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Note and Comment

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Sep 22, 1904

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 81, No. 38.

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Note and Comment

PREMIER COMBES, of France, has declared for a complete separation of church and state in that country. A dispatch dated at Auxerre, September 4, says: “Prime Minister Combes, speaking at a banquet in this city, declared that the republic meant to free France from all dependence as regards religious power. For thirty years, he said, the ecclesiastical power had audaciously violated the concordat. A new one was impossible. The only solution was the separation of church and state by mutual consent. In the interests of social peace and religious liberty he was disposed to make all reasonable concessions in order that the separation should open a new era of social concord.” Pope Pius professes to welcome the prospect of the proposed separation, saying that a union of church and state is desirable only where the state is Catholic as well as the church.