Baiting the Church in France

I

NOTHING is more surprising in French politics than the fact that the Government which came into power after M. Poincaré’s downfall should have added enormously to its extreme financial difficulties by reviving the old religious feuds, which had so divided France before the war that the German militarists were able to count upon France being unprepared to resist attack. The explanation is to be found only in the history of French party politics, and in the deep-rooted anticlerical tradition that still animates Radical and Socialist politicians. And although the French Catholics remain a relatively small minority of the whole people, and although in the municipal elections which were held at the beginning of May they lost ground even in the districts where their resistance to the revival of anticlericalism has been most successfully organized, yet it is not too much to say that M. Herriot’s arbitrary resumption of hostilities against the Church contributed largely to his own downfall.

The situation is complicated and requires some explanation. M. Herriot’s conflict with the Catholics arose chiefly through his insistence upon three measures, which were in themselves admittedly only an installment of his full intentions if he had been able to carry out his programme. His first declaration of policy after forming his Government last year announced in the forefront of his programme that he would abolish the Embassy to the Vatican, which had been restored by M. Briand when he was Prime Minister and leader of the Bloc National. It announced also that the pre-war laws directed against the religious congregations, which had fallen into abeyance during the war, would be strictly enforced again. And he announced further that the recovered provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, which had been allowed to live under a special régime that gives them freedom to have separate denominational schools for each of the churches, — Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish, — would be asked to accept the same system as has long been in force in the rest of France.

Each of these proposals was certain to evoke a great deal of hostility. There was no reason whatever for adopting them at a time of international crisis, except to gratify the doctrinaire opinions of the parties of the Left. There was everything to be said in favor of leaving matters as they were, at any rate until the Government was no longer dependent upon the good-will of all French citizens for the renewal of the vast internal loans which fall due for redemption this year and in the near future. But M. Herriot deliberately set about enforcing by stages the full policy of his party. The result has been to create an enormous amount of friction all over France and to discourage the Catholics, who include many of the large landowners and a multitude of thrifty peasants, from investing their money in the public loans.

So, when he was finally faced with a financial crisis that had left the Treasury almost entirely without resources even to meet its current expenditure, M. Herriot as a last resort called upon the one conspicuous member of his own party who had persistently opposed this policy of reviving the old feud with the Church, Senator de Monzie, and asked him to become Finance Minister. M. de Monzie insisted before accepting the office that he would do so only if M. Herriot would agree to retain at the Vatican a diplomatic representative of real distinction who, even if he did not rank as an ambassador, should at least be an effective diplomatic agent for the whole of France. M. Herriot had to capitulate and M. de Monzie became his Finance Minister. But the mischief had already been done and the Government fell within a few days. M. Herriot had to make way for M. Painlevé, who, it is true, had been actively identified with the policy of reviving the trouble with the Church, but is admittedly only a figurehead.

The new Government includes at least three men of outstanding importance who are all committed to opposing any measures which tend to outrage Catholic feeling. M. de Monzie has gone to the Ministry of Education and will therefore be in charge of the delicate question of the schools in Alsace and elsewhere. M. Briand, who himself restored diplomatic relations with the Vatican, has become Foreign Minister; and both he and M. Caillaux, who has returned to public life to try to restore financial solvency, are men of much greater importance than the Prime Minister. M. Caillaux has all his life been strongly anticlerical; but there is little doubt, since his whole career now depends upon his success in restoring the French finances, that he will oppose any measures which would give the Catholics a definite grievance against the Government.

Yet, though the newly formed Government thus seems unlikely to pursue the policy of attacking the Catholics, the trouble between the State and the Church is far from having been ended. For one thing, the average duration of French governments is less than twelve months, and the future of this present Government cannot but be stormy. The municipal elections have changed the situation by confirming and strengthening the mandate given to the Bloc des Gauches. Many important cities were actually won from the Conservatives, and the final results show that the Left has gained as a whole much ground and lost almost none. But the most striking feature of the elections was the decisive victory of the Socialists, who hold the balance of power in the Chamber of Deputies. They won ground from the Radicals, who are less extreme, and also from the Communists, who, after the first results had shown that they were faring very badly, withdrew their candidates in most districts and agreed to support the Socialists instead. Consequently the Painlevé Government is still subject to the same dictation which the Socialists were able to exercise upon M. Herriot; while the Socialists have gained so substantially at the recent elections that they will be less in a mood to condone compromises than ever before, and they can now plan with some confidence for the formation of a Socialist Government if another election has to be held, with the Radicals supporting them, instead of their having to support a Radical Government. And the Socialists are more determined than ever to press forward their attack upon what they describe generally as the ‘capitalist and clerical reaction.’ M. Caillaux’s appeals for national unity to stabilize credit will not count with them. They believe in a levy on capital and in showing no tenderness for the susceptibilities of capitalists.

II

The question of the Vatican Embassy is obviously more or less an academic issue, but it has been magnified by both sides as a symbolic conflict. All the parties of the Left are agreed in desiring that the Church should be entirely separate from the State, as it has been since the Law of Separation was passed in 1905. But the Treaty negotiations of Versailles revealed the wide extent of the Holy See’s influence in international affairs; and besides, experience during the war and in the subsequent peacemaking had shown that the Vatican was, in M. Briand’s phrase, the ‘best listening-post in European diplomacy.’ M. Briand himself had been personally responsible for abolishing the diplomatic connection with the Vatican before the war, and his conversion to demanding its restoration showed how much opinion had changed in the light of experience. The most characteristic exponent of this new attitude toward the Vatican was Senator de Monzie, a brilliant young Radical who, while not being a Catholic, maintained that France ought to have her diplomatic representatives in every important international centre. He demanded simultaneously that France should have her ambassadors at the Vatican, at Moscow, and in Constantinople. His views in regard to Moscow were adopted even by M. Poincaré; and in regard to the Vatican also most Frenchmen consider that his argument is irrefutable, so far as it goes.

But the Radicals and Socialists have always regarded the Church as the implacable enemy of the Republic; and their present insistence upon abolishing the restored Vatican Embassy is chiefly based on the plea that the Papal Nuncio in Paris, Monsignor Ceretti, has used his diplomatic position to make Paris the headquarters of a Catholic revival in France. Monsignor Ceretti is in fact one of the ablest and most experienced diplomatists in Europe, and he has been scrupulously careful to avoid any breach of diplomatic etiquette. No complaint on this score could possibly be proved against him. But he has undoubtedly been a powerful influence in rallying the French Catholic forces for a religious revival. Any capable envoy from the Holy See will always have such influence, and as the personal delegate of the Pope he naturally commands the allegiance of all French Catholics on moral questions.

The Radicals’ and Socialists’ objection to the Vatican Embassy is really a religious much more than a political matter, though they attack it chiefly on political grounds. Thus they deny that the renewal of diplomatic relations has done what was claimed for it by M. Briand and other politicians, who have no affection for the Vatican, but who believe it necessary to ensure the goodwill of the Holy See in the many questions affecting the French spheres of influence in Africa, in the Middle East, and in the Far East, where the French missionaries have been and still remain the chief agents of French colonization. They contend that the Holy See has not given more favorable treatment to French interests than if there had been no Ambassador at the Vatican. And they complain that, whereas Monsignor Ceretti has been able to do much for consolidating the Catholic forces in France itself, the French Ambassador at the Vatican has been no more than an ornamental figure at public ceremonies.

Such questions can be debated interminably; but the real objection of the Left to having any connection with the Vatican is that it strengthens the Catholic organizations in France to such an extent that any sacrifice of French interests abroad is preferable to incurring such a danger to the Republic at home.

The Catholics, of course, hotly repudiate the suggestion that they are enemies of the Republic, and it is in fact ridiculous to pretend that they are as a whole anti-Republican even in theory. It is true that the older generation of the French clergy, who are now mostly dead, did feel that the Republic could only be an agency of dechristianization in France, and they could see no future for the Church except by a restoration of the Monarchy in some form. But such views have long ceased to be commonly held. Even in Brittany, which has always been the chief stronghold of the Royalists, the great majority of the Catholics nowadays are irrevocably committed to support of the Republic, and are in most cases enthusiastic Republicans. But the Royalist movement led by M. Léon Daudet and M. Charles Maurras has since the war exercised a strong influence on the younger generation, and a certain number of the younger clergy have openly declared their admiration for these leaders of the Action Frangaise. It, however, has lost ground rapidly in the past few years; all its chief candidates at the last election were hopelessly beaten. And it has no more implacable foes than the Catholic Republicans who consider that this neo-royalist movement has done nothing more than expose the Church to the old charge of being the constant enemy of the Republic.

Nothing exasperates the Catholics in France more than this revival by the Left of a charge which they consider monstrously unjustified. They retort by appealing to the magnificent military record of the Catholics in the war. They claim with pride that during the war the Catholic Generals (of whom Foch was the most conspicuous example), who had been deprived of high positions before the war because they were distrusted for being Catholics, had to be given the chief commands before the French Army could find its best and most devoted leaders. The list of these Catholic Generals is very impressive. It includes Foch, Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied Armies, and his righthand man, General Weygand; Marshal Pétain, Commander-in-Chief of the French Army; old Generals like Pau and Castelnau, who performed wonders in the organization of defense and of attack; Marshal Lyautey, who not only made Africa safe for France during the war, but so won the confidence of the Africans that they enrolled in scores of thousands in the French Army; General Mangin, the hardest fighter of all, who created the black army and led it to victory against the most impregnable positions, besides having command of the first big counter-offensive which began the German debacle; Marshal Franchet Desperey, the conqueror of Bulgaria; General Gouraud, the hero of Gallipoli, who afterward consolidated the French influence in Syria as no man had done before. These are only the most notable of a group of brilliant commanders who all are devout Catholics, and whose religious convictions would have prevented them from holding any important command before the war. Can they be fairly accused of lack of patriotism?

Nor were the great Catholic soldiers the only Catholics who set a heroic example during the war. The French hierarchy did more than most men to stimulate the patriotic spirit of the people under a terrific strain. Cardinal Lugon, for instance, the Archbishop of Reims; or Cardinal Charost, now primate of Brittany, who during the war was Bishop of Lille, whence, although he was kept virtually in captivity by the Germans, he issued vehement appeals to the world against Germany’s enrollment of French civilian labor and the deportation of women and children. But, above all, the Catholics point to the record of the French clergy who fought in the ranks or who worked tirelessly on every battlefield as army chaplains. When war broke out the Army had no chaplains. The previous Radical Governments had done away with them. But the troops and the whole nation demanded that they should be allowed to go with the fighting men; and when the appeal for chaplains went forth the members of the banished religious congregations came flocking back from all quarters of the world to serve. They were mentioned in dispatches time after time, decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the Military Medal and the Legion of Honor, by the very politicians who had previously driven them out; and the whole French Army came to expect from them a higher standard of heroism and moral endurance than from anyone else. Nearly five thousand French priests were killed in action. Many thousands were wounded or maimed for life. And now in any church in France the clergy can be seen wearing their military decorations, as all Frenchmen do, while many of them have lost limbs or been stricken blind under fire, but still carry on their work.

Their future more than anything else is the chief cause of the trouble between the Catholics and the Bloc des Gauches. The really burning question is whether M. Herriot’s intention of driving these members of the religious communities out of France again shall be frustrated or fulfilled. The Socialists insist upon it ruthlessly, and M. Painlevé has urged the same course again and again. It remains to be seen whether the financial difficulties of France will deter the anticlericals from carrying out their desire. These religious communities touch the lives of every family in France. Nearly every family has some member who is a monk or nun or priest. Everyone who served in the trenches has some vivid memory of the noble devotion of priests either serving as plain soldiers or ministering to the wounded and dying under fire. But the party politicians are inexorable in demanding that the ‘unalterable laws’ of the Republic shall be enforced as before the war.

III

M. Herriot announced in his first ministerial declaration that the law would be enforced. In practice this means that the members of religious communities who came back from Belgium, from Holland, from England, from the Far East, from Canada and the United States, and from all parts of the world, and who have simply stayed on in their own country after their war service ended, will have to face exile again. The laws against the congregations insisted that every religious community must obtain authorization from the Government to remain in France. Most of the Orders who applied for such authorization were immediately refused and were ordered to leave. Others, like the Jesuits, against whose schools the laws were chiefly directed, never went through the farce of demanding authorization and simply waited to be turned out. But the Jesuits more than any other Order distinguished themselves in military service. And they have been conspicuous in announcing their refusal to be driven out again. One of them, Père Doncoeur, who was one of the most famous army chaplains in the war, published an open letter to M. Herriot defying him to do his worst and stating simply that they might be sent to prison or be put to death, but that no power on earth would ever again force them to acquiesce in banishment from the country in whose battles they shed their blood. And this bold defiance has been echoed in every remote little parish church in France.

M. Herriot, however, showed his resolution to put the old laws into force again by instituting a general inquiry into the state of the religious Orders. Instructions were issued to the prefect of every Department to send out agents to obtain full particulars concerning every religious community. The inquiry was met almost immediately with organized passive resistance; and when the strangely miscellaneous band of emissaries came round to schools and monasteries and hospitals or orphanages and houses of retreat for the aged, they were all met with a flat refusal to answer any questions. The object of the inquiry was of course to ascertain whether unauthorized communities had established themselves, and whether the prescribed number of religious in those communities which had authorization (such as nursing sisters) had been exceeded. The ownership of their buildings was also to be ascertained. These inquiries also met with insuperable silence. But while monks and nuns and priests have established themselves in houses lent or given to them by friendly owners on terms known only to themselves, the fact of their presence is an open secret; and the inquiry must have furnished the Government with enough evidence to take action if it chooses. The question is whether the Government dares take such action.

For ever since M. Herriot revealed his intention of reviving hostilities against the Church the Catholics have organized their resistance on a national scale. Monster meetings, attended by twenty, forty, or fifty thousand people or even more, have been held in all the great Catholic centres, and the resolution of the Catholics to assert themselves in vindication of their religion is no longer in doubt. There was never such organized resistance before the war, and it is now not only organized but much more intense in quality than of old. The war stimulated the religious revival which had been steadily growing for some twenty years, and, although the number of practising Catholics — using the word in a wide interpretation — has probably not increased very largely, yet the religious spirit is much stronger among them as a whole. Still more important in considering the potentialities for resistance is the fact that they have acquired a new spirit of determination during the war. They have also won back a good deal of social and political influence. The War Office and the Foreign Office came largely under their control when the Bloc National was in power, and although the new Government has made wide changes, and has deliberately replaced its own supporters in the pivotal positions, the prestige and experience of the Catholic soldiers and diplomatists give them real power up to a certain point. They have also greatly increased their influence in the universities and other such institutions. And, with these new advantages, they are now led by men who are accustomed to fight in selfdefense and who have been greatly hardened by the war. Thus the new Catholic Federation, formed to organize the Catholics in every part of France under a national leadership, has as its president General de Castelnau. And in Brittany, which remains the chief Catholic province of France, Cardinal Charost has an unrivaled experience of the possibilities of passive resistance, gained during four years of German occupation in Lille. The clergy also, instead of being shy men, who were constantly misrepresented as being secret enemies of the Republic, have since served in the war themselves. They have gained much more confidence and vastly more experience in dealing with other men, and they have learned how to defend themselves from much more formidable violence than any Government can threaten them with in France.

But two facts count heavily against them. In the first place, the laws which they seek to oppose arc still on the statute book and have been in operation for a considerable period. To resist them openly now involves playing into the hands of those who regard the Church as the enemy of the Republic. The recent manifesto issued over the names of the six French Cardinals, proclaiming the duty of all French Catholics to resist laws which involve injustice to themselves as a minority and which violate their rights of conscience, has enabled the Radicals to assert again that the Holy See requires of its subjects an allegiance which is incompatible with the duties of citizenship. Such assertions are easier to make than to refute, and the Cardinals’ manifesto has provided the Radicals with just the sort of ammunition they have desired. It is indeed arguable that the Radicals have deliberately adopted a policy of creating friction between the Catholics and the State in the hope that they would force the Catholics into taking some sort of public action, which would appear to throw on the latter the responsibility of opening hostilities.

M. Herriot can claim that, apart from expelling two small communities of the Clarisse nuns from Évian and Alençon, he has taken no active measures against the religious communities, but merely instituted an inquiry all over the country to see whether the laws were being broken. However, the mere fact of his having expelled a few communities, simply on the ground that they had no permission to remain, left no doubt that the inquiry was intended as a first step toward enforcing the laws against all the other religious communities who came back during the war or who have since increased their numbers. What else could the Catholics do but proclaim their intention to resist unless they were ready to acquiesce in being driven out again? And, so far as the Cardinals’ manifesto is concerned, Cardinal Dubois, the Archbishop of Paris, made a public statement immediately afterward to explain that Rome did not even know of its contents until after it had been made public. It represented simply the protest of the French hierarchy against an injustice to Catholics contemplated by their own Government, and it had nothing to say to instructions, whether direct or indirect, from the Holy See. But the fact remains that the laws, with all the injustice they entail, are on the statute book, and the Government has the supreme tactical advantage of being able to denounce the Catholics as rebels acting under orders from the Vatican if they organize in self-defense. By skillfully exploiting this advantage, the Radicals and Socialists have been able to revive a great deal of the old distrust of the Church and also to galvanize those latent anticlerical prejudices which have always been one of the chief assets of the parties of the Left.

And, in face of this disadvantage, what prospects have the Catholics of asserting their right to practise and develop their religious life, which for centuries was traditional throughout France? It is impossible to discuss here the available material for estimating how much of France can be described as definitely Catholic. Broadly speaking, the practising Catholics have for more than a century been a small minority in most parts of the country, although in the extreme northwest the peasantry of Brittany have remained devoutly Catholic, living in the most primitive conditions and regularly producing very large families. In Savoy too they are a local majority and also around the Pyrenees, and there are large Catholic elements in the northeast. But, taking the country as a whole, it is probably true that not more than ten out of forty millions are practising Catholics, and of these at least five millions are concentrated in special areas of the country. Elsewhere they are at the mercy of the administration, which has for years been in the hands of anticlericals appointed by former anticlerical ministers. They are further at a disadvantage because the political traditions of France show an astonishing lack of conformity between the religious convictions of the people and the politicians whom they send to Parliament. Many of the most conspicuous anticlericals have been elected by constituencies where the Catholics are in a strong majority, and this tendency has been recently confirmed by the results of the municipal elections in May. The most significant feature of those elections was that the Radicals and Socialists have gained ground even in the districts where the Catholic resistance has been most strongly organized since last autumn. Thus Rennes, where Cardinal Charost has organized the Catholic resistance on an immense scale, has suddenly gone over to the Left. Vitré, Vannes, and other towns in the Catholic Northwest, have also voted for M. Herriot’s supporters. So also has Orléans, whence Cardinal Touchet has made devotion to Saint Joan of Arc a national cult. Bordeaux, the seat of Cardinal Andrieu, and the principal Catholic centre in the Southwest, has gone Left for the first time. Even in Alsace the Catholics have lost ground, though it was the organization of their resistance that gave a lead to the rest of France and gave most embarrassment to the Radical Government.

IV

The situation in Alsace differs from that of the rest of France and requires brief explanation. When Alsace and Lorraine were still French provinces before 1870, the Church in France had not yet been disestablished, and under German rule they were allowed to retain their religious rights in various matters. The clergy were still subsidized by the State, and the State schools were organized on a denominational basis, as they are in England. Thus the Catholics, Protestants, and Jews received grants for their own schools, provided that they would educate a certain number of pupils, and the children received religious instruction in their ordinary curriculum. But before the war the French Governments did away with all religious teaching, and in the rest of France the schools where religion is now taught have to be established and maintained entirely by voluntary subscriptions, so that the parents have to pay entirely for these schools they want, besides having to pay taxes for the State schools which are of no use to them. In some parts of France many of these State schools are virtually empty, though they are fully staffed and expensively equipped. The Alsatians were determined that they should not have to submit to such conditions when they were restored to France; and so, immediately after the Armistice, M. Clemenceau, on behalf of the French Government, promised solemnly that they should retain their former rights and should be administered under special conditions.

The transition from German to French rule was naturally a delicate matter, and, even without raising this religious question, the French Government had a very difficult task to prevent discontent from spreading rapidly, owing to various causes. But M. Herriot last year boldly introduced the religious controversy as well, and his ministerial declaration was no sooner delivered than the various denominations began organizing protests on similar lines. The Catholics had a leader of great energy and ability in Monsignor Ruch, the Bishop of Strassburg, who has organized an agitation in defense of the existing régime with fierce determination. But M. Herriot persisted, and obtained t he support of a few municipalities which voted that the schools within their own area should become undenominational as in the rest of France. The recent municipal elections have strengthened the position of the Radicals and Socialists in the towns of Alsace, which are chiefly industrial, while the Catholics in the rural districts have rallied strongly against the Left. It would seem, therefore, as though the Radicals will be able to extend the undenominational system into these towns. But on the larger issue the Bishop of Strassburg is in a much stronger position than the other members of the French hierarchy. The existing law in Alsace is on his side, and he defies the Government to alter it against the wishes of the people. His position is so clear in this respect that, even when the Herriot Government insisted upon abolishing the Embassy to the Vatican, it was found necessary to retain a special Diplomatic Delegate to represent Alsace and Lorraine, since they are entitled under the promises made by M. Clemenceau to enjoy the privileges of the old régime.

The situation as between the Government and the Catholics may be briefly summarized. The Catholics of Alsace refuse to accept the imposition of the French system which drives religion out of the schools, and in this they have the support of the Alsatian Protestants and the Jews. They also insist that they will be no party to a rupture with the Holy See. Their defiant attitude on these matters has been supported by the Catholics all over France, who demand not only that there shall be no rupture with the Vatican, but that the pre-war laws banishing the religious communities shall be left in abeyance as they have been for the past ten years. They are less favorably placed than the Alsatians and know that the Radicals desire, if they can, to abolish even the right to have independent elementary and secondary schools supported entirely by voluntary subscriptions. To abolish these ‘free’ schools would require new legislation and would raise a terrific controversy all over France. But the Government could at any moment enforce the pre-war laws against the religious Orders if it were not for the Catholic agitation in their defense.

It remains to be seen what the Government will do, even if it decides to risk the financial consequences of antagonizing the Catholics. The clergy who fought through the war, and the nuns who organized and staffed the military hospitals during the war, have made up their minds that they will not obey any new order to leave. They will have to be driven out if the Government means business, and this wxmld involve the use of troops. It is quite possible that Foch and Pétain and Lyautey and the other great Catholic Generals would all resign their commissions if any such attempt were made to employ the Army against priests and nuns who were decorated for their services in the war. But the politicians who control the Parties of the Left are as implacable as circumstances allow them to be, and they have for more than forty years staffed the local administration of the country with prefects who were chosen for their anticlcricalism. The prefects have an immense influence in all French elections, and they thus are able to secure the return of anticlerical politicians whose views are the same as those of the men who appointed them to their positions under the Government.

Were it not for the urgency of the financial situation, which makes a united effort by all French citizens as essential as it was during the war, it would seem as though France were about to plunge again into the religious feud which left her at the mercy of Germany in 1914. But the realism of M. Caillaux, and the sense of national urgency which everyone in France must now begin to realize, may prevent the present Chamber of Deputies from insisting upon the fulfillment of its anticlerical programme.