Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/506



500 THE RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS IN FRANCE.

her, the great influence which they secure for her especially in the East, all these are facts recognized by men of the most varied opinions, and only lately solemnly proclaimed by the voice of the highest authority.

Under these circumstances, to deprive the religious congregations at home of the freedom and peace which alone can ensure the recruiting of their members and the long and laborious task of their training would not onty be to requite so many great services with inexplicable ingratitude, but would also, at the same time, be a clear renunciation of the benefits that flow from them. Other nations have already had sorry experience of such a policy. After having checked the expansion of the religious congre- gations at home, and so gradually dried up their seed they have seen their own influence and prestige abroad proportionally decline; for it is useless to seek fruit of a tree from which you lop the branches.

It is easy to see that all the great interests at stake in this question would be seriously compromised, even if the missionary orders were spared that the others might be struck, for careful consideration shows that the existence and action of the one are bound up with the existence and action of the others. As a matter of fact the vocation of the missionary religious germinates and develops under the word of the preacher religious, under the pious direction of the teaching religious and even under the supernatural influence of the contemplative religious. One can im- agine, too, the difficult situation in which the mission- aries would be placed, and the decline of their authority and prestige which would follow on the people whom they are seeking to evangelize, learning that the religious congregations, far from meeting with protection and respect in their own country, were there treated with hostility and harshness.

But, looking at the question from a higher standpoint, we may point out that the religious congregations, as We have already said, represent the pubhc practice of Chris-