This is only en passant; and, as it is often more satisfactory to let those outside of the church answer themselves, here is the opinion of the London Spectator upon this particular point, given in direct answer to the Pall Mall:
“Is an age of the world in which few men know what is truth or whether there be truth, one in which you would ask statesmen to determine its limits? We suspect that a race of statesmen armed with such powers as Prussia is now giving to her officials would soon cease to show their present temperance (!) and sobriety, and grow into a caste of civilian ecclesiastics of harder, drier, and lower mould than any of the ecclesiastics they had to put down.... To our minds, the absolutism of the Vatican Council is a trifling danger compared with the growing absolutism of the democratic temper which is now being pushed into almost every department of human conduct.”
On the larger question of the dangers of modern universities, the opinion of one of the keenest of living English statesmen was given in unmistakable language at the annual meeting of the Church Congress last year at Leeds. The Marquis of Salisbury is quite as true an Englishman as any writer on the Pall Mall Gazette, and his words may be considered to possess at least equal weight with those of the distinguished journal mentioned.
Referring more immediately to the abolition of the “Test Acts,” by which the state had hitherto guaranteed to overlook and prevent the teaching of infidelity, he said: “All hindrance to the teaching of infidelity has been taken away, and that is the great danger of the future. The great danger is that there should be formed inside our universities—especially, I fear, inside Oxford—a nucleus and focus of infidel teaching and influence; not infidel in any coarse or abusive sense, but in that sense in which Prof. Palmer used the words ‘heathen virtue.’ I fear that the danger we have to look to is that some colleges in Oxford may in the future play a part similar to that disastrous part which the German universities have played in the dechristianization of the upper and middle classes.” And the only advice he can give to England now is: “If the parents of England who send their sons to these colleges will be alive to the heavy responsibility which is now laid upon them, then perhaps we may have a better security, a better guarantee, than we have had that Oxford shall not be the means of uprooting the Christian faith which they had learnt at home.”
These words of the real, if not the nominal, leader of the conservative party in the British House of Lords, who at the same time is, or was when he delivered the speech, chancellor of the university of Oxford, are worthy of attention, and may be commended to that fussy little termagant, the Pall Mall Gazette. They have been doubly corroborated since by another British statesman whose testimony on such a subject is of at least equal weight with that of the ultra-liberal journal, inasmuch as he is the leader of the liberal party—the present Premier of England, in his recent great speech at Liverpool, which was principally devoted to exposing the errors of Strauss.
Passing on to the other laws, why, considered merely from a financial point of view, should the creation of new seminaries, great or small, be prohibited? This is controlling the private purse with a vengeance. The Prussian state, or Prince Bismarck and the professordom, forbid Prussians or anybody else to erect ecclesiastical seminaries. Of course, this means that Prussian or German youth are in future to be educated only in the state schools and universities. If they want to become priests, they must learn their theology as best they may; at least there shall be no schools or colleges for them to study in, for those already in existence are to be placed under state surveillance, to receive no new pupils—in a word, to be closed, or converted from the purpose for which they were founded by private funds into state schools with state professors at their head, which is just as though Gen. Grant swooped down on all the banking-houses in the United States, set them under government control, and bade the bankers go about their business. And yet Catholics who find some reason to object to this summary mode of dealing with their property and what they considered were their rights, are told that they are traitors to the state, conspirators against the empire, and that they only object in slavish obedience to a mandate from Rome.
This measure was well devised. Its framers said: We have banished the Jesuits; we have banished religious societies of every description; we have abolished the sacrament of marriage; we have banished religion from the schools; we now proceed to abolish ecclesiastical seminaries altogether: that is to say, we abolish the priesthood, we abolish God as far as Germany is concerned, and men shall worship us and us only—the supreme power.
What else does this law mean? It strikes out the priesthood, root and branch, as effectually as did the penal laws in England; nay, more so. The next clause fits in neatly. The bishop who nominates a candidate otherwise than in accordance with the law is fined heavily. As there are a good number of bishops, and as they are likely to disregard the law in this respect, this will ensure a constant revenue to the state as long at least as they are allowed to remain in the country.
Ecclesiastical disciplinary power can only be exercised by ecclesiastical authorities of German nationality. This, of course, is a blow struck directly at the Pope in his capacity of universal head of the church; indirectly at whoever may hereafter be appointed as bishops of the church in Germany. It simply forbids the Catholic bishops and priests to obey the commands of the Holy See, and, if carried out, would be subversive of the whole edifice of Christ’s church, which its divine Founder made one, indivisible, and CATHOLIC. “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations.” Prince Bismarck aims at carrying out what Bolanden calls “the Russian idea”—the erection in Germany of a state popedom. And again, Catholics are traitors to the state for objecting to it, though it is an amendment introduced into Article 15 of the Prussian constitution for the purpose of nullifying that truly liberal and wise measure, which was to the following effect: