4. The Law of Separation deprives communes of the right to give any subventions for religious worship—though the State inscribes on its own budget the stipends to chaplains of lyceums frequented by children of the rich, notwithstanding Art. II.
5. A whole class of citizens are placed hors la loi, in that they are deprived of the right of trial by jury for offences amenable to this procedure. They (priests) are placed on the same footing as convicted anarchists.
6. Divine service is assimilated to any public meeting. A band of Socialists may fill the church and render prayer impossible by their irreverent attitude but they cannot be expelled unless they resort to violence.
7. The same class of individuals can invade any cathedral at any hour and insist on inspecting, gratis, all its treasures (objets mobiliers classés). In other words, these venerable edifices, the church of Brou, Notre Dame, etc., are treated already like public museums, less well in fact. And all this, we are told seriously, is “Separation.”
Meanwhile the two parties most nearly concerned in this question, the Holy See and the French people, thirty-five million Catholics, have never been consulted.
M. Briand with remarkable impudence asserted that, since thirty-five years, the country had sighed after “Separation,” though he well knows that no one thought about it but the Grand Orient. He himself admitted, in the same session, that the question did not exist (n’était pas posée) at the beginning of this legislature (1902), and was only raised by the Pope’s violations of the Concordat. This lie, which tends to become historic, was amply exploded, when M. Combes was convicted in the Chambers of having suppressed a document, which amply justified Pius X’s action in the case of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, which the lodges used as a casus belli. Moreover, we must remember that the current Jacobin thesis is that the Seventeen Articles of the Concordat, which alone were signed by Pius VII, and the Seventy-six Organic Articles, added ex parte by Napoleon, in violation of every code of honour and equity, form an intangible whole. Nevertheless, the Seventeen Articles of the Convention which were alone signed by Pius VII and Napoleon, in Messidor l’an IX, took effect as soon as the ratifications were exchanged. The churches, seminaries, etc., were immediately “placed at the disposal of the Bishops,” and the stipulated indemnities were forthcoming.
It was not till Germinal l’an X that the Seventy-six Organic Articles were promulgated, together with the Convention.
Now no one surely can be accused of violating articles regarding which he has never been consulted. Yet this is precisely the ground taken by the Jacobins.
A senator of the Right alleged, in defence of the Concordat, Art. 1134 of the Code Civil: “Conventions legally formed are a law to those who make them. They can only be revoked, by mutual consent, by those who make them, and for causes which the law recognizes.”
Thereupon the reporter replied: “There was a Convention between Pius VII and Napoleon; this Convention formed a whole (un ensemble) with the Seventy-six Organic Articles.” And as no Government has ever been able to enforce these articles, some of which are rankly heretical, the reporter alleged Art. 1184 of the Code against Art. 1134 to defend the Government’s ex-parte denunciation of the Concordat. This Art. 1184 declares that “a Convention is rescinded when one of the parties does not keep his engagements.”