The discussion raised by M. Combes with the Vatican, regarding the words _nobis nominavit_ in the canonical investiture of French bishops presented by the Government as candidates, and then the affair of the deposition of the Bishops of Dijon and Laval, 1894, convinced them that a national schismatic church was impossible, so they fell back on this alternative scheme of _Associations cultuelles_, destined to set in motion a process of slow disintegration and gradual decomposition. A noted Freemason said recently, “Twenty years of secular schools have made us the masters of France; with twenty years of _Associations cultuelles_ every trace of the Catholic religion in France will be effaced.”
In the Senate M. Berger, a Protestant Freemason, made the following interesting statement (_Journal Officiel_, p. 1380): “The law,” he said, “had been slumbering in the Republican programme for the past fifty years ... but how can a law be perfect that has had only one deliberation?... Instead of this a voice cries to us, ‘Vote, vote.’ Here are articles in disagreement with each other--Vote. They are in contradiction with the spirit of the law--Vote. They violate existing rights--Vote, vote. Do your duty as a Republican.... Well, yes, I will vote this law from a sense of duty.”[18]
This same senator described the true character of the _Associations cultuelles_ when he said, “They are free associations destined to take the place of the ancient Church.”
Not less clear was the statement of M. Briand, Minister of Public Worship: “Dissensions may arise, not in matters of dogma only, but in questions of administration. We must allow those, who do not wish to submit, to form independent autonomous associations if they wish to use the same church.”
If Christians anywhere wonder at the severity of the papal encyclical rejecting these associations, it is because they have not even scanned the text of the law, and accept, unchallenged, the misrepresentations of a Press which seems to derive all its information from organs like _La Lanterne_, _L’Action_, _Le Siècle_, _Le Temps_, etc. This Law of alleged Separation presumes to dictate to the Catholic Church, an organization in which episcopal authority, the basis of her divinely given constitution, is completely set at naught. The Roman Pontiff, her supreme head, was not once consulted, and in order to make it impossible to do so, they began by severing all connexion with the Vatican in 1904. It is very much as if, after suppressing all their schools and colleges, the English Government were to pass a law declaring that Quakers and Presbyterians are to be deprived of all their ecclesiastical property unless they consent to adopt episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer. Would any one under these circumstances hesitate to say that Quakers and Presbyterians were persecuted? I trow not.