Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/215

 FRANCE

176

FRANCE

Through all these changes of government French foreign policy, either knowingly or by force of habit and precedent, has been of service to the Catholic Church, service amply repaid by the Church in per- petuating in some measure the Christian ideal of earlier times. The Crimean War, undertaken (1855) by Napoleon III, originated in the desire to protect Latin Christians in Palestine, the clients of France, against Russian encroachments. During the course of the nineteenth century French diplomacy at Rome and in the East has aimed at safeguarding the pre- rogatives of France as patron of Oriental Christen- dom, and of thus justifying the traditional trust of the Orientals in the " Franks ' ' as the natural champions of Christianity in the Ottoman Empire. French influ- ence in this field was threatened by Austria, Italy, and (iermany in turn; the first of these powers alleged certain treaties with the sultan, dating from the eighteenth century, as giving it the right to defend Catholic interests at the Sublime Porte; the other two made repeated efforts to induce Italian and German missionaries to seek protection from their owii consuls rather than those of France. But on 22 May, ISSS, the circular "Aspera rerum conditio", signed by Car- dinal Simeoni, Prefect of the Propaganda, commanded all missionaries to respect the prerogatives of France as their protecting power. Even at the present time, in spite of the separation of Church and State, the diplomacy of the Third Republic in the East enjoys the prestige acquired by the France of St. Louis and Francis I. And amid all the ideas and tendencies of "laicization" this protectorate continues to exist as a relic and a right of Christian France. — " Anticlerical- ism is not an article for exportation", said Gambetta, and up to within recent years this has always been the motto of Republican France. In spite of the con- stant threats under which the congregations have lived during the Third Republic, it is nnciuestionable that certain important institutes have seen the num- ber of tlicir members increase notably. This is illustrated by the following table: —

Members

Institute

1879

1900

Society des Missions Etrangercs

480

1200

Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny

2067

4000+

Daughters of \\ isdom

3600

4650

Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres

1119

1732

Brothers of St. Gabriel

791

1350

Little Brothers of Mary

3600

4850

Little Sisters of the Poor

2683

3073

Brothers of the Holy Ghost

515

902

Taine has proved that vocations to the religious life increased remarkably in the France of the nineteenth century, when they were entirely spontaneous, as compared with the France of the eighteenth century, when many families, for worldly reasons, placed their daughters in convents.

Missionary France in the Nineteenth Century. — The reawakening of English Catholicism at the be- ginning of the nineteenth century was in some measure due to the influence of the French refugee clergy whom the Revolution had driven into exile. And when, in 1789, in the United States of America, John Carroll was named Bishop of Baltimore, it was to the Sulpician Fathers that he appealed to establish his seminary, thus preparing for the part which that splendid insti- tute of French priests was to take, and still continues to play, in building up the Church in America. The discussion between Monsignor Dubourg, Bishop of New Orleans, and Madame Petit, a widow of Lyons, on the spiritual needs of Louisiana (1815), and the letter written by the .\hh6 Jaricot to his sister Pauline, who

also lived at Lyons, on the poverty of the foreign missions (1819), led these two ladies to organize, each independently of the other, societies for the collection of alms from the faithful for the propagation of Chris- tianity, and from these first feeble beginnings was born, 3 May, 1822, the great work known to English- speaking Catholics as the "Propaganda of Lyons". In 1898 this society collected from one country or another, 6,700,921 francs ($1,140,180.00 or £228,000) for missionary purposes. Of this sum no less than 4,077,085 francs was contributed by France alone, while, in 1908, owing to the many needs of the C'hurch at home, France's contribution fell from 6,402,586 francs to 3,082,131 francs. In 1898 the work of the Sainte-Enfance (The Holy Childhood), also of French origin, which aspires to save both the bodies and the souls of Chinese children, collected 3,615,845 francs (about $723,000.00 or £145,000), of which 1,094,092 francs came from France alone, while in 1908-09, for the reason referred to above, French generosity could only contribute 813,952 francs to this work, the gen- eral receipts of which amounted to 3,761,954 francs. That work in 1907-08 helped in 236 missions, 1171 orphanages, 7372 schools, and 2480 manual-training establishments. In 1898, again, L'CEuvre des Ecoles d'Orient, an association for supplying schools in the East, collected in France 584,056 francs, in 1907 it collected in France 243,634 francs, and in other countries only 27,596 francs. In 1898 the Society of African Missions collected 50,000 francs, the Anti- Slavery Society, 120,000 francs, while the Good-Friday alms for the maintenance of the Holy Land amounted to 122,000 francs, making in all, for the year 1898, a total of 6,047,231 francs contributed by France to foreign missionaries without distinction of nationality. But France furnishes not money only but men and women to these missions. On the eve of the Law of 1901 the Abbe Kannengieser compiled the following approximate estimates of tlie religious, men and women, of French nationality engaged in mission work:—

Soci^t6 des Missions Etrangcres 1200

Society of Jesus 750

Lazarists 500

August inians of the Assumption 216

Brothers of the Christian Schools 813

Capuchins 160

Dominicans 80

Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales 60

Carmelites 14

Marianists 80

Little Brothers of Mary 359

Oblates of St. Francis de Sales 25

Franciscans 95

Fathers of the Holy Spirit 429

White Fathers 500

African Missions 123

Oblates of Mary Immaculate 400

Marists 320

Picpus Fathers 80

Missionaries of Mary 46

Brothers of St. Gabriel 53

Redemptorists 100

Priests of B^tharram 80

Christian Brothers of Ploermel 272

Christian Brothers of the Sacred Heart 346

Missionaries of the Sacred Heart 27

Sulpician Fathers 30

Congregation of Holy Cross 40

Fathers of Mercy 21

Children of Mary Immaculate 15

Brothers of Our Lady of the Annunciation. 60

Brothers of the Holy Family 40

Benedictines of La-Pierre-qui-Vire 25

Fathers of La Salette 5

Trappists 21

A similar list of the women engaged in religious