Signs Of The Times.
In Europe, of late, meetings have been the order of the day. There have been meetings of emperors and Internationalists; of “Old Catholics” and Catholics; of church congresses and congresses to disestablish the church; of “Home-Rulers” and Dilkites. The voluntary expatriation of the Alsace-Lorraine population has followed close on the heels of the violent expulsion of the Jesuits, both influenced by the same motive power; trades-unions have called together a society of German professors, who, by dint of powerful speeches of an explosive nature, succeeded finally in showing, in a very conclusive manner, that they knew little or nothing of what they were talking about. Gambetta has found his voice again; Russia has mildly but decidedly objected to its inflammable utterances, and in the midst of all the hubbub the eyes of the world have been attracted to the strange spectacle in these days of a nation, by a sudden and spontaneous [pg 423] movement, turning its steps to an humble shrine of the Blessed Virgin.
As for the meeting of the emperors, we were not present at the council, and had no secret emissary concealed in the cup-board. What was effected, or what was intended to be effected, is an utter mystery to us. We very much doubt if anything were effected at all; that is, anything real, lasting, and permanent. The composing elements were in themselves as incapable of mingling as oil and water. If people looked to permanent peace or peace for any length of time from it, we fear they will be sadly mistaken in view of what we have since seen. The effective forces of Austria are fixed at 800,000 men. The government, actuated doubtless by peaceful motives; finds it necessary to keep on hand a peace effective of 250,000; and, that this force may be in fighting order at any moment, the recruits must be kept for three years under colors. To supply this contingency, 30,000 more men are required, which draws a sum of $1,850,000 out of the national chest, a chest neither very deep nor very safe. The measure was objected to, whereupon Count Andrássy spurred them up by informing the astonished members that, notwithstanding the imperial exhibition of brotherly love at Berlin, the speeches, manœuvrings, fireworks, and the rest, he would not venture to answer for the continuance of peace even to the end of the present year. As an echo of the truth of this, Prussia has just given an order for 3,000,000 rifles of a new pattern, on the strength, doubtless, of the discharge of the French debt. Russia is increasing her already vast army steadily and surely, while France hopes by her new scheme of raising forces to show at the end of five years an active army of 715,000, and a territorial force of 720,000 men. So much for the effects of the imperial conference as regards peace.
The Internationale, true to the discordant elements of which it was composed, adjourned without effecting anything or coming to any conclusion. This was only to be expected; but we should not judge from this that it is dead, as has been too hastily done by many journals. Its life is disorder, and, if it can catch the trades-unions, its influence would be paramount.
As for the meeting of the “Old Catholics”—we presume they call themselves “Old” Catholics as the Greeks called the furies Eumenides—it will soon have passed out of memory. We rejoice that it did occur, in order to show the “movement” in its true light. Luther himself had not half the chance which Döllinger and the rest enjoyed. The strongest of governments at their back, the whole anti-Catholic world looking with eager eyes on this mountain in travail—parturiet; and not even the ridiculus mus is born in recompense for all this labor, storm, fuss, and anxiety. We forget; there issued a long string of resolutions, which one or two newspapers published, the generality very sensibly finding them of too great length and of too little importance to burden their leaders with them. The whole affair was utterly ridiculous even to the ménu, which, as became a solid dinner, composed for the most part of German professors with a few Episcopal waifs and strays from England and America, was in Latin, and commenced thus:
Symposium. Gustatio: Pisciculi oleo perfusi et salmones fumo siccati ad cibi appetentiam excitandam. Mensa prima, etc.
And this is the way in which the “Old Catholics” meet to found or reform a church! The effect of it all is shown in the comments of the secular press. The cleverest journals in England and America, those who expected much from it, generally express themselves to the effect that, though far from saying that the meeting was without significance, it did not succeed in erecting a platform whereon a body could stand. The fact is this: We are far from denying to the majority of the men there assembled abundance of intellect and that sort of talent that can make a fine speech or perhaps compose a readable book, but the world, if it must be changed, wants something more solid than this.
Prince Bismarck's measures are what Strafford would call “thorough”; and he is carrying out this “thorough” policy with far greater effect than the vacillating Stuart. The latter lost his head for too much heart; the German chancellor is not likely to imitate him in that. The Jesuits had small respite. We presume they are all out of Germany by this time. How much the country at large will gain in peace, solidity, and security by their expulsion it is impossible for us to say. Oddly enough, in Prince Bismarck's stronghold, Prussia itself, we find that the new order is not destined to run quite smoothly. The diet [pg 424] is dissolved because the Upper House refused to pass the country reform bill in the face of the emperor and an official intimation from the minister of the interior that if the measure were defeated the government would dissolve the diet and convoke a new one. Whether the members of the Upper House will continue the fight, and come into direct collision with the power which they so helped to make supreme, we do not know yet, but we expect not.
Meanwhile, the Jesuits have not gone out of their fatherland alone. The sympathy of the whole Catholic world has gone out with them, and its expression is gaining volume daily. Addresses of condolence and protestations against the legal violence which expelled them are rising up day after day from the hearth-stones of the land they have quitted, as well as from lands and multitudes to whom they as individuals are utterly unknown. Perhaps the most noticeable of the many which are continually appearing in their own land is that of the society of German Catholics recently assembled at Cologne, which passed a series of resolutions protesting strongly:
1. Against the assertion that the Catholic population is indifferent to the interests of fatherland, and hostile to the empire. 2. Against the laic laws which would control the affairs of the churches. 3. Against the state direction of the schools. 4. Against the expulsion of the Jesuits. 5. Against the encroachment of the state on the jurisdiction of the bishops. 6. Against the suppression of the temporal power of the Pope.
Such is the Catholic voice all the world over. If rulers can respect this voice, they will have no more faithful, earnest, or devoted children than the children of the Catholic Church. If they cannot respect it, they have only to expect an unfailing legal opposition until they are compelled to respect it, as Ireland, speaking in O'Connell, compelled England to do; as Germany, by lawful agitation and peaceful though unceasing and determined protest, will compel Prince Bismarck to do, until we see again restored to the country which they love and which loves them the sons who, by peaceful counsel and wise guidance, and religious instruction, will bring more glory, solid prosperity, enlightenment, and peace to the nation than a cycle of Bismarcks.
The Bishop of Ermeland still survives the terrible threats of the chancellor which have been gathering over his head in deepening thunder this long while for excommunicating heretic priests; the bolt has not yet fallen. Perhaps Jove finds himself a little puzzled how to fulminate it to a nicety. To show the justice of the Bismarck government, and how equally it deals with all classes, the Consistory of Magdeburg has quite recently decreed the excommunication of all Protestants who by mixed marriages shall educate their children as Catholics; the decree has been carried into execution at Lippspring; the case brought before the civil courts, and of course the pastor, one Schneider, who wrought the excommunication publicly and openly in the church, was supported by the just weight of the law. Now, excommunication is excommunication whether you call it Catholic or Protestant. Why, then, threaten with impeachment? Why stop the salary which the government for the country bestows in the one case, and let the other go entirely free? And yet this is all according to law!
Another anomaly according to law is displayed in the seizing of the schools by the government. We have not space here to go into the whole question, instructive though it would be, as showing the determination of this government to uproot the Catholic faith by every means in its power. But we will mention one instance. A ministerial circular accompanied the notice of the new arrangements, informing the teachers that it was desirable that their scholars should belong to no religious confraternities—of the Rosary, Blessed Virgin, and such like—and that if they persisted in belonging to them they should be dismissed. We find it necessary to endorse this statement by informing our readers that it is plain, unvarnished fact. Civil marriage is now in full sway; that is to say, it is no longer a sacrament according to law. What wonder that the German bishops assembled at Fulda gave utterance to their solemn protest, an extract of which we cull? It reads as though it had been penned in the days of Diocletian, or Julian the Apostate, or Henry VIII. But in these days, when mere human society has come to know its power, and dream that it possesses freedom, the protest jars on our ears as something out of tune, out of time, out of date altogether:
“We demand, as a right which no one [pg 425] can dispute to us, that the bishops, the parish priests of the cathedral churches, and the directors of souls, be only appointed in accordance with the laws of the church and the agreement existing between the church and state.
“In accordance with these laws and agreements, the Catholic people and ourselves cannot consider as legal a director of souls or a teacher of religion one who has not been so named by his bishop; and we, the Catholic people and ourselves, cannot consider as legally recognized a bishop who has not been named by the Pope.
“We claim equally for ourselves and for all Catholics the right of professing throughout Germany our holy Catholic faith in all its integrity, at all times and in all freedom, and to rest upon the principle that we are in no wise constrained to suffer within the bosom of our religious community those who do not profess the Catholic faith, and who do not submit entirely to the authority of the church.
“We consider as a violation of our church and of the rights which are guaranteed to it every attack made against the liberty of religious orders. We regard and vindicate, also, as an essential and inalienable right of the Catholic Church, the full and entire liberty which it possesses of elevating its servants in accordance with ecclesiastical laws, and we demand not only that the church exercise over the Catholic schools (primary, secondary, and higher) the influence which alone can guarantee to the Catholic people that its children shall receive in the schools a Catholic education and instruction, but we claim also for the church the freedom to found and direct in an independent manner, certain private establishments ordained for the teaching of the sciences in accordance with Catholic principles. In fine, we maintain and defend the sacred character of Christian marriage as that of a sacrament of the Catholic Church, as well as the right which the divine will has given to the church in connection with this sacrament.”
The signatures of the bishops are affixed to this document, which is addressed to all the German governments, and produced a commotion and irritation among all the national liberal journals which were unexampled. We have given this extract here in order to bring home to the minds of our readers how hard the church is driven in Germany. When the bishops and the laity combined feel themselves called upon to protest in this style, the government which for no reason whatever can give rise to such a protest—signed by the saintly chiefs of a body of 14,000,000, and endorsed in meeting after meeting by those 14,000,000 and the countless numbers of their co-religionists outside of Germany scattered through the broad world—must be one which does not govern, but tyrannizes.
The same “thorough” policy prevailed in Alsace and Lorraine. On the very day, October 1, when the option of declaring for France or Germany arrived, all the men who remained in the countries named were enrolled in the Prussian service from that date. This, beyond what Mr. Disraeli would call a “sentimental grievance,” drove them from the country, as it must have been intended to do. Service under the power that annexed them, which they but yesterday fought against, and a service the most rigorous and exacting that exists, as it must be in order to retain its supremacy, was something that seems to have been ingeniously invented in order to drive the people out. The provinces are more than decimated; the Prussian army, if increased at all, is increased in the event of a renewed war by untrustworthy men, and a new drop of gall is thrown into the already overbitter cup which France is compelled to swallow. And yet the Provinzial Correspondenz (official) of Berlin, in view of October 1, said: “The government has not hesitated an instant in calling without delay on the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine to serve in the German army, as the best and surest means to evoke and develop speedily among the population newly reunited to Germany the sentiment of an intimate community with the German people.”
This smacks of excess of credibility. If Bismarck wanted really to annex the provinces in heart and soul, he adopted the very surest means of emptying them in the speediest manner, and letting in the Germans, who now, sick of war and of the rumors of war, wish to emigrate in such formidable numbers. Probably the chancellor proposes using the deserted provinces as a safety-valve for these recreant spirits. One of the most significant signs of the instability of the new empire is the desire of so many earnest workers to leave it [pg 426] just when it has been established in all its glory and power. But glory and power do not last long in the eyes of men who look to a peaceful life and to which side, in a popular phrase, their bread is buttered. Instead of peace, they find the service more rigorous than ever; the money which was won by the blood of their kin and countrymen going to the pockets of the generals, to carry out emperors' fêtes, and purchase millions of rifles of a new pattern. Evidently the business of the German Empire wears a very martial look. But the artisan and clerk have fought well, and find no returns. Your German is of a logical bent, so he determines on going elsewhere, where he may live at peace, and let Bismarck look after his own empire.
In France, we have had and are having the pilgrimages to Lourdes. Not alone to Lourdes, and not alone in France, but in Belgium and Germany also there have been numerous pilgrimages to various shrines. Of course the wits of the secular journals, with a few honorable exceptions, have had a fine time of it, and have twisted the stories of the miracles of Lourdes and La Salette into every possible shape in which they might squeeze a laugh out of it. They are at great pains to show what we were long ago convinced of—that they do not know what faith means.
Mgr. Mermillod, after a residence of seven years in full enjoyment and exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, has suddenly come to be non-recognized by the Swiss government, or, more properly, by the Grand Council of Geneva, and his pension stopped. The Grand Council of Geneva had already expelled the Sisters of Charity and the Christian Brothers. It essays the rôle of Bismarck, and where it purposes stopping we do not yet see. But as the population of Geneva is composed of 47,000 Catholics against 43,000 Protestants, we may presume that the Grand Council of Geneva will very speedily be brought to its senses. Its miserable pension of 10,000 francs was raised to 23,000 in two days by a voluntary contribution set on foot by M. Veuillot of the Univers. The Grand Council has incurred the contempt of all rational minds, while Mgr. Mermillod is supported in his action by all his fellow-bishops, by his Holiness, and by the Catholic world. It may be as well to remember that the Protestant party in the Swiss cantons voted, but were happily outvoted, for union with Prussia. It is not difficult to see whence the persecution of Mgr. Mermillod starts.
Gentlemen who have visited the Alhambra in London, or any one almost of the Parisian theatres, or Niblo's in New York, are not apt to be squeamish on the score of the decent and moral in theatrical representations. Things must therefore be at a very bad pass when we find the correspondents of the London Times and the other English newspapers, in common with those of our own and the Parisian press, uniting in condemning in the most unsparing terms the pieces which are now in vogue on the boards of the Roman theatres. Cardinal Patrizi addressed an official letter to Minister Lanza on the subject. That gentleman, who is extremely active in suppressing a Catholic paper which dares to caricature his majesty's government, sends back an answer which, divested of its diplomatic wool, is cowardly, stupid, and insulting. We have been astonished to find “religious” newspapers in this city gleeful over these representations which the good sense, if nothing more, of the secular correspondents of all journals in all countries condemns as odious, detestable, and utterly unfit to be presented in any civilized, or for that matter uncivilized, community. These journals which are religious see in them “a new means of evangelizing Italy.” Another feature in “united Italy” is the utter insecurity of life and property in Rome, Naples, and Ravenna principally, though, in fact, through the length and breadth of the land. Victor Emanuel has held the country long enough now to give some account of his stewardship. The government of the Pope and of the Bourbons, we were told, favored brigandage and every other atrocity; yet the correspondents of the London Times, the London Spectator, and by this time most of the other anti-Catholic journals, are furnishing articles which must rather astonish the upholders of the blessings which were to flow from “Italy united.” They picture scenes of rapine and blood before which the graphic Arkansas letters of the Herald pale, while the doers of these deeds, the thieves and murderers, are “well known to the police,” in fact, on excellent terms with them, and walk about in the open day with any man's life in their hands who dares frown on them. The government is simply afraid of them, afraid to use [pg 427] the only remedy now in its hands by proclaiming martial law, a proceeding which the English journals strongly advise. If such a state of things continues much longer, we fear the inevitable verdict must come to Victor Emanuel, “Now thou shalt be steward no longer.” Of his ill-gotten power, indeed, it may be said, “blood hath bought blood, and blows have answered blows.” People are apt to be logical; if a government robs and kills and calls it law, why should not they do the same? Italy will continue in a state of chronic anarchy until religion is restored to it; then order will follow as it is following in France to-day.
In England, though Parliament has not been sitting, questions of moment have been rife. Mr. Miall has again raised the war-cry against the Established Church, ably seconded by Mr. Jacob Bright. The Times and Saturday Review and other journals affect to laugh at Mr. Miall, as they and such as they laughed at the Reform Bill, the Act of Catholic Emancipation, and the disestablishment of the Irish Church. We believe Mr. Miall's measure to be the logical sequence of the last of these measures, a fact which Mr. Disraeli in opposing it foretold. It is an anomaly—a church supported by a majority which does not believe in it. Mr. Miall's measure is only a growth of time; in fact, it only requires the conversion of such organs as the Times and Saturday Review to bring it to pass to-day.
As a corollary to Mr. Miall's movement comes the annual Church Congress held this year at Leeds under the presidency of the Bishop of Ripon. This annual congress is a curious thing; it is a meeting of everybody, high and low, church and lay, to compare notes and see how the church is getting on—a very useful proceeding, no doubt, if there were only something faintly approaching unanimity among its members. As it happened, unanimity was the one thing wanting, and certain stages of the proceedings were as warm as those of the “Old Catholics” at Cologne. In fact, the account of the whole proceedings reads like an extract from The Comedy of Convocation.