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

by Francis A. Cunningham

"According to its first article the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion was to be exercised freely in France; the Catholic Church was therefore to be free in her organization, free in her preaching and teaching, free in her discipline, in her ministers, in her right of acquiring such property as would be necessary for the accomplishing of her mission. She is no longer as under the old regime, intimately allied with the State; she is no longer the Church of the State; the separation of the temporal and the spiritual has been effected.... But if in return one considers the words of the text according to their real value, she is entirely free; she need no longer fear trespassing from outside nor a supervision that tends only to hinder her action; nor those thousand and one interferences which were formerly perpetrated by Gallicanism."

The article continues: "Its worship shall be public"—words which naturally signify the exercise of religious ceremonies not merely within the walls of the church, but exteriorly also, as in public processions, carrying the Blessed Viaticum to the sick, and such like. Nor is it strange that these practices should be permitted in a land where the Catholic faith is the religion of the great majority of the people, when in Protestant countries they are carried out solemnly and amid the veneration of all.

The addition of the words—"in conforming to the regulations of internal administration (reglements de police) which the Government shall deem necessary for the public tranquility"—was one of the causes of the delay in framing the Concordat; it was the clause against which the First Consul declaimed so violently on the famous afternoon of July 14th, and it has served ever since as the foundation of an anti-liberal jurisprudence.

"In practice it is the mayor who in each commune is charged with maintaining public order and tranquility, and, by the same title, whenever a mayor considers that a procession or any other religious manifestation can occasion trouble and disorder upon the public streets, he has the right to interdict it. One must confess that in a country like ours where the idea of liberty is so limited, it is sometimes a means for the protection of the clergy and faithful against injuries and outrages. But very often mayors have interdicted, and permanently, only Catholic processions, while they permit freethinkers to pass through the streets in parades that are dangerous to the public. If a mayor acts with such partiality, if he cannot support his interdiction with some serious reason—like that municipal official who would interdict a procession because the white veils of the young girls might frighten horses—if a mayor, in a word, acts by party spirit, and not in view of the public tranquility, he violates the Concordat. True liberty of conscience does not take account of the sentimental susceptibilities of occasional nervous individuals, nor would it impose upon anyone the obligation of dissimulating their religious professions or philosophical opinions; on the contrary it imposes on men the obligation of tolerating each other reciprocally in the peaceful manifestation of their beliefs. Hence, independently of the Concordat, is not such liberty of conscience demanded for all citizens by the Declaration of the Rights of Man?" (Croizil.)

The articles relating to the bishops excited the greatest amount of dissatisfaction in many quarters. It meant the realization of that idea which Bonaparte had expressed to Cardinal Martiniana in the year preceding—the utter abolition of the old hierarchy—and the substitution of one entirely new and conformable to the order of things about to be established. Before the Revolution there were in France 136 Episcopal Sees. In the scheme of Bonaparte these were to be reduced to fifty only, of which ten were to be metropolitan, although later, in 1801, he was pleased to add ten other sees to the number. Commenting upon this reduction, Cardinal Mathieu observes:

"Sixty-six cities were thus subjected to a moral and material decline from which they have never since rallied. Indeed, each of these suppressed Sees was illustrated with memorials of apostleship and holiness, with monuments, with religious establishments of every kind which gave to the episcopal cities an importance superior to that of their population and made them so many interesting little capitals, wherein were often hidden men of great merit. The dignitaries of the secular and regular clergy, some families of impoverished gentlemen or well-to-do bourgeois and professional people, maintained therein an amiable society which kept up in the most secluded provinces the best traditions of the old regime—courtesy, a taste for literature and charity for the poor. All these little centres of intellectual and moral life were blotted out and the Concordat thus only sanctioned the destruction effected by the Revolution."

It was mainly because of reflections like these that the old émigré bishops received the news of these articles with so sad a grace.

The articles which treat of ecclesiastical property and the salaries of the clergy will prove of interest especially at the present time, when in the Law of Separation they have been so badly misinterpreted. Article XII. reveals the fact that the Church was placed in absolute possession of her property. The term "shall be placed at the disposition of the bishops" signifies the same thing that it did when in 1789 the property of the Church was confiscated by the then Government and, to use the terms of that law, mise a la disposition de la nation, placed at the disposition of the nation. There can be little doubt as to how those words were understood in 1789, for the nation, acting upon the law, immediately proceeded to the sale of all ecclesiastical property. The words, therefore, signified that the nation was placed in full and absolute possession of such property, and the precedent must in all honor apply equally when the terms are used in favor of the Church. To say, therefore, that the article gave to the bishops the mere use ad revocationem of such property is only to betray a desire to excuse a robbery under the pretext of a misunderstanding. The Concordat thus acknowledged the Church's absolute possession of her churches and other religious establishments, a possession which will always remain hers rightfully, and which she shall defend in her own way against any attempt at alienation.

In the articles XIII. and XIV. the French Government acknowledges that even the alienated property, i. e., the churches, etc.—which after the confiscation of 1789 were sold, were even in 1801 the rightful property of the Church; though, nevertheless, the Church, for the sake of peace, therein agrees to waive her right. In so doing, however, she requires as a condition that the State shall compensate her for the same. This compensation is expressed in article XIV., wherein it is declared that the State shall assure a suitable salary to the clergy. In accordance with this disposition it follows that whenever—as at present—the Concordat should be abolished the Church should revert to her natural rights the compensation for alienated property being discontinued, such property or its value should be restored to the Church. In this matter the present Government of France has shown itself not merely unfair but actuated also by a spirit of robbery.

The Concordat finished, Cardinal Consalvi began his preparations for returning to Rome. He arrived in the Eternal City on August 6th. He had, however, been preceded by a messenger bearing the precious document, who arrived at the Vatican on July 25th. The instrument was immediately subjected to the examination of a commission of cardinals, and only after long and heated discussions was it finally accepted by the Holy See. It was signed by the Pope on August 15th, 1801.