Now Christianity was a profound and radical innovation. Never had the supremacy of the ruler or the State been questioned before the Apostles proclaimed the Creed in “One Holy Catholic Church,” destined to transcend all natural and political boundaries, without distinction of class or colour. Not less radical was the second innovation, a necessary corollary of the first, viz. the ecclesiastical autonomy and independence of the new spiritual society or Church, one, Catholic. “Never,” writes J. B. Martineau, “until the Church arose did faith undertake the conquest alone, and triumph over diversities of speech and antipathies of race.”
But Paganism, with its system of state absolutism in spiritual as well as in temporal matters, has never accepted its defeat by the Catholic Church, a spiritual, autonomous society, distinct from the State. The tale of Byzantine heresies, from the fourth to the eighth century, were all efforts of each successive Emperor of Constantinople to shake off the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and be again the Pontifex Maximus of his dominions. The long struggle of the Investitures, the Constitutions of Clarendon, statutes of Præmunire, State Gallicanism, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 1792, Josephism in Austria, the Kultur-Kampf laws in Germany and Switzerland, 1870-76 were all episodes of this struggle, between the new dispensation and the ancient system of national religions under state supremacy. In the sixteenth century there was a vast renaissance of this latter system in a new dress called Erastianism. Lord Clarendon declared that this spiritual supremacy of rulers was “the better moiety of their sovereignty.” The old pagan, or Erastian system, triumphed in the eastern empire with the Schism of Photius, in Russia under Peter the Great, in England under Elizabeth, in all the Protestant States of northern Europe.
The well-defined purpose of the Revolution and of Napoleon, its heir-at-law, was to establish this system in France. After long and arduous negotiations the Concordat of 1801 was concluded with Pius VII. It was a bilateral contract between two sovereignties, the French Republic, as party of the first part, and the Holy See as party of the second part. It contains seventeen articles. To these, Napoleon, without the knowledge of the Pope, added seventy-six articles, and published both documents, in conjunction, as the law of Germinal l’an X. Great was the indignation, and loud were the protestations of the party of the second part, as we may well suppose. Nor is this surprising when we consider that one of these “organic articles” (24th) requires that all professors in ecclesiastical seminaries shall “submit to teach the doctrine of the Declaration of 1682, and the bishops shall send act of this submission to the Council of State.” In other words, the Catholic Church in France was to turn Protestant. Even Louis XIV, who had had this famous Declaration drawn up to spite Pope Innocent, who alone in Europe had dared to oppose him, never exacted that it should be taught, and had practically suppressed it before he died. Since the Council of the Vatican the subscribing to and teaching the Declaration of 1682 would be an act of formal heresy and apostasy. The fifty-sixth of the organic articles renders obligatory the use of the Republican calendar to the exclusion of the Gregorian. There are other articles equally absurd, which have never been observed.
Now M. Combes declares that “in deliberately separating the diplomatic convention (Concordat) from the organic articles, Pius VII and his successors have destroyed its efficacy.” Napoleon himself understood this and, for seven years, he held Pius VII a close prisoner, hoping to break his spirit and wring from him another Concordat which would be an abdication. Fortunately, the tide of war turned against Napoleon, and the new Concordat was never ratified. M. Combes recognizes that no Government since a century has been able to enforce the “organic articles,” and that the only course left is “divorce,” and by this unstatesmanlike term he means the repudiation of thirty or forty million francs of the national debt. The payment in perpetuity of suitable subsidies to the Catholic clergy is stipulated for by Article 14 of the Concordat. It is a quid pro quo of Article 13, by which the Holy See consented to give a clear title to all the Church property confiscated by the Revolution. The payment of these subsidies was inscribed on the national debt by the spoliators themselves, the Conventionals of 1792, and it was solemnly recognized as part of this debt in 1816, 1828, 1830, and 1848. The salaries paid to Jewish and Protestant clergymen are purely gratuitous. Their property was not stolen by the Revolution in 1792. They had no part in the Concordat.
But the projected spoliation of the Catholic clergy is a mere detail, and would be an insignificant ransom, if at this price the French Catholics could have liberty such as we enjoy in England and the United States. “Separation” means strangulation in Jacobin parlance. They would infinitely prefer Erastianism. But the defection of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, on whom they counted, and the spontaneous and unanimous adhesion of the episcopate to the Holy See, which provoked the thunders of M. Combes against the Vatican in July, have shown the impossibility of a schism. It was tried for four years a century ago and failed. The “Separation” plan was also tried in 1795 for two or three years, and was an epoch of virulent persecution. History will repeat itself, though not exactly in the same words.
ALCOHOLISM IN FRANCE
July 10th, 1905.
THE Chambers continue the discussion of the Bill of alleged separation in a perfunctory, apathetic way, and it is curious that M. Rouvier, the successor of M. Combes, has never once condescended to speak or even to be present at these sessions.
The utter lack of interest in these debates is misinterpreted to mean indifference on the part of the French public. This is not correct. It is, as I have often repeated, the great misfortune of France that people will not concern themselves with politics, and they only begin to interest themselves in a law when it is applied.
Even I, who have followed the phases of the religious persecution with keen interest since four or five years, can hardly wade through these tedious, irksome columns, in which ambiguity reigns supreme. Even M. Briand, the reporter of the law and spokesman of the Government, being questioned closely as to the sense of certain passages, replied “It is” and “It is not” in the same breath. He is evidently of the opinion that language is a convenient means of disguising thought.