The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1916-10-07

Apostolic and Roman" This is the
religious seed sown through all the
centuries. Has war reyiyified it?
Unless a foreigner has entered long
and closely into the intimate life and
feelings of the French people, and, to
some degree, shares with them their
spiritual Inheritance, he will find it
difficult to learn the true answer to
such a question. We cannot expect
French soldiers at the front to sign "a
round robin, or French families at the
rea to hold mass meetings, to tell the
World-we are religiously revived.
All that can be done is to observe
and gather, with the sympathy which
is the first condition of any knowledge
of a peoples religion, its passing
signs and popular opinion.
During the first half-year of war,
among the soldiers torn SO suddenly
from peaceful lives and hurried into
fighting and killing and being killed,
there was much seeking of comfort in
religion. A soldier friend, not sus-
pected of religion, told me his own
observations in Rheims Cathedral be-
fore the enemy destroyed it. 1t was
during one of the GREATNESS move
ments of French troops, after Char
leroi and Mons. All the livelong
night, here and there i'm the great
church wherever they could find place,
by a pillar or on the open pave, fifty
soldier priests in their uniforms like
the rest heard confessions of their
comrades who came kneeling one
after the other without human re-
spect and praying for the sacramental
dissolution. A few days later, in full
battle of the Marine, five German sol.
diers found in this church the old
French cure of a village where the
fight was raging, and snatched the
1t vas the death-hour which tries
mems souls.
All slept in the swaths when the
night was falling.
Men Attend Church.
There is a general opinion express
ed even by well-known Catholic
writer's of the French press, that this
first wave of religious feeling has re-
coded as war became a custom and a
routine. So far as can be judged from
letters from the front and from the
testimony of those who survive, l
think this may easily be exaggerated.
Religion too has entered into the
routine of all these lives cultivated
in the presence of DEATH"
A happy father whose son has es-
capped at Verdun with a wound and
an army citation and honors after a
deed of great daring showed me the
soldiers own frank, awkward letter.
"The Colonel asked for volunteers to
try to take a prisoner from the Boches
who were firing ON our trench from
quite near by. Every one offered, and
he chose out of eleven of us. One OF
us was a priest. So before we jump,
ed out of the trench, we all knelt
down and asked him to give us the
a%bsolution. He did SO and then we
made one leap. He was killed and
most of the others, but | got back
with the prisoner"
Not the least element of per-
manence in this revival of religious
habits comes from this long living
together, through hardships and dan
gers of Frenchmen who are priests
and Frenchmen, who, before the war,
might eve have spoken with a
priest. This applies particularly to
workmen from cities-and TO the
priests themselves. The French
priest is usually the o OF peasants
or of a middlesclass family in towns.
In the religious orders the higher
social classes are often represented,
and, of course, sometimes in the par
ish clergy. But it has been the great
difficulty of the French priest to find
common language with the workmen
of organized labor; and the workmen
have often been made diffident or
worse towards the cure by politics.
In the army, during the war, all bar
riers have been broken down. All