Another cause of the religious apathy is to be found in the desecration of Sunday, which has become very general in France, especially in the larger cities. The revolution suppressed Sunday by brute force, and the law has ever since afforded the greatest possible latitude to all who were inclined to disregard its obligations. Sunday labor came thus to be gradually sanctioned by custom and countenanced by law. Under Louis Philippe, the bourgeoisie managed to turn this laxity to account, and even to this day the work on the public improvements proceeds without reference to the festivals of Holy Church or Sundays. At first the laborer, tempted by the offer of higher wages, consented to work on Sundays for the sake of gain. Now stern necessity compels the majority of laborers to do this, and yet they barely manage to support life. Once men desecrated the Sunday out of avarice; now they desecrate it to satisfy their hunger. Such is the condition to which irreligion has reduced the French working-man. The capitalist who introduced this desecration can, however, afford better than ever to rest each day of the week.
The amount of evil which the desecration of Sunday has sown can hardly be conceived. Hundreds and thousands of those honest laborers who flock to Paris and to the great manufacturing centres from the provinces have been morally and physically destroyed by it. Not only has the discharge of all religious obligations become impracticable, but there being no longer a day on which the family finds itself united, every thing like the love of home has been destroyed. The tenderest and most holy ties have been broken, the unity of family interests has ceased, and each member of the household has been left to pursue his own course. But as the human body requires some rest, the mind some relaxation, so men by way of compensation drink and dissipate, which speedily destroys their love for the fireside. On Sunday afternoons and evenings, the working-men exchange the shop only for the tavern, and they soon learn to find their relaxation and amusement there even on week-days. The consequence is, that the working-men have become demoralized; they think of nothing but work, or rather of the means by which they may procure that which will enable them to minister to their depraved appetites.
In this manner the wants of these men multiply in an inordinate degree, their minds and tastes are debased, and all their earnings soon cease to suffice for even the most indispensable articles of food and raiment. Those who break the Lord's day, though they seem to earn better wages, look wretched, and have rarely a decent coat to their backs. If the weather, or some other unforeseen cause, prevents them from working, they resort to the tavern and spend there their Sunday gains. It is notorious that exactly in those work-shops where the Sunday is habitually ignored, the hands are the most dissipated and shiftless. Even from a purely material stand-point the non-observance of Sunday is therefore a fearful social evil which has unhappily made serious progress, even in the rural districts, and especially in those immediately surrounding Paris.
This pagan system of civil legislation interferes very materially with the religious life. The French code robs the father of nearly all authority over his grown children; for instance, a son eighteen years of age may legally mortgage half the property which he is to inherit, even though it may have been earned by the parent's personal industry. Husband and wife hold their property separately, neither being liable for the debts of the other. In this way the members of the same family are invested with such widely diverging rights that they can have no interests in common. The effect of this arrangement upon the domestic relations, upon the harmony, unity, and morals of the family will be readily conceived. It is therefore to be regarded at once as a wonder and a proof of the power of the Catholic Church that there should still exist so many exemplary households in France.
Wretchedness in all its forms naturally goes hand in hand with these false principles of legislation. Thanks to the boasted progress of modern days, there is more suffering and misery in Paris than in any other city on the continent of Europe. Those who speak from personal observation of the social condition in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, acknowledge that pauperism is most gigantic in the latter capital. In the year 1866, Paris contained 1,791,980 inhabitants, of whom 105,119 were paupers, or 40,644 families who received aid from the municipal authorities. This gives one pauper to every seventeen inhabitants; but the number of destitute who stand in need of help is at least as large again. The Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, the many other charitable societies, and the pastors, support and succor quite as many more families, the greater portion of whom are also dependent on the public. And with all this, most societies are compelled to turn away nearly as many destitute as they can relieve. It is therefore not too much to assume that one tenth of the Parisians are reduced to the verge of absolute poverty. And how inadequate, at the best, is the relief doled out by the municipality to the poor! A couple of pounds of bread each week, a few cast-off garments, occasionally some bedding, is about all which a family can usually expect to receive from this source. In 1866, the city disbursed, by way of relief, four millions of francs among 40,644 families, which gives forty-eight francs and sixty-five centimes per year for each family, or eighteen francs and sixty-five centimes per head. But it should be borne in mind that bread sells at one fourth of a franc per pound, which shows how insignificant the relief is which the otherwise so extravagant Paris municipality bestows on its destitute. And it should be further remembered that a family has to pay an average annual rental of one hundred and forty-one francs and twenty-five centimes—which average was only one hundred and thirteen francs and forty-five centimes prior to the year 1860. These statistics sufficiently demonstrate the grave importance which the solution of the social problem threatens to assume in France.
But there is at least an equally large number of families who, though they may not be regular applicants for municipal and other charity, are yet unable to get on without undergoing greater or less privations and self-denials. It can hardly be believed how much this wide-spread distress tends to the demoralization of the poor. Without education, without intellectual incentive, without religious consolation, and even without a day of rest; constantly fighting for bare existence; weighed down by bodily suffering, the better feelings of these unfortunates have become so blunted that they think only of gratifying their unceasing, never quite satisfied material wants. The disuse of the Sunday solemnities has weaned them even from bestowing a proper care on their persons. They rarely possess any other dress than the one worn in the work-shop. Still worse, if possible, is the state of the quarters, or holes, in which they are domiciled. Besides a wretched couch, an old table, some broken chairs and crockery, one meets there nothing but filth and offensive odors. Parents and children sleep in one close room; the children run wild in the streets, and thus deteriorate morally and mentally before they perish physically.
Such an element of the population can only be redeemed morally and religiously by relief of their material misery. No amelioration of their condition is otherwise possible. Wherever the church desires to interfere, she must be prepared with material aid—must send the Sister of Mercy as well as the priest. A sort of brutishness has been engrafted on this pauperism, and until it is eliminated no improvement can be seriously attempted. When modern science, therefore, represents man as a purely animal organism, the conclusion is perhaps not so very illogical after all. By systematically degrading the disinherited working classes into a race of human beings inferior in many essential features to the savage, modern political economy has to a certain extent furnished this theory with an illustration. The savage still experiences the necessity of prayer, a want which the modern proletarian has long ceased to feel; the religious necessity is either dulled or destroyed in him, because the religious sentiment has been torn from his heart. For this reason also the reconciliation of the proletarian with Christianity is frequently surrounded by far greater difficulties than the conversion of the downright heathen. The Christian, corrupted by our so-called progress, stands perhaps lowest in the scale of humanity.
On the other hand, the craving for sensual indulgences seems to have become so general among the higher class of working-men that there are few who lead a well-regulated, frugal, quiet life. It is, no doubt, difficult to resist the manifold temptations which Paris presents, and which are intensified by the frequent financial and industrial revulsions. All the more remunerative trades are subject to periods of stagnation, during which numbers of operatives are thrown out of employment, or work only half-time. The self-denial which they have then to practise leads them afterward to make up for it by dissipation, and they thus contract habits which end in ruin. Here we see again, and most distinctly in Paris, what immense influence a nation's political economy exerts on its religious and moral character. Nowhere are the fruits of the mischief committed by the politico-economical theories now ascendant in France to be observed more plainly than in the metropolis, a city in which at least one half of the population, if not permanently in want, are certainly always in danger of it.
Under these circumstances, it is all the more cheering that so large a number of working-men's families should have preserved their Christian faith and still attend to their religious duties. A more than ordinary amount of virtue and self-denial is required for it, and those who practise them amidst the vicissitudes of life are truly noble souls. Yet there exist many such even among the poorest and lowliest. Another guarantee of a brighter future is that nearly all working-men appear fully convinced of the necessity of an education, and that they therefore rarely object to having their children instructed. Even the most irreligious among them manifest an implicit confidence in the clergy, and prefer to have their children attend the schools controlled by the religious. Though pretending to care nothing for the church themselves, they deem religion an excellent thing for their families. With the steady improvement in the system of popular education, and with the diffusion of schools superintended by the church, a corresponding advance in the religious and moral condition of the masses may be expected, and is indeed already apparent. There are in Paris 53 schools for boys attended by 17,360 pupils, which are managed by the different religious orders, and 63 schools for boys attended by 16,750 pupils, conducted by laymen. Of the schools for girls 68, with 19,720 pupils, are controlled by the sisters, and 57, with 12,630, by lay instructresses. The elementary Protestant establishments are included in the above figures. A similar ratio exists between the intermediate and the higher schools.
To form an adequate idea of the superior advantages which the different religious orders possess as educators, it should be known that, while the city of Paris pays its elementary lay teachers yearly from 2000 fr. to 3000 fr. salary, besides giving them lodgings and a retiring pension, the brothers have only 950 fr., lodgings, but no pension. The female lay teachers, mostly single, receive from 1800 fr. to 2400 fr. per annum, while the sisters have only 800 fr. In this comparison we made no mention of the difference in the expense of the lodgings, which is much larger in the case of laymen, most of whom have families. The city of Paris could therefore well afford, without incurring the reproach of any especial extravagance, to present the church with a large piece of ground and a sum of money for a building where the superannuated brothers could pass the rest of their days. The evening classes for adults, which have been opened under the auspices of the church, are quite a success.