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On November 9th, 1906, M. Briand described the Status of the Church in France as follows (Officiel, 2459): “The churches are affected to public worship and must remain so indefinitely.... It is our duty to leave them open.... Reunions are possible, you may have them. The priest may live in direct communication with the people, he may receive manual gifts. Perhaps the Catholic hierarchy about which you are so much concerned will suffer. Perhaps this faculty left to the faithful to live with their priest haphazard (au hasard de la rencontre) will soon dry up the revenues of the priests; it will certainly dry up those of the bishops.”
It is well also to recall here the words pronounced by M. Briand, October 17th, 1905 (Journal Officiel, 1223), regarding the Associations cultuelles: “They will be hardly born on the 11th December, 1906. They will not have had time to obtain funds. If we deprive them of the patrimony of the fabriques and menses episcopales it will be impossible for them to maintain public worship, and the faithful will be unable to practise their religion.”
Yet the Government impudently declares to-day that the Catholics are hard to please!
On December 1st, 1906, M. Briand sent forth an ukase commanding every priest to consider public worship assimilated to public meetings, and to make a declaration to the mayor according to the law of 1881.
Now the law of 1905 says that public worship cannot be regulated by the law of 1881. Moreover, this law requires the constitution of a bureau, and that a declaration be made before each meeting twenty-four hours in advance. M. Briand took upon himself to modify the law (l’assouplir) and to say no bureau was necessary, and that one declaration would do for a year! The clergy made no declarations. A few were made by Anarchists and Freemasons.
From the 12th to the 20th December the police were kept busy making thousands of procès verbaux all over France. This idea of making 65,000 prosecutions every day was soon found to be grotesque and impracticable. Moreover, under the law of 1881 it is the owner of the public hall or the café or cabaret who is prosecuted for not making the required declaration. The State and the communes being now the alleged owners of the churches since December 11th, 1906, they should have been prosecuted and not the priests. This same M. Briand, who thus modified the law of 1881, had declared in the Chambers: “Common right no longer exists if you interpret it otherwise than the law” (November 9th, Journal Officiel, p. 2438).
Since December 11th, 1906, the Church in France is very much in the condition of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
On December 29th, 1906, a new Law of Separation was passed. It confers on 36,000 mayors the right to invest 36,000 priests with a precarious use of Church edifices, sauf désaffection. The time-limit is to be decided, à l’amiable, between the mayors and their nominees. Truly this is the reductio ad absurdum of separation.
M. Briand assures us “that the mayor will accord the church to the curé most capable of keeping it in good condition” (Journal Officiel, p. 3398, December 21st, 1906). This is lay orthodoxy. “As to the period of enjoyment, it is impossible to fix it by law,” says M. Briand, “to one, two, or three years” (Officiel, p. 3407), “‘ce sont des questions d’espèce qui seront tranchées selon les communes’; it will vary in each commune.”