Pius IX. And His Time

by Æneas MacDonell Dawson

The Protestant and free-thinking majority in Switzerland were jealous of the prosperity of the Catholic Church. They must, therefore, if possible, divide, and by dividing, weaken, if not destroy, the Catholic body. The most efficient means they could think of was the establishment of an old or alt-Catholic Church on the model of that of Germany. The idea was at hand, and the elements were not far to seek. Among the Swiss Catholic clergy there were none so weak as to betray their church. In the coterminous country—France, where there are fifty thousand parochial priests, some thirty were found already in disgrace among their brethren, who were ready to form the nucleus of the proposed schismatical church. The pretext was the pretended novelties introduced by the Œcumenical Council of the Vatican, which, they insisted, changed the character of the ancient Catholic Church. The schism once on foot, the majority in the State affected to treat the real Catholics as dissenters, and the handful of schismatics as the Catholic Church of Switzerland. Founding on this idea, persecution was speedily inaugurated. First came the secularization of several abbeys, which the revolution of the sixteenth century had respected, in the northern cantons, and the confiscation of the Church of Zurich, which was handed over to the alt-Catholics. Their next measure was the expulsion of Mgr. Mermillod, Bishop of Hebron and Coadjutor of Geneva. Mgr. Lachat, Bishop of Bale, was then deprived, and, on a purely theological pretext, his public adhesion to the Council of the Vatican. The sixty-nine parish priests of Bernese Jura, having declared in writing that they remained faithful to the Bishop of Bale, were, in their turn, suspended from their offices and driven, at first, from their parishes, and afterwards from the country. As there was not a sufficient [pg 411] number of foreign priests to replace the dispossessed clergy, the number of parishes was arbitrarily reduced from seventy-six to twenty-eight. It was regulated that nominations should, henceforth, be made by the government alone, and by a single stroke of the pen were suppressed, both the Concordat concluded with Rome, in 1828, and the act of re-union of 1815, by which, when Bernese Jura, formerly French, was incorporated with Switzerland, an engagement was made with France to respect, in every way, the liberty of Catholic worship. France was not in a position, at the time, to enforce the terms of the treaty. They who dared to call it to mind, accordingly, were sent to prison or heavily fined.

Almost all the Bernese clergy, when banished from their churches and presbyteries, sought shelter and protection on the hospitable soil of France. From that country they returned often, under cover of night, to their forsaken parishes, in order to administer the sacraments and perform other religious offices for the consolation of their flocks, hastening back to the land of liberty and safety before the approach of day. The persecution was carried to such extremes that the Catholics were not only deprived of their churches, but forbidden, under severe penalties, to assemble for Divine worship, even in barns or such-like places. “As an official of the State of Bearn,” wrote a school inspector to a school mistress, “you are bound to strive, with all your might, that the purposes of the said State, as regards attendance at public worship, be carried out. If your conscience does not admit of your attending the Church which is recognized and approved by the government, I leave you at liberty to refrain from attending any worship, but I forbid you to go to the barn, where the deprived parish priest officiates, because I would not have you set a bad example to your children.”

No encouragement or word of consolation that Pius IX. could bestow, was wanting to his persecuted children of Switzerland. In addressing Bishop Lachat, whom he received with every mark of friendship, when he came to represent the sad [pg 412] condition to which he was reduced, the Holy Father said: “To you also it is now given to experience the greatest happiness that can fall to the lot of an apostolic man. This happiness is thus expressed in the New Testament: Ibant gaudentes, quoniam digni habiti sunt pro nomine Jesu contumeliam pati. They went away rejoicing, because they were thought worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus.”

The Prussian chancellor, as devoid of humanity as he was short-sighted in statesmanship, forbad the exiled clergy of Switzerland to set foot in the annexed Province of Alsace. The brutal conduct of the chancellor could, however, only injure himself. It stigmatizes him as a persecutor throughout the ages, as long as history shall be read, whilst the sufferers to whom he refused shelter and bread, found abundant compensation in the generous hospitality of the French nation.

Mentita est iniquitas sibi. The persecution brought little benefit to either the Protestant or infidel party in the Bernese Legislature, by whom it was inaugurated, whilst the moral power of the Catholics was greatly increased. Travellers relate that “the Catholics of Jura treat with a degree of contempt, as immense as is their faith, the apostate priests who banished the true ministers of God. They assembled in barns and all sorts of out-buildings, all remaining faithful to God, the Holy Church and their parish priests. Faith which slept in some souls is reawakened and endowed with new life. Bernese Jura is more Catholic than ever.”

The Central Council of the Swiss Confederation, at length, became ashamed of the inglorious name which the Canton of Bearn was making for the common country—the country of William Tell so highly famed for its love of liberty and its noble hospitality. Perhaps, also, they were not unconcerned to find that travellers from other lands protested, in their way, against the barbarous persecution, and left their money in more favored lands.

The Bernese government was advised, either to proceed legally and regularly against the parish priests, or to recall [pg 413] them. There being nothing on which to found legal proceedings, the exiles returned to their country at the end of 1875. The persecution was not, however, at an end. Neither churches, nor presbyteries, nor liberty, were restored. The faithful clergy, rich in the fidelity of their devoted flocks, fulfilled the duties of their ministry in the darkness of night, using every precaution in order to escape the snares of the police, and to avoid fines and imprisonment, which were now the punishment instead of exile.

GREAT BRITAIN AND THE BRITISH COLONIES.

Taking leave of the dark and dreary pages which bear the melancholy record of persecution, we turn, with a feeling of relief, to the more cheering picture presented by those countries where the great principle of religious liberty has come, at length, to be fully understood. It was a great day for the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, when the legal disabilities which weighed so long on the Catholic people, were removed. It was the noble and powerful protest of a mighty empire against the narrow and irrational spirit of persecution, which still disgraces so many of the European nations. If ever the Catholics, by superiority of numbers, which is far from being an impossible state of things, should come to sway the destinies of that empire, the glorious fact will be remembered and bear its fruit. England, Ireland and Scotland, already enjoy an abundant measure of their reward, in the increase of piety and of that righteousness which exalteth a nation. This is manifest in many ways. It is particularly shown forth by the more friendly feeling towards the Catholics of the empire which now universally prevails. We may not be supposed to know much, here in Canada, about the state of sentiment or opinion in England. But when we appeal to the testimony of so eminent an Englishman as Cardinal Newman, what we affirm cannot be easily gainsaid. In a discourse recently delivered at Birmingham, on the growth of the Catholic Church in England, the very learned cardinal noted the [pg 414] striking contrast between the feeling towards Catholics in Cardinal Wiseman's time and that of the present day, and accounted for the improvement by showing that there is now a much better knowledge of the Catholic religion among Protestants. “What I wish to show,” said his Eminence, “and what I believe to be the remarkable fact is, that whereas there have been many conversions to the Catholic Church during the last thirty years, and a great deal of ill-will felt towards us, in consequence, nevertheless, that ill-will has been overcome, and a feeling of positive good-will has been created instead in the minds of our very enemies, by means of those conversions which they feared from their hatred of us. How this was, let me now say: The Catholics in England, fifty years ago, were an unknown sect amongst us. Now there is hardly a family but has brothers or sisters, or cousins or connections, or friends and acquaintances, or associates in business or work, of that religion, not to mention the large influx of population from the sister island: and such an interpenetration of Catholics with Protestants, especially in our great cities, could not take place without there being a gradual accumulation of experience, slow, indeed, but therefore the more sure about individual Catholics, and what they really are in character, and, whether or not, they can be trusted in the concerns and intercourse of life; and I fancy that Protestants, spontaneously, and before setting about to form a judgment, have found them to be men whom they could be drawn to like and to love quite as much as their fellow-Protestants—to be human beings in whom they could be interested and sympathize with, and interchange good offices with, before the question of religion came into consideration.”

The increase in the number of Catholics and of Catholic institutions in Great Britain, has kept pace with the growth of friendly sentiments in their regard. That island, “the mother of nations,” appears to be destined to unite by means of her ever spreading language, the immense family of mankind. For what end and purpose none can tell. The hidden ways of [pg 415] Divine Providence are known to God alone. We may, nevertheless, in view of certain well-known facts, presume to draw the veil of mystery aside, and discover so far the secret of God's mercy. In Pius the Ninth's time the number of Catholics has been doubled in Great Britain, as well as in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, remote India and the Cape of Good Hope.