Mock Conciliation
Some time ago (as the cables sufficiently informed
. us) M. Clemenceau (the French Premier) and M. Briand -(Minister of Worship) played the lion- and roared farresounding . threats as to what would happen the
Church in France on the fateful day (December 12) when the Separation Law would come into operation.
But .. as the momentous date approached,- they (hanged their note and, by comparison', roared ' as gently as any sucking dove ',— as mildly 'an 'twere a nightingale '. The French Ministry was placed between the' upper ami the nether millstones. On_JLhc che sitle there lay the extreme probability of grave disturbances— amounting possibly to something like .a state of insurrection— over wide districts of the country. On 'the other side, there were the raucous clamors of the Extreme Left, calling for a regime of swifter and more savage proscription against religion" and those:- who. practise it. 'In a situation of such delicacy',, -says the London ' Tablet ', ' a policy of bluster would be provocative and dangerous, and therefore 'the most elementary prudence—coupled with an anxiety- for the safety of tln».r
own skin— suggested to the Government an attitude and
tone _of conciliation '. In the course of a lons policy speech in the Chamber of Deputies a' few weeks ago, M. Briand, with roundabout politeness, ma-dc it clear that the Government were not to be driven into the dangerous extremes favored by such, men as Combes and Pelletan. He even, spoke in tones of unaccustomed respect of the Pope and the Bishop. He dismissed
the Dcs Houx hoaxes— lhe ' Matin's ' sham ' Catholic ' associations of worship as ' caricatures '. He graciously announced ' that the refusal to form (uncanonical) associations of worship would not be regarded as .111 . act of revolt against the law of the land. He stated furthermore- that (contrary to previous intimations) the clergy would not -'be deprived of their civil rights as ' officials of a foreign power ', and that the churches set aside for public worship, would remain open to the clergy to minister in, and to the people to pray in, whether singly or in common. 'We will leave you the churches — on .sufferance', said M. Briand to" the clergy. • Public worship .will go on' uninterrupt-^ edly. You can take advantage of the law .regulating public meetings '.
A few weeks previously the Government had declared that- ' sans r association, cultuelle, la celebration dv culte devient iegalement impossible ' — apart - from the (cxciubivoly lay; absociaiions for public worship, the celebration of worship would become impossible throughout France. It was likewise announced that the Government would legalise these associations whatever their religious beliefs or disbeliefs might "be. Ami they jsoi far acted x upon this declaration as to -hand over the lesaK ownership of the church - property at Culey and „ Puymasson to ' caricature >i associations which were openly and notoriously in schism and. rebellion against the ecclesiastical authority. The Clemenceau Ministry now finds that it has bitten off a -foigger chunk' of persecution than it can well chew. The 'Bloc ' is . '' blocked ' just when it was getting its forces together for the grand assault upon Christianity in Prance:
•If this change of voice betokened a change of heart,it would bs as welcome in_the . fervor of political feeling in France" as "the coming-upL of the cool 'southerly buster' at the close of a sweltering day in Sydney. But in the Third Republic, policies and political parties arc as shifting
' And vaiiable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made *
The ministerial statement looks unmistakably, like a ministerial weakening before the perils of a position " from which even the Man ot Blood and Iron might well recoil. Moreover, the new utterances of M. Clemenceau and his; atheistic confreres must be read side <by side with ministerial pronouncements made in moments of official candor. We cannot, for instance, , afford to forget the boast -of ~M. Clemenceau that he had . scaled heaven and dethroned God. And M. Briand f gf soft phrases of a few weeks ago are not set in their full context till we place them side by side with the declaration of war "which (with a collective 'we ') he made against Christianity a short time beforehand at the Teachers' Congress at Amiens ':— '
'We must get rid of Christianity. .. . We , have hunted Jesus Christ out of the schools, out of the university, out of Che hospitals, the refuges, nay, evenout of the gaols and the lunatic asylums. We must now hunt Him out of the Government of France.' And on the very day previous fco—M. Borland's declaiation of ministerial policy, his confrere, M. Viviani (Minister, of Labor), made the following further braggart declaration of war on religion, which (be it no£ed) was placarded by the Government oii the walls "of every town-hall in France :—: —
' All of us together— first by our forefathers,- then by our. fathers, and now by ourselves— have -been , at« 't ached "to the - work of" anti-clericalism and irreligioiuWe have snatched the human conscience from belief in the Beyond. Together, too, we have with one sweeping gesture quenched -in • heaven the. lights that shall rie\or be" rekindled. Do you think that the workjis- at an end ? No, it is but commencing. Do you think thai it has no morrow? Lo, the morrow is dawning. '
French Catholics x know very well .by this time ' that they have no justice to - expect from the Clemenceau Ministry, and only as much mercy as overruling circumstances may compel the Christ-hunters to show.
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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 1, 3 January 1907, Page 10
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907Mock Conciliation New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 1, 3 January 1907, Page 10
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