TOPICS OF THE DAY
LEO XIII. AND FRANCE.
TT is to be regretted, in the interests of contemporary history, that the acts and words of Leo NHL are not more carefully noted and recorded. He does not excite the imagination of Roman Catholics as Pius IX. somehow did, lacking, perhaps, a certain ray of originality, which lighted up his predecessor s character, and he is, therefore, not watched with the same assiduous care. He is coming, however, out of the mist, and as his figure grows more distinct, it will attract many observant eyes. A philosopher on a throne is always a rare sight, and no one quite like Leo XIII. has sat for centuries in the Papal Chair. Able Popes, and astute Popes, and Popes with a capacity for finesse there have been many—for, after all, the Popes are picked Italians—but this one gives the impression of being a wise Pope, who marches to his ends as a modern statesman of high character and serene thought would march. There is a moderation in his inflexibility, and a certain honest plainness in his denunciations which are not supposed to be usual among ecclesiastics. We once compared Pio Nono, with his fidelity to his Church, his belief in himself, and his vein of humorous originality, to a fine old English rector, who had always had his own way, who thought Dissenters rather im- pertinent, but who wished to be obeyed because he sincerely believed that obedience must of necessity be best for the parish. Leo XIIL is not like that at all. He is rather like a statesman of a type we occasionally see in all countries, in whom nature or circumstance has bred toleration, but whose advice is weighty because he intends the machine to move on, and who can when needful, recommend grave acts. This Pope has been tried in four very grave affairs, the :atruggle with Germany, the struggle with the Czars in Poland, the struggle with Italy, and the struggle with the Irish Reds, and in all he has shown the same qualities,—inflexible devotion to his Church, a cool perception of all circumstances, and a patient wiseness—we do not quite mean wisdom—which id the end secured at least partial success. No man can have a more formidable opponent than Prince Bismarck, and the Chancellor has not come well out of that fight, nor can any one fairly say that the Pope has won by unworthy devices. The Czars in Poland are supported by irresistible force, but they have yielded in the contest about Bishops so completely that the Vatican is content. Nowhere is reverence for the Papacy weaker than in Rome, where each successive Pope lives under a microscope ; and in Rome, in the municipal elections of last, week, the Papalini swept everything before them. They seated two-thirds of all candidates. Nowhere among Catholics is the Papal authority so resisted as in Ireland, but the Pope has given a heavy blow to the Parnellites, which, though it has not dried up the subscription he denounced, has altered the tone not only of the clergy, but of mass meetings.
Now the Pope has turned to France, and very quietly, but quite unmistakably, has intimated, in a letter to President Grevy, that if the tone of the Government cannot be modified, the Papacy cannot keep on its old terms with France. The two Powers will, as in Germany and Russia, be openly at war. The letter to the President from the Pope, read in the Cabinet on Tuesday, and though not published allowed to ooze out, is understood, we think correctly, to mean this, though Leo XIII. carefully abstains from any menace. It was time for such a declaration. We do not know that the Assembly has yet passed any law to which the Roman Church cannot submit under protest, unless it be the one subjecting divinity students to the conscription ; but the tone of recent legislation in France is so anti-Christian that a self-respecting Church is bound, at all events officially, to declare that it is submitting only to direct force. The recent laws on education go far beyond any possible definition of State neutrality in religious affairs. They amount to this,— that every teacher is tolerated except the Catholic priest, who is excluded with his emblems almost by name. The aboli- tion of military chaplaincies, though not exactly persecu- tion, is in a Catholic country pretty clear intimation that the State thinks Catholicism worthless ; while the abolition of chaplaincies in hospitals goes even further. Unless the Cardinal-Archbishop Guibert has deliberately falsified the facts in his circular to the Cures of Paris, the Municipality, with the sanction of the Government, which has a legal veto on such votes, has not only abolished the chap- lains—who were, of course, its own officers—but has closed
the hospital chapels on week days—the Prefect opens them once a week—and prohibited the voluntary entry of any priest into the wards. He can enter only when summoned by a patient. Considering the importance attached by Catholics- to the last offices, the immense extent of these hospitals, and the antagonism of most French doctors to the priesthood, this- order goes far beyond "neutrality," and amounts to direct persecution alike of the priesthood, who are inhibited from preaching even to willing hearers, and of any religious patients the hospitals may relieve. As the Cardinal-Archbishop puts. it, the summons to the Cure may never be delivered, and even then he is distant, and often occupied with a parish contain- ing 50,000 souls. If the Pope, under such circumstances, did not warn the Government that its tone was one of hostility, that the obvious meaning of the Concordat was not respected, and that serious consequences might follow, he would be- gravely wanting, not only in self-respect, but in his duty to. the Church, whose mouthpiece he claims to be. So would the Archbishop of Canterbury be under the same circum- stances, and the Archbishop would not be under the spur of a system of theology which makes the intervention of the priest- hood in the hour of death a necessity.
The letter will, it is said, be answered by the President with respect, but we question, strong as the motives are which bind both the Papacy and the Government of France to modera- tion, whether a rupture can ultimately be avoided. That the. Pope will suffer long is true. He has repeatedly warned the French Episcopate to be moderate, and has recently selected a Nuncio whom he can trust to guide his rather hot-headed ecclesiastical team in that sense. He must, too, be keenly aware that in France he is not fighting, as in Germany and Russia, rulers of another creed ; but men who sincerely disbelieve all. creeds, who are full of a scientific Paganism, and who would, if provoked to fight, go strange lengths. They might sup- press outward Christianity altogether. France is the only country which, in modern times, has been laid under an inter- dict by secular authority, and all Frenchmen still feel the effect of that long intermission of religious teaching. That might happen again, and no Pope would lightly run such a risk. Moreover, the disestablishment of the Church, which would be the first counter-blow struck by the Chamber, would in France have serious dangers of its own. The spread of materialism in some districts has been so great, and the reluctance of the peasantry to pay for anything not visible is so rooted, that, as the Bishops believe, large patches of the soil, possibly whole Departments, would be left without the offices of religion, and a generation would grow up to whom Church ser- vices would seem needless innovations on habit. That is a dis- tinct danger, not to mention that an open contest would embitter the Atheistic propaganda which is so active in France—as it also begins to be in England—and compel the Church to a warfare of argument, at the very moment when it was strug- gling to retain its corporate existence. Rome, too, which has. to think of the whole world, and not merely of the corner of it which to French and even English journalists seems to make up the universe, is anxious for French assistance at a hundred points, and were the French Government sin- cerely hostile, might see her converts abandoned in a hundred provinces, from Manchootia to Montenegro.. Nevertheless, the Pope can hardly go on in apparent amity with a Power definitely anti-religious. If he does, he justifies the sarcasm that Rome is only inflexible to the weak. If he does, he weakens for a generation the coherence of his Church in France, which will undoubtedly be rent into two parties,—those who approve and those who disapprove the policy of submissiveness. And finally, if he does, he destroys his power of fighting in all lands, for he cannot excommuni- cate in Mexico, or Ireland, or Italy for acts which he visibly passes over in France without open reprehension. We con- ceive that in a very short time, if the temper of the majority does not change, the Pope will be compelled to withdraw his Nuncio, and thus announce to the whole world a.rupture with France, which will undoubtedly impel the majority to extreme courses, including the suppression of the Ecclesiastical Budget. What will be the result of the contest it is difficult to foresee, for unless the Chamber goes revolutionary lengths the Papacy will not have its usual leverage, the absence of priests among a popu- lation which wishes for them. It must, according to its modern practice, supply the churches with priests, missionary or other, so long as the secular power will allow. But we should . imagine that, as in all other cases, the believing section of the community would derive new energy from the insults cast upon their faith, that their antagonism to-:
the Republic would become more definite, and that in no long time Republican statesmea would see the folly of wilfully exasperating such a force, and would seek a modus vivendi. They may be very fanatical, but they are not as fanatical as the Terrorists, and very energetic, but they are hardly more energetic than Napoleon or Prince Bismarck. The entire experiment has been tried before, under conditions very favourable to the anti-religious party, which, be it remembered, during the period of the suspension of services tied victory to its banners ; and it ended in a victory for Rome, which can wait, if need be, for centuries. This, however, is a specula- tion as to the future. All we wish to point out to-day is that Leo XIII., the most moderate of Popes, finds it necessary to warn the Government of France that a contest with the Church is at hand ; and that if it begins, the whole power of that Church, with its persistence and its hold over the common people, will be thrown decisively against the Republic.
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