Disestablishment in France.
While in England there are issues which dispute the first place with the Education bill, there can be no doubt as to the pre-eminence, just at this time, of the administration of the law providing for separation of Church and State in France. It was early in December, 1905, that the French Senate adopted a measure which abrogated the Concordat, signed in 1801 by the First Napoleon and Pope Pius VII. This measure had already passed the Chamber of Deputies in July. In France the churches are owned by the state and the clergy, regardless of denomination, are supported by the government, a member of the cabinet known as the Minister of Public Worship, having supervision of ecclesiastical affairs. According to the terms of the new bill, no newly made clergyman of any denomination is to receive support from the government of the republic. Those now getting it from the state will continue to do so, but the appropriations are to be decreased as the pensions and salaries of the clergyman now in office expire or are withdrawn. The churches and other places of religious worship will continue to belong to the state, but they are to be leased to congregations of the churches or denominations now worshipping in them. The Vatican is bitterly opposing the separation act, and there has been considerable delay in forming the associations to take over the church property under the terms of the law. Originally it was provided that the period during which these associations should be formed would expire on December 11, 1906, but there is no intention on the part of the Clemenceau ministry, which came into power late in October, to persecute the church. M. Briand, Minister of Public Worship and the author of the bill, announced in the Chamber of Deputies on Nov. 10, that church property not claimed by the “cultural associations” by Dec. 11 would pass under control of the state and finally go to the communes at the end of the ensuing year, but that in the meantime the churches will remain at the disposition of the clergy. The way is thus left open to the Vatican by the admission of the possibility that church property can be granted by state decree to associations formed before December 11, 1907.
The government’s inventories of church property were completed without arousing as much hostility as they did in the beginning but as we go to press great excitement prevails.