and then the secular priests were persecuted, and bishops imprisoned. Since 1879 there was a continued agitation in France against the Jesuits and their schools. This campaign has now issued in a general war against all teaching congregations, in fact against all religious orders.
But this is not all; of late radical papers begin to proclaim the real intentions of the persecutors of the religious orders. One paper wrote recently: "Now we must not forget the Curés (Parish priests); after the monks let us attend to them." Hostility to the Church, nay, to all religion, is at the bottom of the unjust and tyrannous proceedings against the Jesuits and other religious orders in France. For, whilst to the ordinary reader of newspapers the recent laws "appear to be a mere measure of self-defense forced upon the Republican Government by the reputed political intrigues of the Clerical party in France, it is in reality a systematic attempt to discredit religion, and to remove its checking influence upon the atheistic movement of the controlling party."[1] That influence was chiefly felt to come from the religious orders, particularly from the teaching congregations. Hence they must go. The hypocritical assertion: "We combat Jesuitism, not the Church, not religion," is a mere ruse the guerre, a stratagem, used to deceive more fair-minded Protestants, and short-sighted or lukewarm Catholics. That this is no exaggerated party statement, is evident from the discussions in the French Senate during the last three years. It is also frankly
- ↑ American Ecclesiastical Review, Sept. 1902, p. 324. – See especially the Dublin Review, October 1902: "The Power behind the French Government," where it is clearly set forth who the real instigators of this new persecution are.
