THE PERSECUTION IN SWITZERLAND FROM THE REVUE GENERALE.
For seven months have we kept silence on the religious persecution in Switzerland. Not that during that interval the rage of the persecutors has become appeased; very far from it. But the spectacle they afford is so repulsive to the conscience that the pen falls from the hand in disgust whilst narrating their exploits. Nevertheless, we suppose it may be of service to give a complete although succinct history of the violence and hypocrisy of Swiss liberalism. And for that reason we renew our recital.
Up to the present time, the persecution has only raged in two dioceses, the smallest, Geneva, and the largest, Basel. But elsewhere the fire smoulders beneath the ashes, and everything goes to prove that, if the liberals should succeed in overthrowing the church in the cantons where they have inaugurated their barbarous and intolerant rule, they will continue their efforts even into the heart of the country. Already, indeed, here and there, outside of the two just-named dioceses, they reveal their intentions by isolated measures.
Thus at St. Gall, the cantonal council, the majority of which consists of Protestants and free-thinkers, has forbidden the Catholic clergy to teach the Syllabus and the dogma of Papal Infallibility; and, as the clergy have refused to obey such an order, the Council of Public Instruction has withdrawn from them the teaching the catechism during Lent, and has placed the duty in the hands of schoolmasters in absolute dependence on the state. This example betrays the intention of liberalism, in the name of liberty, no longer to tolerate any religion but such as is fashioned by its own hand. This intention is now betraying itself openly in the two dioceses of Geneva and Basel. It is useless to speak of the rights of Catholics consecrated by treaties, to invoke the respect due to their conscience; useless is it to adduce in their behalf the religious equality which they scrupulously maintain in the cantons, such as Lucerne and Freyburg, where they have the superiority; useless to insist on their patriotism, and on their loyal submission to laws which do not encroach on the domain of religion. No, there are no rights for Catholics, there is no justice for them; and when it is a question of attacking them, the end justifies the means.
This is no invention of ours. We will cite a few examples in support of our assertion.
M. Teuscher in the canton of Bern, and M. Carteret at Geneva, have founded churches to which they have assigned the name of Catholic, which they support with unusual zeal. Now, in the journal of these churches, the Démocratie catholique, which is published at Bern, of the date of January 2, is the following statement: “Ultramontanes are malefactors, and there is no liberty for malefactors.” It may be objected, that these words are merely the expression of an individual opinion. Let us listen then to M. Carteret, speaking, about the same time, before the Grand Council of Geneva: “Ultramontanism is dangerous; it is necessary to combat it, to make on it a war of extermination and without mercy; it is affectation to dream of being just and equitable with such an adversary.” A little later on, in the same assembly, a credit was voted for the maintenance of candidates for Catholic cures, whose rightful possessors had been arbitrarily ejected; and when M. Vogt expressed his astonishment that the canton should keep a tavern for liberal abbés, a deputy exclaimed, “We shall act as we please.”
It would seem impossible for cynicism to go beyond this. But no; the brutality of despotism was able to surpass even it. At the moment when, in the canton of Soleure, the people were summoned to vote the suppression of the secular foundations, of which we shall speak presently, one of their journals published the following: “If we should be conquered, and the blacks should defeat the measure, we shall handle the knife.” It sounds like a sinister echo of 1793.
What can be the object of the persecutors? Is it the substitution of Protestantism for Catholicity? Scarcely. Protestants who really believe in their religion disapprove of these iniquities. The object is akin, rather, we may be sure, to the sentiment lately given utterance to by the Pastor Lang of Zurich: “We are slowly but surely approaching the end towards which the development of our spiritual life is urging us, to wit, the suppression and disappearance of all churches.” The same sentiment had been expressed during the debates on the federal revision by M. Welti. “He who would wish to be free must not belong to any church. No church gives liberty. The state alone gives that.” In other words, the ideal to be aimed at is the reign of the state over soul as well as body. After this, can we wonder at the cry of alarm issuing from a quarter not at least to be suspected of Catholic bias? It is a Protestant journal—l’Union jurassienne—which exclaims, “The star of liberty pales, the shadows of spiritual despotism are gathering around us.” But the cry is lost in the desert. Despotism throws those who exercise it into a kind of intoxication; every one of the excesses to which it commits itself becomes the source of fresh ones. Its last word is proscription, when it is not the scaffold.… In the diocese of Basel the crimes of liberalism have been perpetrated principally at Soleure, in the Jura, and at Bern. We will review them successively.
At Soleure, the Benedictine monastery of Maria-Stein, the collegiate church of Schoenwerth, and that of S. Urs and S. Victor have been overthrown at one stroke.
The monastery of Maria-Stein was founded in 1085, and had cleared and cultivated the country. But the church can no more reckon upon the gratitude of its enemies than upon their justice. They determined to seize the property of the convent, to convert the building into a madhouse, and to mock justice with the bestowal of a trifling alms on the religious thus iniquitously dispossessed. At the first news of this project, the ex-Father Hyacinthe again gave expression to the indignation he had exhibited before on similar provocation, and sent to the abbot of the monastery a protest against “this attack on property and religion.”
The foundation of the collegiate church of Schoenwerth, situated near Olten, dates from the Xth century. It had only five canons, who served four parishes, and gave instruction in the schools. That of S. Urs and S. Victor from the VIIIth. It was erected into a cathedral in 1828; when the residence of the Bishop of Basel was transferred to Soleure. Its chapter has kept perpetual watch for nearly a thousand years at the tombs of the Theban martyrs. These venerable memories arrested not the arms of the spoilers. What was wanted was to punish the canons of Schoenwerth and of Soleure for their loyalty to their bishop, and at the same time to get possession of the endowments they administered.
Consequently, the suppression of the two collegiate churches, as well as of the monastery of Maria-Stein, was submitted to the popular vote. It was adopted by 8,356 votes against 5,896. But when it is remembered that the majority included about 3,000 Protestants, besides the manufacturing population of Olten, who are in complete subjection to the tyranny of their Freemason employers; that more than 3,000 timid Catholics abstained from voting, and that the women and children were not consulted, there can remain no doubt that once again a Catholic majority has been sacrificed to a coalition of Protestants and free-thinkers.
However it may be, this vote remarkably facilitated the object the liberals have had in view for some time, namely, of abolishing the chapter of Basel. This chapter consisted of canons from seven states of the diocese—Bern, Basel, Thurgau, Aargau, Soleure, Zug, Lucerne. The state of Soleure having suppressed its own, and the states of Aargau and Bern being urged to do the same to theirs, the conference of the diocesan states, on the 21st December, decreed the suppression of the chapter itself and the sale of its effects. The support of five of these states had been procured. No heed was taken of the opposition of Lucerne and Zug.
And it is asserted that it is in the name of religious liberty that Swiss liberalism has deprived the diocese of Basel of its bishop and its chapter! But what cares liberalism for the rights of Catholic consciences? However, in thus decapitating the diocese it was carrying out a purpose on which it was inexorably bent. It had long resolved to create a national church calling itself Catholic, and it hugged the illusion that the suppression of the Catholic bishoprics would contribute to the success of this design. It is in pursuance of the same object that it opened in Bern, in the month of October, a faculty of Old Catholic theology.
These facts display a complete change of tactics on the part of unbelief. In the last century, Voltaire and his satellites tried to batter down the church, without dreaming of putting anything in her place. They failed. Their successors of to-day adopt another plan. It is to create anti-Catholic churches, calling themselves Catholic, to which they do not belong, whose dogmas they abjure, and whose priests they despise. They trust thus to satisfy the people, whilst retaining for themselves the benefits of unbelief.
Next, in the month of October, the government of Bern opened, in the federal capital, a faculty of theology, which it called “faculty of Catholic theology,” and it invited chiefly foreigners to occupy its chairs. It nominated dean of the faculty a German, that unfortunate Dr. Friedrich of Munich, who was amongst the first to follow Döllinger in his perversity, and they appointed as his subordinates a few apostates picked up wherever they could find them. Eight students, almost all from the canton of Soleure, the real focus of Swiss liberalism, were enrolled. With such a contingent, the dream of a national church does not appear certain to be realized. But the government of Bern flatters itself that in time the number of students will increase, and that it will thus have at its disposal submissive agents ready to assist it in its detestable undertaking, the perversion of the Jura.
The Jura! It is impossible to cast a glance around that unfortunate country without being filled with gratitude to God for the religious heroism it perseveres in displaying in the presence of a powerful and treacherous enemy who is striving to crush it utterly.
It is notorious that the ninety-seven parishes of the Jura have been arbitrarily reconstructed by the government of Bern; and that, after having reduced them to the number of twenty-five, it finally increased them to forty-two. Nothing has been left undone to place at the head of every one of these an apostate priest. But in spite of all its efforts it has only been able to muster seventeen. Besides, what trouble do the recruits swept up from all the by-ways of Europe cause them! Some have already sent in their resignation.
Thus it was with Giaut, curate of Bonfol, who, in a public letter announced his abandonment of the mission he had assumed, “because he saw no immediate prospect of the realization, in the Jura, of his aspirations and ideas.” Of the same kind was the course pursued by d’Omer Camerle, who, on his withdrawal, declared that the new clergy, “utterly despised by the liberals and execrated by the ultramontanes, were attempting a work which was entirely useless if not contemptible.” Others have been obliged to escape, or had to evade justice.
We have before narrated the misfortunes of Rupplin. His rival Naudot, arrested for abduction of a minor, was condemned to six months’ imprisonment. In his defence, made by himself, he demanded, “Am I more guilty than Giaut, curé of Bonfol, who calls himself Guiot; than Choisel, curé of Courgenay, whose real name is Chastel; than Déramey, who calls himself Pipy?” We must, however, state to his credit that he abjured his errors and returned into the bosom of the church.
At Bienne, the intruder, St. Ange Lièvre, threw off the mask, and married a Protestant named Tsantré-Boll. The union was blessed by M. Saintes, a Protestant minister, after an address by M. Hurtault, from Geneva, who complimented his colleague “for having had the courage to throw off the yoke of bondage imposed upon him by the Roman papacy.” This was overshooting the mark. The intruders may commit all imaginable escapades without provoking attention. But they must not marry. It reveals prematurely the programme of the free-thinkers of Bern, who, in order to conciliate the population of the Jura, declare that they have no intention to meddle with the dogmas of the church. Accordingly, the “Provisionary Catholic Synodal Commission,” in a letter addressed to “MM. the curates of the Jura,” “severely rebuked the deplorable example given by M. St. Ange Lièvre, and promised to demand from the authorities a remedy, which could not be refused if another member of the clergy should venture to violate the venerable laws of the church.” Ludicrous imbecility! They will try to hinder for the future a renewal of these wanton freaks, but they respect what has been already perpetrated. And so M. Lièvre and his Protestant wife remain at the head of the parish of Bienne!
But do any of the intruded meet with success in their propaganda? No! At Alle, Salis rings the bell for Masses which he does not say. At Bienne, only twenty or thirty persons attend the service of St. Ange Lièvre. At Delémont, the chief place of the district, enjoying a radical priest, a radical president of the tribunal, radical functionaries, so empty is the church usurped by Portaz-Grassis that, on the 7th of January, the council of the parish gave vent to the following cry of distress in a circular addressed to “Liberal Catholics”: “The religious question in the Jura being intimately associated with the political one, it is important, now that our national church is constituted on solid and legal foundations, that all liberals should support this church and sustain the majority of the Bernese people in the steps that have been taken. [It must be remembered that the majority of the Bernese people is Protestant.]
“Yet is our worship little frequented, and our enemies proclaim everywhere that our church is deserted.
“In presence of this carelessness—we may say, even of this culpable indifference—we make a last appeal to the patriotic sentiments of the liberal Catholics of Delémont, beseeching them to assist more regularly at the Sunday Mass, and above all to induce their wives and children to be present at it. If Catholics [!] will not show more zeal in supporting the liberal curate and the council of the parish, the latter will resign in globo the charge entrusted to it.”
Nothing, however, discourages the government of Bern, and in conformity with the law of worship, voted some months ago, it has obliged the new parishes of the Jura to proceed to the formation of parochial councils, and to the nomination, or rather confirmation, of the intruding curates. But here, also, what deception! Out of 12,000 electors, only the tenth part voted. In 28 communes, not a single elector presented himself at the ballot. In the others, the number was laughably small. At St. Imier, for instance, out of 1,933 electors, only eight answered the summons. At Moustier, out of 1,429, only 24. No less significant are the numbers of votes polled for the elected curates:
Fontenais: M. d’Abbadie (Frenchman) had 77 votes out of 1,651 electors.
Courtemaiche: M. Coffignal (Frenchman) had 15 votes out of 1,683 electors.
Undervelier: M. Salis (Italian) had 13 votes out of 1,046 electors.
Courroux: M. Maestrelli (Italian) had 60 votes out of 1,557 electors.
Roggenburg: M. Oser (German) had 40 votes out of 465 electors.
Bislach: M. Schoenberger (German) had 33 votes out of 669 electors.
Dittengen: M. Fuchs (Austrian) had 33 votes out of 667 electors.
Bienne: M. St. Ange Lièvre (Frenchman) had 50 votes out of 1,040 electors.
Imagine the Bernese government being eager to confirm nominations made under such circumstances!
As to the Catholics, they continue to assemble in barns and cart-sheds, and there to lift with faith their hands towards heaven, and to rest firm in their fidelity. This attitude only aggravates the rage of their persecutors. We have already spoken of the suppression of the Ursulines of Porrentruy. The last remaining religious congregation in that town could not long escape the same fate. It was that of the Sisters of Charity of Ste. Ursanne, who had for twenty years ministered in the hospital for the poor of the chief town of the Bernese Jura. They began with seizing their chapel and handing it over to schism. Then, without any pretext, they cast into prison the Superior and two of the Sisters, where they remained four days. At length, one fine morning, they were informed that they must leave the place within four hours; at the expiration of which period, if they had not left, “they would be forcibly expelled.” The execution soon followed the sentence; and these religious ladies, whose presence had only been known by good works, were, in their turn, compelled to tread the path of exile!
In spite of the implacable intolerance of their enemies, the Jurassians do not cease petitioning the federal authorities; and to the number of 9,000 they have demanded the restitution of their churches and of their ecclesiastical property, the re-establishment of the Catholic worship, and the recall of the 97 priests unjustly expelled. The restitution of the churches, and the re-establishment of the Catholic as a public worship, have been flatly refused, on the plea that there cannot exist in the canton any other public Catholic worship than that established by the law of January, 1874! But the federal council, notwithstanding its notorious hostility, shrunk from an open and avowed approbation of the ostracism of the faithful priests; and it requested of the Bernese government an explanation of the reasons which, in its opinion, justified the continuance of that rigorous measure; reserving to itself to give a subsequent decision on the appeal which had been made to it.
Opinions are divided as to the real intentions of the federal council, and at the moment when we write the definitive decision has not been announced. But whatever may be the fate of the appeal, the situation of the church in the Jura will remain no less lamentable.
Whilst the Jurassian population give, thus, an example of fidelity worthy of the first ages of the Christian era, the tempest has burst upon the Catholic parish of the town of Bern.
This parish possesses a church built by the late Mgr. Baud, predecessor of the present curate, M. Perroulaz, and paid for by the alms of the Catholics of the entire country. The schismatics cast longing eyes upon it; but their designs were for a while impeded by the fear of displeasing the ambassadors. This fear was unfounded. For since the overthrow of governments caused by the detestable policy of Napoleon III., there is no longer an Europe; and everywhere violence and injustice, having nothing to fear from the once protective influence of the great powers, commit themselves to every license. It is thus, then, they set about to compass their end.
First, an assembly of the parish was convoked to elect a parochial council. But as such an assembly owes its existence to the late law of worship, and as the faithful Catholics could not consequently take any part in it, the council was chosen by one hundred out of three hundred and sixty electors. Scarcely was it installed when it received a request from the professors of the Old Catholic faculty of Bern, that the church might be placed at their disposition, for their Masses, worship, and preachings. It eagerly acceded to this request, and desired M. Perroulaz to open the gates of the church to the schismatic priests of the university. He refused. They ordered him to give up the keys. He did nothing of the kind. They went to his house and took them from him; and on Sunday, 28th February, Dr. Friedrich and his accomplices took possession of the sanctuary. M. Perroulaz, to avoid scandal, assembled his parishioners for the celebration of their worship in the great hall of the Museum. Thither they flocked in crowds. Foremost amongst the worshippers were the ambassadors of France, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, etc. Thirty years ago, such a demonstration of the diplomatic body would not have remained without results. But in the year of grace 1875, “might makes right,” and the petty tyrants of Bern, supported by certain foreign cabinets, satiate with impunity their hatred of the church.
But even this did not content them. It was not sufficient for them to have deprived Catholics of their church. They wanted, further, to compel M. Perroulaz to say Mass in it together with the apostates. The Council of State designed, in this way, to place him in a position in which they might be able, in due form of law, to relieve him of his functions. On his refusal it decided to institute a process of revocation; and, pending the trial, it suspended him! Then he was driven out of the presbytery, and a Bavarian impostor was installed in his place. What! After having despoiled the faithful of the sanctuary built by their own hands and with their own money, they command them, besides, to make common cause with renegades, and make it a crime in their pastor to assemble them elsewhere to adore God according to their conscience. At Rome, under the pagan emperors, the Christians had the freedom of the Catacombs; at Bern, in 1875, even such freedom would be grudged by the ingrates whose cradle was enlightened by the rays of divine truth!
At Geneva affairs are as gloomy as in the canton of Bern. Last August, at the moment when we were relating the high-handed proceedings of the government, M. Loyson had just distinguished himself by breaking his connection with the lay chiefs of the schism. “I will not engage,” he said, “in useless discussions with men who confound liberalism with radicalism, Catholicism with the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard vicar.” The poor apostate would, we suspect, have been but too glad to return to the venerable church which received his first oaths. But how dispose of Mme. Loyson and the little Emmanuel? He continued therefore schismatic, and he announced that he should remain at Geneva “until the election of a bishop, who, with his synod, was the only authority,” he added, “which he could recognize in the religious order.” In pursuance of this secession, he founded a free worship, which has a small number of sectaries as its following.
As to the official church, its misfortunes are beyond calculation. The town of Geneva itself was favored with three curates, each receiving from four to five thousand francs a year, and a few vicars. After the retirement of M. Loyson, the second of the three curates—M. Hurtault—left, in order to occupy one of the chairs of the Old Catholic faculty at Bern. It was, no doubt, to console the new church in these bereavements, that one of the vicars, M. Vergoin, in imitation of his accomplices, took to himself a wife in the person of a Freyburg damsel.
However, the law of the organization of religious worship enjoined on all the curates and vicars of the canton the oath of obedience to the laws. The Council of State shrunk for a long time from the application of this provision in the rural communes. At length, yielding to the impatience of the “Catholic Superior Council,” it decreed that the oath should be taken on the 4th September by the seventeen curates and the two vicars officiating in the country.
On the appointed day, a large crowd assembled around the entrance of the town-hall. Not a priest summoned presented himself. They, too, were proud to wear the device of Mgr. Lachat: Potius mori quam fœdari!—“Death rather than shame!”
Immediately afterwards, the Council of State pronounced the aforesaid cures vacant, and suppressed the pay of their occupiers from October 31. This measure was communicated to the “Catholic Superior Council,” with the view of its filling the vacancies.
Great was the embarrassment of the latter. As a commencement, it demanded of the Council of State the power of disposing of the country churches from the 31st October. The reply was that it had only to apply to the municipal authorities. It then devised the plan of publishing in the journals, amongst the advertisements, a notice to the effect that “the registry was open at the office of the superior council for the offices of curate and vicar in twenty-two parishes of the canton, which had become vacant in consequence of death, dismissal, and revocation.” When at length it had found a candidate, it resolved to present him to the parish of Grand-Saconnex, one of the nearest to Geneva, and which on that account appeared to it to be ripe for schism. But only thirty-three electors out of one hundred and sixty-six responded to the call. It was less than a third, and the election was abortive in consequence.
Such a check was suggestive. The measure decreed on the 4th September was not put in force, except that the salaries of the faithful curates remained suppressed. But they revenged themselves by annoying the Catholics in every possible way.
We will cite two instances.
An Old Catholic interment having taken place at Hermance, after several provocations, the population threw some stones on the coffin of the defunct. The blame was immediately laid on the curate, and he was expelled from the canton on the pretext that “he troubled the public peace,” said the decree, “by his preachings, and excited hatred of one another among the citizens.” No accusation could be more serious than this. For, indeed, had he been guilty of it, it was before the courts he should have been brought. But all that was wanted then was to punish the parishioners for having, a few days before, given an ill reception to two intruders who had attempted to pervert the village.
The second is a yet sadder incident. One fine day, an Old Catholic inhabitant of Geneva, named Maurice, who lived close to the Old Catholic church, took it into his head to have his infant child baptized by the intruding priest, Marchal, in the Catholic Church of Compesières, used for two communes, Bardonnex and Plan-les-Ouates. On the arrival of the cortége, the mayors of these communes, habited in their scarfs of office, and surrounded by their subordinates, opposed its entry into the church, and forced it to beat a retreat. At the news of this there was great consternation at Geneva.
The whim of M. Maurice was not only a violation of the liberty of religion; it was a wanton provocation, since he belonged to the commune of Geneva, and could have had his child baptized in the church of S. Germain, of which the schism had taken possession. No matter. The Council of State took advantage of the incident, and ordered the mayors of Compesières to keep the parish church open for baptism of the little Maurice. At the same time it ordered thither some squadrons of gendarmes and of carabineers, and, thanks to this display of the public force, a locksmith was able to force open the doors of the sacred edifice. They had it sealed with the borough-seal, and a huge placard was stuck on it, bearing the following inscription: “Property is inviolable.” Before the profanation, a delegate from the communal authorities of Bardonnex and of Plan-les-Ouates had communicated to the invaders a final protest.
Any commentary would be superfluous. We limit ourselves to quoting the following words of the Journal de Genève: “What has passed at Compesières has but too quickly justified the mournful forebodings inspired by the violent policy which is growing from bad to worse in official quarters. We persist in demanding that a stop be put to this sowing the wind at the risk of reaping the whirlwind.” But the object had been achieved. The Catholics had been outraged, and a pretext had been made for dismissing M. de Montfalcon, mayor of Plan-les-Ouates and president of “l’Union des Campagnes.”
It appears, however, that this was not enough. In the bosom of the “Catholic Superior Council,” M. Héridier exclaimed: “We must follow the course of the Bernese government.” Such bitter hatred can only be accounted for by the negative results of the country enterprise. The firmness of the Catholics, in fact, increases, instead of growing fainter, and they are unanimous in adopting the sentiments of a speaker of the “Union des Campagnes,” who exclaimed lately: “Whatever happens we will not be found wanting. If they despoil us of our churches, they can only take the walls; they cannot take our souls. We will follow our stripped and proscribed altars even into the poverty of a barn or the darkness of a cavern. If they hunt our priests from their presbyteries, we will offer them an asylum under our modest and friendly roofs. If they rob them of their salaries, we will share with them the wages of our labor and the bread of our tables.”
A special cause of irritation to the liberals and free-thinkers was the circumstance that scarcely had the Catholics been despoiled of the church of S. Germain before they bought, to replace it, the Temple Unique, formerly occupied by the Freemasons, and which they dedicated to the Sacred Heart. Accordingly, no sooner had the elections for the renewal of the Grand Council given a majority to M. Carteret, before that gentleman set to work to inflict a fresh blow upon the Catholics, by robbing them of the Church of Notre Dame. This magnificent church was built in 1857 by means of subscription collected throughout the Christian world by Mgr. Mermillod, and M. Dunoyer, the dismissed curate of Geneva. The subscriptions had been given, we need scarcely say, on the faith of the Catholic worship, and that alone, being celebrated in the church; and for seventeen years no other had been celebrated there.
For a long while M. Carteret and the free-thinking liberals had been casting longing looks on this prey. They had been impeded in their designs by energetic resistance, and, amongst others, by that of the ex-Father Hyacinthe. But at last they lost patience, and at their instigation, backed by the pressure of a populace whose worst passions they had inflamed, the Grand Council, at the beginning of January, adopted an order of the day requiring the prompt execution of the law of 2d November, 1850.
This law, which had bestowed upon Catholics the land on which the sacred edifice is built, enacted that the administration of the church should be entrusted to a commission of five members, chosen by the Catholics of the parish of Geneva. By demanding the putting in force of this clause, they hoped to form a commission of Old Catholics who would hand over the church to the radicals concealed under a schismatic mask.
We do not intend to discuss here the question of right; although it appears clear to us that they could not justly turn against Catholics a stipulation which had been made expressly in their favor. The mere equity of the case should have sufficed to prevent, under existing circumstances, the application of the clause. This was the view taken by two distinguished Protestants who had not abandoned all regard for justice—M. Naville and M. de la Rive. The latter, in a remarkable production, observed: “There is not, I think, an impartial mind, which, looking at the matter from the point of view of simple equity, will not decide in favor of that one of the two churches which has borne the whole of the large outlay by which the value of the original grant has been increased more than tenfold. The spot on which now stands one of the most splendid monuments of our city would be still a waste space but for the sums collected and furnished precisely by those persons whose possession of it is now disputed. Notre Dame is exclusively the work of the priests and faithful of the Catholic Church. That is a notorious, undisputed fact.”
There could be no reply to language so true and striking. Moreover, one of those who had collected the subscriptions, in a published letter, stated that “the principal part of the sums employed in the erection of the building had been subscribed by Roman Catholics throughout the world, and that he could assert and prove that those who are separated from the Catholic Church had nothing whatsoever to do with its construction.”
But these protests were useless. Had, however, the sectaries the pretence that they were in a majority in Geneva, and that they had need of Notre Dame? By no means. And the Chronique radical remarked it, demanding: “What will you do with the church of Notre Dame? Can you fill it?” Indeed, no! They will never be able to fill it. But the object was to wrest it from the faithful—from those who flocked to it in crowds, whose registry records, in 1874, 260 Baptisms, 170 Burials, 60 Marriages, 174 First Communions, and 30,000 Communions of adults; and for whom five Masses were celebrated every Sunday. Here, once more the end justifies the means.
The Council of State, moved thus to put in force the law of 1850, convoked the electoral body, deciding, as a preliminary, that the citizens of Geneva alone should take part in the election. To understand the importance of this qualification it will suffice to observe that there are in the canton of Geneva 25,000 Catholic foreigners,[147] and that, by depriving them of the right of voting, the Catholic strength would be seriously weakened.
In spite of this subterfuge, there was every prospect of victory for the faithful, when, on the very eve of the elections, the 6th February, during the afternoon, the number of electors which, in the morning, stood at 1,500 only, was raised to 1,924. Whence these recruits at the last moment had been procured may be easily conjectured. The Courrier de Genève asserted that it saw come to the poll “a band of unknown individuals who appeared to be formed in brigades.”
Thanks to this reinforcement, the free-thinking list obtained a majority of 187 votes.
The commission thus elected immediately entered upon its duties, and instead of taking their church away from the Catholics, it hurriedly decided that “the inhabitants of the right bank of the Rhone and of the Lake, who belong to the religion recognized by the state, should be at liberty to perform in the temple the ceremonies of Baptism, Marriage, and Burial,” and that it reserved for itself to take what steps it might deem advisable to take against ecclesiastics who should give occasion to just complaints, specially in aught that concerns the public peace, obedience to the laws, and the respect due to magistrates.
These resolutions were on the point of being executed when Mgr. Mermillod, M. Dunoyer, as representatives of the subscribers, and M. Lany, rector of Notre Dame, claimed, before the courts, the ownership of the edifice.
Do judges still exist at Geneva? It remains to be seen.
But this was not all. On the 6th April, at five o’clock in the morning, the recently-elected commission had the doors of the church broken open by a locksmith, protected by a squad of gendarmes and police-agents; after which seals were placed on the doors, and further worship interdicted!
The situation becomes thus more and more critical. M. Carteret envies M. Bismarck his laurels, and, supported by all that is evil in Geneva, we must expect to see him rush headlong to the utmost extremities. Far distant, indeed, is the time when one could talk of Swiss liberty. The violence of every description which has gone on increasing in the old Helvetic land demonstrates that despotism can run riot as savagely under a republican form of government as under any other; and that they who cry out the most lustily against the tyranny of kings are themselves tyrants of the worst kind when they have power in their hands.
It is clear that in the course they are pursuing the Swiss radicals will not suffer themselves to be distanced by any one. They have formed a vast association, called the Volksverein, at one of whose meetings, held at Olten last autumn, a programme was voted containing the following clause: “The moment has arrived for the application of the principles which are the foundation of the new federal party. In order to crush for ever the influence of Ultramontanism it is not enough to emancipate from the church the individual as such, it is necessary that churches themselves should be governed democratically and nationally and that every hierarchical institution be suppressed, as dangerous to the state and to liberty; and that, by virtue of Art. 50 of the new constitution, the existing bishoprics be suppressed by the federal assembly.” The hypocrites! They dare to take the name of liberty upon their lips! True, the “National Convention,” and the Paris “Commune,” they too scribbled the word everywhere!
The demonstrations, the principal of which we have indicated, must end in the definitive constitution of the projected national church, before which all will be expected to bow the knee, as the pagans demanded of the primitive church to adore their false gods. Active negotiations for this object are being carried on between five states of the ancient diocese of Basel, the cantons of Zurich, Schaffhausen, Ticino, Geneva, etc. It has been decided to have a bishop. All will be required to submit to this bishop. But he will have a superior in the form of a synod composed of sectaries of all creeds or of no creed, and these will enjoy, in his regard, the right of deposition. It is asserted that M. Reinkens will consecrate the new bishop. The consecration of an apostate does not share in the promise of indefectibility.
Anyhow, the Old Catholics will not succeed in erecting a serious edifice. To found a church there are needed faith, zeal, devotedness, religious conviction. Radicals and free-thinkers have none of these.
Without belief of any kind, their one aim is the overthrow of all religion. Let them, then, seize our churches—let them decree the formation of an ecclesiastical hierarchy! The profaned churches will be deserted, their priests will be despised, and again they will be taught the lesson that the Living God does not preside over schismatics and heretics!