FRANCE AND THE PAPACY by Jean Vuilleumier

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 19, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 29.

FRANCE AND THE PAPACY.

By Jean Vuilleumier

An Official Historical Sketch.

BY JEAN VUILLEUMIER.

THE grandest and longest parliamentary debate on the question of the separation between the state and the church has now been going on at the Palais Bourbon in Paris for two months and a half, and is far from being concluded.

The committee made its report on March 4, through its secretary, M. Aristide Briand, who read as an introduction an extensive historical sketch of 138 columns, covering the relations between France and the Papacy for the last thirteen centuries. Extremely interesting in itself, this sketch grows more so from the fact that it is an official document; that it was read before the French Chamber; and that it contains the government's reasons for the great reform which is taking up the attention of the French legislators, and, in a certain sense, of all the civilized world.

Constantine's Perversion of Christianity.

M. Briand began by stating that "Constantine's adhesion to Christian ideas opened a new era in the history of Christianity. From the time in which, after being the sovereign pontiff of Paganism, he styled himself emperor and doctor, king and priest, the tendencies of the religion of Jesus were deeply changed, and the words of the Galilean, 'Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's,' lost all their application." Rome became a temporal and political power, and, as such, a necessary factor for the establishment of the barbarian kings on the soil of old Gaul. This was demonstrated at the conversion and baptism of Clovis and his 3,000 Franks and by his subsequent victory over the Arian Burgundians and Visigoths. Later on, Pepin was crowned by Pope Steven II., and, in 756, he made the pope a present, consisting of the keys of twenty-two cities taken from the Lombardians.

From here to the arrogant supremacy claimed by Gregory VII., the road was short and direct. His name, he claimed, was unique in the world. He could be judged by no man. He could dethrone emperors, and the church which he ruled had never erred, and could never err. Henry IV., of Germany, Philip I., Philip the Handsome, and Charles VII., of France, resisted the prerogatives of the Papacy under popes Gregory VII., Innocent III., and Boniface VIII. By these kings the pope was accused of "very grave usurpations, heresy, blasphemy, and simony."

Protestantism and Persecution.

Then came the Reformation. "French Protestantism began among the Humanists, who were struck by reading the Gospels found among the Greek and Latin authors. They were accustomed to a religion which attached a capital importance to observances, rites, and practises, and which claimed their devotions for the virgins and the saints. They read the very text of the New Testament, and all this vanished; Jesus Christ alone was left; He, always He!"

Persecution did not wait long. "The edict of 1551 was a veritable code of persecution which regulated even the denunciation of those who read the Bible." Oct. 17, 1685, came the revocation of the edict of Nantes, which cost 100,000 Frenchmen and 60,000,000 francs out of the country, ruined its commerce, and strengthened foreign navies by 9,000 seamen, and their armies by 600 officers and 12,000 soldiers.

A New Era.

But a new era was arising: "No human power could henceforth stay the coming on of the philosophy of the eighteenth century, which looked upon persecutions as odious, which weakened the faith of the upper and middle classes, and rejected, not only the infallibility of the pope, but also all revealed religion."

The first attempt of the Revolution against the Papacy was to wrest the clergy from its domination. A series of laws called the "Civil Constitution of the Clergy" was therefore issued, which made the priests directly responsible to the people and not to the pope. The clergy, of course, rebelled, and the National Assembly resolved to bring them violently to terms. The king refused to endorse the decision of the Assembly, and thus became the first victim of the fearful storm which began to rage against the church and its defenders.

Futile Struggle with the Papacy.

Ten long years the Revolution fought against the priests, who remained faithful to Rome, only to find out its utter impotence. Then came Bonaparte, who tried his hand at it. He gave the Papacy many advantages and concessions, and signed the concordat of 1801 with Pope Pius VII., to whom he gave back his estates. But Napoleon had craftily kept back some "organic articles" by which he meant to keep the pope within proper bounds. When the pope learned the trick, he denounced the whole affair in disgust. Napoleon appointed a committee to straighten the matter. Nothing succeeding, he called together a grand council of bishops to which he endeavored to impose his own ideas. The bishops refused to be forced in their deliberations. Bonaparte got angry, and ordered the pope brought to Fontainebleau, where he overawed the old man, and got from him what he wished, only to lose it when the pope returned to Rome.

Victories for the Papacy.

Louis XVIII., Louis Philip, and Napoleon IV., resumed and concluded the negotiations in quite a different spirit. This enabled the hierarchy to take up its work with renewed energy. In 1864, Pius IX. proclaimed the Syllabus, in which all the modern liberties were anathemetized; and in 1870, the pope was declared infallible at the Vatican council.

Since then the power and wealth of the Catholic Church have been growing steadily in France, until the priests were found everywhere; on the school board, in the army, in the navy, and in the prisons as chaplains, at the public and national ceremonies, controlling, as it were, every part of the government.

On the other hand, since 1870, the republican party has grown in power, and has set up a decided and firm opposition to Rome's influence over French affairs. Various measures have been taken by the government to which such men as Gambetta, Jules Ferry, Paul Bert, Goblet, Waldeck, Rousseau, and Combes have attached their names. Every one knows how all non-authorized congregations, the Jesuits first of all, have been expelled within the last two years, and how the question of separating the churches from the state has been suddenly sprung by the protest of Pope Pius X., after M. Loubet's visit to Rome in 1904.

In my next letter I will endeavor to give some idea of the spirit in which the memorable debate is being conducted at the Bourbon Palace.