Chapter II: A Glance From Mr. Schöninger (2)

3. The candidate for the priesthood who is nominated by the bishop must be approved of and installed in his office by the president of the province. The bishop who nominates a candidate otherwise than in accordance with the law, shall be punished by a fine of from 750 francs to 3,750 francs ($150 to $750). The candidate submitting to such nomination shall be punished by a fine of from 3 francs (75 cts.) to 375 francs.

4. Ecclesiastical disciplinary power can only be exercised by ecclesiastical authorities _of German nationality_. The ecclesiastical functionaries who, by exercise of their functions, transgress the laws of the state or the ordinances of the civil authority, may, at the demand of that civil authority, be deposed, if the maintaining of their functions prove incompatible with public order.

A single question may not be inappropriate here: Why all this? Why must all Prussian citizens who wish to embrace the ecclesiastical state matriculate at the university? What special advantages are either they or that undefined thing called the state likely to derive from this matriculation? Matriculation is a very small thing at the best, and Catholics do not object to it even in a state university, as in London, where they do not possess one of their own. But why must ecclesiastical students be compelled to pass it? The matriculation examination as it obtains at the London University embraces a hodge-podge of study, a great part of which is of no absolute service to the clerical student in his career. All the subjects are touched upon more or less in his college course; but he naturally devotes his attention particularly to those which relate more especially to his vocation. And when the state forces a man who is studying to be a priest to attend a university course of three years, it steps out of its province, and commits a useless and tyrannical act.

As for the final examination at the end of the course, S. Paul certainly could never have passed it to the satisfaction of the present Prussian state—a man who taught such dangerous doctrines as that Christ was “above all principality, and power, and virtue, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.”

There is no need to pursue this part of the subject further. It must be plain to everybody that this provision of the bill is simply aimed at preventing candidates from aspiring to the priesthood at all, and hindering those who are perverse enough to aspire from becoming priests—a view which is strengthened by the clause following.

The candidate for the priesthood whom the bishop wishes to ordain and appoint must first meet with the approval of the president of the province, and not only meet with his approval, but be installed in his office by him. That is to say, the candidate must not be what the state would call an ultramontane—in other words, a Catholic; and ordination is practically transferred, if that were possible, from the bishop to the state. What can the president of the province possibly know about the candidate, an utter stranger to him? Or how is he to judge of his fitness or unfitness for the divine vocation? Is the president of the province for the future to undergo a course of theology, so as to be “up” in his duties? But it is needless to pursue this inquiry.

Jesus Christ, when he called his apostles, never consulted Pilate or Herod. He sought not men for the ministry who were learned in the wisdom of the schools: poor, ignorant fishermen were the foolish ones whom he chose to confound the wise and convert a world. Humanly speaking, and to human eyes, the Son of Joseph the carpenter was himself an ignorant man. There is no record of his studying, as did S. Paul, “at the feet of Gamaliel.” The apostles asked no man’s permission to preach; they consulted no powers in “the imposition of hands”; they carried on all the business of the church, they ordained and excommunicated, without ever consulting the president of the province in which they happened to be. Their successors will continue to do the same.

In military matters, for instance, which are purely state affairs, the interference of the president of the province would be resented. Courts-martial try offenders—the civil law may not touch them, and no president is ever called in to sanction the appointments to the various military grades. Why not? Simply because, in plain words, it is none of his business.

It seems foolish to examine this theme so closely, so flagrant is the violation of all common sense even, not to speak of legal right. Nevertheless, here is the _Pall Mall Gazette_, an ultra-liberal organ—so _ultra_, indeed, that it despises “commonplace liberalism”—giving its hearty concurrence to these measures, on the ground that priests are out of date, and the fittest judges of education are men of the world, statesmen, lawyers, and business men, who are more clever, better educated, and brisker in every way than the clergy—with much more to the same effect. Regarding its charge that the clergy are less fitted to cope with the question of education than men of the world:

In the Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus is the principal teaching order of modern times. But outside of it there are plenty of teaching orders and societies—the Benedictines and others—possessed of excellent colleges and schools. There are also the colleges belonging to each diocese under the control of the respective bishops. Moreover, all education has come to us through the hands of the clergy; and the Catholic writers who have come out from Rome, and Louvain, and other purely clerical centres, even in these enlightened days, might possibly stand the trying test of comparison with the writers on the _Pall Mall Gazette_. But not to wander into so wide a field as this, the _Pall Mall_ may be referred to its own columns for a refutation of at least a great part of this charge.

Writing last year on the expulsion of the Jesuits from Germany by the same power which has framed these laws for the education of the clergy, and which, as it confesses, are “almost enough to take one’s breath away,” the same journal said: “One of the most remarkable traits of the Society of Jesus has always been its literary productiveness. Wherever its members went, no sooner had they founded a home, a college, a mission, then they began to write books. The result has been a vast literature, not theological alone, though chiefly that, but embracing almost every branch of knowledge.”

And of their work in the particular profession which the _Pall Mall_ itself graces at present—there is no knowing what it may not come to be in the future if its principles are only carried out—it said: “In Italy, Germany, Holland, and Belgium, the most trustworthy critics are of opinion that there are no better-written newspapers than those under Jesuit control.”

This is only _en passant_; and, as it is often more satisfactory to let those outside of the church answer themselves, here is the opinion of the London _Spectator_ upon this particular point, given in direct answer to the _Pall Mall_:

“Is an age of the world in which few men know what is truth or whether there be truth, one in which you would ask statesmen to determine its limits? We suspect that a race of statesmen armed with such powers as Prussia is now giving to her officials would soon cease to show their present temperance (!) and sobriety, and grow into a caste of civilian ecclesiastics of harder, drier, and lower mould than any of the ecclesiastics they had to put down.... To our minds, the absolutism of the Vatican Council is a trifling danger compared with the growing absolutism of the democratic temper which is now being pushed into almost every department of human conduct.”

On the larger question of the dangers of modern universities, the opinion of one of the keenest of living English statesmen was given in unmistakable language at the annual meeting of the Church Congress last year at Leeds. The Marquis of Salisbury is quite as true an Englishman as any writer on the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and his words may be considered to possess at least equal weight with those of the distinguished journal mentioned.

Referring more immediately to the abolition of the “Test Acts,” by which the state had hitherto guaranteed to overlook and prevent the teaching of infidelity, he said: “All hindrance to the teaching of infidelity has been taken away, and that is the great danger of the future. The great danger is that there should be formed inside our universities—especially, I fear, inside Oxford—a nucleus and focus of infidel teaching and influence; not infidel in any coarse or abusive sense, but in that sense in which Prof. Palmer used the words ‘heathen virtue.’ _I fear that the danger we have to look to is that some colleges in Oxford may in the future play a part similar to that disastrous part which the German universities have played in the dechristianization of the upper and middle classes._” And the only advice he can give to England now is: “If the parents of England who send their sons to these colleges will be alive to the heavy responsibility which is now laid upon them, then perhaps we may have a better security, a better guarantee, than we have had that Oxford shall not be the means of uprooting the Christian faith which they had learnt at home.”

These words of the real, if not the nominal, leader of the conservative party in the British House of Lords, who at the same time is, or was when he delivered the speech, chancellor of the university of Oxford, are worthy of attention, and may be commended to that fussy little termagant, the _Pall Mall Gazette_. They have been doubly corroborated since by another British statesman whose testimony on such a subject is of at least equal weight with that of the ultra-liberal journal, inasmuch as he is the leader of the liberal party—the present Premier of England, in his recent great speech at Liverpool, which was principally devoted to exposing the errors of Strauss.

Passing on to the other laws, why, considered merely from a financial point of view, should the creation of new seminaries, great or small, be prohibited? This is controlling the private purse with a vengeance. The Prussian state, or Prince Bismarck and the professordom, forbid Prussians or anybody else to erect ecclesiastical seminaries. Of course, this means that Prussian or German youth are in future to be educated only in the state schools and universities. If they want to become priests, they must learn their theology as best they may; at least there shall be no schools or colleges for them to study in, for those already in existence are to be placed under state surveillance, to receive no new pupils—in a word, to be closed, or converted from the purpose for which they were founded by private funds into state schools with state professors at their head, which is just as though Gen. Grant swooped down on all the banking-houses in the United States, set them under government control, and bade the bankers go about their business. And yet Catholics who find some reason to object to this summary mode of dealing with their property and what they considered were their rights, are told that they are traitors to the state, conspirators against the empire, and that they only object in slavish obedience to a mandate from Rome.

This measure was well devised. Its framers said: We have banished the Jesuits; we have banished religious societies of every description; we have abolished the sacrament of marriage; we have banished religion from the schools; we now proceed to abolish ecclesiastical seminaries altogether: that is to say, we abolish the priesthood, we abolish God as far as Germany is concerned, and men shall worship us and us only—the supreme power.

What else does this law mean? It strikes out the priesthood, root and branch, as effectually as did the penal laws in England; nay, more so. The next clause fits in neatly. The bishop who nominates a candidate otherwise than in accordance with the law is fined heavily. As there are a good number of bishops, and as they are likely to disregard the law in this respect, this will ensure a constant revenue to the state as long at least as they are allowed to remain in the country.

Ecclesiastical disciplinary power can only be exercised by ecclesiastical authorities of German nationality. This, of course, is a blow struck directly at the Pope in his capacity of universal head of the church; indirectly at whoever may hereafter be appointed as bishops of the church in Germany. It simply forbids the Catholic bishops and priests to obey the commands of the Holy See, and, if carried out, would be subversive of the whole edifice of Christ’s church, which its divine Founder made one, indivisible, and CATHOLIC. “Go ye, therefore, and teach _all_ nations.” Prince Bismarck aims at carrying out what Bolanden calls “the Russian idea”—the erection in Germany of a state popedom. And again, Catholics are traitors to the state for objecting to it, though it is an amendment introduced into Article 15 of the Prussian constitution for the purpose of nullifying that truly liberal and wise measure, which was to the following effect:

The Evangelical and the Roman Catholic Churches, as well as all other religious societies, may administer and regulate their affairs in perfect freedom. All religious societies may continue in the possession and enjoyment of their institutions, foundations, and funds destined for worship, instruction, and charity.

This is the law that works in England, in this country, and wherever else the name of freedom is known. It left the Catholic Church little to desire in Prussia. The justice, the wisdom and necessity of substituting for this law those which appear at the head of this article, will be apparent.

Moreover, that same article very wisely and fairly provided that the state right of nominating, proposing, electing, and confirming in the offices of the church be suppressed, with the single exception of ecclesiastical appointments in the army and in public establishments.

That law worked to the satisfaction of all parties—the state, the Evangelicals, and the Catholics. The state never complained of it; the Evangelical Church never complained of it; the Catholic Church never complained of it. Why reverse this order now? Why, after handing the disciplinary power over into the hands of the church, and after having proved it so satisfactorily for half a century, do you now forbid the exercise of that power by authority which is not of German nationality? The constitution of the Catholic Church is exactly the same now as it was when that article was drawn up. The Catholic bishops were not self-appointed. Who conferred ecclesiastical disciplinary power in the first instance? The church through its head, the representative of Jesus Christ, who is not of German nationality; who, as head of the Catholic Church, is of no nationality; and to whom in that capacity the question of nationality does not apply: for the laws of which he is the keeper refer to the spiritual part of man’s nature, the moral order, which in all men is the same, and which takes as little color from the accidents of place or climate as it does from the darkness or the whiteness of the skin.

This law cannot be obeyed: its framers evidently were assured of this fact, for they provide that the ecclesiastical functionaries who, by exercise of their functions, transgress the laws of the state or the ordinances of the civil authority, may, at the demand of that authority, be deposed, if the maintaining of their functions prove incompatible with public order.

This means the destruction of the Catholic episcopate, or its total subserviency to the state. “I will strike the shepherd, and the flock will be dispersed,” said our Lord on a memorable occasion. That is precisely what Prince Bismarck says: Take all power out of the hands of the Pope; destroy the bishops if you cannot win them over to the state; strive to set priest against superior, by telling him that, if he disobey, the voice of his church is powerless to affect him whilst the arm of the state supports him. Swell the ranks of the “Old Catholic” party thus, and we shall force a schism on the church; after a short time, the people will go this way and that; the true shepherds gone, the flock will be dispersed, and the nation is ours to do as we please with, for there is no longer the voice of religion to rise up against us: the people are ripe for the worship of force.

Observe the steps which have led up to the present consummation from the foundation of the German Empire two years ago. The Jesuits, the vanguard of the church, are driven out. Why? For conspiring against the empire. Proofs? None.

All the other orders are driven out for the same reasons, and with the like proofs of guilt.

The universities are placed in the hands of infidels.

The schools are taken from the hands of religious, and placed altogether in the hands of the state.

The solemnization (!) of marriage is placed in the hands of the state.

Ecclesiastical seminaries are suppressed, and given over to the state.

Ecclesiastical students are for the future to be educated and appointed by the state.

Catholics must not subscribe money to build colleges of their own; if they do, those colleges will, like all the others, be appropriated by the state.

The bishops, the divinely appointed successors of the apostles, are only allowed to hold office at the will of the state.

He who disobeys is deposed from office by the state. The church is a thing of state. The human conscience is a thing of state. It has no rights, no thoughts, no feelings, no desires, that are not absolutely controlled by the state, “for in the kingdom of this world the state has dominion and precedence.”

There is the whole doctrine out, plain and undisguised. Those last words are taken from the speech delivered by Prince Bismarck to the House of Peers in the debate of March 10 on the question under consideration. And now that they are there, what is the state?

“The state is I,” said Louis XIV., and he was right in his estimate; but the fact of his having been right at the time when he made the boast did not prevent the French Revolution, rather helped it on, and does not prevent us to-day from repudiating the doctrine.

What constitutes the state in Prince Bismarck’s eyes? Is it the emperor, or himself, or Dr. Falk, or the German professordom? Is it the representatives of the country as collected in the Lower and Upper Prussian Houses? On the educational question, the Upper House, in which lay the strength of the conservative party, gave an adverse vote to the government, and the House was immediately dissolved. A number of mushroom peers were hastily created in an unconstitutional manner, and sent in as the creatures of Prince Bismarck, for the sole purpose of passing these bills, in order to give a show of free discussion, and make the measure of Prince Bismarck appear as the will of the nation. But does the following read like the speech of a man who was likely to favor free discussion, or rather, of one who pined for absolutism, and was determined to have it? It is an extract from the speech of the prince on resigning the premiership of the Prussian Parliament to Count von Roon: “There is no fear that Prussia will lose her legitimate influence in the federal government, even if the individual members of the cabinet are not on all questions at one.... Prussia’s territory making five-eighths of all Germany, she will always command the authority naturally belonging to her. Besides, the identity of the German and Prussian politics is guaranteed by the fact that the German Emperor and the King of Prussia happen to be one and the same person. _I do not deny that the premier should be invested with more extensive prerogatives than are now his own._ He might, for instance, be accorded the right of suspending the decisions of the cabinet until their approval or otherwise by the king; or he might be granted some other prerogative with a view to regulating the action of the administration. _All this, I dare say, will come to pass in course of time_, but, not being as yet conceded to him, he has to shift as best he may.... There is too much talking over one’s colleagues involved in the premiership to leave a man time for anything else.”

That speech was delivered some months ago. Since then, the speaker has come nearer to the boast of Louis XIV. This is how the echo of the German chancellor, the Berlin special correspondent of the London _Times_, speaks of it, with a cringing tone that to free stomachs brings an absolute nausea: “With a decisive struggle against popery looming ahead, it would be a great mistake in this loyal and king-loving country to strip the ministry of the authority it derives from representing _the crown rather than the parliament_”; whilst the _Times_ itself remarks editorially, with a mental blindness strange indeed, if unintentional: “We do not anticipate any retrogression in the development of Prussia, but it seems inevitable that there should be some check in the progress of change, some slackening in the audacity of legislation, some disposition to rest and be thankful.”

To show how far freedom of discussion prevails in the Prussian Parliament over and above the speech quoted of Prince Bismarck, the dissolution of the Upper House on refusing to go the length of the government on the education question, and the creation of new peers for the purpose of overcoming that opposition, may be added the very significant announcement made by Dr. Falk on presenting the bill to the Chamber in the first instance, before a word of discussion had taken place on it, that his majesty’s sanction was certain beforehand; which was saying practically: You may vote as you please, but this bill must be passed, and he who opposes its passage is an enemy to the throne—no small threat in a military nation.

So much for freedom of discussion! Where, then, is one to find that mysterious body, the state, of which there is so much talk? Of course, this bill has passed both houses; it has been debated and divided on, and the divisions have gone with the ministry. Well, in representative governments, such is the rule. Whatever the majority votes becomes law. All looks fair. The bill has gone against the Catholics, and that is all that can be said about it.

But how has it gone against them? It is a sweeping measure; of that there can be no doubt. It is the most tremendous measure framed within this century, perhaps in all time, for the suppression of the faith; for, to any honest mind, these laws are absolute suppression of all that constitutes the Catholic Church, so far as human enactments can effect it. Prince Bismarck endeavored from the beginning of this contest with the church to throw a false light over it. He banished the Jesuits and the other orders on the plea that they were conspiring against the empire. There was no trial, or searching, or investigation. It was simply his _ipse dixit_: he commanded, and they were banished. At that time his contest, as he and his organs and representatives in the Chamber continued to assure the world, was one with conspirators, and in no wise with the Catholic Church. The secularization, which has been better called the dechristianization, of the schools, and the abolition of the sacrament of marriage, had nothing whatever to do with the Catholic faith. What mockery! Now he comes and forces this bill through the parliament, which, if carried out, as it doubtless will be to the letter—for Prince Bismarck does nothing by halves—simply and absolutely stops the life of religion, not alone the Catholic, but all religion with any pretension to the name, throughout Germany; and still he persists in declaring that the contest is not with the church. In his speech of March 10, which will be remembered in history, and in calmer moments read aright by all, the prince chancellor said: “The question in which we are at present involved is placed, according to my judgment, in a false light if we call it a confessional religious question. It is essentially political; it has nothing to do with the conflict of an evangelical dynasty against the Catholic Church, as our Catholic fellow-citizens are taught to believe; it has nothing to do with the conflict between faith and infidelity: it has solely to do with the ancient contest for dominion, which is as old as the human race; with the contest for power between monarchy and priesthood—the contest which is much older than the appearance of the Redeemer in the world.”

Now, if this statement of the relative position of the opposing forces be correct, Prince Bismarck makes the contest all the easier for the Catholics. He professes to remove it altogether out of the region of religion into that of politics, and thus the conflict, according to him, is one between two purely political parties. As will be shown, the party opposed to the present Bismarck policy is not at all restricted to the Catholics; it embraces the greater portion of the Evangelicals, most probably all of them, as well as those who, outside of Germany, would be called democrats. Basing the contest, then, on purely political grounds, the majority of the German Empire is driven by sheer force of the will of one man or of a few men, backed by the most powerful army in the world, into accepting a state of things which it abhors, and against which it vehemently protests. The claims of either party are to be decided purely on their own merits, and the verdict of a fair mind cannot fail to side with that at whose head stand the Catholics; for they claim nothing more than that the Prussian constitution, under which all up to the present have lived happily, be preserved inviolate. “Leave the Prussian law as it stood,” demand the Catholics and the Evangelicals. “We are content with it; we demand nothing more.” How such a plain and patriotic request can be contorted into conspiracy against the empire it is hard to conceive. As for the allegation that the relations of Catholics to the state have been altered one jot by the declaration of infallibility, that is idle. Catholics believe now precisely what they believed from the beginning. Prince Bismarck, then, was fully alive to the importance of the question he was engaged in at the time. It was no insignificant measure that might quietly sneak through the House almost without the House being aware of its existence. The German Empire numbers 40,000,000 of souls; of these 14,000,000 are Catholics; that is to say, more than one-third of the entire population. Call the relation existing to-day between these 14,000,000 of Catholics and the head of their church, the Pope, between them and their bishops and clergy, what you please, political or religious, the result of the passing of this measure is one and the same—the total breaking up of that relation in all that makes it what it is, in so far as it lies in Prince von Bismarck to effect that result. And so the world understands it.

“There is no parallel in history,” says the _Pall Mall Gazette_, “to the experiment which the German statesmen are resolutely bent on trying, except the memorable achievement of Englishmen under the guidance of Henry VIII.... Like all these measures, the new law concerning the education of ecclesiastical functionaries, which is the most striking of the number, will apply to all sects indifferently, but, in its application to the Roman Catholic priesthood, it almost takes one’s breath away.”

The London _Times_ of April 19, in a curious article on our Holy Father which will call for attention afterwards, sums up the situation thus:

“The measures now in the German Parliament, and likely to become [which since have become] law, amount to a secular organization so complete as not to leave the Pope a soul, a place, an hour, that he can call entirely his own. Germany asserts for the civil power the control of all education, the imposition of its own conditions on entrance to either civil or ecclesiastical office, the administration of all discipline, and at every point the right to confine religious teachers and preachers to purely doctrinal and moral topics. Henceforth there is to be neither priest, nor bishop, nor cardinal, nor teacher, nor preacher, nor proclamation, nor public act, nor penalty, nor anything that man can hear, do, or say for the soul’s good of man in Germany, without the proper authorization, mark, and livery of the emperor.”

The _Times_ is no special advocate of Catholic interests, so that, when it puts the case thus, it is out of no love for them. But after such a graphic picture of the situation, it is needless to reiterate what has been maintained, that, call these measures what you please, they simply involve and mean the legal suppression of the Catholic Church in Germany.

The bill, then, required some consideration; for it could only be regarded by one-third of the empire at least, and by the millions of their co-religionists outside the empire, not simply as an outrage on their conscience—that would be a weak word for it—but as a measure, whether it passed or was defeated, to be resisted with all the power that lies in man’s nature. In this light alone could it be looked upon by the Catholics, and thus the hearts of one-third of the empire were at once and, if freedom of conscience be not a meaningless phrase, most justly alienated from the government of an empire scarce yet two years old.

But the opposition was not confined to Catholics alone. The Evangelical party, though a few of its members and organs had opposed the intermeddling of the state with church affairs from the first, as a whole accepted the expulsion of the Jesuits and the other arbitrary measures as a good thing, and as a deadly blow struck at Rome. But when these crowning measures appeared, it saw that, as usual, the blow struck at Rome was a blow struck at all freedom, and strove to retract when too late. To quote the _Pall Mall Gazette_ again:

“The difficulties of Prince Bismarck are not decreasing. The Jesuits have found a fresh ally in Prussia, and the ranks of the enemies of the new ecclesiastical legislation are swollen by combatants whose loyalty hitherto has been unswerving. Herr von Gerlach no longer stands alone as a Protestant opponent of the chancellor’s policy. A portion of the Evangelical clergy and a section of the Protestant aristocracy of the old provinces of the kingdom have passed over into the camp of the enemy. In Pomerania and Silesia, a bitterness of antagonism has revealed itself which was never suspected. The feelings that have fed this opposition have evidently been long in existence, but only now have they betrayed themselves openly. The occasion on which this was done was the emperor’s birthday. It has been customary to have religious services in the churches at such times, and they had come to be expected by the population as a regular part of the celebration. This year, however, many of the Evangelical clergy in different towns omitted the usual services, and kept their churches closed. A letter in the _Spener Gazette_ remarks upon the astonishment excited in Neusalz, in Lower Silesia, because of the omission. Another letter from Wolgast says neither in that town nor in Kammin or Schievelbein was ‘the divine service held to which we have been always accustomed.’ The same thing occurred at Wernigerode, where the only notice of the occasion was in the prayers at the usual Sunday service the day after. These facts have excited much comment in Germany. The official papers openly accuse the Protestant clergy of the eastern provinces of becoming the allies of the ultramontanes” (April 12).

Thus does this “loyal and king-loving” people manifest its gratitude to the monarch for the forcing of this bill upon it. How is it that the bill hurts them, the Evangelicals, who detest the Pope, most of them, just as cordially as does Prince Bismarck? Alas for human nature! There was a touch of the weakness of the flesh in it after all.

When this bill met their gaze, the eyes of the Evangelicals were at last opened. They saw that its provisions were all-embracing, and that there was no distinction made between Catholic and Protestant, so just and righteous to all is the Gospel promulgated by Prince Bismarck—the gospel of the state! They had thought to get off scot-free; they lent no voice to the noble protest of the Catholic bishops at Fulda; but at length their zeal is aroused, and they generously throw their weight into the scale, praying that the new laws may take the form of exceptional measures for the Catholic Church.

Such was the form which the Evangelical objection took—on purely conscientious grounds, no doubt. While the internal budget was being discussed, some of the progressionists were so stupidly logical as to vote a refusal of the very respectable subsidy which this generous, charitable, and conscientious body enjoys. But Dr. Falk, the liberal, came to the rescue, and saved it.

The Prussian correspondent of the London _Times_ has an instructive little paragraph on this subject, which may serve to throw some further light on this eleventh-hour opposition:

“But the Catholic dignitaries are not the only ecclesiastics opposed to the bill. The new measures applying not only to the Catholic Church, but to all religious communities recognized by the state, the Oberkirchenrath, or Supreme Consistory of the Protestant Church in the old provinces, has also thought fit to caution the crown against the enactment of these sweeping innovations. The principal reason given by the Oberkirchenrath against the clause in the new laws facilitating secession from a religious community, is that many a Protestant might be tempted to forsake his faith on the eve of the building of a new church. Rather than contribute his mite, as compelled by law, he might prefer being converted to something else.”

If letters could blush, that last sentence ought to be of a scarlet color. However, to keep to the question at hand: whatever may have been the motive, certain it is that at length the Evangelical party, as a party, a body, political or religious, as you please, is aroused, and turns upon the government, of which it was ready to be the obedient servant so long as all things went smoothly. A similar instance of a great uprising of religious zeal against government innovation was exhibited and is witnessed still in that “loyal and king-loving” body, the Irish Protestants, on the disestablishment of what was called the Irish Church. Here, then, are the Evangelicals protesting against the government, and the Catholics protesting against the government; how much of the nation is left? The Catholics are 14,000,000; the number of the Evangelicals is unknown to the writer, but it probably doubles, perhaps trebles, that of the Catholics—certainly in Prussia; at all events, it may be safely said that the majority of the German Empire protests against these laws. Where is the state to be found, then? The state certainly does not lie in the majority of the people. On purely political grounds, therefore, Prince Bismarck’s measure is tyrannical; nevertheless, “in the kingdom of this world, the state has dominion and precedence.”

“Ave, Cæsar! Morituri te salutant!”

Prince Bismarck expected this opposition. So powerful did he imagine it would be that he even feared it, and in his own speeches and organs mingled cajolery with threats. Whilst the ecclesiastical bills were still being debated, the _Provinzial-Correspondenz_ (official), in a flaring article on the protest of the Catholic bishops at Fulda, and the Catholic opposition to the ecclesiastical laws, wrote:

“The state, of course, being responsible for the welfare of the inhabitants in every measure adopted, will have to be guided by a _strict regard for what is just and upright_. It will have carefully to refrain from meddling with the creed or interfering with the ecclesiastical institutions and usages immediately connected with the sphere of religious belief. Only the other day, the Minister of Education (Dr. Falk) expressed his conviction in the Lower House that, directly the new bills became law, the Catholic subjects would perceive that no one intended to injure their religious faith, oppress their church, or interfere with the preaching of saving truth.” (Dr. Falk’s convictions are of a piece with his notions of “truth.”) ... “In carrying through their present task, government is prepared to encounter serious resistance and much trouble; but it is also aware that the bills now under discussion, if once they become law, will supply it with effective means of exerting its authority.... If the washes of the government and parliament are fulfilled, the bills under discussion will be a work of peace.”

“That is, in case the bishops yield,” remarks the Prussian correspondent of the London _Times_. “In the other event, they are sure to be successively fined, deposed, incarcerated, and perhaps sent out of the country. All this the new legislation empowers the government to effect.”

The government, then, or the state, or whatever be the name by which Prince Bismarck chooses to be called, dreaded a powerful opposition. Nevertheless, it determined to pass these bills—which were absolutely uncalled for, as far as the harmony of the relations between Catholic and Protestant went, and that of either or both of these bodies with what ought to be the state, the true representative rulers of the people, and not a man or a few men elevated on the bayonets of a million soldiers—conscious that it was doing what the conscience of its people might of necessity endure for a time, but could never consent to. How long, then, did it take to bring this stupendous measure about, fraught as it was with all these consequences, and a cause of alarm and anxiety even to the government itself with all its bayonets?

The laws are dated January 8 of this year; they were presented to the Chamber on the following day, and, by the 21st of the same month, their first discussion is over. On April 25, they finally passed the Upper House.

In three months! A bill which altered throughout the whole relations between church and state in Germany, down to their minutest details; which involved the appropriation to state purposes of every ecclesiastical college or seminary subscribed for, and erected, and founded by the money of private individuals; which, involving as it does the suppression of the bishops and the clergy, as a necessary consequence hands over to the state a vast amount of funded property in churches and houses; which, above all this, meets religion at every turn, and makes it bow down and worship the state; which threatens a future of disturbance and danger of every kind—is pushed through both Houses of Parliament, and supposed to be fully discussed and decided on in a period of three months!

Why, a bill for the laying of a new line of railroad twenty miles in length would have required longer time and called for more discussion. There it stands now, law, and all Germany must obey it, because the state calls it law. On April 24, Germany could be Christian; on April 26, to be Christian is a crime against the state; to obey the dictates of conscience is a crime; to establish a school in the name of God is a crime; to establish a college for the education of God’s ministry is a crime; to obey the pastors, the priests, and bishops of God’s church, whom to obey hitherto was a virtue, is now a crime; to acknowledge the Pope as the head of the universal church, a crime; in a word, to be anything but German, body and soul, mind and heart and thought, is a crime, to be punished by all the rigor of the law!

Prince Bismarck, while he is about it, should go further. “To-day we will proceed to create God,” said a countryman of his, a philosopher, an enlightened man and apostle of the stamp of Dr. Falk, the putative father of these bills. The chancellor should create a German heaven to correspond with this German religion and reward its devotees, the worshippers of the divine state. What German Dante will arise to give us the Bismarck _Inferno_?

The steps which led up to this measure, the ingredients which compose it, the manner in which it was forced through, the meaning of it, and the effect, if carried out, it will produce on religion, have now been set before the reader, and he may fairly pronounce for himself upon the whole question. But the question asked at the beginning remains still unanswered: _Why_ has all this come about? Why has so wise a statesman as Prince Bismarck is reputed to be raked up these embers of dissension, and fanned them into so fierce a flame? Is it to his advantage to turn one-third, the majority even, of his empire against him? Why, if the contest were not, as he and his supporters of the liberal and religious press allege, in a manner forced upon him, should he be so unwise as to run the danger of rending his empire asunder, and opening up that bitterest of difficulties, the religious question, which lay so quiet? In one word, was or was not the Catholic Church a danger to the new empire?

This is becoming the question of the day; and what concerns Germany concerns the whole world. The Catholic Church is a danger to the state.

Again, why?

Because you obey an infallible Pontiff, an absolute ruler, blindly and implicitly. Matters were not quite so bad before the declaration of the dogma of infallibility; but since that date, the Pope has taken a new stand which governments cannot admit. They cannot endure to have any portion of their subjects ruled by a foreign potentate. They cannot have their measures thwarted and decrees opposed by a mandate, open or secret, from Rome. They cannot admit the pretensions of a well-meaning, no doubt, but rather unpractical and decidedly impracticable old gentleman to the sovereignty over the whole world. Those whom he claims as his subjects may venerate him as much as they choose; they may even obey him, as far as believing in a God and all that sort of thing goes, if it bring any unction to their souls; they may believe in any mortal or immortal thing they please; but they must obey the laws of the land in which they live, _whatever those laws may be_. Religious belief may be anything you please, as long as it is confined to the individual’s mental faith; but his conduct must not be ruled by it. Whenever religion crosses the state, religion must give way. Governments cannot admit the disloyal theory of “a Catholic first, a nationalist if you will.”

It all lies there: the contest between Prince Bismarck and the church, between Italy and the church, between the whole world and the church. This contest did not begin with the German chancellor. There is a power behind the throne that moves even him to this deed of violence upon the sacred person of the spouse of Christ, his holy church: the same old tempter that first whispered to man in Eden: “Ye shall be as gods”; that drove the kings to stone and persecute the prophets; that moved the Jews to crucify Christ; that directed the arm of the pagan emperors of Rome. It is not in man of his own will merely to stir up this strife, and wage war upon his brother for the matter of faith. The spirit of evil is ever working; and his present chief representative, unconsciously it may be hoped, is the powerful chancellor of the German Empire. Here is his standpoint, as given by the Berlin correspondent of the New York _Herald_, in the remarkable speech of March 10. In the extract already given, the chancellor pronounced the contest he has entered upon as having “solely to do with the ancient contest for dominion, which is as old as the human race; with the contest for power between monarchy and priesthood—the contest which is much older than the appearance of the Redeemer in the world.” After endeavoring to connect every great movement of recent and mediæval history inimical, or supposed to be inimical, to Germany with the machinations of the Papacy, he goes on to say: “It is, in my estimation, a falsification of politics and of history when His Holiness the Pope is considered exclusively as the high-priest of any one confession, or the Catholic Church as representative of churchdom in general. The Papacy has been in all times a political power which, with the determination and with the greatest success, interfered in all the relations of this world; which meant to interfere, and considered such interference as its legitimate programme. This programme is well known. The aim constantly kept in view by the Papal power (like the Rhine borders before the eyes of the French)—the programme which, at the time of the mediæval emperors, was very nearly realized—is the making the secular power subject to the clerical—an aim eminently political, the effort to attain which is, however, as old as humanity; for so long have there been persons, whether cunning people or real priests, who have asserted that the will of God was better known to them than to their fellow-citizens; and it is well known that this principle is the foundation of the Papal claim to dominion.”

Now, there is no denying that this is a very fascinating doctrine for nations. The rulers studiously misrepresent the Papacy, setting it down as a political power: as that most dangerous of political powers which would clothe politics in the garb of religion, as Mahomet did, and give to their selfish schemes the name of the cause of God, so as to arouse an enthusiasm and fanaticism in their devotees which mere human powers can never hope to enkindle. Mahomet was just one of those “cunning people” who “asserted that the will of God was better known to him than to his fellow-citizens,” if they could be designated by that title. And the conquests that Mahomet achieved by that deceit are in the memory of all. The Pope is the Mahomet of the XIXth century, according to Prince Bismarck.

When Shakespeare put that famous sentence into the mouth of King John, “No foreign power shall tithe or toll in my dominions,” he only said the same thing. “You are about to disestablish the church in Ireland, because it was imposed by a foreign power,” said Mr. Disraeli, during the debates on the question of the disestablishment. “You will do so; but what will you have in its place? A nation ruled by a foreign power; for the Pope is an absolute sovereign.” The words are from memory; but the aim and substance are correct, and he of all men understood the fallacy of the argument; but he knew that it was a valuable party-cry to stir the blood of the patriotic Englishman. So, recently, Mr. Gladstone told the House of Commons that the Irish University Bill was defeated by Cardinal Cullen, under mandate, of course, from Rome. And so runs the cry through the world.

It buzzes around our ears out here even in certain quarters, though much less, happily, than it was wont to do. Terror of Rome! is the string to harp on. The Catholics wish to surrender the country into the hands of the Pope!

Laying aside the consideration of the practical impossibility of such a thing, suppose the Pope did reign as emperor in Germany to-day, would the people be less happy than they show themselves to be under the rule of Prince Bismarck? Would the Pope encircle his throne with a cordon of steel, or reign in the hearts of his people? How much happier are the inhabitants of the Papal States to-day under the rule of Victor Emanuel than they were under that of Pius IX.? Let the correspondents of the secular press answer with their periodical record of outrage and crime.

How is it possible to convince people that all these allegations are utterly and maliciously false? The Pope is infallible; and so was Peter when our Lord made him the rock upon which he should build his church. Peter had the same conflict with Rome that Pius has with Germany, not simply because he was Peter, the head of the church on earth, and the vicar of Jesus Christ, but because he was a Christian. And every Christian who is faithful to the law of his crucified Master is bound to say to the state “I cannot” when the state would have him deny that Master, and break loose from the teachings of the church. It is not the Pope these men are fighting: it is Christianity. As far as the German laws of making the divinely instituted sacrament of matrimony a merely civil contract, of preaching disobedience to the pastors of the church, go, were the Pope to die to-day, and, if possible, an interregnum, which seems to be so desired by many, to ensue, that fact would not make a bit of difference in the opposition of Catholics to these state measures. Wrong would be wrong still; the laws of God would remain as binding as ever; and to hinge the Catholic faith _in this fashion_ on the Papacy is a transparent trick. The Pope teaches what Jesus Christ bade him teach; and no pope has ever swerved from that line.

It is almost useless to discuss this theme, and yet it must be taken up, though those violent opponents of what they call ultramontanism, by which they mean Catholicity, will still continue to close their eyes to the truth that the Catholic religion has no connection of any kind with politics as pure politics. But where politics touches upon religion, of course religion is to be taken into account. It would far overstep this article to go into all the details and intricacies of this question; but the statement of the position which Catholics take upon the subject may serve best to put the matter before the reader.

Catholics read history differently from Prince Bismarck and the scientific historians who surround him. For them all practical history, if the term may be used, begins with Jesus Christ. All the rest, as far as theories of government, of the relations of the state to the individual, go, may be considered as blotted out, as a _tabula rasa_, and the world, in the moral order, began anew. Before the coming of our Lord there was no government, in the modern sense of the word, outside of the Jewish nation: there was force. Jesus Christ laid down laws which should enter into every relation of the life of man, and could not be mistaken. These laws were just as binding on the monarch as on the subject, on the government as on the governed; they did not destroy government: they guided and helped it, and infused into it the first principles of freedom. Men recognized this fact, and, as Christianity advanced, governments began to fashion themselves closer and closer upon the law of the Gospel, until at length what is known as Christendom grew up, grounded, as its very name implied, upon the religion of Christ—that is to say, upon the law of Christ. Of course, in the various governments, many things remained contrary to this law, not, however, as rights, but as wrongs which only time and Christian influence could remove. However, governments were measured as to their justice and injustice, not by a standard antecedent to the Christian era, nor by any standard which they might choose to set up for themselves, but by their assimilation to, their agreement or disagreement with, the law of Jesus Christ.