During the reign of Pope Pius X the war against religion in France was at its height. For awhile, after the fall of Louis Napoleon, the Third Republic of France was at peace with the Church. In 1876 the anti-clerical party came to power. The right to confer degrees was taken away from Catholic universities. Work was authorized for Sundays. Military chaplaincies were suppressed. Primary public education was the law, divorce was legalized and military service was imposed on the clergy. Suppressions of religious congregations followed in 1905. Priests were thrown out of their churches and nuns from their convents. Church property was confiscated.
With the direction we seem to be headed at present in the United States, the war on religion, and that is what it is, could become dictatorial in nature. If the Administration does not back down, there could be horrendous fines, school and hospital closures, and who knows what all. The Church hierarchy, and I include other Christian and Jewish leaders of faith and resolve must stand firm, no matter what.
I have here some quotes from Une Fois Encore (Once Again), an Encyclical of Pope St. Pius X on the problems of the Church in France in 1907. Perhaps they are prophetic.
"...far from abating, the struggle grows fiercer and expands unceasingly. It is no longer only the Christian faith that they would uproot at all costs from the hearts of the people; it is any belief which lifting man above the horizon of this world would supernaturally bring back his wearied eyes to heaven. Illusion on the subject is no longer possible. War has been declared against everything supernatural, because behind the supernatural stands God, and because it is God that they want to tear out of the mind and heart of man.
"The war will be bitter and without respite on the part of those who wage it. That as it goes on harder trials than those which you have hitherto known await you is possible and even probable. Common prudence calls on each of you to prepare for them. And this you will do simply, valiantly, and full of confidence, sure that however firecely the fight may rage, victory will in the end remain in your hands.
"....Specious promises, dishonorable bribes offered to schism, threats and violence, all these have been brought into play and employed......The Church, they said, is seeking to arouse religious war in (France), and is summoning to her aid the violent persecution which has been the object of her prayers. What a strange accusation! Founded by Him who came to bring peace to the world and to reconcile man with God, a Messenger of peace upon earth, the Church could only seek religious war by repudiating her high mission and belying it before the eyes of all. ....Besides, the whole world now knows that if peace of conscience is broken in (France), that is not the work of the Church but of her enemies. Fair-minded men, even though not of our faith, recognize that if there is a struggle on the question of religion in your beloved country, it is not because the Church was the first to unfurl the flag, but because war was declared against her."
"....The vague and ambiguous wording of some of its articles places the end pursued by our enemies in a new light. Their object is, as we have already pointed out, the destruction of the Church and the de-christianization of (France)....If their enterprise had been really popular, as they pretend it to be, they would not have hesitated to pursue it with visor raised and to take the whole responsibility. But instead of assuming that responsibility, they try to clear themselves of it and deny it, and in order to succeed the better, fling it upon the Church, their victim. This is the most striking of all the proofs that their evil work does not respond to the wishes of the country.
"....It is in vain that after daring Us to the cruel necessity of rejecting the laws that have been made -seeing the evils they have drawn down upon the country, and feeling the universal reprobation which, like a slow tide, is rising round them - they seek to lead public opinion astray and to make the responsibility for these evils fall upon Us...."
Is History repeating itself?
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