Part 10 — THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN GENEVA.

I.

In order to understand the events which have lately taken place in Geneva, and those that are preparing there, it is necessary to cast a general glance over the past and present state of the Catholic religion in that little commonwealth.

Most people know what Geneva was prior to the French Revolution: an independent state, separate from the Swiss Cantons, reduced by Calvinism to an aristocratic theocracy, and shorn of those ancient democratic franchises which it had enjoyed before breaking away from Rome. The dominant principle in its customs and legislation was fear and hatred of the proscribed worship. A minute and jealous care was taken to repress the expansion of Catholicism—one exhibition of which was seen in the strict closing of the city gates on the grand festivals of the church, and the fine of ten crowns imposed on those who held intercourse with the Bishop of Annecy on the occasion of his pastoral visits. Under these circumstances, only a small number of Catholics clung with heroic constancy to the ancient faith, and secretly practised their religious duties in the recesses of their houses. There were in 1759 but two hundred and twenty-seven Catholics in Geneva—and in this number even Voltaire and his hangers-on were included.

It was the French Revolution that forced open the gates, up to that period so carefully closed, of this Protestant Rome. Geneva became under the Empire a French department, and the Catholic religion in the persons of the imperial functionaries was officially recognized. Permission to erect a church was granted; but this first move toward a less hostile attitude was not taken without the bitterest opposition from the old Protestant party. In the remodelling of Europe, after Napoleon's downfall, it was found desirable to provide against the absorption of Geneva by uniting it to the Swiss Confederation; but in order to overcome the difficulties of geographical position, and make such an acquisition of territory acceptable to Berne, it became necessary to join to Geneva certain strips of land from the Catholic districts of Gex and Savoy. The Genevans, who looked with dread upon this annexation, strove to assure in any case their own supremacy, but the Catholics found defenders in diplomatic circles, and their cause was protected by the several treaties of Paris, Vienna, and Turin (1814-1816). In virtue of these, all civil and political rights were guaranteed to the new citizens, the Catholic religion was recognized, its exercise in Geneva permitted, religious freedom solemnly pledged to the annexed populations, and the expenses of their public worship assumed by the state.

At this period the Catholics were not over a third of the whole canton; but they rapidly increased, less, indeed, through conversions than by immigration. In 1834, there were 25,000 Protestants and 18,000 Catholics. What was the attitude of the Genevan government then? Power was still in the hands of the old Protestant aristocracy—the strongest and only organized party, and a singular admixture of good qualities and defects. The patrician of Geneva was, indeed, a strange and now fast-disappearing type. Living in his old town surrounded by ramparts, and in his old society even more stringently closed, clad in sombre colors, speaking little and laughing less, vain, stiff in his manners, with a stony cast of countenance, he was devoid of generous sympathy and largeness of heart, without, however, being altogether incapable of a certain pecuniary liberality; benign to his clients, implacable to rivals, marking out in everything a conventional line, and merciless to the one who should cross it; a man of letters, but an enemy to literary liberty, the friend of order, respecting traditions, an ardent patriot, but of a narrow and exclusive patriotism, he was attached more to his caste and party than to his country. Often sincerely pious, this Genevan gentleman of the old school was sometimes a hypocrite and Pharisee; a formalist himself, he was quick to cast the first stone at the transgressors of the law. But what was strongest in this class of men was the Protestant sentiment in its most odious and intolerant shape. Having seen with displeasure the annexation of the Catholic districts, and agreed very unwillingly to the religious liberty insured by treaty, this party found it hard to extinguish its traditional spirit of bigotry. Every movement of vitality on the part of Catholics excited distrust, and looked like a revolt; and proceeding to open acts, it struck successively at the liberty of instruction, the freedom of the pulpit, and the right of endowment. The attempt to enforce civil marriage failed only when Sardinia threatened to intervene. Catholics were eyed with disfavor, and of the thousand servants of the government, only fifty-nine belonged to their creed. Finally, if Protestants were obliged to endure the official existence of the Roman Church, it seemed to them quite proper to try and make it a state affair. They obtained from the Pope in 1819 the transfer of jurisdiction over Geneva from the Archbishop of Chambéry to the Bishop of Lausanne—their secret object being to subject the Catholic clergy to the direct influence of government, through the dependence on the state to which the bishops of Switzerland had long been accustomed, and in particular by using the conciliatory and somewhat weak character of Monseigneur de Lausanne.

In fact, an agreement was drawn up with the bishop, by which the civil power was permitted to interfere in the nomination of pastors, exact from them an oath, publish and circulate episcopal charges. Soon after, a law made the placet obligatory for all documents emanating from the diocesan or papal authorities. A few official honors and some pecuniary advantages were the only compensation made to Catholics for the prejudice done their liberty. These, however, struggled perseveringly against all exertions to enthrall them, and continued in spite of every difficulty to increase and gain strength. This success they owed chiefly to their courageous pastor, the Abbé Vuarin, "an admirable man for a conflict," as his friend Lamennais used to say of him: one whose indefatigable industry, fearlessness, and devotion to duty made every sacrifice light. He travelled Europe in the interests of his flock, and Turin, Berne, Paris, Munich, Rome, heard him defend their cause. He had friends in all places, and corresponded with popes, kings, and the great men of his day; and, during the continual hostilities which he carried on against Protestants, wrote some severe things, for the most part anonymously, but other times under his own name, wherein the only subject of regret is too great fieriness and irony. He used to watch the ballot-boxes while reciting his breviary, which drew from M. de Maistre the remark, "When I see his way of working, it recalls the success of the apostles." M. Vuarin had said, "A priest who is named pastor at Geneva should go, should remain, and should end there"; and, true to his own word, he died there, parish priest, in 1843, having been appointed under the Empire. Before his time, it was only now and then that a cassock ventured to appear in Geneva: at his funeral, two bishops, two hundred priests, and thousands of Catholic laymen defiled through the streets of the old Protestant city.

It turned out, however, that Catholic progress only irritated the intolerant spirit of opposition, and at the centennial jubilee of the Reformation, in 1835, the inflamed passions of the multitude broke out in insults and deeds of violence against the faith of the minority. The Protestant Union, a sort of secret society, was formed to sustain and encourage exclusivism and anti-Catholic feelings; and when a collective address, signed by the clergy of Geneva, denounced the movement to the bishop, the council of state, in retaliation, refused to admit the nomination of any priest who should not have expressed regret for appending his name to the paper. At M. Vuarin's death, Geneva was for several years deprived of the ministrations of his successor, M. Marilley, who had been arrested by the public officers and conducted to the frontier. Such, in 1846, was the position of the church: misunderstood in her spirit, the full measure of her rights withheld, strong only in the energy of her defenders. Then a political change took place, which considerably modified the situation.

In the plain on the other side of the Rhone, facing the steep hill whereon are the dwellings of the Genevan aristocracy, along which are drawn out the narrow streets of the old town, and on the summit of which rise the city hall and St. Peter's church—that Acropolis of Calvinism—extends the democratic and laboring suburb of Saint Gervais. Here for several years a work had been going on whose gravity the ruling class of Geneva did not comprehend. A radical and demagogical party, intimately connected with the revolutionists of other countries, was being organized. Its newspapers, pamphlets, and the affair of "Young Italy" in 1836 revealed its boldness and vigorous action. On the occasion of the Sonderbund disturbances in 1846, the radicals got excited, the Faubourg St. Gervais rose in tumult, and after a sanguinary struggle the conservatives were put down, the old town was occupied by the victorious workmen, and the power of the state passed into the hands of the leaders of the insurrection—M. Fazy and his friends. The extinction of the ancient oligarchy was known to be their object. Catholics had kept aloof from this conflict, feeling little sympathy with the revolutionary passions of the radicals, whose pretext, moreover, for rising had been the aid extended by the Genevan government to their co-religionists of the Sonderbund. But when once in power, the new party, more astute than its predecessor, understood the importance of the Catholic element when it came to a question of votes.

M. Fazy, although ultra in politics, had no religious prejudices, and, neither Catholic nor Protestant, all he cared for was to bring about the ruin of the Calvinist aristocracy. In so much (as the Bishop of Lausanne observed in 1849), he was acting to the advantage of Catholics. After the radicals had destroyed the ramparts of the old town, Geneva began rapidly to change appearance: entirely new quarters were soon laid out, strangers came in large numbers, and the Catholic population visibly increased with the immigration. In 1850, the canton counted 34,212 Protestants and 29,764 Catholics; ten years later, the figures stood 42,099 of the latter to 40,069 of the former.

The radicals had the good sense also to respect the liberty of Catholics; they gave them ground to build another church on, and in the central part of the new districts, hard by the railway-station, a Gothic edifice, which people used to call the cathedral-citadel—the temple of liberty—was erected. Thus little by little the two classes were drawn together, despite so many profound differences. The conservatives themselves contributed to this, for the concessions to Catholics were their chief point of opposition; and in the next electoral campaign they took for rallying-cry, "Fazy sold to the papists." Thereupon it became a necessity, if Catholics would keep their rights, to vote with the radicals; they did so in 1855, and the conservatives were utterly defeated. Things remained in this state until 1860, the government continuing to respect Catholic liberty; the bishop also was allowed to return to Geneva, and Fazy ably defended him against the narrow prejudices of a few friends. When the church of Our Lady was finished, the consecration sermon was preached by the eloquent mouth of the man who to-day exercises over the faithful of Geneva, although with different qualities, the influence that M. Vuarin once had. This was the Abbé Mermillod. Untrammelled by attachments either to person or party, clever, firm, yet pacific, uniting to the authority of virtue all the charms of talent and character, his liberal ideas no one could gainsay, and his devotion to the church the Holy Father has on more than one occasion publicly recognized. Nevertheless, if the rule of the radicals was in some respects profitable to Catholics, it was baneful to them on more than one account. The sources of moral and intellectual corruption were multiplied in the canton; freemasonry received the same concessions as religion; the professorships in the academy were bestowed upon the enemies of every form of Christianity; and all the while an active proselytism was spreading immoral sentiments and infidelity among the people. In this state of affairs, the opposition daily waxed stronger, and after fifteen years of administration, the radicals were defeated (1861) by the conservatives, rejuvenated and transformed into an independent party.

II.

The party that now came in was no longer the same old purely aristocratic one of former times; it had allies among the democrats. A popular society, known as The String, established in the very centre of the working Quartier de Saint Gervais, furnished it with brawny arms and clubs to repel at the polls the violence which the radicals had initiated. From 1861 to 1864, the independents gained ground rapidly, and the bloody riots that disturbed Geneva in the last-named year only served to assure their success. It may be asked, What did the Catholics do during this political change? They could not aspire to rule: they were forced to choose between the Protestant haters of their faith and the radical indifferentists who treated all religions alike—one might say with equal contempt—but which had at least the merit of respecting liberty of conscience. A handful of Catholics, disgusted with the subversive doctrines of the radicals, sought alliance with the independents; but the mass remained liege to their first protectors. Some of the leaders, too, of that party belonged to Catholic families, and were, nominally, Catholics themselves; whereas all the chief men of the independents were Protestants.

At this period, a great event in the Catholic life of Geneva took place. Pius IX. in 1864 raised the Abbé Mermillod to the episcopal dignity; only by a prudent reserve he did not immediately confer upon him the title of bishop of that city, but of Hebron in partibus infidelium. In order not to encounter too many obstacles at the outset, the authorities of the canton were not officially notified of the fact, which was brought to their knowledge indirectly. The independents affected to ignore the new arrangement, and consider Mgr. Mermillod as only the vicar-general of Bishop Marilley. Whenever he spoke as a prelate, they showed themselves surprised and angry. The radicals, on their part, saw the establishment of an episcopal see with the same unconcern as they had witnessed the erection of the cathedral. And yet a few were provoked; they were principally leaders from the Catholic ranks, who foresaw the blow their influence would receive from such a quarter. On the other hand, Mgr. Mermillod's European reputation flattered the self-love of the Genevans, thus lessening political and religious repugnances; while his amenity, conciliatory spirit, the irresistible seduction of his ways, his political prudence, which caused him to avoid the entanglements of party strife, helped to surmount many obstacles.

A question of great importance to Catholics soon came up. In 1815, when parts of Savoy and the Pays-de-Gex were annexed, although the religious liberty of the new-comers had been diplomatically secured, Geneva reserved to her own sons, under the modest designation "rights of property, burghership, and district residence," the enjoyment of considerable wealth coming from old foundations, and destined particularly for hospitals and other charitable institutions. The new-comers had no share in the distribution of these funds: hence arose the distinction in the community of elder and younger brothers. About the year 1866, a motion was put forward to abolish this privilege of the ancient citizens, and to induce the new ones to renounce the treaty stipulations in their favor and come under the common law. The project fell through at the time, but was finally adopted in 1868. The Catholics took a liberal and generous stand. They might regret the international engagements to respect their religious liberty; they could loudly complain that by a provision of the bill the independents endowed the Protestant Church with a part of this appropriation, consequently securing it against loss in the event of a separation between church and state, whereas nothing was set apart to defray the expenses of Catholic worship; nevertheless, the great majority voted to let it pass. God grant that they may not have been deceived! If they had been organized into a political party, they could and they should have had inserted some similar allowance in their favor. For all this, the Catholics, while they continued to make rapid progress, assumed an attitude of moderation and straightforward liberality. Mgr. Mermillod openly declared, "The Catholics have not the preponderance, or the means of obtaining it; they do not think of it, they cannot have it, they do not desire it. They have no privileges to petition for, but all more than ever must love our native Switzerland, which turns now her eyes upon us, and must cling to our institutions and to that liberty which they secure us." The bishop's adversaries could not find fault with him, and the Revue des Deux Mondes was obliged, however unwillingly and tardily, to acknowledge his liberal tone. And yet this attitude of Catholics and their progress only excited greater distrust and hatred. The society of The String raised in its manifestoes the phantom of ultramontanism, the press insulted them, and they were threatened in their rights of association, of burial, of instruction, and of preaching. It is principally at Carouge that they have had to suffer. This place is under the influence of certain so-called Catholic radicals, who in truth are more anti-Catholic than the Protestants themselves. When these people attack the church, the independents support them; sometimes, however, the latter have known how to maintain an at least apparent neutrality.

It is chiefly in view of the eventual re-establishment of the bishopric of Geneva that anti-Catholic prejudices are manifested. The Protestants understand that Hebron is only a first step, and they recoil at the idea of having at Geneva itself a Bishop of Geneva. Several times already the question has been discussed in the council of state, and the opponents of the church seek in Gallican and Josephine traditions, in the text of treaties, everywhere, for reasons to deny to Catholics the right of having a bishop. Common sense, equity, treaties, all is against them, but prejudice prevails. The Catholics on their side are determined that they shall have their own bishop, and this to-day is the great dispute between them and the Protestants. Mgr. Mermillod acts in all these troubles more like an apostle than a politician. He is right. He believes in his mission; and, without being able exactly to point out the course which Providence will keep, he is convinced that the church will prosper in Geneva. May his hope be realized! At any rate, the Genevan Catholics are fortunate to have such a bishop. To conclude, their present situation is a critical one. It is fraught with dangers and yet full of hope.