And it is asserted that it is in the name of religious liberty that Swiss liberalism has deprived the diocese of Basel of its bishop and its chapter! But what cares liberalism for the rights of Catholic consciences? However, in thus decapitating the diocese it was carrying out a purpose on which it was inexorably bent. It had long resolved to create a national church calling itself Catholic, and it hugged the illusion that the suppression of the Catholic bishoprics would contribute to the success of this design. It is in pursuance of the same object that it opened in Bern, in the month of October, a faculty of Old Catholic theology.
These facts display a complete change of tactics on the part of unbelief. In the last century, Voltaire and his satellites tried to batter down the church, without dreaming of putting anything in her place. They failed. Their successors of to-day adopt another plan. It is to create anti-Catholic churches, calling themselves Catholic, to which they do not belong, whose dogmas they abjure, and whose priests they despise. They trust thus to satisfy the people, whilst retaining for themselves the benefits of unbelief.
Next, in the month of October, the government of Bern opened, in the federal capital, a faculty of theology, which it called “faculty of Catholic theology,” and it invited chiefly foreigners to occupy its chairs. It nominated dean of the faculty a German, that unfortunate Dr. Friedrich of Munich, who was amongst the first to follow Döllinger in his perversity, and they appointed as his subordinates a few apostates picked up wherever they could find them. Eight students, almost all from the canton of Soleure, the real focus of Swiss liberalism, were enrolled. With such a contingent, the dream of a national church does not appear certain to be realized. But the government of Bern flatters itself that in time the number of students will increase, and that it will thus have at its disposal submissive agents ready to assist it in its detestable undertaking, the perversion of the Jura.
The Jura! It is impossible to cast a glance around that unfortunate country without being filled with gratitude to God for the religious heroism it perseveres in displaying in the presence of a powerful and treacherous enemy who is striving to crush it utterly.
It is notorious that the ninety-seven parishes of the Jura have been arbitrarily reconstructed by the government of Bern; and that, after having reduced them to the number of twenty-five, it finally increased them to forty-two. Nothing has been left undone to place at the head of every one of these an apostate priest. But in spite of all its efforts it has only been able to muster seventeen. Besides, what trouble do the recruits swept up from all the by-ways of Europe cause them! Some have already sent in their resignation.
Thus it was with Giaut, curate of Bonfol, who, in a public letter announced his abandonment of the mission he had assumed, “because he saw no immediate prospect of the realization, in the Jura, of his aspirations and ideas.” Of the same kind was the course pursued by d’Omer Camerle, who, on his withdrawal, declared that the new clergy, “utterly despised by the liberals and execrated by the ultramontanes, were attempting a work which was entirely useless if not contemptible.” Others have been obliged to escape, or had to evade justice.
We have before narrated the misfortunes of Rupplin. His rival Naudot, arrested for abduction of a minor, was condemned to six months’ imprisonment. In his defence, made by himself, he demanded, “Am I more guilty than Giaut, curé of Bonfol, who calls himself Guiot; than Choisel, curé of Courgenay, whose real name is Chastel; than Déramey, who calls himself Pipy?” We must, however, state to his credit that he abjured his errors and returned into the bosom of the church.
At Bienne, the intruder, St. Ange Lièvre, threw off the mask, and married a Protestant named Tsantré-Boll. The union was blessed by M. Saintes, a Protestant minister, after an address by M. Hurtault, from Geneva, who complimented his colleague “for having had the courage to throw off the yoke of bondage imposed upon him by the Roman papacy.” This was overshooting the mark. The intruders may commit all imaginable escapades without provoking attention. But they must not marry. It reveals prematurely the programme of the free-thinkers of Bern, who, in order to conciliate the population of the Jura, declare that they have no intention to meddle with the dogmas of the church. Accordingly, the “Provisionary Catholic Synodal Commission,” in a letter addressed to “MM. the curates of the Jura,” “severely rebuked the deplorable example given by M. St. Ange Lièvre, and promised to demand from the authorities a remedy, which could not be refused if another member of the clergy should venture to violate the venerable laws of the church.” Ludicrous imbecility! They will try to hinder for the future a renewal of these wanton freaks, but they respect what has been already perpetrated. And so M. Lièvre and his Protestant wife remain at the head of the parish of Bienne!
But do any of the intruded meet with success in their propaganda? No! At Alle, Salis rings the bell for Masses which he does not say. At Bienne, only twenty or thirty persons attend the service of St. Ange Lièvre. At Delémont, the chief place of the district, enjoying a radical priest, a radical president of the tribunal, radical functionaries, so empty is the church usurped by Portaz-Grassis that, on the 7th of January, the council of the parish gave vent to the following cry of distress in a circular addressed to “Liberal Catholics”: “The religious question in the Jura being intimately associated with the political one, it is important, now that our national church is constituted on solid and legal foundations, that all liberals should support this church and sustain the majority of the Bernese people in the steps that have been taken. [It must be remembered that the majority of the Bernese people is Protestant.]
“Yet is our worship little frequented, and our enemies proclaim everywhere that our church is deserted.