1. Against the assertion that the Catholic population is indifferent to the interests of fatherland, and hostile to the empire. 2. Against the laic laws which would control the affairs of the churches. 3. Against the state direction of the schools. 4. Against the expulsion of the Jesuits. 5. Against the encroachment of the state on the jurisdiction of the bishops. 6. Against the suppression of the temporal power of the Pope.
Such is the Catholic voice all the world over. If rulers can respect this voice, they will have no more faithful, earnest, or devoted children than the children of the Catholic Church. If they cannot respect it, they have only to expect an unfailing legal opposition until they are compelled to respect it, as Ireland, speaking in O'Connell, compelled England to do; as Germany, by lawful agitation and peaceful though unceasing and determined protest, will compel Prince Bismarck to do, until we see again restored to the country which they love and which loves them the sons who, by peaceful counsel and wise guidance, and religious instruction, will bring more glory, solid prosperity, enlightenment, and peace to the nation than a cycle of Bismarcks.
The Bishop of Ermeland still survives the terrible threats of the chancellor which have been gathering over his head in deepening thunder this long while for excommunicating heretic priests; the bolt has not yet fallen. Perhaps Jove finds himself a little puzzled how to fulminate it to a nicety. To show the justice of the Bismarck government, and how equally it deals with all classes, the Consistory of Magdeburg has quite recently decreed the excommunication of all Protestants who by mixed marriages shall educate their children as Catholics; the decree has been carried into execution at Lippspring; the case brought before the civil courts, and of course the pastor, one Schneider, who wrought the excommunication publicly and openly in the church, was supported by the just weight of the law. Now, excommunication is excommunication whether you call it Catholic or Protestant. Why, then, threaten with impeachment? Why stop the salary which the government for the country bestows in the one case, and let the other go entirely free? And yet this is all according to law!
Another anomaly according to law is displayed in the seizing of the schools by the government. We have not space here to go into the whole question, instructive though it would be, as showing the determination of this government to uproot the Catholic faith by every means in its power. But we will mention one instance. A ministerial circular accompanied the notice of the new arrangements, informing the teachers that it was desirable that their scholars should belong to no religious confraternities—of the Rosary, Blessed Virgin, and such like—and that if they persisted in belonging to them they should be dismissed. We find it necessary to endorse this statement by informing our readers that it is plain, unvarnished fact. Civil marriage is now in full sway; that is to say, it is no longer a sacrament according to law. What wonder that the German bishops assembled at Fulda gave utterance to their solemn protest, an extract of which we cull? It reads as though it had been penned in the days of Diocletian, or Julian the Apostate, or Henry VIII. But in these days, when mere human society has come to know its power, and dream that it possesses freedom, the protest jars on our ears as something out of tune, out of time, out of date altogether:
“We demand, as a right which no one [pg 425] can dispute to us, that the bishops, the parish priests of the cathedral churches, and the directors of souls, be only appointed in accordance with the laws of the church and the agreement existing between the church and state.
“In accordance with these laws and agreements, the Catholic people and ourselves cannot consider as legal a director of souls or a teacher of religion one who has not been so named by his bishop; and we, the Catholic people and ourselves, cannot consider as legally recognized a bishop who has not been named by the Pope.
“We claim equally for ourselves and for all Catholics the right of professing throughout Germany our holy Catholic faith in all its integrity, at all times and in all freedom, and to rest upon the principle that we are in no wise constrained to suffer within the bosom of our religious community those who do not profess the Catholic faith, and who do not submit entirely to the authority of the church.
“We consider as a violation of our church and of the rights which are guaranteed to it every attack made against the liberty of religious orders. We regard and vindicate, also, as an essential and inalienable right of the Catholic Church, the full and entire liberty which it possesses of elevating its servants in accordance with ecclesiastical laws, and we demand not only that the church exercise over the Catholic schools (primary, secondary, and higher) the influence which alone can guarantee to the Catholic people that its children shall receive in the schools a Catholic education and instruction, but we claim also for the church the freedom to found and direct in an independent manner, certain private establishments ordained for the teaching of the sciences in accordance with Catholic principles. In fine, we maintain and defend the sacred character of Christian marriage as that of a sacrament of the Catholic Church, as well as the right which the divine will has given to the church in connection with this sacrament.”
The signatures of the bishops are affixed to this document, which is addressed to all the German governments, and produced a commotion and irritation among all the national liberal journals which were unexampled. We have given this extract here in order to bring home to the minds of our readers how hard the church is driven in Germany. When the bishops and the laity combined feel themselves called upon to protest in this style, the government which for no reason whatever can give rise to such a protest—signed by the saintly chiefs of a body of 14,000,000, and endorsed in meeting after meeting by those 14,000,000 and the countless numbers of their co-religionists outside of Germany scattered through the broad world—must be one which does not govern, but tyrannizes.
The same “thorough” policy prevailed in Alsace and Lorraine. On the very day, October 1, when the option of declaring for France or Germany arrived, all the men who remained in the countries named were enrolled in the Prussian service from that date. This, beyond what Mr. Disraeli would call a “sentimental grievance,” drove them from the country, as it must have been intended to do. Service under the power that annexed them, which they but yesterday fought against, and a service the most rigorous and exacting that exists, as it must be in order to retain its supremacy, was something that seems to have been ingeniously invented in order to drive the people out. The provinces are more than decimated; the Prussian army, if increased at all, is increased in the event of a renewed war by untrustworthy men, and a new drop of gall is thrown into the already overbitter cup which France is compelled to swallow. And yet the Provinzial Correspondenz (official) of Berlin, in view of October 1, said: “The government has not hesitated an instant in calling without delay on the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine to serve in the German army, as the best and surest means to evoke and develop speedily among the population newly reunited to Germany the sentiment of an intimate community with the German people.”