M. Waldeck-Roussean passed his Associations Bill on March 30th by
a vote of 303 to 224. It has still to be accepted by the Senate, but the Senate is not religious, and with some modifications the Bill will probably get through, and then within six months all unlicensed monastic societies will exist by sufferance of the State. Whether the State will crush them remains to be seen. Many observers believe that the Government will shrink from so deadly a quarrel with the Church, while others point out that this is the one question upon which a French Ministry can gratify the Socialists without menacing lay property. Our own impression is that a wave of hostility to the religious Orders, especially the Jesuits, is passing over the whole Continent—it is visible throughout Austria, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal—and that in France in particular the masses, while friendly to the parochial clergy, are even spitefully inimical to monasteries, convents, and purely religious education. Otherwise, why in a constituency nominally Catholic should such a Bill pass?
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