PRUSSIA AND THE CHURCH.
II.
In February, 1848, Louis Philippe was driven from his throne by the people of Paris, and the Republic was proclaimed. This revolution rapidly spread over the whole of Europe. The shock was most violent in Germany, where everything was in readiness for a general outburst. Most of the governments were compelled to yield to the popular will and to make important concessions. New cabinets were formed in Würtemberg, Darmstadt, Nassau, and Hesse. Lewis of Bavaria was forced to abdicate. Hanover and Saxony held out until Berlin and Vienna were invaded by the revolutionary party, when they too succumbed. On the 13th of March the Vienna mob overthrew the Austrian ministry, and Metternich fled to England. Italy and Hungary revolted. Berlin was held all summer by an ignorant revolutionary faction. In September fierce and bloody riots broke out in Frankfort.
Popular meetings, secret societies, revolutionary clubs, violent declamations, and inflammatory appeals through the press kept all Germany in a state of agitation. Occasional outbreaks among the peasantry, followed by pillage and incendiarism, increased the general confusion.
It was during this time of wild excitement that the elections for the Imperial Parliament were held. To this assembly many avowed atheists, pantheists, communists, and Jacobins were chosen—men who fully agreed with Hecker when he declared that “there were six plagues in Germany—the princes, the nobles, the bureaucrats, the capitalists, the parsons, and the soldiers.” The parties in the Parliament took their names from their positions in the assembly hall, and were called the extreme left, the left, the left centre, the right centre, the right, and the extreme right. The first three were composed of red republicans, Jacobins, and liberals. To the right centre belonged the constitutional liberals; and on the right and right centre sat the Catholic members, the predecessors of the party of the Centrum of the present day. The extreme right was occupied by functionaries and bureaucrats, chiefly from Prussia. The Parliament of Frankfort, in the Grundrechte, or Fundamental Rights, which it proclaimed, decreed universal, suffrage, abolished all the political rights of the aristocracy, the hereditary chambers in all the states of Germany, set aside the existing family entails, and, though nominally it retained the imperial power, degraded the emperor to a republican president by giving him merely a suspensive veto.
While this Parliament was sitting the Catholic bishops of Germany assembled in council at Würzburg, and, at the conclusion of their deliberations, drew up a Memorial as firm in tone as it was clear and precise in expression, in which they set forth the claims of the church.
“To bring about,” they said, “a separation from the state—that is to say, from public order, which necessarily reposes on a moral and religious foundation—is not according to the will of the church. If the state will perforce separate from the church, so will the church, without approving, tolerate what it cannot avoid; and when not compelled by the duty of self-preservation, she will not break the bonds of union made fast by mutual understanding.
“The church, entrusted with the solemn and holy mission, ‘As my Father hath sent me, so send I ye,’ requires for the accomplishment of this mission, whatever the form of government of the state may be, the fullest freedom and independence. Her holy popes, prelates, and confessors have in all ages willingly and courageously given up their life and blood for the preservation of this inalienable freedom.”
In virtue of these principles the bishops, in this Memorial, claimed the right of directing, without any interference on the part of the state, theological seminaries, and of founding schools, colleges, and all kinds of educational establishments; of exerting canonical control, unfettered by state meddling, over the conduct of their clergy, as well as that of introducing into their dioceses religious orders, congregations, and pious confraternities, for which they demanded the same rights which the new political constitution had granted to secular associations. Finally, they asserted their right to free and untrammelled communication with the Holy See; and, as included in this, that of receiving and publishing all papal bulls, briefs, and other documents without the Royal Placet, which they declared to be repugnant to the honor and dignity of the ministers of religion.