The Modern Regime Volume II Part 9

Through this office the Catholic priest rises above human conditions to an immeasurable height; for, in the confessional, he exercises supreme power, that which G.o.d is to exercise at the Last Judgment, the formidable power of punis.h.i.+ng or remitting sins, of judgment or of absolution, and, if he intervenes on the death-bed, the faculty of consigning the impenitent or repentant soul to an eternity of rewards or to an eternity of d.a.m.nation.[5337] No creature, terrestrial or celestial, not even the highest of archangels, or St. Joseph or the Virgin,[5338] possesses this veritably divine prerogative. He alone holds it through exclusive delegation, by virtue of a special sacrament, the order which a.s.signs to him the privilege of conferring five others, and which endows him for life with a character apart, ineffaceable and supernatural.--To render himself worthy of it, he has taken a vow of chast.i.ty, he undertakes to root out from his flesh and his heart the consequences of s.e.x; he debars himself from marriage and paternity; through isolation, he escapes all family influences, curiosities and indiscretions; he belongs wholly to his office. He has prepared himself for it long beforehand, he has studied moral theology together with casuistry and become a criminal jurist; and his sentence is not a vague pardon bestowed on penitents after having admitted in general terms that they are sinners. He is bound to weigh the gravity of their errors and the strength of their repentance, to know the facts and details of the fall and the number of relapses, the aggravating or extenuating circ.u.mstances, and, therefore, to interrogate in order to sound the soul to its depths. If some souls are timorous, they surrender themselves to him spontaneously and, more than this, they have recourse to him outside of his tribunal; he marks out for them the path they must follow, he guides them at every turn; he interferes daily, he becomes a director as was said in the seventeenth century, the t.i.tular and permanent director of one or of many lives.[5339] This is still the case at the present day, and especially for women and for all nuns; the central conception around which all Roman ideas turn, the conception of the imperium and of government, has here found its perfect accomplishment and attained to its final outermost limits.

There are now of these spiritual governors about 180,000, installed in the five regions of the world, each a.s.signed to the leaders.h.i.+p of about 1000 souls and as special guardian of a distinct flock, all ordained by bishops inst.i.tuted by the Pope, he being absolute monarch and declared such by the latest council. In the new Rome as in the ancient Rome, authority has gradually become concentrated until it has centered in and is entrusted wholly to the hands of one man. Romulus, the Alban shepherd, was succeeded by Caesar Augustus, Constantine or Theodosius, whose official t.i.tle was "Your Eternal," "Your Divine," and who p.r.o.nounced their decrees "immutable oracles." Peter, the fisherman of Galilee, was succeeded by infallible pontiffs whose official t.i.tle is "Your Holiness," and whose decrees, for every Catholic, are "immutable oracles" in fact as in law, not hyperbolically, but in the full sense of the words expressed by exact terms. The imperial inst.i.tution has thus formed itself anew; it has simply transferred itself from one domain to another; only, in pa.s.sing from the temporal order of things to the spiritual order, it has become firmer and stronger, for it has guarded against two defects which weakened its antique model.--One the one hand, it has provided for the transmission of supreme power; in old Rome, they did not know how to regulate this; hence, when an interregnum occurred, the many violent compet.i.tors, the fierce conflicts, the brutalities, all the usurpations of force, all the calamities of anarchy. In Catholic Rome, the election of the sovereign pontiff belongs definitively to a college of prelates[5340] who vote according to established formalities; these elect the new pope by a majority of two-thirds, and, for more than four centuries, not one of these elections has been contested; between each defunct pope and his elected successor, the transfer of universal obedience has been prompt and unhesitating and, during as after the interregnum, no schism in the Church has occurred.--On the other hand, in the legal t.i.tle of Caesar Augustus there was a defect. According to Roman law, he was only the representative of the people; the community had delegated all its rights incorporate to him; but in it alone was omnipotence vested. According to canon law, omnipotence was vested solely in G.o.d; it is not the Catholic community which possesses this and delegates it to the Pope;[5341] his rights accrue to him from another and higher source.[5342] He is not the elect of the people, but the interpreter, vicar and representative of Jesus Christ.

III. The Church today.

Existing Catholicism and its distinctive traits.--Authority, its prestige and supports.--Rites, the priest, the Pope.

--The Catholic Church and the modern State.--Difficulties in France born out of their respective const.i.tutions.--

Such is the Catholic Church of to-day, a State constructed after the type of the old Roman empire, independent and autonomous, monarchical and centralized, with a domain not of territory but of souls and therefore international, under an absolute and cosmopolite sovereign whose subjects are simultaneously subjects of other non-religious rulers. Hence, for the Catholic Church a situation apart in every country, more difficult than for Greek, Slavic or Protestant churches; these difficulties vary in each country according to the character of the State and with the form which the Catholic Church has received in them.[5343] In France, since the Concordat, these difficulties are of greater gravity than elsewhere.

When, in 1802, the Church initially received her French form, this was a complete systematic organization, after a general and regular plan, according to which she formed only one compartment of the whole.

Napoleon, by his Concordat, organic articles and ulterior decrees, in conformity with the ideas of the century and the principles of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, desired to render the clergy of all kinds, and especially the Catholic clergy, one of the subdivisions of his administrative staff, a corps of functionaries, mere agents a.s.signed to religious interests as formerly to civil matters and therefore manageable and revocable. This they all were, in fact, including the bishops, since they at once tendered their resignations at his order. Still, at the present day all, except the bishops, are in this situation, having lost the owners.h.i.+p of their places and the independence of their lives, through the maintenance of the consular and imperial inst.i.tutions, through removal, through the destruction of the canonical and civil guarantees which formerly protected the lower clergy, through the suppression of the officialite; through the reduction of chapters to the state of vague shadows, through the rupture or laxity of the local and moral tie which once attached every member of the clergy to a piece of land, to an organized body, to a territory, to a flock, and through the lack of ecclesiastical endowment, through the reduction of every ecclesiastic, even a dignitary, to the humble and precarious condition of a salaried dependent.[5344]

A regime of this kind inst.i.tutes in the body subject to it an almost universal dependence, and hence entire submission, pa.s.sive obedience, and the stooping, prostrate att.i.tude of the individual no longer able to stand upright on his own feet.[5345] The clergy to which it is applied cannot fail to be managed from above, which is the case with this one, through its bishops, the Pope's lieutenant-generals, who give the countersign to all of them. Once inst.i.tuted by the Pope, each bishop is the governor for life of a French province and all-powerful in his circ.u.mscription we have seen to what height his moral and social authority has risen, how he has exercised his command, how he has kept his clergy under discipline and available, in what cla.s.s of society he has found his recruits, through what drill and what enthusiasm every priest, including himself, is now a practiced soldier and kept in check; how this army of occupation, distributed in 90 regiments and composed of 50,000 resident priests, is completed by special bodies of troops subject to still stricter discipline, by monastic corporations, by four or five thousand religious inst.i.tutions, nearly all of them given to labor and benevolence; how, to the subordination and correct deportment of the secular clergy is added the enthusiasm and zeal of the regular clergy, the entire devotion, the wonderful self-denial of 30,000 monks and of 120,000 nuns; how this vast body, animated by one spirit, marches steadily along with all its lay supporters towards one end. This purpose, forever the same, is the maintenance of its dominion over all the souls that it has won over, and the conquest of all the souls over which it has not yet established its domination.

Nothing could be more antipathetic to the French State. Built up like the Church, after the Roman model, it is likewise authoritative and absorbent. In the eyes of Napoleon, all these priests appointed or sanctioned by him, who have sworn allegiance to him, whom he pays annually or quarterly, belong to him in a double sense, first under the t.i.tle of subjects, and next under the t.i.tle of clerks. His successors are still inclined to regard them in the same light; in their hands the State is ever what he made it, that is to say a monopolizer, convinced that its rights are illimitable and that its interference everywhere is legitimate, accustomed to governing all it can and leaving to individuals only the smallest portion of themselves, hostile to all bodies that might interpose between them and it, distrustful and ill-disposed towards all groups capable of collective action and spontaneous initiation, especially as concerns proprietary bodies.

A self-const.i.tuted daily overseer, a legal guardian, a perpetual and minute director of moral societies as of local societies, usurper of their domains, undertaker or regulator of education and of charitable enterprises, the State is ever in inevitable conflict with the Church.

The latter, of all moral societies, is the most active; she does not let herself be enslaved like the others, her soul is in her own keeping; her faith, her organization, her hierarchy and her code are all her own.

Against the rights of the State based on human reason, she claims rights founded on divine revelation, and, in self-defense, she justly finds in the French clergy, as the State organized it in 1802, the best disciplined militia, the best cla.s.sified, the most capable of operating together under one countersign and of marching in military fas.h.i.+on under the impulsion that its ecclesiastical leaders choose to give it.

Elsewhere, the conflict is less permanent and less sharp the two conditions which aggravate it and maintain it in France are, one or both, wanting. In other European countries, the Church has not the French form imposed upon it and the difficulties are less; in the United States of America, not only has it not undergone the French transformation, but the State, liberal in principle, interdicts itself against interventions like those of the French State and the difficulties are almost null. Evidently, if there was any desire to attenuate or to prevent the conflict it would be through the first or the last of these two policies. The French State, however, inst.i.tutionally and traditionally, always invasive, is ever tempted to take the contrary course.[5346]--At one time, as during the last years of the Restoration and the first years of the second Empire, it allies itself with the Church; each power helps the other in its domination, and in concert together they undertake to control the en tire man.

In this case, the two centralizations, one ecclesiastic and the other secular, both increasing and prodigiously augmented for a century, work together to overpower the individual. He is watched, followed up, seized, handled severely, and constrained even in his innermost being; he can no longer breathe the atmosphere around him; we can well remember the oppression which, after 1823 and after 1852, bore down on every independent character and on every free intellect.--At another time, as under the first and the third Republic, the State sees in the Church a rival and an adversary; consequently, it persecutes or worries it and we of to-day see with our own eyes how a governing minority, steadily, for a long time, gives offence to a governed majority where it is most sensitive; how it breaks up congregations of men and drives free citizens from their homes whose only fault is a desire to live, pray and labor in common; how it expels nuns and monks from hospitals and schools, with what detriment to the hospital and to the sick, to the school and to the children, and against what unwillingness and what discontent on the part of physicians and fathers of families, and at what bungling waste of public money, at what a gratuitous overburdening of taxation already too great.

IV. Contrasting Vistas.

Other difficulties of the French system.--New and scientific conception of the world.--How opposed to the Catholic conception.--How it is propagated.--How the other is defended.--Losses and gains of the Catholic Church.--Its narrow and broad domains.--Effects of Catholic and French systems on Christian sentiment in France.--Increased among the clergy and diminished in society.

Other disadvantages of the French system are still worse.--In (the nineteenth) century, an extraordinary event occurs. Already about the middle of the preceding century, the discoveries of scientists, coordinated by the philosophers, had afforded the sketch in full of a great picture, still in course of execution and advancing towards completion, a picture of the physical and moral universe. In this sketch the point of sight was fixed, the perspective designed, the various distances marked out, the princ.i.p.al groups drawn, and its outlines were so correct that those who have since continued the work have little to add but to give precision to these and fill them up.[5347] In their hands, from Herschel and Laplace, from Volta, Cuvier, Ampere, Fresnel and Faraday to Darwin and Pasteur, Burnouf, Mommsen and Renan, the blanks on the canvas have been covered, the relief of the figures shown and new features added in the sense of the old ones, thus completing it without changing in any sense the expression of the whole, but, on the contrary, in such a way as to consolidate, strengthen and perfect the master-conception which, purposely or not, had imposed itself on the original painters, all, predecessors and successors, working from nature and constantly inviting a comparison between the painting and the model.--And, for one hundred years, this picture, so interesting, so magnificent, and the accuracy of which is so well guaranteed, instead of being kept private and seen only by select visitors, as in the eighteenth century, is publicly exposed and daily contemplated by an ever-increasing crowd. Through the practical application of the same scientific discoveries, owing to increased facilities for travel and intercommunication, to abundance of information, to the mult.i.tude and cheapness of books and newspapers, to the diffusion of primary instruction, the number of visitors has increased enormously.[5348] Not only has curiosity been aroused among the workmen in towns, but also with the peasants formerly plodding along in the routine of their daily labor, confined to their circle of six leagues in circ.u.mference. This or that small daily journal treats of divine and human things for a million of subscribers and probably for three millions of readers.--Of course, out of a hundred visitors, ninety of them are not capable of comprehending the sense of the picture; they give it only a cursory glance; moreover, their eyes are not properly educated for it, and they are unable to grasp ma.s.ses and seize proportions. Their attention is generally arrested by a detail which they interpret in a wrong way, and the mental image they carry away is merely a fragment or a caricature; basically, if they have come to see a magisterial work, it is most of all due to vanity and so that his spectacle, which some of them enjoy, should not remain the privileged of a few. Nevertheless, however imperfect and confused their impressions, however false and ill-founded their judgments, they have learned something important and one true idea of their visit remains with them: of the various pictures of the world not one is painted by the imagination but from nature.[5349]

Now, between this picture and that which the Catholic Church presents to them, the difference is enormous. Even with rude intellects, or minds otherwise occupied, if the dissimilarity is not clearly perceived it is vaguely felt; in default of scientific notions, the simple hearsay caught on the wing, and which seem to have flickered through the mind like a flash of light over a hard rock, still subsists there in a latent state, amalgamating and agglutinating into a solid block until at length they form a ma.s.sive, refractory sentiment utterly opposed to faith.--With the Protestant, the opposition is neither extreme nor definitive. His faith, which the Scriptures give him for his guidance, leads him to read the Scriptures in the original text and, hence, to read with profit, to call to his aid whatever verifies and explains an ancient text, linguistics, philology, criticism, psychology, combined with general and particular history; thus does faith lay hold on science as an auxiliary. According to diverse souls, the role of the auxiliary is more or less ample it may accordingly adapt itself to the faculties and needs of each soul, and hence extend itself indefinitely, and already do we see ahead the time when the two collaborators, enlightened faith and respectful science, will together paint the same picture, or each separately paint the same picture twice in two different frames.-- With the Slavs and Greeks, faith, like the Church and the rite, is a national thing; creed forms one body with the country, and there is less disposition to dispute it; besides, it is not irksome; it is simply a hereditary relic, a domestic memorial, a family icon, a summary product of an exhausted art no longer well understood and which has ceased to produce. It is rather sketched out than completed, not one feature having been added to it since the tenth century; for eight hundred years this picture has remained in one of the back chambers of the memory, covered with cobwebs as ancient as itself, badly lighted and rarely visited; everybody knows that it is there and it is spoken of with veneration; n.o.body would like to get rid of it, but it is not daily before the eyes so that it may be compared with the scientific picture.--Just the reverse with the Catholic picture. Each century, for eight hundred years, has applied the brush to this picture; still, at the present time we see it grow under our eyes, acquiring a stronger relief, deeper color, a more vigorous harmony, an ever more fixed and striking expression.--To the articles of belief which const.i.tute the creed for the Greek and Slavic church, thirteen subsequent Catholic councils have added to it many others, while the two princ.i.p.al dogmas decreed by the last two councils, Transubstantiation by the council of Trent and the Infallibility of the Pope by that of the Vatican, are just those the best calculated to hinder forever any reconciliation between science and faith.

Thus, for Catholic nations, the dissimilarity, instead of diminis.h.i.+ng, is aggravated; both pictures, one painted by faith and the other by science, become more and more dissimilar, while the profound contradiction inherent in the two conceptions becomes glaring through their very development, each developing itself apart and both in a counter-sense, one through dogmatic verdicts and through the strengthening of discipline and the other by ever-increasing discoveries and by useful applications, each adding daily to its authority, one by precious inventions and the other by good works, each being recognized for what it is, one as the leading instructor of positive truths and the other as the leading instructor of sound morality. That is why we find a combat in each Catholic breast as to which of the two concepts is to be accepted as guide. To every sincere mind and to one capable of entertaining both, each is irreducible to the other. To the vulgar mind, unable to combine both in thought, they exist side by side and clash with each other only occasionally when action demands a choice.

Many intelligent, cultivated people, and even savants, especially specialists, avoid confronting them, one being the support of their reason and the other the guardian of their conscience; between them, in order to prevent any possible conflict, they interpose in advance a wall of separation, a compartment part.i.tion,[5350]" which prevents them from meeting and clas.h.i.+ng. Others, at length, clever or not too clear-sighted politicians, try to force their agreement, either by a.s.signing to each its domain and in prohibiting mutual access, or by uniting both domains through the semblance of bridges, by imitation stairways, and other illusory communications which the phantasmagoria of human eloquence can always establish between incompatible things and which procure for man, if not the acquisition of a truth, at least a pleasure in the play of words. The ascendancy of the Catholic faith over these uncertain, inconsequent, tormented souls is more or less weak or strong according to time, place, circ.u.mstance, individuals and groups; in the larger group it has diminished, while it has increased in the smaller one.

The latter comprises the regular and secular clergy with its approximate recruits and its small body of supporters; never was it so exemplary and so fervent; the monastic inst.i.tution in particular never flourished so spontaneously and more usefully. Nowhere in Europe are more missionaries formed, so many "brethren" for small schools, so many volunteers, male and female, in the service of the poor, the sick, the infirm and of children, such vast communities of women freely devoting their lives to teaching and to charity.[5351] Life in common, under uniform and strict rules, to a people like the French, more capable than any other of enthusiasm and of emulation, of generosity and of discipline, naturally p.r.o.ne to equality, sociable and predisposed to fraternity through the need of companions.h.i.+p, sober, moreover, and laborious, a life in common is no more distasteful in the convent than in the barracks, nor in an ecclesiastical army more than in a lay army, while France, always Gallic, affords as ready a hold nowadays to the Roman system as in the time of Augustus. When this system obtains a hold on a soul it keeps its hold, and the belief it imposes becomes the princ.i.p.al guest, the sovereign occupant of the intellect. Faith, in this occupied territory, no longer allows her t.i.tle to be questioned; she condemns doubt as a sin, she interdicts investigation as a temptation, she presents the peril of un belief as a mortal danger, she enrolls conscience in her service against any possible revolt of reason. At the same time that she guards herself against attacks, she strengthens her possession; to this end, the rites she prescribes are efficient, and their efficiency, multiplicity and convergence--confession and communion, retreats, spiritual exercises, abstinences, and ceremonies of every kind, the wors.h.i.+p of saints and of the Virgin, of relics and images, orisons on the lips and from the heart, faithful attendance on the services and the exact fulfillment of daily duties--all attest it.

Through its latest acquisitions and the turn it now takes, Catholic faith buries itself in and penetrates down to the very depths of the sensitive and tried souls which it has preserved from foreign influences; for it supplies to this chosen flock the aliment it most needs and which it loves the best. Below the metaphysical, abstract Trinity, of which two of the three persons are out of reach of the imagination, she has set up an historical Trinity whose personages are all perceptible to the senses, Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The Virgin, since the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, has risen to an extraordinary height; her spouse accompanies her in her exaltation;[5352] between them stands their son, child or man, which forms the Holy Family.[5353] No wors.h.i.+p is more natural and more engaging to chaste celibates in whose brain a pure, vague vision is always present, the reverie of a family const.i.tuted without the intervention of s.e.x. No system of wors.h.i.+p furnishes so many precise objects for adoration, all the acts and occurrences, the emotions and thoughts of three adorable lives from birth to death and in the beyond, down to the present day. Most of the religious inst.i.tutions founded within the past eighty years devote themselves to meditation on one of these lives considered at some one point of incident or of character, either purity, charity, compa.s.sion or justice, conception, nativity or infancy, presence in the Temple, at Nazareth, at Bethany, or on Calvary, the pa.s.sion, the agony, the a.s.sumption or apparition under this or that circ.u.mstance or place, and the rest. There are now in France, under the name and patronage of Saint Joseph alone, one hundred and seventeen congregations and communities of women. Among so many appellations, consisting of special watchwords designating and summing up the particular preferences of a devout group, one name is significant there are seventy-nine congregations or communities of women which have devoted themselves to the heart of Mary or of Jesus or to both together.[5354] In this way, besides the narrow devotion which is attached to the corporeal emblem, a tender piety pursues and attains its supreme end, the mute converse of the soul, not with the dim Infinite, the indifferent Almighty who acts through general laws, but with a person, a divine person clothed with the vesture of humanity and who has not discarded it, who has lived, suffered and loved, who still loves, who, in glory above, welcomes there the effusions of his faithful souls and who returns love for love.

All this is incomprehensible, bizarre or even repulsive to the public at large, and still more so to the vulgar. It sees in religion only what is very plain, a government; and in France, it has already had enough of government temporally; add a complementary one on the spiritual side and that will be more and too much. Alongside of the tax-collector and the gendarme in uniform, the peasant, the workman and the common citizen encounter the cure in his ca.s.sock who, in the name of the Church, as with the other two in the name of the State, gives him orders and subjects him to rules and regulations. Now every rule is annoying and the latter more than the others; one is rid of the tax-collector after paying the tax, and of the gendarme when no act is committed against the law; the cure is much more exacting; he interferes in domestic life and in private matters and a.s.sumes to govern man entirely. He admonishes his paris.h.i.+oners in the confessional and from the pulpit, he lords it over them even in their inmost being, and his injunctions bind them in every act, even at home, around the fireside, at table and in bed, comprising their moments of repose and relaxation, even hours of leisure and in the tavern. Villagers, after listening to a sermon against the tavern and drunkenness, murmur and are heard to exclaim: "Why does he meddle with our affairs? Let him say his ma.s.s and leave us alone." They need him for baptism, marriage and burial, but their affairs do not concern him.

Moreover, among the observances he prescribes, many are inconvenient, tasteless or disagreeable--fasting, Lent, a pa.s.sive part in a Latin ma.s.s, prolonged services, ceremonies of which the details are all insignificant, but of which the symbolic meaning is to-day of no account to people in attendance; add to all this the mechanical recitation of the Pater and of the Ave, genuflections and crossing one's self, and especially obligatory confession at specified dates. Nowadays the worker and the peasant manage without these constraints. In many villages, there is n.o.body at high ma.s.s on Sundays but women, and often, in small numbers, one or two troops of children led by the clerical instructor and by the "Sister," with a few old men; the great majority of the men remain outside, under the porch and on the square before the church chatting with each other about the crops, on local news and on the weather.

In the eighteenth century, when a cure was obliged to report to the "intendant" the number of inhabitants of his parish, he had only to count his communicants at the Easter service; their number was about that of the adult and valid population, say one half or two fifths of the sum total.[5355] Now, at Paris, out of two millions of Catholics who are of age, about one hundred thousand perform this strict duty, aware of its being strict and the imperative prescription of which is stamped in their memory by a rhyme which they have learned in their infancy;[5356] out of one hundred persons, this is equal to five communicants, of which four are women and one is a man, in other words, about one woman out of twelve or thirteen and one man out of fifty. In the provinces,[5357] and especially in the country, there is good reason for doubling and even tripling these figures; in the latter case, the most favorable one and, without any doubt, the rarest, the proportion of professed Christians is that of one to four among women and one man out of twelve. Evidently, with the others who make not attend Church regularly, with the three women and the eleven other men, their faith is only verbal; if they are still Catholics, it is on the outside and not within.

Besides this separation from the main body and this indifference, other signs denote disaffection and even hostility.--In Paris, at the height of the Revolution, in May and June 1793, the shopkeepers, artisans and market-women, the whole of the common people, were still religious,[5358] "kneeling in the street" when the Host pa.s.sed by, and before the relics of Saint Leu carried along in ceremonial procession, pa.s.sionately fond of his wors.h.i.+p, and suddenly melted, "ashamed, repentant and with tears in their eyes, when, inadvertently, their Jacobin rulers tolerated the publicity of a procession. Nowadays, among the craftsmen, shopkeepers and lower cla.s.s of employees, there is nothing more unpopular than the Catholic Church. Twice, under the Restoration and the second Empire, she has joined hands with a repressive government, while its clergy has seemed to be not merely an efficient organ but, again, the central promoter of all repression.-- Hence, acc.u.mulated bitterness that still survives. After 1830, the archbishopric of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois is sacked; in 1871 the archbishop and other ecclesiastical hostages are murdered. For two years after 1830 a priest in his ca.s.sock dared not show himself in public;[5359] he ran the risk of being insulted in the streets; since 1871, the majority of the Parisian electors, through the interposition of the Munic.i.p.al Council which they elect over and over again, persists in driving "Brethren" and "Sisters" from the schools and hospitals in order to put laymen in their places and pay twice as much for work not done as well.[5360]--In the beginning, antipathy was confined to the clergy; through contamination, it reached the doctrine, to include the faith, the entire Catholicism and even Christianity itself. Under the Restoration, it was called, in provocative language, the priest party, and under the second Empire, the clericals. Afterwards, confronting the Church and under a contrary name, the anti-clerical league was formed by its adversaries, a sort of negative church which possessed, or tried to, its own dogmas and rites, its own a.s.semblies and discipline: and for lack of something better, it has its own fanaticism, that of aversion; on the word being given, it marches, rank and file, against the other, its enemy, and manifests, if not its belief, at least its unbelief in refusing or in avoiding the ministration of the priest. In Paris, twenty funerals out of a hundred, purely civil, are not held in a church; out of one hundred marriages, twenty-five, purely civil, are not blessed by the Church; twenty-four infants out of a hundred are not baptized.[5361]

And, from Paris to the provinces, both sentiment and example are propagated. For sixteen years, in our parliaments elected by universal suffrage, the majority maintains that party in power which wages war against the Church; which, systematically and on principle, is and remains hostile to the Catholic religion; which has its own religion for which it claims dominion; which is possessed by a doctrinal spirit, and, in the direction of intellects and souls, aims at subst.i.tuting this new spirit for the old one; which, as far as it can, withdraws from the old one its influence, or its share in education and in charity; which breaks up the congregations of men, and overtaxes congregations of women; which enrolls seminarians in the army, and deprives suspect cures of their salaries; in short, which, through its acts collectively and in practice, proclaims itself anti-Catholic. Many of its acts certainly displease the peasant. He would prefer to retain the teaching "brother"

in the public school and the "sister" in the hospital as nurse or as teacher in the school; both would cost less, and he is used to their dark dresses and their white caps; moreover, he is not ill-disposed towards his resident cure, who is a "good fellow." Nevertheless, in sum, the rule of the cure is not to his taste; he does not wish to have him back, and he distrusts priests, especially the aspect of their allies who now consist of the upper bourgeoisie and the n.o.bles. Hence, out of ten million electors, five or six millions, entertaining partial dislikes and mute reservations, continue to vote, at least provisionally, for anti-Christian radicals. All this shows that, through an insensible and slow reaction, the great rural ma.s.s, following the example of the great urban ma.s.s, is again becoming pagan[5362]; for one hundred years the wheel turns in this sense, without stopping, and this is serious, still more serious for the nation than for the Church.

In France, the inner Christianity, has, for all that, through the dual effect of its Catholic and French envelope, grown warmer among the clergy especially among the regular clergy, but is has cooled off among the people and it is especially here that it is needed.

Post Scriptum:

Taine died in 1893 not long after having written this. Much has happened since and the struggle between "Lay Republicans" and the Catholic Church has continued. In "QUID 2000," a French popular reference manual containing on page 515 some notes on the evolution of the Catholic religion in France, we can read the following:

"1899-11-11 the police occupies l'a.s.somption, 6, rue Francois Ier. The Augustin brothers are accused in court for breaking the law forbidding unauthorized a.s.semblies... 1900 Thomas, mayor of Kremlin-Bicetre, forbids the wearing of the ecclesiastical costume in his town. This example is followed by others..." Reading further we may learn that later in 1901 to 1904 the various Catholic orders are forbidden or dissolved and most French Church property seized. In 1905 a law decreeing a separation between the State and the Church is narrowly and bitterly voted and a struggle between France and the Pope begins ...

Between 1914 and 1918 25 000 priests and seminarians are mobilized and app. 5000 among them fall. This disarms many of the Church's enemies and in 1920 funds are appropriated for the re-establishment of the French emba.s.sy to the Pope in Rome. etc. etc. Today the Catholic religion is tolerated more or less in the same manner as Judaism, Islam etc. (SR.)

[Footnote 5301: The Budget of 1881. 17,010 desservans of small parishes have 900 francs per annum; 4500 have 1000 francs; 9492, sixty years of age and over, have from 1100 to 1300 francs. 2521 cures of the second cla.s.s have from 1200 to 1300 francs; 850 cures of the first cla.s.s, or rated the same, have from 1500 to 1600 francs; 65 archipretre cures have 1600 francs, that of Paris 2400 francs; 709 canons have from 1600 to 2400 francs; 193 vicars-general have from 2500 to 4000 francs.--Abbe Bougaud, "le Grand Peril," etc., p.23. In the diocese of Orleans, which may be taken as an average type, fees, comprising the receipts for ma.s.ses, are from 250 to 300 francs per annum, which brings the salary of an ordinary desservant up to about 1200 francs.]

[Footnote 5302: The fees, etc., of the cure of the Madeleine are estimated at about 40,000 francs a year. The prefect of police has 40,000 francs a year, and the prefect of the Seine, 50,000 francs.]

[Footnote 5303: Praelectiones juris canonici, II., 264-267.]

[Footnote 5304: Ibid., II., 268.]

[Footnote 5305: "The Ancient Regime," pp. 119, 147. (Ed. Laffont I. pp.

92, 115.) (On the "Chartreuse" of Val Saint-Pierre, read the details given by Merlon de Thionville in his "Memoires.")]

[Footnote 5306: Praelectiones juris canonici, II.,205. (Edict of Louis XIII., 1629, art. 9.)]

[Footnote 5307: The following are other instances. With the "Filles de Saint-Vincent de Paule," the superior of the "Pretres de la Mission"

proposes two names and all the Sisters present choose one or the other by a plurality of votes. Local superiors are designated by the Council of Sisters who always reside at the princ.i.p.al establishment.--With the "Freres des ecoles Chretiennes," a.s.sembled at the call of the a.s.sistants in function, a general chapter meets at Paris, 27 rue Oudinot. This chapter, elected by all professed members belonging to the order, comprises 15 directors of the leading houses and 15 of the older brethren who have been at least fifteen years in profession. Besides these 30, the a.s.sistants in function, or who have resigned, and the visitors of the houses form, by right, a part of the chapter which comprises 72 members. This chapter elects the general superior for ten years. He is again eligible; he appoints for three years the directors of houses, and he can prolong or replace them. With the Carthusians, the superior-general is elected by the professed brethren of the Grande Chartreuse who happen to be on hand when the vacancy occurs. They vote by sealed ballots unsigned, under the presidency of two priors without a vote.]

[Footnote 5308: The reader may call to mind the portrait of Brother Philippe by Horace Vernet. For details of the terrible mortifications inflicted on himself by Lacordaire see his life by Father Chocarne.

"Every sort of mortification which the saints prized, hair-cloth jackets of penance, scourges, whips of every kind and form, he knew of and used.... He scourged himself daily and often several times during the day. During Lent and especially on Good Friday he literally scored and flayed himself alive."]

[Footnote 5309: Notes (unpublished) by Count Chaptal.]

[Footnote 5310: "etat des congregations, communantes et a.s.sociations religieuses, autorisees et non-autorisees, dresse en execution"

according to article 12, law of Dec. 28, 1876. (Imprimerie nationale, 1878)--"L'Inst.i.tut des freres des ecoles chretiennes," by Eugene Rendu (1882), p. 10.--Th. W. Allies, "Journal d'un voyage en France, p.81.

(Conversation with Brother Philippe, July 16, 1845.)--"Statistique de Inst.i.tut des Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes," Dec.31, 1888. (Drawn up by the head establishment.) Out of the 121 houses of 1789, there were 117 of these in France and 4 in the colonies. Out of the 1,286 houses of 1888, there are 1,010 in France and in the colonies. The other 276 are in other countries.]

[Footnote 5311: emile Keller, "Les Congregations religieuses en France"

(1880), preface, xxIII., xvIII., and p. 492.]

[Footnote 5312: In 1789, 37,000 Sisters; in 1866, 86,000 Sisters ("Statistique de la France," 1866); in 1878, 127,753 Sisters ("etat des congregations," etc.).]