286 



FRANCE. 



and other credit societies may have their bills 

 discounted. The Senate, on March 28, agreed to 

 a bill limiting the hours of labor for women as 

 well as for children employed in factories to 

 eleven hours a day. 



A proposition to allow women to vote for the 

 Conseil des Prudhommes was carried in the 

 Chamber by a good majority, but a resolution to 

 allow them" to be members of the body was de- 

 feated. 



In the triennial elections of one half the mem- 

 bers of the departmental councils in August 

 many Catholic candidates declared their accept- 

 ance of the republic. In the place of 1,980 Re- 

 publicans and 872 Conservatives who retired, 

 there were elected 2,157 Republicans, 26 Con- 

 stitutionalists or Republican Conservatives, and 

 667 Monarchists. 



Church and State. On Jan. 21 Cardinals 

 Richard, Desprez, Langenieux, Place, and Fou- 

 lon, Archbishops of Paris, Toulouse, Rheims, 

 Rennes, and Lyons published a complaint re- 

 garding the situation of the Church, in which 

 they said that the state had become atheistic, and 

 had revived obsolete enactments in order to cur- 

 tail the liberty of the bishops ; that ecclesiastical 

 subsidies were cut down, monks dispersed, and 

 the remaining congregations ruined by unjust 

 taxation; renegade priests were allowed to marry; 

 and the teachings and dignity of the Church 

 were violated in the divorce law, the seculariza- 

 tion of the schools, the enforced military service 

 of seminarists, the exclusion of religion from 

 charitable institutions, and the control of 

 churches by municipalities. Catholics were 

 enjoined to respect the laws and the authorities, 

 except where they violated conscience or en- 

 croached OP the spiritual domain, in which case 

 they should offer a firm resistance. This cata- 

 logue of the sins of the republic accompanied a 

 reluctant and equivocal declaration that, in ac- 

 cordance rrith the orders of the Holy See and 

 with Catholic tradition, they would refrain 

 from opposing the form of government that 

 France had chosen for herself. Cardinal Lavi- 

 gerie, of Algiers, who had taken the lead in the 

 rapprochement between the French Church and 

 the republic, announced his adhesion to the 

 letter as an acceptance of the republic, which 

 Catholics not only had no desire to oppose, but 

 were bound to respect. The declaration of the 

 French cardinals, to which all the bishops, ex- 

 cept one, gave their adhesion, did not represent 

 the position of the Holy See, which was unfolded 

 at full length in an encyclical of the Pope to the 

 French bishops, published on Feb. 19. After 

 affirming that religion alone can create a true 

 social bond and solidly secure a nation's peace, 

 and denouncing as a calumny the charge often 

 brought against the Church, that it aims to 

 secure a political domination over the state, the 

 encyclical explains the principles of the relation 

 of the Church to civil government, especially in 

 France. 



There have been many governments in France 

 during this century, and each has had its distinctive 

 form imperial, monarchical, and republican. Each of 

 these is good so long only as it makes for the common 

 well-being, and one form may be good at one time 

 and another at another. Catholics, like all citizens, 

 have a perfect right to prefer one form to another, as 



none of these forms in itself is opposed to Christian 

 teaching. The Church has always in its dealings 

 with states fully recognized this principle. Each 

 state is a special individual result, growing out of and 

 modified by its peculiar surroundings, and thus ob- 

 ligatory upon the members which compose it, who 

 should do nothing to seek to overturn it or change its 

 form. The Church, therefore, guardian of the truest 

 and loftiest conception of political sovereignty, since 

 it derives it from God, has always reproved sub- 

 versive doctrines and condemned tl'ie rebels to legiti- 

 mate authority, and this, indeed, even when those in 

 authority used their power against the Church. Yet 

 it must not be forgotten that no governmental form is 

 definitive. The Church alone has been able, and will 

 continue, to preserve its form of government. But in 

 human history crisis follows crisis, revolution revolu- 

 tion, and order anarchy, and in these circumstances a 

 new form of government may be needful to satisfy 

 new wants and conditions. The principle of author- 

 ity never changes, but only the method of its expres- 

 sion or the form of its incarnation. Hence authority 

 is enduring, for in its nature it is imposed for the 

 well-being of all, or, in other terms, is considered, as 

 such, to be derived from God. Consequently, when a 

 new government is founded, acceptance thereof is not 

 only permissible, but a duty. But for some people 

 there is a difficulty here. Tins republic, they say, is 

 animated by sentiments so antichristian that honor- 

 able men, and Catholics in particular, could not con- 

 scientiously accept it, and this is a widespread cause 

 of dissension. But all this divergence might have 

 been avoided but for a regrettable confusion of " con- 

 stituted powers " and " legislation." Indeed, under the 

 most unimpeachable form legislation may be detest- 

 able, and likewise under a very imperfect form there 

 may be excellent legislation. History bears ample 

 witness, and the Church has always recognized this 

 fact. Legislation is the work of men invested with 

 power, who, in fact, govern the nation whence it 

 results that in practice the quality of laws depends 

 more on the quality of these men than on the form of 

 government. Those laws will be good or bad accord- 

 ing as legislators have minds imbued with good or 

 bad principles. The respect due to constituted au- 

 thorities can not involve the respect, much less the 

 obedience, to any legislative measure whatever en- 

 acted by these same authorities. Let it not be forgot- 

 ten that law is a prescription ordained by reason and 

 promulgated for the good of the community by those 

 who have for that purpose been intrusted with power. 

 Never, consequently, can points of legislation be ap- 

 proved which are h'ostile to religion and to God. The 

 concordat some of the adversaries of the Church 

 wish to abolish so as to give the state every liberty of 

 molesting the Church, while others wish to uphold it 

 in order to fetter the Church, as though the conces- 

 sions made by the latter could be separated from the 

 engagements made by the state. Catholics should 

 seek not to provoke a schism on a subject which it is 

 for the Holy See to handle. Separation of the state 

 from the Church is tantamount to separating human 

 from Christian and divine legislation. When the 

 state refuses to give God what is God's, it refuses by 

 a necessary consequence to give citizens that to which 

 they are entitled as men, for the true rights of man 

 spring from his duties to God. In certain countries 

 the churches have been reduced to a common-law 

 status, and this, if it has serious inconveniences, may 

 have some advantages. But in France, a nation Cath- 

 olic by its traditions and by the faith of the great ma- 

 jority of its sons, the Church should not be placed in 

 so precarious a position. Catholics can all the less 

 advocate such a separation as their enemies avowedly 

 aim at entire independence of political toward reli- 

 gious legislation, indifference to the interests of Chris- 

 tian society, and the very negation of the existence of 

 the Church. As soon as the latter, by redoubled 

 activity, had made its work prosperous, the state 

 would intervene and exclude French Catholics from 

 the common law. 



