The right to keep the churches open and to celebrate
the Mass can, it appears, be secured in any parish by any two laymen giving the statutory notice, and this notice will operate for a whole year. If the Vatican persists in for- bidding recourse to such formalities, it is difficult. to argue that the responsibility for the present crisis' falls upon the French Government. We fear that the desire of the Pope at the present moment is not to secure the exercise of the rites of the Church for the Roman Catholics of France, but rather to manceuvre the French Government into action whieh may be represented as of a persecuting nature, and so will discredit them and score a point on the side of the Clericals. Unless we are mistakin, the Pope is miscalculating. We do not suppose that any large number of priests, even though Republican in sentiment, will in the last resort obey the State rather than the Papacy, but we believe that the obedience offered to the latter will be so perfunctory and half-hearted that in the end the Pope will be beaten. His only chance is that the French Anti-Clericals may, in a moment of excitement, force the Government into taking some arbitrary or oppressive action which will unite all sections of Roman Catholics and make them forget the Pope's bad statesmanship.
