FRANCE
176
FRANCE
Through all these changes of government French
foreign policy, either knowingly or by force of habit
and precedent, has been of service to the Catholic
Church, service amply repaid by the Church in per-
petuating in some measure the Christian ideal of
earlier times. The Crimean War, undertaken (1855)
by Napoleon III, originated in the desire to protect
Latin Christians in Palestine, the clients of France,
against Russian encroachments. During the course
of the nineteenth century French diplomacy at Rome
and in the East has aimed at safeguarding the pre-
rogatives of France as patron of Oriental Christen-
dom, and of thus justifying the traditional trust of the
Orientals in the " Franks ' ' as the natural champions of
Christianity in the Ottoman Empire. French influ-
ence in this field was threatened by Austria, Italy, and
(iermany in turn; the first of these powers alleged
certain treaties with the sultan, dating from the
eighteenth century, as giving it the right to defend
Catholic interests at the Sublime Porte; the other two
made repeated efforts to induce Italian and German
missionaries to seek protection from their owii consuls
rather than those of France. But on 22 May, ISSS,
the circular "Aspera rerum conditio", signed by Car-
dinal Simeoni, Prefect of the Propaganda, commanded
all missionaries to respect the prerogatives of France
as their protecting power. Even at the present time,
in spite of the separation of Church and State, the
diplomacy of the Third Republic in the East enjoys
the prestige acquired by the France of St. Louis and
Francis I. And amid all the ideas and tendencies of
"laicization" this protectorate continues to exist as
a relic and a right of Christian France. — " Anticlerical-
ism is not an article for exportation", said Gambetta,
and up to within recent years this has always been the
motto of Republican France. In spite of the con-
stant threats under which the congregations have
lived during the Third Republic, it is nnciuestionable
that certain important institutes have seen the num-
ber of tlicir members increase notably. This is
illustrated by the following table: —
Members
Institute
1879
1900
Society des Missions Etrangercs
480
1200
Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny
2067
4000+
Daughters of \\ isdom
3600
4650
Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres
1119
1732
Brothers of St. Gabriel
791
1350
Little Brothers of Mary
3600
4850
Little Sisters of the Poor
2683
3073
Brothers of the Holy Ghost
515
902
Taine has proved that vocations to the religious life
increased remarkably in the France of the nineteenth
century, when they were entirely spontaneous, as
compared with the France of the eighteenth century,
when many families, for worldly reasons, placed their
daughters in convents.
Missionary France in the Nineteenth Century. — The reawakening of English Catholicism at the be- ginning of the nineteenth century was in some measure due to the influence of the French refugee clergy whom the Revolution had driven into exile. And when, in 1789, in the United States of America, John Carroll was named Bishop of Baltimore, it was to the Sulpician Fathers that he appealed to establish his seminary, thus preparing for the part which that splendid insti- tute of French priests was to take, and still continues to play, in building up the Church in America. The discussion between Monsignor Dubourg, Bishop of New Orleans, and Madame Petit, a widow of Lyons, on the spiritual needs of Louisiana (1815), and the letter written by the .\hh6 Jaricot to his sister Pauline, who
also lived at Lyons, on the poverty of the foreign
missions (1819), led these two ladies to organize, each
independently of the other, societies for the collection
of alms from the faithful for the propagation of Chris-
tianity, and from these first feeble beginnings was
born, 3 May, 1822, the great work known to English-
speaking Catholics as the "Propaganda of Lyons".
In 1898 this society collected from one country or
another, 6,700,921 francs ($1,140,180.00 or £228,000)
for missionary purposes. Of this sum no less than
4,077,085 francs was contributed by France alone,
while, in 1908, owing to the many needs of the C'hurch
at home, France's contribution fell from 6,402,586
francs to 3,082,131 francs. In 1898 the work of the
Sainte-Enfance (The Holy Childhood), also of French
origin, which aspires to save both the bodies and the
souls of Chinese children, collected 3,615,845 francs
(about $723,000.00 or £145,000), of which 1,094,092
francs came from France alone, while in 1908-09, for
the reason referred to above, French generosity could
only contribute 813,952 francs to this work, the gen-
eral receipts of which amounted to 3,761,954 francs.
That work in 1907-08 helped in 236 missions, 1171
orphanages, 7372 schools, and 2480 manual-training
establishments. In 1898, again, L'CEuvre des Ecoles
d'Orient, an association for supplying schools in the
East, collected in France 584,056 francs, in 1907 it
collected in France 243,634 francs, and in other
countries only 27,596 francs. In 1898 the Society of
African Missions collected 50,000 francs, the Anti-
Slavery Society, 120,000 francs, while the Good-Friday
alms for the maintenance of the Holy Land amounted
to 122,000 francs, making in all, for the year 1898, a
total of 6,047,231 francs contributed by France to
foreign missionaries without distinction of nationality.
But France furnishes not money only but men and
women to these missions. On the eve of the Law of
1901 the Abbe Kannengieser compiled the following
approximate estimates of tlie religious, men and
women, of French nationality engaged in mission
work:—
Soci^t6 des Missions Etrangcres 1200
Society of Jesus 750
Lazarists 500
August inians of the Assumption 216
Brothers of the Christian Schools 813
Capuchins 160
Dominicans 80
Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales 60
Carmelites 14
Marianists 80
Little Brothers of Mary 359
Oblates of St. Francis de Sales 25
Franciscans 95
Fathers of the Holy Spirit 429
White Fathers 500
African Missions 123
Oblates of Mary Immaculate 400
Marists 320
Picpus Fathers 80
Missionaries of Mary 46
Brothers of St. Gabriel 53
Redemptorists 100
Priests of B^tharram 80
Christian Brothers of Ploermel 272
Christian Brothers of the Sacred Heart 346
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart 27
Sulpician Fathers 30
Congregation of Holy Cross 40
Fathers of Mercy 21
Children of Mary Immaculate 15
Brothers of Our Lady of the Annunciation . 60
Brothers of the Holy Family 40
Benedictines of La-Pierre-qui-Vire 25
Fathers of La Salette 5
Trappists 21
A similar list of the women engaged in religious
