The turpitude of their rebellion against the church is equalled only by that of the means which they have adopted to defend it and to spread its principles. Repeating the worst and most perfidious slanders of the past against the church, and giving them out as the result of science, they proclaim to the world that the Apostolic See has for a thousand years been the seat of well-concocted fraud and deceit, and that in the most sacred of matters; that the Catholic Church is dangerous both to the state and to morals; and that the decree solemnly proclaimed by the Œcumenical Council, that Christ will for ever preserve his visible representative on earth from all error in faith and morals—a belief which has always been the key-stone of Catholic faith, Catholic life, and Catholic practice—is a doctrine inimical to the rights of the state. Under these pretexts, they require the state to deprive the Catholic Church of its rights, and of the liberty which has been guaranteed to it by the state, and not to recognize the church represented by the bishops and the Pope, but themselves, who have renounced all allegiance to it, as the legal Catholic Church, the only one recognized and promised protection by the state. Moreover, they desire that those Catholics who have remained faithful to the church shall be looked upon as recreant to the state, accusing them of want of patriotism. Designating all those peoples embraced in the Catholic Church by the name of the Romanists, they, in the name of what they designate Germanism, demand their oppression and extirpation.
And, we are sorry to say, these attempts have not been without some success. Individual governments have been induced to take steps against the church which, a short time ago, it was supposed it would be impossible to take, and which the Catholics living under those governments did nothing to warrant.
During this condition of affairs, the one hundred and twentieth Catholic Congress met in the second week of September in Mayence, to give expression in no weak or ambiguous terms to their faith, and to their views on the condition of things; and they did it with that unanimity and certainty which Catholic faith alone can give—a faith neither anxious nor troubled with doubt, or weakened by the spirit of the age.
This they did by their resolutions on the Roman question, on the Vatican Council, and on the more recent opposition that has been made to its decrees—and rightly; for, in the Roman question, the question of all external Christian law and order reaches its culminating point, as do theirs the constitution of the church itself, and the whole of Catholic faith, in the decrees of the Vatican Council.
The occupation of Rome is simply robbery—a crime against the church, against every individual Catholic which nothing can justify, which no principle of international law can excuse or cover, which no prescription can make valid. The so-called guarantees made to the church by the Italian government can never be accepted, because they are based upon the false principle that the state alone has the right to declare under what conditions the church and its pastors shall exercise their functions as teachers, priests, and shepherds of the flock—functions which they exercise in virtue of the power conferred upon them by Jesus Christ himself; because these laws do not by any means guarantee to the Pope the free discharge of his supreme authority as chief pastor, and, moreover, because there is not the least security that these guarantees will be respected. The occupation of Rome and of the Quirinal is the culmination of the policy of the Italian revolution, and the success of that policy the disgrace of this age. That the governments of European nations have done nothing to defend the Pope is an injustice to their Catholic subjects, a violation of the law of nations, and paves the way, necessarily, to the violation of all law and the overthrow of all order. And this is why it is that Catholics must for ever discountenance all these acts, and oppose them by all legitimate means. And their opposition cannot be rightfully construed as insubordination to the powers that be, or as a want of patriotism on their part. On the contrary, Catholics may be sure that in so acting they will be doing their government and their country the greatest possible service. Such service has been rendered by the resolutions of the Catholic Congress in Mayence.
It was well that, at the first general meeting of the society after the occupation of Rome, its members should give expression to their thought on the wicked act by which, for the third time in this century, it was attempted to destroy the work founded by divine Providence since the christianizing of the world, in order to secure to the head of the church his liberty and the efficient discharge of the duties of his high office. Nor could the members of the society express themselves concerning this crime otherwise than in bold words of truth and justice—in words becoming an occasion when the interests of God and man are alike at stake—in words such as nature itself puts into the mouth of those who have been the victims of great injustice or great misfortune. Worldly policy may wait, and consider itself justified in waiting, to take account of circumstances; but for us Catholics there is but one thing to do when the question is simply this—whether Christ or Antichrist shall reign, namely, what the martyrs did under circumstances still more aggravating, what God himself has commanded us to do, what we see his representative on earth doing—to proclaim the truth to those in power before kings and peoples.
It was, if possible, yet more necessary that the Catholic Congress should make a public profession of its faith in the decrees of the Œcumenical Council of the Vatican, that it should raise its voice against those proceedings of the government which have no object but to hinder the Catholic Church in the declaration of its doctrines, and to lead or force Catholics into heresy. And on these points again the association, in its resolutions, speaks the truth, and expresses the Catholic view on them, in the plainest and most direct manner, without any show of diplomacy or of pedantry. We joyfully profess, say they, our faith in everything which the church requires, particularly in the infallibility of the Pope teaching the universal church, and in the very sense in which the Vatican Council has defined it, do we believe it. And we are convinced that the definition of this truth in our time is no evil, but the work of a kind and good Providence, intended to strengthen the church, to preserve unity, to reclaim the erring. We reject with horror the caricature of the doctrine of Papal infallibility which the opponents of the Vatican Council have drawn, and we repudiate the slander that this doctrine or any other article of our faith is in conflict with our duties as subjects of our government, or with the allegiance which we owe our fatherland. We protest against the course of those governments which have endeavored to hinder the propagation of Catholic doctrine within their territories, and to favor the opposition to the church by their protecting the rebellion against it. In this manner, they have overstepped the bounds of their rightful authority, infringed the rights of conscience of their Catholic subjects, and made themselves responsible before God for a host of evils. The political principles which have led to these things are in conflict with the law of God, in fact with all law and order, and can never be recognized by Catholics as right or just. Yet are we not without the hope that the governments which have been guilty of these things will at no distant future forsake the unholy path upon which they have entered.
But the members of the Catholic Congress did not confine themselves to professing the Catholic faith, to raising a protesting voice against the encroachments on their liberties and on their rights—rights which should be ever inviolate; they pointed out the fertile source from which have flown as well the most recent evils as the more ancient ones which have done so much injury to the Catholic life of Germany. The source of all these evils, past as well as present, is in a science grounded on false principles, and which appropriates to itself exclusively, but not with any show of reason, the name of German science. These evils can be healed only by the cultivation of real Catholic science in Germany, and the most recent events demand absolutely that the reign of such a science should be inaugurated at once. But so long as the ancient institutions founded for Catholic purposes ignore, for the most part, the object of their being; when they have gone over, to a great extent, to infidelity or to secular management, it is extremely important, both to pastors and people, that new seats of science, of education, of real science and Christian education, should be established.
Such are the principal resolutions of the Catholic Congress held during the present year. What these resolutions contain is only the echo and essence of the thought of the assembly expressed in the orations and sayings of the members—the deep, unanimous, and undoubted convictions of all. These same thoughts found expression also in their addresses to the Holy Father, to the Bishop of Ermeland, to the Bavarian Episcopate, to the Bishops of Switzerland, as well as to the defenders of the Catholic faith in Italy and Austria. But is it right to assume that the voice of all Catholic Germany has been heard, and is heard, in the voice of this general meeting of Catholics? True it is that they would entirely misunderstand the essence and the spirit of the principles of the members of those meetings who would invest their doings or their sayings as a society with any authority; but they would err no less grossly who would consider these meetings as mere party meetings, or as meaning nothing as merely the coming together of a few private individuals. From the very significance of this year’s meeting’s resolutions, it may not be amiss to examine the question somewhat more closely—how much importance is to be attached, what significance and authority such Catholic meetings may have.
These general meetings are nothing more than the coming together of believing Catholics. They do not assume to have any power or authority ecclesiastical or political. They have nothing in their own right that entitles them to be considered as possessed of such power or authority, nor have they a power of attorney of any kind to represent any one else in these meetings.