The evident aim of this law is to create a schism in every parish in the German Empire, which, by fomenting divisions amongst the Catholics, would greatly aid the government in its efforts to destroy the church. But this is only one of innumerable instances in which the persecutors have been wholly mistaken.
They counted first upon the weakness of the Catholic bishops; confidently expecting that one or the other of them would place himself at the head of the Old Catholics, [pg 440] and thus, whilst causing great scandal in the church, give to that still-born sect at least a semblance of respectability. But not one of the German prelates wavered. They go to prison, like the apostles, rejoicing that they are found worthy to suffer for Christ, and declare that they are willing to shed their blood for the holy cause. Their enemies are not more ready to inflict than they to bear everything for the love of Jesus. Then, there was no doubt in the minds of the Prussian infidels that large numbers of the clergy would take advantage of the bribes offered by government to apostates to throw off the authority of the bishops, and to constitute themselves into a schismatical body. On the contrary, the persecution has only drawn tighter the bonds which unite the priests with their chief pastors. In all Germany there have not been found more than thirty rationalistic professors and suspended priests who were willing to take sides with Döllinger in his rebellion; and the juridically-proven immorality of Bishop Reinkens will no doubt give us a true insight into the characters of most of the men who have elected him their ecclesiastical superior.
When the persecutors found that both bishops and priests were immovable in their devotion to the church, they appealed to the Catholic people, and, by the laws of last May, placed it in their power to create a schism, by giving them the right to elect their own pastors, with the promise that government would turn the churches over to them. But this attempt to show that the bishops and priests of Germany have not the sympathy and confidence of the laity has met with signal rebuke.
The elections for the Prussian Landtag in November, 1873, and those for the Reichstag in January last, had not merely a political significance; their bearing upon the present and future welfare of the church in the German Empire is of the greatest importance. Opportunity was given to the Catholic people to make a public confession of faith; to declare, in words which could not be misunderstood, whether or not they were resolved to stand firm in the struggle into which their leaders had been forced.
In the November elections, in spite of every effort of the government, the Catholics increased their representatives in the Landtag from fifty-two to eighty-nine; whilst in the Reichstag their members have grown from sixty-three to considerably more than one hundred.
The entire Rhenish Province elected Catholics. Cologne, Düsseldorf, Treves, Coblentz, Aix-la-Chapelle, Crefeld, Bonn, Neuss, Düren, Essen, Malmedy, Mülheim, all the cities of the Lower Rhine, made their vote an act of faith. Windthorst, the leader of the Catholic party, was elected at Meppen (Hanover) over Falk, the author of the May laws, by a majority of nearly fifteen thousand. The entire vote for Falk was only three hundred and forty-seven.
The result of the elections undoubtedly startled the government, and possibly shook Bismarck's confidence in the power of persecution to destroy Catholic faith; but the struggle had grown too fierce to allow him to think of withdrawing.
On the contrary, the firmness of the Catholic people incited the persecutors to still harsher measures; but nothing that they have done or can do will succeed in breaking the combined passive opposition of the clergy and the laity.
In the Vatican Council, the most determined resistance to the definition of the infallibility of the Pope was made by the German bishops, who felt no hesitation in openly declaring with what anxiety they regarded the probable effects of such a definition upon the Catholics of their own country. Divisions, apostasies, schisms, seemed imminent; and it is not easy now to determine what might have been the result had not God's providence interfered.
In the first place, at the very moment when the definition was made, the terrible conflict between France and Prussia broke forth, and raged so fiercely that the loud earth was struck dumb, and men held their breath till it should be ended. In the meantime, the angry feelings aroused by the discussions in the Vatican Council had, in great measure, been calmed, and it was possible to take a fairer and more dispassionate view of the whole subject.