The debate was opened in the month of May, 1872. A project of law, restricting the liberties of religious orders, and especially directed against the Society of Jesus, was brought before the Federal Council and accepted by a large majority. When it came before the imperial Parliament, amendments were added rendering it still more harsh and tyrannical. The order was to be shut out from the empire, its houses to be closed, foreign Jesuits were to be expelled, and the German members of the society were to be confined to certain districts; and the execution of these measures was to be entrusted to the Federal Council.
On the 4th of July the law received the approval of the emperor, and on the 5th it was promulgated.
Thus in the most arbitrary manner, without any legal proceedings, hundreds of German citizens, against whom there was not the slightest proof of guilt, were deprived of all rights and expelled from their country. Besides, the measure was based upon the most ignorant misconception of the real condition of the church, and was therefore necessarily ineffective. The religious orders and the secular priesthood do not represent opposite tendencies in the church; their aims are identical, and, in our day at least, the secular priests are as zealous, as active, and as efficient as the members of the religious orders.
What end, then, was to be gained by expelling the Jesuits, whilst devoted and faithful priests were left to minister to the Catholic people, whose faith had been roused by this scandalous persecution of men whom they knew to be guilty of no crime except that of loving Jesus Christ and his church? The blow struck at the Jesuits was, in truth, aimed at the church, and this the bishops, priests, and entire Catholic people of Germany at once recognized. They saw now, since even the possibility of doubting was no longer left to them, that the German Empire had declared open war against the church; and Bismarck, seeing that his half-way measures had deceived no one, resolved to adopt a policy of open violence. With this view a new minister of Public Worship was appointed in the person of Dr. Falk, who drew up the plan of the famous Four Church Laws to which he has given his name, and which was adopted on the 11th of May, 1873.
In virtue of these laws—which it is unnecessary to transcribe in [pg 296] full—the state arrogates the right of appointing to all ecclesiastical offices, since the government claims authority to approve or annul all nominations made by the bishops; and the President of the Province (Oberpraesident) is bound to interdict the exercise of any religious function to ecclesiastics appointed without his consent. The bishop who makes an appointment to the cure of souls without the consent of the civil authority is fined from two hundred to one thousand thalers; and the priest who, appointed in this way, exercises spiritual functions, is visited with a proportionate fine. This is an attempt to change the very nature of the church; it is a denial of its right to exist at all.
The third of these laws creates the “Royal Court of Justice for Ecclesiastical Affairs,” which claims and possesses by act of Parliament the right to reform all disciplinary decisions made by the bishops in relation to the ecclesiastics under their jurisdiction. This same court has by law the right to depose any ecclesiastic whose conduct the government may see fit to consider incompatible with public order.
The Pope is interdicted from the exercise of disciplinary power within the territory of the Prussian monarchy.
The state takes control of the education of the young men destined to the priesthood. It requires them to pass the arbiturienten-examen in a German gymnasium, and then to devote three years to the study of theology in a German university, during which time they are not to be permitted to live in an episcopal seminary; and thereafter they are to pass a public examination before the state officials. All educational establishments for the clergy, especially all kinds of seminaries, are placed under the superintendence of the government, and those which refuse to submit to this supervision are to be closed. The education of priests, the fitness of candidates for holy orders, appointments to the cure of souls, the infliction of ecclesiastical censures, the soundness of the faith of the clergy, are, in the new German Empire, matters to be regulated by the police.
This is not a struggle between Catholicity and Protestantism; it is a battle between the Atheist State and the Kingdom of God. The Protestant Church in Germany does not alarm Bismarck, because it is feeble and has no independent organization, since its ministers are appointed and ruled by the emperor, and it is also well understood that very few of them have any faith in positive religion.
But the orthodox Protestants of Germany thoroughly understand that the attempt to crush the Catholic Church is meant to be a fatal blow at the vital principle of all religion. This is recognized by the Allgemeine Evang. Luth. Kirchenzeitung in the article from which we have already quoted. “It is a common remark,” says this organ of orthodox Lutheranism, “that the blows struck at the Church of Rome will tell with redoubled force against the evangelical church. But what is meant to injure, only helps the Roman Church. There she stands, more compact than ever, and the world is amazed at beholding her strength. Once the word of the Monk of Wittenberg made her tremble, but to-day the blows of power make her stronger. Let us beware of illusion; it is certain that in the Protestant North of Germany there has grown up a [pg 297] public opinion on the Church of Rome which provokes the respect even of the liberals. We have enough to do, they say, to fight the socialists; it is time to leave the Catholic bishops in peace.”