This Separation Law is, as M. Briand said, only “transitory.” It is, I repeat, eminently perfidious. There is no form of tyranny, vexation, and spoliation which cannot be legalized by its equivocal articles. It contains all that is necessary to eliminate Catholicism from France as far as public worship is concerned.
On June 3rd I wrote, “What these Jacobins want is to have the law voted before the elections of May, 1906, and then say to the people, ‘You see the law is voted, and nothing is changed.’” At the final session after the vote, M. Briand, in a speech now pasted up all over the country, said, “Our work is done. What have you to say? You tried to trouble the conscience of the French Catholics, but can you find anything in the Bill to warrant your grievances? Dare now to tell the people the churches are to be closed, the priests proscribed.” Yet all this, alas! arrived almost immediately after the first Separation Law made in 1795.
“No one,” echoed M. Deschanel, a smooth-tongued, dainty politician like M. Rousseau, “can maintain that this law is the work of hatred and persecution, unless it is travestied by some profoundly dishonest Government.”
“Like that of M. Combes, who travestied Waldeck Rousseau’s Associations Bill,” rejoined a deputy of the Right.
This Law of Separation bears the same imprint as that of 1901; both emanated from the same quarter. It is, I repeat, a masterpiece of guile and arbitrary tyranny. Any sense can be given to the ambiguous language in which the most important articles are couched, and their interpretation is not to be left to ordinary civil tribunals. The jus et norma in all doubtful questions is to be the Conseil d’Etat. In other words, the Grand Conseil of the Grand Orient is to be the supreme court of first and last appeal.
The Church in France might just as well descend into the catacombs here and now. It will come to this, unless some cataclysm rouse the French to a violent uprising, in which the Third Republic and all its works and ways will be swept away.
The Senatorial Commission is composed of fourteen Jacobin Freemasons. Their rulings are a foregone conclusion. The Separation Bill may be considered already voted in the Senate.
Great crimes against liberty, justice, and humanity cannot be circumscribed by national frontiers. They offend all Christendom, and though nations may, supinely, say “Am I my brother’s keeper?” they pay the penalty sooner or later. France in acute revolution will mean Europe in flames, as in 1792.
THE PROGRESS OF ANARCHY
12th October, 1905.