Chapter II: A Glance From Mr. Schöninger (3)

Of course, to those who deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, all this reasoning goes for nothing; but Prince Bismarck does not profess to do so. Where, then, was this law to be found? Had it a keeper, a guardian, a propounder, one to whose care its divine Founder had entrusted it, guarded against the possibility of mistaking its teachings, or did he leave the dead letter to commend itself in a variety of ways to a variety of minds? Were all men blessed from birth with perfect intelligence and personal infallibility, there would have been no need of leaving anything more than the dead letter of the law, as in that case all would have agreed as to its meaning. But as men do not as a rule lay claim to perfect intelligence and personal infallibility, without going further into the question here, it seems obvious to common sense that, if Christ left a law to the world, he left it in somebody’s keeping: he left a government and a head, as the representative of himself. This representative is the Pope, whom all Christendom recognized for so many centuries, not as king of this mundane world, but as the supreme head of the universal church of Christ.

In time, he came to have a patrimony of his own, which was freely given him, and has been recently very freely taken from him. That patrimony he did not rule infallibly as king. His policy as an earthly monarch might even be defective, like that of any other ruler; but, in the domain of faith and morals, he, when speaking _ex cathedrâ_, could not err, and Christendom bowed to his decisions.

Here it is, then, that Catholics bind their faith in the Pope; not in Pius IX. as ruler of Rome, but in Pius IX. as the successor of Peter, as the vicar of Jesus Christ, as his living representative on earth. When, therefore, Christendom departs from Christianity, from the law of Christ upon which it was founded, and devises measures or promulgates doctrines in opposition to the law of Christ, Catholics look to the decision of him with whom the Word abides to say if this be true or untrue, right or wrong. He pronounces, and they believe and obey. He simply says this is or this is not the law of Christ—the law that rules the government as well as the governed. If governments enforce wrong with the strong arm, you must use all lawful resistance; but, rather than deny the truth, you must die as your Saviour died.

The tendency of governments to-day is to say: “We bow to no law, we recognize nothing higher than ourselves, and the laws we make must be obeyed without question.” This is going back to the ante-Christian era, and reviving the worship of force. Such is the tendency to-day: disbelief in Christ; disbelief, consequently, in his doctrines, in his church, in Christianity, in the head of his church. To be Catholic, consequently, is to be anti-national, in the eyes of the state, when in reality it is to be the truest citizen of the state. Home employed a Christian legion, and, though in bravery and devotion to the empire that legion knew no superior, many of its members were martyred because they recognized a spiritual power higher than the state.

And therein Catholicity is compelled to oppose the state: dating from Christ, believing in Christ, building itself upon Christ, its followers members of the church of Christ, it follows the state in all things save where it transgresses the commandments of Christ; hence the _non possumus_.

Coming back, then, to the present question, Catholics believe the Pope to be the infallible head of the Catholic Church, not the absolute emperor of the kingdoms of this world. Jesus Christ, whose vicar he is, himself proclaimed, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Nations may assume what form of government best suits them; all that is nothing to the Pope. A Catholic is absolutely free in this country, for instance, to vote whatever ticket he may please, Republican or Democratic. As far as those names and their meaning go, Catholicity has absolutely nothing whatever to do with them. But a political party erects what it calls a platform, raises a party-cry, and, as in the present instance in Prussia, calls itself liberal, and its liberalism attempts to wipe out absolutely the Catholic religion from the land and from the world if it could. Is it in human reason to expect Catholics not to allow their religion to influence their votes in such a case as that, or in such a case as the Irish university question, or in any similar case that might occur here?

What are votes given for? Surely to protect ourselves against tyranny of every form, and to secure our proper representation in the body to whose care is entrusted the government of the country. God forbid that religion should not influence politics! Why should it not? Let it alone; leave it free to do God’s work; leave it its churches, its colleges, its schools, its hospitals, its asylums, its associations, its free worship, its beliefs, and its institutions. But if you come, as Prince Bismarck has done, to say to religion, I will take from you your schools, which are your own private property; I will take from you your sacraments, which you believe to have been instituted by Jesus Christ; I will strip you of your ecclesiastical colleges, and educate your students myself; I will take your ordination out of the hands of your bishops, and ordain your priests myself; I will appoint your bishops as I please, and they who displease me are no longer bishops; I will take from you your head, the Pope, and make myself pope in his stead: all this will I do, but still you are at liberty to believe in and worship God—what must the answer be?

This is a mockery! This is paganism; it is violence, not law. We cannot obey. There, says Bismarck, or the state, that is treason. Why cannot you obey? Because the Pope, “that old conjuror of the Vatican,” forbids you. That is just the point: either the Pope must rule or I.

Because conscience forbids me, because human reason forbids me, because Jesus Christ forbids me, is the response of the Catholic. Catholics cannot consent to the doctrine that in the dominion of this world the state has precedence. What is the state? An accident. The Czar of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey, Bismarck, the British Parliament, the _Commune_, all these in turn call themselves the state. Government indeed is supreme, and to be obeyed, _in its own sphere_; but if there be no law higher than the material laws which men construct for themselves, and change as occasion demands, good-by to all stable government. If government be merely a creation of man, it must be subject to the varying temper of man; it cannot fix absolutely the rights of man; it can have no absolute title to his obedience. We utterly repudiate this doctrine, and refuse to accept anything as final which we construct for our own use. Its powers are limited as are those of all human institutions: once it oversteps these boundaries, it becomes tyranny. State to-day means Bismarck, to-morrow the _Commune_; it is a case of circumstances; and, if there lie no law beyond all this, no principles which are fixed and come from a Power above “this world,” one is as good as another. This power is religion, and the church is the embodiment of religion, and the Pope is the head of the corporate body, infallible indeed when teaching the universal church, else is he an accident the same as all the others.

Suppose our Blessed Lord were to come down in the flesh at this moment into Germany, what course would he take upon this question? Would he bow to Cæsar in this? Neither will his vicar nor his children. With the army at his back, Prince Bismarck does this wrong. It is said that he is driven to it for the unity of Germany. Germany was united without it. All the states cheerfully submitted even to Prussian preponderance, without thought of dragging in the religious question. The laws as they stood on that point were satisfactory. Well, Germany is united now; but it has become the union of galley-slaves, chained together, watched by a hard taskmaster whose blow is death. The enemy of true German unity to-day is Prince Bismarck.

There is the law, and it is sure to be carried out. Well, the bishops will go to prison, will pay the fines, or become exiles. They will continue to ordain priests and educate them, irrespective of that power called the state. And the real difficulty begins now. The Catholics cannot yield: sooner or later, the state must.

One fact has come out of it all which is worthy of notice. This XIXth century, at least this latter half of it, has been lauded and glorified superabundantly as the age of freedom, the liberal age.

Catholics began to forget their history. They began to think the era of persecution for conscience’ sake over, when they heard it proclaimed on all sides that perfect freedom of thought was the order of the day; there was to be no such distinction as Catholic or Protestant, or Jew or Gentile, any more; the lion was to lie down with the lamb, the world to become a haven of brotherly love, and the dawn of the millennium was seen in the heavens. The rack, the gibbet, the fagot, and the hurdle were all to be banished out of sight and forgotten, or only preserved in museums as evidence of what horrible beings our sires could become. It was all very gushing and nice; the narrow lines of prejudice were to be softened down, and old-fogy, stiff-kneed notions to be voted out.

Suddenly rang out the voice of Peter’s successor: _Liberalism_ is false: beware of it. It is only a few years back since these words startled the world in the Syllabus. A storm of hatred and malign fury arose on all sides, endeavoring to drown the voice of the church. Who are you who condemn us? asked the world.

The infallible head of the church! Men proclaimed that Catholics themselves did not accept it; and the Catholic Church spoke out boldly in these days, not to proclaim a new doctrine, but only to acknowledge to a doubting world what it had always accepted and believed, that the head of the church upon earth is infallible. There was no more talk of softening down of lines: Catholics believed this, or were not Catholics. Listen to the voice of one of the bitterest and most persistent enemies of the Pope, speaking only the other day:

“It is impossible to imagine a belief more sincere, a vision more intense, a life more consistent, than that of the man who has claimed for more than a quarter of a century to be the lord and master of the whole world. If there be neither folly nor sin in such a claim, then we may admire Pius IX., _and indeed must worship and obey him also_.”[149]

Was the “intense vision” mistaken in detecting the poison which lay at the bottom of liberalism? Prince Bismarck has just deserted the conservative party to which he adhered so long—all his political life almost—and thrown himself into the arms of the liberals. These ecclesiastical bills are the result—such is liberalism. “We will force your children to go to our schools and receive the education we give them, which you call godless,” says Huxley, scientific liberal like Dr. Falk. _La Commune_ was the essence of liberalism, and it shot the Archbishop of Paris and the priests out of pure sport apparently. “A free church in a free state” was the Cavour doctrine for liberal Italy, and the bill for the appropriation of church property and of that belonging to the religious orders has followed naturally upon the appropriation of the Papal States and the imprisonment of the head of the church. Switzerland, the liberal republic, banishes the Jesuits, closes the convents, and follows Bismarck’s steps in its dealings with the Catholic clergy. The South American states are doing the same in the name of liberalism. The whole world may be traversed, and wherever liberalism is strongest, there is violence done in the name of freedom.

And here in this free republic men are found, like the writers in the _Nation_ and throughout the Protestant press, to approve of all this. And they are republicans—Americans—lovers of freedom. If Americans, they are traitors to their country, repudiators of the principles of their sires. They forget their history. What brought the Pilgrim Fathers hither? The refusal to take the oath of supremacy to the state. Is what was right in them wrong in us? Freedom was the one word written on the virgin brow of this yet young republic. You who approve of these measures in Prussia would wipe that word out, and set in its place slavery.

The effect which these measures have produced on the outer world is significant. Those who hailed the first outburst on the part of Prince Bismarck with such loud acclaim begin to hesitate and draw back. The secular journals in this country and in England, as a rule, either watch and pronounce upon the steps which have led up to this final outrage with timid caution, or, in a few instances, with downright disapproval.

“We deny entirely that Prince Bismarck himself ever adopted this policy on its merits in the sense in which the _Pall Mall_ admires it. On the contrary, we believe that, as a statesman, he distrusted it seriously, _and has even now little confidence in its success_. We believe that it will result in giving a new stimulus to Roman Catholicism, and that the fanatical vehemence with which the German people have adopted it is a sufficient evidence of _the rash and ill-considered character of the policy itself_.”[150]

“This rough-and-ready method of expelling ultramontane influences ‘by a fork’ can hardly fail to suggest to a looker-on the probability that, like similar methods of expelling nature, it may lead to a reaction. Downright persecution of this sort (we are speaking now simply of the Jesuit law), unless it is very thorough indeed—more thorough than is well possible in this XIXth century—usually defeats itself.”[151]

In this country, the secular press seems generally inclined to shirk the question, or devotes an occasional paragraph to it from time to time, as to a disagreeable subject which will force itself upon the sight, but which it is better to get out of the way as speedily as possible. The religious press among us has gone wild over it from the beginning as a death-blow to Rome. But even they begin to distrust it, and soften their jubilant notes to a mild _piano_, that they hope all good from this measure—they do not exactly see what good, but they live in hope, whilst one of their number, the New York _Observer_, a fine hater of “Popery,” actually declared the other day that, in its opinion, “Cæsar was going too far.”

In Germany itself, as may be gathered from some of the extracts already given, the state-god is not yet accepted as infallible and supreme even in this world. Prince Bismarck marches very fast; and he would make Germany march with him. Sedan was won by marching: but this moral Sedan, as he would consider it, laughs at the snail’s pace of the other. There is such a thing as “riding a gift horse to death”; and Prince Bismarck seems intent on accomplishing that foolish feat.

And here a word may be devoted to the false allegation, which is now beginning to be dropped, that the Catholics were foes to the consolidation of the empire. The Jesuits were banished as conspirators against the empire; the whole Catholic Church was in a conspiracy against it; the Pope had gone further, and, with the rashness characteristic of him, “openly declared war against Bismarck and his ideas” (New York _Nation_). We have looked in vain for the details of this mysterious conspiracy, which have not yet seen the light, though it was so “well known.” Not a single scrap of evidence appeared, not a single riot occurred, not a house was fired; there was no gun-powder discovered, not even the traditional slouched hat and dark-lantern; the supreme majesty of the law was never violated even in the sacred person of a solitary policeman.

As for the other allegation, that Catholics were opposed to the unity of the fatherland, they had ample opportunity to speak prior to the war with France. There was no necessity for the Catholic German states to join Prussia, and spend their wealth and the lives of their sons in a terrible war. Why did not the Catholic clergy and bishops and the Pope, who are nothing but a political power, use the vast political power which they are supposed to wield in preventing the fatal alliance between Protestant Prussia and the Catholic states? Then was the time to pronounce, and how did they pronounce?

There was no doubt or hesitation on the part of either clergy or people. Napoleon made the fatal mistake of endeavoring to throw a religious color over his campaign, to win Catholic Germany to his side. Catholic Germany stood by its homes and altars, and its bishops, priests, and Jesuits stood with it. The Prussian Catholics gloried in their country, and would yield the palm of religious freedom to no nation, not even to ourselves. Mgr. Ketteler had long ago pronounced for the unity of the German Empire. So let that allegation drop.

After the war, each state continued in full and free possession of the right to manage its own home affairs: Prussia was the centre of foreign policy alone. First the Prussian system of service in the army was forced upon all, contrary to the wishes of the states, particularly Bavaria. When Prince Bismarck made up his mind to force this ecclesiastical bill upon Prussia, he saw clearly that, if it remained law for Prussia only, and a dead letter for all the federal states outside, it could not stand: it must be German or nothing. In order to bring this about, he sounded the states for the transfer of the home policy also to the hands of Prussia.

The proposition was vigorously opposed by all, chiefly by Bavaria. Everybody understood the thing dead, when suddenly the announcement came one morning that all the states, with the exception of Bavaria, were in favor of placing the home policy also in the hands of Prussia. Bavaria was left to do as it pleased, and now Prussia is the centre of all power in Germany, so that the reins of absolute government over a number of federal states, which two years ago were free, rest now in the hands of a man whose chief doctrine is the natural preponderance of Prussia.

The measures of the Bismarck régime in Germany have been from first to last measures of violence, not simply as regards the Catholic Church, but as regards the whole of the federal states; and their effects begin to show themselves already in the disrespect shown the emperor on his birthday, in the various riots which have taken and are taking place. And be it marked, not one of these riots has been attributed to the Catholics; they are too obedient to the religion which Prince Bismarck would destroy to take this form of endeavoring to right their wrongs. The riots have been generally called beer riots; but they are following so fast one upon the other, and occurring in so many different cities, that, however exciting a topic beer may be, people begin to hint at something else as cause for them.

“The riots at Stuttgart, which were due, _apparently at least_, to the hereditary quarrel with the Jews, were paralleled at Frankfort on Monday by a great beer riot, said to be due to the high price of beer, in which sixteen breweries were wrecked, twelve persons killed, and one hundred and twenty arrested. A correspondent of yesterday’s _Times_, who was in Frankfort and saw the riot, regards the deeper and more remote cause as being the thorough dissatisfaction of the people with the Prussian system of government.”[152]

Our readers will remember the very serious riot which took place in Berlin at the meeting of the emprors last year right under the noses of their imperial majesties. A _Herald_ correspondent, writing on March 23, tells of a riot in Berlin on the birthday of the emperor; of another which occurred on March 18, the anniversary of the Revolution of 1848 in Berlin; and the correspondents both of the London _Times_ and of the _Herald_, describe the ferocity with which the mounted police charged upon the unarmed mob, using their drawn sabres. The _Herald_ correspondent concludes his letter thus:

“A slight demonstration on the part of the social democrats took place at Brunswick.

“A feeling of dissatisfaction at an undefined something is constantly gaining ground in Germany. There is a yearning after the freedom promised with the united empire. ‘Germany is great, but she is not happy!’ This seems to be the condition of the empire. The revolutions that have just taken place in France and Spain, the declaration of the republic, have had a positive influence in Germany. The democratic element is again lifting its head, and a great meeting of democratic leaders is soon to be held at Frankfort-on-the-Main, unless it be prohibited by the authorities. The Catholic element of the German population is also in a state of continual excitement.”

It is with no feeling of pleasure that these extracts are given here from such a variety of non-Catholic quarters, showing the distrust and growing dislike with which the Prussian rule is regarded. It is only to show that Catholics, in battling for their religion, are only battling for freedom and the rights of man. The mailed hand, red already with the life-blood of three nations, which now smites the church, will not hesitate to crush to powder every semblance of freedom which dares stand in its path. He who attacks the rights of God will laugh at the puny rights of man, simply as man. And you who bow down before the state; you who set up this state above you, and surrender yourselves to it absolutely—you have breathed life into the statue of Frankenstein; you would rid yourselves of it if you could, but you have created that which you cannot destroy, and forged for yourselves an agent of self-destruction.

Happily, Catholics have faith in a God above it all. If it has done no other good, it has brought out to the eyes of the world, in a wonderful manner, at once the vastness and the unity of the Catholic Church. Two years ago, the cry was: Catholics will not accept infallibility. When the Jesuits were driven out from Germany, the cry was: “Catholic Germany rejoices.” When the last remnant of the Papal States was torn from the Holy Father, the world cried out: “Now is the Papacy dead.” When a few disappointed and faithless men showed their heads in Germany, with all the power of the throne at their back, men cried out: “There is to be a new schism.” What do they say now?

Part of it has been seen already. M. John Lemoine, one of the oftenest-quoted writers of the day, a Protestant, writes to the anti-Catholic _Journal des Débats_ on the defeat of the Irish University Bill: “From the depths of that palace which he calls his prison, the now helpless old man (_le vieillard désarmé_), who reigns only over consciences, has just shattered the most solid government of Europe (the Gladstone ministry), and overthrown the greatest minister of England. We would remark that never was the Pope more sovereign, more a dictator, more omnipotent, than since he has relinquished the command of subjects for that of the faithful only.”

After concluding that the stars in their courses have fought against Pius IX., and that his failure is Heaven’s doom, the London _Times_ says:

“Indoors the whole universe is at his feet, but he cannot look out of his windows without seeing a world in arms against him.... Pius IX. has done all that devotees could dream, and suffered all that the world could accomplish. He has achieved an absolute dominion over the human intelligence, and lost every inch of his temporal power.... We may concede, we may be even well content, that he still holds and rules the most impulsive, the most imaginative, and the most sentimental races of the civilized world, and that he himself is admirably adapted for that empire over souls.... We envy the Pope his Irish, French, and Peninsular subjects as little as we envy them their infallible guide.”

The _Times_ forgets the 14,000,000 German “subjects,” as it calls them, and the other millions outside of the races it has mentioned. From all it concludes, however, that “Rome will be Rome to the end of the chapter,” and that indeed it would be a pity that it were not so, though it ought to change a little with the world.

How, then, stands Rome to-day? Never more united, though never did the whole world collect its forces with greater _animus_ to overwhelm it. The state in Germany banishes the Jesuits, and takes infidels to its bosom; in Spain, it banishes the Jesuits, and finds in their place the _Descamisados_; in Switzerland, it ejects Mermillod, and embraces Loyson; in Italy, it imprisons the Pope, and welcomes Victor Emanuel or Garibaldi: _Non hunc sed Barabbam!_

Meanwhile, the Catholic world speaks out, and from the ends of the earth comes back the protest, echoed from point to point, and gathering volume as it goes: We protest as men, we protest as free citizens, we protest as Christians! Protestation does little, say some. True, but, if it has done nothing else, it has at least silenced the false cry that Catholics approved of these measures. Protestation at last tells; and when the interests of those who are now indifferent come, as sooner or later they must come, to be affected by the policy to-day so successful in Prussia, our voices and warnings will be remembered. Catholics cannot at present take up the sword; they can only use, then, the weapons at their disposal—the voice and the pen. They must use them unceasingly and unsparingly until justice is done, and Catholics are granted the rights of citizens, which Freemasons are allowed to enjoy undisturbed. The rights of the state, whether monarchy or republic, are sacred in their eyes, but they live for something more than the state. All the armies in the world cannot coerce the free soul of one man, for they cannot reach it: it is beyond their province. There always will be two laws in this world—the law of God, and the law of man. The first is equivalent to _right_, the second is not necessarily so. The difficulty between states and the Catholic Church lies in the fact that the states consider _legality_ synonymous with _right_, and that what is legal therefore must commend itself to the Christian conscience. Were men ruled by the law which makes the Catholic proclaim himself “a Catholic first, and a nationalist if you will,”[153] all difficulties would be at an end. We are Catholics first, because to be a true Catholic is the truest patriotism, and the perfection of citizenship; because to be Catholic is to be Christian, and all civilized governments draw all that is sound and good in them from Christianity, from Christ. When the state constructs no law which is not right, then will Lord Denbigh’s famous sentence have lost its meaning.

TO THE SACRED HEART.

“Ego dormio, et cor meum vigilat.”[154]—Cant. v. 2.

HEART of hearts, a love is thine
Madly tender,[155] blindly true!
Love in vastness so divine,
In excess so human too!
Seems it more a burning grief—
Pining, aching for relief.

Seems thou dost not, canst not live,
Save to sue us for thy rest:
While the all that we can give
Is as nothing at the best.
Wondrous Lover! Shall I say
Thou hast thrown thyself away?

Drench’d with anguish, steep’d in woe,
Thou must needs, insatiate still,
Linger wearily below,
Prison’d to thy creatures’ will:
While the current of the days
Murmurs insult more than praise!

Here I find thee, hour by hour,
Waiting in thy altar-home,
Full of mercy, full of power—
Mutely waiting till we come:
Waiting for a soul to bless,
Some poor sinner to caress.

Forth, then, from the fragrant hush,
Where I almost hear thee beat,
Bid a benediction gush—
O’er me, thro’ me, thrilling sweet!
Heart of Jesus, full of me,
Fill mine—till it break with thee!

FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART, 1873.

BRITTANY: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS POEMS.

FOURTH ARTICLE.—CONCLUSION.

LIKE the Cambrian bards, their brethren of Armorica sang the triumphs and misfortunes of their country, and the deeds of her defenders, during the twelve centuries that they were governed by chiefs of their own race. The great names of Arthur,[156] of Morvan Lez-Breiz, of Alan Barbe Torte, and of Nomenöe, offered stirring subjects for the inspiration of the bards. In a former number, we gave “The March of Arthur,” of which the original, with the exception of the last two lines, bears every stamp of antiquity, and probably dates from the VIth century. The epic of “Lez-Breiz,” of which we proceed to give a translation of the fragments still extant, is about two centuries later.

Morvan, Machtiern or Viscount of Léon, son of a _Konan_, or crowned chief, was famous in the IXth century as one of the maintainers of Breton independence against the encroachments of the Franks under Louis le Débonnaire, and received from his grateful countrymen the surname of “Lez” or “Lezou Breiz”—the Stay, or the Hammer, of Brittany.

The story of Lez-Breiz, in a weakened and modified form, exists in Wales in the fragmentary ballad of _Peredur_.

MORVAN LEZ-BREIZ.