To-day, Islamism is, ipso facto, the only religion recognized by the French Government; its ministers and mosques and schools are provided for, and its ceremonies are often honoured by the presence of state officials. This, in spite of Article 2, “the Republic recognizes and subventions no worship.”
Another point worth noticing is that while discussing Article 1, “The Republic assures liberty of conscience,” the Minister of Public Worship, speaking for the Government, clearly indicated that state functionaries would never be permitted to send their children to any but government schools.
There are three points on which I insist in conclusion: (1) That the country has not been consulted. At the general elections, 1902, not one senator, and only 130 deputies out of 580 had “Separation” in their programmes, and the Budget of Worship was voted in 1902, 1903, 1904 by a compact majority who would then have been indignant had it been said that they were acting against the wishes of the country. On January 27th, 1903, M. Combes himself repelled a suggestion of denunciation of the Concordat thus: “If you do this by an improvised vote ... you will throw the country into the greatest difficulties, trouble consciences, and cause a veritable peril to the Republic.” Now the country has not been heard from since 1902. Yet the law was rushed through, on the eve of a new election, for reasons I have indicated.
(2) We must remember that when continual violations of the Concordat are alleged as an excuse for the rupture, the Jacobins constantly confound the seventy-five Organic Articles with the seventeen articles of the Convention called Concordat, 1801, which alone was signed by Pius VII.
(3) The suppression of the indemnity Concordataire is, as far as the Catholic clergy are concerned, a partial repudiation of the National Debt. It was recognized as such by laws of 1789, 1790, 1791, 1793, 1801, etc.
This law of pseudo-Separation is not only a law of spoliation, but also of supreme tyranny, in that in the name of Separation, it pretends to regulate minutely the mode of existence of its victims, in future, by special codes, and deprives them of the right to have more than the strictest necessary for a hand-to-mouth existence.
I am convinced that to acquiesce in regard to these “associations of worship” will be to fall into the Government’s trap as the Congregations did when they applied for authorization in 1902. It will only mean retreating before the enemy, and postponing the hour of violent persecution and combat, which must come before the Jacobin-Freemason yoke can be broken.
THE INVENTORIES
12th February, 1906.
YEAR by year, I have foreshadowed and characterized the programme of persecution, spoliation, and arbitrary tyranny which is that of the Judeo-Masonic coterie which governs France, by means of the Socialist vote. We have now reached the second part of this programme.