I allow myself to call Prince von Bismarck's attention to this point. Positive relations between the church and states have been settled by concordats only; always, at all periods of history, the popes alone have negotiated concordats with the states; pontifical infallibility has absolutely no connection with concordats, and the Pope when he signs them does not speak ex cathedrâ and as supreme doctor of the church. How, then, can the declaration of the council have changed the relations between the church and governments, and how can the church, by proclaiming the dogma of infallibility, be said to have declared war to the state?
It is, then, a mere matter of pretext. In point of fact, it is the German Empire which is laying claim to absolute and unlimited power in the domain of religion as well as in the domain of politics; it examines and judges dogmas, intrudes itself into ecclesiastical discipline; it closes the priest's mouth in his pulpit—by the lex Lutziana; it closes Catholic colleges and schools; it forbids religious to preach, to hear confessions, and even to celebrate Mass; it forbids the bishops to canonically exclude from the bosom of the church those who openly separate themselves therefrom; it banishes, for no crime, without trial and in bodies, the religious orders, in the same way that Louis XIV. (though he could give better reasons) drove the Huguenots from the soil of France; it favors schism, and aims at establishing a national church. It is, then, the German state which is declaring war to the church, and which is raising claim to political and religious infallibility by founding a veritable civil theocracy.
Let us put aside the pretext, which can in no wise serve either for the justification or for the explanation of the conduct of the government of Berlin. Let us examine the real motives which governed that conduct, the circumstances by which the emperor was carried away, and the fatal temptations which deluded him.
VI.
Foremost among these reasons and temptations has been, as I have said before, the alliance with Italy. It was the first cause, and was the signal for the sudden change which took place in the interior policy of the German Empire. This is evident from the fact that the political storm burst forth during the last session of Parliament precisely upon the occasion of a paragraph in the draft of the address got up by the national liberal party, and which was a stone hurled at the papacy. This was taking place at Berlin at the very hour when the Italo-German alliance [pg 496] had been concluded at Rome; the coincidence is striking, and proves that war against the Catholic Church and her head has been made a condition of this alliance.
The next temptation, the second blunder of Prince von Bismarck, has been his exclusive alliance with the national liberal party, whose character I have defined above. This alliance with pseudo-liberalism is the corollary of his alliance with Italy; both rest within and without on the revolutionary and anti-Christian principle. War on Rome and the papacy has been the condition of the alliance with Italy; war on the Catholics in Germany has been the condition of the alliance with the national liberal party.
Prince von Bismarck had, for several years, met a keen resistance to his plans from the national liberal party, while during the same period he found a support in the conservative section of the Prussian chambers, with whom were joined the few Catholics of note who happened to be members of them.
To-day he turns away from this weakened but still powerful conservative section, and he wages the bitterest war against the centre section, which is made up of Catholics. These two sections watch over the deposit of old German traditions; they wish to preserve the federal and constitutional character of the Empire, to maintain the Christian and denominational character of the schools, and throughout the nation, religious peace. Latterly the conservative section has become weak; it has yielded to M. von Bismarck's policy; but sooner or later its traditions will bring it to the side of the section of the centre, in order that both may unite in sustaining the historic principles of the Germanic race against the centralizing anti-religious policy of the national liberal party, which represents above all else the idea of the French Revolution.
The section of the centre, which, in 1870, in point of numbers amounted in the parliament to but very little, has seen its power increase proportionately with the development of the pseudo-liberal party of centralization, of omnipotence of the state, of political levelling, and of anti-Christian reaction. The outrage committed on the papacy by the Italian government gave increased energy to the Catholic movement, and the section of the centre, which, at the time it was first organized, consisted of fifty members only, saw its numbers increase after the elections to more than sixty, all united together by strong convictions; it can count to-day nearly eighty, and it is safe to predict that, unless the government sends into the interior, or into exile, or puts in prison the leaders of the Catholic movement, the party of the centre will, after the next elections, thanks to the war begun against the church, have gained a force of more than one hundred votes, which will thus counterbalance those of the national liberal party.
It is this growing power of the party of the centre, the fruit of M. von Bismarck's policy, which has impelled him to his policy of violence and anger against the Catholic Church; he means to make the clergy, the Jesuits, the religious orders, and the bishops pay for the political loss of rest occasioned to him by this phalanx which is growing into a legion, and at whose head stand such powerful leaders as Reichensperger, Mallinckrodt, and Windthorst. The eloquent words of these orators, as in former times those of O'Connell in England, and Montalembert in France, spread beyond the boundaries [pg 497] of Germany, to arouse and stir up everywhere all lovers of right, justice, true liberty, and the church of Jesus Christ.