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[ The brothers Allignol, "De l'État actuel du clergé en France," p.248. "The mind of the desservant is no longer his own. Let him beware of any personal sentiment or opinion!... He must cease being himself and must lose, it may be said, his personality."—Ibid., preface, XIX. "Both of us, placed in remotes country parishes,... are in a position to know the clergy of the second class well, to which, for twenty years, we belong.">[
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[ The principal means of action of the State is the right of appointing bishops. The Pope, however, installs them; consequently, the Minister of Worship must have an understanding beforehand with the nuncio, which obliges it to nominate candidates irreproachable in doctrine and morals, but it avoids nominating ecclesiastics that are eminent, enterprising or energetic; once installed and not removable, they would cause trouble. Such, for example, was M. Pie, bishop of Poitiers, nominated by M. de Falloux in the time of the Prince-President, and so annoying during the Empire; in order to keep him in check, M. Levert, the cleverest and most adroit prefect, had to be sent to Poitiers; for many years they waged the most desperate war under proper formalities, each playing against the other the shrewdest and most disagreeable tricks. Finally, M. Levert, who had lost a daughter and was denounced from the pulpit, was obliged, on account of his wife's feelings, to leave the place. (This happened to my own knowledge, as between 1852 and 1867 I visited Poitiers five times.) At the present day, the Catholics complain that the government nominates none but mediocre men for bishops and accepts none others for cantonal curés. (Today, in 1999, we can look back on a century of quarrelling, even war, between Rome and Paris with the separation of the Catholic Church and the State in 1905, sequestration of all church property, impoverishment of the clergy, interdiction of the different orders, papal bulls, ending in 1914 when the State had to concentrate all effort towards winning the war. Today the church is allowed to operate but its influence is much reduced as it the case for all the religions since the advent of the consumer society with television etc. SR.)]
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[ "The Ancient Régime," pp 171, 181, 182. (Ed. Laffont I., p. 129 to 139.)]
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[ M. de Vitrolles, "' Mémoires," I., 15. (This passage was written in 1847.) "Under the Empire, readers were to those of the present day as one to a thousand. Newspapers, in very small number, scarcely obtained circulation. The public informed itself about victories, as well as the conscription, in the articles of the 'Moniteur,' posted by the prefects."—From 1847 to 1891, we all know by our own experience that the number of readers has augmented prodigiously.]
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[ I wonder what Taine would have said of television, that system which allows its producers to make all mankind believe that the lies and figments of the imaginations put in front of them show the true and real world as it is. (SR.)]