France Separates Church and State

This series has eight easy 5-minute installments. This first installment: The Government’s Case.

Introduction
Few controversies have been so bitterly waged, few events have been fraught with such lasting importance to the future of both religion and government, as the controversy between Church and State which convulsed France in 1906. Roman Catholicism had been for centuries the established “State Church” of France; but the “Radical” party gained control of the French Government, and this party was determined to dissolve the union which bound France to one faith rather than another.

M. Emile Combes was at the time Prime Minister of France and we give here his own statement, first offered to the American people through the pages of the Independent Magazine, as to what seemed to him the necessity and value of the decisive steps through which he led the party. On the other side, we give the story of the struggle as it appeared to the eyes of American Catholics as represented by their distinguished prelate, Archbishop Ireland. Then, as M. Combes failed to go into details in his address, we supplement it with a fuller statement of the French Government’s view, by one of its well-known sympathizers, Mr. H. H. Sparling.

The selections are from:

• Correspondence by Emile Combes published in around 1906.
• Sermon on the French Church by John Ireland published in around 1906.
• special article to Great Events by Famous Historians, volume 20 by Henry H. Sparling published in 1914.

For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Summary of daily installments:

We begin with Emile Combes (1835-1921). He was the Premier of France who led the government administration that separated government from the Catholic Church.

Time: 1906

No one who follows world politics can fail to perceive the moral grandeur nor yet the numberless difficulties of the work of social and political reform in which France is at present engaged. It must be self-evident that such a reform in volves the most vital questions affecting the highest national interests. It stirs society to its utmost depths, for it means the inevitable upheaval of its time-honored customs and sentiments. This reform is directed against a formidable power, the mysterious forces of the Church of Rome, which, after having seen monarchies tremble before them, have spread unreasonable fears among Republican Governments and used them to enslave the minds and hearts of the people. Nor have cabinets alone, always more or less ephemeral in their nature, failed in their efforts to confine the activities of the Church within prescribed limits. The law itself has been compelled to retreat before it.

It is, therefore, easily explained why these forces have been marshaled against the Government with all the paraphernalia of their power when their illegal conquests and the privileges they had usurped were found to be menaced. It has been possible to measure the extent of their power and of their action by the tenacity with which they have opposed the sovereign will of Parliament. To hold us in check they have called to their aid all these various factors which they com mand in society which for ages has borne the imprint of their domination. They have drawn into their ranks all those interests of society which are interwoven with their own and marched them all against the Administration. These aids and these interests, which have everywhere found a foothold, have waged a pitiless warfare on the Republic.

Even though the Republican cause had lost ground in this great contest, there would have been no good reason for either surprise or discouragement. The public mind, poisoned for a century, is not to be won over in a space of two short years. A splendid result may already be claimed, now that Republican France, by means of reform legislation, is prepared for a future that shall be free from the servitude of the It is an inspiring spectacle, indeed, to see a Republican majority brave all the united forces of retrogression, treating their threats with contempt, and finding alone in the conscientious performance of their duty the strong will to sacrifice all private interests, and, if necessary, their personal interests, to the higher welfare of the Republic.

But far from having lost ground, a decided advance has been made. The Republican standard has been planted in communities which have long been strongholds of retrogression, and where we have raised our flag, we shall succeed in promulgating our ideas. The minds of the people shall be freed from the yoke which bears them down. Education, once freed from monastic control and placed in the hands of the laity, will in its turn emancipate future generations. In these, as well as in the more advanced communities, Democracy, having become the ruler of her own destinies, will then rapidly and safely march along the broad highways of progress and of liberty. It was our rallying-cry that awoke Democracy to her work of freedom and which has brought about this triumph over the parties that are united in the cause of moral slavery and intellectual darkness. We have conquered solely by the power of truth. It is a travesty on the common sense of the people to attribute the late victory to intimidation and coercion.

The truth, as learned from an impartial study of the last election, is that France has simply refused to be caught by the advances of the Opposition. France has for two years seen the Cabinet at work. She is conscious of the grandeur of the task before it, and she sustains it with a perseverance that overcomes all the intrigues which are, openly or in secret, concocted against it, and all the combinations made for its overthrow.

The ultramontanes have tried to install the people with a passionate love of the Roman orders under the pretext that their cause was the cause of justice and of liberty. The result of this policy is that France has become impassioned only with love for her moral independence, for true justice and for true liberty, the splendid outgrowth of the immortal principles of the Revolution. Ultramontanism has for a century been constantly scheming to ensnare our unhappy country in the meshes of the ingeniously woven net of the Roman orders. Republican France has broken the meshes and thrown far from her the fateful snare in which Clericalism tried to throttle her.

The whole policy of France for two years past has been a policy of emancipation and of liberty. Naturally the Administration does not have the same conception of emancipation and of liberty as does the Opposition. It borrows its inspiration neither from Clericalism nor from the spirit of Conservatism. It regards itself as being empowered by a Democracy that is inimical to all special privileges, and its honor as well as its duty demands every effort to secure its triumph. The Government has been enabled by its policy to unite closely all the Republican forces and to oppose them victoriously to the united forces of the enemy. Those who incriminate the Government cannot cite a single law proposed by it, a single administrative measure, that is opposed to the leading principle of its policy.

John Ireland begins here. Henry H. Sparling begins here.

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