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management, assigning the monopoly of it to the
communes. Only the furniture used for the exterior
or interior decorations of religious edifices could
thenceforward be provided by the jahriqnes. But the
Separation Law of lOOo supervened, and all such
decorative furnitvire became the proiierty of the asso-
ciations CKltiielles (see below) . As no associalion cultu-
elle was formed for the Catholic religion, the material
fell into the hands of the sequestrators of the /abrique
property.
The Law of Separation. — " The Law of Separation of the Churches and the State" {Loi de Separation, des Eglises et de I'Etat) of 1905 proceeded from the princi- ple that the State professes no religious belief. Re- garded from the viewpoint of the life of the Church, it completely dissociated the State from the appoints ment of bishops and parish priests. Soon after the passage of the law all the vacant sees received titulars by direct nomination of Pius X. As to the annual revenue of the Church, the appropriation for public worship (budget des cultes), which in 1905 amounted to 42,324,933 francs, was suppressed. The departments and communes were forbidden to vote appropriations for public worship. The law grants, first, life pensions equivalent in each case to three-fourths of the former salary to ministers of religion who were not less than sixty years of age when the law was promulgated and had spent thirty years in ecclesiastical services remun- erated by the State. Secondly, it grants life pensions equivalent to one-half the former salary to ministers of religion who were not less than forty-five years of age and had passed more than twenty years in ecclesiasti- cal services remunerated by the State. It makes grants for periods of from four to eight years to ecclesiastics less than forty-five years of age who shall continue to discharge their functions. The law resulted, in the budget of 1907, in the elimination of the item of 37,441,800 francs ($7,488,360) for salaries to ministers of religion and the inclusion of 29,563,871 francs ($5,912,774) for the pensions and allowances of the first year, making a saving of about eight millions. As the allowances are to diminish progressively until the suppression is complete, at the end of eight years, and as the pensions are to cease with the lives of the pensioners, the appropriations on account of reUgious worship will decrease notably as year follows year.
With respect to the buildings which the Concordat had placed at the disposal of the Church, the law pro- vided that the episcopal residences, for two years, the presbyteries and seminaries (gratids siminaires), for five years, the churches, for an indefinite period, should be left at the disposal of the associations cul- tueltes, which will be discussed later on in this article. In reganl to church property, this consisted of (a) the meyisa: cpiscopales and meiisce curiales (see Mensa), which were composed of the possessions restored to the Church after the Concordat, together with the sum total of the donations made to bishoprics or parishes in the course of the intervening century; (b) the prop- erty of the parish fabriques, intended to meet all the expenses of public worship, and derived either from possessions restored to the Church after the Concordat or from gifts and legacies, and augmented by pew- rents, collections, and funeral fees. The Law of Sep- aration divided the property of the mensm and the jabriques into three classes. The first of these classes consisted of property received from the State, and this the State resumed; as to the second, consisting of property not received from the State, and on the other hand burdened with eleemosynary or educational obli- gations, it was ruled that the representatives of the fabriques could give it to public establishments or to establishments of public utility of an eleemosynary or educational character, subject to the approbation of the prefect. Lastly, there was a third category which comprised property not derived from state grants and not burdened with any obligations or only with obliga-
tions connected with public worship. It was ruled
that such property should pass into the hands of the
associations cultncllcs, ani.1 that if no such body ap-
peared to receive it it should bo assigned by decree to
communal benevolent institutions within the territo-
rial Umits of the parish or diocese.
This brings us to the subject of the associations cultuclles. Under the Concordat the episcopal mensa and the parochial fabrique were public institutions. When religious worship ceased to be a department of the public service, the Chambers, in order to replace the mstitutions which had been suppressed, wished to call into existence certain private " moral persons", or associations. Without any previous understanding with the Holy See, the rupture with which was already complete, the Chambers decided that in each diocese and each parish associations for religious worship (associations cultuelles) could be created to receive as proprietors the property of the mensa, with the respon- sibility of taking care of it. The transfer of the prop- erty was to be effected liy decisions of the former fabriques in favour of these new associations. The law imposed a certain minimum number of administra- tors on each association, the number varying from seven to twenty-five, according to the importance of the commune, and the administrators might be French or foreign, men or women, priests or laymen. The preparation of statutes for the associations was left entirely free. Very lively controversies arose. It was suggested that the application of this law would be followed by an influx of lay Catholics, members of the associations cultuelles, into the government of the Church. Some thought this anxiety excessive; for, as the law allowed a number of adjacent parishes to be administered by a single association cultuelle, it seems that it would have been, strictly speaking, possible for one association, composed of the bishop and twenty-four priests chosen by him, to receive both the property of the mensa and that of all the parishes of the diocese.
But other reasons for anxiety appeared when Arti- cles 4 and 8 of the Law were carefully compared. Article 4 provided that these associations must, in their constitutions, "conform to the general rules of organization of public worship", and as a matter of fact, at Riom, in 1907, the court refused the use of the church to a schismatical priest who was supported by a scliismatical association cultuelle. But Article 8 pro- vided for the case in which several associations cultu- elles, each with its own priest, should lay claim to the same church, and gave the Council of State the right to decide between them, "taking account of the cir- cumstances of fact". Thus, while, according to Arti- cle 4, it appeared that the cultuelle recognized by, and in effective conununion with, the hierarchy nuist natu- rally be the owner of the property of the /abrique. Article 8 left to the Council of State, a purely lay authority, the settlement of any dispute which might arise between a cultuelle faithful to the bishop and a schismatical cultuelle. Thus it belonged to the Council of State to pronounce upon the orthodoxy of any asso- ciation cultuelle and its conformity with "the general rules of public worsliip" as provided by Article 4.
A general assembly of the episcopate, held 30 May, 1906, considered the question of the associations cultuclles, but the decisions reached were not divulged. Should such associations be formed according to the Law, or must they refuse to form any? In the month of March, twenty-three Catholic writers and inembers of the Chambershad expressed, in a confitlential letter to the bishops, a hope that the cultuelles might be given a trial. The publication of this letter had stirred up a bitter controversy, and for some months the Cath- olics of France were seriously divided. Pius X, in the Encyclical "Gravissimo officii" (10 August, 1906), gave it as his judgment that this law, made without his assent, and which even purported to be made
