The War Upon Religion / Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-Christianism in Europe

by Francis A. Cunningham

The defenders of the Revolution take great pains to demonstrate that the object of the earlier laws was not anti-Christian or subversive of religion, alleging that the spirit of demolition appeared only after and because of the hostile attitude of the Church. One has only to read the speeches in the National Assembly, and the early laws emanating therefrom, to perceive the hypocritical nature of such assurances. The spirit of Voltaire is evident from the first day of the States General, and its tactics of falsehood and deception mark every stage of revolutionary progress until the end. The pretext of establishing a national church is a fact in evidence, whereby under the pretence of safeguarding the liberties of Catholics in France, an effort was made to uproot all idea of religion from the minds of the people. The signal for the opening of such a perversive campaign was the passing of that iniquitous law to which was given the name of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.

On August 20, 1789, an ecclesiastical committee was formed for the regulation of all affairs pending between Church and State. It was composed of thirty members, chosen with great care from among the most violent sectaries of the Assembly. Out of the thirty only nine were able to approach the discussion of ecclesiastical subjects with any appearance of justice, and this small minority soon found it impossible to advance their views in the face of the twenty-one radicals sworn to enslave and degrade the Church; they were consequently compelled to resign from the commission, leaving the great work of Church affairs in the hands of an impious cabal. The result of the deliberations of this diminished committee is found in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which was voted in the Constituent Assembly, from July 12 to July 24, 1790.

The adversaries of religion betray a naive surprise that the Church should refuse to accept a law so worded as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Yet to anyone acquainted with the spirit of Christianity the reasons for such hostility are sufficiently evident. The Abbe Hubert Mailfait in his comprehensive little work upon the subject thus sums up the most objectionable features of the wholly iniquitous law:

First. It destroys the religious hierarchy and annihilates the pontifical supremacy when it stipulates: (a) that the new bishops can no longer address the Pope to obtain from him the bulls of confirmation (tit. II., art. 19): (b) that the canonical institution shall no longer be given by the Pope, but by the metropolitan (tit. II., art. 16 and 17): (c) that the old division of France into dioceses and parishes shall be substituted by a new repartition, decreed without the advice of ecclesiastical authority, and without the approbation of the head of Christianity (tit. I.).

Second. It destroys ecclesiastical discipline: (a) by attributing the election of bishops and pastors to the laity, by way of the ballot and the absolute plurality of votes (tit. II., art. 2) and in decreeing the conditions of eligibility which should be found in candidates to a bishopric or parish (tit. II.): (b) in determining the number of foundations, prebends, abbeys, priories, etc. (tit. I., art. 20-24 and 25); in restricting to the point of annihilation the power of the bishops in the nomination to ecclesiastical employments (tit. II., art. 22, 24, 25, 43).

Third. It sanctions an inadmissible domination of the temporal over the spiritual power, in subordinating the exercise of ecclesiastical functions to the taking of an oath of fidelity to the Constitution decreed by the Assembly (tit. II., art. 21 and 38).

The Civic Constitution of the Clergy thus established in France not only a schism, by depriving the bishops of the right of recourse to the Pope, but heresy also in denying the effective primacy of the Pope and his sovereign power in the direction of the Church and the nomination of her ministers.

SORROW OF PIUS VI.

When the news was brought to Pope Pius VI. that the Assembly was actually engaged in voting the several articles of the Civil Constitution, his sorrow knew no bounds. Public prayers were at once ordered in the churches of Rome, while at the same time the Holy Father addressed an impressive appeal to Louis XVI., insisting on his refusing his sanction to the impious measures. Letters were also sent by the Pope to the Archbishops of Bordeaux and Vienne, requesting them to use their good offices in dissuading the king from sanctioning the law. Unhappily these two prelates betrayed the trust reposed in them and used their influence to the opposite end. It is to their credit that they soon perceived their error and repented bitterly for it.

In the meantime Louis XVI. wrote to the Pope beseeching him to approve, at least provisorily, of the first five articles to which he was in a manner forced to give his sanction. The Holy Father placed the matter in the hands of a commission of cardinals for examination. On October 30, of the same year, the thirty bishops who occupied seats in the Assembly subscribed their names to a carefully prepared memorial entitled Exposition of Principles Concerning the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, wherein the new code of laws was unequivocably condemned. In this position the episcopal deputies were supported by the adherence of nearly all the French bishops. Their expression of disapproval, however, came too late, as the civil constitution had already received the royal sanction (August 24, 1790), and thereby became a law of the realm.

MIRABEAU.