BELGIUM
405
BELGIUM
and has come forth victorious. In the second place it
must be remarked that the war on the rehgion of the
people has daily assumed a more threatening aspect.
At the close of the eighteenth century, Belgium had
no enemies except its foreign oppressors, abetted by
a few handfuls of traitors. Under the Dutch Govern-
ment, it was evident that the generation which de-
veloped under the French domination had been
partly won over to revolutionary doctrines, and
that among the bourgeoisie of the cities there was a
body which no longer recognized the authority of
religion in social matters. After 1846, it was mani-
fest that this faction was under the control of the
Masonic lodges, and had positively declared itself
for war upon religion and the Church. In 1886, it
was e\"ident that, in the bourgeois class, the great
mass of workingmen had been won over to the cause
of irreligion and that the population of the industrial
districts had been seriously affected. In addition to
this, the four larger cities of Belgium, Brussels,
Antwerp, Liege, and Ghent, and most of the cities
of the Walloon provinces, had gone over to the
Anti-Catholic party. The defenders of religion and
its oppressors tended to become numerically equal,
a state of things that would be apparent to all, were
it not masked in a way by the system of plural
voting. In the votes cast at the general elections
there is always a Catholic majority, but it is a ques-
tion whether the majority of voters are Catholics.
If it is asked whether the Catholics, namely, the
Belgians who submit to the teachings of the Church,
still constitute the majority of the nation, the answer
would be more or less doubtful. This leads to a third
remark. The resistance to the enemies of religion
has not been as effective as the duration and intensity
of the contest might lead one to believe. Whenever
the Catholics were successful, they have been satisfied
with keeping the power in their hands; they have
not exercised it to carry out their programme. No
Catholic vNTongs liave been redressed; every law made
by the Liberals against the Church and the clergy
has remained unrepealed, and it was only in 1884
that the Government, supported by the entire nation,
felt strong enough to inaugurate a bolder policy.
But the revision of the School Law of 1879 is the
solitary instance of this progress, and will probably
continue to be so for some time to come.
The social condition of the Catholic religion in Belgium, while doubtless favourable, is not, there- fore, free from danger. The School Law of 1884, amended in 189.5, is inadequate to guarantee the Christian education of the people. It is evaded by the municipal government of the capital, which man- ages by trickery to exempt the majority of the children from religious instruction, and even in the Liberal communes, where the pupils receive religious instruction, it is neutralized by the lessons given them by their freethinking teachers. Many of the public schools are now developing generations of unbelievers. This is a matter that needs attention. It is also imperative to re-enforce the Catholic army by drawing recruits from the only source open to it, namely, the people. To do this the Government must accentuate the character of its social legislation, which is too often compromised by provisions which deprive it of a large part of its effectiveness. The law on trade unions deprives them of the means most hkely to make them prosper, which is to make trade. The law on labour accidents would be ex- cellent, if insurance against accidents was made obligatory. The law enjoining the Sunday rest, carried with the co-operation of the Socialists, con- tains such a large number of exceptions and is en- forced with such want of earnestness that it is almost a dead letter. The Socialists declare, often with a semblance of truth, that the laws piissed to benefit the workingmen are mere blinds, and it is II.— 26
not always easy to convince them of the contrary.
The continuation of the Catholic regime in Belgium
seems to be contingent on a radical reform of school
legislation, on provision for the division of State sub-
ventions among all the communal or private schools
in proportion to the services that they render, and
greater boldness in the solution of the labour ques-
tions. Religion has in Belgium so strong a support
in popular loyalty and devotion that by judiciously
taking advantage of them at the proper time, an
indefinite tenure of power will be ensured.
V. St.^tistics. — According to the census of 31 De- cember, 1905, the population of Belgium is 7,160,547. The great majority of the inhabitants are Catholic, but the lack of religious statistics makes it difficult to give the exact number of non-Catholics. There are about 30,000 Protestants, 3,000 to 4,000 Jews and several thousand persons who, not having been bap- tized, do not belong to any faith. The kingdom is divided into six dioceses, namely: The Archdiocese of Mechlin and the suffragan Dioceses of Bruges, Ghent, Liege, Namur, and Tournai. Each diocese has a seminary and one or several preparatory schools for the training of the clergj'; there are, in addition, the Belgian College at Rome, a seminary to which all the Belgian bishops send the best of their pupils, and the College of the Saint-Esprit at Louvain, where a superior theological course is pursued. The secular clergy number 5,419; the regular clergy, 6,237; these latter are distributed in 293 houses. The religious orders in Belgium have 29,303 members living in 2,207 houses; the members of the orders, both male and female, devote their time chiefly to teaching and nursing the sick; the male orders also aid the secular clergy in parochial work.
Under the guidance of this large body of labourers for the Church, the religious life in Belgium is intense, and the works of piety and charity are very numerous. Statistics of these charities are given in JIadame Charles Vloebergh's "La Belgique charitable", in the preface to which M. Beernaert states that no country has their equal. Belgium also takes a share out of all proportion to the size of its territory in international works of piety and in foreign mis- sions. It is at the head of the work of the Eucharistic Congress, two of its bishops. Monscigneur Doutreloux,. of Liege, and Monseigneur Heylen, of Namur, having been the first two presidents of the association. Five sessions of this congress have been held in Belgium; at Liege (1883), Antwerp, Brussels, Namur, and Tournai. Equally distinguished are the service? of Belgium in the sphere of Catholic missions. The congregation of secular priests of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, founded at Scheutveld near Brussels in 1862, labour for the evangelization of Mongolia and the Congo; several of their members have suffered martjT-dom in these countries. The Belgian Jesuits have" for their mi.ssion-field Calcutta and Western Bengal. Their missionaries are trained in the Apostolic school established at Turnhout. The American seminary at Louvain (1857) aids in re- cruiting the secular clergj' of the United States. Other religious orders also labour for the evangeliza- tion of foreign regions. The toils and heroism of a number of the Belgian missionaries have given them a world-wide renown; such are. Father Charles de Smedt, the apostle to the Indians of the Rocky -Mountains, and Father Damien de Veuster, who de- voted himself to the lepers of Molokai.
The great success of Catholicism in Belgium is largely explained by the freedom it enjoys under the Constitution. "The freedom of religions and their public exercise, as well as the right to the expression of opinions on all subjects are guaranteed, with the exception of misdemeanours committed in exercising this liberty" (art. 14). The sole restriction to this liberty is contained in article 16 of the Constitution
