enthusiastic characters like King William the Fourth might cherish, and which might also claim a place in the thoughts of the Bavarian king, could scarcely have much attraction for Döllinger. But it was otherwise with the second idea which King Maximilian had elaborated, that is, with the idea of a German national church; and, finally, with the third idea, that of the absorption of all the confessions into a universal republic of savants, and the church into a world-academy of science. Here the thread of the supernatural is completely lost, though, perchance, the king himself was not aware of it; for, is this not the most utter rationalism?
If, now, we look at Döllinger’s declaration of the 28th of March, we will find these two ideas standing out in bold relief. The odious antithesis of Germanism and Romanism may indeed be in harmony with the reigning political spirit; it certainly is incompatible with the idea of the Catholic Church. Whoever presumes in the name of nationality to speak of any member of the church as of the “Roman party,” either knows not what he is doing or must wish the “German national church” in schism. From this there is but one step, and that not a hard one for the pride of intellect or the haughtiness of science, to the position occupied by Döllinger in his declaration to the archbishop, in which he places the scientific fraternity of historians as the highest authority over the church, and makes it the court of final appeal in matters of faith. And yet the learned gentleman, although he signs himself only “a Christian,” will have us consider him a Catholic.
It is impossible to look into the abyss into which this once clear thinker has fallen without a feeling of terror. Is it not sufficient to open the eyes of every one that the apostles of
German Catholicism and free religion, like a Heribert Rau and an Oswald, have again called the attention of the public to their already published works as an “interesting commentary on Dr. Döllinger’s protest”?
It is true that Döllinger has nothing in common with those men in his views of his relations to God; but then we must remember these gentlemen are only drawing their own consequences, and Döllinger has lost all right to find fault with the consequences they draw.
The unwarranted introduction of nationalism into the idea of the church was doubtless Döllinger’s first step downhill. This gained, the disturbers of the peace of the church soon possessed themselves of the whole man. There can be nothing more hostile to the real spirit of Catholicism than this false principle of nationality; for the end of the church, in a spiritual point of view, is to smooth away all national differences, and bring the different nations into one fold.
To wish, at a time like the present, when the fanaticism of nationality, if we may be allowed the expression, is tending to alienate still more the peoples of different nations—to wish, we say, at such a time to destroy the only tie that holds them together, is to betray the wildest party fanaticism imaginable.
We can understand what the cry for a German national church means in the mouths of those modern Neros, the liberalists—in the mouth of any one else, we cannot understand it.
We know very well that Döllinger was very far from desiring a schism when he spoke at the Linzer Catholic meeting in 1850, upon the subject of the place of German nationalism in the church. It was somewhat otherwise in his declarations in the Munich Conference in 1863. There a turning-point was discoverable.
A short time previously, the at first purely scientific difference with the “Roman party,” or neo-scholastics, had arisen. Döllinger had roused the suspicions of these latter; but we feel certain that at that time there were no grounds for their suspicions. He was, it was plain, only a little too susceptible to the influences of a certain kind of liberalism, and extraordinarily anxious to do away with any suspicion of adhering to the Ultramontane party.