The War Upon Religion / Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-Christianism in Europe

by Francis A. Cunningham

In the Council of the Vatican, the position held by Ketteler in regard to the Definition of the Great Dogma, was that of many German bishops, namely, that while admitting the doctrine of infallibility as true and essentially Catholic, they were unwilling to admit that its definition was just then opportune. On the eve of the last session Mgr. Ketteler addressed to Pius IX. a letter full of submission, and during the rest of his life he defended the doctrine with all the enthusiasm of his heart and soul.

During the Kulturkampf until his death the great prelate proved a power of resistance against the tyranny of Bismarck, and although he could not live to behold the final failure of the enemy, he was rejoiced to know that the persecution was already producing fruits of conversion and edification everywhere. His great soul comprehended that the Church must finally come forth from the contest crowned with the glory of triumph. It was in the assurance of this hope that he died in the Capuchin Convent of Bruchhausen in Bavaria, as he was returning from his last visit to Pope Pius IX. His part in the Kulturkampf, we shall review in the succeeding paragraphs.

Such then were the giants who came to the conflict of the Kulturkampf armed cap-a-pie, one indeed, with the weapons forged by hate and selfish ambition; the others with those emblems of Christian faith the lustre of which called forth the admiration even of the adversaries, and finally brought all opposition to a standstill.

III.

The Kulturkampf! The name was invented by Virchow, the atheistic professor. He calls it a War for Civilization, though he of all men very well knew that the reality could mean only a return to savagery and barbarism. But as the Kulturkampf began in hypocrisy, was continued in hypocrisy, and finished in cowardly hypocrisy, what matters it, if even the name by which the mongrel is called is also born of hypocrisy!

The war was not the sudden ebullition of frenzied fear; it was a carefully prepared campaign. It was launched only when every circumstance seemed favorable to its success. France and Austria were helpless to oppose it; England and Italy were full of encouragement; the Protestants of Germany were excited by the spectre of infallibility; the Liberals welcomed it as a rebuke against their old enemy, Conservatism; the Holy Father himself was closed in behind the walls of the Vatican, a prisoner, and therefore without the prestige of governmental influence. At the beginning of 1871, the Catholic Church in Germany stood alone without an influential friend in the world. It was then that cowardice raised its hand to strike; it was the act of a ruffian felling with a blow of his mailed fist the woman whom robbers had left half dead by the roadside.

If the Catholics were to blame in any manner, it was only because they had permitted themselves to be cajoled in advance by the smiles and hypocritical advances of Bismarck and his henchman, though it is true, they had every right to expect a grateful treatment from the new Empire. In 1870, Peter Reichensperger, one of the most prudent leaders of the Catholic party, advised the Bavarian Diet to join the Prussian alliance, through the trust he had in that State at the moment. Even Bishop Ketteler was deceived when he beheld the comparatively fair treatment of Catholics in the Rhenish province, whose proximity to France rendered it advisable that they should not be discomforted, though at the same time the Polish subjects of Prussia, at the other end of the Kingdom were complaining of political aggressions against their religious liberty. Bishop Ketteler, however, was soon compelled to avow his mistake. "It was a great fault on our part," he writes, "to have believed in the stability of the Prussian Constitution, in the rights which it plainly allowed us. We were culpable for having believed that, in Prussia, justice could triumph over the inveterate prejudice against Catholics, and over party feelings. We were deceived; but our fault is not of the kind that should cause us to blush."

The Catholics had, indeed, just reason to expect favorable treatment. They had been repeatedly assured that it would be accorded to them. In 1870 the Emperor, replying to an address from the Knights of Malta from the Rhenish Provinces and Westphalia, had uttered the significant words: "I regard the occupation of Rome by the Italians as an act of violence; and when this war is ended, I shall not fail to take it into consideration, in concert with other sovereigns."

Thus it was that the Catholic people of Germany, whose men fought against the bullets of France for the Fatherland, whose priests and nuns went about the battle fields succoring and comforting the wounded and the dying, who, in a word, stood in every trial foremost among the defenders of the King and of his Government, were unprepared to see the hand that they had aided, raised in a moment to strike them down, and the sword that they had supported, uplifted for their extermination. It was again the conflict of the Church against a lying, hypocritical, ungrateful world.

THE CENTRE.