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Show COMBES AND GALL1CANISM. The present position of the Disestablishment Question in France is very curious. M. Briand. .who drew up the first projet de loi. finds that M. Combes' bill is too hard on Protestants and Jews and too easy in regard to the police regulations against Catholics! M. Combes will do his best to oblige M. Briand on both these points; that is, he J will try to temper the wind for the Jews and I Protestants, and will make it still more severe for. ' the disestablished Catholics, says the London Catholic Times. He has conceded a little, too, to the committee of the house now con-j con-j sidering the bill. In a preamble to be affixed t'o j the bill he agrees to the principle that under no j form will the state give any subvention for re-i re-i ligioii. He inserts a clause in the bill claiming i for the state or the Commune the ownership of all ; property held by the Church now, but going back ! to a time anterior to the Concordat. He also per-i per-i mits the union of ecclesiastical associations with- in the limits of a diocese, and not, as in his first ! draft, of the department. But this latter conees- sion will effect little good to Catholics, whose hier-archial hier-archial necessities transcend the bounds of any merely diocesan or departmental limits. M. Combes aims at crippling the legislative power of the Church by splitting up the communities of the faithful into isolated and insulated bodies of worshippers, wor-shippers, lie 'aims at restoring Gallicanism, if possible. |