The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906Brodhead, J. Napier (Jane Napier)
History
The Religious Persecution in France 1900-1906
Brodhead, J. Napier (Jane Napier)
Catholic Church -- France; Church and state -- France
All that remains of the Concordat is the indemnity paid yearly to the
Catholic Church, as a very slight compensation for the millions stolen
by the revolutionary government of 1792, known as the First Republic.
Though it must be said to the credit of those Jacobins that when they
instituted the budget of cults they recognized that they had taken the
property of the Church, and that the payment of these yearly subsidies
was part of the National Debt.
The Jacobins of to-day, less scrupulous than their forefathers of 1790,
are craving for the repudiation of this portion of the National Debt.
The untold wealth of the Congregations, the billions held out as a
glittering lure by Waldeck Rousseau in 1900 as a nest-egg for _retraîtes
ouvrières_, having melted into thin air “the bloc” or Ministerial
majority must be held together by the prospect of some new quarry.
Those, who for years past made a fine distinction between the secular
clergy and the regular or _congréganist_ clergy are now convinced that
there is no distinction to be made between them. When New York dailies
kindly advise the French clergy and Catholics to give up what their
editors are pleased to call “their salaries” and adopt the American
system, they merely proclaim their ignorance of the situation.
The French would gladly sacrifice everything, even to the noble church
edifices built and endowed by their ancestors during long centuries, if
thereby they could secure liberty and separation from the State, as they
are understood in the United States. But all the alleged projects of
“Separation” are merely projects of strangulation. The articles of all
these projects of law are as unacceptable as were those of the Trouillot
Associations Bill, even if it had not been superseded by the _table
rase_ of the law of 1904 suppressing all teaching orders whatsoever.
The carrying into execution of any of these projects of “Separation,”
even the least Jacobin, would render the normal existence of the
Catholic Church in France impossible. This has been the aim and purpose
of the Third Republic ever since its advent. For, once again, I repeat
that Republicanism in France is not a form of government; it is the
_modus operandi_ of a secret society, of the same secret society which
established a monarchy in Italy, in order to have a pretext for seizing
Rome and destroying, if possible, the prestige of the Papacy. In both
cases the object was the same, the weakening and the destruction of the
Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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