Thus at St. Gall, the cantonal council, the majority of which consists of Protestants and free-thinkers, has forbidden the Catholic clergy to teach the Syllabus and the dogma of Papal Infallibility; and, as the clergy have refused to obey such an order, the Council of Public Instruction has withdrawn from them the teaching the catechism during Lent, and has placed the duty in the hands of schoolmasters in absolute dependence on the state. This example betrays the intention of liberalism, in the name of liberty, no longer to tolerate any religion but such as is fashioned by its own hand. This intention is now betraying itself openly in the two dioceses of Geneva and Basel. It is useless to speak of the rights of Catholics consecrated by treaties, to invoke the respect due to their conscience; useless is it to adduce in their behalf the religious equality which they scrupulously maintain in the cantons, such as Lucerne and Freyburg, where they have the superiority; useless to insist on their patriotism, and on their loyal submission to laws which do not encroach on the domain of religion. No, there are no rights for Catholics, there is no justice for them; and when it is a question of attacking them, the end justifies the means.
This is no invention of ours. We will cite a few examples in support of our assertion.
M. Teuscher in the canton of Bern, and M. Carteret at Geneva, have founded churches to which they have assigned the name of Catholic, which they support with unusual zeal. Now, in the journal of these churches, the Démocratie catholique, which is published at Bern, of the date of January 2, is the following statement: “Ultramontanes are malefactors, and there is no liberty for malefactors.” It may be objected, that these words are merely the expression of an individual opinion. Let us listen then to M. Carteret, speaking, about the same time, before the Grand Council of Geneva: “Ultramontanism is dangerous; it is necessary to combat it, to make on it a war of extermination and without mercy; it is affectation to dream of being just and equitable with such an adversary.” A little later on, in the same assembly, a credit was voted for the maintenance of candidates for Catholic cures, whose rightful possessors had been arbitrarily ejected; and when M. Vogt expressed his astonishment that the canton should keep a tavern for liberal abbés, a deputy exclaimed, “We shall act as we please.”
It would seem impossible for cynicism to go beyond this. But no; the brutality of despotism was able to surpass even it. At the moment when, in the canton of Soleure, the people were summoned to vote the suppression of the secular foundations, of which we shall speak presently, one of their journals published the following: “If we should be conquered, and the blacks should defeat the measure, we shall handle the knife.” It sounds like a sinister echo of 1793.
What can be the object of the persecutors? Is it the substitution of Protestantism for Catholicity? Scarcely. Protestants who really believe in their religion disapprove of these iniquities. The object is akin, rather, we may be sure, to the sentiment lately given utterance to by the Pastor Lang of Zurich: “We are slowly but surely approaching the end towards which the development of our spiritual life is urging us, to wit, the suppression and disappearance of all churches.” The same sentiment had been expressed during the debates on the federal revision by M. Welti. “He who would wish to be free must not belong to any church. No church gives liberty. The state alone gives that.” In other words, the ideal to be aimed at is the reign of the state over soul as well as body. After this, can we wonder at the cry of alarm issuing from a quarter not at least to be suspected of Catholic bias? It is a Protestant journal—l’Union jurassienne—which exclaims, “The star of liberty pales, the shadows of spiritual despotism are gathering around us.” But the cry is lost in the desert. Despotism throws those who exercise it into a kind of intoxication; every one of the excesses to which it commits itself becomes the source of fresh ones. Its last word is proscription, when it is not the scaffold.… In the diocese of Basel the crimes of liberalism have been perpetrated principally at Soleure, in the Jura, and at Bern. We will review them successively.
At Soleure, the Benedictine monastery of Maria-Stein, the collegiate church of Schoenwerth, and that of S. Urs and S. Victor have been overthrown at one stroke.
The monastery of Maria-Stein was founded in 1085, and had cleared and cultivated the country. But the church can no more reckon upon the gratitude of its enemies than upon their justice. They determined to seize the property of the convent, to convert the building into a madhouse, and to mock justice with the bestowal of a trifling alms on the religious thus iniquitously dispossessed. At the first news of this project, the ex-Father Hyacinthe again gave expression to the indignation he had exhibited before on similar provocation, and sent to the abbot of the monastery a protest against “this attack on property and religion.”
The foundation of the collegiate church of Schoenwerth, situated near Olten, dates from the Xth century. It had only five canons, who served four parishes, and gave instruction in the schools. That of S. Urs and S. Victor from the VIIIth. It was erected into a cathedral in 1828; when the residence of the Bishop of Basel was transferred to Soleure. Its chapter has kept perpetual watch for nearly a thousand years at the tombs of the Theban martyrs. These venerable memories arrested not the arms of the spoilers. What was wanted was to punish the canons of Schoenwerth and of Soleure for their loyalty to their bishop, and at the same time to get possession of the endowments they administered.
Consequently, the suppression of the two collegiate churches, as well as of the monastery of Maria-Stein, was submitted to the popular vote. It was adopted by 8,356 votes against 5,896. But when it is remembered that the majority included about 3,000 Protestants, besides the manufacturing population of Olten, who are in complete subjection to the tyranny of their Freemason employers; that more than 3,000 timid Catholics abstained from voting, and that the women and children were not consulted, there can remain no doubt that once again a Catholic majority has been sacrificed to a coalition of Protestants and free-thinkers.
However it may be, this vote remarkably facilitated the object the liberals have had in view for some time, namely, of abolishing the chapter of Basel. This chapter consisted of canons from seven states of the diocese—Bern, Basel, Thurgau, Aargau, Soleure, Zug, Lucerne. The state of Soleure having suppressed its own, and the states of Aargau and Bern being urged to do the same to theirs, the conference of the diocesan states, on the 21st December, decreed the suppression of the chapter itself and the sale of its effects. The support of five of these states had been procured. No heed was taken of the opposition of Lucerne and Zug.