To recapitulate. Rome, as it never goes out of the path leading to its end, has wished and wishes to create its own supremacy in France, which has been so long prevented by royalty allied to the French clergy.
It has found a clergy not attached to the soil and to the state by great interests of wealth and influence.
Profiting by the situation, it has wished to reduce the clergy into bondage after a precise fashion by the intrusion of all of the doctrines of the ultramontane church, and, to obtain its end, has employed all the powers of polemics, of spiritual administration, and of the regular clergy.
The clergy conquered, it has marched on to possess itself of all classes of society through the medium of educational institutions, of confraternities and congregations of every kind, and has established an organization as vast as it is formidable.
Henceforth Rome rules the clergy and the Church of France, and, through the clergy and the church, it means to rule the country.
II.
Such is a true picture of the religious situation.
However, if the French clergy seem unwilling to oppose any further external resistance to the doctrines, plots, and encroachments of Rome, it must not be forgotten that very many of its members in conscience are far from approving what they call the excesses of ultramontanism, because they fear for their own safety and for that of the true religion.
A great part of the episcopate realizes the fact that the effort is being made to reduce them to the condition of simple vicars apostolic, whose jurisdiction could be recalled, and to suppress the proprium jus episcopûm. They foresee that the nation will never go back on the civil and political progress made in order to place itself under any theocracy whatsoever.
Consequently, they are not convinced of the strength of the proposed ultramontane arrangement, which may be set forth in these terms: "Be no longer a French episcopate; acknowledge your absolute dependence on the Pope; and, in recompense, we will have all together the religious government of France." Such a plan would expose religion to many and inevitable conflicts, in which it would be either swallowed up by worldly views, or would be gravely compromised.