The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1907-01-12

With December 18th the great COM
edy Of which France is Just now the
theater reached It's crisis. Upon that
date the whole property of the Cath
Ollie church was technically confis-
Gated to the use of public bodies, and
was 50 confiscated because the Papacy
and hierarchy with the exception of
a small and insignificant minority now
unveiled) refuse to accept that pro-
vision in the law of disestablishment
which sets up what were called "asso-
citation cultuelles."
France, which is always the arena in
which take place the great European
struggles, is therefore to be in the Inn
mediate future the scene Of what will
perhaps be, though not the most noisy
the most important of all modern COM
bats. There is definite and active
war declared between those who ut
present hold the executive power in the
country and the organization of the
Catholic church. OF the chances Of
victory In this struggle on either side
I do not propose to speak in such
onVIt uOCCD 90 t4So0S WudI IdtucI
purport to do is to define, as see
It the situation.
What Catholicism Means.
The first and the greatest determin-
ant in the whole matter is one upon
which the majority Of Englishmen have
at present no information or exper-
fence whatsoever, and it is the quality
of opposition which Catholicism
arouses where Catholicism is strong.
Those who profess to tolerate"
Catholicism, by that very profession
confess themselves completely ignor-
ant OF their subject The Catholic
church, setting forth into and against
the world, may be accurately compared
to a human group setting forth into
and against the forces Of nature. Let
a tribe of men land upon hitherto I'M
inhabited island. They will at once
begin to build, to cultivate, to kill ami
mails, and in a hundred ways to trans
form their environment to their own
uses. In other words, II they are to
exist they must conquer. Conversely
the animals, the soil, the forest, the
torrent, are all struggling against this
tribe. The twill" of each-if one may
use such word of vaguely conscious
Or wholly unconscious animals and
things-is different from, and, there
fore, necessarily in antagonism to the
more conscious and the more definite
will of the human being. So it Is, and
so it always has been, with the Catholic
church and what is called the world"
The Catholic church has no object but
to transform its environment in the
service of its own great end, which is
by it's own hypothesis the only true
and the only good end. Against such
an effort all that is not Of it Is neces-
sarily, though not always consciously,
leagued.
In countries like England, where the
Catholic church is little known, where
its members are either alien Gas are
the Irish) or form tiny and almost
imperceptible group of well-to-do men
to whom eccentricities are permitted,
the character Of the opposition which
the Catholic church excites in COM
munities where she Is strong cannot
be appreciated.
France the Stronghold Of Catholicism.
Now, the community of the modern
world in which the Catholic church is
strongest is the French nation. 1t is
there that you will get the old rigid
discipline which at once detects and
Immediately brushes heresy; 1t Is there
that you still get one of the chief notes
of the only readable apologetics which
the church is publishing today; it is
there that you get the great men of
the nation, men like Pasteur, men
like Coppee, men like the late M.
Brunetiere, not only Catholic, but mil
itantly Catholic. In the Germanies
southern Catholicism is Intellectually
humble before the Protestant philos-
ophy and method of the north. In
Spain and Italy Catholicism is intel
lectually silent or but just beginning
to speak. It is in France alone, I
repeat, that you have surviving the
chief characteristic, namely, that an
active Catholicism feels itself intellec-
tually superior to its intellectual OPP
ponents. France produces half the
money and more than half the men
for all the foreign missions over more
than half the world; ten times tine
religions she had a century ago--a
crowd Of new churches in stationary
population; finally, it is upon French
soil alone in Europe that you will find
Catholic vitality ultimately allied with
the material advantages of modern
learning.