The War Upon Religion Part 10

The following form of prayer shall be recited at the end of the Divine Office, in all the Catholic Churches of France: Domine, salvam fac Rempublicam. Domine, salvos fac Consules.

Article IX.

The bishops shall make a new circ.u.mscription of the parishes in their dioceses, which shall be of no effect until approved by the Government.

Article X.

The bishops shall appoint to the parishes. Their choice shall fall only on persons acceptable to the Government.

Article XI.

Bishops may have a chapter in their Cathedral, and a seminary for their diocese, without any obligation on the part of the Government to endow them.

Article XII.

All the metropolitan churches, cathedrals, parishes, and others not alienated, necessary for worship, shall be put at the disposal of the bishops.

Article XIII.

His Holiness, for the sake of peace and the happy restoration of the Catholic religion, declares that neither he nor his successors will disquiet in any manner the holders of alienated ecclesiastical property, and that, consequently, the right to said property, with the rights and revenues attached thereto, shall remain incommutable in their hands or those of their representatives.

Article XIV.

The Government will secure a suitable salary to the bishops, and to parish priests whose dioceses and parishes are comprised in the new circ.u.mscription.

Article XV.

The Government will also take measures to enable French Catholics, when so disposed, to create foundations in favor of churches.

Article XVI.

His Holiness recognizes, in the First Consul of the French Republic, the same rights and prerogatives enjoyed at Rome by the former Government.

Article XVII.

It is agreed between the contracting parties that in case any successor of the present First Consul should not be a Catholic, the rights and prerogatives mentioned in the preceding article, and the nominations to Sees, shall be regulated, so far as he is concerned, by a new convention.

The ratifications to be exchanged at Paris within forty days.

Done at Paris, 26th Messidor, year IX. of the French Republic, July 15th, 1801.

H. CARDINAL CONSALVI, J. BONAPARTE, J. ARCHEVEQUE de CORINTHE, FR. CHARLES CASELLI, CRETET, BERNIER.

Upon its appearance, the new treaty was naturally subjected to criticism, adverse and favorable. That it meant a decided victory for the Church over her old enemies was admitted on all sides, and all hostility to its prescriptions could be reduced to the murmurings of the Royalists, the emigres, the Gallicans, the const.i.tutionals and the various revolutionary parties. By the great ma.s.s of the Catholic people it was hailed as a rainbow of promise after the desolating storms of the past ten years.

"According to its first article the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion was to be exercised freely in France; the Catholic Church was therefore to be free in her organization, free in her preaching and teaching, free in her discipline, in her ministers, in her right of acquiring such property as would be necessary for the accomplishing of her mission. She is no longer as under the old regime, intimately allied with the State; she is no longer the Church of the State; the separation of the temporal and the spiritual has been effected.... But if in return one considers the words of the text according to their real value, she is entirely free; she need no longer fear trespa.s.sing from outside nor a supervision that tends only to hinder her action; nor those thousand and one interferences which were formerly perpetrated by Gallicanism."

The article continues: "Its worship shall be public"--words which naturally signify the exercise of religious ceremonies not merely within the walls of the church, but exteriorly also, as in public processions, carrying the Blessed Viatic.u.m to the sick, and such like. Nor is it strange that these practices should be permitted in a land where the Catholic faith is the religion of the great majority of the people, when in Protestant countries they are carried out solemnly and amid the veneration of all.

The addition of the words--"in conforming to the regulations of internal administration (reglements de police) which the Government shall deem necessary for the public tranquility"--was one of the causes of the delay in framing the Concordat; it was the clause against which the First Consul declaimed so violently on the famous afternoon of July 14th, and it has served ever since as the foundation of an anti-liberal jurisprudence.

"In practice it is the mayor who in each commune is charged with maintaining public order and tranquility, and, by the same t.i.tle, whenever a mayor considers that a procession or any other religious manifestation can occasion trouble and disorder upon the public streets, he has the right to interdict it. One must confess that in a country like ours where the idea of liberty is so limited, it is sometimes a means for the protection of the clergy and faithful against injuries and outrages. But very often mayors have interdicted, and permanently, only Catholic processions, while they permit freethinkers to pa.s.s through the streets in parades that are dangerous to the public. If a mayor acts with such partiality, if he cannot support his interdiction with some serious reason--like that munic.i.p.al official who would interdict a procession because the white veils of the young girls might frighten horses--if a mayor, in a word, acts by party spirit, and not in view of the public tranquility, he violates the Concordat. True liberty of conscience does not take account of the sentimental susceptibilities of occasional nervous individuals, nor would it impose upon anyone the obligation of dissimulating their religious professions or philosophical opinions; on the contrary it imposes on men the obligation of tolerating each other reciprocally in the peaceful manifestation of their beliefs. Hence, independently of the Concordat, is not such liberty of conscience demanded for all citizens by the Declaration of the Rights of Man?" (Croizil.)

The articles relating to the bishops excited the greatest amount of dissatisfaction in many quarters. It meant the realization of that idea which Bonaparte had expressed to Cardinal Martiniana in the year preceding--the utter abolition of the old hierarchy--and the subst.i.tution of one entirely new and conformable to the order of things about to be established. Before the Revolution there were in France 136 Episcopal Sees. In the scheme of Bonaparte these were to be reduced to fifty only, of which ten were to be metropolitan, although later, in 1801, he was pleased to add ten other sees to the number. Commenting upon this reduction, Cardinal Mathieu observes:

"Sixty-six cities were thus subjected to a moral and material decline from which they have never since rallied. Indeed, each of these suppressed Sees was ill.u.s.trated with memorials of apostleship and holiness, with monuments, with religious establishments of every kind which gave to the episcopal cities an importance superior to that of their population and made them so many interesting little capitals, wherein were often hidden men of great merit. The dignitaries of the secular and regular clergy, some families of impoverished gentlemen or well-to-do bourgeois and professional people, maintained therein an amiable society which kept up in the most secluded provinces the best traditions of the old regime--courtesy, a taste for literature and charity for the poor. All these little centres of intellectual and moral life were blotted out and the Concordat thus only sanctioned the destruction effected by the Revolution."

It was mainly because of reflections like these that the old emigre bishops received the news of these articles with so sad a grace.

The articles which treat of ecclesiastical property and the salaries of the clergy will prove of interest especially at the present time, when in the Law of Separation they have been so badly misinterpreted. Article XII. reveals the fact that the Church was placed in _absolute_ possession of her property. The term "shall be placed at the disposition of the bishops" signifies the same thing that it did when in 1789 the property of the Church was confiscated by the then Government and, to use the terms of that law, _mise a la disposition de la nation_, placed at the disposition of the nation. There can be little doubt as to how those words were understood in 1789, for the nation, acting upon the law, immediately proceeded to the sale of all ecclesiastical property.

The words, therefore, signified that the nation was placed in full and absolute possession of such property, and the precedent must in all honor apply equally when the terms are used in favor of the Church. To say, therefore, that the article gave to the bishops the mere use _ad revocationem_ of such property is only to betray a desire to excuse a robbery under the pretext of a misunderstanding. The Concordat thus acknowledged the Church's absolute possession of her churches and other religious establishments, a possession which will always remain hers rightfully, and which she shall defend in her own way against any attempt at alienation.

In the articles XIII. and XIV. the French Government acknowledges that even the alienated property, _i. e._, the churches, etc.--which after the confiscation of 1789 were sold, were even in 1801 the rightful property of the Church; though, nevertheless, the Church, for the sake of peace, therein agrees to waive her right. In so doing, however, she requires as a condition that the State shall compensate her for the same. This compensation is expressed in article XIV., wherein it is declared that the State shall a.s.sure a suitable salary to the clergy. In accordance with this disposition it follows that whenever--as at present--the Concordat should be abolished the Church should revert to her natural rights the compensation for alienated property being discontinued, such property or its value should be restored to the Church. In this matter the present Government of France has shown itself not merely unfair but actuated also by a spirit of robbery.

The Concordat finished, Cardinal Consalvi began his preparations for returning to Rome. He arrived in the Eternal City on August 6th. He had, however, been preceded by a messenger bearing the precious doc.u.ment, who arrived at the Vatican on July 25th. The instrument was immediately subjected to the examination of a commission of cardinals, and only after long and heated discussions was it finally accepted by the Holy See. It was signed by the Pope on August 15th, 1801.

In accordance with the prescriptions of the Concordat the Holy Father began at once the execution of that article which required the resignation of the various sees by their actual or rightful inc.u.mbents.

The brief dispatched by the Pope to all the bishops of France, whether resident in that country or living in foreign lands, necessitated that an answer be received within ten days. Fourteen prelates residing in London declared, on September 27th, that they could not consent for the present to his demands, at least without having been heard. Twenty-six bishops residing in Germany answered in the same terms on October 28th.

On January 21st the bishops who had taken refuge in England addressed to the Holy Father a new refusal protesting "against the attempts which had been made or which might be made against the rights of the Most Christian King, their Sovereign Lord, rights which the laws of the Church commanded the first among the Pontiffs to respect religiously, and the defence of which was for the French bishops a duty rendered sacred by their oaths of fidelity from which no power could release them, and whose violation would be a criminal act." Some hesitation was likewise manifested by the const.i.tutional bishops resident in France, a hesitation, however, which under the tactful management of Cardinal Caprara, the new Legate a Latere at Paris, was finally overcome.

The Holy Father, after waiting patiently for several months for a favorable answer to his demands, resolved at length to act notwithstanding all protestations. In the Bull, _Qui Christi Domini_, he declared that he derogated to the consent of the bishops who had refused to sign their resignation, he interdicted in them every act of jurisdiction, he abolished the old dioceses existing in France, and erected sixty new sees in their place.

In the meanwhile the Concordat had been signed by Bonaparte, on September 10th, 1801. It yet, however, required the ratification of the governmental bodies before becoming law. Though signed on July 15th, 1801, it was not until April of the following year that this desired consummation was effected. It was finally ratified on April 8th, by the Corps Legislatif. The reason for the delay became apparent upon this occasion, for then there appeared in conjunction with the Concordat, and as if forming a part of it, a series of laws ent.i.tled _Organic Articles_, which had been elaborated during those nine months without the knowledge of the Pope, just as their publication was now effected without his cognizance. The purport of these latter articles was to destroy or contradict in great part the concessions granted by the Concordat. Rome has never ceased to protest against them, and to demand their abrogation or modification. In 1804 she seemed to have succeeded, deceived by the promises of Napoleon at a moment when he desired the aid of the Holy Father at the ceremonial of his coronation; in 1817, when a new Concordat was attempted, the partial abrogation of these Articles was one of the stipulations; their suppression was again proposed in 1848; and again in 1853. They remained, however, in spite of every effort, a constant obstacle to the fulfilment of the concessions of the Concordat and a source of perpetual trouble to the Church in France.

_TEXT OF THE ORGANIC ARTICLES._

Organic Articles of the Convention of the 26 Messidor, Year IX.

Article 1. No bull, brief, rescript, decree, mandate, provision, signature serving for provision, nor other doc.u.ments expedited by the Court of Rome, even though they concern private individuals can be received, printed, or otherwise put in force without the authorization of the Government.

Article 2. No individual styling himself a nuncio, legate, vicar, or commissary Apostolic, or who makes use of any other determining t.i.tle can, without the same authorization, exercise upon French soil, or elsewhere, any function relative to the affairs of the Gallican church.

Article 3. The decrees of the foreign synods, even those of the general councils, cannot be published in France before the Government has examined their form, their conformity with the laws, rights and privileges of the French Republic, and all that which in their publication could alter or interfere with the public tranquility.

Article 4. No council, national or metropolitan, no diocesan synod, no deliberative a.s.sembly, shall be held without the express permission of the Government.

Article 5. All ecclesiastical functions shall be gratuitous, except the offerings which will be authorized and fixed by the regulations.

Article 6. Recourse to the Council of State shall be had in every case of abuse on the part of superiors and other ecclesiastical persons.

The cases of abuse are as follows: Usurpation or excess of power, contravention of the laws and regulations of the Republic; violation of the rules which are consecrated by the Canons received in France; any attack on the liberties, privileges, and customs of the French church; and every undertaking or proceeding which, in the exercise of worship, might compromise the honor of citizens, trouble their consciences unnecessarily, or which might degenerate into a source of oppression or injury to them, or become a public scandal.

Article 7. Recourse to the Council of States shall also be permitted whenever an attack is made upon the public exercise of worship, and the liberty which the laws and regulations guarantee to its ministers.

Article 8. This recourse is the privilege of all persons interested. In default of a particular complaint, this duty will devolve upon the prefects. Public functionaries, ecclesiastics or other persons who wish to make use of this appeal, will address a memorial, detailed and signed, to the counsellor of State charged with all matters concerning religion, whose duty it will be to obtain, in the shortest time possible, all proper information, and upon his report the affair will be taken up and finished in the administrative form, or sent, as the case may demand, to the competent authorities.

Article 11. The archbishops and bishops may, with the authorization of the Government, establish in their dioceses cathedral chapters and seminaries. All other ecclesiastical establishments are suppressed.