Ten Years Near the German Frontier: A Retrospect and a Warning

by Maurice Francis Egan

The choice of the 'Germanisers' was the Reverend Dr. P. J. Schroeder—[Monseigneur] Schroeder, rather; he had been imported by Bishop Keane, afterwards Archbishop, to lecture at the Catholic University. Bishop Keane, like most Americans before the war, believed that Germany held many persons of genius who honoured us by coming over. When Dr. Schroeder's name was mentioned, a caustic English prelate had remarked: 'I thought the Americans had enough mediocrities in their own country without going abroad for them.' But Mgr. Schroeder had a very high opinion of himself. American Catholics were heretical persons, of no metaphysical knowledge; they could not count accurately the number of angels who could dance on the point of a needle! He arrogantly upheld the German idea. English-speaking priests were neither willing nor capable. The emigrants in the United States would be Germans or nothing—aut Kaiser aut nullus.

The German priests in the West claimed the right to exclude from the Sacraments all children and their parents who did not attend their schools, no matter how inefficient they were. The controversy became international.

In Germany, to deny the premises of Mgr. Schroeder was to be heretical, worthy of excommunication; in this country there was a camp of Kaiserites who held the same opinion. It is true that Bismarck had opened the Kulturkampf in the name of the unity of the Fatherland. It is true that the Kaiser would gladly have claimed the right his ancestors had struggled for—of investing Bishops with the badges of authority—and that he gave his hearty approbation to the exile of the Jesuits. Nevertheless, he was the Kaiser! Compared with him, the President of the United States was an upstart, and Cardinal Gibbons was to the ultra-Germans almost an anathema as Cardinal Mercier is! There was a fierce struggle for several years. Bombs, more or less ecclesiastical, were dropped on Archbishop Ireland's diocese.

To hear some of these bigots talk, we would have thought that this brave American was Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun. But the right won. Cahenslyism was stamped out, and here was another reason why the Kaiser did not love Archbishop Ireland, and another reason why Bavaria and Austria, backed up by Prussia, protested against every attempt on the part of Rome to give him the Cardinal's hat. This would have meant the highest approval of a prelate who stood for everything the Kaiser and the Bavarian and Austrian courts detested.

The curia is made up of the councillors of the Pope; a layman might be created Cardinal—it is not a sacerdotal office in itself—and while the Pope would reject with scorn the request that a temporal Government should nominate a bishop, he might accept graciously a request that a certain prelate be made a cardinal from the ruler of any nation.

If President Roosevelt had been willing to make such a request to Leo XIII.—he was urged to do it by many influential Protestants who saw what Archbishop Ireland had done in the interest of this country—there is no doubt that his request would have been granted. The Cardinals are 'created' for distinguished learning. One might quote the comparatively modern example of Cardinals Newman and Gasquet; for traditional reasons, because of the importance of their countries in the life of the Church; and they might be created, in older days, for political reasons. But the wide-spread belief that a Cardinal was necessarily a priest leads to misconceptions of the quality of the office.

If the French Republic were to follow the example of England and China, send an envoy to the Holy See, and make a 'diplomatic' rapprochement, neither Rome nor any nation in Europe would be shocked if His Holiness should consent to a suggestion from the President of the French Republic and 'create,' let us say, Abbé Klein a Cardinal.

Archbishop Ireland with his group of Americans saved us from the insults of the propaganda of Kaiserism. This name was synonymous with all things political and much that is social, loathed by the absolutes in Austria, Bavaria and, of course, Germany. The creation of Archbishop Ireland as a Cardinal would have been looked on by these powers as a deadly insult to them, on the part of the Pope. They made this plain.

The failure of the Cahensly plan caused much disappointment in Germany. The Kaiser, in spite of his flings at the Catholic Church—witness a part of the suppressed Century article and the letter to an aunt 'who went over to Rome'—was quite willing to appear as her benefactor. Much has been made of his interest in the restoration of the Cathedral of Cologne. This, after all, was simply a national duty. A monarch with over one-third of his subjects Catholics, taking his revenues from the taxes levied on them, could scarcely do less than assist in the preservation of this most precious historical monument.

He seemed to have become regardless of the opinion of his subjects. He had heart-to-heart talks with the world; one of these talks was with Mr. William Bayard Hale; the Century Magazine bought it for $1,000.00. It was to appear in December 1908. That its value as a 'sensation' was not its main value may be inferred from the character of the editors, Richard Watson Gilder, Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel—a group of scrupulously honourable gentlemen. This conversation with Mr. Hale took place on the Kaiser's yacht. It was evidently intended for publication, for the most indiscreet of sovereigns do not talk to professional writers without one eye on the public.