July 3, 1905: France Finally Separates Church and State

Émile Loubet

July 3, 1905: The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of France's national legislature, passes a bill for the separation of church and state, 341 to 233. It becomes law in the nation's Third Republic, and remains so into its Fifth Republic.

This is bigger than it might appear to a 21st Century audience. It is often presumed that the French Revolution of 1789 to 1795 fully overturned the established order, known as the Ancien Régime. Certainly, there was a desire to overturn the Roman Catholic Church, as much as there was to overturn the royal House of Bourbon. Writer and philosopher Denis Diderot, who died a few years before the Revolution, is credited with saying, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

But the Revolution fell into the Reign of Terror, and ultimately failed. The stated ideals of Liberté, égalité, fraternité -- liberty, equality and brotherhood --  were tossed aside for the dictatorship, and then the empire, of Napoleon Bonaparte.

This was followed by a conservative retrenchment, a new monarchy that teamed up with the Church to reassert the old values and turn back a few attempted revolutions, including the June Rebellion of 1832, the centerpiece of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables. This was followed by the Second Empire, run by Napoleon's grandnephew, Emperor Napoleon III, before it fell in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The Third Republic was subsequently founded.

The Dreyfus Affair that began in 1894 uncovered a considerable amount of anti-Semitism in France, particularly among the nation's Catholics. Finally, in 1905, President Émile Loubet wanted full separation. His popularity, having grown through his settling of the Dreyfus Affair and his diplomacy in building the Triple Entente with Britain and Russia, helped to pass it.

And so, 116 years after 1789, when France had its Revolution, and America's Bill of Rights enshrined freedom of religion into the First Amendment to its federal Constitution, France also had an official separation of church and state -- something that Canada took until 1982, with its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to have; and that Britain still does not have, as it is officially tied to the Church of England. France has been a largely secular nation ever since, though Catholicism remains the leading religion.

Speaking of Canada: It has been noted that, due to its separation from France proper, the Canadian Province of Quebec, formerly known as New France, faced a tighter grip from the Church than did the "mother country." It would take until the "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s for that grip to be broken.

This is not to say that the Catholic Church said, "Oh well, we lost this one. Let's move on." Hardly. On February 11, 1906, Pope Pius X wrote a papal open letter titled Vehementer Nos, which is Latin for "We strongly." Given that the Pope is, technically, the Church's monarch, he was speaking for the Church and using "the Royal We."

Pope Pius X

He wrote, "Our soul is full of sorrowful solicitude and Our heart overflows with grief... How, indeed, could it be otherwise, immediately after the promulgation of that law which, by sundering violently the old ties that linked your nation with the Apostolic See, creates for the Catholic Church in France a situation unworthy of her and ever to be lamented?"

He said the new law "must be deplored by all the right-minded." Why? Because it was "disastrous to society as it is to religion." He called it a "great calamity." He wrote, "That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error." And why is that? Because it was "a great injustice to God."

God's thoughts on the matter were not recorded by the media that existed at the time.

*

July 3, 1905 was a Monday. Johnny Gibson was born. From my original hometown of Bloomfield, New Jersey, he was a runner who competed in the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, although he did not win a medal. He later served as the longtime track & field coach at Seton Hall University, and lived to be 101 years old.

These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Highlanders beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-0 at Hilltop Park in Upper Manhattan. Al Orth, a pitcher known as "The Curveless Wonder," pitched a 4-hit shutout. Willie Keeler went 3-for-4 with an RBI for the Highlanders, who became the New York Yankees in 1913.

* The New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-1 at National League Park (later renamed Baker Bowl) in Philadelphia.

* The Brooklyn Superbas beat the Boston Beaneaters, 2-1 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. The Superbas became the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1911, and the Boston team became the Braves in 1912.

* The Boston Americans, forerunners of the Red Sox, beat the Washington Senators, 6-2 at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-3 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. Honus Wagner went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

* And the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Naps (forerunners of the Indians and the Guardians), the Detroit Tigers, the St. Louis Browns, the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals were not scheduled.