Vehement nos

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With the encyclical Vehementer nos (against the separation of state and church in France ), Pope Pius X turned against this movement on February 11, 1906 . The encyclical is addressed to the French people, the French episcopate and the clergy .

Historical background

The law on the separation of church and state in France was passed by the Parliament of III. Republic passed at the end of the eighth legislative period (1902–1906) with a majority of 367 to 246 votes. The left bloc was instrumental in making Émile Combes prime minister . The two socialists Aristide Briand and Jean Jaurès tabled a bill together. Briand did not want to destroy the church, but rather to set limits in order to preserve tolerance, justice and worldliness of the state.

Demand for freedom from religious ties

The public discussion about secularism began on March 21, 1904 in the Chamber of Deputies and on July 3, the text was adopted with 341 votes to 233. If the advocates of secularism saw the law merely as a policy of separating church and state, Catholics saw it as a policy of plunder. There were riots during the inventory in about twenty departments. In the Senate, Clemenceau , who had just taken over the Ministry of the Interior, announced that there would be no compulsory inventory. "Counting the candlesticks," he said, "is not worth human life."

Resistance from Rome

Pope Pius X opposed the separation of church and state in his encyclical Vehementer nos . He revolted against the unilateral termination of the Concordat and directed his violent criticism against the establishment of cult associations. The Assembly of French Bishops agreed to the encyclical but did not want to break with state power. Therefore she basically agreed to the status of associations under the authority of the bishop.

Effects of the encyclical

Resistance and protests such as B. in the north of France, after Pius X. had described the law of separation as godless in his encyclical. In mid-March 1906, the government stopped the controversial inventory campaign, and with the law of January 2, 1907, the state finally left the churches to the priests with the legal formula that they were “owners without legal title”. Church property that had already been confiscated was distributed to charities. Church and state remained separate from then on.

The guardians of separation

In the school system, however, this separation remained a fiction. The church schools continued to exist as “private” - and can still rely on state subsidies to this day. To this day, the French elite are happy to have their children educated in church schools - around 10,000 institutions (with less than ten percent working-class children and foreigners) that make up around 13 percent of the total national education budget. But the guardians of the secular state also remain vigilant. When the liberal education minister François Bayrou wanted to lift the restrictions on state grants to Catholic schools in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands protested against the project, with success.

Excerpts from the encyclical

It is the state (France) that has unilaterally broken the Concordat, forcibly robbed the Church and is fundamentally trying to tear every remnant of religion out of the hearts of its fellow citizens.

"We will oppose hatred with love, error with truth, against insults and abuse we will offer forgiveness, and we will ask God that the enemies of religion may stop persecuting it"

"The Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, there are two categories in it, the shepherds and the flock ... And these categories are so different from one another that law and authority are to be sought only in the circle of shepherds. to lead and guide all members to the goal of the community; As for the majority, it has no other duty than to allow itself to be led and to follow its shepherds as an obedient flock ... "

Latin text and German translation

  • Helmut Schnatz (Ed.): Papal pronouncements on the state and society. Original documents with German translation (= Texts on Research , Vol. 12). Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1973, ISBN 3-534-04645-5 , pp. 275-297.

literature

  • The papacy - epochs and shapes, ed. Bruno Moser, Südwest Verlag, Munich, 1983, without ISBN
  • Carl Andresen , Georg Denzler : dtv dictionary of church history , Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, May 1982, ISBN 3-423-03245-6
  • Timetable of world history, Werner Stein, extended edition 1990, Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich - Berlin, ISBN 3-7766-1476-5
  • Small Lexicon of the Popes, Georg Schwaiger / Manfred Heim, Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 2005, ISBN 3-406-51134-1
  • Do you know? - Lexicon of religious and ideological questions, Rudolf Fischer-Wolpert, Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg, 1980, ISBN 3-7917-0738-8

Web links