THE SEPARATION 
 OF THE CHURCHES AND STATE 
 
 IN FRANCE 
 
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The Separation 
 
 of 
 
 The Churches and The State 
 in France 
 
 With the compliments 
 of the author 
 
 AMHERST, MASS. 
 1917 
 
The Separation 
 
 of 
 
 The Churches and The State 
 in France 
 
 BY 
 
 WM. HENRY HARRISON STOWELL 
 
 OF AMHERST, MASS. 
 
 AMHERST, MASS. 
 1917 
 

 COPYEIGHT, 1917, 
 BY 
 
 WM. HENRY HARRISON STOWELL 
 
 Stonbcpe ■f/tem 
 
 F. H. GILSOH COMPAKT 
 BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. The Early Church i 
 
 II. The Apostolic Succession 8 
 
 III. The Holy Roman Empire 20 
 
 IV. The Modern Roman Church in France . 24 
 V. The Separation . .... 49 
 
 VI. The Law of Separation ... 90 
 
The Separation of the Churches 
 and the State in France 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EARLY CHURCH 
 
 This is an epoch-making period in French 
 as well as in Church history. The burning 
 question in France and, indeed, in Europe, at 
 the opening of the Twentieth Century, "The 
 Separation of the Church and the State," is the 
 same one that confronted Christ at the begin- 
 ning of the First, which He answered thus: 
 
 "Render unto Caesar the things which are 
 Caesar's and unto God the things that are 
 God's." 
 
 So far as the Church is concerned it has also 
 been a vital question for it through all the 
 intervening centuries. 
 
 Underlying all policies and creeds, like a 
 foundation, stands this claim to Temporal 
 Power. Above all ideals and prayers has soared 
 their ambition to rule the world. 
 
 This question of temporal power, though 
 
forming no part of the mission of Christ himself, 
 was nevertheless bred in the bone and was 
 burned into the very soul of his early worshippers 
 as the result of their sufiferings under the fierce 
 persecutions practiced upon them during the 
 first four centuries of the life of the church, or 
 until their Union with the State after the Coun- 
 cil of Nicsea. 
 
 The early Christians worshipped one God, 
 believed in His omnipotence and supremacy and 
 thereby technically questioned the sovereignty 
 of Rome under whose political jurisdiction they 
 lived. Rome had many Gods, implicitly be- 
 lieved in her own sovereignty and relentlessly 
 crushed those who denied it. One more God 
 added to her many deities would not make much 
 difference to her, but just imagine the haughty 
 Roman who held that "to be a Roman Citizen 
 was greater than to be a King," being called 
 upon to worship as the only God a lowly subject 
 of a captive nation who had just been ignomini- 
 ously crucified because of that very claim. 
 
 From the Roman point of view then it- is not 
 surprising, considering the customs of the age, 
 that they used brute force to suppress the new 
 creed. From the Christian point of view it is 
 not surprising, considering their sufferings and 
 martyrdom, that they lived in fear of that force, 
 longed to escape from its terrors and hastened 
 to avail themselves of its promised protection. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Although this question of the Separation of 
 the Church and the State does not directly affect 
 us in America, it commands attention never- 
 theless from the fact that so large a portion of 
 our people are deeply interested in it because 
 they are members of the Roman Catholic Church 
 which is one of the parties to the controversy. 
 
 Living in Paris during this period, the writer 
 became deeply interested in it, was a witness 
 to some of the exciting episodes and heard it 
 discussed, praised and criticized, by all manner 
 of men from an Archbishop and an Ambassador 
 down to the ubiquitous concidrge. 
 
 With an abundance of time, that else might 
 have been wasted, but which was utilized, 
 instead, in watching the manifestations and 
 developments, the facts noted and conclusions 
 drawn were finally reduced to writing and 
 published in Paris in March, 1907. 
 
 W. H. H. STOWELL. 
 
Up to the time of Christ every nation, except 
 Judea, had a multiplicity of Gods. Israel alone 
 worshipped one; that was the cornerstone upon 
 which her religious superstructure was built. 
 The first Commandment demanded it, Moses 
 proclaimed it, the Prophets promulgated it, and 
 the Law avenged it. The New Dispensation 
 continued it, Christ declaring, "I came not to 
 destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to 
 fulfill." 
 
 The whole known world was at that time 
 under the dominion of Rome. After the cruci- 
 fixion the Apostles went forth spreading the 
 New Gospel, first to their near neighbors, then 
 to more distant lands. They met with fierce 
 opposition and martyrdom in Rome, but se- 
 cured cordial acceptance in her tributary prov- 
 inces, in Alexandria and Damascus; in Antioch 
 and Ephesus and elsewhere throughout Asia and 
 Africa. The intellectual Paul went to intel- 
 lectual Greece and practical Rome. The aggres- 
 sive Peter went among the restless dreamers of 
 the East. These three fields of activity among 
 these people of diverse characteristics, mark the 
 three lines of cleavage into which, later on, the 
 Christian Church was to be divided, viz.: the 
 Mohammedan, the Orthodox and the Roman 
 Church. 
 
 As the converts multiplied in numbers im- 
 portant questions of faith arose. The Apostles 
 
 3 
 
answered these by issuing Epistles to the several 
 inquiring churches. Jerusalem was the mother 
 church, the center of authority whom all 
 obeyed, the deciding judge in all questions of 
 faith. After the Apostles had passed away and 
 Jerusalem had been destroyed, their successors, 
 the "Early Fathers," held their Councils in 
 other cities and from thence promulgated their 
 interpretations of doctrine. 
 
 Gradually the great topic, the Unity or the 
 Trinity of God, became the one absorbing ques- 
 tion. Some of the ablest of the Early Fathers 
 believed with Arius in the Unity of God. In 
 general Asia and Africa believed in the Unity, 
 and Europe in the Trinity. 
 
 Rome was the seat of all temporal power. 
 She ruled the world ruthlessly and aggressively 
 with the sword. She was not much interested 
 in religion; the multiplicity and variety of the 
 gods which she had accepted and absorbed along 
 with, and as a part of her conquered provinces, 
 neutralized and dissipated her religious zeal, 
 but she was vitally concerned in perpetuating 
 her military sway over her restless captive 
 provinces. 
 
 After persecuting the Christians for cen- 
 turies, the Roman Empire, under Constantine, 
 for political rather than religious reasons, recog- 
 nized and united with the Christian Church, 
 sustained Athanasius and proclaimed the Trin- 
 
 4 
 
ity. Thereafter, those who believed in it reUed 
 upon the military supremacy of Rome to defend 
 their faith as well as to protect their persons. 
 
 The Christians of Rome had lived so long 
 under its iron rule, had felt the weight of its 
 burdens as practiced upon themselves, and had 
 been crushed beneath its bloody vengeance, so 
 relentlessly applied, that they fully understood 
 its cruel power over their material interests as 
 well as its blighting effect upon their religion; 
 hence they naturally rejoiced to have these 
 burdens removed from their daily life and this 
 power used in their spiritual behalf. 
 
 Living under its influence and surrounded by 
 it, they naturally absorbed much of the Roman 
 spirit and many of the Roman customs, so that 
 when they were released from persecutions and 
 when the opportunity came, they naturally 
 employed her methods and utilized her power, 
 at first to protect themselves and then to con- 
 vert others. 
 
 How terrible had been their struggles to 
 worship their Gqd against the will of Rome! 
 How easy it was to worship and how inspiring 
 it was to propagate their religion, when backed 
 by the Legions of Rome! Hence the Church 
 now united with the Empire, having once tasted 
 of rulership and feasted on its fruits, became 
 saturated with the desire for temporal power, 
 and the closer their Union with the State, the 
 
 5 
 
more this power became an inherent part of 
 their life and policy and the more the Church 
 regarded it as vital to their interests. 
 
 This hunger after power thus born in them 
 and strengthened by success, has been con- 
 tinuously guarded and perpetuated down to the 
 present time as a priceless heritage, a holy 
 birthright, with alluring memories of human 
 triumphs in a glorified cause. Is it then any 
 wonder that the Church having once obtained, 
 has never voluntarily surrendered this claim? 
 So Rome, the Imperial State, adopted the 
 Trinity; and the Church, the Vicar of Christ, 
 adopted Temporal Power; the Church becom- 
 ing a State, the State becoming a Church and 
 together they conquered and proselyted as a 
 Church-Empire. They were the religious de- 
 scendants of Athanasius. 
 
 During those early centuries when Rome was 
 persecuting the Christians, her subject provinces 
 in Asia and Africa were rapidly advancing in 
 Christianity both in numbers and influence. 
 They, like Judea, believed in the Unity of God. 
 They were not, like the Romans, wholly given 
 over to material things but like all orientals 
 thought and meditated upon life and death and 
 eternity and spiritual problems. They dared 
 not oppose Rome openly either in politics or 
 religion. They silently submitted, believing 
 in their innermost souls, more and more, in the 
 
 6 
 
Unity of God. They secretly hoped their 
 religion would procure for them their political 
 freedom. They hated in their hearts, more 
 and more, their political bondage which they 
 inevitably associated with what was to them, 
 the religious heresy of their oppressors. 
 
 A zealous reformer arose crying in the wilder- 
 ness against the burdens, civil and religious, 
 that oppressed them. His rallying cry was 
 "There is but one God, and Mahomet is his 
 Prophet." Mohammedanism swept over Asia 
 and Africa like a whirlwind bringing to them, 
 before its frenzy had been spent, their political 
 freedom in the name of religion. 
 
 The Mohammedan believed in Moses and the 
 Prophets, accepted the Old Testament and 
 the New, considered Christ as the greatest of 
 the Prophets, but he unceasingly proclaimed 
 "there is but one God." They were the reli- 
 gious descendants of Arius. 
 
 Thus the first and greatest schism in the 
 Church developed; the people of Asia and 
 Africa became Mohammedans, those of Europe 
 became Orthodox and Roman Christians. It 
 was the end of an historical epoch for the 
 Church. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 
 
 Our immediate inquiry, however, relates to 
 the present rehgious situation in France and 
 hence concerns the Roman Church alone, but 
 as this is only one of its many previous conflicts 
 of a like character, it may be well for a full 
 understanding of it to study its origin and then 
 to trace the historical sequence of events leading 
 up to the present contest. It is more than a 
 change of dynasty or a form of government. It 
 is the close of a religious epoch because it means 
 the ultimate end of the Union of Church and 
 State in all countries. 
 
 The Separation of the Church and the State 
 follows as the natural result of the Church's 
 efforts to exercise temporal power, a worldly 
 function not germane to religion, and an un- 
 natural union bound to disintegrate. 
 
 To justify the exercise of this worldly power 
 to the conscience of those who were governed 
 by high religious ideals, it was necessary to 
 supply a moral and spiritual background or 
 
 8 
 
purpose; hence the most important part of the 
 claim Hes in the motive which impelled them to 
 create and promulgate it; which motive was 
 their desire to be recognized as the "only True 
 Apostolic Church," a heavenly endowed insti- 
 tution of divine origin, which they believed 
 should be supreme, or at least be free from all 
 outside control; and their early experience had 
 taught them that in order to be free from control 
 they must be in a position to do the control- 
 ling. 
 
 When Christ called his disciples, Peter, the 
 most aggressive and the most human of them 
 all, was one of the first chosen. Early in his 
 teachings, while preparing them for his ministry, 
 he asked (Matt., Chap. i6, v. 15-19): "Whom 
 say ye that I am?" Peter answered, "Thou 
 art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." 
 Jesus replied, "Thou art Peter and upon this 
 rock I will build my church . . . and I will 
 give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. ..." 
 
 In Hebrew the same word is used for and 
 means either Peter or rock. It is upon this 
 sentence the Roman Church bases its right to 
 be considered "The only True Apostolic Church." 
 
 This was said by Christ at the very beginning 
 of his mission, and yet during all the following 
 years of his ministry, he made no further 
 mention of Peter's leadership, but treated all 
 
 9 
 
his disciples alike, as of equal authority; and 
 at the end when his mission was finished and 
 he was about to leave them forever, he ap- 
 peared to them, after his Crucifixion, and 
 instructed them all to remain in Jerusalem until 
 after they had received "power from on high " — 
 not power from Peter, — and then to go forth 
 and spread the gospel to all the world. There 
 was no preference expressed or implied, no des- 
 ignation of a leadership, during that parting hour, 
 which of all times and occasions was the one 
 most likely to have been utilized for such an 
 important designation. 
 
 Even if this giving of the Keys of Heaven to 
 Peter were good authority for the premiership 
 of Peter, there is nothing to show that Christ 
 conferred, or intended to confer, the premier- 
 ship, or the Apostolic Succession, upon the 
 Church at Rome, or upon any other one church ; 
 or that he empowered Peter to delegate any such 
 succession. In fact there was no church at 
 Rome at that time. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church claims for itself, 
 solely and exclusively, the Apostolic Succession 
 and claims it from and through Peter. 
 
 There is not one direct word in the Bible to 
 sustain this contention, while all the indirect 
 and collateral facts are against it. 
 
 Peter never delegated the Supremacy to 
 Rome. Why should he? In his day the 
 
 10 
 
Churches at Ephesus, Antioch and Damascus, 
 with which he was personally identified, were 
 more influential than the one at Rome. 
 
 On the contrary, Peter, in conjunction with 
 all the other Apostles, fully recognized Jerusalem 
 as the central or mother church from whence 
 emanated all authority, and after Christ's 
 Ascension, they remained in Jerusalem until 
 they had received their "power from on high." 
 As long as the Apostles were alive, all the 
 Church Councils were held there and all the 
 Epistles were issued in its name. 
 
 There is not a word in the New Testament 
 to show that Peter was ever in Rome or even any- 
 where near Rome. 
 
 If Peter was ever in Rome, it was a most 
 remarkable omission not to have mentioned it 
 somewhere, considering how fully all the doings 
 and journeyings of all the Apostles, including 
 Peter, are described in detail in the New Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 If Peter was never in Rome, it is still more 
 remarkable that Peter should have been thus 
 selected as the one to be the Sole Vicar and 
 Successor of Christ, invested with power and 
 authority to transfer the same to the Church at 
 Rome and to make it the "Only True and 
 Apostolic Church." 
 
 The only explanation is that Peter was never 
 so selected and authorized. Peter's work was 
 
 II 
 
elsewhere, in Asia Minor among the Jews and 
 Semitic Nations. 
 
 On the other hand Paul's work was among 
 the Gentiles and especially in Rome. He 
 indirectly discredited the claim of Peter's su- 
 premacy when he said, "There is one church of 
 which Christ is the head and we are all members." 
 He did not say "of which Christ is the head and 
 Peter is to be his successor and our leader," 
 which he would have done had that been the 
 understanding. 
 
 Paul's greatest work as well as his martyr- 
 dom, was in Rome, as fully described in his 
 Epistles, yet in them he never mentions Peter 
 as being in Rome or as being the successor of 
 Christ or as being their leader after Christ's 
 death, though he frequently makes reference to 
 the other Apostles. Was the omission inten- 
 tional, was he jealous of Peter's leadership, or 
 was that leadership non-existent? Clearly we 
 can exonerate Paul of any intentional suppres- 
 sion of facts. 
 
 Having in mind Paul's prominence and in- 
 fluence as a leader, of his extreme activity and 
 energy as a worker, as well as of his numerous 
 and specific Epistles, it is impossible to conceive 
 of Peter as the pre-ordained heir to Christ's 
 power, or as the acknowledged founder of the 
 Roman Church, or as the grantor to it of his 
 Apostolic Supremacy, in face of the fact that 
 
 12 
 
Peter was never in Rome and that Christ nor 
 any of his disciples ever referred to it. 
 
 It was Paul who wrote the Epistles to the 
 Romans. Peter never sent them any Epistle 
 or any message of any kind, direct or indirect. 
 
 If Peter were their founder and guardian, this 
 was a remarkable omission or oversight, con- 
 sidering the watchful and painstaking care the 
 Apostles always exercised over their duties and 
 over their flocks. It was also a neglect of that 
 last injunction Christ gave to his Apostles 
 when he appeared to the eleven, just before his 
 Ascension and enjoined them to "feed my 
 sheep." Did Peter neglect to feed the Roman 
 sheep which had been especially committed to 
 his care? Peter's fidelity on all other occasions 
 exempts him from any charge of neglect. 
 
 Still stronger proof is the fact that Peter made 
 no claim to any connection with Rome, on the 
 contrary in his Epistles Peter clearly describes 
 himself as (Peter, Chap, i, v. i), "The Apostle 
 to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, 
 Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia." 
 
 If Peter was ordained to bequeath the Apos- 
 tolic Succession to Rome, it is strange there is no 
 reference to Rome in his Epistles nor any claim 
 therein to leadership, nor any assertion of his 
 supposed Apostolic connection with Rome, con- 
 sidering Rome was the most powerful and im- 
 portant city in the world. 
 
 13 
 
There is, however, an illuminating reference 
 to Paul at the very end of Peter's Epistles, 
 wherein he says, "our beloved brother Paul, 
 also, according to the wisdom given unto him, 
 hath written unto you, in which are some things 
 hard to be understood, . . . therefore, beloved, 
 seeing ye know these things before" (that is, ye 
 know that they are hard to understand) "be- 
 ware lest ye also, being led away, fall from your 
 own steadfastness." 
 
 There was in this no show of superiority in 
 leadership, nor of the exercise of any prerogative 
 to set aside Paul's message because he could not 
 explain it, but rather an appeal to them to 
 follow Paul's advice as being authoritative and 
 to be obeyed even if they could not understand 
 it. 
 
 Peter, himself, never claimed, nor did the 
 other Apostles ever claim for him, or acknowl- 
 edge to him or to others, this Apostolic premier- 
 ship or this authority to bequeath the Apostolic 
 Supremacy to Rome, but they all proclaimed 
 Christ as the head of the church and recognized 
 each other as co-equal workers. 
 
 It is evident that if Peter had considered 
 himself as the supreme head of the Church and 
 as the sole authorized Vicar of Christ, and that 
 it was incumbent upon him to transmit this 
 Apostolic Supremacy to the Church at Rome, he 
 would in that event have journeyed to Rome 
 
 14 
 
and personally made the transfer with such 
 appropriate ceremonies as would have firmly 
 and indelibly fixed its authenticity and infalli- 
 bility in the minds of the worshippers and in the 
 records of the church. 
 
 Such an act would have been one of the most 
 momentous events in his own life and one of the 
 most important acts in the history of the church. 
 Peter was courageous, watchful and aggressive 
 and would not have failed in the execution of it 
 had it been his duty to have carried it out, and 
 above all he would have made some mention of 
 it in his teachings or writings. 
 
 It is also evident that if Peter had been 
 divinely commissioned by Christ to transfer the 
 Apostolic Succession to the Church at Rome, 
 exclusively, some recognition of that authority 
 or some mention of it, would have been made by 
 the other Apostles. 
 
 There was none. On the contrary Christ's 
 parting message was given to all alike, when, 
 after his Resurrection and just before his 
 Ascension (Mark, Chap. i6, v. 14, 15), "he 
 appeared to the eleven," and said, "Go ye into 
 all the world and preach the Gospel to every 
 creature." 
 
 Had there been any, he would have supple- 
 mented his original first words (Matt., Chap. 16, 
 V. 15-19), "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock 
 I will build my church," by adding to his other 
 
 15 
 
final parting words, these words, "And thou 
 Peter, go ye to Rome and build my church there 
 as I have commanded from the beginning." 
 
 Equally evident is the fact that the Church 
 at Rome never claimed, nor even asked for the 
 Apostolic Succession from Peter, but, instead, 
 Rome in common with all the other churches 
 recognized Jerusalem as the mother church. 
 
 There was no such special selection by Peter, 
 nor by anybody else, and the Orthodox Greek 
 Church is just as much "The Apostolic Church" 
 as is the Roman. 
 
 It was centuries after his death that Rome 
 appropriated Peter with his premiership — and 
 largely because of his premiership — and made 
 it the basis of their prima facie claim to being 
 "The only True Apostolic Church." 
 
 There was Apostolic power and authority 
 conferred by Christ upon all the Apostles alike. 
 It was not transferred to Rome alone to the 
 exclusion of all the others. This is established 
 by the above mentioned incontrovertible facts, 
 viz., that Christ never commanded it, the Apostles 
 never recognized it, Rome never claimed it and 
 Peter never exercised it. 
 
 These details have been explained and en- 
 larged upon because "Temporal Power" and 
 "Apostolic Supremacy" are so closely inter- 
 woven and interdependent that they cannot be 
 wholly separated, and above all because "Apos- 
 
 i6 
 
tolic Supremacy" is simply and solely the 
 Church's moral and spiritual justification for 
 claiming "Temporal Power." 
 
 Paul's injunction, "There is one church of 
 which Christ is the head and we are all mem- 
 bers," was given for another purpose, that of 
 concentrating organization and action. This 
 conception of church unity was a vital necessity 
 in those early days for it secured common 
 protection, harmony of purpose and economy 
 of effort among the disciples. Without it their 
 labors would have been frittered away. Ever 
 since then it has been recognized as essential 
 to success. 
 
 After the death of the Apostles and under the 
 "Early Fathers," Christianity spread rapidly in 
 influence over the civilized world until, under 
 Constantine, there came a formal Union of the 
 Church and State, a union of the material with 
 the spiritual. This added a spiritual sanction 
 in support of the State and gave temporal power 
 in support of the Church, which later on was 
 condensed into the dogma, "One Church in one 
 State." 
 
 The belief in the necessity of this Union 
 became so deeply implanted in the Christian 
 mind that they could not conceive of a church 
 except as a part of a political state. This 
 doubtless tended to materialize the church and 
 endowed it with a secular organization which 
 
 17 
 
was then, and still is, the most complete and 
 efficient organization in existence. It is a direct 
 heritage from Imperial Rome. 
 
 Owing to its rapid growth as a center of 
 power and learning, Constantinople became a 
 second Rome, ^even greater than Rome, with a 
 joint Emperor and a joint Head of the Church 
 ruling over both. There were not two separate 
 empires, but there was a dual administration of 
 the "one empire;" advisable, if not necessary, 
 on account of its vast territorial extent, and 
 especially on account of the oriental character 
 of the eastern people who were so different from 
 the western in temperament and spiritual char- 
 acteristics. There were rivalries and clashes of 
 authority, but no formal separation was ever 
 decreed; nevertheless, they were known and 
 designated as the Eastern Empire and Eastern 
 Church and the Western Empire and Western 
 Church. 
 
 The Church of Rome, however, always strove 
 to sustain the life of its partner "The Empire," 
 and always regarded Rome as the seat of author- 
 ity for the whole Empire and gave it spiritual 
 support and in fact made its continued existence 
 possible through the many turbulent centuries 
 that followed. 
 
 As the barbaric conquests increased these 
 former Roman provinces were detached from 
 Rome and were divided up among themselves 
 
 i8 
 
into independent political kingdoms. This 
 weakened Rome and finally left the controlling 
 power in the East. 
 
 These new kingdoms, France, Germany and 
 England, maintained the old theory of a Union 
 of the Church and State; and, as they were 
 powerful enough to protect their political in- 
 dependence and desired also to control their 
 spiritual freedom, they modified so far as they 
 themselves were concerned, the original idea of 
 a "One universal Church- Empire ruling the 
 whole world,'" by substituting for it a Church- 
 Nation, which should maintain its control over 
 its own Church and Nation. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 
 
 In the eighth century the Western Church, 
 gaining in strength, repudiated the Emperor at 
 Constantinople as their Emperor, but they 
 retained the conception of One Empire for 
 Church and State, with the Church, however, 
 superior to the State and nominating the 
 Emperor. 
 
 With this increase in power, the Pope at 
 Rome advanced the idea of becoming, in his 
 own person, the temporal head of those western 
 kingdoms created by Clovis and Theodoric, and, 
 logically, if he were the head of the western 
 kingdoms, why not the head of the whole 
 Empire; especially as he was the head of the 
 Church which was a part of and co-extensive 
 with the Empire. But the Popes were not 
 strong enough, by themselves, to carry out this 
 program, so they invited Charlemagne, the 
 Prankish King, to aid them and become the 
 secular ruler and as he was the most powerful 
 monarch of his day and demanded it, they were 
 compelled to crown him The Emperor. 
 
 He was, moreover, the logical Emperor for 
 
 20 
 
Rome to select, because, in addition to his 
 military power, he was in his own right and 
 person descended from a line of kings who had 
 been friendly to Rome, and Athanasian from 
 the beginning; not Arian like the Lombardy 
 kings, who were the allies of the Eastern Church 
 and were fighting Rome at that time. 
 
 It might be noted here that the present line 
 of Italian Kings have come from this same 
 Lombardy. Perhaps the persistency of old 
 feuds and beliefs is shown by the present opposi- 
 tion of the Italian King and Nation to the 
 exercise of temporal power by the Pope. 
 
 The Church was profoundly grateful to Charle- 
 magne's grandfather, Charles Martel, who had 
 saved Europe and the Church from Moham- 
 medanism. He had also sustained Rome in the 
 religious controversy which was then fiercely 
 raging over the question of the worship of 
 images in the churches, which Rome favored, 
 while the Eastern Church was opposed to it, 
 believing it violated the First Commandment, 
 viz.: "Thou shall not make unto thee any 
 graven image, etc." 
 
 The Church was also grateful to his father. 
 Pippin the Short, who had converted Germany 
 to Christianity, a difficult and memorable 
 achievement in itself, and he was the Church's 
 most active and powerful supporter in those 
 days when the Church needed a defender. 
 
 21 
 
Charlemagne was equally zealous in behalf of 
 the Church, between times, while advancing his 
 own conquests. 
 
 The Prankish King now ruled from the Pyre- 
 nees to the Harz and from the Baltic to the 
 Mediterranean, an empire, not universal like the 
 Old Roman it is true, but still an empire; so 
 Lgo in, finding he needed Charlemagne to 
 protect him from his own hostile Roman States 
 as well as from his old enemies, crowned him 
 Emperor on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, repudi- 
 ated the Emperor at Constantinople and laid 
 the foundation for "The Holy Roman Empire," 
 which was to continue, with varying fortunes, 
 for one thousand years until destroyed by 
 Napoleon. 
 
 So the Church at Rome, occidental in thought 
 and methods, assuming to be the heir to the 
 premiership of Peter, tightened its grasp on 
 what remained of its old authority and became 
 the Roman Catholic Church, while the Church 
 at Constantinople and in the East, being more 
 oriental in membership and characteristics, be- 
 came the Orthodox or Greek Church. 
 
 The idea of universal empire and of "One 
 Church in one State," continued, however, 
 uppermost in their aims and purposes in both 
 the East and the West, and has descended down 
 with varying fortunes as an inheritance until in 
 modern times it has developed into and is 
 
 22 
 
represented by the Russian Empire in the East 
 and the French, German and EngHsh Empires 
 in the West. 
 
 Further but futile efforts to unite the Eastern 
 and Western Churches led to that most remark- 
 able of all human impulses, the Crusades, which 
 were vitalized by the pious and sentimental 
 aspirations of all Christians to recover possession 
 of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre. In this 
 movement France was preeminent and took the 
 leading part and, owing to the brilliant and 
 spectacular heroism of her knights, became the 
 most prominent of all the nations as the De- 
 fender of the Faith and as the Examplar of the 
 Age of Chivalry. 
 
 It will thus be seen that temporal power was 
 first adopted by the early Christians as a matter 
 of necessity to protect their persons as well as 
 their religious liberty, was then assumed by the 
 Roman Church in conjunction with Apostolic 
 Succession to extend their power and has been 
 contended for by them ever since as being 
 essential to the preservation of the life of the 
 Church. It has permeated all Catholic nations 
 during all the ages as a vital living principal of 
 faith. 
 
 This brings us down to the Union of the 
 Church and State in modern France. 
 
 23 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MODERN ROMAN CHURCH IN FRANCE 
 
 This Union, originally formed for purposes of 
 mutual protection, gradually drifted into the 
 position where the Church assumed both spirit- 
 ual and temporal supremacy, which threatened 
 the sovereignty of the State. 
 
 No question more profoundly agitates any 
 nation than that of its sovereignty, which is the 
 basis of its very existence, and this present 
 question of the "Separation of the Church and 
 State," stripped of its verbiage and its struggles 
 over property, is one of Sovereignty pure and 
 simple. 
 
 It is in addition a very complicated one. 
 
 First, because each of the parties to the con- 
 troversy is more or less divided within itself. 
 
 Secondly, because of the magnitude of the 
 interests involved covering as they do the field 
 of material, political and spiritual affairs. 
 
 Thirdly, because the changing relations of the 
 people to both the Church and State, have, dur- 
 ing the passing centuries, produced different 
 conditions, which in turn have been modified 
 
 24 
 
by customs and historical events, both internal 
 and foreign. 
 
 Fourthly and especially, because the principals 
 to this dispute are alien in nationality, are 
 powerful in influence, and represent the diverse 
 functions and ambitions of the Church and the 
 State — the Church contending for Temporal 
 Power, the State for National Sovereignty. 
 
 In France there are three parties to this dis- 
 pute, the Church, the State and the People. 
 The People are a varying quantity in numbers 
 in the support they render as between the other 
 two, but include all the French membership of 
 both the Church and the State with the "Anti- 
 Clericals," in full control of the State. On the 
 other hand the French membership of the 
 Church is only a small portion of the whole 
 Roman Catholic Church, which latter is, in fact, 
 an alien body with ample power to decide its 
 problems entirely independent of France and 
 with the "Clericals" in full control of the 
 Church. 
 
 To rightly understand this question, we must 
 know the causes which originally produced their 
 " Union" in France, just as we traced it in Rome; 
 the past history of the relations of the parties 
 to the Union and to each other; then the causes 
 which produced their disagreement and finally 
 the causes which brought about their separation. 
 
 In general, the Union lasted through many 
 25 
 
centuries, down to the Revolution in 1793. the 
 Disagreements from 1793 down to the Law of 
 Separation passed Dec. 10, 1905, the Separation 
 from 1905 down to the present time. 
 
 No attempt will be made to follow any strictly 
 chronological order, beyond the sub-divisions 
 above indicated. 
 
 Over one thousand years ago, amid the throes 
 of war, France was gradually evolved from a 
 group of small principalities into a great nation, 
 with the Church presiding at its birth and 
 standing sponsor at its christening. Much of 
 the intervening time since then it was the greatest 
 of the great nations, and the history of France 
 is quite largely the history of Catholicism in 
 Western Europe. 
 
 Over one thousand years ago, also amid the 
 throes of war, the Church definitely attained its 
 long sought purpose and took its seat upon the 
 throne of temporal power; and much of this 
 time it held sway over the kingdoms of the 
 civilized world. 
 
 Founded upon the life and teachings of Jesus 
 Christ, who explicitly repudiated temporal power 
 and who was condemned with the consent of 
 Pontius Pilate upon the charge that he claimed 
 it and was finally crucified in derision as the 
 King of the Jews, the Church, nevertheless, has 
 for a thousand years made this very claim one 
 of the main tenets of its faith, and has held it 
 
 26 
 
to be vitally essential to its existence; has 
 instigated war upon war to establish it over the 
 world; and today maintains it as a living 
 principle of faith and makes it the basis of its 
 contests with both France and Italy. 
 
 For one thousand years in mutual support of 
 this claim the Church and the State were 
 united as one in France. Married by common 
 consent, they were partners in the work of 
 government, partners in the propagation of 
 religion. 
 
 History tells us how thoroughly France per- 
 formed her share of the work and how faithful 
 she remained to the cause, even after the chang- 
 ing sentiment of the people in other countries 
 had produced, on this very account, the with- 
 drawal from the Church, of England, Germany, 
 Switzerland, Holland and Scandinavia. 
 
 For a portion of this one thousand years the 
 Church was the controlling partner in this 
 alliance, dictating its policy, temporal as well as 
 spiritual; while the State was content to sub- 
 missively obey, although allowed to strut showily 
 upon the world's gilded stage. During this 
 period the imparting of education was confided 
 wholly to the priests and nuns and acts of 
 benevolence naturally belonged to the Church, 
 so that, from time to time, the State, by gifts of 
 love or by deeds of loyalty, showed its devotion 
 to the Church, by turning over to its prelates 
 
 27 
 
the use of State palaces as residences for its 
 higher ecclesiastics, State seminaries for the 
 education of the young, State hospitals for the 
 helpless sick, State retreats for the aged and 
 infirm, State asylums for the orphans and the 
 numerous illegitimate children. 
 
 This property was owned by the State, but 
 was loaned by it to the Church, which thus had 
 the control and enjoyed the usufruct of it, by an 
 arrangement in which the State furnished the 
 buildings and money, and the Church did the 
 actual work of caring for these various bene- 
 factions. The Church doubtless did good work 
 for that period, but the system was gradually 
 found to be bungling and wasteful, was a 
 paternalism liable to abuse, and furnished the 
 opportunity for increasing its temporal power 
 which the Church did not fail to utilize, but 
 which the State finally was compelled to oppose 
 as destructive of its own sovereignty. 
 
 During this long period, benevolent and pious 
 individuals also and in addition, gave or be- 
 queathed lands and buildings and valuable gifts, 
 sometimes to the Church direct and sometimes 
 to the Nation, or to the Department, or to the 
 Commune — that is, the town — in which they 
 lived, for churches, seminaries, hospitals, asy- 
 lums and other benevolent institutions. 
 
 In France the custom was to place the practi- 
 cal administration of all such gifts and institu- 
 
 28 
 
tions in the hands of the Church. The Church, 
 therefore, has been in actual physical possession 
 of all such properties, in some cases for centuries, 
 and has had the full and free use of them, al- 
 though the legal title for a portion was still 
 vested in the State. The result was the Church 
 in its secular affairs was in actual possession of 
 two classes of property, viz. : that owned by the 
 Church itself and that owned by the State. 
 Aided by the influence which the control of such 
 a large property gave them and by their use of 
 temporal power, the Church, during all these 
 centuries, was also a Church Militant. It 
 believed in and contended for two things. 
 
 First. All Christian countries should be under 
 the control of the Church. 
 
 Second. All countries should be made Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 Education was confined to the clergy and the 
 aristocracy, while the masses were kept in dense 
 ignorance and had no voice in the management 
 of the Government. They did not count, they 
 simply served and obeyed. 
 
 There were three powerful organizations which 
 jointly controlled the State, viz.: the Army, the 
 Monarchy and the Church. 
 
 The fundamental rule of the Army was 
 obedience. The Commander was supreme, so 
 the General gave the orders, the soldiers im- 
 plicitly obeyed. The basis of the Monarchy 
 
 29 
 
was obedience. Allegiance was due the King 
 who "could do no wrong," so the King was 
 absolute, his subjects implicitly obeyed. The 
 unquestioned principle of the Church was obedi- 
 ence. The Pope was infallible, so Catholics 
 implicitly obeyed. 
 
 In France these three organizations were 
 united in support of a common cause and sus- 
 tained each other and constituted the State. 
 Thus was the Union established, and all the 
 parties were in harmony with the Union and 
 with each other. 
 
 After the old feudal system had passed away, 
 after printing had been discovered and intellec- 
 tual development commenced among the people, 
 and after Magna Charta led to liberty for 
 England, and the Reformation of Luther and 
 the intellectualism of Calvin severed Germany, 
 Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland 
 from the Roman Church, the masses in France 
 became imbued in some degree with this oppo- 
 sition to the Church. It found a partial outlet in 
 the movement of the Huguenots, but it was not 
 until the great upheaval of 1793 that it became 
 dangerous to the Church and State. 
 
 There was at that time a world wide move- 
 ment for liberty, for a release from the thraldom 
 of both the Church and the State. It com- 
 menced in England and America and culminated 
 in France. In England, under Cromwell, it 
 
 30 
 
created a Parliament of the people which ruled, 
 but left a Sovereign who simply reigned. It did 
 not finally overthrow the Monarchy, neither did 
 it disestablish the Church. 
 
 In America the conditions were very different, 
 and, having once separated our body politic 
 from the Monarchy, the act of separating 
 "The Church" from "The State," was a 
 simple matter, especially as a large portion of 
 our population were Puritans who had separated 
 from the church and became such in order to 
 escape from the union of church and state. We 
 were sparsely settled, we were forming a new 
 government and framing new laws. We were 
 seceding Colonies, not a compact nation. We 
 had no sacred traditions behind us. The State 
 had no enemy, no opponent even, within its 
 borders. The people were of many diverse 
 creeds. No church had a preponderating ma- 
 jority. Each church was naturally opposed to 
 having any other church made The State 
 Church. 
 
 The spirit of the age was an intense desire for 
 freedom — free government, free manhood, free 
 speech, free press — why not free worship? 
 
 So our very wise and far seeing ancestors 
 incorporated free worship in our Constitution, 
 and safeguarded it by allowing no church any 
 special privilege, but while providing for equal 
 opportunities for free worship for all religions, 
 
 31 
 
allowed none any participation in the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 France was our ally in our struggle for liberty 
 and became imbued with the same intense 
 desire for freedom. The people, staggering 
 under the wrongs of a debased monarchy, 
 witnessing the successful emancipation of reli- 
 gious worship among their neighbors, and in- 
 spired by the example of freedom in America, 
 at last broke loose from their bonds and over- 
 threw the hated Monarchy, and embraced 
 democracy with "Liberty, Equality and Fra- 
 ternity," as their sibboleth. In doing this they 
 also antagonized the Church, which was the 
 ally of the State and had faithfully supported 
 the Monarchy in its distress. 
 
 Here then was a change in the relations of the 
 People to the Church and to the State. Liberty 
 for the body and liberty for the conscience was 
 the entering wedge which was ultimately to lead 
 to total separation. The new State forcibly 
 dissolved the partnership of centuries and 
 became the opponent of the Church — princi- 
 pally because the Church was the friend and 
 supporter of the old State. In this great and 
 bloody upheaval, the Church was despoiled of 
 much of its property which was compensated 
 for, later on, by Napoleon in order to legalize his 
 divorce from and his marriage with a Catholic 
 wife and to perpetuate his dynasty. This was 
 
 32 
 
accomplished by the Law of i8 Germinal, Year 
 X (i8 April 1802) known as the Concordat. 
 
 Though the Roman Church complains that it 
 was despoiled because it was a church, during 
 the Reign of Terror, it ignores the fact that 
 Protestants and Jews suffered equally at that 
 time, that the House of Bourbon, with its 
 followers, were stripped of all their possessions, 
 guillotined or exiled. It ignores the fact that 
 the Roman Church alone among all of these, 
 recouped its losses through the Concordat. It 
 also ignores the fact that it suffered this despolia- 
 tion largely because it was the active partner of 
 the old State, so that the fury of the masses 
 against the Bourbons was naturally extended 
 to their most intimate and powerful ally, the 
 Church. 
 
 The Church, while condemning the confisca- 
 tion of its property in 1793, also ignores the fact 
 that, after the Revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes, for which it was responsible, and while 
 in the full plenitude of its power, it not only 
 confiscated all the property of the Huguenot 
 Protestants but drove them from France, and 
 never afterwards during the long years of its 
 rule made any restitution of property or rights, • 
 nor expressed any regret, nor offered any con- 
 demnation of the very thing which it now 
 condemns. 
 
 But a new controlling force stepped in when 
 33 
 
Napoleon, acting in the name of liberty, rose 
 from one honor to another, until he became First 
 Consul. He organized this wild frenzy of the 
 French people for freedom into a machine for 
 his own personal ambitions and advancement, 
 and thus became the enemy of the Church as 
 well as of the old State. The glamor of mili- 
 tary conquest swept over France and Napoleon 
 became the idol of the Army, one of the old allies 
 of the Church, that army commanded, not as 
 formerly by monarchial favorites, but by soldiers 
 who had proved their worth on the field of 
 battle. Then he became Emperor. Thus the 
 Church lost its two secular allies, the Army and 
 the State. The Bourbons could neither forgive 
 him nor bargain with him, for to accept him 
 would be to keep themselves out of rulership, 
 but the Church could and would and did trade, 
 specified the terms in a written agreement called 
 the "Concordat," which was the reparation 
 received by the Church. This Concordat, which 
 they now laud so highly, was then accepted 
 grudgingly, and only because they were com- 
 pelled to and with the inward determination to 
 supplant it with better terms as soon as they 
 possibly could. 
 
 In 1789 the French people were profoundly 
 Catholic and unquestioning believers, but the 
 intervening years between that and the Concor- 
 dat produced a great change in their mental and 
 
 34 
 
moral characteristics and in their attitude 
 toward both the Church and the State. They 
 yearned for liberty, but it was an anticipation 
 rather than a realization — a vision only of the 
 future. It might have had a different termina- 
 tion, but for the hostile attitude of the Church; 
 the check it received was largely due to them. 
 
 The Army, the Monarchy and the Church 
 were always thoroughly organized. The Re- 
 public was largely an impulse, and during the 
 later Napoleonic regime it became completely 
 disorganized, so when he lost at Waterloo, the 
 Monarchy again came into power. 
 
 The aspirations for freedom, however, still 
 lived in the minds and hearts of France and 
 grew so strong that in 1830 the Monarchy was 
 again expelled and the second Republic pro- 
 claimed. It, however, was too feeble to question 
 the Concordat. The Church was silent, but in 
 secret sympathy with the Bourbons and in 
 secret enmity against the Republic. 
 
 The pendulum again swung back, the Republic 
 gave way before the powerful combination. 
 France was still too much opposed to anything 
 Bourbon to consent to their restoration, so the 
 glamor of their former military glories was 
 flaunted before their eyes, the body of the Great 
 Napoleon was brought back to France, was 
 buried in the Invalides with imposing cere- 
 monies and they allowed Napoleon III to be- 
 
 35 
 
come President of the Republic. With true 
 Napoleonic instinct he quickly changed it into 
 an Empire, and with equal Napoleonic aspira- 
 tions he turned to the glories of war to keep him 
 on the throne. His conquest of Algiers and 
 Tunis, his successful campaign against Russia 
 which confirmed Turkey as a European power, 
 and against Austria which helped to make Italy 
 a united nation, kept him on the throne for 
 eighteen years, but he finally fell before German 
 discipline. 
 
 The bitterness of the French people against 
 everything Napoleonic had a powerful influence 
 in causing them to undo the work of Napoleon 
 I, "the Concordat," and to change their feelings 
 towards those who upheld it — "The Church." 
 
 The Republic was proclaimed for a third time 
 amid the humiliation of defeat by the Germans 
 and the disheartening atrocities of "The Com- 
 mune." 
 
 The trials and perils were many. No new 
 nation ever stepped into the arena with less 
 prospects of success. It was heavily in debt, 
 humbled in pride, stripped of portions of its 
 territory, sapped of its slain manhood, with the 
 hostile Commune within its borders on the one 
 hand, and the intriguing Bourbons and Im- 
 perialists on the other, while without was the 
 mailed hand of Germany ready to strike again 
 should occasion arise. 
 
 36 
 
The Aristocracy claimed that honor could be 
 restored only through the Monarchy. They 
 asserted that the people were incapable of self- 
 government, that the Republic had twice before 
 proved itself inadequate to the task of govern- 
 ing. The world in general feared that France 
 could not long withstand these burdens and 
 exist. 
 
 Where did the Church stand during those 
 vital days of the Republic's trials and struggles 
 for existence? Did it help the Republic, or did 
 it work against it, or did it remain neutral? 
 
 Pope Pius IX, in the Encyclical Quanta Cura, 
 condemned the Republic when he declared "The 
 Roman Church cannot accept progress, liberal- 
 ism and modern civilization." Also in Syllabus, 
 proposition 77, when he anathematized those 
 who denied that "The Catholic religion is to be 
 recognized as the sole religion of the State, to 
 the exclusion of all others." 
 
 Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII and Pius X, 
 all claimed for the Catholic Church the right to 
 be placed by the State in a privileged position, 
 and condemned religious toleration or, as it was 
 dogmatized, condemned "a free church in a free 
 state." Leo XIII, addressing English pilgrims 
 January 1901, declared it was an outrage on the 
 Catholic Church "that the Italian Government 
 tolerated Protestant Chapels in Rome." 
 
 The recent Encyclical against the Law of 
 37 
 
Separation issued February 1906, "Vehementer 
 Nos," is the same in spirit as that enunciated by 
 Innocent III in his Bull of August 1215, anathe- 
 matizing Magna Charta, and the same as that 
 of Boniface VIII, in 1303, in his famous "Con- 
 stitution Unam Sanctam," "The temporal au- 
 thority must be subject to the spiritual power," 
 or as the Vatican now expresses it, "The Church 
 must have Temporal Power." 
 
 It may be remembered that in their denuncia- 
 tion of "Americanism," as subversive of the 
 Church, they approved of the writings of the 
 Canon of Cambrai who accused Cardinal Gib- 
 bons and Archbishop Ireland, than whom there 
 are none better, with dealing in "Freemasonry 
 and Satanic Agencies," and in May 1904, the 
 Pope created the Abbe Maignon a "Monsig- 
 nore" in compensation for his work "The 
 Sovereignty of the People is Heresy." 
 
 I give these quotations without comment and 
 leave the reader to judge whether the Church 
 was friendly or hostile or neutral toward the 
 new Republic. 
 
 Doubtless many who loved liberty lost their 
 love for the Church because of these Encyclicals. 
 Doubtless it widened the breach between the 
 Church and the State. Doubtless the Church 
 was responsible for it. 
 
 During these years the People of France, 
 schooled in adversity and sobered by defeat, 
 
 38 
 
only strengthened the more their devotion to 
 republican principles and yearned for freedom 
 of body and mind and soul. They regarded 
 this dogma of Temporal Power as subversive of 
 all civil government, of all religious toleration 
 and of all liberty of conscience. 
 
 The principles of democracy, however, were 
 too deeply implanted by this time, to be easily 
 torn up; wisdom had come with years of trial, 
 and knowledge with years of experience; the 
 errors of the past were carefully avoided; they 
 set their standards high, they idolized their 
 ideals; nevertheless they did not forget their 
 obligations. Though burdened with an in- 
 demnity debt to Germany which all the world 
 thought would crush her, the Republic stood by 
 the Concordat and each year faithfully paid the 
 agreed stipend, which the Church as regularly 
 accepted. 
 
 In this crisis the Republic possessed in Thiers 
 and Gambetta two wise and energetic leaders to 
 pilot it through those early and stormy years of 
 its reincarnation. It was during these trying 
 years that France showed her true and noble 
 spirit. 
 
 It was Gambetta who clearly looked into the 
 future of the Republic with prophetic eye, and 
 summarized his vision in one short sentence. 
 "Le Cl^ricalisme, voila I'ennemi!" (Clerical- 
 ism, there is the enemy). Not Germany, but 
 
 39 
 
the guest within her gates, the partner of her 
 past, was her future enemy. 
 
 For one hundred years the Church has been 
 living under The Concordat, the recipient of its 
 many valuable privileges. Now the partnership 
 is to be dissolved, the Siamese twins are to be 
 cut asunder, all these special privileges and 
 money largesses are to be annulled. The State 
 property is to be taken back, the 40,000,000 
 francs annually paid to the Vatican is to be cut 
 off, the pensions and allocations are to be dis- 
 continued, the asylums, hospitals, seminaries 
 and other properties are to be turned over to 
 their legal owners — the Nation, the Depart- 
 ments or the Communes. 
 
 For over one hundred years this bitter contest 
 for supremacy has been going on between the 
 People on the one side and a triumvirate on the 
 other, composed of the Monarchy, the Army 
 and the Church. 
 
 It took eighty years to overthrow the Bourbon 
 Monarchy and the Napoleonic Empire. During 
 this period the French people became, each year, 
 more and more embued with democratic ideas, 
 more liberal in thought, more enlightened in 
 mind, more elevated in aspirations and more 
 opposed to the policy of the Church. On the 
 other hand, the Church rigidly adhered to its 
 old ideas of absolutism and clericalism, as shown 
 by quotations already given, and either scorn- 
 
 40 
 
fully rejected all democratic tendencies or sub- 
 mitted to them for the time being without giving 
 them a sincere support. It is true Leo XIII at 
 one time advised the French Catholics to make 
 peace with the Republic, but either from lack 
 of sincerity on the part of the clergy or from 
 distrust on the part of the Republic, the advice 
 made no progress but rather widened the 
 breach, so after Leo XIII died, the Church 
 drifted back, under the new Pope, to the cleri- 
 calism of the Middle Ages. 
 
 The Church never changes its policy though 
 force may compel it to defer its execution. 
 This suggestion of Leo XIII is the only instance 
 on record where the church has ever offered, or 
 even suggested, to waive its claim to temporal 
 power. 
 
 The Roman Church has a great past of both 
 good and evil. Its great evils have come from 
 intermeddling with politics and its great good 
 from conducting with such superb efficiency its 
 charitable and spiritual work. 
 
 The French people are by nature Catholics. 
 They love the formal ceremony of the Roman 
 Church. When they disagree with Clericalism 
 they do not drift into Protestantism as might be 
 expected, they simply refrain from religious 
 worship, still remaining Catholics while dis- 
 agreeing with the methods of Catholicism. 
 
 The Catholic faith is not incompatible with 
 41 
 
republicanism nor with the Republic of France. 
 Nowhere has it made greater progress in num- 
 bers or influence than in America where it is 
 without temporal power. Nowhere has it de- 
 generated more rapidly than in France and 
 Italy where it had temporal power and where 
 its whole strength has been devoted to efforts 
 to perpetuate it. That it has flourished like 
 the "green bay tree" in America all the world 
 knows and acknowledges. That it has retro- 
 graded in Italy, the present position of the 
 Holy See in the city of St. Peter, abundantly 
 proves. That it has degenerated in France is 
 proven by its own statement, viz.: "That once 
 it had the whole of France as worshippers, while 
 now the majority of Frenchmen are its persecu- 
 tors." The judgment of the outside world is 
 that it has brought this condition about by its 
 own actions. 
 
 No more striking proof of this loss of prestige 
 can be needed than the fact that when the Third 
 Republic was proclaimed every ofhce in France, 
 from the Emperor down to the humblest 
 doorkeeper, was held by a Catholic, while 
 today not a single clerical holds a position. 
 
 That the majority is against it, and that the 
 antagonism is constantly increasing, is shown 
 by the fact that each succeeding election gives 
 an increased number of Republican members 
 in the National Assembly, and a decreased 
 
 42 
 
number of Catholics. This result followed in 
 the elections held after the passage of the laws 
 of 1 88 1 and 1901, both of which had an import- 
 ant bearing upon "Separation." A general 
 election was held this year, i.e., after the passage 
 of the Separation Law of December 10, 1905, in 
 which this law was the special issue of the 
 campaign. The result was an increased Repub- 
 lican majority; so any change of Cabinet now 
 would undoubtedly result in a more severe 
 execution of the law rather than in an increase 
 of the conciliatory course pursued by the present 
 Government. 
 
 The voting strength of the two parties in the 
 Assembly is about 450 for the Government to 
 150 for the Catholics, or about three to one, and 
 in the Senate about two to one. 
 
 The fact is the "Clericals" call all Frenchmen 
 atheists who are not on their side. This is 
 hardly fair. Setting aside the Jews and Protes- 
 tants who constitute about one-tenth of all the 
 population, a very large proportion of the 
 remainder are Catholics who are alienated from 
 the Church because they are Patriots rather than 
 Clericals. They do not actively attend worship. 
 
 A small portion are "Liberal Catholics," or 
 "Young Catholics." They are educated and 
 thinking men, liberal and progressive in ideas, 
 who foresee the new destinies towards which 
 France is moving as the enemy of injustice and 
 
 43 
 
as the defender of the liberties of the people. 
 They also disagree with the policy of the church, 
 i.e., with "Clericalism," but remain active in 
 Church matters. This body is one of the most 
 important in France, is a growing power and 
 will some day exercise its proper influence. To 
 it, the church will owe its regeneration — but 
 that is another and very large question. 
 
 There is also, as in all countries, a body of 
 educated men, who make the best of citizens 
 and are religious in their hearts, but are not 
 registered members of any church. 
 
 There is a small body of atheists who are 
 hostile to all religion, and active and abusive in 
 expressing it. They delight in stirring up the 
 Catholics, who apparently delight in being 
 stirred up, and who make the political mistake 
 of noticing them and of classing all opponents 
 with them. These atheists now give the Govern- 
 ment more trouble than the Clericals, but on this 
 one question they vote with the Government. 
 
 The balance of the people, a minority of all, 
 are "Clericals," and the Church itself, at Rome, 
 as a whole, is controlled by the "Clericals." 
 Such is the relative position now of the People 
 to each other and to the Church and State. 
 
 A tax on every citizen and on all property has 
 always, in the past, been levied by the Govern- 
 ment for the support of the Roman Catholic 
 Church and for that Church alone. Those who 
 
 44 
 
were not Catholics objected to this, so the law 
 was changed releasing from this tax those 
 persons who did not register themselves as 
 Catholics and retaining it upon those who were 
 willing to do so. The result was that a little 
 over one-tenth of the men and a little under 
 three- tenths of the women so registered, say 
 one-fifth of the population. This, of course, is 
 not a fair statement of the numerical strength 
 of the Catholics, for a large portion of their 
 membership is made up of the poorer class who 
 are not financially able to pay any tax, while 
 there are among them, as there always is in 
 every community, many of those who will not 
 pay any tax if they can legally avoid it, still it 
 represents in a large degree the number of those 
 who took sufficient interest in their religion to 
 be ready to stand up and be counted and help 
 pay for its support. These, with the Aristoc- 
 racy, are the ones who are now making all the 
 disturbances, the rest of France is quiet and 
 apparently apathetic. 
 
 Formerly the children in France were entirely 
 educated by the priests and nuns in their 
 parochial schools, where they were carefully 
 taught that their first allegiance was to their 
 Church. Some years ago the Government es- 
 tablished Communal, or public, schools, where 
 the education is secular and where allegiance to 
 France is taught, hence the man of today has 
 
 45 
 
an entirely different view of his duty to his 
 country from what he had yesterday under the 
 old parochial system and enters upon his 
 citizenship either as a Republican or a Liberal 
 Catholic, rather than as a Clerical; a patriot 
 rather than a subject of an alien power. 
 
 This change in the system of education has 
 been one of the most important factors in chang- 
 ing the relations of the People to the Church 
 and to the State. 
 
 Having effectually overthrown the "Mon- 
 archy," one of the old Triumvirate, the Republic 
 next took issue with the Army, another member. 
 
 Dreyfus was ostensibly and apparently the 
 bone of contention, but the unanimity and energy 
 with which the Church entered into this contest 
 in support of its former ally, the Army, showed 
 that other and greater interests were at stake. 
 
 The Dreyfus case was not simply a prejudice 
 against a Jew, nor was it solely a trial for 
 treason. Fundamentally it was a struggle for 
 supremacy between the Civil and the Military 
 powers, a recrudescence of the old contest which 
 the Church hoped to profit by. 
 
 Dreyfus was first tried, convicted and punished 
 by a Court Martial. The Army contended that 
 such a trial was final and beyond any review by 
 the Civil Courts. The Government contended 
 that it came within the jurisdiction of the Civil 
 Law. 
 
 46 
 
The prejudice against Dreyfus because of his 
 Hebrew extraction was no doubt utilized to the 
 utmost to stem the rising tide of sentiment in 
 favor of the supremacy of Civil Law. The 
 Church is not wholly free from Jewish prej- 
 udices which might have been an additional 
 incentive for giving assistance to the Army. 
 
 There was an undefined suspicion that the 
 Army was willing to sustain any attempt to 
 overthrow the Republic and to establish a 
 dictatorship in the person of General Boulanger, 
 who was ambitious, was then at the height of his 
 popularity and was regarded by the populace 
 as the coming "Man on Horseback" — France 
 has been so accustomed to seeing them come. 
 
 It was planned to have a "Manifestation" in 
 his favor during a parade of the Army down the 
 Champs Elysees. If the enthusiasm justified, 
 this was considered to be the psychological 
 moment, when he had the Army at his back 
 under arms, to execute his "coup" and become 
 Dictator. 
 
 It failed, they say, because he lacked the 
 nerve at the decisive moment. He went to 
 Belgium. 
 
 These stirring and critical events, otherwise 
 fruitless, enabled the military party, however, 
 to prevent for several years, any review of the 
 Dreyfus case. 
 
 Even the famous retrial of five years ago 
 47 
 
which Labori conducted so ably in Court and 
 Zola defended so zealously out of Court, was a 
 military trial solely, but it aroused the con- 
 science of France. The friends of Civil Law 
 never gave up the fight. They finally suc- 
 ceeded last year in bringing the case before the 
 "Cours des Cassation" — the Supreme Court 
 of France — which decided in favor of Dreyfus 
 and thus established a new landmark in the 
 progress of France by making the Civil Law 
 superior to the Military. This has since been 
 confirmed and strengthened by a Statute to 
 that effect. 
 
 It is hard for Americans, where Civil Law has 
 always been supreme, to fully comprehend the 
 significance of this bitter contest, but it was not 
 "Dreyfus" that was at issue. It was the pass- 
 ing away of militarism and the establishment of 
 the supremacy of Civil Law, the uplifting of 
 France into a higher plane, with regenerated 
 hopes and aspirations. It was also the fore- 
 runner of the passing away of Clericalism. 
 
 48 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SEPARATION 
 
 Having succeeded against these two, the 
 Monarchy and the Army, the Republic finally 
 joined issue with "The Church," the third and 
 last member of The Triumvirate, the most 
 powerful and resourceful of them all. 
 
 It is on the eve of success. It will surely 
 triumph. The Law of Separation will un- 
 doubtedly be sustained and when it is, then the 
 Republic can turn its serious attention to carry- 
 ing out its elaborate program, already an- 
 nounced, for social and economic reforms, 
 questions similar to those now pressing for 
 solution before the German, English and Ameri- 
 can people. 
 
 The French People are now the sole Arbiters of 
 this Question. That is an important point over- 
 looked by the Church. France is a Republic. 
 The people decide, not the Emperor, — not the 
 Army, — not the Church, — but the People. 
 If they decree Separation, that ends the contest. 
 
 The very attitude of the French people, 
 themselves, on this question, is conclusive proof 
 
 49 
 
that separation will come, and when finally 
 established they will no more think of going 
 back to a union of Church and State than we 
 would in America, or than the English would 
 think of repudiating "Magna Charta." 
 
 That separation will succeed is shown by the 
 apparent indifference of the French Secular 
 Press. 
 
 Every Catholic paper thunders forth, daily, 
 either calling Catholics to armed resistance or 
 accusing them of cowardice, but the general 
 press takes scant notice of all this uproar. This 
 is what one Catholic paper, "Autorit^," says: 
 
 "When a Government attacks their property 
 and seriously injures their interests, not only is 
 it the absolute and formal duty of those citizens 
 not to obey, and to refuse to submit to it, but 
 also to resist actively by armed force. This 
 opinion will be opposed no doubt by Liberals, 
 but it is, nevertheless, the opinion of every 
 Catholic." 
 
 Another paper speaking of the debate in the 
 Assembly, says: "Only one anti-Ministerial 
 dared face the Government. His colleagues 
 abandoned him to the insults of the Left. 
 Catholics expect a different attitude from their 
 representatives. ' ' 
 
 From "Soleil" (clerical): 
 
 "Civil discord and religious war will fall on 
 those who have denounced the Concordat, and 
 
 50 
 
thus organized the struggle against religion and 
 for the spoliation of property. In doing this 
 they pave the way for barbarity and despotism 
 without honor, without country, without God." 
 
 The Church issues a special appeal to the 
 outside world in the shape of the Pope's Encycli- 
 cal, already quoted. 
 
 It is all to no purpose. The French people 
 are calm and indifferent; the daily life on the 
 street, in the mart and at home moves on as 
 placidly as ever, and the stranger within her 
 gates would never know from any outward 
 manifestation, of the deep inward determina- 
 tion of the body politic, down in the bottom of 
 their hearts, to carry out this momentous 
 change. And all this is in excitable, impulsive 
 France, where the least difference in opinion 
 results in vehement "demonstrations." Why 
 this apathy and especially on that one subject 
 of all others, religion, the most likely to engender 
 strife? It is simply because all Frenchmen 
 consider Separation as already effected, as com- 
 pletely finished, that nothing now remains but 
 the details of executing the law. This they leave 
 to the Government in full confidence it will be 
 faithfully done. 
 
 There can be no question but the people are 
 back of the Government. The "Clericals" 
 attempt to draw a distinction between the 
 French Government and the French People. 
 
 51 
 
No greater mistake could be made. The Govern- 
 ment is the People. 
 
 The Law of Separation is only the Govern- 
 ment's interpretation of the will of the people. 
 They cannot be led away from Republican 
 principles. Not one out of a thousand could 
 be induced to give up self-government. It is 
 the Vatican, not the people, that is fighting the 
 Government. 
 
 The extremists on both sides who advocate 
 force mistake the purpose of the law abiding, 
 industrious and frugal French people. Al- 
 though they are devoted to the Republic, they 
 are also religious in feelings and Catholics by 
 nature. These 38,000,000 Frenchmen are no 
 more likely to help the "Clericals" destroy the 
 Republic than they are likely to help the Atheists 
 demolish religion. 
 
 There is a very small minority that is anti- 
 religious, and a still smaller minority that is 
 anti-republican. 
 
 Between modern freedom in thought and act 
 as typified by the Republic, and ancient restric- 
 tion and subserviency as practiced by Clerical- 
 ism, there is such an inherent difference that 
 they cannot be reconciled, they must oppose 
 each other to the end. 
 
 The Clerical idea of citizenship is incompatible 
 with liberty and democracy. Democracy must 
 be free to live its own life and make its own laws. 
 
 52 
 
Clericalism demands ecclesiastical authority over 
 political matters. Submissive himself to the 
 dictum of the Church, the "Clerical" regards 
 any other course as impossible, if not heretical, 
 and cannot understand independence in any 
 one else. 
 
 The Catholic clergy were invited, then urged, 
 to meet the Legislative Committee of the 
 Assembly to help formulate the Law, to suggest 
 any desired changes and to cooperate in making 
 it equitable and acceptable. They refused. 
 They would not argue, they would not deny, 
 they would only condemn. 
 
 The Jews and Protestants are small in number 
 and their religious influence is negligible. Under 
 the old law the Roman Church enjoyed special 
 privileges. The Jews and Protestants had none, 
 but on the contrary were hampered by restric- 
 tions. Under the present Law they are all placed 
 upon an equal footing. Perhaps this is the 
 reason why the Jews and Protestants so cordially 
 accept it and why the Vatican so bitterly con- 
 demns it. Theoretically, the rupture is with all 
 the churches. Practically, it is with the Roman 
 Church only. 
 
 The Law of Separation is really a liberating 
 measure for it removes all previous restrictions 
 on religious liberty. It is not the result of a 
 recent or of a temporary quarrel with the 
 Vatican, but is an inherent and irreconcilable 
 
 53 
 
diflference in fundamental principles of long 
 standing. If France should now surrender to 
 the claims of the Vatican, surrounded as she is 
 by rival and unfriendly nations, she would soon 
 cease to exist. France insists that the right to 
 govern itself is inherent and self-evident, so she 
 is now completing the work, begun under 
 Napoleon, by throwing off all allegiance. Fol- 
 lowing the example of England, Germany, 
 Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Italy, France 
 - — the eldest and best loved daughter of the 
 Church — is now emancipating herself, leaving 
 only Austria and Spain under the Roman rule. 
 
 The Church has made many charges against 
 the Law of Separation. Two only of them are 
 very serious or fundamental, viz. : 
 
 First. That the State is depriving them of 
 religious freedom. 
 
 Second. That the State is confiscating their 
 property. 
 
 These charges, if true, would arouse the 
 conscience of the civilized world to protest 
 against the action of the French Government 
 and in favor of the Church. Are they true? 
 An examination of the Law will best answer 
 that question. 
 
 It is not quoted in full, but those Articles to 
 which the above charges refer are translated 
 entire, while a synopsis only is given of the 
 others. 
 
 54 
 
A careful study of the Law itself shows it has 
 three purposes in view. 
 
 First. To guarantee free religious worship, 
 not to destroy it. 
 
 Second. To protect religious property, not 
 to confiscate it. 
 
 Third. To give all religions an equal oppor- 
 tunity, not to give the Roman Church a prefer- 
 ence as formerly. 
 
 The word "establishment" in the Law refers 
 to the old church organization as it existed 
 before the Law, and the word "Association" 
 refers to the new organization as it will exist 
 after the Law has been complied with. 
 
 The Law speaks for itself, mere denunciation 
 will not controvert what it says. The only 
 question left is whether it is being executed fairly 
 and in harmony with its spirit. The Law shows 
 positively that between 1793 and 1905 the laws 
 of the State have been greatly changed. This 
 is because the attitude of the people toward the 
 State as well as towards the Church has changed. 
 The laws of the Church during this period show 
 the Church itself has made no change. 
 
 The liberal element thought they had made 
 some progress during the Pontificate of Leo 
 XIII, but he never surrendered the claim to 
 temporal power, only doubted the wisdom of 
 violently insisting upon its exercise at that time. 
 It was thought the Sacred College might aban- 
 
 55 
 
don it when a new Pope was chosen, but the 
 "Clericals" controlled and selected their candi- 
 date and therein lies one reason for the present 
 contest with France. 
 
 The Vatican maintains foreign relations with 
 all nations, is deeply engaged in the game of 
 politics and no country has more skilful diplo- 
 mats, therefore, a recital of a few additional 
 events of recent date may help to a full compre- 
 hension of the position of the Church. 
 
 First. It was France that made Italian 
 nationality a possibility. 
 
 Second. It was Italy as a nation that took 
 away the temporal power of the Church. Is 
 there any connection between these two facts 
 and the present attitude of the Vatican? 
 
 Third. The present Pope, Pius X, was not 
 the choice of the French clergy, but was espe- 
 cially acceptable to the German. 
 
 Fourth. When Leo XIII died, neither Car- 
 dinal Rampolla his able Secretary of State, nor 
 Cardinal Merry del Val, the present Secretary, 
 could be elected, though both desired it and 
 both were prominent candidates. 
 
 Fifth. Merry del Val made the combination 
 in the Sacred College which elected Cardinal 
 Sarto, knowing Sarto would be Pope in name 
 only, while he. Merry del Val, as Secretary of 
 State, would be the real Pope. 
 
 Sixth. Merry del Val is a Spaniard. Bril- 
 56 
 
liant, with an active mind, a good linguist, and 
 an accomplished diplomat, and modern in 
 material things such as the telephone and type- 
 writer, he has nevertheless the old Spanish 
 medieval way of doing spiritual things. If the 
 heretic would not believe, then the Inquisition 
 was just the thing to make him believe. 
 
 Seventh. With Merry del Val as the con- 
 trolling spirit, "Clericalism" is the logical policy 
 of the Vatican. 
 
 Eighth. What has been done by France is 
 being contemplated by Spain, so Merry del Val 
 is trying to prevent Separation in Spain by 
 defeating it in France and is arousing the 
 Catholic world to rally to his assistance. This 
 latter is being done by making three charges 
 against the French Law, which if true would be 
 serious, and, being contrary to the spirit of 
 modern thought, would arouse in behalf of the 
 Church the sympathy and command the support 
 of non-catholic as well as of Catholic countries 
 and especially of America where religious free- 
 dom is zealously guarded. 
 
 Here is a portion of what the kind-hearted, 
 much beloved Cardinal Gibbons says to the 
 American people, asking them to give the Church 
 their sympathy: 
 
 " I think I know my countrymen. They love 
 fair play. The late years have shown how 
 cordially they hate injustice, tyranny and 
 
 57 
 
inhumanity. And yet France has treated her 
 noblest citizens with injustice and inhumanity, 
 and America, which has sympathy for all the 
 oppressed of all nations, has raised no protest, 
 nor uttered a word of sympathy." 
 
 "The majority of the anticlericals have far 
 less love of the Republic than they have hatred 
 of religion. I am weighing my words and I say 
 with deliberate conviction that the leaders of 
 the present French Government are actuated 
 by nothing less than hatred of religion." 
 
 These are appealing words from one than 
 whom none stands higher in the Catholic 
 Church, save the Pope himself. Are they true? 
 Every American will say that if true the Church 
 should have, and will have, the sympathy of the 
 American people. But are they true? What 
 then are these three charges? And what is the 
 answer? 
 
 First. That France is depriving the Church 
 of religious freedom. 
 
 Second. That France is Atheistic. 
 
 Third. That France is robbing the Church 
 of its property. 
 
 In order to judge impartially, we must see 
 what the law itself says, as well as listen to the 
 testimony of the opposing sides. Singularly 
 enough articles one, two and three of the law 
 answer these charges in one, two and three order. 
 The best answer to the first charge, namely, 
 
 58 
 
that France is depriving the Church of religious 
 freedom, is to be found in the opening sentence 
 of the law in Chapter I - entitled Principles — 
 Article i, which reads: 
 
 "The Republic assures liberty of conscience 
 and guarantees the free exercise of religions." 
 
 This is hardly depriving the Church of 
 religious freedom. Mark the word "free" and 
 mark also the plural "religions." Hitherto 
 there was only one religion guaranteed, the 
 Roman Catholic, which in addition enjoyed 
 special privileges. Hitherto there were restric- 
 tions upon all other religiohs and they enjoyed 
 no special privileges. Now the freedom of all 
 religions is guaranteed and there are no special 
 privileges for any of them. 
 
 What the Vatican really means and should 
 say is, "That France is depriving the Church 
 of its former religious privileges." It is hard 
 to understand why the Church is opposing this 
 law upon the ground that it deprives them of 
 religious liberty, for it seems clear that the 
 declaratory preamble of Principles in the law 
 itself, disproves the Church's first charge. 
 
 In other words apparently the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church is not content with equality under 
 the law, does not stand for "a square deal," is 
 not willing to rest its claims on its own merits 
 and win its way into the hearts and intelligence 
 of the people by its own good deeds, but wants 
 
 59 
 
special privileges allowed or force even employed 
 in its behalf. 
 
 It seems equally clear that the French As- 
 sembly desires to make a law that guarantees 
 liberty of conscience to all persons and bestows 
 equal rights upon all creeds. That it has suc- 
 ceeded is shown by the well-known fact that 
 the Jews and Protestants have enthusiastically 
 welcomed it and have complied with its re- 
 quirements. The revolt of the Catholics con- 
 clusively proves that the Roman Church cannot 
 remain content to receive the same treatment 
 that is granted to the other religious bodies and 
 that she is unwilling to accommodate herself to 
 a regime of freedom of worship and that she 
 does not believe, as the Vatican officially 
 expresses it, in "A free Church in a free 
 State." 
 
 Articles 2, 9, 11, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 
 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 35, 39 and 41, also specifically 
 refute this charge because they all clearly bear 
 internal evidence of being made entirely in the 
 interest of free worship and for the protection 
 of the rights and property pertaining thereto. 
 
 Article 2 reads: 
 
 "The Republic neither recognizes, nor salaries, 
 nor subsidizes any religion. All appropriations 
 for religion will be omitted from the Budget 
 except appropriations for charity and for the 
 Chaplains who give free religious ministrations 
 
 60 
 
in public lyc^es, colleges, schools, hospitals, 
 asylums and prisons to such of the inmates as 
 desire them." 
 
 It will be seen this article refuses to legally 
 recognize or subsidize the Roman Church as 
 formerly and also refuses to recognize or sub- 
 sidize any and all religions, but it does allow 
 appropriations of money for charitable institu- 
 tions and allows their inmates to have the 
 ministrations of their own clergy if they want 
 them. 
 
 Article 9. Provides for keeping the property 
 of any church within the control and under the 
 management of the same religious denomination 
 that has always hitherto used it. 
 
 Article ii. Continues grants of pensions 
 to clergymen. 
 
 {Note. While theoretically applicable to all 
 denominations it practically applies to Roman 
 Catholic priests only because they were the only 
 ones who formerly received them.) 
 
 Articles 13 and 14. Gives the gratuitous 
 use of State Churches and the residences of 
 prelates to the Catholic parishes. 
 
 Article 19. Gives the details for forming 
 the new Associations. 
 
 Article 20. Allows all the parishes or 
 "Associations" of any one religion to unite and 
 form one central organization or "Union." 
 
 Articles 21 and 22. Provides for the disso- 
 61 
 
lution of an "Association" or "Union" if it 
 violates the Laws or misappropriates funds. 
 
 {Note. This is the only case where an "Asso- 
 ciation" or "Union" can be dissolved by the 
 State, or by any other power except the religious 
 denomination itself.) 
 
 Article 24. Exempts churches from taxa- 
 tion. 
 
 Article 25. Church worship must be public 
 not secret. 
 
 Articles 26, 27, 28, 29. Prohibits holding 
 political meetings in Churches, or the use of 
 religious emblems in public places and regulates 
 out of door meetings and processions. 
 
 Article 30. Religious teaching of children 
 attending public schools can be given only out- 
 side of school hours. 
 
 Articles 31 and 32. Prevents coersion and 
 disturbances. 
 
 Articles 34 and 35. Prevents any minister 
 by sermon or circular from teaching or advising 
 sedition, revolt or civil war. 
 
 Articles 36, 37, 38. Associations and Reli- 
 gious Orders are subject to law and the Penal 
 Code. 
 
 Article 39. Exempts religious students from 
 military duty. 
 
 Article 41. Provides that the money hither- 
 to paid to the Vatican in bulk under the Concor- 
 dat, and which was largely disbursed by the 
 
 62 
 
Vatican outside of France, shall in future be 
 paid to the several individual parishes or 
 Communes. 
 
 All these articles seem clearly to indicate that 
 the makers of the Law intended to protect 
 religious liberty, not to destroy it; that they 
 respected religion, not hated it. 
 
 The second charge is that France is Atheistic. 
 
 While there are many Atheists in France, 
 perhaps more than in any other country, and 
 while they are more active and outspoken there 
 than elsewhere, they are nevertheless a very 
 small minority and were far from being a con- 
 trolling factor in the making of the Law. They 
 voted for it, not because of their opposition to 
 all religion, but because, as between different 
 religions, it was fair and just and placed them 
 all on the same basis. 
 
 If the majority of the people of France are 
 Atheistic as the Vatican charges, the question 
 might very properly be asked at this point 
 "Who made France Atheistic?" 
 
 For one thousand years the Roman Catholic 
 Church has been supreme in all matters of 
 religion and very influential in all matters of 
 State. It drove out and suppressed all other 
 creeds. It controlled almost exclusively all 
 hospitals and charitable institutions. It was 
 encouraged and assisted by the State in pro- 
 pagating its religion, but above all other in- 
 
 63 
 
fluences, the education of all the children during 
 all these centuries has been exclusively placed 
 in its hands. Having had full control of the 
 mental, moral and spiritual education of all 
 French children, if they have grown up to 
 become Atheists, who taught them to become 
 such? Clearly no one but the Roman Church 
 itself. 
 
 Man learns by example as well as by precept. 
 What the "Clericals" call a "good Catholic" 
 is one who does not think for himself. Rome 
 does his thinking for him. A vast majority of 
 them have never read the Law of Separation, 
 but they accept, without questioning its accu- 
 racy, the Church's assertion that it robs them of 
 their religious liberty and their property. 
 
 The man who does read and think for himself 
 is confronted by the problem of choosing 
 between his Church, which he knows to be 
 wrong, and — what? There is no middle ground 
 in France. There is no other religion which 
 appeals to him for the natural tendency of the 
 Latin race is toward the imposing pomp and 
 ritual of the Catholic Church, therefore, if he 
 ceases to be a Catholic he fails to belong to any 
 church, however religiously inclined. 
 
 The Clericals call every one an Atheist who 
 is not a Catholic and say France is Anti-Chris- 
 tian. In reality the French people are only 
 Anti-Clerical and their delicate sense of pro- 
 
 64 
 
priety is outraged when they see a vestured 
 priest step down into the political arena to 
 become a politician, working for the overthrow 
 of the Republic and for the advancement of a 
 Count de Chambord or of a General Boulanger 
 to a dictatorship. 
 
 Thus it happened that as the national mind 
 became more enlightened and its spirit more 
 liberal and other governments more demo- 
 cratic, the thinking man realized, more and 
 more, the inconsistencies of the Vatican with its 
 reactionary tendencies towards political rule, 
 and, therefore, separated himself from the 
 political activities of the Church, with the 
 result that today nearly all the intelligence of 
 France is against — not the Church — but the 
 " Clericalism" of the Church; while the ignorant 
 and unthinking still follow the Papal See, the only 
 exception being that the adherents of the House 
 of Bourbon and the followers of the Imperialism 
 of Napoleon still rally to the aid of the Church, 
 as therein lies their only hope of overthrowing 
 the Republic. 
 
 The third charge is that "The State is robbing 
 them of their property." While no vital ques- 
 tion of principle is involved in this charge, it is 
 very important as affecting their prosperity. 
 
 The articles already quoted would seem to 
 fully answer this charge, so far as the law is 
 concerned, for they read as though intended to 
 
 65 
 
conserve the property and not to confiscate it, 
 and seem to provide every safeguard to protect 
 it from neglect or treachery within, or aggression 
 from without. 
 
 Article 3 provides that a Government Com- 
 missioner and the legal representative of the 
 Church shall jointly make an inventory of all 
 the property owned, used or controlled by the 
 Church. 
 
 First. Of all real and personal property 
 owned by the Church. 
 
 Second. Of all real and personal property 
 owned by the Nation or Department or Com- 
 mune. 
 
 There was no provision for such an inventory 
 in the original text as prepared by the Briand 
 Committee, but the Catholic members of the 
 Chamber of Deputies urged it as being necessary 
 to protect their interests, as well as being 
 essential when the time should come to correctly 
 make the legal transfer of the property from the 
 old "establishment," to the new "Association," 
 so it was added. 
 
 Curiously enough it was the Church itself 
 which afterwards violently opposed the actual 
 taking of these inventories upon the ground 
 that to do so and make a list, would be sacrile- 
 gious. It was during this time that some of the 
 priests carried away and sold without protest 
 some of the more valuable church articles and 
 
 66 
 
relics, to art collectors in Paris and London, so 
 as to dispose of them before they could be 
 inventoried by the Government. As a matter 
 of fact most of the acts of violence against the 
 law have been those connected with the taking 
 of these inventories. 
 
 In some cases the acts were led by the priests 
 and bishops themselves, while all, including 
 Cardinal Richard of Paris and the Pope, gave 
 their consent by their silence. 
 
 The main object for taking the inventory is to 
 separate the secular Church property from that 
 used for purposes of worship, so as to tax the 
 former and to secure the perpetual ownership 
 of the latter to the Church. 
 
 This last is accomplished in Articles 4 and 19, 
 by creating a trust or corporation called "Asso- 
 ciation cultuelle," to which is assigned in trust 
 all of the property owned by the Church called 
 "Attribution des biens." 
 
 This "Association" then is a corporation 
 formed not under the general law of corporations, 
 but under a special religious law, just as we 
 charter railroads under a special railroad law. 
 The whole body of religious worshippers in a 
 parish select from among their own membership, 
 a specified number of men who must be residents 
 of the commune, who become legally incorpo- 
 rated into an "Association" for the purpose of 
 taking over and holding in trust the property of 
 
 67 
 
the Church and of managing it for purposes of 
 worship exclusively. 
 
 A similar plan was adopted long ago in 
 Switzerland and later in Prussia, and was 
 immediately and gladly accepted for those 
 countries by the Vatican, without any protest 
 either then or since. An analogous plan has 
 been voluntarily adopted by many parishes in 
 America, as the best way of handling secular 
 property owned by a church. 
 
 Neither in Switzerland, Germany, England 
 or America does the Roman Church claim, as 
 it does in France, to be superior to the law of 
 the land, or demand exemption from taxation 
 of secular property. 
 
 There is often some underlying national 
 characteristic which has an influence in shaping 
 its laws, but which is not superficially apparent. 
 In France it is frugality. 
 
 The national debt of France is the largest of all 
 the nations, and bears heavily upon all the 
 people. On the other hand, the French are the 
 most frugal and saving of all peoples, hence they 
 do not like to see any of their hard earned money 
 sent out of France, or controlled by an alien 
 power. Herein lies one powerful motive for 
 the law. 
 
 The practical effect of this law, as regards the 
 church money received under the Concordat, 
 is, not to take it out of the hands of Catholics, 
 
 68 
 
but out of the control of the prelates of the 
 Vatican, that central power which has hitherto 
 managed it independently of the French, and to 
 place it under the control of French Catholics 
 of the several communes, a majority of whom 
 would be laymen rather than priests. This is 
 local self-government, home rule and not cen- 
 tralized power. The income is to be received 
 and disbursed by and for the local parishes and 
 not sent to Rome in bulk to be disbursed by 
 and for the Vatican. Thus while the people 
 receive the direct benefit of these moneys and 
 are, therefore, in favor of the law, the Vatican 
 will lose the immediate control of the French 
 revenues which are said to be the largest received 
 from any one source, and herein lies one main 
 cause of their opposition to the law. 
 
 It has been suggested the French Clergy 
 themselves were in favor of the law because of 
 the pensions provided for them in Article ii, 
 and because the large appropriations under 
 Article 41 will now come, pro rata, to the 
 several parishes direct, instead of going to Rome. 
 Who knows? What is known is that nine- 
 tenths of the clergy were in favor of the law 
 before the Papal prohibition. 
 
 The question, however, was not left to them 
 to decide. There was an interval of some 
 months between the date of the passage of the 
 Law and the Papal Encyclical, during which the 
 
 69 
 
Vatican gave no outward intimation of its 
 intentions, and the French Clergy, being in 
 favor of it, naturally proceeded to comply with 
 its requirements. During this time some 39,000 
 parishes out of a total of 40,000 formed the 
 "Association" required by the Law. Less than 
 1000 remained outside and most of these would 
 probably have complied before the year expired, 
 as they were being formed rapidly. 
 
 The law seems to provide safeguards against 
 all possible contingencies and human frailties. 
 Thus, for any wrong act, the Trustee or Vestry- 
 man is punished. If he is derelict, incompetent, 
 or changes his religious faith, the law provides 
 for his removal, and the parish itself selects his 
 successor. Suppose, for example, that all the 
 members of an "Association" should cease to 
 be Catholics and become Episcopalians, they 
 could not continue to hold the property, for the 
 law in that event transfers it to another Catholic 
 Association, and in case there are not the seven 
 Catholics left in that commune necessary to 
 form a new Association, then it transfers it to 
 the commune itself. 
 
 What the State did was first to take posses- 
 sion of its own, the State property; and then 
 second, not to take the Church property for its 
 own use, but to take the management of this 
 Church property out of the hands of an alien 
 power, and place it in the hands of a friendly 
 
 70 
 
local French corporation. This can hardly be 
 called stealing the church property as charged 
 by the Church. 
 
 Taking all these things into consideration it 
 would seem that these three charges fall to the 
 ground so far as the Law, as written, is concerned. 
 This carries us over to the period since the 
 passage of the Law on December lo, 1905, and 
 to the question whether the Law is being fairly 
 executed in letter and in spirit. 
 
 The execution of any law which involves such 
 large and diverse interests, and which changes 
 the customs of centuries, must necessarily 
 produce friction, but aside from that the manner 
 of executing it by the Cabinet appears to have 
 been conciliatory as shown. First, by their 
 willingness to extend for another year the time 
 within which the inventories must be taken. 
 
 Secondly, to allow the parishes to form their 
 Associations under the general law for creating 
 corporations, if they so desire. 
 
 Thirdly, to permit those parishes which have 
 not complied to continue to hold their services 
 under the old general law governing public meet- 
 ings, that is, by giving a written notice of such 
 religious meetings. In that case the Govern- 
 ment was willing to accept one such notice as 
 sufficient for and covering all the services held 
 during the year, instead of requiring a separate 
 notice for each separate meeting as is the case 
 for all secular meetings. 
 
 71 
 
It will be readily seen the Government has 
 not been oppressive or even strict in the execu- 
 tion of the letter of the law, and that all its 
 departures from the specific requirements of 
 the law have been concessions in favor of the 
 Church, so much so that the opponents of the 
 Church are calling on the Government to execute 
 the law without favor. 
 
 Some of the Catholics charge that the Govern- 
 ment is afraid, while others accuse it of brutality. 
 The Government, apparently confident of its 
 strength and the justice of its conduct, takes no 
 notice of either the threats or abuse, but con- 
 tinues to pursue its lenient policy and manifests 
 a disposition to allow the Church to gradually 
 readjust itself to the new conditions. 
 
 All these plans, however, were officially re- 
 jected by the Vatican and singularly enough one 
 of the main reasons given for its opposition is 
 Article 8, which provides that if two "Associa- 
 tions" are formed and both desire the same 
 property, then the Council of State, which is 
 a semi- judicial body, shall decide between 
 them. 
 
 It will be seen that a valuable property might 
 be claimed, with the connivance of the appli- 
 cants, by two "Associations" one of which would 
 be a dummy, and if the Church had the power 
 to decide which should control the property, it 
 could decide in favor of the dummy association 
 
 72 
 
which could afterwards turn it over to the 
 Vatican, which process repeated indefinitely, 
 would give the Vatican the control of all the 
 valuable Church property. 
 
 To prevent this. Article 8 provides that the 
 Council of State shall decide which Association 
 shall control the property, the Government 
 holding that all judicial questions affecting the 
 title or ownership of property are a function of 
 the State and not of the Church. The Church 
 contends that the Bishops should decide, that 
 it is a function of the Church rather than of the 
 State, and thus the question of sovereignty and 
 temporal power again obtrudes. 
 
 Much of the property owned by the Church 
 has no connection with religion, but is wholly 
 secular and some of it is income producing, which 
 if owned by an individual would be subject to 
 taxation. Hitherto it has never been and the 
 Church contends such secular property must not 
 now be taxed because of its church ownership. 
 The Church is also a large owner of stocks and 
 bonds and carries on many profitable business 
 enterprises, like the manufacture of Benedictine 
 and other cordials, upon all of which it claims 
 exemption from taxation upon the ground it is 
 church property. 
 
 Taxation in France is very heavy and such an 
 exemption is of itself a profit, besides it is an 
 injustice to others engaged in the same line of 
 
 73 
 
business who are taxed. The extra profits 
 represented by these remitted taxes might be 
 and hitherto have been applied to purchasing 
 new enterprises or enlarging old ones. If al- 
 lowed to go on indefinitely, this might in time 
 become a huge monopoly in the control of the 
 Church. 
 
 On the 15th of January they found bonds to 
 the value of five million francs ($1,000,000) in 
 the seminary at Versailles. Last summer during 
 the taking of the inventories they found eighty 
 million francs ($16,000,000) in silver and copper 
 coins in the vaults of one Paris Church alone, 
 and the coffers of all the others contained 
 various amounts carefully stowed away. Church 
 offerings are mostly in small coins and being 
 unwieldly are usually put into circulation again 
 at once by exchanging them at the banks for 
 notes of large denomination. French econo- 
 mists charged that it was deliberately planned to 
 withdraw this small coin given in Church 
 offerings from circulation, for the purpose of 
 creating, and that it did create, an extremely 
 annoying scarcity of ready jnoney so necessary 
 to the daily transaction of retail trade in France, 
 where bank checks are not used in paying debts 
 as with us, but where "cash down" is the uni- 
 versal rule in trade and the stocking is the main 
 bank of deposit. This former exemption from 
 taxation on its secular property was another one 
 
 74 
 
of the many special privileges enjoyed by the 
 church, which naturally it hated to lose, but it 
 can hardly be called "stealing church property" 
 or even classed as unjust. 
 
 When the Pope issued Encyclicals prohibiting 
 the clergy from taking an inventory or forming 
 an "Aslsociation," the Bishop of Bordeaux con- 
 ceived the idea of forming a corporation under 
 the general law of 1891 for forming corpora- 
 tions. He did so and assigned the Church 
 property to it. He thus complied with the 
 spirit of the law and with its requirements and 
 at the same time did not disobey the Pope's 
 Encyclical which applied to the Separation Law 
 specifically. His charter called for almost every- 
 thing besides religious worship, but it did take 
 over the church property as required. The 
 Minister of Public Worship said it complied with 
 the requirements of the Law and was satisfactory 
 to the Government; that is, it was evident the 
 Government was willing to meet the Church 
 half-way in an adjustment of the difficulties. 
 
 It looked for a time as though the good 
 Bishop had reached a peaceful "modus vivendi" 
 and that the remaining parishes by chartering 
 under the general law, could satisfy the Govern- 
 ment without disobeying the Papal authorities; 
 but the Vatican said "No." This suspended 
 the action of the tardy ones and nullified all the 
 previous work of those who had obeyed. 
 
 75 
 
The opinions of the different groups may be 
 seen from a few quotations from the daily press. 
 
 "Le-Lanterne," anticlerical, says: 
 
 "We are moving very gently, but very surely, 
 towards a complete separation of Church and 
 State, and as we must be just, we must thank the 
 inimitable Sarto (the Pope) for the precious aid 
 he has given us. No one has struck such violent 
 blows at the Church as he." 
 
 Even if this were true, it would be conveying 
 a false impression of the present Pope, who was 
 noted among all the Cardinals as the one least 
 imbued with reactionary traditions, and the one 
 most governed by gentleness of nature and 
 singleness of purpose and simplicity of mind. 
 The one of all others who would be led by the 
 more designing. 
 
 It is said that when he was promoted to a 
 Bishopric at Venice, he wanted to remain as the 
 village priest and minister to the simple wants 
 of his flock, and live with his plain peasant 
 sisters and read the village paper, whose editor 
 was his chum, whose editorials he believed to 
 be right and whose recommendations he im- 
 plicitly followed. When made Cardinal he 
 wanted to decline it. He still went among the 
 poor and lowly and still read his village paper 
 and followed its advice. When made Pope, as 
 all the world knows, he wept and wanted to 
 decline its honors, but he still read the old village 
 
 76 
 
paper and followed its suggestions without a 
 question, and nothing could change him. As 
 the editor was a plain, liberal thinking man 
 whose editorials were not in harmony with the 
 clericalism of the Papal Secretary, Merry del 
 Val, that prelate, who is the controlling mind of 
 the Vatican, quietly bought out the paper and 
 put in an editor of his own way of thinking. No 
 sudden change was made in its policy, but 
 gradually, step by step, the editorials were 
 changed until the whole policy was reversed and 
 the good Pope read on and on, and accepted the 
 new theories without a suspicion of their 
 authorship. Like a king who is kept by his 
 courtiers from all knowledge of the public 
 opinion of his subjects, so the Pope is kept by 
 his entourage from the knowledge of what is 
 actually going on around him, or of real public 
 opinion, and there is small doubt but he believes 
 that his Encyclical will rally Frenchmen to his 
 support and prevent a separation of Church 
 and State. 
 
 "Humanity" says: 
 
 "How can the Catholics act otherwise than 
 disobey the law in view of the Pope's attitude. 
 Roman absolutism has killed all Catholic action 
 in France." 
 
 "Autorit^" says: 
 
 "If the German army crossed our frontier, 
 what would be our duty. It would be to 
 
 77 
 
exercise our natural right to declare war regard- 
 less of Pope or any alien power." 
 
 "It is this right which the Republic is on the 
 eve of giving to its Catholic Citizens." 
 
 "Petite R6publique" says: 
 
 "It is not the Separation Law which is at 
 stake, but all law. If the Pope can nullify the 
 Separation Law, he can nullify all law. But 
 the power no longer exists to do now, what was 
 formerly done when a Pope, in conflict with a 
 King of France, released the King's subject^ 
 from their oath of allegiance to their country. 
 These threats today no longer frighten anyone, 
 but in defying the law on the order of a foreign 
 sovereign, his priests expose themselves to be 
 considered as in the service of the Pope and 
 thus cease to be Frenchmen." 
 
 "Radical " says: 
 
 "We owe liberty to the Church as to every 
 citizen. Since the Church will not accept 
 special and privileged treatment, there only 
 remains to apply to it the common law of the 
 land." 
 
 "Obedience to the law of the land shall be 
 demanded from the servants of the Pope, made 
 without passion, and in that spirit of equity 
 which is the duty of a republican government, 
 more than of any other." 
 
 "Rappell " says: 
 
 "The overthrow of the Clemenceau Cabinet 
 78 
 
would avail the Catholics nothing. A new 
 Cabinet would not be as kind and gentle with 
 them. The law of 1905 was passed by a great 
 majority, since then a general election has been 
 held which explicitly approved the law, by 
 electing a still greater majority in favor of it, 
 so any new Cabinet would be more radical than 
 this." 
 
 "Siecle" says: 
 
 "Bishops must learn that they were French- 
 men before becoming Priests, they have con- 
 tinued Frenchmen, and before obeying the orders 
 of the Pope, they must bow to the authority of 
 the Republic." 
 
 "Autorite" (Catholic organ) says: 
 
 "After the pontifical Encyclicals no Catholic 
 can even discuss a measure which is repudiated 
 beforehand, nor propose any amendment to it, 
 because that would confirm and recognize 
 things already condemned. The intervention 
 of Catholics in the debate would become an 
 Act of High Treason." 
 
 " In other words. Members of the Assembly of 
 France elected by their Constituents to make 
 laws for their Country and having as such, taken 
 the customary oath of allegiance to France, are 
 told, now that the Pope has condemned it, they 
 must not take part either in making or amending 
 the laws, and that if they do, they will be guilty 
 of High Treason to the Pope." 
 
 79 
 
This latter is the CathoHc position and claim 
 in France. Should the Vatican put this princi- 
 ple into practice and call on French Catholics 
 to rebel against their government, it will result 
 in the Vatican losing France, just as a similar 
 policy by Pius V lost them England. 
 
 As we have no Union of Church and State, the 
 American Congressman is not put to the test 
 of choosing between loyalty to the Pope and 
 loyalty to his country, but the Pope does force 
 such a choice upon the French Deputy. If the 
 Deputy obeys, he must feel the falsity of his 
 position and his constituents will continue to 
 desert to the side of their country as they have 
 already done by thousands. 
 
 On the first day the law went into effect, 
 fifteen Bishops voluntarily left their official 
 residences and twenty-nine seminaries were 
 voluntarily evacuated, because they were the 
 property of the state, and on each succeeding 
 day others rapidly followed, until 39,000 out 
 of the 40,000 parishes had complied with the 
 law. 
 
 One example out of the many cases to show 
 the way the Government treated the Church 
 will suffice. It is a very prominent one and 
 aroused the attention of the whole world. 
 
 I refer to the expulsion from the residence he 
 had occupied for so many years, of the venerable 
 and much loved Cardinal Richard, now eighty- 
 
 80 
 
nine years old, and head of the Church in Paris 
 and France. 
 
 In bygone days when Church and State were 
 in happy accord, it became the custom of the 
 State to turn over to all the higher ecclesiastics 
 a residence, the property of the State, befitting 
 their rank, free of rent and suitably furnished. 
 Such a residence was furnished to Cardinal 
 Richard, as it had been to his predecessors from 
 time immemorial. 
 
 These special privileges were so ancient that 
 the world in general, and Catholics in particular, 
 had come to regard them as vested rights, as 
 belonging to the Church. 
 
 The Law of Separation went into effect, 
 January i, 1906, and allowed the parishes one 
 year to comply with its requirements. The 
 Papal Nuncio issued a circular letter which was 
 read on Sunday morning, December 10, 1906, 
 in each and all of the 40,000 Churches of France, 
 ordering — not advising — but ordering all 
 Catholics to obey the Encyclical of the Pope, 
 and to disobey the laws of France. Cardinal 
 Richard promulgated it in Paris. 
 
 The Government could not with either dignity 
 or safety overlook such a flagrant defiance of 
 law, or openly abandon its duties to the State 
 in the face of such a challenge. In the case of 
 Cardinal Richard it acted calmly and gently, 
 for the venerable prelate is personally much 
 
 81 
 
beloved. An official quietly informed him that 
 the Government wished to take possession of 
 its own property and expected him to vacate 
 as soon as he could conveniently. The Car- 
 dinal replied that he would consider the notice 
 as a forcible ejection and fixed upon 1:30 P.M., 
 Tuesday, December 18, as the time when he 
 would leave. At that hour all the Prelates in 
 or near Paris, with all the old Bourbon aris- 
 tocracy and the irreconcilable "clericals" as- 
 sembled inside the Palace Yard, and a large 
 crowd of sympathizers and curious onlookers 
 gathered in the street without. There was the 
 singing of hymns, the offering of prayers and 
 vehement protests prior to his departure. 
 
 Paris keenly enjoys a skilfully executed "coup" 
 and the one perpetrated on this occasion, set the 
 Boulevards, which means Paris, chuckling with 
 delight and turned what might have been a 
 serious tragedy into a pleasing comedy. 
 
 It had been arranged by a group of irrecon- 
 cilable "clericals," that after the impressive 
 demonstrations of affection for the venerable 
 Cardinal and of protest at his removal had been 
 carried out, and after they had aroused the 
 passions of the populace to the highest pitch, 
 they would unharness the horses and haul him 
 in his private carriage through the streets of 
 Paris to his new residence; then, while doing 
 this, they would crowd around the carriage, 
 
 82 
 
uttering their protests and in the confusion 
 would overturn it. They intended the feeble 
 and helpless Cardinal should at least be injured, 
 he might, perhaps, be killed, then they would 
 charge the Government with causing the cal- 
 amity ,and herald it forth to an indignant world 
 as an example of the brutality of the Law of 
 Separation. Their theory was that a dead 
 Cardinal would be a greater asset for the Church 
 than a live one, in that it would fill mankind 
 with indignation at the manner of his death and 
 thus bring condemnation upon the Government 
 responsible for it. 
 
 They calculated the Government would fill 
 the Palace Yard with soldiers and line the streets 
 with cavalry, which they would denounce as an 
 example of the force and brutality necessarily 
 connected with the enforcement of an unjust law. 
 
 But the Government knew better. Not a 
 soldier, not even a gendarme, appeared upon 
 the scene, only the civil officer who was to 
 ofhcially receive the delivery of the Palace. 
 Instead, the chief-of-police assigned a force of 
 some twenty-five detectives in citizens clothes. 
 These wormed their way into favorable posi- 
 tions and when the time came for the Cardinal 
 to enter his carriage, these detectives, in the 
 guise of ardent adherents, took charge of the 
 unharnessing of the horses and dragged the 
 carriage through the streets to the admiration 
 
 83 
 
of the plotting clericals who thought they were 
 zealots in the cause, even more earnest than 
 themselves. The plotters were an unorganized 
 mob, the detectives were disciplined and had 
 no difficulty in assuming full control and took 
 good care that the carriage was not rushed or 
 overturned and delivered the Cardinal safe and 
 sound at his destination without a mishap, to 
 the great relief of all except the astonished and 
 disgusted plotters. 
 
 Knowing it would amuse Paris hugely, the 
 Government immediately made known the 
 "coup" and the populace swallowed the joke 
 with its afternoon ap^ratif and took no further 
 notice of the ejectment. 
 
 One sample of the moderation of the Govern- 
 ment in taking possession of the schools and 
 seminaries owned by it will suffice for the many 
 such. December 20th, officials proceeded to the 
 seminaries of St. Nicholas and St. Sulpice, and 
 called for the evacuation of the buildings. At 
 St. Sulpice they were saying mass when the 
 official arrived. He waited until the service 
 was over before stating his mission. The Di- 
 rector of the seminary then read two protests 
 and declared he would yield only to force. ' ' Ah ! 
 I see," rejoined the official smiling, "You insist 
 upon a little formality," then addressing a 
 policeman he said, "Touch the director on the 
 shoulder very lightly with your finger to prove 
 
 84 
 
that he gave way only to violence." The 
 shoulder was touched, the director evacuated 
 the seminary and the Government took pos- 
 session of its own. Scarcely a day passed during 
 those December days which did not witness a 
 similar scene, somewhere in France. 
 
 However, many, especially in Brittany and 
 in the south, were expelled only after the use of 
 actual force and in some cases only after stub- 
 born resistance. But on the whole it was done 
 amid the apathy and indifference of the great 
 masses of the people, to such an extent as hardly 
 to amount to curiosity or cause the passing 
 throngs on the sidewalk to pause to see the 
 result. The Government took possession of its 
 own, the Church scored its point, and these 
 acts are now heralded over all the world by the 
 Church as instances of stolen property. 
 
 The case of Monsignore Montagnini de Mira- 
 bello, the Papal Representative, was, however, 
 very different and was handled by the civil 
 authorities in an exceedingly prompt and de- 
 cisive way. 
 
 The Separation Law has a special clause. 
 Article 35, fixing a penalty for uttering or 
 publishing in places of public worship any in- 
 citations to resistance, or sedition, or civil war. 
 
 The Vatican claims temporal power. Exer- 
 cising this temporal power it sends Ambassadors 
 to all foreign nations, called "Nuncios." 
 
 85 
 
There is one in Washington. 
 
 There was one in Paris. 
 
 This representative of the Vatican issued a 
 circular letter ordering the clergy of the 40,000 
 parishes in France to read on Sunday, December 
 10, the Encyclical of the Pope to disregard and 
 oppose the laws of France. The priests obeyed 
 the Papal Nuncio and read his letter. 
 
 The police immediately took possession of 
 the residence and letters of Monsignore Mon- 
 tagnini and within twenty-four hours had es- 
 corted him to the Italian Frontier and thus 
 expelled him from France. 
 
 Fancy the Chinese Ambassador telling the 
 American people they must disobey the laws of 
 Congress when ordered to do so by the Chinese 
 Emperor. Or imagine the Papal Nuncio in 
 Washington sending out a circular to every 
 priest in America saying that the order of the 
 Pope was supreme and his dictum the only law 
 for Americans to obey. Yet this is exactly 
 what was done in France. 
 
 One quotation will show the position of the 
 Government after these events. The Prime 
 Minister, M. Clemenceau, concluded a speech 
 in the Assembly thus: 
 
 "We shall respect religion and all that is 
 religious, but we shall combat without mercy 
 this Roman policy. Above all things we shall 
 maintain the supremacy of French Civil Law. 
 
 86 
 
I make a last appeal to members of the Right 
 (Catholics). If you want peace, there is yet 
 time, if you want war, you shall have it." 
 
 Many, however, obeyed the Pope rather than 
 the Law, thus it will be seen the Pope nullified 
 the Laws of France in so far as those Catholics 
 are concerned who obeyed the Pope. The 
 Vatican practically says it can nullify any 
 French Law, just as South Carolina in 1833, 
 claimed the right to nullify any objectionable 
 United States Law, but with this great differ- 
 ence, South Carolina only claimed the right in 
 its own territory while the Vatican claims it in 
 alien territory, and according to Vatican logic, 
 that means the right to nullify any law any- 
 where in the wide world. And why not? This 
 same Encyclical against France is almost iden- 
 tical in words with the famous Bull of Pope 
 Innocent III, against Magna Charta, which 
 was so dear to all Anglo-Saxons, but which was 
 so obnoxious to the Church of that day, hence 
 France is now contending for the principles of 
 national Sovereignty as well as for religious 
 freedom, the same as England did centuries ago 
 and the Christian world cannot be wholly 
 indifferent. 
 
 The crux of the whole matter is, shall the 
 French Assembly make the Laws of France, or 
 shall the Vatican? It is not a question of 
 property, of atheism, or of religious freedom, it 
 
 87 
 
is a question of national sovereignty, which 
 makes it a vital one. Is France a sovereign 
 nation with power to make its own laws, or must 
 she go to Rome and submit them to the approval 
 of an alien power? France says she is Sovereign. 
 Rome says, submit. 
 
 The conclusion reached is, that the law 
 separating the Church from the State is not an 
 episode, the result of a temporary quarrel with 
 Rome, is not a confiscation of property and is 
 not a measure for the suppression of religious 
 freedom. 
 
 It is a liberating measure born of the spirit of 
 the age, seeking to free the conscience from 
 blind obedience, and to broaden the mind by 
 intelligent and untrammeled worship. It repeals 
 every restriction which hitherto existed upon 
 liberty of worship, and grants new rights of 
 religious freedom not hitherto enjoyed. It 
 wrongs no one. It rights former wrongs. It 
 gives equal rights to all. It is a lesson in 
 loyalty, a defense of the nation's sovereignty, 
 an awakening of justice, and marks the evolu- 
 tion of France from the thraldom of servitude 
 into the full inJdependence of a complete nation- 
 ality. 
 
 The conscience of France has awakened to 
 new ideals of religious equality and of national 
 sovereignty, and the mind has garnered solid 
 wisdom from its past experience and it was 
 
 88 
 
inevitable that this separation would come 
 sooner or later. 
 
 If France were Protestant like England, 
 where the same question of disestablishment 
 exists, and which the Vatican does not condemn, 
 but on the contrary encourages, it would still be 
 inevitable. It is in the blood, it is in the air, 
 it is in the spirit of modern progress, it will come 
 to England later, it has come to France now, 
 and the genius of modern thought, of modern 
 aspirations, and modern love of justice, per- 
 meating the masses, will carry this movement 
 through to a successful conclusion in France 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 89 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE LAW OF SEPARATION 
 
 The Law of lo Dec. 1905, effective i Jan. 1906. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 PRINCIPLES 
 
 Article i. The Republic assures liberty of 
 conscience and guarantees the free exercise of 
 religions, subject only to the restrictions relating 
 to public order. "Elle garantit le libre exercise 
 des cultes." 
 
 Article 2. The Republic neither recognizes 
 nor salaries, nor subsidizes any religion. After 
 Jan. I, 1906, all appropriations connected with 
 the exercise of religion will be omitted from the 
 Budgets of the State, the Departments and the 
 Communes, except appropriations for charity 
 and for the chaplains who give free religious 
 ministrations to such of the inmates as desire 
 them, in public lycees, colleges, schools, hos- 
 pitals, asylums and prisons. 
 
 All public religious establishments are hereby 
 dissolved as provided for in Article 3. 
 
 {Note I. The ' ' public religious establishments ' ' 
 90 
 
herein referred to are the Catholic, Protestant 
 and Jewish Churches which were recognized in 
 the Concordat and whose ministers were paid by 
 the State.) 
 
 {Note 2. This article shows the absence of any 
 antireligious bias in the Law, and secures to the 
 inmates of public institutions free religious minis- 
 trations if they desire them.) 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 ASSIGNMENTS OF PROPERTY AND PENSIONS 
 
 Article 3. The establishments herewith dis- 
 solved by Article 2 can continue to exercise their 
 functions until after the Assignment provided 
 for by Article 4 has been actually carried out. 
 
 A Government Inspector and the legal repre- 
 sentative of the Church or "establishment" 
 shall jointly take an Inventory and make a 
 valuation of all the property. 
 
 First, of all real and personal property belong- 
 ing to the establishment. 
 
 Second, of all real and personal property 
 belonging to the State, Department or Com- 
 mune of which these establishments have had 
 the use. 
 
 Article 4. Within a year this property of 
 the "establishment" must be transferred by its 
 legal representatives to the "Association" legally 
 
 91 
 
formed under Article 19, located in the same 
 Commune or district and of the same religious 
 faith, subject to any debts or encumbrances on 
 the property, but retaining any special rights 
 or privileges belonging to that establishment. 
 
 Article 5. Transfers State property to the 
 State, reserving to the "Association" formed 
 any pious foundation previously enjoyed by 
 the establishment, but not until a month after 
 the claim has been adjudicated by a competent 
 tribunal. 
 
 Article 6. Making the new "Association" 
 responsible for the existing debts and obliga- 
 tions of the old establishment and prescribing 
 methods of procedure. 
 
 Article 7. Property extraneous to religion, 
 if charitable in its nature, is to be transferred to 
 a public institution or to one "of public utility" 
 similar in its nature and purposes, but not until, 
 after adjudication and a decree by the Council 
 of State. 
 
 Article 8. If establishment property is not 
 transferred to a legal "Association" within a 
 year it is to be sequestered until it is trans- 
 ferred. It also provides for a judicial trial by 
 the Council of State when the same property is 
 claimed by two or more "Associations" of the 
 same religion. 
 
 Article 9. In default by any "Association" 
 to take over the property of the old establish- 
 
 92 
 
ment, it is to be assigned to the Commune within 
 which it is situated, or in default of that, it is to 
 be assigned to an adjoining Commune. In case 
 of the dissolution of an "Association," it is then 
 to be assigned to a new and similar religious 
 "Association" when formed. 
 
 Article io. All transfers herein required are 
 to be exempt from all Taxes and all Internal 
 Revenue Stamps, such as are levied on secular 
 transfers. 
 
 Article ii. Ministers of religion, now in 
 service, who have hitherto received their salaries 
 from the State, shall receive from the State a 
 pension for life. If they are sixty years old and 
 have served for thirty years, three-fourths of 
 their present salary. If they are forty-five 
 years old and have served twenty years, one- 
 half of their present salary. In case of death, 
 one-half of said pension shall be paid to his 
 widow and children under age, or one-fourth 
 to a widow without children. The pension to 
 children to lapse when the children become of 
 age. All other ministers hitherto salaried by 
 the State, with less years of service, shall receive 
 a pension for four years as follows : For the first 
 year they receive their whole salary. For the 
 second year they receive three-fourths of their 
 whole salary. For the third year they receive 
 one-half of their whole salary. For the fourth 
 year they receive one-third of their whole salary. 
 
 93 
 
In communes of less than looo population, 
 if they continue to serve, the duration of each of 
 these four periods shall be doubled. 
 
 These pensions are without prejudice to other 
 pensions or rights previously given the minister 
 or his family. These pensions are untransfer- 
 able, are exempt from distraint for debt, but are 
 forfeited "By circumstances which cause a man 
 to lose his French Nationality," or by conviction 
 for crime. Application for pensions must be 
 made within a year. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 ECCLESIASTICAL BUILDINGS 
 
 Article 12. All churches, buildings, resi- 
 dences of clergy, seminaries with their furniture 
 and fittings which were the property of the State 
 and which were loaned to the establishments 
 for their use, shall remain the property of the 
 State or Commune owning them. 
 
 Article 13. State Buildings used for public 
 worship with their furniture and fittings shall 
 be left gratuitously for the use of the "estab- 
 lishments" which have used them, and then to 
 the "Associations" which replace them under 
 Chapter II. The cessation of this possession 
 may be made after a legal hearing by the 
 Council of State, for the following reasons: 
 
 94 
 
First. If the beneficiary association is dis- 
 solved. 
 
 Second. If the association ceases worship 
 therein for more than six months. 
 
 Third. If the buildings are not kept in 
 repair. 
 
 Fourth. If the buildings are diverted from 
 their proper use as places of worship. 
 
 Fifth. If historical monuments are not cared 
 for as provided in Article i6. 
 
 Sixth. If no religious association claims them 
 within two years. 
 
 Article 14. The State residences of the 
 Clergy for two years and of seminaries for five 
 years are left gratuitously to the Association 
 under the same conditions as specified for 
 churches in Article 13, 
 
 Article 15. Refers to rights acquired in 
 Savoy and Maritime Alps before the Concordat. 
 
 Article 16. Provides for the preservation 
 of historical buildings, fixtures and relics which 
 are to be scheduled. 
 
 Article 17. Scheduled objects are to be 
 open to the inspection of the public free of 
 charge and may be sold under the supervision 
 of the Minister of Fine Arts, but cannot be 
 removed from France. 
 
 95 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE PRACTICE 
 OF RELIGION 
 
 Article i8. Associations formed to main- 
 tain public worship must conform to the Law of 
 I July 1901, known as the Association Law, of 
 which Chapter i, Articles i to 5, refers to 
 ordinary business corporations and the remain- 
 der of the Law to religions. 
 
 Article 19. These "Associations" must be 
 formed exclusively for worship and must have a 
 minimum membership as follows: 
 
 In communes of less than 1000 inhabitants, 
 seven adult persons. 
 
 In communes of from 1000 to 20,000 inhabi- 
 tants, fifteen adult persons. 
 
 In communes of over 20,000 inhabitants, 
 twenty-five adult persons, all to be residents 
 within the district. A member of the Associa- 
 tion may retire at any time upon paying his 
 dues. A report must be made once a year to 
 the general meeting for its approval of the 
 financial condition and of the legal administra- 
 tion of the property. The Association has power 
 to receive and pay out money and to do every- 
 thing necessary for its purposes, except it cannot 
 under any circumstances receive subventions 
 from the State, the Department or the Commune, 
 but any allowance for the repair of registered 
 
 96 
 
monuments or works of art shall not be con- 
 sidered as a subvention. 
 
 Article 20. These Associations may form 
 " Unions; " so, if they desire, all the Associations 
 of any one religion can unite into one central 
 administration or organization either for the 
 whole country or for any portion of it. 
 
 Article 21. The Associations and Unions 
 shall keep an account of receipts and expendi- 
 tures and each year draw up a balance sheet and 
 shall inventory their property, real and per- 
 sonal, and submit the same to the Inland 
 Revenue Department for inspection. 
 
 Article 22. The Associations and Unions 
 may have a reserve fund for the maintenance of 
 their religion, which cannot be diverted to any 
 other purpose and may have a special reserve 
 fund to be employed exclusively in the purchase, 
 construction, or repair of real or personal 
 property for the use of the Association or 
 Union. 
 
 Article 23. Any director of any Associa- 
 tion or Union, who violates the Law shall be 
 fined, and any Association or Union which 
 violates Articles 18, 19, 20, 21 or 22, may be 
 dissolved by the Courts. 
 
 {Note. This is the only case where an Associa- 
 tion or Union can be dissolved by the State, or 
 by any power, except by the religion itself, the 
 Government holding that misapplication of 
 
 97 
 
funds is criminal and must be punished when 
 committed by an Association, just as it would 
 be if committed by a business corporation.) 
 
 Article 24. All Churches used for worship 
 are exempt from taxation, but all other property 
 belonging to the Associations or Unions are sub- 
 ject to taxes, except they are exempt from the 
 four per cent Income Tax and from the special 
 tax imposed on business corporations. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 REGULATION OF PUBLIC WORSHIP 
 
 Article 25. Association assemblies for wor- 
 ship must be public. They require registration 
 as such only once a year. 
 
 {Note. General assemblies require a regis- 
 tration for each meeting.) 
 
 Article 26. It is forbidden to hold political 
 meetings in places regularly used for public 
 worship. 
 
 Article 27. Relates to out of door meetings 
 and processions. 
 
 Article 28. No religious emblem shall be 
 fixed upon any public monument or in any 
 public place except on places of worship, ceme- 
 teries, monuments of the dead, or in museums 
 or exhibitions. 
 
 98 
 
Article 29. Contraventions of these articles 
 shall be punished by simple police penalties. 
 
 Article 30. Religious teachings to children 
 between six and thirteen years of age, who are 
 attending public schools, may be given only 
 outside of school hours. 
 
 Article 31. Fine or imprisonment imposed 
 on those who by assault, violence or threat 
 against an individual make him fear the loss of 
 his employment; or by exposing his person, 
 family or fortune to injury, shall determine him 
 to practice or to refrain from practicing a reli- 
 gion; to join or to leave a religious association; 
 or to contribute or abstain from contributing 
 to the maintenance of a religion. 
 
 Article 32. The same penalties on those 
 who hinder, delay or interrupt a service of 
 religion. 
 
 Article 33. Articles 31 and 32 apply only 
 to those minor outrages which shall not call for 
 the severer penalties of the Penal Code. 
 
 Article 34. Fine and imprisonment for any 
 minister who in places of religious worship shall, 
 by spoken discourse, by reading, by distribution 
 or placarding of written or printed notices, have 
 insulted or defamed a citizen holding a public 
 office. 
 
 {Note. Ministers can say and do what they 
 please outside of places of public worship. 
 Considering the churches are permanently given, 
 
 99 
 
free of charges, to the associations, and the 
 ministers are protected by this same law from 
 any interruption or dissent from their remarks, 
 it is reasonable that ministers of religion should 
 not be allowed to use their protected position 
 to defame from the pulpit the Government or 
 to insult State officials or to incite to illegal 
 action before an audience that is by the same 
 law forbidden to reply to or dissent from it.) 
 
 Article 35. Fine or imprisonment for any 
 minister who in a place of public worship 
 delivers a sermon, or placards or distributes a 
 document which contains a direct provocation 
 to resist the execution of the Laws, or the legal 
 acts of Public officers, or tends to arouse or to 
 arm one section of the citizens against the 
 others by sedition, revolt or civil war. 
 
 {Note. This and Article 34 apply only to 
 action by ministers in places of public worship. 
 Outside of places of public worship ministers 
 are subject to no restrictions.) 
 
 Article 36. The Association which has 
 charge of the building wherein the infraction has 
 been committed shall be civilly responsible for 
 violations of Articles 25, 26, 34 and 35. 
 
 100 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 GENERAL REGULATIONS 
 
 Article 37. The Penal Code applies in all 
 major cases where the law provides penalties. 
 
 Article 38. Religious Orders are subject to 
 the Law. 
 
 Article 39. Ecclesiastical students are ex- 
 empt from military duty. 
 
 Article 40. For eight years ministers can- 
 not be eligible for election to the Municipal 
 Council in the commune wherein they exercise 
 their ecclesiastical functions. 
 
 Article 41. Money previously paid to the 
 Roman Church by the State in the Budget of 
 Religions shall hereafter be paid to the Com- 
 munes, in proportion to the land tax on vacant 
 land assigned to them previous to this Law. 
 
 Article 42. Present legal holidays to con- 
 tinue. 
 
 Article 43. Public Administrative By-laws 
 to be drawn up for executing this Law. 
 
 Article 44. Repeals the Concordat and 
 other inconsistent Laws. 
 
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