The ideas expressed in the royal conversation above referred to are here recognizable, more particularly in the introduction, as well as the endeavor to harmonize them with the principles of the church. It would not be very difficult to allay the doubts which Döllinger has endeavored to awaken concerning the mediæval church and the Papacy in his (or his amanuensis’s) letters on the council in the Allgemeine Zeitung, and now in his “declaration,” from his own work of 1861. The Encyclical, and particularly the doctrine of the Syllabus on the relations of church and state, may be both explained and defended by the assistance of the same book. Döllinger then knew very well how to vindicate the true sense of certain decrees and bulls of the popes issued while the mediæval
relations of the church to the state were yet in force; he well knew then how to separate what is transient from that which is eternally true. If, at that time, any one had come to him to tell him that Napoleon III. intended to take advantage of the Bull “Cum ex apostolatus officio” against the Protestant princes of Germany and Prussia, with what shouts of laughter would he not have received him! Now he himself is guilty of just such an absurdity—and how grave he is withal!
The question of the relations of science to church authority became now in Bavaria a practical question, and Döllinger was called upon to prove the strength of his principles by overt acts. One difference followed another in that country, and Döllinger was as interested in them as he could be in matters entirely personal to himself. Like a general, he felt himself responsible for the result of all those contests, and never thought of examining closely the claims of those who crowded around him and offered him their services. In this way it was that he became the protector of one so unworthy as Pichler against the archiepiscopal ordinary. At this time, even, he had his passionate turns, which gave rise to serious misgivings, but which he was sure to regret himself before any length of time had expired.
At this period the episcopal conference at Fulda resolved to take steps to revive action in the matter of the establishment of a “free Catholic university.” Döllinger could see in this nothing but the proof of a dark conspiracy against German science.
He was unable to see that the anti-ecclesiastical, not to say the antichrist, spirit which had crept into the universities, was more than even he would be willing to be accountable
for were he the chief pastor of a diocese.
The opinion expressed in an appeal to the Catholic ladies of Germany on the subject of the higher schools, made him lose his patience altogether. The outbreak of the Seminary question in Spiers was in his view another attempt of those infected with the “Roman” spirit against free German science, and it found him, even if not publicly, on the side of the decided opponents of the bishop’s rightful claim in the matter.
Very nearly at the same time, the then Bavarian minister of worship made a report to the king on the occasion of a vacancy in the theological faculty of Würzburg, in which he painted the clergy educated in the German College at Rome in no flattering terms. An accidental circumstance threw suspicion on Döllinger as the instigator of it. The pamphlet “for the information of kings,” which appeared in the beginning of 1866, represented Döllinger, although only under the general name “of the Munich school,” as the real actor in the minister of worship’s puppet-play. There was a report that in the Spiers matter, speaking of the attitude of the bishops, he had said: “They are attempting to misuse the king’s youth!” How much of this had its foundation in truth, to what extent the statements of the pamphlet were based on a change or mistake between the ministry and cabinet, must remain undecided.
The pamphlet referred to created no small excitement, however; and, precisely two years before the appearance of the notorious articles on the Council, was exhaustively replied to in the Allgemeine Zeitung. The style and other accidents would lead to suppose that the “amanuensis,” since known more of, had here made
his début. The reply was not a refutation. It was made up of a series of counter-complaints, and, with the exception of the attacks on the Jesuits, the Roman party, and the boys’ seminaries, these articles contain the kernel of the articles against the Council published two years later. In spite of all this, however, Döllinger is represented in these articles as of the same unaltered mind with other members of the faculty, Haneberg and Reithmayer.