The third temptation of the German government has been the stand taken in the Vatican Council by nearly all the bishops of Germany and of Austria. These pious and learned prelates were all agreed, along with those of the entire world, as to the mere ground of the doctrine; all or nearly all were infallibilists; Josephism, Fébronianism, had been for a long time dying, if not dead; but these same bishops were nearly all inopportunists. This M. von Bismarck misapprehended, he believed that there was, among the bishops in council, a real dissent as to doctrine; he imagined that the majority of the German and Austrian bishops would separate from Rome to follow M. Döllinger in the path of defection or of schism, through which he is moving to his ruin. The Italian alliance and the alliance with the national liberal party carried M. von Bismarck into hostile action against Rome; the difference of opinion among the bishops on the question of the opportuneness of the decision by the council led him to hope that he would find therein the elements for a Janist[194] and national church.
In this he has been entirely mistaken. “He had left the Holy Spirit out of his reckoning,” said recently to me a learned ecclesiastic of Berlin, and I add that he had also not reckoned on the faith and virtue of the episcopate.
Observe what is going on and how the Catholic tide is rising and resisting. M. von Bismarck met at Sedan a splendid, courageous French army, which, badly led and crushed by the fire of the German artillery, was forced to capitulate; he will henceforth find in opposition to him the Catholic populations, with their clergy and their bishops at their head, who will rise, in the name of God and of the liberty of the church, who will resist and never surrender.
M. von Bismarck is about to have experience of what the Catholic bishops are and of what they can do. They will not conspire; they will not sow rebellion and revolution; they will not join themselves to the red international party, but they will resist and will not yield. “In this present sad condition of things,” said the bishops met together at Fulda in April, 1872, “we will fulfil our duty by not disturbing the peace between the church and the state.” “As Christians,” said the learned Bishop of Paderborn, in his touching address to the exiled Jesuits—“as Christians, we can oppose neither force nor overt resistance to the measures of governmental authority. Albeit such measures seem to us iniquitous and unjustifiable, we may only meet them by that passive resistance which our divine Master Jesus Christ has taught us by his words and example; that silence, calm and full of dignity; that patience, tranquil and resigned, but abounding in hope; that loving prayer which heaps burning coals on the heads of our persecutors.”
Such is the admirable language of the German bishops, as it fell from the lips of the Archbishop of Cologne, Mgr. von Droste-Vischering, on the very day preceding that on which he was led captive by a guard of soldiers to the fortress of Minden. The calm and intrepid Bishop of Ermeland is deprived of his salary and injured in his authority; he is marked out for punishment, and he [pg 498] awaits the coming of the soldiers with the fetters to bind him.
I cannot recall the venerated name of Mgr. Krementz without adding to it the illustrious one of Mgr. Mermillod, whom all Europe will continue to address as Bishop of Hebron and Geneva, despite that decision of the council of state which forbids him to exercise any function whatever, whether as bishop or as curate, and which cuts him off from all salary. Here, then, we have this republican and liberal Switzerland suppressing the Jesuits and all cognate religious orders, the brothers of the schools, the sisters of charity; closing seminaries, as at Soleure, because the moral theology of S. Liguori was taught there; unseating bishops, as at Geneva; and the people that do these things are yet shameless enough to talk of liberty, while all the speech-makers of liberalism, whose hair stands erect at the mention of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who dinned the world with their clamors in the young Mortara case, cannot find a single word of liberality, not a single protest, not a single expression of indignation, to stigmatize these unheard-of outrages against all liberties at once, and against all the rights of human conscience.
I have just been adverting to the passive resistance of the bishops in Germany; but the lay movement, which is kept strictly within the law, is less passive, less resigned, and is somewhat inflamed by politics. The reaction against the unwarranted persecution set on foot a year ago is breaking out everywhere. A committee of direction has been formed at Mainz, whose business is to centralize the legal resistance of German Catholics for the defence of religious liberty thus threatened and assailed. This committee, in their address dated in July last, call upon the Catholics of Germany to a crusade in opposition to the aggressions of the government. “We claim,” says this address, “for our creed that liberty and independence guaranteed to it by the constitution; and under the device, For God and our Country, we will fight to the last for the maintenance of our rights.” This address is signed by some of the most illustrious names of Germany, foremost among which I may mention those of Count Felix de Löe, of Baron de Frankenberg, of Count C. de Stolberg, and of the Prince of Isenburg.
A numerous meeting of Catholics voted to send the Archbishop of Munich an address praising him for his firmness and encouraging him in the contest which he is maintaining. At Breslau, a Catholic Congress has just assembled with great éclat. All the Catholic men of note in Germany were present at it. Vent was therein given to the most energetic complaints and the most indignant protests, resolutions of great firmness were adopted, a new impulse was given to all those associations which, like that of S. Boniface, of S. Charles Borromeo, and of Pius IX., have multiplied on German soil works of teaching and of charity; powerful preparations were in this congress made for resistance, while confiding in their rights and in God.
While the Catholic laity were thus meeting and organizing at Breslau and at Mainz, the bishops were quietly deliberating at Fulda, presided over by the Archbishop of Cologne, who is mindful of his illustrious predecessor, Clement Augustus. There, as the apostles of old in the cenaculum, they tarry in prayer, and they will come forth with a confidence and a courage such as have overcome adversaries far more powerful than the Prince von Bismarck.