New-York tribune., 1907-01-06
FRENCH BISHOPS OPPORTUNITY.

The PRONUNCIATION of the new church law In
| France is to be followed a few days hence by
| meeting of the Roman Catholic bishops Of that
country In this there is ground for hoping that
! affairs between Church and State VIII be put
| upon a pleasanter basis. The new law certainly
seems suited to open the way to amicable
nlOduS Uirendf. What the meeting Of the bishops
| will mean is yet to be disclosed, but the fact
that it is TO be held indicates that the case Is
not considered to be closed. but is still open for
negotiation. What the bishops will do depends,
doubt, upon the attitude Of the Vatican or
upon their attitude toward it-whether they are
| to meet at its command, to ratify and register
it's deerees, or on their own initiative to follow
| their own Judgment.
1t would be interesting to see what would
happen if the French bishops should collectively
| adopt and publish a declaration to some such
effect as this That the civil power Of the State
and the spiritual authority of the Church are
| absolutely distinct and never meant by the
! Almighty to interfere with each other; that,
| therefore the Pope has no right, directly in
directly, to any civil or temporal Jurisdiction,
power authority within the French Republic;
that the allegiance of Catholics to the civil gov
ernment is entire and undivided. and that they
hold themselves bound In conscience TO obey the
civil government Of the republic in all things of
a civil and temporal nature. notwithstanding any
Pope or any authority of the Church OF Rome.
If they had made such declaration a few
years or even few months ago. and had Loyalty
executed ii, we cannot doubt that the present
strained state OF relations with the civil gov
ernment would have been avoided and the Cath.
! olic Church, a religious organization would
now have been more prosperous and influential
in France than ever before. If even now at the
| eleventh hour and later. they were to make such
! 81 hat
Church would be rehabilitated and greatly ad-
vanced in popular confidence and favor. so that
even II some antl-Christian politicians still
sought TO persecute il there would be mandate
given in It's favor at the polls which nobody
would dare to resist.
In order that II may not be supposed that
have presumed 10 suggest to the bishops what
they should do. or have suggested TO them some
thing which they could not properly do we may
observe that the hypothetical declaration which
we have outlined IS quoted almost literally. and
in exact spirit, from the Declaration of the
| Catholic Bishops. the Wears Apostolic and
Their CoadjutoTs in Great Britain" made moro
than eighty years ago. 1t is true that that dec
laration was made before the emancipation of
Catholics in England and probably intended
to make weight for emancipation as It undoubt-
edly did But we must. none the less assume IL
TO have been sincere and to have been Loyalty
/
the welfare of the Church it should be sufficient
to note that while IN 1851 there we've only S26
priests and 5S8 churches of that faith in Eng
land and Wales, in 1901 there were 1887 and
1885 respectively, an increase of 243 per cent
in priests and of 1853 per cent in churches.
The question will inevitably arise, and will
have much force with impartial observers Why
should not policy adopted in England be
adopted in France? If it be argued that in 1926
the Catholic Church under grave disabilities
in England and took that means to get rid Of
them, it may be replied that it should be equally
ready TO take the same means to avert what 1t
considers grave injustice in France. Surely
nothing with which that Church is threat
ened in France is as bad as what It actually suf-
fered century ago in England If from evil
a plight it rose into such prosperity through
merely giving assurance of its civic loyalty it
may be that through like means in France like
end could be attained.