“If there was no ground of suspicion during all these long years, no reason to believe that these men were hankering after dangerous novelties, how comes it recently that such suspicions are aroused, seeing that they have always been of the same mind?” It is now certain that this unanimity has since ceased; and it is clear that Döllinger’s monstrous accusation—“not a soul believes it”—must have been unjustly brought by him against his colleagues. The articles also quote the words of the Tübingen theologian: “The suspicion has spread further—Döllinger and Michelis are no longer innocent.” What says the Tübinger of the drifting of these two men to-day?
On the first of January, 1867, the Hohenlohe ministry took charge of the ship of state.
It will not be claimed that Döllinger’s influence increased with the accession of his old friend Prince Hohenlohe to the ministry; it seemed more probable that the prince would have found the learned professor a powerful obstacle in his way. The prince had formerly been considered unexceptionable in his religious views and relations; but in order to dissipate the bad odor in which he was in the highest circles, suspected as he was of favoring Prussia, he knew no better method than to encourage the superstitious fear of the Ultramontanes
and of the Jesuits which for twenty years had reigned within the walls of the royal palace at Munich. This it was which had made Dr. Döllinger so interesting a subject since he was regenerated from the infection of Ultramontanism.
Countenanced by such a man, it was thought the discomfiting of the “clerical party” would be a less dangerous operation than effecting it by an unasked-for alliance with the party of progress.
This explains how Prince Hohenlohe, at the head of the foreign department, was determined to serve Döllinger in every way possible against the “Curia” and all matters related to it.
The infamous articles on the Council appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung from the 10th to the 15th March, 1869, under an anonymous name. Every effort was made to conceal the author, and even to mislead the public as to who he was. The real author could not conceal himself as far as we were concerned; but it required a long time to convince the many, and great was the surprise of all unprejudiced minds at the discovery.
In the meantime, the preparation of the anonymous Janus was undertaken, and the circulatory dispatches of Prince Hohenlohe made their appearance on the 9th of April, 1869, which, of course, Döllinger could not well subscribe as their author. The council of ministers, of course, was not consulted in the matter; and the well-known five questions put by Prince Hohenlohe to the theological faculties of Munich and Würzburg, concerning the future council, were not whispered to the minister of foreign affairs by some secret agent.
In the name of the majority of the faculty of Munich, Döllinger was
called upon to answer his own questions. In contradistinction to the clear and frank separate vote of Professors Schmid and Thalhofer, and to the incisive opinion of the Würzburger faculty, that exposition was but the unworthy production of a time-server. It was impossible for any one to discover the real meaning of the opinion. The only thing plainly discoverable was the ambiguity by which the author sought to shield himself from trouble.