Why did France decide not to touch French religious schools abroad?

Emre Demir*

Turkey these days is debating attempts by the state to have Turkish schools that were opened as a result of civil initiatives closed down across the globe.

It is perhaps valuable then to note that France, which had such an important influence on the founding cadres of the Turkish Republic, can through its own history shed some light on many debates unfolding these days in Turkey. It is important, in this vein, to remember that while there was huge oppression against religious communities and clerics in the France of the 19th century, quite the opposite was occurring with schools run by said French religious communities in Africa and throughout Ottoman lands.

The period between 1882 and 1905 has been marked in history as a time in France when the church and all religious communities were under great pressure and even oppression. In fact, as ruling parties came to power promising to struggle against religion, the government cut ties with the Vatican. Tens of thousands of educational organizations, as well as monasteries belonging to the church, were forced to shut down. More than 60,000 clerics were kicked out of the country. And despite resistance from the people, monasteries were forced at gunpoint to give up their inhabitants, who were then deported from France. In Bretagne, there were clashes between local residents and the gendarmerie, which had come to close down the region's monastery. There were, however, no efforts to intervene in the schools run by religious communities, schools that were spread all over the world by this time. In fact, due to a reduction in donations coming in from the Catholic community to these schools, the state even went as far as increasing its own financial assistance to them.

In 1878, in a France with a population of some 38 million people, there were 56,000 nuns, and 160,000 church-related workers. Throughout the 19th century, religious communities experienced an unparalleled level of growth, with large donations allowing the creation of thousands of organizations all over the world aimed at boosting education, health and humanitarian assistance. When Leon Gambetta came to power in 1881 defending the erasure of Jacobinism and religion from social life, a quarter-century of darkness began for the Catholic community.

In his first speech at Parliament, Gambetta talked of how “the supporters of the church are our enemies.” In the first stages of that era, it was the Jesuits -- Catholics known for their strong support for education -- who were targeted by Gambetta, while other less prominent orders -- at least in the first few years -- were not touched. Gambetta opened the way forward for state clerks who attended church on Sundays to be removed from their jobs; in the meantime, a widespread purge of state clerks who had been educated in Catholic schools got underway. When Emile Combes came to power in 1902, he formed a government made up largely of members of the Grand Eastern Masonic Lodge, with the promise that religious sects and communities would be completely uprooted from France. The Combes government, from the date of 1902 onward, closed down hundreds of private schools on the basis that they “did not fulfill conditions set in place.” These moves to shut down schools, however, were targeting the Jesuit schools in particular; the schools belonging to other important religious communities -- which had in the past formed alliances with the secular governments -- were allowed to carry on their activities. On July 7, 1904, Combes introduced a law that stated, “It is forbidden for any religious community to carry on educational activities in France.” This law was interpreted as being the end of the 20-year war between the seculars and the Catholics, between whom the country was so completely divided.

Returning to secular life

It is well known that tens of thousands of nuns and monks who left their religious orders and returned to secular life carried on their religious lives more secretly, even while wearing their civilian clothes, throughout France.

But that same year, some 30,000 clerics also left France, heading off into the world with the aim of carrying on their educational activities. This was called the Great Exile, and is recalled by many as a very dark period for the Catholic Church. Under Combes between the years of 1902 and 1905, 17,000 private educational institutes, hospitals and assistance organizations were forced to shut down. And some 60,000 clerics were forced to leave the country.

While the French state used all its power to identify devout Catholics as “Vatican agents,” “puppets of foreign powers” and “domestic enemies,” it paradoxically kept on funding religious communities outside of France, working in concert with said communities. And to wit, these religious communities were instrumental in the spread of French culture all over the world. According to Gambetta, secularism belonged only to France and was not a product meant for export. At the same time, however, some of the more radical MPs in the government at the time insisted that diplomatic methods should be used to force the Catholic schools outside of France to shut down; they were insistent that it was hypocrisy for the state to offer financial support to these schools. One of the more prominent MPs at the time, Maurice Barres, criticized those pushing for the closure of French schools abroad with these words: “They are unaware that they have fallen into the category of alliance with France's competitors, against the interests of France, such is their hatred for the church. They do not know that those same devout people who they see as backwards and dark are in fact now in the position of being the greatest leaders of Western civilization in the East and the Far East.”

In a report prepared by the French Foreign Ministry at the time -- in response to questions in parliament on why monetary assistance was still being given to these religious schools abroad -- it was noted that the Catholic orders who formed and ran these schools were playing a greater role in the spread of French language and culture in the world than the state was. In addition, the Foreign Ministry pointed out that Catholic missionaries, spread throughout the world at the time, were also playing an important role from the angle of French diplomacy. With these debates swirling, the French decided that rather than forcing religious communities' schools abroad to shut down, they would use the new French Secular Mission organization, formed in 1902, to set up its own schools abroad. These state-supported schools were to promote anti-religious humanist philosophy of a level of quality that would compete with Catholic schools in places like Africa. But though these schools were formed with great hopes, it turned out that only one, in Madagascar, had any success, and this only for a brief period. As for the other secular schools, they were never able to maintain the quality levels that the Catholic schools had reached, and most wound up closing shortly after being opened, as there weren't enough teachers willing to head out to Africa from France to teach in these schools.

During that period, Catholic communities in Ottoman lands were very important to France. While assistance to Catholic schools across the world during this period -- when some 30,000 clerics had fled abroad from France -- was not reduced at all, there was a 50 percent increase in financial assistance going to such schools within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Between the years of 1903 and 1905, when the witch hunt against the church and clerics reached its peak in France, it is interesting to note that the monetary assistance offered by the French Foreign Ministry to Catholic schools in the Ottoman Empire saw such a great increase. Donations from Catholics in France to these schools had been severely reduced due to the difficult conditions during these years, and so it was that the French government, which had cut its diplomatic ties with the Vatican, helped out these schools so they could keep running. During this period, France also maintained its status as protector of Catholic minorities under the Ottomans. And though France had downgraded its diplomatic relations with the Vatican at the time because the latter was a religious state, it carried on joint diplomacy with the Vatican in the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Also interestingly, though the French state had taken control of all the various organizations and foundations of the Jesuits in France at the time, between the years of 1890 and 1904, the Jesuits in Lebanon alone increased the number of their schools from 110 to 188. French diplomats were insistent that Catholic schools were the only way to defend and promote French interests in the Muslim world at the time. And to wit, according to a French Foreign Ministry report at the time, “It was not possible for Muslims to accept among them a school that did not bring with it God.”

At the same time, the French ambassador to İstanbul, Paul Cambon, called for more monetary support to be given to the missionary schools in Ottoman lands, noting that if such support was not given soon, the number of Turkish teachers would soon surpass the number of French teachers.

The 'political aim' in assistance

Here is part of a 1905 note from the French Foreign Ministry's political affairs department: “The assistance given to Catholic schools in Turkey really does have a political aim. Catholic functionaries in this country are yielding cultivating civilian workers and judicial bureaucrats, and leaving them without assistance would also damage our interests in Syria.” In the meantime, while countless Jesuits had fled or been exiled from their own country of France, Jesuit communities in Egypt were able to carry on with their educational activities thanks to monetary support offered by the French Consulate in Cairo. At the opening of one school in Egypt, the French ambassador to Cairo said, “I salute the Jesuits here, who work so hard for French civilization and interests. We need to set aside the problems and tension we experience in our own country and work together for the good of France in Egypt.” These words surprised everyone, including of course the Jesuits.

Historian Jerome Bocquet explains what appears to be an enormous contradiction inherent in the dualism of extremely secular governments and their support for religiously run schools abroad: “Many French diplomats were well aware that the most effective way of increasing influence and power in Muslim lands was through these Catholic orders and their schools. The Catholic orders were labeled backwards and reactionary in their own country, but were also seen by the foreign envoys in the Ottoman lands as being the way to spread French thinking into Muslim intellectual circles.

Of course, the conflict that gripped France between the years of 1882 and 1905 is different on many levels from the one we see unfolding now in Turkey. First and foremost, while the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government does show strict statist reflexes very similar to those displayed by the Gambetta-Combes governments in France more than a century ago, it is of course not a strict secular or anti-religion government. Nor do the Hizmet movement schools all over the world targeted by the Erdoğan government shoulder the same sorts of missionary tasks that the Catholic schools of France did and do. Rather, the Hizmet movement schools aim to provide a modern education in keeping with the standards of the 21st century, offering universal values to their students.

But the fact that France, with its strong state traditions, kept its national interests in mind and never tried to shut down French religious schools abroad -- even during the height of its witch hunts against the Catholic community of France -- has some important lessons for Turkey right now. In the meantime, this bygone era in France remains as a stain on its own history; it is not a period much explained in school textbooks. But Catholic schools that have now been offering education for hundreds of years abroad are now considered some of the most prestigious and successful educational institutions the country has to its name. And assertions made in the previous century by some in France that “we will uproot the religious communities” were never brought forward again.

*Emre Demir is Zaman's Paris bureau chief.

Published on Today's Zaman, 15 April 2014, Tuesday