On This Day in History: February 11

Vehementer Nos

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Those with power are loath to relinquish it. That’s why when France brought in a new law in 1905 for the separation of church and state, overturning a cozy arrangement Napoleon made with the Catholic Church a century earlier, the pope had a hissy fit.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: February 11, 1906--

Napoleon made a deal with Pope (notso) Pius VII. Called the Concordat of 1801, it was designed to smooth over relationships with the Church that had gone to shit during the revolution, with much Church property seized and sold off. The agreement specified that the Catholic Church had a distinctive status as the majority church of France, and that clergy could return from hiding and exile. They didn’t give back all the confiscated stuff or the money they made from selling it, but it did restore a lot of papal power in the nation.

The Concordat also established a working relationship between the French government and the pope. That’s not a separation of church and state. In December of 1905 the new law established state secularism. It involved a lot of things that Catholics don’t like, such as freedom of religion and cutting off funding to the Church. The law also said all religious buildings were the property of the state. Yeah you can still use them for free, but those fuckers belong to the gubmint. Also, no putting up your God or Jesus or whatever signs on public buildings anymore. 

As you can imagine, there was a popely apoplexy. And so, on February 11, 1906, Pope (also notso) Pius X wrote a papal open letter called Vehementer Nos, which is Latin for “Listen up, motherfucker.” Actually, it means “We strongly,” but you get the idea. Continues …

Listen up, motherfucker. You knew I couldn’t resist that. Anyway. Yeah. Paid subscription. Green button. That thing.

The letter was a big fucking whine fest. See for yourself: “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?” Oh boo fucking hoo. And just like TV pitchman Ed Valenti said, “But wait, there’s more.” Like how the new law “must be deplored by all the right-minded” because it’s “disastrous to society as it is to religion” and how it’s a “great calamity” and on and fucking on.

He even wrote “That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error” because it’s “a great injustice to God.” Yeah your god is so special but fuck all those other religions, right? Anyway, the fucking thing was over 5,000 words long and no I didn’t read all of it because fuck that pope. Decades later they were still bitching about it. Even Pope John Paul II whined about secular governments such as what France established.

In 2007 the French black metal band Vehementer Nos released their debut album.

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