“I was coming down from the chambers, and met them at the street door, madame,” Jane made haste to say; “and I thought you would hear the steps.”
“Very well, Jane; it’s no matter. I’m sure you do your duty faithfully. And now we will have supper.”
[CHURCH AND STATE IN GERMANY.]
The new laws for the regulation and adjustment of the relations between church and state in Prussia, for the establishment of what Prince Bismarck calls a modus vivendi between the power spiritual and the power temporal—laws which have won the approval of the liberal and sectarian press in Europe and America—are substantially as follows:
1. All Prussian citizens who wish to receive ecclesiastical functions must matriculate at the state university. After matriculating, they must attend the university course for three years. On concluding their ecclesiastical studies, they must pass another state examination; that is to say, at the university. No candidate can be admitted to the priesthood unless he satisfy the state in this examination.
2. The creation of new (ecclesiastical) seminaries, great or small, is prohibited. The seminaries already existing shall be placed under state surveillance, and are forbidden to receive new scholars.
3. The candidate for the priesthood who is nominated by the bishop must be approved of and installed in his office by the president of the province. The bishop who nominates a candidate otherwise than in accordance with the law, shall be punished by a fine of from 750 francs to 3,750 francs ($150 to $750). The candidate submitting to such nomination shall be punished by a fine of from 3 francs (75 cts.) to 375 francs.
4. Ecclesiastical disciplinary power can only be exercised by ecclesiastical authorities of German nationality. The ecclesiastical functionaries who, by exercise of their functions, transgress the laws of the state or the ordinances of the civil authority, may, at the demand of that civil authority, be deposed, if the maintaining of their functions prove incompatible with public order.