New Publications.
The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for the United States, for the Year of our Lord 1875. Calculated for Different Parallels of Latitude, and Adapted for Use throughout the Country. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
This annual is already known in almost every Catholic home in the land. Its cheapness places it within the reach of all, whilst its literary and artistic excellence renders it acceptable even to the most fastidious. The issue for 1875 even surpasses its predecessors in the variety of subjects treated and in the beauty of its illustrations.
Publications of this kind undoubtedly do very much to awaken a truly Catholic interest in the contemporary history of the church, and therefore tend to enlarge the views and widen the sympathies of our people. The life-current of the universal church is borne through the whole earth, and whatever anywhere concerns her welfare is of importance to Catholics everywhere.
The opening sketch in the Almanac for the year which even now “waiteth at the door” carries us to Rome, in a biographical notice of Cardinal Barnabo, whose name will long be held in grateful remembrance in the United States.
There are also sketches of the lives of the late Archbishop Kenrick, Archbishop Blanc of New Orleans, Bishop Whelan. Bishop McFarland—brief, but sufficiently comprehensive to give one an insight into the character and labors of these apostolic men. Col. Meline and Dr. Huntington, who strove so faithfully and so successfully, as men of letters, to defend and adorn Catholic truth, receive due tribute, and are held up as examples for those of our Catholic young men to whom God has given talent and opportunity of education.
Cardinal Mezzofanti, the greatest of linguists; Cardinal Allen, who was the first president, and we may say founder, of the Douay College, which, during the darkest period of the history of the Catholic Church in England, gave so many noble confessors of the faith to Great Britain; Archbishop Ledochowski, who is to-day suffering for Christ in the dungeons of Ostrowo, all pass before us in the pages of the Catholic Almanac for 1875.
Then we have sketches of John O'Donovan, the famous Irish antiquarian; of Father Gahan, the great Irish preacher; of [pg 430] Father Clavigero, the historian of Mexico and California, and of Joan of Arc, whose name may yet be inscribed by the church among those of her saints. The miscellaneous matter with which the present issue of the Catholic Almanac is filled has been chosen with admirable tact and with a special view to the wants of our own people.
If the standard of excellence which this publication has now reached be maintained, it cannot fail to command a steadily increasing patronage, and to become in yet wider circles an instrument for good.
Notes on the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. By Rev. S. Smith, D.D., formerly Professor of Sacred Scripture, Canon Law, and Ecclesiastical History at Seton Hall Seminary. New York: P. O'Shea. 1874.
The author of these Notes makes his observations on a considerable number of very practical questions, some of which are of the greatest moment and of no small difficulty, with great modesty and moderation of language. Evidently, he seeks to promote piety, discipline, and the well-being of the church in an orderly manner, and with due respect to authority and established usage. The Decrees of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore is intended as a text-book of instruction for the clergy and seminarists on what we may call “pastoral theology”—that is, on the whole range of subjects relating to the conduct, preaching, and administration of those who are invested to a lesser or greater degree with the pastoral office. The author makes the Acts of the Council therefore the basis of his Notes, or familiar disquisitions on practical topics of canon law, giving also a general exposition of certain fundamental canonical principles and laws, chiefly derived from the standard authors Soglia and Tarquini. Some valuable documents are also contained in the appendix. Such a work as this is evidently one that, if it can be made complete, and also carry with it sufficient intrinsic and extrinsic authority to give its statements and opinions due weight, will be one of great utility. Due respect to the author, who has given us the results of careful and conscientious labor, as well as the great importance of the topics he discusses, demand that we should not attempt to express a judgment upon his work or the opinions contained in it without a minute and detailed examination and discussion of every point, supported by reasons and authorities. We are not prepared to do this at present. We may say, however, that, in our opinion, a work of this kind cannot easily be brought to completion by a first and single effort. It is, in many respects, tentative in its character. As such, we regard it as a promising effort, creditable to its author, and in many ways likely to prove a serviceable manual for the clergy and those who are engaged in teaching canon law in seminaries.
The Mistress of the Manse. By J. G. Holland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.
We never pardon the reviewer who praises a novel by telling us its plot. Therefore we shall not spoil the pleasure of the reader by revealing the story of this poem. We will only say that the heroine is the wife of a “country parson,” and that their conjugal life is beautifully drawn. A Catholic will not find anything to move his righteous indignation, as he did in the author's Marble Prophecy though here and there he will come upon something which
“In the light of deeper eyes
Is matter for a flying smile.”
For instance, a poet who can write such Tennysonian verse does not blush to place in the same “evangelical” library “Augustine” and “Ansel” (we suppose he means S. Anselm) by the side of
“Great Luther, with his great disputes,
And Calvin with his finished scheme.” (!)
After the flood of light which even Protestant research has poured on the characters of Luther and Calvin, how can a poet (of all men) dare to hold them up to admiration?
Maria Monk's Daughter. An Autobiography. By Mrs. L. St. John Eckel. New York: Published for the Author by the United States Publishing Co.., 13 University Place. 1874.
The writer of this notice well remembers reading, when a boy of fifteen, the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, and Six Months in a Convent, by Rebecca Reed. With great satisfaction he recalls the fact that his own father, who was a Presbyterian minister of Connecticut, together with a very large number of other most respectable Protestants, condemned [pg 431] and repudiated the calumnies of Maria Monk from the first moment of their publication. The effect of these books and of the exposure so honorably made by Col. Stone on our own young mind, and undoubtedly upon the minds of thousands besides, to open our eyes to the falsehood and dishonesty of the gross misrepresentations of the Catholic religion and its professors which have been rife among Protestants, and are still prevalent among the less enlightened of them, both gentle and simple. Afterwards the task devolved upon us to prepare a set of documents concerning Rebecca Reed and Maria Monk which Bishop England had collected, for publication in the edition of his works issued by his successor in the see of Charleston. While we were correcting the last proofs of the printer at Philadelphia, the Times of that morning furnished us the last item of news respecting the unfortunate Maria Monk, which came to the knowledge of the public before the publication of the volume under notice, viz., that she had died in a cell on Blackwell's Island. After the lapse of twenty-five years, we find before us the autobiography of a daughter of Maria Monk, who seeks to expiate her mother's crime, and to make reparation for the wrong done to the clergy and religious of the Catholic Church by her pretended disclosures made in the fictitious character of an escaped nun. The unhappy young woman herself, though we believe she was the daughter of an English officer at Montreal, seems to have had a very unkind mother, and, for some reason to us unknown, to have been brought up without education, and early turned adrift without any protection. Having fallen into a condition of desperate misery, she resorted to the expedient of inventing her Awful Disclosures in order to get money and escape from present wretchedness. The men—far more malicious and base in their villainy than this poor forlorn girl, so much sinned against and so fearfully punished for her own sins that we pity more than we blame her—who prepared the vile book of Awful Disclosures, and published it under the name of Howe and Bates, cheated her out of her share of the profits. We are glad to see their infamy once more exposed, and the honor of the Catholic religion avenged. Although the most honorable class of Protestants are exempt from complicity with this and similar gross libels on Catholics and caricatures of all they hold dear and sacred, nevertheless their cause and name are disgraced by the fact that they are so frequently and generally implicated in a mode of warfare on the Catholic Church which is dishonorable. The statements which are continually made current among them respecting Catholics and their religion, and which are so generally believed, do no credit to their intelligence or fairness. We remember hearing the Archbishop of Westminster remark that the most ridiculous fables about the Catholic religion are accepted as truth among the aristocratic residents of the West End of London. The coarse and angry assaults of the English press upon the Marquis of Ripon, on account of his conversion, show, what Dr. Newman has so humorously and graphically described, the extent and obstinacy of vulgar prejudice and hostility in England. There is less here, and it is diminishing; yet there is enough to make Mrs. Eckel's audacious spring into the arena of combat against it well timed as well as chivalrous.
We do not intend a criticism on her book, but merely, as an act of justice to one who has braved the criticism of the world, to aid herself and her book to meet this criticism fairly, without prejudice from any false impressions which may be taken from its title. We therefore mention the fact, which may not be known to those who have not read the book or any correct account of its contents, that Maria Monk, according to the probable evidence furnished in the book, and which does not seem to have anything opposed to it, was really married to a man who was a gentleman by birth and of respectable connections, although reduced by his youthful follies to a condition which was always precarious and sometimes very destitute. Mrs. Eckel is the offspring of this marriage. After a childhood of hardship, she was adopted into a respectable family related to her father, Mr. St. John, and made the most strenuous efforts to acquire the education and good manners which are suitable for a lady. She married a gentleman of respectable position and of very superior intellectual gifts and culture, Mr. Eckel, who afterwards fell into distressed circumstances, and died in a very tragical manner. Mrs. Eckel separated herself from him some time before this occurred, and very shortly before the birth of her [pg 432] daughter, as it seems to us for very good reasons which exonerate her from all blame for the misery into which her husband fell when he lost the support of her sustaining arm. The remarkable history of her subsequent career in Paris must be sought for in the pages of the autobiography. The circles in which she moved while there were the highest, and many of her intimate friends were persons of not only exalted rank, but of the most exemplary piety, and of universal fame among Catholics. Of her own accord, without either compulsion or advice, she did what she was not bound in conscience to do—abandoned her brilliant position in the world, made known the secret of her origin, and has now thrown open the history of her life to the inspection of the world. That history must plead for itself and for the author before impartial and judicious readers. In our opinion it is substantially true. We believe the author has written it from a good motive, and that she is sincere in her statements. Divested of all the adventitious glitter of the successful woman of the world, she presents herself for precisely what she is in herself, and, as we think, is far more worthy of honor and respect now than ever before, or than the most brilliant marriage in France could have made her.
Everybody who can read this book will do so, as a matter of course, even if they have no other motive than they would have in reading one of Thackeray's romances. It is a romance in real life, and an instance of the truth of the old adage, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Such fictitious works as Lothair and the Schönberg-Cotta Family have served as a polemical weapon against the Catholic Church, and we do not see why a romantic but true history, of much greater literary merit than the whole class of that sort of trash, should not answer a good purpose on the other side. If the readers of the book find in it many things open to criticism, and jarring upon a delicate and cultivated Catholic sense of propriety and reverence, they should remember that the author lacks the advantage of long and careful Catholic discipline, is still comparatively young, and a novice in everything that relates to the spiritual and religious life. She does not profess to give the history of her life as a model to be imitated, or to instruct others as one competent to teach on spiritual matters, but to write her confessions for the encouragement of other wayward and wandering souls, and to speak out freely what she thinks as she goes along, with very little regard to censure or fear of it.
There seems a Nemesis in the publication of such a book which should give a salutary lesson to those who dare to throw dirt on the spotless robe of the Catholic Church. We have often thought that this Nemesis is frequently apparent of late in the punishments which have come from divine or human justice on notorious corrupters of public and private morals. Dreadful as are the actual corruptions and the corrupt tendencies in the bosom of our political and social state, we hope this is a sign that God has not abandoned us. It is hardly necessary to say that this is not a book suitable for very young people.
The Catholic World. Vol. XX., No. 118.—January, 1875.
The Persecution Of The Church In The German Empire.
Concluded.
In the spring of 1870, whilst the discussion concerning the opportuneness of defining the infallibility of the Pope was attracting the attention of every one, and when the distant mutterings of the Franco-Prussian war were not yet audible, the leading organs of the Party of Progress in Berlin sought to weigh the probable results of a definition, by the Vatican Council, of the much-talked-of dogma. In case the Pope should be declared infallible, the Volkszeitung, of Berlin, affirmed that many would favor the interference of the government to prevent all further intercourse between the bishops of Prussia and the Roman Pontiff, which would result in the creation of a national church wholly independent of Rome.
But this organ of the Party of Progress openly avowed that there was not the slightest probability that the state could, by any means at its command, succeed in separating the Catholic Church in Prussia from communion with the See of Peter; nor was there, it confessed with perfect candor, a single bishop in Germany who would desire such a separation.
And yet, as we have shown in a former article, the task which the German Empire has set itself is precisely the one which is here pronounced impossible; and we propose now to continue the history of the tyrannical enactments and harsh measures by which the worshippers of the God-State hope to destroy the faith of thirteen millions of Catholics. The project of the Falk laws was brought before the Landtag on the 9th of January, 1873, and on the 30th of the same month the Catholic episcopate of the kingdom of Prussia entered a solemn protest against this iniquitous attempt to violate the most sacred rights of conscience and religion.
In the name of the natural law, [pg 434] of the historical and lawfully-acquired rights of the church in Germany, of the treaties concluded by the crown of Prussia with the Holy See, and, in fine, in the name of the express recognition of these rights by the Constitution, they protest against the violation of the inalienable right of the Catholic Church to exist in the integrity of its doctrine, its constitution, and its discipline.
It is of the duty and right of each bishop, they declare, to teach the Catholic doctrine and administer the sacraments within his own diocese; it is also of his duty and right to educate, commission, and appoint the priests who are his co-operators and representatives in the sacred ministry; and it is of his duty and right to exhort and encourage them in the fulfilment of their charge, and, when they obstinately refuse to obey the doctrine and laws of the church, to depose them from office, and to forbid them the exercise of all ecclesiastical functions; all of which rights are violated by the proposed laws. As to the Royal Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs, they affirm that they can never recognize its competency, and that they can see in it only an attempt to reduce the divinely-constituted church to a non-Catholic and national institution.
The Memorial concludes with the following noble and solemn words:
“Concord between church and state is the safeguard of the spiritual and the temporal power; the indispensable condition of the welfare of all human society. The bishops, the priests, the Catholic people, are not the enemies of the state; they are not intolerant, unjust, rancorous towards those of a different faith. They ask nothing so much as to live in peace with all men; but they demand that they themselves be permitted to live according to their faith, of the divinity and truth of which they are most thoroughly convinced. They require that the integrity of religion and their church and the liberty of their conscience be left inviolate, and they are resolved to defend their lawful freedom, and even the smallest right of the church, with all energy and without fear.
“From our inmost souls, in the interest of the state as much as of the church, we conjure and implore the authorities to abandon the disastrous policy which they have taken up, and to give back to the Catholic Church, and to the millions of the faithful of that church who are in Prussia and in the Empire, peace, religious liberty, and security in the possession of their rights, and not to impose upon us laws obedience to which is incompatible, for every bishop and for every priest and for all Catholics, with the fulfilment of duty—laws, consequently, which violate conscience, are morally impossible, and which, if carried into execution by force, will bring untold misery upon our faithful Catholic people and our German fatherland.”
The organs of the government declared that the Memorial was an ultimatum, “a declaration of war”; that “it was impossible to keep the peace with these bishops; and that they should be reduced as soon as possible to a state in which they could do no harm.” Accordingly, the discussion of the Falk laws was hurried up, and they were adopted in May by a majority of two-thirds.
In the meantime, the government continued to follow up its harsh measures against the religious [pg 435] orders, going so far as to close the churches of royal patronage in Poland, in order to prevent their consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It even forbade the children of the schools to assist at the devotions of the Sacred Heart. The Catholic casinos were closed; the Congregations of the Blessed Virgin, the Society of the Holy Childhood, and other religious associations were suppressed. The Catholic soldiers of the Prussian army had already been outraged by having their church in Cologne turned over to the Old Catholics.
By the beginning of 1873 nearly all the Jesuits had withdrawn from the territory of the German Empire, and taken refuge in France, England, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Indies, and the United States. Those who still remained were interned, and, deprived of all means of subsistence, placed under the supervision of the police. The government next proceeded to take steps to suppress those religious orders which it considered as affiliated to the Jesuits. A mission which the Redemptorists were giving at Wehlen, near Treves, was broken up by the police. Another mission which they were about to open at Oberjosbach (Nassau) was interdicted; whilst almost at the same time several Redemptorists were decorated “for services rendered to the fatherland during the war.” A community of Lazarists at Kulm was dissolved, and houses of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, of the Sisters of Notre Dame, of the Sisters of Charity, and of the Sisters of S. Charles were closed.
Von Gerlach, the President of the Court of Appeals of Magdeburg, himself a Protestant, has informed us, in a pamphlet which he published about this time, of the effect of these persecutions upon the Catholics of Germany.
“As for the Catholic Church,” he wrote, “persecutions strengthen her. In fact, her moral power is increased under pressure. The Catholic Church is to-day more zealous, more compact, more united, more confident of herself, more energetic, and better organized, than she was at the commencement of 1871. The Roman Catholics have good reason to be thankful that their church has gained in faith, in the spirit of sacrifice and prayer, in devoutness in worship, and in all Christian virtues.
“It is even evident that the interior force of the religious orders, especially that of the Jesuits, has been proportionately augmented. Around these proscribed men gather all those who love them to protect and help them.”
The courageous conduct of the German bishops in taking a firm and decided stand against the persecutors of the church met with the almost unanimous approval of both priests and people. Dr. Döllinger and his sect were forgotten. If there had ever been any life in the impossible thing, it went out in the first breath of the storm that was breaking over the church. All the cathedral chapters gave in their adhesion to their respective bishops, and their example was followed by the pastors, rectors, and vicars of the eleven Prussian dioceses. They repelled with horror, to use the words of the clergy of Fulda, the attempt to separate the members from the head, and to give to the priesthood tutors in the person of a state official. Even the twenty-nine deacons of the Seminary of Gnesen entered their protest, recalling in their address to Archbishop Ledochowski the beautiful words [pg 436] of S. Laurence to Pope Sixtus as he was led to martyrdom: Quo sine filio, pater?
The Catholic nobility, in their meeting at Münster in January, 1873, openly proclaimed their fidelity to the church and their firm resolve to defend her rights and liberties; and the Catholic people began to organize throughout the Empire.
“The Association of the Catholic Germans,” which now counts its members by hundreds of thousands, was formed, with the motto, Neither rebel nor apostate. Its Wanderversammlungen (migratory reunions) spring up everywhere, and become the centre of Catholic life. This association is based upon the constitutional law, its acts are public, the means it employs are lawful, and the end it aims at is distinctly formulated in its statutes.
In this manner the Catholics of Germany prepared themselves, not to commit acts of violence or to transgress the law, but to offer a passive resistance to tyranny and oppression, to uphold liberty of conscience against state omnipotence, and to suffer every evil rather than betray their souls' faith.
The Imperial government, on the other hand, showed no intention of withdrawing its arbitrary measures, but through its organs openly declared that “the execution of the clerical laws would form a clergy as submissive and tractable as the Prussian army”; whilst Herr Falk proclaimed in the Reichstag “that the government was resolved to make use of every means which the law placed within its power; and if the present laws were not sufficient, others would be framed to ensure their execution.”
The ukase, signed by Bismarck on the 20th of May, 1873, suppressed the convents of the Redemptorists, of the Fathers of the Holy Ghost, of the Lazarists, and of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart; and the members of these orders were commanded to abandon their houses before the end of the following November. The Ladies of the Sacred Heart were accused of desiring to acquire “universal spiritual dominion.”
The bishops were called on to submit for the approval of the government, in accordance with the tenor of the May laws, the plan of studies and the disciplinary rules of their diocesan seminaries; which, of course, they declined to do, whilst foreseeing that their action would bring about the closing of these institutions. Herr Falk, the Minister of Worship, ordered an examination into the revenues of the different parishes, without even asking the co-operation of the bishops; and the civil authorities were warned of their duty to notify the government of any changes which should be made in the body of the clergy. The police received orders to interfere, at certain points, with Catholic pilgrimages, which, in other instances, were positively interdicted.
The annual allowance of twelve hundred thalers to Mgr. Ledochowski, Archbishop of Posen, was withdrawn, his seminary was closed, and all teachers were forbidden to ask his permission to give religious instruction. In November, 1873, the archbishop's furniture was seized; even his paintings were carried off. The people, gathering in crowds, shouted after the officials: “Thief! thief!” On the 23d of the same month Mgr. Ledochowski was condemned to pay a fine of five thousand four hundred thalers, or, in default, to an imprisonment of two [pg 437] years, for having made nine appointments to ecclesiastical offices contrary to the laws of May.
Before the end of December, the fines imposed upon the archbishop reached twenty-one thousand thalers. In January, 1874, he was cited before a delegate judge of the Royal Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs, but refused to appear, since he could not, in conscience, recognize the competency of a civil tribunal to pass sentence on the manner in which he had exercised his pastoral functions. He moreover averred that, in case the threat to drag him into court should be carried out, it was his firm resolve to say nothing.
Several priests of the Diocese of Posen had already been incarcerated for failure to pay the fines of the government, and on the 3d of last February, at five o'clock in the morning, the archbishop was himself arrested and carried off to prison in Ostrowo, a town of about seven thousand inhabitants, chiefly Protestants and Jews.
The bishops of Prussia at once drew up a letter to the clergy and the Catholic people of their dioceses, in which they declared that “the only crime of Archbishop Ledochowski was that of having chosen to suffer everything rather than betray the liberty of the church of God and deny Catholic truth, sealed by the precious blood of the Saviour.”
The canons of the Chapter of Posen were ordered by the government to elect a capitular-vicar; and as they declined to give their approval to the cruel and unjust imprisonment of their archbishop, a state official was appointed to take charge of the affairs of the diocese.
Both the priests and people of Prussian Poland remain firm, and give noble examples of steadfastness in the faith.
The history of the persecution in one diocese is, with a few unimportant differences, that of all. More than a year ago, the annual allowance of three thousand four hundred and seventy thalers made to the Theological Seminary of Cologne was withdrawn. Archbishop Melchers and his vicar-general were cited before a civil tribunal for the excommunication of two apostates. The Lazarists were driven from the preparatory seminaries of Neuss and Münstereifel.
On the 22d of November, 1873, the archbishop was condemned to pay a fine of twenty-five hundred thalers for five appointments made in violation of the May laws; and almost every week thereafter new fines were imposed, until finally his furniture was seized on the 3d of last February, and in a very short time the venerable prelate was incarcerated, not even his lawyer being allowed to visit him. His prison-cell was thought to be too comfortable, and he was soon changed to one under the very roof of the jail. A great number of pastors and vicars of his diocese were deprived of their positions, and some of them imprisoned.
On the 20th of November, 1873, the priests of twenty-eight towns and villages of the Diocese of Treves were interdicted by the government, and the bishop fined thirty-six hundred thalers. The Theological Seminary was closed, “not to be reopened until the bishop and rector should accept in good faith the laws of May, 1873.” Any seminarians who might be found there on the 12th of January, 1874, were to be forcibly ejected.
The 15th of this same month the professors were forbidden to instruct the students of theology, under penalty of a fine of fifteen [pg 438] thalers or five days' imprisonment for each offence; and this prohibition is to remain in vigor until the bishop accepts the Falk laws. On the 21st of January, an inventory of the furniture of the episcopal palace was taken. The goods were sold at public auction on the 6th of February; in a few days, Bishop Eberhard was thrown into prison; and before the end of last August sixty of his priests were confessing the faith in the dungeons of Treves and Coblentz.
The old Dominican convent in Treves had been converted into a prison, and it is there that the bishop and some thirty of his priests were incarcerated. The prison discipline is rigid and harsh in the extreme. These confessors of Christ are forced out of their beds at five o'clock in the morning, and from this until they retire at nine in the evening they must either walk to and fro in their cells, or sit upon stools, since chairs are not allowed. If during the day they wish to lie down for a moment, an official at once informs them that this is not permitted; if they lean against the wall, the table, or the bed, they again receive the same warning. A jailer accompanies them whenever necessity forces them to leave their cells. All letters to and from the prison are read by the officials, and, in case the slightest pretext can be found, are destroyed. None save those who have voluntarily given themselves up, and who, after a first imprisonment, have not received an ovation from the people, are allowed to say Mass. The bishop is permitted to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice, but no one is suffered to be present except the server and the indispensable government official.
The food seems scarcely sufficient to sustain life. Three times in the week, each of the prisoners receives a small piece of meat, and this is the only change ever made in the bill of fare which we have just given. What we have called “porridge” is known at Treves under the name of Schlicht, and is a kind of flour-paste. When we reflect that there are in Germany to-day not less than a thousand priests who are suffering this slow and cruel martyrdom, we shall be able to realize that the present pagan persecution may in all truth be compared to those which, in the first ages of Christianity, gave to the church her legions of martyrs and confessors. It is not necessary that we should enter into a detailed account of the persecution in the other dioceses of Germany. The same scenes are everywhere enacted—fines, citations, seizure of effects, interdicts, and imprisonments, on the part of the government; whilst the Catholics, standing in unshaken fidelity to God and conscience, suffer in patience every outrage that their enemies can inflict, rather than betray the sacred cause of the religion of Christ. The May laws of 1873 did not prove sufficiently harsh or tyrannical to satisfy the Prussian infidels; and they were consequently supplemented by clauses which passed both [pg 439] houses of the Reichstag last May. In virtue of these amendments, the state can decree the sequestration of the goods of an ecclesiastical post not occupied in the manner prescribed by the Falk laws. In this case, these goods are to be administered by a royal commissary.
The Royal Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs receives the power to depose bishops; and, this deposition being once pronounced, they are forbidden to exercise any ecclesiastical functions in their respective dioceses, which by this very fact are placed under interdict. When the bishop is deposed by the Royal Court, the cathedral chapter is summoned to proceed to elect his successor; and in case it fails to comply with this injunction within ten days, all goods belonging to the episcopal see, as well as those of the chapter of the diocese, and of the parishes, are sequestrated and administered by the government.
This miserable legislation gives to the state the entire spiritual power, and ignores alike the rights of God and those of the free Christian conscience. Still, it is only the legitimate and logical expression of the views and aims of the modern heathendom which is organizing throughout Europe for the destruction of the religion of Christ.
The May laws of 1873 required the bishops to convert all the incumbents having charge of churches into permanent and irremovable parish priests; in consequence of which the position of twelve hundred and forty-one incumbents in the Rhine Province became illegal on the 11th of last May. A general interdict was therefore expected, and even a process to compel the bishop to comply with this clause was looked for; but Herr Falk seems to have been frightened by his own legislation, since already, on the 8th of May, he announced in the Reichstag that only those priests whom “the government considered dangerous” would be notified of the proceedings taken against the bishops, and that no others would be held to come under the operation of the law. In this manner the Prussian Minister of Worship avoided the odium of a general interdict, whilst by a slower process he hopes eventually to bring about this result. The moment the incumbent of a church receives official notification that his bishop has been put under restraint, he is by the very fact forbidden to perform any ecclesiastical function, and his post is considered vacant. The Landrath then declares this vacancy, and invites the parishioners to prepare for the election of a successor to their former pastor.
That this election may take place, it suffices that ten men, who are of age and in the full possession of their civil rights, put in an appearance, that the person chosen by them and approved of by the civil authority may be recognized as the lawful incumbent.
The evident aim of this law is to create a schism in every parish in the German Empire, which, by fomenting divisions amongst the Catholics, would greatly aid the government in its efforts to destroy the church. But this is only one of innumerable instances in which the persecutors have been wholly mistaken.
They counted first upon the weakness of the Catholic bishops; confidently expecting that one or the other of them would place himself at the head of the Old Catholics, [pg 440] and thus, whilst causing great scandal in the church, give to that still-born sect at least a semblance of respectability. But not one of the German prelates wavered. They go to prison, like the apostles, rejoicing that they are found worthy to suffer for Christ, and declare that they are willing to shed their blood for the holy cause. Their enemies are not more ready to inflict than they to bear everything for the love of Jesus. Then, there was no doubt in the minds of the Prussian infidels that large numbers of the clergy would take advantage of the bribes offered by government to apostates to throw off the authority of the bishops, and to constitute themselves into a schismatical body. On the contrary, the persecution has only drawn tighter the bonds which unite the priests with their chief pastors. In all Germany there have not been found more than thirty rationalistic professors and suspended priests who were willing to take sides with Döllinger in his rebellion; and the juridically-proven immorality of Bishop Reinkens will no doubt give us a true insight into the characters of most of the men who have elected him their ecclesiastical superior.
When the persecutors found that both bishops and priests were immovable in their devotion to the church, they appealed to the Catholic people, and, by the laws of last May, placed it in their power to create a schism, by giving them the right to elect their own pastors, with the promise that government would turn the churches over to them. But this attempt to show that the bishops and priests of Germany have not the sympathy and confidence of the laity has met with signal rebuke.
The elections for the Prussian Landtag in November, 1873, and those for the Reichstag in January last, had not merely a political significance; their bearing upon the present and future welfare of the church in the German Empire is of the greatest importance. Opportunity was given to the Catholic people to make a public confession of faith; to declare, in words which could not be misunderstood, whether or not they were resolved to stand firm in the struggle into which their leaders had been forced.
In the November elections, in spite of every effort of the government, the Catholics increased their representatives in the Landtag from fifty-two to eighty-nine; whilst in the Reichstag their members have grown from sixty-three to considerably more than one hundred.
The entire Rhenish Province elected Catholics. Cologne, Düsseldorf, Treves, Coblentz, Aix-la-Chapelle, Crefeld, Bonn, Neuss, Düren, Essen, Malmedy, Mülheim, all the cities of the Lower Rhine, made their vote an act of faith. Windthorst, the leader of the Catholic party, was elected at Meppen (Hanover) over Falk, the author of the May laws, by a majority of nearly fifteen thousand. The entire vote for Falk was only three hundred and forty-seven.
The result of the elections undoubtedly startled the government, and possibly shook Bismarck's confidence in the power of persecution to destroy Catholic faith; but the struggle had grown too fierce to allow him to think of withdrawing.
On the contrary, the firmness of the Catholic people incited the persecutors to still harsher measures; but nothing that they have done or can do will succeed in breaking the combined passive opposition of the clergy and the laity.
In the Vatican Council, the most determined resistance to the definition of the infallibility of the Pope was made by the German bishops, who felt no hesitation in openly declaring with what anxiety they regarded the probable effects of such a definition upon the Catholics of their own country. Divisions, apostasies, schisms, seemed imminent; and it is not easy now to determine what might have been the result had not God's providence interfered.
In the first place, at the very moment when the definition was made, the terrible conflict between France and Prussia broke forth, and raged so fiercely that the loud earth was struck dumb, and men held their breath till it should be ended. In the meantime, the angry feelings aroused by the discussions in the Vatican Council had, in great measure, been calmed, and it was possible to take a fairer and more dispassionate view of the whole subject.
Then the attempt of the government to destroy the Catholic Church in Germany, by tearing it away from its allegiance to the Pope, and debasing it to a mere function of the state, roused those who might have been disposed to waver, and brought about a universal reawakening of faith. It is the fate of the enemies of God's people to bless when they mean to curse. In fact, when Catholics begin to suffer, they begin to triumph; and hence even those who hate us have of nothing so great horror as of making martyrs and confessors. They know the history of martyrdom—that in the whole earth and in all ages it means victory.
The church, which sprang from the conflict of the God-Man with death, like him, in her greatest humiliation shows forth her highest power.
Her march through the world and through the ages is not along pleasant roads and through peaceful prospects, or, if so, only at times and rarely. If she move in pomp amid the acclamations of peoples, her triumphal procession ends in sorrow. The bark of Peter must be storm-tossed; and when the angry waves would swallow it, the divine voice speaks the magic word, and the quiet deep bears it up on her peaceful bosom.
The road wherein the progress of the church is most secure is the blood-stained way of the cross. When she is all bruised, and there is no comeliness left in her; when her eyes are red with weeping, and the world, beholding her agony, mocks and jeers and laughs her to scorn, then is she strongest; for her strength comes from humility, from suffering, from the cross. When she is humbled, God exalts her; when he permits her enemies to entomb her in ignominy, he is near at hand to crown her with the immortal glory of a new life. The word of Christ is: “You shall live in the world in the midst of persecutions; but take heart: I have conquered the world.”
Within the memory of those who are still young, it was the fashion with our enemies to proclaim that the church was decrepit, that she was dying, that of her own weight she would fall to pieces in the new society that was growing up around her: to-day we hear that she is everywhere waxing too strong, and men appeal against her to tyranny and to brute force.
The most powerful and the most thoroughly organized of the modern nations, the great Cultur-Staat of the age, has confessed that it is unable to check the growth of the church by legitimate means, and it [pg 442] has therefore had recourse to the most arbitrary legislation and to the harshest measures of compulsion and violence. This, of course, is the most explicit avowal of its own impotence. We find also that the two nations which have manifested the most supercilious indifference to the Catholic Church, as being something which did not and could not concern them, now applaud this Prussian tyranny, in spite of the pretence of the love of freedom and fair play. The sympathy of the English press, and to a great extent of the American press, in this struggle, is with the absolute and liberty-destroying government of Prussia. The favorite motto of “civil and religious liberty all the world over” has been wholly lost sight of, and Englishmen and Americans give moral aid to a state which wantonly tramples upon both.
This, too, was a cherished watch-word: The church is the friend of absolutism, the enemy of freedom.
But to-day we behold the Catholic Church, single-handed, fighting again the same battles of liberty which she fought and won in the early centuries of Christianity. Now, as then, she opposes absolutism in the state; denies, as she then denied, that Cæsar can lawfully lay claim to “the things of God”; and protests, in the name of the outraged dignity of human nature, that there is a freedom which transcends the sphere of all earthly authority. Her children, when nothing else remains to be done, utter the divine words: Non possumus—we cannot; we must obey God rather than men.
Referring to this struggle, Bismarck has said, in a memorable speech, that “it is the ancient contest for power, which is as old as the human race itself—the contest for power between king and priest.” This is necessarily the view which he takes, since he believes in nothing but force. But the dualism here is not in the combatants alone; it is in the objects for which they contend.
It is indeed the ancient contest between good and evil, between the spirit and the flesh, between the Christ and the rulers of this world, which makes life a warfare and the earth a battle-field, and which must continue until the end. Never has it been fiercer than in our day, and the battle is yet hardly begun. But very few indeed understand, as yet, the nature of the struggle, or are at all aware of the real principles and interests which are at stake. Few men can see further than an hour or beyond the little circle that bounds their private interests; but each day it is becoming more evident that men must take sides; that not to be for Christ is to be against him.
Twice in the last eighteen hundred years the church has been the ark of the nations: she destroyed paganism; she converted and civilized barbarism. Some historian will tell, in another age, how, when Christian society, grown luxurious and corrupt, without God and without future hope, was sinking back into the flesh-worship and the death of ancient paganism, she, gathering around her the remnant of her children, and fearlessly facing the storm and the wrath of those who had ceased to know her, kept her own pure and undefiled till the dawn of the brighter day, to become the leaven of the social state that is to be.