1. From its origin in 1871 up to 1876 the Republic showed itself extremely favorable to religion. The National Assembly, elected after the war, asked for the re-establishment in the Church service of the official prayers for the state, which had been temporarily suppressed, and for the restoration of the military chap lains. It admitted ministers of religion into the boards of Public Instruction and Public Charity. It increased by $800,000 the parlia mentary appropriation for public worship. Finally in 1875 it gave private citizens the right, previously reserved to the state, to undertake higher education, a right of which the Church availed herself to found five universities. Need I recall that on the other hand, it healed up the wounds of the stricken fatherland with a rapidity which was the wonder of the world, and replaced France in a very short time in the position of dignity and honor from which the cruel disasters of the Franco-German War had for the moment displaced her? One of the most clear-sighted citizens of America, Father Hecker (q.v.), founder of the Paulists, who lived much in France at that time, declared the Republic of that day one of the best govern ments that any people had ever known.
Unfortunately the foresight of the men who composed this government was not equal to their honesty, and their ability to serve well the interests of the country at the time was the measure of their inability to follow its political and social evolution. The majority of them did not suspect that France, con sciously or unconsciously, had entered the age of democracy; and when, after vain efforts to agree upon the choice of a king or of an em peror, they finally adopted, in 1875, a Republican form of government, because it was the only possible one, they lost the benefit of that act of wisdom in letting it be seen that they had done as they did in spite of themselves, and in setting themselves immediately to work to destroy what the had built up.
Those senseless tactics constituted at once the joy and the success of their adversaries, but I am frank in saying that France suffered griev ously from it all. Men, if not gifted with the most profound foresight, at least possessed of honesty and disinterestedness, have been placed in a powerless opposition to the government, and from the special point of view which now concerns us this has been most disastrous for the cause of religion. The Conservatives, be it said to their praise, were in general the best friends of the Church, whilst by an unhappy coincidence the most active and advanced Re publicans were at the same time enemies of the Christian faith. From this there resulted
an inevitable solidarity, which on the one hand cast the lot of the Church with that of the Conservative party, and on the other hand iden tified the Republic with the cause of irreligion.
Little by little, however, a new generation grew up, and among the members of the Church were many who discerned the signs of the time and the political evolution of the majority of their countrymen. The liberal language of Pope Leo XIII and of Cardinal Lavigerie, ad vising Catholics to sincerely accept the repub lican constitution even when it was a duty to oppose some tendencies of the party in power, found enthusiastic echo in the hearts of many young priests and young laymen as well; and they did their best to destroy the old prejudice that Catholic faith was incompatible with re publicanism, one of their chief arguments to prove that freedom and religion can find their highest expression under a republican form of government being America herself and the satisfaction with which American prelates view the conditions of the Church in their country.
Unfortunately this movement, called in France Ralliement, was not universal, at least before the Great War, and there remained some people simple enough to keep on believing that the acts of the government were an unavoid able fruit of republicanism, and that the only thing to do was to try to overthrow it. That little coterie of blind men of the extreme Right did not exert a real influence on public opinion, nor on the life of the country; but in their speeches and in their newspapers they gave a perpetual pretext' to the Anti-clericals of the extreme Left to unceasingly assume the role of saviors of the Republic and to proclaim that, outside of themselves, there were no sincere Republicans in France. The Radicals, only too glad of such an opportunity, repudiated and misrepresented the attitude of the Catholics who were sincerely adhering to Republicanism and did their utmost to perpetuate the animosity between the Church and the state and to pre vent a reconciliation which would have hin dered them from monopolizing the benefits of power.
Hence the Radicals' perpetual hostility and their destructive measures against every reli gious institution, which we have now to speak about as impartially as we have pointed out the political mistakes of the Conservatives.
They declared war on the Church and that officially, when Gambetta put forth in 1876 his famous phrase "Le clericalisme, voila l'ennemio ("Clericalism is the enemy").