Part 14

Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by Presbyterians in the United States?

In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as a means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon, “the least-erected spirit that fell,” Moloch, “horrid king besmeared with blood,” Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between “the serpent’s seed and the seed of the woman.”

In this unholy struggle “all the bonds of cohesion on which political organization depended were weakened or destroyed,” writes Lecky. “The spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury” (_History of Rationalism_, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary. He describes the Hussites as “wild beasts whom the severity of the emperor had roused to furor.”

In Germany, apostate ecclesiastical and secular electors were seeking their own aggrandizement. Bishoprics with their manses were converted into hereditary principalities. As to their Swedish ally, Gustavus Adolphus, I refer my readers to the judgment of a Protestant admirer of this doughty champion of the Reformation. On page 329 of _Thirty Years War_ Schiller writes as follows:--

“The last, the greatest service, Gustavus Adolphus could render to religious and civil liberty was to die (1632, at battle of Lutzen).... It was no longer possible to doubt that he was seeking to establish himself in Germany, not as a protector, but as a conqueror. Already Augsburg boasted that it had been chosen as the capital of the new monarchy. The Protestant princes, his allies, made claims which could only be satisfied by despoiling the Catholics. It is then permitted to conclude that like the barbarian hordes of yore, he intended to divide the conquered provinces of Germany among the Swedish chiefs of his army. His conduct towards the unfortunate Elector Palatine, Frederick V, is unworthy of a hero. The Palatinate was in his hands, justice and honour required that he return it to the legitimate sovereign. But to avoid doing so he had recourse to subtleties which make us blush for him.”

It is only fair to add that Gustavus did finally restore the Palatinate to Frederick, but as a fief of the Swedish crown.

What, I ask, has been gained by the overthrow of the Public Law of Europe? For this was waged the Thirty Years War, one of the most cruel the world has known. Atrocities were committed on both sides, and the _tu quoque_ argument is very foolish. But if it be admitted that defensive war is always just and righteous, we must allow that the Catholics were justified in fighting for their public law. They were in possession since more than twelve centuries, and were resisting assailants who showed no quarter, and who robbed them of their churches and persecuted them, relentlessly, whenever they gained the upper hand, just as the Puritans did in Maryland. And what was the net result of the Thirty Years War? The loss of liberty both civil and religious. The German electors, ecclesiastical as well as secular, had been but administrators of free citizens, who now became subjects with little or no voice in the government. As to religious liberty, the new axiom _Cujus regio ejus religio_ was substituted for One Lord One Faith. The ruler of each realm became the infallible Pontiff of his subjects. “If any gratitude from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, and I, Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I have enlightened and adorned the temporal authority, for this alone should it be thankful to me, since even my worst enemies know that a like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed under the Papacy” (Walch’s _Augs._, XIV, p. 520).

In this same connexion Schiller makes the following statement. “No country changed religion oftener than the Palatinate. Unhappy weathercock of the political and religious versatility of its sovereigns, it had twice been forced to embrace the doctrines of Luther and then to abandon them for those of Calvin. Frederick III deserted the Confession of Augsburg, but his son re-established it by most violent and unjust measures. After closing all the Calvinist temples and exiling the ministers and school teachers, he ordered by his will that his son should be brought up by Lutherans; his brother, however, annulled this will and became regent under the young Frederick IV, who was confided to Calvinists with strict orders to destroy in his mind the “heretical doctrines of Luther by all means, by beating and whipping even.” It is easy to guess how subjects were treated when the heir to the throne was thus tyrannized over” (_Thirty Years War_, p. 40).

What, I ask, has Europe gained by the overthrow of its public law? Strife, anarchy, nihilism in religion as in philosophy. After centuries of dabbling, floundering, and blundering, we are again seeking to devise some principle of unity, some Amphictyonic Council to supplement the illusory balance of power; to set up a Court of Arbitration to replace the one that really did exist in the Middle Ages and functioned as well as could be expected in those days of liquescence.

All in vain. The grand Peace Congress from which the Papacy was excluded was followed, almost immediately, by two most cruel wars which were pre-eminently subjects for arbitration. Men will submit to this court questions about which they do not care enough to fight about them, but these subjects only will they submit to arbitration. Unless the Lord build the house, in vain they labour who build.

There is only one tribunal that can ever arbitrate efficaciously, and this is the one which presided at the Genesis of Christendom.[27]

Socialists and anarchists, without having pondered the passage from Guizot I quoted in beginning this chapter, understand perfectly that our Western or Christian civilization is grounded on the unity of one Holy Catholic Church, and the destruction of the social structure being the object of their ambition, they very logically direct all their efforts to destroying this foundation.

The work of disintegration was begun in the sixteenth century. “Socinius, the most iconoclastic of Protestants, predicted that the seditious doctrines by which Protestants supported their cause would lead to the disintegration of society” (_History of Rationalism_, II, 239).

This work of disintegration has made rapid progress since the eighteenth century in virtue of the law of accelerated movement. The French Revolution, like the Protestant revolt, was essentially a work of disintegration. The successors of the Masonic Jacobins of 1790 openly proclaim their set purpose of completing the work begun by the _grands ancêtres_ of bloody memory.

“The Revolution,” wrote Renan (in the preface to _Questions contemporaines_), “has disintegrated everything, broken up all organizations, excepting only the Catholic Church. The clergy alone have remained organized outside the State. As the cities, in the days of the ruin of the Roman Empire, chose bishops for their representatives, so in our provinces the bishops will soon be the only leaders left in a dismantled society.”

The object of the Separation Law was to accomplish the disintegration of the Church, the only organized body, outside the State, which the Revolution failed to disintegrate, because Pius VI rejected, _in toto_, the civil constitution of the clergy. These noble French priests were drowned, guillotined, proscribed, and imprisoned by tens of thousands, but the Church in France maintained the principle of life strong within her, and on the third day she rose again.

What violence failed to accomplish a century ago, the Third Republic hoped to compass by guile and fraud, labelled liberty and legality.

The true purpose of the Law of Separation was to break up the Church into an ever-increasing number of viviparous _Associations cultuelles_, independent of all ecclesiastical control.

The successor of Pius VI, Ithuriel-like, has pierced the thin disguise of the toad lurking in the purlieus of Eden.[28] Instead of a divided demoralized clergy, the Masonic Jacobins are confronted by the serried ranks of an invincible phalanx.

“At the end of the fourth century,” writes Guizot, “it was the Church with its magistrates, its institutions, and its power that vigorously resisted the internal dissolution of the empire and of the barbarians, and became the bond, the medium, and the principle of civilization between the Roman and the barbarian worlds” (_History of Civilization_).

Now, as in the fourth century, we are menaced with social dissolution. The barbarians are at our gates, nay, in our midst, and not in France alone, by any means. A ferocious, self-seeking atheistic materialism is disrupting Christendom. And let us not be deceived. Societies are never saved and regenerated except by their generating principle; and the generating principle of Western civilization is Christianity.

Therefore, I repeat, that society will be compelled, in self-defence, to restore Christianity or slavery, in some form; State Socialism perhaps--or perish.

_21st November, 1906._

APPENDIX

PAGE 29

SÉANCE DU 28 DECEMBRE, 1906.

Au _Sénat Journal Officiel_, page 1236.

M. DELAHAYE: “M. Briand’s law is older than himself. We find traces of it in all the Masonic convents.... Gentlemen, why are we going to vote this additional law, as we did the first Separation Law, without changing an iota?... Because the lodges have so decided.

“The Convent, the public should be told, is the general assembly of the lodges.... The Convent, called during the Revolution _La Convention_, is the source of all our evils. On 12 November, 1904, brother Lafferre (a senator), thirty-third degree, read the following _ordre du jour_: ‘The general assembly of the Grand Orient addresses to M. Combes warm assurances of sympathy and confidence, and begs him to persevere courageously in the struggle to defend the Republic against clericalism, and accomplish social, military, and fiscal reforms. The Assembly demands that at the session of January, 1905, Separation and the _retraites ouvrières_ be discussed simultaneously.’”

M. Lafferre and the reporter of the new Separation Law here applauded ironically.

M. Delahaye continued: “Let us pass to the Convent of 1905, séance 23 September, 1905.

“Le Frère Roret, reporter (of the Masonic Commission): ... A wish more important, and which will be adopted without discussion, emanates from the Congress of the region of Paris. It regards the Separation and has been slightly modified by the (Masonic) Commission (of political and social studies). The Congress demands that the Separation Law voted in the Chambers be amended by the Senate. Your Commission judges that it is most important that this law be voted immediately and promulgated before the legislative elections (May, 1906), so that the country may see that it is a liberal law and not at all vexatious.... Your Commission proposes the following vote: ‘The Convent emits the wish that the law, imperfect but perfectible, be adopted by the Senate as rapidly as possible and promulgated before the elections, but that it be amended later by the Republican Parliament and rendered more distinctly _laïque_.’”

M. Delahaye continued: “It is well to notice that laic has two meanings. For us it means not ecclesiastic; for Freemasons it means atheistic, anti-Catholic.... I have proved, incontestably, that M. Briand is here as the mouthpiece of Freemasonry, to which he says he does not belong.... There is a privileged Congregation in France which holds property as a _société immobilière_ of the Grand Orient by ‘interposed persons.’ This Congregation is about to sell its real estate of the Rue Cadet (Paris). It received an offer of 1,250,000 francs. The State offers to buy it for 1,300,000 francs, to be used as a telephone office.... I wish to know why the State does not simply expropriate this Congregation, seeing that it is illegal, because this _société immobilière_ is simply a _personne interposée_?... Gentlemen, the book just published by one of your former friends, M. Flourens (ex-minister), _La France Conquise Edward VII and Clemenceau_, is going to enlighten rulers deaf to the voice of the Pope (who had condemned Masonry since 1728). The Bourbons and the French nobility, whom Freemasonry had doomed to death, were dancing on the first floor of the lodges, while overhead sentence was being passed on them.... In spite of many changes of government since a century, we are descending steadily, because your principles, destructive of family, country, and private property, have entered into our legislation.... We have a fine army, but at your touch it becomes no more than a national guard. We have many vessels, but no navy.... Ere long kings and emperors, who now utilize Freemasonry, will end by saying, ‘This instrument is very dangerous.’”

There were cries of “_Clôture, clôture_.” The discussion was closed. No one replied to M. Delahaye.

PAGES 113-125

Commenting on the annual Convent of the Grand Orient, September, 1906, the _Journal de Génève_, the leading Swiss Protestant daily, made the following statements:--

“LE RÔLE DE LA MAÇONNERIE

“_Septembre, 1906._

“Il ne faut pas se dissimuler que la franc-maçonnerie tient entre ses mains les destinées du pays (la France). Quoiqu’elle ne compte que vingt-six mille adhérents, elle dirige à sa guise la politique française. Toutes les lois dont le catholicisme se plaint si amèrement ont été d’abord élaborées dans ses convents. Elle les a imposées au gouvernement et aux Chambres. Elle dictera toutes les mesures qui seront destinées à en assurer l’application. Nul n’en doute, et personne, non pas même les plus indépendants, n’oserait heurter de front sa volonté souveraine. Il serait aussitôt brisé, celui qui se permettrait seulement de la méconnaître.

“Jamais, depuis l’époque où Rome commandait aux rois et aux princes, on ne vit pareille puissance. Et cette puissance est d’autant plus forte, à cette heure, qu’elle vient de subir victorieusement une crise redoutable. Après l’affaire des fiches, on croyait la maçonnerie morte, tout au moins bien malade; mais, à force d’audace, elle a triomphé de ses ennemis, qui déjà sonnaient joyeusement l’hallali. Les deux tiers des membres de la Chambre actuelle sont francs-maçons.

“La volonté de la franc maçonnerie, nul ne l’ignore plus, c’est de détruire le catholicisme en France. Elle se dresse comme une Eglise contre l’Eglise de Rome. Elle n’aura ni cesse ni répit, qu’elle ne l’ait jetée bas, qu’elle n’en ait semé les poussières au vent. Tous ses ressorts sont uniquement tendus vers ce but. Les autres religions, si même elle ne les ignore momentanément, elle paraît les ménager. Elle se dit sans doute que, le catholicisme ayant rendu l‘âme sous son étreinte, l’anéantissement des autres confessions ne serait pour elle que jeu d’enfant.

“Mais l’adversaire n’est pas encore terrassé, auquel elle s’était attaquée. Il est comme Antée, qui, toutes les fois qu’il touchait le sol, retrouvait de nouvelles forces. Elle s’en rend bien compte. C’est pourquoi, crainte que d’un tour de reins désespéré il ne se dresse dans toute sa vigueur, elle n’a point poussé jusqu’ici la lutte à fond. Parfois même elle semble accorder une trêve; elle rentre dans ses quartiers. Mais, dès que la vigilance des catholiques lui paraît suffisamment endormie, elle se jette de nouveau sur sa proie. Elle continuera cette tactique jusqu’au triomphe définitif.

“Ce triomphe est-il prochain ou lointain? Pour le moment, la défiance de Rome est bien éveillée, et Pie X n’est peut-être pas de ces hommes qui se laissent prendre aux feints désarmements.

“Quelques-uns se demanderont comment il peut se faire qu’une minorité si faible gouverne ainsi tout un pays. C’est pourtant très simple. D’abord les maçons sont étroitement unis; et l’union fit toujours la force. Ensuite, appartenant tous aux classes moyennes, ils exercent par leur situation personnelle, par leurs fonctions--tous les gros bonnets de l’administration sont affiliés à la franc-maçonnerie--une influence très grande. L’on peut dire qu’ils disposent de toutes les faveurs gouvernementales; et ces faveurs, ils ne les distribuent qu’à bon escient. Non seulement donc ils tiennent à leur discrétion tous ceux qui occupent un poste quelconque de l’Etat, mais encore tous ceux qui aspirent à en occuper un, et ils sont légion. Ça leur fait une armée formidable, disciplinée par l’intérêt.

“On comprend que, dans ces conditions, la franc-maçonnerie n’ait qu’à faire un signe aux pouvoirs publics pour qu’elle soit immédiatement obéie. Quoi qu’elle décide, ce sera exécuté sur l’heure.

“La franc-maçonnerie, dit-il, sait mieux que le gouvernement lui-même, quelle somme de résistance, en ce moment, le catholicisme peut opposer à un assault décisif. Elle n’ignore pas que, quoiqu’il soit très ébranlé, il serait très hasardeux de le vouloir abattre d’un dernier coup. Elle craint surtout que, si elle ne parvenait pas à lui faire exhaler le soupir suprême, il ne retrouvât une nouvelle vie, la volonté et l’énergie de vaincre à son tour.

“La franc-maçonnerie se gardera de compromettre, dans une lutte chanceuse, les fruits de longs efforts. Elle a emprunté sa devise à Rome: ‘Patiens quia æterna,’ et elle attendra qu’elle puisse frapper à coup sûr. Les probabilités sont donc pour que, tout en s’opposant à ce que des relations soient renouées avec le Saint-Siège, elle ne chassera pas les catholiques de leurs derniers retranchements, c’est-à-dire de leurs églises; elle les y laissera tranquilles, jusqu’au jour où, par un nouveau coup d’audace, elle s’en emparera.

“Un de ses orateurs a prophétisè qu’avant peu on entendrait des ‘batteries d’allégresse’ sous les voûtes de Notre-Dame; et les prophéties maçonniques ne se sontelles pas souvent réalisées?”

PAGE 204

On November 9th, 1906, M. Briand described the Status of the Church in France as follows (_Officiel_, 2459): “The churches are affected to public worship and must remain so indefinitely.... It is our duty to leave them open.... Reunions are possible, you may have them. The priest may live in direct communication with the people, he may receive manual gifts. Perhaps the Catholic hierarchy about which you are so much concerned will suffer. Perhaps this faculty left to the faithful to live with their priest haphazard (_au hasard de la rencontre_) will soon dry up the revenues of the priests; it will certainly dry up those of the bishops.”

It is well also to recall here the words pronounced by M. Briand, October 17th, 1905 (_Journal Officiel_, 1223), regarding the _Associations cultuelles_: “They will be hardly born on the 11th December, 1906. They will not have had time to obtain funds. If we deprive them of the patrimony of the _fabriques_ and _menses episcopales_ it will be impossible for them to maintain public worship, and the faithful will be unable to practise their religion.”

Yet the Government impudently declares to-day that the Catholics are hard to please!

On December 1st, 1906, M. Briand sent forth an ukase commanding every priest to consider public worship assimilated to public meetings, and to make a declaration to the mayor according to the law of 1881.

Now the law of 1905 says that public worship cannot be regulated by the law of 1881. Moreover, this law requires the constitution of a bureau, and that a declaration be made before each meeting twenty-four hours in advance. M. Briand took upon himself to modify the law (_l’assouplir_) and to say no bureau was necessary, and that one declaration would do for a year! The clergy made no declarations. A few were made by Anarchists and Freemasons.

From the 12th to the 20th December the police were kept busy making thousands of _procès verbaux_ all over France. This idea of making 65,000 prosecutions every day was soon found to be grotesque and impracticable. Moreover, under the law of 1881 it is the owner of the public hall or the café or cabaret who is prosecuted for not making the required declaration. The State and the communes being now the alleged owners of the churches since December 11th, 1906, _they_ should have been prosecuted and not the priests. This same M. Briand, who thus modified the law of 1881, had declared in the Chambers: “Common right no longer exists if you interpret it otherwise than the law” (November 9th, _Journal Officiel_, p. 2438).

Since December 11th, 1906, the Church in France is very much in the condition of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.

On December 29th, 1906, a new Law of Separation was passed. It confers on 36,000 mayors the right to invest 36,000 priests with a precarious use of Church edifices, _sauf désaffection_. The time-limit is to be decided, _à l’amiable_, between the mayors and their nominees. Truly this is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of separation.

M. Briand assures us “that the mayor will accord the church to the _curé_ most capable of keeping it in good condition” (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3398, December 21st, 1906). This is lay orthodoxy. “As to the period of enjoyment, it is impossible to fix it by law,” says M. Briand, “to one, two, or three years” (_Officiel_, p. 3407), “‘ce sont des questions d’espèce qui seront tranchées selon les communes’; it will vary in each commune.”

To this M. Ribot replied: “‘C’est l’anarchie dans 36,000 communes.’ At every election this question will be raised, Shall we leave the church to the _curé_ or not? You are making of this question, eminently a governmental one, a municipal question, given over to dissensions, competitions, and coteries” (_Officiel_, p. 3407).

The new Law of Separation (December 29th) abolishes the sequestration ordered on December 11th of all Church revenues, etc., till December, 1907. It turns over immediately to the communes and to lay institutions all the property of the Church. Yet on November 9th (_Journal Officiel_, p. 2461) M. Briand stoutly resisted the Left, clamouring for this very thing. “We must not raise illusory hopes,” he said.

“No,” cried a deputy, “it will be like the milliard of the Congregations.”

“There are fourteen millions of revenue,” continued M. Briand,” ...but are they ‘liquid,’ free of charges? The communes are stretching out their hands to receive. You will give them what? Nests of lawsuits. Yes, nests of vipers that will poison the communes with their venom.”

To explain this change of policy M. Briand said: “We have acquired the certitude that the situation is without issue. It was impossible to expect that during the next year regular associations (of 1905) will be constituted to claim this property of the _fabriques_. We cannot remain another whole year in this uncertainty” (_Journal Officiel_, p. 3396, December 21st). A French proverb says: “Souvent femme varie bien fou qui s’y fie.”