11. THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE IN FRANCE. The Facts and the Without entering into an abstract discussion of right and wrong, we may admit as a fact that the whole world is now moving, more or less slowly, from the region where civil and religious power is lodged most fully in the same hands to the region where these two powers are completely separate; and to American minds, in the habit of taking prac tical views of things nothing must seem more natural and more profitable to the state as well as to the Church. How did it happen that, in France the same phenomenon could not be effected without great difficulties which nearly led the faithful to revolt and the state to per secution? A first cause of it is to be deducted indeed from the general centralization, from the moral impossibility of any great social force having a normal life outside of government con trol in a land where the state intervenes as mas ter or guide in the most trivial details of the citizen's private life. But, in order to understand it fully, we have also to remember that for many hundred years Church and State had lived in union, . and held their interests in common. After their intimate (though not always happy) relations during the Middle Ages, they had been united since the 16th century by the close bonds of a Concordat made between Francis I and the Holy See.
The French revolutionists did not at first seek to disestablish the Church, and if it is true that the Assemblee Constituante began by transferring to the nation all the property of the clergy, it was by agreement with the latter and under a formal pledge to provide for their support in an annual budget. So far from considering the Church and the State as sepa rate and independent, the Assembly voted a so-called Civil Constitution for the clergy and intended to organize it in such a way that it would depend much more on the popular elec tions than on the authority of the bishops and of the Pope. It is well known that they achieved exactly the contrary of what they in tended, and, instead of becoming thereby more closely united, the civil and religious powers were thrown into a violent conflict which led to their first separation. The Pope having pro
nounced the Constitution Civil du Clerge in compatible with the principles of Catholicism and the majority of bishops and priests having refused to sever with Rome, the Assembly pro claimed them rebellious (Ref ractaires) and en deavored to replace them by more docile minis ters (pretres assermentes), whom most of the faithful refused to follow.
Irritated by this failure, the government took more and more drastic measures against the Ref ractaires; and under the Convention, went as far as condemning many of them to exile and even to death. Such strained conditions could not and did not last; but the ameliora tion which followed covered a feeling of un easiness and uncertainty equally detrimental to religion and public welfare. Therefore when, in 1801, a Concordat was signed between Napo leon and the Pope, giving the Church a legal status and regulating its relations with the state, France welcomed it with sincere comfort and satisfaction.
Despite its imperfections, the chief of which was the narrow-minded confusion of temporal and spiritual power, one must render the Con cordat this justice, that it granted France al most a whole century of religious tranquillity. The conflicts, more or less grave, which sprang up from time to time between the state and the Church were as a rule only verbal recrimina tions, and always ended without serious con sequences. At least such was the case under the Monarchy and the Empire, but under the third Republic after a few years of perfect harmony, feuds arose, little by little, which ever became more serious and finally brought about the very unfriendly rupture.
Our aim is to expose the events and laws of this last period with the errors or the faults which, perhaps from each side, have led up to the separation.