A Political Humbug

New Zealand Tablet, 22 November 1906, Page 9

A Political Humbug

The Freemason-Atheist- -Bloc ' organ, " the Paris ' Siecle \ -is as frank as M. ,-Clemenceau and }&. Briand in- avowing the 'hostility of the dominant" French party to" religion. The aim .of the Government (it admits) is 'to shake off the yoke of the Papacy '. And, as with associations nearer home to us, any stick, .however rotten, is good enough for the back of ' Rome \ ' One of the weapons that -it has taken up— or that has placed - itself mm the hands "of the' Government— is ' the antiCatholic journalistic hack, Ues Houx,- a hired '^employee of the anti-Christian. "' Matin ', who has started .an organisation with the. fraudulent .title of 'The League of French Catholics '. The object of this antl-Cathollc organisation" (as stated in- our issue of last week) is to ■ further schism (if- possible) by getting "the - control of ecclesiastical property into the hands of _- hostile to all religion, and to use the leverage of Hhe position thus gained for th*e~ purpose of forcing- the Pope and the French Hierarchy- to recede from that attitude of firm determination in regard to the worship associations which has proved so embarrassing to the ruling clique. So clumsily" transparent, a device ■ will hardly achieve, its purpose. And -the unknown Des Hpux is not quite the man to carry to a successful issue a -revolt against the ecclesiastical authority; in France. He reminds one of a character in - 1 Sybil ' — Muddle- i brains, who is described as ' a political humbug, - the greatest of all humbugs ; a .man who swaggers about London clubs and consults solemnly about his influence, and in .the, country is a nonentity '. Des Houx is, a notientity in Paris as well as" in the. provinces. . - The studious reticences of the cable-demon clap upon him -the tinsel aureole of Catholic leadership. , But going;\to Des Houx, and : his atheistic associates, for Catholicism is like the process which in the Celtic saying is'^described as going to the goat's .house to look for wool.