FREPPEL, CHARLES ÉMILE
So well was the formula of the Concordat adapted nificance of the Revolution and the conditions of its
to existing conditions and to the mentality of the time in
France and throughout most of western Europe that many
neighboring states tried to obtain from the Holy See a
similar accord during the following quarter-century. In
France the Concordat survived its author. The Restora-
tion period did not succeed in replacing it, even though
it regarded a return to the prerevolutionary regime as es-
sential. Despite numerous changes of government,
France retained the concordat for 104 years, until the
Third Republic legislated the separation of Church and
State (December of 1905).
Prolongation of the Conflict. The mass of French
Catholics interpreted the Concordat of 1801 as proof of
the Revolution’s failure in its attempt at dechristianiza-
tion. But some conservative philosophers and, still more,
some ultramontane theologians continued to deplore the
Church’s impaired status in comparison with the ancien
régime; even more did they bewail the partial victory of
Revolutionary principles over Catholic doctrine. The
Church could indeed forgive and forget the plundering,
the bloody persecution, even the sacrilegious overthrow
of the Holy See during the Revolution. It could also con-
sent to deal with the new, secularized states to obtain the
blessings of peace and to safeguard religious liberty. It
could not and would not, however, tolerate the propaga-
tion of those doctrines championed by the Revolution
that were injurious to God and to society. Among them
was the substitution of popular sovereignty for authority
emanating from God. Unacceptable to the Church also
was the concession of equal rights to religious truth and
error implied in the phrases ‘‘liberty of opinion’’ and
‘‘liberty of conscience.’’ The proclaimed equality among
individuals seemed contrary to traditional teachings
about the providential inequality of conditions.
This explains the effort by the Church, particularly
by the papacy, for more than a century to condemn and
refute the ‘‘principles of 89’’ and to repel the Revolution,
which was conceived thenceforth less as an historic event
than as a doctrine of revolt and of negation that had taken
hold of the human mind as a result of a false philosophy
and had caused the diabolic insurrection of man against
God. If several popes, notably Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and
Pius X, waged a relentless struggle against the Revolu-
tion, it was because they attributed to it the essential re-
sponsibility for the spread of such modern errors as
doctrinal indifferentism, rationalism, naturalism, and lib-
eralism and because they saw in it a series of innovations
dangerous to the individual, the family, and society, in-
cluding civil marriage, secularized education, and separa-
tion of Church and State.
Liberal Catholics proposed, at times with tenuous ar-
guments, that the Church reexamine the message and sig-
NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
promulgation; but for a long time this proposal went un-
heeded. The Church considered war on Catholicism as
the basic aim of the Revolution, against which it must
take an irreversible counterrevolutionary stand. The ap-
peasement of this antagonism between Church and Revo-
lution demanded, especially in the 20th century, new and
terrible trials by mankind. It required also a pacifying of
the antireligious fury that characterized the spiritual heirs
of the Revolution, a more serene and detailed examina-
tion of the philosophical contents of the Declaration of
the Rights of Man, a more minute and exact knowledge
of the origin of some decisions and of the historic chain
of events between 1789 and 1799. In fine, it necessitated
a long labor of reconciliation between the Catholic
Church and the modern world.
Bibliography: P. DE LA GORCE, Histoire religieuse de la Rév-
olution française, 5 v. (Paris 1909–23). A. LATREILLE, L’Église
catholique et la révolution française, 2 v. (Paris 1946–50). J. LE-
FLON, La Crise révolutionnaire 1789–1846 (Fliche-Martin 20;
1949). C. LEDRÉ, L’Église de France sous la Révolution (Paris
1949). F. MOURRET, A History of the Catholic Church, tr. N. THOMP-
SON, 8 v. (St. Louis 1930–57) v. 7. H. DANIEL-ROPS, L’Église des
révolutions: En face des nouveaux destins (Histoire de l’Eglise du
Christ 6.1; Paris 1960). Dansette v. 1. A. AULARD, La Révolution
française et les congrégations (Paris 1903); Christianity and the
French Revolution, tr. LADY FRAZEN (London 1927). A. MATHIEZ,
Les Origines des cultes révolutionnaires, 1789–92 (Paris 1904);
Contributions à l’histoire religieuse de la Révolution française
(Paris 1907); La Révolution et l’Église (Paris 1910); Rome et le
clergé français sous la Constituante (Paris 1911); La Question reli-
gieuse sous la Révolution (Paris 1929). A. SICARD, L’Ancien clergé
de France, 3 v. (Paris 1893–1903; v. 1, 5th ed. 1912); Le Clergé
de France pendant la Révolution, 3 v. (new ed. Paris 1912–27). P.
PISANI, L’Église de Paris et la Révolution, 4 v. (Paris 1908–11). C.
H. TILLY, The Vendée (Cambridge, Mass. 1964).
[A. LATREILLE]
FREPPEL, CHARLES ÉMILE
French theologian, apologist, writer; b. Obernai
(Bas-Rhin), France, June 1, 1827; d. Angers, Dec. 22,
1891. After studying at the seminary in Strasbourg, he
was ordained (1849) and then became director of St. Ar-
bogaste College in Strasbourg (1851), professor of homi-
letics, and later of patristics, at the Sorbonne (1855),
consultor in the preparations for Vatican Council I
(1869), and bishop of Angers (1869). During Vatican
Council I he was an energetic supporter of papal infalli-
bility. In 1880 he was elected deputy to the French Cham-
ber, where he was a stalwart upholder of the Church and
the monarchy. As a teacher and writer he was noted more
for brilliance than for profundity. His voluminous writ-
ings included more than 40 titles in 80 volumes. Apart
from his numerous pastoral letters and speeches as bish-
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