THE DÖLLINGER SCANDAL.
FROM THE HISTORISCH-POLITISCHE BLAETTER.
During the course of the year 1857 we published in these pages an exhaustive article on the philosophy of Baader. Before the article was sent to press, the editor of Baader’s complete works gave to the public the author’s correspondence in another volume, the appearance of which occasioned the most painful surprise among the admirers of the great thinker. The book showed that, in his later years, Baader’s mind was out of harmony with the church; and that his tone towards it had grown to be one of bitterness even. As was wont to be the case in those happier days, the editors of these pages turned to Dr. Döllinger for an explanation of the glaring contradictions between the earlier and later views of Dr. Baader. The result was a postscript to the article above referred to, written by Dr. Döllinger, and which may be seen in the fortieth volume of the Historisch-Politische Blätter, p. 178.
In this postscript, Dr. Döllinger pointed out from the correspondence itself what were the reasons of the change, and showed that Baader’s animosity against the church rested only on extraneous and accidental causes, and had nothing to do with his philosophy. “No further key”—these are Döllinger’s concluding words—“will be needed to understand how the broad chasm that separates the calm convictions of the ripe man in his prime from the passionate, almost childlike, outbursts of mental impotence of the old man in his decline, was overleaped.”
These lines were written by Dr. Döllinger thirteen years ago, and we have often read them since. Step by step, he has himself proceeded in a course towards the church which he so severely censured in the philosopher of Munich.
The fall of the two men is to a certain extent the same. The gray-haired church historian, too, is separated by a great chasm from what he was in his prime—at a great distance from the convictions that guided him when he was in the zenith of his intellectual power.
His deportment and language betray signs of ungovernable passion, incompatible with the self-possession of a man who understands his own mind.
We have a right to seek in his case, also, for a psychological solution of the change that has left him the very reverse of what he was. In his case, as in that of Baader, it will be seen that the reasons have nothing to do with his erudition as a church historian; that they are of a purely “extraneous and accidental character.” But, indeed—and this is the great difference between the two—in Baader’s case, the motives were of a private, domestic nature; in the case of Döllinger, they are of a public and political nature. To express it in a word, it is the spirit of the times and of the world that has carried Döllinger into the fatal gulf. Döllinger’s fall, his breaking off from all he was in the past, is only a piece of the political history of Bavaria during the last twenty years. The Council and the definition of the 18th of July have only hastened the matter; they
have merely given the disease, in its crisis, an acute form; but, without them, the break would still have taken place; for a current of thought had set in in Döllinger’s mind which would have necessitated it. When, therefore, we are asked how it happens that a highly learned and highly respected man, like Döllinger, in the enjoyment of a completely independent position, could cast himself into a current running counter to his whole previous life, our answer is very simple; for, from the very beginning of a certain period in the history of Bavaria, every true Catholic was called upon to bear his cross with the church; and it is not given to every one to choose being put in the background when he needs only to yield in order to reap his share of the honors of this world.
It was beyond a doubt impossible for Döllinger to add anything to his reputation for learning. Was he not the head and ornament of the Catholic school of Munich? And, by the way, it is beyond a doubt that that school had taught as a body, concerning the ex cathedrâ decisions of the Holy See, neither more nor less than is now required by the decrees of the Council of the Vatican. Witnesses can be found for every day and year, from among the students of the Munich theological faculty, from the Bishop of Mainz down to the humblest parish priest, to show from their notes and memoranda that Döllinger himself taught exactly what the Archbishop of Munich requires him now to subscribe to. Whoever questions the infallibility of the Papal decisions contradicts the present and past testimony of the church, and must deny the infallibility of the church itself—such was the view of the whole Munich school; such was Döllinger’s own view.
If Döllinger’s present views were correct, the immunity of the church from error could not for a moment be maintained, no matter where it might be claimed its infallibility resided. Döllinger subordinates the church to science and the decisions of the church to the final judgment of the learned, more especially to the final judgment of historians. Such is his theory, and such, practically, his answer to his ecclesiastical superiors.
Not without reason, therefore, does the Archbishop of Munich in his pastoral, dated Palm Sunday, say: “In this manner the church’s divine commission and all Catholic truth is called in question.” It cannot for a moment be doubted that a man who speaks as does Döllinger in his declaration of the 28th of March last, has lost completely the Catholic idea of the church. The only difference between him and the Protestants is that, in addition to the Bible, he admits, tradition, “the unanimous consent of the fathers,” to be a source of religious truth; and this a Protestant may also do, provided no external authority be constituted the court of final appeal; and Döllinger in fact claims that there is no such court, since he subordinates both Pope and Council alike to what he calls “science.”
In point of fact, however, even if not expressed in precisely those words, these were Döllinger’s views years ago. We long since foresaw what was coming, and just as it has come. It was then a matter of no little surprise to us that his course caused no uneasiness even in ecclesiastical circles; and that no importance was attached to the remarkable revelations to which we now call attention, although the circumstances attending and the persons concerned in them were calculated to invest them with a character of the highest
importance. We have already referred to the revelations in question as throwing light on the internal history of Bavaria, and on Döllinger’s dangerous complication with certain tendencies of the late government; but we must return to the subject, and treat it more particularly. We refer especially to the academical oration held by Dr. Döllinger on the 13th of March, 1864, on King Maximilian II.
In his oration, he happens to speak of the remarkable interest felt by the deceased monarch in historical research, and reveals to the world a very strange, “a more secret” motive for the royal interest. The reader, to understand the full bearing of the history which we give below entire on Döllinger himself, must bear in mind the peculiar characteristics of a man who has lived more among his books than among men. It would be hard for any one to be more subject to external influences than Döllinger is, and, at the same time, to be less conscious of their presence or effect. He unconsciously puts forth to-day, as the result of his own experience, what he happened to hear expressed yesterday by another. Döllinger is always the product of his surroundings, and hence his change, as he lost his old friends, one after another, by death or by alienation, and fell in almost exclusively with the society of the so-called “Bernfenen.” This explains also how it came to pass that many younger men, and the members of the scientific guild—for example, his little Mephistopheles, Huber—exercised so unwarranted and increasing an influence over him. Bearing all this in mind, it is impossible to overestimate the effects and influence of the overtures which King Maximilian made to Dr. Döllinger. He was completely intoxicated by them, and his new
friends found means to prevent his return to his sober senses. The impression made on Döllinger in the conference in question must have been the more lasting, as Döllinger, the acknowledged head of the Ultramontane party, could not have hoped to stand any higher in his majesty’s favor than any other of that abused class. To express the whole matter in a few words, we are convinced that the careful observer will discover the later as opposed to the earlier Döllinger in the following account, or in his cradle.
The following extract is from the oration above referred to:
“As I have permitted myself to refer to the deeper thoughts which guided the king in his government, and especially in his attitude towards science, I may also recall certain other communications which I received from his own mouth. An upright, faithful Christian, he believed in the lasting future of Christianity, and, therefore, could not conceive that its divisions and the struggle of the different confessions should continue for ever; that Christians should waste their powers in mutual injury. The division, he was of opinion, had had its time, and God had permitted it for some high purpose; and that time, even where not entirely past, was near its end; and he believed firmly that in spite of all polemical bitterness, in spite of the sordid spirit of self which had intruded itself into the controversy, the day of union for Christian nations would come, and the promise of one fold and one shepherd be fulfilled. And the great ecclesiastical bodies of the West being once reconciled and working with more than redoubled intellectual vigor upon the Græco-Russian church, the latter would not long resist the powerful magnetic influence of unity. Or, on the other hand, when once
the union of the Catholic and Anatolian churches was effected, the various Protestant sects would be gradually drawn into the current and meet their brethren.
“Naturally, however, the attention of the king was claimed in the first instance by whatever could be looked upon as tending in a proximate or remote degree to the reconciliation of the East, and particularly of Germany. He saw that the future union could not be a simple, unaccommodating mechanical coming together of the separated confessions. Neither did he think for a moment of the absorption of one church into another. It was necessary, he thought, that both bodies should first undergo a purgative process, and that each should acknowledge that it might receive, though, perhaps, in an unequal degree, some good from the other; that each might help to free the other from its peculiar defects and one-sidednesses, and supply what was wanting in each other’s ecclesiastical and religious being; that each might heal the other’s wounds; and that neither should be required to surrender anything which its life and history had proved to be a positive good. Under these conditions, sooner or later, the process of reconciliation and of union would take place in the heart of Europe, in Germany.
“Such nearly were the thoughts which the king developed to me in a long conversation which I had with him, and which I never can forget. I do not know how far Schelling’s ideas of an all-embracing church of the future gave form and shape to the royal views. It is a matter of fact, however, that that thinker had exerted a great influence on the mind of the king long before his accession to the throne. At the same time, the king saw that this idea of a future church entertained by Leibnitz and
by Germany’s greatest men was recognized as a necessity, and confidently hoped for also by his eminent and enlightened kinsman, King Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia. A German patriot, he saw in this reunion the salvation of Germany; a Christian, he saw in it a bulwark for the defence of the Christian faith, now so fiercely menaced.
“And here he believed his own Bavaria was called to take an active and initiatory part, and the Bavarian king not only to point out the way the country was to go, but to guide it in that way. It was not a matter of mere chance the Frankish race, the numerically predominant race in Bavaria, was about equally divided between the two confessions, and that in no country, not even in Prussia, were the local mixture and inter-relations of Protestants and Catholics so intimate and extensive as in Bavaria.
“In the second place, as far as the king himself was concerned, he could and it was his duty to do something to bring Germany a little nearer to the desired goal. He had been obliged to establish a perfect equality of rights and of political standing for the professors of both confessions, to the end that no portion of the people might feel oppressed, or grow embittered, or think themselves kept in the background, for with such feelings on the part of any portion of the nation, all coming together, all understanding, was impossible.
“And here he was of opinion science, and particularly historical science, was called upon to accomplish much; for religion itself was history, and only as a historical fact, and in accordance with the rules of historical criticism, could religion be understood or appreciated. In his own view, historical science was the kingdom in which, in the words of the sacred writings, peace and justice
would kiss; for only through history, as established by the most thorough research, could men know their own past and others’ past, their own and others’ failings; through it only was there any hope of begetting a conciliatory and pacificatory frame of mind.
“Thus the field of historical science seemed to the king like the Truce of God in the middle ages, or like a sacred city in which those elsewhere at variance found themselves at peace together; and, urged on by the same desires, endeavored to slake their thirst at the same fountain of truth, and grew into one communion.
“Out of the scientific fraternity of historians would one day proceed, so he hoped, after the trammels of confessions had been done away with, a higher union, embracing all historical, all religious truth, a brotherly reconciliation, such as patriots and Christians alike hoped and prayed for.”
All this Dr. Döllinger spoke with all the warmth of personal conviction. Although the whole is evidently a thrust at the idea of a confession and against the church as an organization, Döllinger does not append one word of correction in the name of the church. We cannot, however, help wondering that a critic so acute, a thinker so profound, as Döllinger should have surrendered himself to such a politico-religious system. It is easily seen that there are three separate, and in part contradictory, ideas in the royal programme, and all three have this in common, that they are totally irreconcilable with the idea of a divinely instituted and saving church.
In the first place, there is mentioned St. John’s church of love, Schelling’s church of the future, on which subject Döllinger was otherwise perfectly innocent. An ideal which contemplative
enthusiastic characters like King William the Fourth might cherish, and which might also claim a place in the thoughts of the Bavarian king, could scarcely have much attraction for Döllinger. But it was otherwise with the second idea which King Maximilian had elaborated, that is, with the idea of a German national church; and, finally, with the third idea, that of the absorption of all the confessions into a universal republic of savants, and the church into a world-academy of science. Here the thread of the supernatural is completely lost, though, perchance, the king himself was not aware of it; for, is this not the most utter rationalism?
If, now, we look at Döllinger’s declaration of the 28th of March, we will find these two ideas standing out in bold relief. The odious antithesis of Germanism and Romanism may indeed be in harmony with the reigning political spirit; it certainly is incompatible with the idea of the Catholic Church. Whoever presumes in the name of nationality to speak of any member of the church as of the “Roman party,” either knows not what he is doing or must wish the “German national church” in schism. From this there is but one step, and that not a hard one for the pride of intellect or the haughtiness of science, to the position occupied by Döllinger in his declaration to the archbishop, in which he places the scientific fraternity of historians as the highest authority over the church, and makes it the court of final appeal in matters of faith. And yet the learned gentleman, although he signs himself only “a Christian,” will have us consider him a Catholic.
It is impossible to look into the abyss into which this once clear thinker has fallen without a feeling of terror. Is it not sufficient to open the eyes of every one that the apostles of
German Catholicism and free religion, like a Heribert Rau and an Oswald, have again called the attention of the public to their already published works as an “interesting commentary on Dr. Döllinger’s protest”?
It is true that Döllinger has nothing in common with those men in his views of his relations to God; but then we must remember these gentlemen are only drawing their own consequences, and Döllinger has lost all right to find fault with the consequences they draw.
The unwarranted introduction of nationalism into the idea of the church was doubtless Döllinger’s first step downhill. This gained, the disturbers of the peace of the church soon possessed themselves of the whole man. There can be nothing more hostile to the real spirit of Catholicism than this false principle of nationality; for the end of the church, in a spiritual point of view, is to smooth away all national differences, and bring the different nations into one fold.
To wish, at a time like the present, when the fanaticism of nationality, if we may be allowed the expression, is tending to alienate still more the peoples of different nations—to wish, we say, at such a time to destroy the only tie that holds them together, is to betray the wildest party fanaticism imaginable.
We can understand what the cry for a German national church means in the mouths of those modern Neros, the liberalists—in the mouth of any one else, we cannot understand it.
We know very well that Döllinger was very far from desiring a schism when he spoke at the Linzer Catholic meeting in 1850, upon the subject of the place of German nationalism in the church. It was somewhat otherwise in his declarations in the Munich Conference in 1863. There a turning-point was discoverable.
A short time previously, the at first purely scientific difference with the “Roman party,” or neo-scholastics, had arisen. Döllinger had roused the suspicions of these latter; but we feel certain that at that time there were no grounds for their suspicions. He was, it was plain, only a little too susceptible to the influences of a certain kind of liberalism, and extraordinarily anxious to do away with any suspicion of adhering to the Ultramontane party.
The danger practically and in point of fact began when he became entangled in Bavarian politics, especially in what concerns the question of the relations of science to ecclesiastical authority. “German science” now became the focus in which the more or less conscious tendencies of Döllinger were concentrated. It is in 1865 that we must place the real turning-point in Döllinger’s career.
About the end of the year 1861, the writer of these lines went to Frankfort-on-the-Main. He visited Böhmer, and will never forget a scene he witnessed on the occasion of that visit. The great historian was sick at the time, fresh in mind, it is true, but in a repining condition, and almost bitter. Our conversation turned on the condition of the University of Munich under the régime of the so-called “Bernjungen.” Böhmer expressed great regret at what was going on in Munich, but reserved the vials of his wrath for the celebrities of the month of March previous. Especially, he made Döllinger responsible for it that so favorable a time had not been used for the founding of a historical school in the interests of the church. It was well known that Dr. Döllinger had had many scholars during his long career as a professor; but he had founded no school. It might be said, even, that
he did not leave a disciple after him. Whilst he expatiated in the endless world of book in a manner hitherto unparalleled, perhaps it became impossible for him to prepare the living materials which young men needed, and lost the gift of sociability.
Böhmer became more and more aggravated as he proceeded, till, finally, his anger culminated in the following anecdote: He said that, when Döllinger visited Frankfort last, he had had a walk with him through the city, and Döllinger had spoken to him about his literary plans. He, Böhmer, remonstrated with him, and inquired why he did not fulfil his older promises; why he did not continue his unfinished church history. Whereupon Döllinger, stopping and swinging his cane, said with a smile: “You see, I can’t do that; for now my researches have brought me to such a pass that I cannot make the end of my history tally with the beginning; the continuation of my church history would be entirely Protestant.” I see Böhmer this moment before me with the same grim visage which he wore as he closed this story with the words: “He—he said that!”
Still, in 1860, Döllinger’s great work, Christianity and the Church in the time of their Foundation, appeared. Embracing the results of the latest research, and written in the most charming manner, this book touched and strengthened many a Catholic heart, as it did my own. But Döllinger has made that same beautiful book a sad memorial of his fall. He had written the book when he was sixty years of age, but when, in 1868, the second edition of it appeared, it was discovered that he had omitted some of the principal passages of the first edition, bearing upon the promises to and the establishment of
the primacy; and what he had not omitted, he had changed in the interests of liberalism, and all without giving any ground for the alterations, without a single note even.
Döllinger has a wonderful memory for everything in the world of print, but very little for what concerns his own person or his own acts. When he wrote his declaration to the Archbishop of Munich, he seems to have quite forgotten the intentional “corrections” of his celebrated work. Otherwise, he would not have referred to the approval which it met with from the whole of Catholic Germany, and raised the question, Which text he meant—the true one of 1860, or the altered, not to say the falsified, one of 1868? Moreover, he, as the inspirer of Janus, recalled, in that last-named book, the little he had left in the edition of 1868 favorable to the primacy, for the reason that it “contradicted all opinions of the fathers, and the principles of exegetical theology.” In other words, Janus has completely and flatly denied the primacy.
It is hard to calculate what a blessing Döllinger might have been the means of to his contemporaries and to posterity, had he continued to make the rich treasures of his knowledge accessible to Christendom as he had done in his work of 1860. The Almighty, who had preserved him upright during the wars and passions of these later years, would have decreed him doubtless a rare old age had he remained true to his resolution not to divide his powers, to live an unprejudiced votary of science. It was to be otherwise. That book was the last fruit of the professional activity of the historian. The historian was now to become the bitter party-man, not to say the future Bavarian senator, and, as a writer, a mere political pamphleteer.
Here his career as a man of science closes.
Late in the fall of 1861 appeared his work, The Church and the Churches, etc. It was a kind of colossal apology for the two well-known Odeon Lectures of the fifth and ninth of April of the same year, on the temporal power of the popes. In these lectures Döllinger has come forward in the rôle of the politician—a rôle which he was never intended to play on account of his too great credulity. Expressions had crept into these lectures so little savoring of piety, so painful to Catholic hearts, that the worst was feared for Döllinger in ecclesiastical circles. We also feared the consequences. Döllinger himself was evidently staggered at the unexpected impression of his, to say the least, unexplained appearance in such a character. The book which followed, in other respects a wonder of historical information, was nothing but a powerful effort to shield himself from the consequences of this step.
The ideas expressed in the royal conversation above referred to are here recognizable, more particularly in the introduction, as well as the endeavor to harmonize them with the principles of the church. It would not be very difficult to allay the doubts which Döllinger has endeavored to awaken concerning the mediæval church and the Papacy in his (or his amanuensis’s) letters on the council in the Allgemeine Zeitung, and now in his “declaration,” from his own work of 1861. The Encyclical, and particularly the doctrine of the Syllabus on the relations of church and state, may be both explained and defended by the assistance of the same book. Döllinger then knew very well how to vindicate the true sense of certain decrees and bulls of the popes issued while the mediæval
relations of the church to the state were yet in force; he well knew then how to separate what is transient from that which is eternally true. If, at that time, any one had come to him to tell him that Napoleon III. intended to take advantage of the Bull “Cum ex apostolatus officio” against the Protestant princes of Germany and Prussia, with what shouts of laughter would he not have received him! Now he himself is guilty of just such an absurdity—and how grave he is withal!
The question of the relations of science to church authority became now in Bavaria a practical question, and Döllinger was called upon to prove the strength of his principles by overt acts. One difference followed another in that country, and Döllinger was as interested in them as he could be in matters entirely personal to himself. Like a general, he felt himself responsible for the result of all those contests, and never thought of examining closely the claims of those who crowded around him and offered him their services. In this way it was that he became the protector of one so unworthy as Pichler against the archiepiscopal ordinary. At this time, even, he had his passionate turns, which gave rise to serious misgivings, but which he was sure to regret himself before any length of time had expired.
At this period the episcopal conference at Fulda resolved to take steps to revive action in the matter of the establishment of a “free Catholic university.” Döllinger could see in this nothing but the proof of a dark conspiracy against German science.
He was unable to see that the anti-ecclesiastical, not to say the antichrist, spirit which had crept into the universities, was more than even he would be willing to be accountable
for were he the chief pastor of a diocese.
The opinion expressed in an appeal to the Catholic ladies of Germany on the subject of the higher schools, made him lose his patience altogether. The outbreak of the Seminary question in Spiers was in his view another attempt of those infected with the “Roman” spirit against free German science, and it found him, even if not publicly, on the side of the decided opponents of the bishop’s rightful claim in the matter.
Very nearly at the same time, the then Bavarian minister of worship made a report to the king on the occasion of a vacancy in the theological faculty of Würzburg, in which he painted the clergy educated in the German College at Rome in no flattering terms. An accidental circumstance threw suspicion on Döllinger as the instigator of it. The pamphlet “for the information of kings,” which appeared in the beginning of 1866, represented Döllinger, although only under the general name “of the Munich school,” as the real actor in the minister of worship’s puppet-play. There was a report that in the Spiers matter, speaking of the attitude of the bishops, he had said: “They are attempting to misuse the king’s youth!” How much of this had its foundation in truth, to what extent the statements of the pamphlet were based on a change or mistake between the ministry and cabinet, must remain undecided.
The pamphlet referred to created no small excitement, however; and, precisely two years before the appearance of the notorious articles on the Council, was exhaustively replied to in the Allgemeine Zeitung. The style and other accidents would lead to suppose that the “amanuensis,” since known more of, had here made
his début. The reply was not a refutation. It was made up of a series of counter-complaints, and, with the exception of the attacks on the Jesuits, the Roman party, and the boys’ seminaries, these articles contain the kernel of the articles against the Council published two years later. In spite of all this, however, Döllinger is represented in these articles as of the same unaltered mind with other members of the faculty, Haneberg and Reithmayer.
“If there was no ground of suspicion during all these long years, no reason to believe that these men were hankering after dangerous novelties, how comes it recently that such suspicions are aroused, seeing that they have always been of the same mind?” It is now certain that this unanimity has since ceased; and it is clear that Döllinger’s monstrous accusation—“not a soul believes it”—must have been unjustly brought by him against his colleagues. The articles also quote the words of the Tübingen theologian: “The suspicion has spread further—Döllinger and Michelis are no longer innocent.” What says the Tübinger of the drifting of these two men to-day?
On the first of January, 1867, the Hohenlohe ministry took charge of the ship of state.
It will not be claimed that Döllinger’s influence increased with the accession of his old friend Prince Hohenlohe to the ministry; it seemed more probable that the prince would have found the learned professor a powerful obstacle in his way. The prince had formerly been considered unexceptionable in his religious views and relations; but in order to dissipate the bad odor in which he was in the highest circles, suspected as he was of favoring Prussia, he knew no better method than to encourage the superstitious fear of the Ultramontanes
and of the Jesuits which for twenty years had reigned within the walls of the royal palace at Munich. This it was which had made Dr. Döllinger so interesting a subject since he was regenerated from the infection of Ultramontanism.
Countenanced by such a man, it was thought the discomfiting of the “clerical party” would be a less dangerous operation than effecting it by an unasked-for alliance with the party of progress.
This explains how Prince Hohenlohe, at the head of the foreign department, was determined to serve Döllinger in every way possible against the “Curia” and all matters related to it.
The infamous articles on the Council appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung from the 10th to the 15th March, 1869, under an anonymous name. Every effort was made to conceal the author, and even to mislead the public as to who he was. The real author could not conceal himself as far as we were concerned; but it required a long time to convince the many, and great was the surprise of all unprejudiced minds at the discovery.
In the meantime, the preparation of the anonymous Janus was undertaken, and the circulatory dispatches of Prince Hohenlohe made their appearance on the 9th of April, 1869, which, of course, Döllinger could not well subscribe as their author. The council of ministers, of course, was not consulted in the matter; and the well-known five questions put by Prince Hohenlohe to the theological faculties of Munich and Würzburg, concerning the future council, were not whispered to the minister of foreign affairs by some secret agent.
In the name of the majority of the faculty of Munich, Döllinger was
called upon to answer his own questions. In contradistinction to the clear and frank separate vote of Professors Schmid and Thalhofer, and to the incisive opinion of the Würzburger faculty, that exposition was but the unworthy production of a time-server. It was impossible for any one to discover the real meaning of the opinion. The only thing plainly discoverable was the ambiguity by which the author sought to shield himself from trouble.
The absence of conviction in the whole affair is so evident that we may well yet remain in doubt concerning the position of Döllinger’s colleagues; and that in spite of the fact that the libellous articles of the Allgemeine Zeitung are to be found in the widespread pages of Janus. We have already looked into this department of the literature of our day; we have done so already. Not only was infallibility condemned in it; but the primacy, at least since 845, is there made to appear as an infinite series of deception and forgeries, or, as Janus expresses it, as a sickly, uncouth, consumptive-engendering excrescence on the organism of the church. Not only was the future council condemned before it was held, but the Council of Trent was turned into “a should-be œcumenical council,” which was arbitrarily governed by legates, in which the Roman party alone had sway, and which, in a word, was nothing but an assemblage of fools and pickpockets. This view of the Council of Trent Döllinger seems to have forgotten, when he wrote his declaration of the 28th of March of the present year, in which he refers to the Tridentine article of faith which he had twice sworn to, and in which he leaves out the essential part of the oath, namely, the promise to interpret the Holy Scripture only “in
the sense approved by Holy Mother Church.”
The foreign office and its zealous co-operator, the learned professor, now began their campaign against the Council. The reporter of the Leipzig Grenzboten of the 24th of June, 1870, thus expresses himself on the subject: “The alarming circulatory dispatches of Prince Hohenlohe have turned to political account the results obtained by Janus, and introduced them into governmental and diplomatic circles.” The Bavarian ambassador, a man of no distinction and one who favored the “Curia,” was recalled and replaced by Count Tauffkirchen, the most talented diplomatist at that time at the disposal of the government.
His operations in Rome were very influential; and if the matter furnished by the events in the Council became immediately the subject of discussion in the press and in the literature of the day, the Bavarian Embassy is not entitled in the least to the merit of it. The rest was accomplished by Döllinger, as is now well known, and by his intimate young friend Lord Acton.
About the end of the year appeared the pamphlet, Considerations for the Bishops of the Council on the Question of Papal Infallibility. This time he appeared again anonymously, but without making any extra effort to conceal himself as the author. A little later, he appeared under his own name in the official organ of the new Catholic theology, the Allgemeine Zeitung, in the “Declaration in the matter of the address touching Papal Infallibility,” on the 19th January, 1870. From this declaration, says the Lepzig correspondent more than once referred to above, proceeded his agreement with the views of Janus.
The publication of his name was no sooner made than the party of
progress took it as a signal to make him their own entirely.
This had already been done in the press; now it was accomplished in the House.
On the 7th of February, Dr. Völk, a deputy, seized the opportunity presented by the debates on the “address” to drag Döllinger into the field against the “patriotic” majority. He read the most objectionable and most venomous parts of the “Considerations” and “Declaration,” and imputed these views to the majority of the House as their own opinions, endeavoring to drive them to declare themselves for Döllinger and against the Pope and the Council. The “patriotic” majority had taken care not to embitter the debates by introducing questions ecclesiastical into them; but now a defence was called for. The stenographic report describes the scenes, which were closed with the following words from Deputy Törg:
“I have been on the most intimate terms with the gentleman whom Deputy Völk so formally parades before the House, for years. I became acquainted with him shortly after the time of the ‘genuflexion question’ in Bavaria; and, surely, no one then imagined that a time would come when Dr. Döllinger would be thus quoted before the whole House by Dr. Völk. I consider it a terrible misfortune, and accept it as such; yes, gentlemen, as a personal misfortune. Dr. Döllinger was an authority for me; he is such no longer; for he has fallen the victim of blind passion and lost the calmness necessary to the forming of an opinion; and he is no longer in a condition to formulate a dogmatic question as a theologian ought to be able to formulate one.”
But that is not what Döllinger wants. He now stands in dread of
all conscientious critics, his own fame for critical acumen being entirely gone.
He makes the definition of Papal infallibility a monstrous bugbear, and no remonstrance prevails to prevent his making the bugbear more terrible to himself and others. The worst feature in the whole is his passion against the temporal power. He sees nothing in his opponents that is not criminal. They use the infallible Pope to depose the monarchs who do not suit them, to absolve subjects from their oath of fealty, to overthrow constitutions, to annihilate every right. Dr. Döllinger endeavors by the most unqualified denunciation to tell the new German Empire—elsewhere he always says that the doctrine was never known in Germany: “I cannot dissemble that this doctrine, in consequence of which the former German empire perished, in case it should obtain sway among the Catholic portion of the German nations, would sow the seeds of an incurable disease in the newly founded German empire.”
But what now? As we have already pointed out, the matter did not turn out as those interested wished it would.
It was expected that Döllinger’s influence would have carried the greater part of the clergy and intimidated the bishops; thus it was hoped without much danger would be obtained the object which, although yet not clearly defined in every particular, embraced, at all events, the annihilation of Ultramontanism, of the “clerical party,” and of the Jesuits in Germany. It was hoped to accomplish all this without the always, as was acknowledged, dangerous assistance of the party of progress, through the mere weight of Döllinger’s name and influence. But his name has not accomplished what was hoped it
would. The auxiliaries wished for did not come; the others who were not expected came in crowds. Scarcely had the national liberals rested from other arduous tasks than they enlisted under Döllinger’s standard for the accomplishment of their next and greatest task, the destruction of the Catholic Church in Germany. We are far from denying that at first, under the pressure of slanders and denunciations, some well-intentioned men were carried away. We have hopes for their return, and do not wish to wound the feelings of any one. But when Dr. Döllinger surveys the chaos of the “address,” and considers how it would fare with him could he hear the confessions of all these “Catholics,” I do believe he would blush at such adherents, for I do not believe he has quite lost the power of distinguishing moral turpidity from virtue.
He need not know the state of the consciences of his Munich colleagues who signed the address, in which they hesitate not to give the lie to the whole Catholic episcopate; he knows better than anybody how many of them have a moral right to speak in the name of “Catholic Christendom.”
Viewing the matter in this light, we have in one way wondered at the signing of many, in another way we have wondered at the signing of only a few. And in the face of such phenomena, Dr. Döllinger desires a church the duty of whose bishops it shall be simply to declare that which all believers, represented by scientists, will have thought or believed upon a question of the faith.
It is easy to say what the next thing sought by those who follow behind Döllinger’s banner is. The police regulations required by the government against the decrees of the Council are a matter of secondary
importance. And the great storm of an ovation given to Döllinger is meant not so much for Döllinger himself as for its influence on the king and his government.
The king must a second time be made to serve the cause of German liberalism. We said it in the beginning: as soon as the little German Empire is established, the party will want a “German National Church” for their little empire. We did not think, indeed, that any attempt at this would be made so soon; for, a year ago, men who knew what they were talking about assured us that so long as the old king lived he would not permit the peace of religion to be disturbed; but that it would be otherwise with those who came after him. But now that the king has become German Emperor, unanimous reports of the contrary come to us. “The idea of the establishment of a German National Church is taking deeper root, to all appearances, in the government circles.” So a relatively unprejudiced Berlin correspondent lately reported. The rest of the tale is told by the debates in the chamber of deputies.
The party are anxious to strike the iron while it is hot; not without reason was the party battle-cry spoken during the war—all our noble blood were shed in vain did not the stroke which freed us from France sever the Catholics of Germany from Rome—“War against France and against—Rome!” Even Dr. Michelis joined in the cry.
If it was very desirable that the Bavarian king should take the initiative in the matter of the imperial title, it was also very desirable that the first step for the establishment of the “German National Church”
should proceed from the palace at Munich.
The King of Bavaria was to be to the “new Luther” what Prince Frederick of Saxony had been to Luther of old; and on that account, he is promised the surname of the Wise. This is the meaning of the infamous telegram of the tenth of March from Dresden—“him, the enlightened thinker who publicly proclaims his dissatisfaction with the dogma of Papal infallibility!” When the representatives of high offices in Munich dare to set themselves up publicly as commanders in the military ecclesiastical society, one need not be surprised at the progressionist intrusive attempts, rashly sporting with the monarchical principle itself. Thus only can we understand how any one could be so bold as to encourage the clergy to fall by insinuating a provision that no one might fear a material loss. Could the necessary number of state-church servants have been found, the programme was that the King of Bavaria should give the “German National Church” its first ground in the Munich places of worship. We wish to be excused from describing further the plan which finally would make true the saying: “They wish to misuse the king’s youth.”
We are not deceived. Should this plan fail, another will be sought to accomplish what is intended. Döllinger has been in relation with Prussian diplomats since 1866. However, neither he nor the new German Empire has the divine promise which the church has; and where the Pope and the bishops are, there is the church.
Let all Catholics gather more closely yet about the centre of unity. We can do no better service to the world. God will take care of the rest.