[13] The Bill was adopted by the French Senate early in December.
[14] Everything except the encyclique of August 15th, 1906.
[15] M. Lefas, deputy of the Right, maintained in the Chambers (Nov. 9th, 1906, Journal Officiel, p. 2448) that “the churches could not form part of the Communal domain when Communes did not exist in France. Communal domain only began with the existence of the Communes; that is to say, a hundred years ago.” Therefore these Church edifices cannot be said to belong to the Communes to-day. Formerly France was divided into parishes, and each parish had its parish church.
As to the cathedrals, if kings and nobles, like other Catholics, contributed to their embellishment or construction, they did so as Catholics. All the guilds and corporations, too, contributed, not only money, but personal labour. Would this entitle the syndicates of masons, goldsmiths, etc., of to-day to claim these cathedrals? But the chief factor in the construction of these noble edifices were the freely given toil and humble labours of the multitudes of Catholics who raised these monuments of faith. It is well known that a Catholic church cannot be dedicated as long as any one has a lien on it, that is, not until the Church’s proprietorship of the building is undisputed. Therefore the assumption that these edifices belong to the State and the Communes can only be justified on the theory of the men who, seeing a trunk lying in the hall of a hotel, said, “This trunk belongs to no one; let us say it belongs to us.”
The recent judgment of the highest court of England in the case of the “wees and the frees” of the Scotch Presbyterian Kirk is eminently applicable in this question of Jacobin appropriations and spoliations.
[16] These inventories, left incomplete after the fall of the Rouvier Ministry (February), are being completed now (November, 1906).
[17] When the daily Press is constantly recording the exploits of cambrioleurs picking locks and bursting open coffres forts with dynamite, it is very piquant to see the Government doing the same thing, flanked by gens d’armes and the regular army. Yesterday at Nantes 1500 soldiers, with two generals and one colonel, surrounded the cathedral at 5 a.m. Forty locks were picked before noon! In cambrioleur slang this would be called a “record haul.” Thanks to the injunctions of Pius X, there was no bloodshed, and M. Clemenceau and his friends proclaim that these inventories are made sans incident.
[18] This Protestant senator seems to have been inspired by an eloquent passage in Bossuet, “Une voix nous crie, Marche, Marche.”
[19] The founder and owner of La Lanterne is said to be a Frankfort Jew, and it is an open secret that all the advanced Socialist and anti-clerical dailies are owned or controlled by the princes of Israel. And it is from these that English and American papers seem to derive all their information regarding the Church in France.
[20] LES CAISSES D’ÉPARGNE.