PARIS
493
PARIS
the Friends of Young Women, in 1905 alone gave
shelter to 11,919 young girls in Paris.
There is at present a great renewal in Catholic methods of charity and relief at Paris, the spirit of which is shown in the report concerning Catholic relief societies read (Aug., 1910) at the International Congress of Public and Private Relief held at Copen- hagen under the presidency of President Loubet: "The great originality of Catholic relief work in re- cent years consists in the multiplication of works for social education. This arises more and more from the 'patriarchal' conception of these undertakings. The modern wish and tendency is to give him who suffers a share in his own relief, to give him a collabora- tive or directing part in the effort which is being made to assist and uplift him. Henceforth the favourite works of charity among Catholics will be those known as preventive. To prevent misery by an hygienic, domestic, professional education is the object of the founders of modern works of relief. They are con- cerned not only with the strife against the conse- quences of misery but with that against its production. Without neglecting individual alms, Catholic charity aims especially at social relief; it prefers to precede misery to prevent it, rather than to follow it to relieve it; it prefers to uplift families rather than assist them, to help them when they are stumbling rather than to raise them up when they have fallen; it prefers to help them actively to better working conditions, than to relieve passively the results of these evil conditions. All instruction imparted in organizations for Catholic youth and in the Catholic patronages of Paris is im- pregnated with this apparently new spirit which on closer view is seen to be merely a return to the Chris- tian solidarity of the Middle Ages."
Religious Renewal of the Twentieth Century. — In 190.5 at the end of the concordatory period the Diocese of Paris had 3,599,870 inhabitants, 38 par- ishes, 104 succursales, 7 vicariates, formerly remuner- ated by the State. Since the separation of Church and State, the religious character of Paris shows signs of renewal. Statistics of the religious and civil burials from 1883 to 1903, drawn up by the Abbe Raffin, afford a very exact idea of the religious condi- tion of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. The largest proportion of civil burials, 23 per cent, was reached in 1884. At the end of the nineteenth century the proportion of civil burials had fallen to 18 per cent; from 1901 to 1903, they showed a ten- dency to rise to 20 per cent. Civil funerals take place chiefly among the poor. For example in 1888 in the five most costly classes of burials the number of civil burials did not exceed 4-5 per cent; on the other hand, the ninth class, which is the cheapest, and the free class show 25 to 30 per cent. At present among the wealthy classes there is a slight increase in the num- ber of civil funerals, and a slight decrease among the working classes, but the fact remains that, despite the gratuitousness of religious assistance in the case of the poor, the average number of 10,000 civil funerals which take place yearly at Paris consists chiefly of funerals of the poor. One reason for this is the in- sufficiency of rehgious assistance in the hospitals. Although more than a third of the Parisians die in hospitals, there are only about thirty hospital chap- lains, and these the management does not permit to approach the sick unless they are summoned. An- other reason lies in the excessive size of suburban parishes and in the difficulty of reaching an immense fluctuating population. At the beginning of the twentieth century Notre-Dame-de-M6nilmontant had 70,000, St-Pierre-de-JMontrouge 83,000, Notre-Dame- de-Clignancourt 120,000 inhabitants. For a long time these enormous parishes had no more priests than the smaller ones in the centre of Paris. At St-Am- broise there were 8 to 10 priests for 80,000 souls, while St-Thomas-d'-4quin had 8 priests for 14,000, and St-
Sulpice 17 for 38,000 (see the report of M. Thureau
Dangin, permanent secretary of the French Academy,
concerning the (Euvre des chapelles de secours). M.
Thureau Dangin calculated in 1905 that Paris, with
its 522 pastors or curates, had an average of 37,000
or 38,000 souls to a parish, while at Lyons there was 1
priest for every 3000 souls, at Antwerp 1 for every
500, at New York 1 for every 1500.
The realization of this dearth and its dangers caused the organization of the (Euvre des Seminaires as early as 1882 to increase and facilitate vocations, and in 1905 Cardinal Richard pointed out the urgent necessity of the creation of about thirty new parishes or of chapelles de secours. At present the diocesan administration is most actively engaged in the organ- ization of these chapelles de secours. Every year a
Triomphe, Paris
dignitary of the French Academy or of the Institute
presents a report of the progress made, MM. Francois
Coppee, Thureau Dangin, de Mun, d'Haussonville,
Georges Picot, and Etienne Lamy having been heard
in turn. The Christian Doctrine Society {(Euvre des
Catechismes) founded in 1885 by Cardinal Richard was
erected into a confraternity by Leo XIII on 30 May,
1893, with which all the catechetical societies of
France may be affiliated. This society is formed of
voluntary catechists and promoters paying dues.
In addition to the multiplication of places of worship,
special religious services have been organized for cer-
tain classes of persons. For example, the missionary
work among young seamstresses (Midinettes) has
developed greatly between 1908 and 1910; it consists
of short instructions between 12.35 and 12. .50 p. m., so
that the young women may return punctually to work.
More than 5000 working girls have profited by these
missions. The Society of Diocesan Missions, founded
in 1886 by Cardinal Richard, supports from 18 to 20
missionaries, who according to the report of their su-
perior, the Abbe Gibergues, made to the Diocesan Con-
gress of 1908, have brought back to the Church more
than 40,000 persons in less than a quarter of a century.
Lastly, the Archdiocese of Paris has assumed the
direction of the Cathohc social movement. In 1910
a social secretariat was organized, as a bureau of infor-
mation and headquarters for social undertakings, and
