THE CHURCH IN FRANCE
Sra,—A sentence in the article by Canon Lloyd requires some modifica- tion. The article was Pays de Mission ? and the sentence: (in France) "everyone who is trying to work for better social conditions must of necessity expect to find the whole body of the Church arrayed against him." It is the phrase "whole body" which seems too general a state- ment. In 1891 Pope Leo XIII exposed the social injustice of his day, proposed remedies, condemned the laissez faire school. The teaching em- bodied in the great Reruns Novarum encyclical letter was in part a vindica- tion of two French Catholics, de l'viun and la Tour du Pin, the former the father of the social legislation of the early years of the French Republic, the latter the creator of Catholic trade unions. Archbishop Temple was proud to quote as his authorities the weighty pronouncements of Leo and of Pius XI. In every walk of life social action was prominent: Ozanam, the professor, turned social worker; the factory owner, Hamel, whose experiments in family allowances became law in 1932. Though some of the Church may have been reactionary, it cannot with truth be
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