The Protestant and Jewish congregations submitted without difficulty to this law, but such was not the case with the Catholic Church, or rather with the head of this Church. The ma jority of French bishops, in assembly at Paris, agreed to accept the law, after a formal protest, and to organize, under the name of Canonical Associations, societies analogous to those the law recommended. There even seemed to be a sort of agreement established between the clergy and M. Briand, who had become Minister of Public Instruction and Religion, and who had charge in this capacity of the administra tion of the Law of Separation. Moreover, the most eminent of the Catholic laity, the Catholic "Intellectuals," had publicly advised the Pope to accept the law. The Pope preferred to fol low the advice of the Jesuits, who urged him to an uncompromising resistance. He believed that the formation of religious societies would bring democracy into the Catholic Church in France, and from that the destruction of the monarchi cal hierarchy of the Church would some day result. Not only did he condemn the law hut he forbade the formation of the religious societies or anything that resembled them. The French bishops were dismayed, but they obeyed the Pope.
There seemed reason to fear a religious civil war. Already at the beginning of the adminis tration of the law, when the government wished to make an inventory of articles of furniture kept in the churches, the Catholics had forcibly opposed the officials in more than one place, and in some conflicts blood was shed.
This time the government pushed prudence to the point of negative passiveness. It allowed the Catholic priests to continue their services in the churches of which they already had posses sion, and to this day they keep this possession under provisional title with no legal right nor guarantee. There has not been any religious
disturbance in any part of France since the Pope rejected the law. Some of the Catholic laity tried by a sort of schism to form religious associations in defiance of the Pope's orders; their attempt fell flat, in the face of public in difference.
But the decision of Pius X deprived the Catholics of property whose transmission to the religious societies was assured by law, that is to say, the property of the former establish ments of the sect, whose sum total is reckoned at about 300,000,000 francs. The Catholics thus saw themselves defrauded of the re sources they would have found in the assess ments, collections and contributions of the re ligious associations. It was difficult for them to pay their clergy and difficult to recruit them. Furthermore, the Pope had the ad vantage of being able to name the bishops without the permission of the French govern ment, a privilege which gave him the oppor tunity to strengthen his absolute power.
The Great War in which France has been engaged since August 1914 has resulted in a truce being called to religious controversies and has almost completely obliterated their remembrance. Clericalism and anti-clericalism are words now scarcely ever spoken. On the various committees formed in aid of the national defense, free-thinkers and bishops sit side by side. There has not been in France any anti-papal movement. The war occupied all parties, and to-day all are united in a "Sacred Union." See CHURCH AND STATE.