La séparation au Sénat

The Separation in the Senate

Raoul Allier

In memoriam

There is a name that I must inscribe at the head of this cahier: it is that of Louis Juttet, the friend with a warm heart, with untiring and modest devotion, who was the true artisan of the inquiry conducted by le Siecle.

Raoul Allier

The Augagneur Amendment

March 26, 1905

The amendments to the separation law are piling up on the desk of the Chamber of Deputies. There is one that is already raising the liveliest controversies: it is the one, or at least a part of the one, that was introduced by M. Augagneur, deputy of Lyon. People have begun to discuss it; but they started, in part of the press, by greeting it with a volley of insults. It is, for some, nothing more or less than an “amendment of treason.” This is how one treats, in our political parties, anyone who takes the liberty, on a particular question, of having his own personal opinion and above all of expressing it. Now M. Augagneur’s proposal, even though one may reject it for reasons that I believe are good, is quite interesting and deserves to be examined closely.

It consists first of replacing article 10 of the bill submitted to the Chamber with the following text:

ARTICLE 10. — Donation is made by the State, the departments and the communes to the ecclesiastical establishments and to the associations substituted for them, as they are designated and instituted by title IV of the present law, of the buildings serving exclusively for the exercise of worship: cathedrals, churches, chapels of ease, temples and synagogues, property of the State, the departments and the communes, whether prior to the promulgation of the Concordat or subsequent to that promulgation.

The archbishoprics, presbyteries, seminaries and their immovable dependencies are returned to the possession of the State, the departments or the communes of which they are the property.

The movable dependencies of the religious establishments, consecrated or not to worship, are attributed in full ownership to the above-named associations.

I do not wish to lend my ear to the malicious uproar that has suddenly arisen around this amendment. M. Augagneur’s anticlericalism is no mystery to anyone. Who will be made to believe that he has been suddenly transformed by an irresistible desire to play, in the interest of the Church, the role of a socialist and candid Constantine? The truth is that we are dealing with a man who has found himself at the head of one of the greatest municipalities in France, who does not live in pure logic and who, without scorning principles, knows how to take account of realities. The motives of his proposal do not succeed in convincing me; but I do not see why I should refuse to recognize that they are very serious.

They are above all of a financial nature. M. Augagneur considers that there is no proportion between the profit that the State or the communes would derive from renting the buildings of worship and the charges that would come to them from the major repairs to be made to these buildings. The profit would be minimal, and the charges crushing. The donation would be to the advantage of its authors. An act of apparent or real generosity would yield a material benefit.

This calculation is certainly combined with a political preoccupation. The municipalities of rural communes — and of many urban communes — will often be driven into a terrible problem. They will have to maneuver between the anti-Catholic objurgations of certain extremists and the anger of other voters whose conscience will perhaps have become dreadfully sensitive. How many of them will there be, among these latter, who were accustomed to always support the Republic against all reactionary enterprises and whose protests will be suddenly violent and disturbing? To give themselves the pleasure of following certain ideas to their conclusion, will they expose themselves to dangerous adventures? The question will not be simple for many mayors and municipalities. It is clear that M. Augagneur wished to simplify it.

One must not neglect any of these data whose totality constitutes, for the deputy of Lyon, the great problem of tomorrow. But one can take them rigorously into account without arriving at quite the same solution. Other data, in fact, must equally be considered.

First, public opinion would accept nothing that had the appearance of a despoiling of the State or the communes for the benefit of the Church. This susceptibility, carried to a certain point, borders on the absurd. There are even cases where it does not content itself with bordering on it. But it is one of those facts that men of politics are not free to forget. Every time they have the appearance of forgetting it, their proposals will have no chance of success. I fear indeed that M. Augagneur’s will run up against an invincible sentiment. One has only, to be assured of it, to reread the articles it has provoked. Eight times out of ten, they express nothing but a start of astonishment before this “gift of so many properties to the Roman clergy.” Consequently, one would argue indefinitely about the pecuniary importance of this gift. Some would maintain that it consisted only of a certain number of buildings without commercial value, unusable outside of worship. Others would show the State and the communes defrauded of an enormous figure of millions. And some and others would find, in favor of their contradictory theses, defensible arguments. Such a debate could not reach a conclusion, and it would be dangerous.

He who says “donation” says “definitive alienation.” There is an adjective there that cannot enter the head of many of our statesmen. Their reasoning is very strong: “We do not know what the new regime holds for Catholicism. Bishops, priests, well-informed laypersons have spoken of schisms they dread. Why should we not think, too, of these eventualities? We are quite willing to put this or that building at the disposal of today’s Catholics. But we do not wish to declare that they will never evolve and that in any case this building will be reserved forever for those who do not evolve. We do not wish to contribute perhaps, through an eternal donation, to freezing history.” Whether this concern is illusory or not, whether it is suggested by real hopes or inspired by a simple scruple, matters little: it haunts our legislators. M. Augagneur’s proposal has the fault of being, at least in appearance, foreign to this concern.

These are the contradictory data that must be reconciled. The political and financial reasons of the deputy of Lyon are quite valid. The reasons of his adversaries are very serious. Indeed he himself has provided, for the donation he insists on having ordered, clauses of revocation that singularly change its character.

I said it on many occasions: there is no normal solution outside of the one that affirms the right of the State over the property that, in conformity with our legislation, belongs to it. This right must be maintained. It is important also to reconcile it with the financial and political demands that dictated M. Augagneur’s amendment. This reconciliation exists only in the symbolic rent. It is M. Reveillaud who, in his bill introduced on June 25, 1903, first advocated the fictitious or nominal rent that, for theoretical reasons, I prefer to call symbolic rent. According to his proposal, the religious buildings, which currently belong to the State and to the communes, are left at the disposal of the worship associations on the condition of paying an annual rent of 1 franc, and this rent has the purpose of ensuring to the grantors the permanence of their right of ownership.

The Worship Associations

April 2, 1905

The question of the worship associations arises every day with new precision. As soon as it concerns Catholicism — and because of the antinomy between the Catholic principle and the principle of universal suffrage — it becomes paramount. From whatever angle one considers it then, it is very grave. This was realized as soon as one wished to speak, in detail, of the devolution of property and the attribution of buildings of worship. M. Barthou said the other day from the tribune — and he was right — that “the fate and the future of the law” would be played out around this problem.

The thoughts in conflict are clear and, I dare to write, equally legitimate. On the one hand, Catholics fear a trap: despite the liberalism of the language used, despite the religious indifference that is affected, is one not working to provoke schisms in the Church? The bishop of Quimper and our five cardinals do not hesitate to affirm it. On the other hand, the republicans of free thought — this denomination goes beyond the circles one knows — do not wish that the great reform of secularization should end up consecrating the absolute monarchism of the Church and fixing French Catholicism in its present form forever.

“A door must be either open or shut.” The Catholics proclaim: we do not intend it to be open. The republicans retort: we demand that it not be shut. I listen to them, one and all, and I note that they all have the fault of not inserting into their categorical declaration what grammarians call an “adverb of time.” By inserting the right adverb, the debate clears up.

Catholics are within their rights to demand that the door of schism not be opened tomorrow, that is, at the moment when the separation takes place. Republicans are within their rights to demand that the door not be shut for the day after tomorrow, that is, for all the times that will follow the separation.

The revolution that Parliament is preparing will take place in peace only on the condition that it not be complicated by anything else. It is large enough in itself without being doubled by a certain number of other revolutions equally considerable. It must consist only in this: the passage from a state where Catholicism is invested with official privileges to a state where this same Catholicism will have lost all its privileges. Is that nothing, then?

This simple transformation is enormous. It will be so in the present. It will be so in its future consequences. I do not see why one would wish to add to it, right now, and by legislative means, an intimate upheaval of Catholicism. The clericals are opposed to the separation by virtue of their principles. Their principles are none of our concern. But they must not be able to fight it by maintaining that the separation offered has less the purpose of consecrating the divorce of Church and State than of organizing the dissolution of the Church.