It appears, however, that this was not enough. In the bosom of the “Catholic Superior Council,” M. Héridier exclaimed: “We must follow the course of the Bernese government.” Such bitter hatred can only be accounted for by the negative results of the country enterprise. The firmness of the Catholics, in fact, increases, instead of growing fainter, and they are unanimous in adopting the sentiments of a speaker of the “Union des Campagnes,” who exclaimed lately: “Whatever happens we will not be found wanting. If they despoil us of our churches, they can only take the walls; they cannot take our souls. We will follow our stripped and proscribed altars even into the poverty of a barn or the darkness of a cavern. If they hunt our priests from their presbyteries, we will offer them an asylum under our modest and friendly roofs. If they rob them of their salaries, we will share with them the wages of our labor and the bread of our tables.”
A special cause of irritation to the liberals and free-thinkers was the circumstance that scarcely had the Catholics been despoiled of the church of S. Germain before they bought, to replace it, the Temple Unique, formerly occupied by the Freemasons, and which they dedicated to the Sacred Heart. Accordingly, no sooner had the elections for the renewal of the Grand Council given a majority to M. Carteret, before that gentleman set to work to inflict a fresh blow upon the Catholics, by robbing them of the Church of Notre Dame. This magnificent church was built in 1857 by means of subscription collected throughout the Christian world by Mgr. Mermillod, and M. Dunoyer, the dismissed curate of Geneva. The subscriptions had been given, we need scarcely say, on the faith of the Catholic worship, and that alone, being celebrated in the church; and for seventeen years no other had been celebrated there.
For a long while M. Carteret and the free-thinking liberals had been casting longing looks on this prey. They had been impeded in their designs by energetic resistance, and, amongst others, by that of the ex-Father Hyacinthe. But at last they lost patience, and at their instigation, backed by the pressure of a populace whose worst passions they had inflamed, the Grand Council, at the beginning of January, adopted an order of the day requiring the prompt execution of the law of 2d November, 1850.
This law, which had bestowed upon Catholics the land on which the sacred edifice is built, enacted that the administration of the church should be entrusted to a commission of five members, chosen by the Catholics of the parish of Geneva. By demanding the putting in force of this clause, they hoped to form a commission of Old Catholics who would hand over the church to the radicals concealed under a schismatic mask.
We do not intend to discuss here the question of right; although it appears clear to us that they could not justly turn against Catholics a stipulation which had been made expressly in their favor. The mere equity of the case should have sufficed to prevent, under existing circumstances, the application of the clause. This was the view taken by two distinguished Protestants who had not abandoned all regard for justice—M. Naville and M. de la Rive. The latter, in a remarkable production, observed: “There is not, I think, an impartial mind, which, looking at the matter from the point of view of simple equity, will not decide in favor of that one of the two churches which has borne the whole of the large outlay by which the value of the original grant has been increased more than tenfold. The spot on which now stands one of the most splendid monuments of our city would be still a waste space but for the sums collected and furnished precisely by those persons whose possession of it is now disputed. Notre Dame is exclusively the work of the priests and faithful of the Catholic Church. That is a notorious, undisputed fact.”
There could be no reply to language so true and striking. Moreover, one of those who had collected the subscriptions, in a published letter, stated that “the principal part of the sums employed in the erection of the building had been subscribed by Roman Catholics throughout the world, and that he could assert and prove that those who are separated from the Catholic Church had nothing whatsoever to do with its construction.”
But these protests were useless. Had, however, the sectaries the pretence that they were in a majority in Geneva, and that they had need of Notre Dame? By no means. And the Chronique radical remarked it, demanding: “What will you do with the church of Notre Dame? Can you fill it?” Indeed, no! They will never be able to fill it. But the object was to wrest it from the faithful—from those who flocked to it in crowds, whose registry records, in 1874, 260 Baptisms, 170 Burials, 60 Marriages, 174 First Communions, and 30,000 Communions of adults; and for whom five Masses were celebrated every Sunday. Here, once more the end justifies the means.
The Council of State, moved thus to put in force the law of 1850, convoked the electoral body, deciding, as a preliminary, that the citizens of Geneva alone should take part in the election. To understand the importance of this qualification it will suffice to observe that there are in the canton of Geneva 25,000 Catholic foreigners,[147] and that, by depriving them of the right of voting, the Catholic strength would be seriously weakened.
In spite of this subterfuge, there was every prospect of victory for the faithful, when, on the very eve of the elections, the 6th February, during the afternoon, the number of electors which, in the morning, stood at 1,500 only, was raised to 1,924. Whence these recruits at the last moment had been procured may be easily conjectured. The Courrier de Genève asserted that it saw come to the poll “a band of unknown individuals who appeared to be formed in brigades.”
Thanks to this reinforcement, the free-thinking list obtained a majority of 187 votes.