Pius IX. And His Time

by Æneas MacDonell Dawson

Pius IX. was indefatigable in giving audiences and receiving deputations from every country where there were members of the Catholic Church. On such occasions he never failed to speak words of edification and encouragement. It was even said that he spoke too much. They were not, however, of the number of his friends who call him il Papa verboso. He was endowed with a wonderful gift of speech, and he always used [pg 371] it effectively. His discourses were invariably to the purpose, the subject of them being suggested by the most recent events, by the nationality of his visitors, or by the expressed pious intentions which brought them to his presence. He made allusion very often to the Gospel of the preceding Sunday, or to the festival of the day, and concluded by imparting his benediction, which his hearers always received kneeling, and seldom without tears. The addresses of Pius IX. delivered at the Vatican have been preserved by the stenographic art, and fill many volumes. His ideas sometimes found expression in conversations with distinguished visitors. Such was the case on occasion of the visit, in 1872, of the Prince of Wales, the heir apparent of the British Crown. His Royal Highness showed his good taste by declining the use of Victor Emmanuel's equipages in coming to the Vatican. The Princess also made manifest her respect for the well-known sentiments of Pius IX. in regard to showy toilettes by appearing in a plain dress. There was a striking contrast between the placid old man, so near the close of his career, and the handsome young couple, in the flower of their age. The Prince and the Pope appeared delighted at meeting; and the eyes of the Princess, who looked alternately at the animated figure of her husband and the benevolent countenance of the venerable Pontiff, were suffused with tears. The Pope began the conversation by expressing his great admiration for the character, both public and private, of the Queen of Great Britain; and smiling expressively, and not without a slight degree of Italian irony, he thanked the British ministers who, more than once, had offered him, in the name of the Queen, an asylum on British territory. “You see, Prince, I have not left Rome quite as soon as some of your statesmen supposed I would.” The Holy Father then alluded to the existing state of things, adding: “In my present condition I am assuredly more happy than those who consider themselves more the masters of Rome than myself. I have no fear for my dynasty. It is powerfully protected. God Himself is its guardian. He also looks to my [pg 372] succession and my family. You are not unaware that these are no other than the Church. I can speak without offence to the Prince of Wales of the instability of Royal Houses, that which he represents being firmly anchored in the affections of a wise people.” “I am delighted,” replied the Prince, smiling expressively, “to find that your Holiness has so good an opinion of our people.” “Yes, indeed, I respect the English people,” continued the Holy Father, “because they are more truly religious, both as regards feeling and conduct, than many who call themselves Catholics. When, one day, they shall return to the fold, with what joy will we not welcome that flock which is astray, but not lost!” The Prince and Princess, being rather incredulous, received this benevolent aspiration with a good-natured smile. “Oh! my children,” resumed the Pontiff, “the future has in store for mankind the most strange surprises. Who could have imagined, two years ago, that we should see a Prussian army in France? I hesitate not to say that your ablest statesmen expected sooner to see the Pope at Malta than Napoleon III. in England. As regards myself, you will observe I am, indeed, robbed of my States, but God, who, at any moment, withdraws the possessions of this world, can also restore them a hundred-fold. Is the dynasty of the Head of the Church, on this account, less secure? I may, for a time, be driven from Rome. But when your children and grandchildren shall come to visit the holy city, they will see, as you see to-day—let the temporal power be more or less considerable—an old man, clothed in white, pointing the way to heaven for the good of hundreds of millions of human consciences. To compensate for the absence of subjects immediately around him, he will have devoted adherents at all times and everywhere.” The conversation turning on Ireland, the Holy Father spoke in the warmest terms of the fidelity of the Catholics of that country. “You know, Prince, the results of persecution. It does not make us any more Catholics. Your Royal Mother follows a policy quite different from that of her predecessors, in regard to Ireland, and you are, [pg 373] like her, aware that good Catholics are always good subjects.” That country, the Pope continued to observe, had need of the vigilant and energetic superintendence of its devoted prelates, whom he praised in the highest terms. “For,” said he, “the wolf—I do not mean Protestantism—but the wolf of anarchy and infidelity is abroad, I fear, in the regions of the West.” He referred to the organization called “the International,” and expressed his astonishment that “any princes should be still so blind as to take pleasure in making war on the Church, at a period when the foundations of civil society were threatened on every side.”

The chief cause of the Holy Father's grief and poignant sorrow, under his calamities, was the loss of souls. “Ah!” said he, in a conversation with Mgr. Langenieux, Archbishop of Rheims, “I could bear my misfortunes courageously, and God would give me strength to withstand the evils which afflict the Church. But there is one thing I cannot forgive those who persecute us. They eradicate the faith of my people—they kill the souls of the children of unfortunate Italy.” The Pontiff, as he uttered these words, moved his hand towards his breast, and as his fingers ruffled his white robe, he exclaimed, in a tone that was truly heartrending: “They tear away my heart!”

“It was sublime,” adds the archbishop, “the great soul of the Pope subdued us, and, at the same time, inspired us with light and fortitude.”

RELATIONS OF PIUS IX. WITH FOREIGN STATES—SWITZERLAND—GERMANY.

The party in Europe who desired the suppression of the Pope's temporal rule professed to be actuated by zeal for promoting a more free and useful exercise of his spiritual authority. It soon became manifest that this was the merest sham. Switzerland, guided by that narrow kind of Protestantism which has so often asserted its power, pretended to see only in the Pope the Chief of the small Roman State; when [pg 374] deprived of that State, he was no longer a prince or dignitary, with whom diplomatic relations could be held. His legate at Berne, accordingly, was informed that he must take his departure from the territory of the Swiss Confederation. It is well understood that this ungracious measure was secretly advised and promoted by Germany. That Power speedily followed the example, although not at first in a very direct or open way. The German ministry appointed to the Embassy of the Vatican Cardinal Hohenlohe, the only one of the cardinals who proved unfaithful to Pius IX. in the hour of his great distress. The Pope remonstrated against the appointment. The inflexible Prussian minister, Bismarck, replied that he would send no other, suspended and finally abolished diplomatic relations between the new Empire and the Holy See. It is by no means matter for surprise that a man of Prince Bismarck's views and character should have so acted, or even that he should have become the promoter of the greatest and most unwarrantable persecution by which any nation has been disgraced, or to which any portion of the Church has been subjected in modern times. This minister, who may be truly described as the political scourge of Germany, is as fanatical in religion as he is coarse and sceptical in politics. He abandoned his party, and became, or feigned to become, a liberal in order to gratify his hatred of the Catholic Church. He belongs to that branch of Protestantism which is called “orthodox” (lucus a non lucendo). On occasion of the debate, 14th April, 1874, on the law which withdrew the salaries of the Catholic clergy, a Protestant conservative member of the representative body, Count de Malrahn, declared that he would vote for this law, because it would affect only the Catholics, without interfering with the rights of the Evangelical denomination. Bismarck, by his reply, not only showed an utter absence of all political faith, but at the same time a degree of political hypocrisy with which all true history will never cease to stigmatize him. “I must express the great joy which I experience on hearing the declaration of the preceding speaker. [pg 375] If, at the commencement of the religious conflict, the conservatives had taken this ground, and sustained the government in the name of the Evangelical religion, I never would have been under the necessity of separating from the Conservative party.”

From Chancellor Bismarck's own words, therefore, it may be concluded that it was excessive sectarian fanaticism which made him an infidel and hypocrite in politics, a traitor to his party, and a savage persecutor of the Church. When there was question in December, 1874, of obtaining an act for the suppression of the Prussian legation to the Holy See, the deep-rooted hatred of Prince Bismarck and his absolute want of conscience became still more apparent. He audaciously accused the Court of Rome of having been the ally of France, and even of the revolution in the war against Prussia in 1870. He pretended that if the Œcumenical Council was closed abruptly, it was in order to leave complete liberty of action to Napoleon III.; and, as facts were necessary in order to support this extraordinary and false assertion, he ascribed to Monsignor Meglia, at the time nuncio at Munich, the words, “Our only hope is in the revolution.” As the chancellor uttered this odious calumny, he suddenly took ill. He became pale, stammered, and had recourse, four or five times, to a glass of water, which was beside him, in order to recover his spirits and find the words which he should use. The whole parliament was struck with this incident. The Abbe Majunke, editor of the Catholic journal Germania, was, however, the only one who spoke of it publicly. Such an offence against the omnipotent chancellor could not, of course, be overlooked. M. Majunke was summoned to the police office, and thence consigned to prison, notwithstanding his inviolability as deputy, and the protestations of the Reichstag (parliament). What a grand conception Chancellor Bismarck must have had of constitutional government!

The great success of William I. in the Franco-Prussian war appears to have so elated that monarch that he considered [pg 376] there was nothing which he might not successfully undertake. He had annexed to Prussia some of the lesser States of Germany, and made a German Empire. The Church in Germany enjoyed many privileges and immunities under his predecessors, who, for the most part, were, like himself, Protestants. Whether it was that he desired to show himself a better Protestant than his ancestors, or that he could not emancipate himself from the control of the minister who had so long guided, with singular success, the destinies of the empire, as well as his own career, or that he believed it to be a political necessity to act according to the views and carry out the principles of the German and European “Liberals”—the party of revolution and unbelief—he resolved to oppose no impediment to his chancellor and the liberal majority of parliament in their endeavors to destroy the Catholic Church in Germany, unless it chose to become as a mere department of the State, acting and speaking in the name of the State, receiving its appointments from the State, as well as the funds requisite for the support of its ministers, accepting all its orders and instructions, even in the most spiritual things, from the State; in fine, looking to the State as the sole source of all its authority, honor, power and influence. There was nothing like the German Empire. It had conquered in gigantic wars with two Powers that were considered the greatest in continental Europe. It had attained a degree of power and greatness, scarcely if at all inferior to that of the first Napoleon, and, like Napoleon, it aimed at more. It sought, like him, to have the Church, no less than the police courts, in every respect, in all circumstances and on all occasions, completely at its orders. This ill-judged ambition accounts for the long list of oppressive laws which were enacted at Berlin for the enslavement of the Catholic Church. They are known as the “May Laws,” all of them having been passed, although not in the same year, in the month of May. Dollinger, Hohenlohe and the rest of the anti-Catholic Bavarian coterie, deluded the Emperor and his minister with the idea of an independent German alt, or Old [pg 377] Catholic Church. They sold their country to the new empire, politically. But they could not sell its church. One of these alt-Catholics, Dr. Schulte, recommended persecution as the surest means of eradicating the ancient church. “Let his twenty thousand florins be withdrawn from such a one, his twelve thousand thalers from such another; let the salaries of the bishops and chapters be suppressed, and the result will soon be manifest. The humbler clergy will rejoice. Since 18th July, 1870, there has been neither belief in Christ nor religious conviction among the bearers of mitres and tonsures.” Thus was the Prussian minister led to imagine that he had only to transfer the benefices of the Catholic dignitaries to the alt-Catholics in order to constitute an independent German Church, which would unite the whole of Germany religiously, as he had already united it politically. All Catholics, of course, would be members of this new Church. The State Protestantism of Prussia would, in due time, join this State Church, and there would be, if not one Faith and one Baptism, one Church and one State.

The calculations of Chancellor Bismarck were, however, at fault. He soon discovered that the clergy were grossly calumniated, and that the alt-Catholic Church in which he trusted never counted more than thirty priests; that this number increased not, and that the hundreds of thousands of adherents of whom the pseudo bishop, Reinkens, boasted, were only some twenty thousand to thirty thousand, scattered over all Germany. These had no principle of cohesion. They could not agree as to any fundamental point of religious doctrine or discipline. According to a census made in 1876, they numbered only one hundred and thirty-six, in a population of twenty-five thousand Catholics, at the city of Bonn, which M. Reinkens had selected as the seat and centre of his episcopal ministrations. Meanwhile, there was a considerable reaction in prevaricating Bavaria. The Catholic minority was changed into a majority, and the Prussian Catholic representation, which was called the fraction of the centre, was strengthened [pg 378] at the elections of 1874 by an increase from twenty-five to forty votes. The chancellor, although enlightened, was not corrected. Nothing could divert him from his evil purpose. By a strange confusion of ideas, he called Kulturcampf (struggle for civilization) the open war which he waged against the Church, the source of all civilization and of liberty of conscience. The persecuting laws which, with the aid of the so-called “liberal” party, or party of unbelief, he succeeded in causing to be enacted were to the following effect. As was to be expected of the blind political fanaticism of the party, the Jesuits were the first objects of hostility, and the first victims of persecution. The May laws required that these unoffending individuals should be expelled without any form of trial, and deprived of their rights of citizens. At the same time, certain religious orders which, it was pretended, were affiliated with the Jesuits, were subjected to the like treatment.

All ecclesiastical seminaries were suppressed, the solons of legislation pretending that it was necessary to oblige the candidates for the priesthood to imbue their minds in lay schools, with the ideas and wants of modern society.

The new laws abolished articles fifteen, sixteen and eighteen of the Prussian Constitution, which guaranteed the autonomy of the different forms of worship; they bestowed on the State the nomination to ecclesiastical functions, and went so far as to forbid bishops the use of their right to declare apostates excluded from the Catholic communion.