The project which bore the names of Trouillot and Waldeck-Rousseau began by declaring all religious congregations "illicit," under the pretext that the members of these associations live in community, that they make the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and that Article 1118 of the Civil Code declares that "only such things as enter into commerce can be made the object of a convention," and that poverty, chastity and obedience are things which do not enter into commerce.
M. Emile Faguet in his L'Anticlericalism (Paris, 1905) scourges this method of persecution:
This argumentation was seething with sophisms. In the first place it transposes into the Penal Code a disposition of the Civil Code and it makes a crime of that which is only a judiciary incapacity: the party who makes a contract upon something which does not enter into commerce cannot judicially exact the execution of that contract if his co-contractor should refuse. That is all that is meant by Article 1118, and there is no penalty against a man who makes a contract not conformable to Article 1118 of the Civil Code. Indeed, if such were the case, marriage would be illicit, for it is a convention of obedience, fidelity and protection between two persons, and obedience, fidelity and protection are not matters of trade; hence marriage would be contrary to Article 1118.
But, it will be said, we must count as illicit every convention which is contrary to good morals. Without doubt; but it is difficult to conceive how living in common, and taking the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are opposed to good morals.
Finally this position of the question betrays a voluntary confusion of the terms "convention" and "vow." A vow is not a contract, it is a resolution which one takes and in which one persists. Thus in no way does Article 1118 affect the question of associations and congregations.
It is strange indeed that these sapient legislators, after declaring religious associations illicit or criminal, contradict themselves by inviting these same "criminal" associations to seek authorization; which amounts to saying that the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry wished to sanction some things which it considered as essentially wrong. Thus the new law stultifies itself almost in its opening sentences, while it makes it quite plain that the subversive intentions of its author were to affect all religious congregations without exception.
Waldeck-Rousseau belonged to the same school as Jules Ferry; he believed in maintaining provisorily the Concordat, but he made it plain that he intended to laicise all the public service, and especially that of teaching, in which the congregations held so large a part. In a speech at Toulouse, October 28, 1900, after arguing that the development of the monastic possessions ought to be arrested, he declared:
Two classes of youth, less separated by their social condition than by the education they receive, are growing up without any mutual acquaintance, until the day comes when they shall meet and find themselves so unlike that they will not be able to understand one another. Little by little two different societies are being prepared—one of them, becoming more and more democratic as it is borne on by the great current of the Revolution, and the other, more and more imbued with doctrines which one would not have believed able to survive the great movement of the eighteenth century.
In this sentence was contained his plea for compelling the teachers of the second class of youth, the congregations, to seek authorization, while at the same time he made it evident that none should be authorized whose methods should not be in accordance with the principles of the French Revolution.
Another element in the deceptive policy of Waldeck-Rousseau was the endeavor to bolster his proscriptive laws upon the assertion that they were intended to protect the secular clergy from the encroachments of the regulars. Hence the phrase: "The Church against the chapel." He ignored the fact that the secular clergy had no need of such protection inasmuch as the harmony between them and the religious orders was never called into question except by these anti-clericals who hated both religious and seculars.
Still further the same Waldeck-Rousseau took pains to falsify himself on more than one public occasion. Thus he assured M. Cochin and Mgr. Gayraud that the law of July, 1901, would permit members of religious congregations to teach in establishments belonging to persons not members of the congregation, although he knew at the time that decrees were being formulated to prevent such practice.
When the iniquitous law was yet before the Chamber the Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII., in a letter to the superior generals of the orders and religious institutes, complained bitterly of its purpose:
We have endeavored by every means to ward off from you a persecution so unworthy, and at the same time to save your country from evils as great as they are unmerited. That is why on many occasions we have pleaded your cause with all our power in the name of religion, of justice, of civilization. But we have hoped in vain that our remonstrances would be heard. Behold, indeed, in these days, in a nation singularly fecund in religious vocations, and which we have always surrounded with our most particular care, the public powers have approved and promulgated laws of exception, apropos of which we have, a few months ago, raised our voice in the hope of preventing them.