His recent political speech in the mining centres near Lyons was bold enough, judging by a stenographic report, for the Officiel and Havas toned it down somewhat.
He gave it to be understood that only those congregations who relieved the State in caring for the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the insane were to be tolerated. In other words, the souls of her children are to become the prey of a pagan State, but their diseased bodies are to be left to the care of the Church!
Eight Jesuits are being prosecuted for preaching Advent sermons, though they have closed their establishments and dispersed. The proper course, apparently, would be to arraign the bishops and curés who had invited these Jesuits to occupy their pulpits. Waldeck Rousseau is too wily for that. His policy is to make a fine distinction between the secular and regular clergy—to divide and conquer.
Three other Jesuits, who profess theology at the Institut Catholique, obtained from Rome dispensation of their vows, in order to be able to retain their chairs at the Institut. They, too, are being prosecuted for alleged violation of the Associations Bill.
I think the situation is clear, and that if any Catholics here or elsewhere still misapprehend the true purport and scope of this law of 1901, their purblindness is no longer admissible.
A COMBES COUP DE MAIN
23rd August, 1902.
THE elections of May, 1902, have not improved the situation in France. No efforts, as I said, however earnest, could now retrieve the political situation. For twenty-five years the “Grand Orient” has been gathering into its hands all the threads of power; ministers, presidents, cabinets are made, unmade, remade, as it suits the well-conceived plans of this band of sectarian Jacobins, who differ from other Freemasons in that with them God is both non-existent and l’ennemi to be vanquished, while at the same time they are strictly a political organization, whose object is to control the country and conform it to their own image.
The Associations Bill, or to speak more accurately, the law against all Christian education, was decreed by the lodges in 1877. An abortive attempt was made to carry it through in 1880. That attempt was premature, because the “Grand Orient” had not yet gained complete control over the judiciary. To-day very nearly every part of the administration is in their power.
People wondered why Waldeck Rousseau resigned immediately after the elections, which seemed a tribute to the success of his administration. The reason of this shuffling of the cards is evident. It had been resolved, as soon as the elections were assured, to make a coup de main, and close, summarily, 3000 primary schools, frequented by hundreds of thousands of children of the poorer classes, and this a few weeks before the holidays, without the slightest regard to the fact that state lay schools were already inadequate, while in many places there were none but congregational schools.