In 1863, at an assembly of savants, at Munich, he discussed in a very bold manner the "Past and the Present of Catholic Theology," which called forth words of indignation from Scheeben, the eminent theologian of Cologne. Doellinger, together with some other disaffected Catholics, considered that the moment had nearly arrived for displaying open hostility to Rome. The man who had defended the Church in the Bavarian Chamber from the year 1845, who had spoken in terms of pure loyalty and affection at the Parliament of Frankfort, and at the Catholic congresses, who had spoken in no uncertain terms against the persecutions incident to the question of mixed marriages, who had flayed with his vehement scorn the supporters of a bill to abolish clerical celibacy, and had denounced the profligacy of King Louis and his favorite Lola Montez, in 1848, was preparing to turn his back upon a career so brilliant, and to take up arms against his mother, the ancient Church.
In 1869 when Pope Pius IX. named the commission which was to prepare the way for the Council of the Vatican, the name of Doellinger was omitted from the list. Although he could expect no other treatment than this, having already signified his utter disregard of all that history and tradition had taught concerning the Holy See, and having even gone out of his way to invent calumnies and garbled citations from historical writers in opposition to every papal claim, nevertheless Doellinger protested against his exclusion from this august body, and accordingly manifested even in advance his hostile attitude to any and every decision which the future Council might make. One of his principal moves in this direction was to instigate Prince Hohenlohe, president of the Bavarian ministry, to arouse all the cabinets of Europe against the Holy Father.
During the Vatican Council he gave his best talents to the cause of opposition. While the episcopate of the whole world was deliberating in St. Peter's, Doellinger published his heretical views in his Janus, and in various Roman Letters to the Allgemeine Zeitung, besides putting forth many "declarations" stigmatizing the work of the Council. When the Archbishop of Munich demanded his submission to the decrees of the Council, Doellinger made a formal refusal, on March 28, 1871, and drew upon himself the sentence of excommunication.
APOSTASY OF DOELLINGER.
The decisive step was now taken, and Doellinger in separating himself from the Catholic body was welcomed by the enthusiastic acclamations of all the liberal camp. Dreaming that he was about to play the role of a new Luther, the apostate gathered about him the disaffected elements of German Catholicism, especially in the various universities of the country. Men who held high prestige in the scientific and literary world, threw themselves at his feet and called him the savior of Germany. Forty-four professors in the University of Munich, a stronghold of Rationalism ever since 1848, and among them Freiderich Sepp and Reischl, were foremost among the defenders. Theologians like Hilgers, Langen, Reusch, and Knoodt from the University of Bonn; Reinkens, Baltzer and Weber, from Breslau; Michelis, from Braunsberg, and Schulte from Prague were but the leaders in the list of eminent savants who placed themselves under his rebel banner. The heart of Doellinger was inflated with pride and in laying the foundations of that sect to which the euphonious title of "The Old Catholics" was given, the apostate imagined that a new Reformation was beginning, which would presently count its supporters by the thousands and millions.
History, with pitiless irony, has told the sad fate of his ambitions. Despite the immense aid given by the State to the new religion, despite the prestige even of Doellinger and his savants, the Old Catholics degenerated in a few years into a squabbling, disunited mob, to such an extent that Doellinger himself became ashamed of the child of his fancy. Too proud to acknowledge publicly the error which his heart recognized, he continued his apostasy until his death, by apoplexy, January 10, 1890.
Hermes, Günther, Frohschammer and Doellinger were but the manifestations of that spirit of disorder among the German Catholics, whose purpose was primarily to reconcile, by their own methods, the spirit of faith with the spirit of the age. Pride had created blindness, and blindness, spiritual suicide. But the liberal world that looked on placed their mutilated carcasses upon the altars of hate, and made their fall the occasion of fiery denunciations against the Church and all that it represented.
PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY.
A second cause of the Kulturkampf lay in the desire of Prussia's rulers and statesmen to place the Protestant Evangelical Church in a position whence it might dominate all religious life in the Empire. Long before efforts were made, especially after the Third Centenary of Luther in 1817, to bring the whole of Prussian Germany into the ranks of the Evangelical Church. The schemes manipulated by means of mixed marriages, the long and pitiless persecutions of Frederick William III., followed by the comparative peace during the reign of Frederick William IV. This latter period had been prolific in examples of Christian life, in pilgrimages to holy shrines, in a great increase of popular devotion, in the spread of religious orders with their sane and vivifying influences. The Catholic Church had been gradually arising out of a state of torpor and subjection to a position of prominence that called for consideration and respect from all non-Catholic sources.
The Protestants of Germany, however, were not altogether gratified at these beautiful results, and indeed, it was not long before they began to resent openly the evidences of Catholic progress. In their determination to stem the tide of Catholic conversion and increase they were not slow to use every means that opportunity placed at their disposal. Among these was the spirit of the Prussian people to which the name of Borussianism has been given, and which manifested itself as early as 1848.