Church & State In France

Four cardinals, 21 archbishops and 79 bishops gathered last week in Paris' Institut Catholique. It was the first full meeting of France's Roman Catholic hierarchy since 1907, when vigorous anticlericalism had placed the church on the defensive, deprived it of state support.

Today, the Roman Catholic Church in France is working hard to regain its lost influence--notably in the Mission de France and the Mission de Paris (TIME, Feb. 27, 1950), which train priests to live and work in overalls side by side with the peasants and factory workers they serve. "The church," said a liberal Catholic editor last week, "has come forward to meet the French Revolution and to live with it."

Most of last week's session took place behind closed doors. Chief result to reach the public: a statement demanding that France subsidize church schools on the same basis as the public schools. "Those who support the Christian schools," the statement declared, "have reached the limit of their resources. Immediate measures . . . are necessary. Otherwise the schools will die of financial asphyxiation.

"National unity is not compromised ... by the existence of two parallel educational systems, which can only favor the unity of all in respect to the liberty of each one . . . The church does not attack the public schools . . . [We] ask only that the state discharge its obligations impartially . . . The moral unity of the nation can only be realized if there is mutual respect of the rights of conscience."

In British Columbia's suburban community of Maillardville, 16 miles southeast of Vancouver, two Roman Catholic parochial schools shut their doors last week and turned their 800 pupils over to the local public-school system. The Catholics had been turned down in their request for free transportation, and the lockout was their reply.

Public-school authorities announced that 15 new teachers had been added and that the organization of morning and afternoon shifts to accommodate the extra pupils was "proceeding smoothly." But at week's end the municipal council unanimously voted to ask the school board to invite British Columbia's Education Minister W. T. Straith to come down and talk it all over at a round-table conference "as soon as possible."

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