The crucial point in the Law of Separation was the attempt of the Government to place the administration of ecclesiastical property in the hands of certain organizations termed Associations of Worship. These associations were to consist of seven persons in a parish of one thousand people, of fifteen where the population is over twenty thousand, and of twenty-five where the number is greater. These associations can consist of lay people at least in the majority. They can build up a reserve fund, which, however, must be limited. Where the revenue is 5,000 francs, they can accumulate a sum only equal to three times their annual expense, and for others the reserve fund should not be in excess of over six times the annual outlay. The association must, moreover, accumulate a special fund, which is to be invested, for the purchase, construction, repair or decoration of the ecclesiastical property. By this article a large recognition is given to the hierarchy, since only such religious bodies can be represented as are in communion with the Church which formerly held the property. But by Article 8 the State proceeds to place itself as a judge over the bishops in cases where different religious bodies through their Associations of Worship lay claim to the property. The other numerous items in the Law of Separation were merely such as might be expected in a law so hostile and so aggressive. _PROTEST OF PIUS X._ Naturally the appearance of the new law caused excitement not in France alone but throughout the whole Catholic world. The Holy Father, Pope Pius X., expressed his grief in no uncertain terms. On February 11, 1906, he addressed to the hierarchy and people of France his encyclical "_Vehementer Nos_." The Holy Father begins, in this letter, by indicating, one by one, all the measures adopted by the French Government against the Church, measures which naturally would lead to that separation which the Holy See has always striven to avoid. He declares that the doctrine of the separation of Church and State is false because: 1, it offers violence to God; 2, it is an open negation of the supernatural order; 3, it overturns the order which God has wisely established in the world, an order which exacts a harmonious concurrence between the two societies; 4, it inflicts heavy injuries upon civil society itself. Moreover, the Popes have always protested against such a separation. France is less able than any other nation to enter upon such a proceeding, for: 1, the bonds which consecrate the union of Church and State ought to be more inviolable than the pledges of sworn treaties; 2, it was a bilateral contract which the State abrogated by its own sole authority; 3, this injury becomes all the greater when one considers that the State has effected this abrogation of the Concordat without any preliminary announcement or notification.