The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1906. THE WAR AGAINST RELIGION IN FRANCE

New Zealand Tablet, 27 September 1906, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1906. THE WAR AGAINST RELIGION IN FRANCE

fOR YEARS past the Freemason, SocialistRadical, and other enemies of religion in France have constituted themselves into 1 a 1 bloc ', or what is known in American politics as ' the machine '. They have played strange pranks before high heaven in their day. Witness, for instance, the manner in which, through organised Freemason spies, the Combes Ministry struck so cowardly and traitorous a blow at the efficiency of the nation's last resort— its army and navy. There were, however, some things that even French political apathy and ' insouciance ' will not stand. The Combes Ministry fell. They found, to their profound surprise, that there was a disproportion between the risks and the red meat of their undertground tyranny. But 'the army scandals were merely a means to an end. The great and openly avowed objective of ' the machine ' was the destruction of religion in France. It set aside the Concordat — a treaity between two Sovereign Powers— without the stipulated formality of previous notification and consultation. The Law of Separation (as the abrogation of the Concordat is called) was passed on December 9, 1905. Had the Law left the Church in Franpe the same liberty that it enjoys in Englishspeaking countries— had ■' the machine ' been content even to plunder the Church and leave her stripped but free— the question would not have assumed so grave an aspect. But the Law of Separation (so-called) was palpably intended as a ■' garote ' with which to strangle the Catholic religion throughout the Republic.

One of the means devised by the Law for that end is the ' associations cultuelles ', or associations for public worship. These are independent lay organisations, unconnected with each other, somewhat on the Congregationalist plan. To these associations the new Law commits the entire control of ecclesiastical buildings and of public worship throughout France. And let it be <borne in mind that these lay councils have no legalised permanency ; that they are completely at the mercy of a Ministry hostile to every religious idea; and that (as Pius X. says in his encyclical) ' the ecclesiastical authority will clearly have no power over them.' It is needless to point out 'the vast possibilities of mischief that underlie so radical a violation of the rights of the Church. A sufficient sample of its working t is supplied toy. a parish in the Department of Lot et Garonne. There, under Government auspices, an anticlerical faction' constituted itself an ' association' cultuelle '. It promptly drove out the lawful pastor, installed an excommunicated ex-priest'in

his place, and snapped its atheistic fingers at the ecclesiastical authority. It is easy tovsee onKow vast' a scale the ' associations for prrtrlic worship ' would— especially in the present unhappy circumstances vU French misgovernment and tyranny— lead to dissension disorganisation, and schism. The new Law was all too manifestly drawn up for the purpose of locally crippling or destroying the hierarchical and diocesan organisation which is bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of the Church's organisation, and forcing upon her a form of government which is foreign to her' | sacred principles and her divinely established constitution. ' The makers of this unjust law ', says Pius X., ' wished to make it a law," not of separation, but of oppression. . . They are now waging an atrocious war against the religion of the country and hurling the brand of the most violent discords, and thus inciting the citizens against each other, to the great detriment, as everyone sees, of . the public welfare itself.' After nine months of anxious thought and deliberation, the expected has come to pass : the Pope has condemned the ' associations cultuelles ' as « a violation of the sacred rights pertaining to the very life of the Church '. And the French episcopate has loyally accepted his exhortation to peaceably organise religious worship as best they can in every way >' which the law recognises as within the rights of all citizens '.

The die is now cast. The worm has turned at last. The Church and the Lodge in excelsis in France stand face to face. The near future will tell whether the French Government will enter upon a religious war the end of which it cannot foresee, or whether it will again (as in the matter of the Freemason espionage and the church inventories) bend 'before the passive or active resistance which it has once more aroused. Religion, as well as the young recruit in wa,r-time, is all the better of being ' blooded ' once in a while. The Kulturkampf was for the Church in Germany the inauguration of its era of proudest success and highest achievements. West, as east, of the lihine, the issue is in the hands of God. But there shines on the west this star of hope : that the Church of France, which has in our time given the bulk of the martyrs to the foreign mission-field, will not fail in the contest for God and right upon its own hearth. In the meantime, the central scheme of the Separation Law has been foiled. And the Great Napoleon's lesson'has been learned by another French Ministry : that it is wise to treat even with a dethroned and imprisoned Pope as if he had two hundred thousand bayonets at his call.