To this end, the State assigns a small,
distinct lodging to the Church and allows her a meager supply of food;
this done, it fancies that it may cry quits; and, worse still, it
imagines that she is always its subject, and still pretends to the
same authority over her; the State is determined to retain all rights
conferred upon it by the old marriage, and these rights it exercises
and adds to. Meanwhile, it admits into the same lodging three other
Churches which it subjects to the same r?gime: that makes four mess-
rooms to be maintained and which it watches, supports and utilizes the
best it can for the temporal advantage of the household. There is
nothing more odious to the Catholic Church than this advertised,
practical polygamy, this subvention granted indifferently to all
cults, this patronage in common, more insulting than abandonment, this
equal treatment[11] which places the pulpit of truth and the pulpits
of falsehood, the ministry of salvation and the ministries of
perdition, on the same footing. Nothing is more serviceable for
alienating a Catholic clergy, for making it consider civil power as
foreign, usurping, or even inimical, for detaching the Gallican Church
from its French center, for driving it back towards its Roman center
and for handing it over to the Pope.
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