decomposition. A noted Freemason said recently, “Twenty years of secular schools have made us the masters of France; with twenty years of _Associations cultuelles_ every trace of the Catholic religion in France will be effaced.”

In the Senate M. Berger, a Protestant Freemason, made the following interesting statement (_Journal Officiel_, p. 1380): “The law,” he said, “had been slumbering in the Republican programme for the past fifty years ... but how can a law be perfect that has had only one deliberation?... Instead of this a voice cries to us, ‘Vote, vote.’ Here are articles in disagreement with each other--Vote. They are in contradiction with the spirit of the law--Vote. They violate existing rights--Vote, vote. Do your duty as a Republican.... Well, yes, I will vote this law from a sense of duty.”[18]

This same senator described the true character of the _Associations cultuelles_ when he said, “They are free associations destined to take the place of the ancient Church.”

Not less clear was the statement of M. Briand, Minister of Public Worship: “Dissensions may arise, not in matters of dogma only, but in questions of administration. We must allow those, who do not wish to submit, to form independent autonomous associations if they wish to use the same church.”

If Christians anywhere wonder at the severity of the papal encyclical rejecting these associations, it is because they have not even scanned the text of the law, and accept, unchallenged, the misrepresentations of a Press which seems to derive all its information from organs like _La Lanterne_, _L’Action_, _Le Siècle_, _Le Temps_, etc. This Law of alleged Separation presumes to dictate to the Catholic Church, an organization in which episcopal authority, the basis of her divinely given constitution, is completely set at naught. The Roman Pontiff, her supreme head, was not once consulted, and in order to make it impossible to do so, they began by severing all connexion with the Vatican in 1904. It is very much as if, after suppressing all their schools and colleges, the English Government were to pass a law declaring that Quakers and Presbyterians are to be deprived of all their ecclesiastical property unless they consent to adopt episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer. Would any one under these circumstances hesitate to say that Quakers and Presbyterians were persecuted? I trow not.

When Henry VIII had resolved to reduce the Church of England to the condition of a department of State, his first step was to undermine her constitution by removing the keystone of the arch. To do this it was necessary to detach the clergy from Rome, the See of Peter on whom the Church is founded. In 1530 he compelled them “to acknowledge the king to be the singular protector and only supreme lord, and, so far as the law of Christ will allow, supreme head of the English Church and clergy.” In 1532 Convocation further abdicated by the elimination of the saving clause, “as far as the law of Christ will allow.” They also consented to have their canon law revised by a Royal Commission, “with a view to the elimination of all canons contrary to the laws of God and of the realm.” Their abdication and submission were recorded in an Act of Parliament, and “henceforth,” writes Wakeman, the Anglican author of a history of the English Church, “the Church of England will be at the mercy of Parliament.” We all know how the schism and apostasy of this great province of the Church were consummated by Elizabeth. The fate of Moscow, and that of Constantinople five centuries before, was the same. Detached from Rome, they fell beneath the tyranny of the State.

It is this condition that the Judeo-Masonic coterie would fain have brought about in France. The seventy-six Organic Articles added surreptitiously to the Concordat of 1801 had no other object in view. But, as M. Combes admitted in the Chambers, the Papacy never accepted them, and no government had ever succeeded in enforcing them. The question of _nobis nominavit_ and that of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval were the last abortive efforts to bring about a schism. Failing this, they resolved to reduce the Church in France to the condition of a Polish Diet, in which the Conseil d’Etat, i.e. the Grand Orient, would have enjoyed an unlimited _liberum veto_.

Even legally speaking, these _Associations cultuelles_ could not function normally, because their situation was anomalous. They were neither owners, _usufruitiers_, nor simple tenants of the Church property of which they had the charge and the responsibility. The law is, as I said before, full of antinomies and obscurities. Senators of the Right pointed them out one by one. All in vain. Decrees of Conseil d’Etat will settle every question as it arises was always the Government’s reply.

The trap was smartly constructed, and neatly baited with the greater portion of the present patrimony of the Church, some two million pounds, it is said, and all Church edifices, etc. Everything is to be confiscated if _Associations cultuelles_ are not formed by December 11th, 1906.

Considering the disastrous consequences of not forming associations, it is not surprising that some Catholics, and even some priests, were disposed, once more, to retreat before the enemy by forming some kind of Janus-faced association, canonical on one side, and in conformity with the law on the other. But it is absolutely false that a majority, or even a minority, of the bishops at the Assembly were in favour of the acceptation of the Law, _telle quelle_.

The clergy and the Catholics of France have been retreating before the enemy for twenty years and more, quite forgetting the “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

Leo XIII, in his profound attachment to France, loyally lent his aid to the Third Republic when implored by M. Grevy. He begged the clergy and the Catholics to rally to the new regime in the interest of peace.

He even discountenanced the formation of a Catholic party in France at that time, because Catholics being divided, politically, into three camps--Royalists, Republicans, and Imperialists or Bonapartists--he feared strife, and did not wish the Catholic religion to be identified with any form of government.

At the time of Leo’s death the _Journal de Genève_ (Protestant) declared that “this Pontiff had at least one miracle to his credit, in that to the end he had maintained kindly relations with an ungrateful Republic that repaid his condescendence and friendly aid by reiterated provocations.” This is quite true. The scholar laws of 1886, when this campaign against religion was begun by irreligious instruction, given under a mask of _neutralité_, now completely laid aside; unjust fiscal laws against the Congregations; and finally the laws of 1901, 1902 and 1904 which embittered Leo’s last hours, were so many acts of hostility, leading up to the final assault, all foreseen and prepared in the Judeo-Masonic lodges since a century we may say. “Il faut sérier les questions,” said Gambetta, whose maxim was _Le clericalism c’est l’ennemi_; and “clericalism,” it seems now, means simply _God_. To-day, they openly proclaim that God is the enemy.

After destroying the outposts and the ramparts by the destruction of all her religious orders engaged in teaching, preaching, and ministering to the poor and the halt, it was resolved to storm the citadel, the Church of France herself, and the Law of alleged Separation was sprung upon the nation.

If any confirmation were needed as to the great hopes the Masonic coterie had founded on the _Associations cultuelles_, we find it in the unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their more moderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot furnish the _Lanterne_ with terms adequate to the occasion; all the more so, that from the beginning it has affirmed, in most scurrilous language, that never, never would the Church refuse the “liberalities” of the law, by which is meant the permission to keep some of her property. Three editorials of _La Lanterne_--November 25th, 1905, “Ils capitulent!”; August 16th, 1906, “C’est la guerre”; and “La folie suprême,” of August 20th--are most interesting revelations of the contemporary Jacobin mind.[19] Even the millions represented by the confiscation of the _menses episcopales_, etc., which the law had assigned to the _Associations cultuelles_, cannot console these sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforced _integrally_, forgetting that the numerous articles regarding _Associations cultuelles_ are already null and void, and that they themselves propose to annul those regarding pensions to aged priests. If they had the courage to enforce Article 35 of the law (_police des cultes_) every French bishop would be in prison for reading the encyclical of August 15th in the churches. Other articles of the _police des cultes_ also fall to the ground, as they were aimed at _Associations cultuelles_, who were to be held responsible if a preacher used seditious language in the pulpit.

No _Associations cultuelles_ will be formed except by Freemasons masquerading as Catholics; but at least there will be no confusion, no disorganization of the Church, which was the main purpose of the law. Thus has Pius X unmasked their batteries and spiked their guns. They will have to resort to other arms, those of undisguised persecution, the very thing they wished, above all, to avoid.

Little is left standing of the Law of Separation but the articles of spoliation and confiscation. If these Jacobins have the courage to enforce them “integrally,” as they say, even to the confiscation of Church edifices, it will mean, for the present, the most threadbare poverty. Whether they will dare to do so remains to be seen.

M. Clemenceau stopped the inventories, because, he said, “it was not worth while to have riots and bloodshed for the pleasure of counting a few candelabras.” He and his employers may find that it is not worth while to risk the Republic for the sake of some Church edifices, for which they have no use.

They may content themselves for the present with seizing all the available cash, which will go the way of the “billions” of the Congregations, and the exchequer will grow poorer and poorer, till the vanishing point of national bankruptcy is reached as in 1793.[20]

Referring to the critical condition in which the Church was placed under the feudal system owing to the abusive practice of investiture by laymen of ecclesiastical dignitaries, Guizot writes: “There was but one force adequate to save the Church from anarchy and dissolution, this was the Papacy” (_History of Civilization_).

To-day also, the Papacy, alone, could rally the clergy and the faithful in complete unity, to offer a solid and compact resistance to these associations of a law of anarchy and dissolution. “That they all may be one that the world may believe” (John XVI).

By a stroke of his pen Pius X, whom these anti-clericals affect to despise as an ignorant peasant, has broken up their cunningly contrived trap. To reject the associations seemed fraught with dire consequences and a perilous launching into deep waters. Happily the French episcopate are worthy and equal to the emergency. My “First Impressions” regarding them (p. 5) were correct.

Their addresses to Pius X and to their flocks, form, with the encyclicals “Vehementer” and “Gravissimo” (15th August), one of the grandest pages of the annals of the Church. “Satan hath desired to sift you as wheat”; to sift you in sore persecutions; to sift you by poverty and by riches; to sift you in the flux and reflux of barbarian invasions; to sift you in the ruins of crumbling empires, that you, like them, might become as “dust which the wind scattereth,” the dust of sects and schisms and national churches. “But I have prayed for thee, Peter, and thou, confirm thy brethren.” _Duc in altum._

SEPARATION

_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.