THE FRENCH ROMAN CATHOLICS AND THE JEWS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1 SIE,—The world has not yet finished with l'Afaire Dreyfus, and the following incident may interest some of your readers who concern themselves with its larger bearings rather than with its more sensational details. It is, of course, well known that to the clerical Press and clerical influences generally is Owing the bitterest opposition which the cause of revision has had to face. I do not enter here upon the reasons for this, but I was interested the other day in seeing somewhat deeper into the mind of the ordinary religions Roman Catholic in this matter. One afternoon, at a tea-party com- Posed of members of various nationalities, the inevitable Dreyfus question arose. There was present a Parisian Baronne," a woman of impressive appearance and apparently great intelligence, known, moreover, to be tr,s devote. Her 1014 a distinguished Parisian avocat, was with her. The %tonne, after her kind, passed from Dreyfus, and the petty
affair of justice to "one Jew," to a diatribe against his race. An English interlocutor put the question, " How do you, as a religious Roman Catholic, reconcile your own
and that of your Church towards the Jews, when the Founder of the Christian religion himself was of Jewish birth P " — " Oh," replied the Baronne. " my director, the Abbe — of Paris—a very learned man—clearly explained to me that that is an entire fabrication, and that our Lord was not of Jewish race."—" Would you favour me with the Abbe's explanation ? " said the inquirer, "as the New Testament writers seem strongly of the other opinion." Here the Baronne drew up short : " Ah, les bonnes Catholiques are not permitted to discuss religious questions, but let me assure you that what the Abbe said is true. It is possible that my son might speak with you on the subject." But the lawyer politely declined. The incident throws some little light in more than one direction. This was the case of a woman highly intelligent on all subjects but religion,—to her the supremely important matter, and yet that in which she had been carefully misled. Irish Catholicism, lay and clerical. is generally credited with most systematised ignorance and obscurantism. I begin to believe, from considerable observa- tion, that French excels it, or, rather, to credit such results to no race but to the " system." To those who love the best in France, and who believe an enlightened religious faith to be the source of a nation's, as well as of an individual's, highest life, it is somewhat tragical to see the party known as the religions party in France still justifying the contemptuous gibes of Voltaire, Condorcet, et hoc genius omne in their day, and the equally serious attacks of Zola in our own. One might wish for a new Pascal and new " Lettres d'un Pro- vincial," but has not Rome always proved too strong for the most enlightened of her sons ? Escobarder, with its con- geners, is still under patronage, while the Port Royalists are no more ; and to-day Catholics who can unite piety and en- lightenment, like Father Duggan in England and Professor Schell in Germany, are formally pronounced heretics. No; a protest to be at once religious and successful must come, as always hitherto, from outside the pale.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A. W. RICHARDSON.
Hold Rigi-Vaudois, Glion, Switzerland, December 101h.
Previous page
