At this very moment the old conflict between the Church and despotic governments is raging fiercely throughout Europe. The scene enacted by John and Herod is today reproduced in almost every kingdom of the old world. It is the old fight between brute force and the God-given rights of conscience.
In Russia we see the Bishop of Plock exiled for life from his See to Siberia. His only offence is his refusal to acknowledge that the Emperor Alexander is the head of the Christian Church.
If we pass over into Italy we see religious men and women driven from their homes; their houses and libraries confiscated—libraries which pious and learned men had been collecting and consulting for ages. The only crime of those religious is that they have not the power to resist brute force.
Cross the Alps into France and there you will see that many-headed monster, the Commune, assassinating the Archbishop of Paris and his clergy, solely because he and they were the representatives of law and order.
In the Republic of Switzerland Bishop Mermillod is expelled from Geneva without the slightest charge adduced against his character as a citizen and a Christian Prelate. Faithful clergymen are deprived by the government of their parochial rights and renegade Priests are intruded in their place. The shepherd is driven away and wolves lay waste the fold.
Go to Prussia; what do you behold there? A Prime Minister flushed with his recent victories over France. He is not content with seeing his master wear the imperial crown of Germany; he wants him to wear also the tiara of the Pope. Bismarck, like Aman, the minister of King Assuerus, is not satisfied with being second in the kingdom so long as Mardochai, that is the Church, refuses to bow down and worship him.
He fines the venerable Archbishop of Gnesen-Posen and other Prussian Prelates again and again, sells their furniture and finally sends them to prison for a protracted period. St. John Chrysostom beautifully remarks that St. Paul, elevated to the third heaven, was glorious to contemplate; but that far more glorious is Paul buried in the dungeons of Rome. I can say in like manner, of Archbishop Ledochowski of Posen, that he was conspicuous in the Vatican Council among his peers; but he was still more conspicuous sitting solitary in his Prussian prison.
The loyalty of the Prussian clergy is above reproach. The Bishops are imprisoned because they insist on the right of educating students for the [pg 245] ministry, ordaining and appointing clergy, without consulting the government. They are denied a right which in this country is possessed by Free Masons and every other human organization in the land.
Perhaps a simple illustration will present to you in a clearer light the odious character of the penal laws to which I have alluded. Suppose the government of the United States were to issue a general order requiring the clergy of the various Christian denominations to be educated in government establishments, forcing them to take an oath before entering on the duties of the ministry, and forbidding the ecclesiastical authorities to appoint or remove any clergyman without permission of the civil power at Washington. Would not the American people rise up in their might before they would submit to have fetters so galling forged on their conscience? And yet this is precisely the odious legislation which the Prussian government is enacting against the Church. And the Catholic Church, in resisting these laws, is not only fighting her own battles, but she is contending for the principle of freedom of conscience everywhere.
But, thank God, we live in a country where liberty of conscience is respected, and where the civil constitution holds over us the ægis of her protection, without intermeddling with ecclesiastical affairs. From my heart, I say: America, with all thy faults, I love thee still. Perhaps at this moment there is no nation on the face of the earth where the Church is less trammelled, and where she has more liberty to carry out her sublime destiny than in these United States.