The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1903-03-28
Opposition to Catholic Orders.

Opposition to Catholic Orders.
To a representative of the Evening
Journal of this city French Catholic
priest had this to say last Wednesday
in reference to persecution of Catholic
orders in France:
For the present the government
makes no charges against the village
cure. He is an honest man, they say,
a good citizen. He is doing his duty
i'll obedience in the concordat by
which the French government and the
vatican are maintaining the religious
establishment of France.
1T is only the orders that should
be punished, expelled, destroyed. The
government says. that these orders are
secret enemies of France, that they
are attacking the republic, that they
are plotting to bring back the mon
archy, the bourbons.
But once let Premier Combes or
and he will turn against the priests.
The cure will be regulated or expelled.
And why? Are any of the French
priesthood, of the French religious
attacking the republic? Where are
the proofs? The government does not
show them. 1t cannot. There are no
proofs.
Yesterday the chamber of deputies
voted against those brave mission
aries, the Capuchins, and voted
against the English Passionists who
conduct the principal church in Paris
for American and English Catholics.
Premier Combes insisted that there
is no place i'll modern society for the
religious congregations that the aim
of the monks seemed to be'-note the
uncertainty to be to instill
Il hatred of republican IDEAS
Not long ago it was the Carthusian
monks who were described as public
enemies. Yet there are no men in
France more harmless, more benevo-
lent, more self-sa criticing. They con-
duct no schools; they do not preach;
they live wholly to themselves. In
deed, the mother house, La Grande
Chartruse, near Grenoble, is high up
OH Il mountain, almost inaccessible
But these monks do make and sell the
Charteuse cordial. They have large
revenues. Nevertheless they pay an
taxi believe it is about
100000 Il year-and all their profits
they devote to maintaining hospitals,
orphan asylums, homes for the poor.
In what way are these monks that
pass their lives i'll poverty and prayer
the enemies Of the people whom they
succor? How will France be better
off when the Carthusians close their
hospitals and their asylums?
1T is not the French people who are
to blame. In my opinion the govern
nlent is controlled by the foreigners,
the socialists at Paris. Not long ago
the socialists proposed a pension sys-
TEN. The government said it had not
enough money. But someone pointed
out that the religious congregations
might be cOntiscated and that their
revenues would afford pension fund.
So it is. These people envy the prop
erty of the church, envy her independ-
ence, envy her abilities. Why are the
church schools disliked in Paris? Be-
cause pupils from the Catholic institu-
lions are more successful i'm passing
the government examinations than are
the pupils from the government
schools?
Yes. the government simply wishes
tn appropriate the revenues of the
church and to make tools of her min
listers. Paris will try to destroy all
connection between the church and
Rome.
but the Catholic church cannot be
ruined by persecution. She is being
prosecuted now in France as the Mas
ter was prosecuted. She will be per-
secuted hereafter. Yet the people of
France will never be persuaded that
these good monks were not the peo-
pies friends"