The patriotic hopes and ideas of his early life were more and more baffled, and he at last saw that any mere political efforts are fruitless; for the decay of peoples and states is not caused so much by political degradation, as by religious and moral corruption. The more he dived into the history of mankind, the more clearly did he perceive that Christianity, which brings redemption to the individual and true freedom to the children of God, is the only source of a people's salvation. When living Christian faith becomes a stranger in the public and private life of citizens; when self-interest and worldly wisdom take the place of Christian charity and justice, then will the interest of the ruler and the subject, of the church and state, of private wealth and corporations, which should all conspire to the common weal, collide, become hostile, and engender confusion and revolution. Görres learned by experience that, since religion had lost its authority, and the Gospel ceased to command respect, the civil power had also lost force, and the liberty of the people had become unstable and undefined, so that Europe wavered with feverish restlessness between despotism and anarchy, revolution and reaction. Men in this doubtful conflict b the egotism of princes and the egotism of subjects, become wrapped up in the natural and earthly, and supernatural.
Investigating the causes of this decline of Christianity, Görres discovered that the faith of Christ is not a dead letter, but a thing endowed with divine life; and as political and social life has stability and force only in the state, so Christian life is only in the church, the kingdom founded by Christ; and as a sound social system depends on the autonomy and freedom of the state, so religious life rests on the liberty of the church. Hence the chief cause of the decay of religion is in the dependence and subjection of the church to the state. The eighteenth century, that age of tyranny and unbelief, had enslaved the church; the revolution and Napoleon made the slavery complete. True, the animus of the war of freedom was a religious as well as a national one; the Holy Alliance, formed in the name of the Trinity, proclaimed Christianity as the groundwork of politics and popular rights; but this religious enthusiasm of 1813 and 1814, not resting on the solid basis of faith, being rather a vague feeling than a conviction, soon cooled off, and the Christian principles of the Holy Alliance were only written on paper, not on the hearts and minds of the high contracting parties. In reality, religion and church remained in the oppressed and debased condition in which Josephism and Napoleonism had placed them. Educated the school of the 18th century, and under Napoleonic influence, statesmen, even after the restoration, continued to mistrust the church, to keep her in the leading-strings of high policy, and repress every one of her free motions. To cap the climax of evil, the church herself, especially in Germany, was so poor and powerless, that she could make no valid opposition to the insulting guardianship of the state; and even churchmen were found weak and selfish enough to become the willing tools of the civil government in destroying their own rights. The curse and plague of the church has ever been cowardly or renegade churchmen. This enslavement of the church was most oppressive and dangerous in those districts of Germany which had been governed by catholic, and, as long as the empire lasted, by spiritual lords, but were now controlled by Protestant rulers. These, accustomed to Protestant teaching, which admitted an unlimited civil surveillance in ecclesiastical affairs, were only too willing to exercise their power over the Catholic Church. They wished and hoped to sever her connection with Rome; change her into a national church, and, uniting her with Lutherans and other sectaries, form one state church. Such a thought will not appear strange to us, if we consider that religious indifference reigned supreme, particularly among the educated classes. A fierce battle, not with the material sword, but with the weapons of faith and talent, was to be fought in order to free the church from the shackles of state control. The standard-bearer in this great conflict was, again, Joseph Görres.
The 11th of November, 1837, marks the turning-point of the career of the modern church in Germany. From that date it revived and began to be independent. To Clement Augustus von Dröste-Vischering, the great and pious Archbishop of Cologne, belongs the glory of opening the battle, and of bearing the first brunt of the onslaughts of the state. The civil government wished him, in contradiction to the laws of the church, to impart her blessing to mixed marriages; and also to give over the chairs of theology and the education of the young clergy to the Hermesians, whose coryphaeus, Hermes, had invented a half-way system between faith and rationalism. Clement Augustus, the Athanasius of our times, unarmed and alone, bravely entered the lists against the spirit of indifferentism and the whole power of the Prussian government. But Gregory XVI., in his memorable allocution of December 10th, 1837, made the cause of the archbishop his own; for it was the cause of religion, and the church. The Catholics of the Rhine province, awakened from their slumbers, rallied with unexpected ardor to the support of their chief pastor. But their cause needed the aid of the press, and Görres was the man to wield that power in their defence. He who had been standing so long on the watch-tower, observing and noting the signs of the times, saw that the moment had arrived to strike a blow for the liberty of the church. In January, 1838, appeared his Athanasius. It fell like a thunderbolt from an unclouded sky among all those who had expected, with the power of the state and an enlightened press, to make short work of the mediaeval archbishop. It came like a ray of divine light into the minds of the despised and intimidated Catholics, a ray that shone in their hearts, and enkindled in them faith and courage. There now arose in Germany a powerful catholic public opinion, which enforced respect from its adversaries. In vain did opponents swarm. Pietists, Hegelians, politicians, jurists, professors, and journalists wrote against Athanasius, which was spread over all Germany by four large editions. Görres answered the critics of Athanasius by another work, called Die Triarier, printed in 1838, and which achieved the spiritual victory of his first book.
The further history of this cause is known. The innocence of the archbishop and the right of the church were acknowledged; and the noble ruler, who then sat on the Prussian throne, confessed the justice of the principles which Görres had so ably explained and defended. The battle between Protestantism and Catholicity for the future should be on even footing; carried on no longer by force or cunning, but by spiritual weapons alone. This is all that truth requires to disarm her enemies—a fair field and no treachery. At the same time with the Athanasius of Görres, catholic public opinion found a vehicle in the Historisch-politische Blätter, edited at Munich. Görres was its chief of staff. His last article in this magazine, which exercised the greatest influence throughout Germany, and which still flourishes, appeared in the January number of 1848, shortly before his death.
Freedom of the church is the condition of its beneficent and working life, but not the life itself. Faith is the basis of religious and church life; faith in the supernatural ideas and facts of revelation, whose centre is Christ, the incarnate Son of God and Redeemer of the world. This faith seemed to have disappeared with the freedom of the church. Protestantism, which began by denying the church, logically ended with a denial of the existence of Christ. Strauss wrote his Life of Jesus with this intention. Even among the Catholics, indifferentism, rationalism, and infidelity had made ravages, and men asked, Where was the faith of the Catholic populations? A striking answer to this question was the Pilgrimage to Trier; the extraordinary spectacle of over a million of free men attesting their living belief in Christ the Son of God; a proof that the Catholic people despised sham liberalism and sham enlightenment, set revolutions at defiance, and professed the same faith as in the days of their fathers. This was the meaning of that remarkable event, which Görres explains in his last published pamphlet, called the Pilgrimage to Trier.
Görres now ceased to be a publicist. He had written countless works; he had aided truth with word and work. No one had done more. No one had seen so clearly into the future. He had attacked selfishness in high and low. His enemies were countless. No man received so much abuse as he; no one was the object of greater hate and more fierce persecution. Yet you will seek in vain for one word of invective against his adversaries in any of his works. His blood boils; his words rush; his lips quiver; his pen runs nervously along the paper; his sentences glow and thrill in defence of truth; but he is never abusive or personal. He chastises wickedness, carves iniquity with the knife of satire, and scourges folly by his wit; but in the midst of the battle he has ever a friendly hand to stretch out to his opponent. Would that all our modern journalists might take a lesson from him in this respect!
Viewing things from the standpoint of divine providence, and having no desire but that of seeing the divine plans realized, he was always tranquil in the midst of storms and confusion. His writings as a publicist are consequently not merely ephemeral, or of passing importance but contain the most profound views on the relations of church and state, on the dogmas of religion, the principles of philosophy, politics, and history.
But the influence of Görres was not confined to mere journalism; he studied and developed science and art. Görres possessed immense knowledge; yet little of it was school learning. He had aided to free his fatherland and the church; he also helped to free science and art from their shackles. The learned almost despised the supernatural. The lives of the saints were looked on as so many myths; their miracles absurd; and everything that was not rational or natural was considered as the result of superstition and ignorance. In order to counteract this tendency of the age, and bring out boldly the belief in the supernatural, Görres wrote in 1826, his St. Francis, a Troubadour; in 1827, Emmanuel Swedenborg, his Visions, and Relation to the Church; an introduction to Diepenbrock's edition of the works of Blessed Henry Suso; and in 1842, his greatest work, in five volumes, entitled Christian Mysticism.
The foundation and source of all mystic theology is the incarnation of God, the union of the divine with the human, in order that the latter should be united with the divine. But what took place in Christ is not merely a passing event, but a living, enduring act of God; who continues the incarnation in the most holy sacrament of the altar, the mystery of mysteries; through which the wonderful life and works of Christ, according to his promise, are continued in the saints of his church. Hence come the supernatural phenomena of visions and ecstasies in the corporal and spiritual life of the saints.