According to one of the May Laws, a parish which has stood vacant for one year possesses the right of electing a new priest. This law was evidently passed with a view of destroying the authority of priests as well as bishops; in fact, it was a bait thrown out to Catholics to join the state church. But Catholics at once understood the malign intention, and spurned it, to the amazement and discomfiture of the persecuting party, which had built its brightest hopes on the working of that law. Not one vacant parish in the whole kingdom of Prussia has as yet been found willing to elect a new pastor. Whenever the Landrath convened an election meeting for that purpose, the invitation was either not responded to at all, or, if for prudence’s sake the electors appeared at the meeting, it was decidedly refused with the declaration that the parishioners had no power to elect their own priests, and that they would never acknowledge a pastor who was not sent to them by their bishop. Such being the firm attitude of all Prussian parishes towards that particular law, how could the government flatter itself with the hope that its own nominees would be received and acknowledged by the faithful? And yet Dr. Falk, disregarding all previous experience, went on imposing state priests on protesting parishes wherever he found an opportunity for it, to the great injury of the faithless priests themselves, who were excommunicated, to the parishes that rejected them, and to government, which made itself only the more odious. By this time, however, the ministry must see their mistake, for, in spite of the many enticements and premiums offered to priests of doubtful character and doctrine, the government during the interval of three years has not been able to gather more than twenty-one apostates round its state-church banner. Twenty-one out of ten thousand! With the exception of one, all these misguided men belong to the provinces of Silesia and Posen. Here is a complete list of them: Mr. Mücke in Gross Strelitz; Kolany in Murzyno; Nowacki in Obornik; Lizack in Schrotz; Kubezak in Xionz; Brenk in Kosten; Kick in Kähme; Gutzmer in Grätz; Würtz in Grabia; Moercke in Podwitz Golembiowsky in Plusnitz; Sterba in Leschnitz; Pischel in Girlachsdorf; Kenty in Boronow; Grünastle in Cösel; Sabotta in Kettch; Czerwinski in Zirke; Büchs in Gross Rudno; Rymarowicz (Posen); and Glattfelder in Balg (Baden).
Besides these state priests who profess to remain faithful to Rome, the Prussian government introduced two apostates in vacant parishes, one of whom is the Old Catholic pastor, Struckberg, presented by the Protestant Baron von Dyherrn to the fat living of Oberherzogswaldau in Silesia, and the other the notorious Suszynski, the married state-priest of Mogilno, who enjoys the emoluments of his sinecure comfortably at Königsberg. In all these state parishes the faithful refuse to entertain any communication, social or religious, with the intruders, and fulfil their religious duties in other churches. As to the congregations of these state priests, they principally consist of a few bad Catholics or government officials, such as burgomasters, policemen, etc.; in some even Protestants and Jews attend, and several count no other members than the clergyman’s housekeepers.
As the sect of Old Catholics must be looked upon as forming part of Prince Bismarck’s intended state church, it may fittingly be mentioned in connection with the state parishes. None of the 26 Kulturkampf laws issued in Prussia and the German Empire since 1871 has been more abused, more arbitrarily and unjustly applied by the government, than the so-called Old Catholic law, which grants to Old Catholic communities the joint use of Catholic parish churches and cemeteries, and the joint possession of the Catholic Church property, wherever a considerable number of these sectarians exist. How ober-presidents apply that law and determine the meaning of the word “considerable” may be seen by the two cases of Braunsberg and Königsberg, where in the one case about 20 and in the other about 40 Old Catholics formed, in the governor’s estimation, a sufficient number to allow the application of the law, and to rob as many as 10,000 Catholics in one instance of their churches and property. The ober-president’s partiality and self-contradicting conduct received a further illustration by the treatment of the Catholics of Hohenstein, who, although numbering 1,500, were refused permission to build a church in the town because the number 1,500 was not considered “considerable” in the meaning of the law. The thousand Catholics of Willenberg who petitioned the government for the same purpose received a similar answer. Thanks to this unjust application of the law, the Old Catholics obtained hitherto possession of 13 beautiful Catholic churches—viz., in Witten (10,000 Catholics to 76 Old Catholics); in Breslau the Corpus Christi Church (20,000 Catholics to a few hundred Old Catholics); in Neisse the Church of the Cross; in Hirschberg St. Ann’s Church (3,000 Catholics to 250 Old Catholics); in Königsberg; in Wiesbaden (15,000 Catholics to 250 Old Catholics); in Bochum (10,000 Catholics to about 200 Old Catholics); in Cologne St. Gereon’s Church (10,000 Catholics to 87 Old Catholics); in Crefeld St. Stephen’s; in Boppard the Carmelite Church (5,000 Catholics to 45 Old Catholics); in Coblentz the Jesuit Church; in Bonn the Gymnasium Church; and quite recently the parish church of Gottesberg in Silesia. In nearly all these churches the Old Catholics made their first entrance with the help of the police, the doors being forced open with hammer and crow-bar. Since they fell into Old Catholic hands most of them stand empty. On Easter Sunday about 20 to 30 worshippers attended in the robbed church in Wiesbaden; in several places grass is growing on the pavement surrounding the churches, and in others mushrooms are springing up freely at the very foot of the altars. There can be no doubt that the sect is already declining. Were it not for the aid in money and other advantages which its members receive from the Prussian government, it would probably by this time have shared the fate of Rongeanism. According to the report read at the fourth Old Catholic synod at Bonn, in May, 1877, there were at that time 35 Old Catholic communities in Prussia, counting in all 6,510 people with civil independence; in Baden there were 44 communities, in Bavaria 31, in Hesse 5, in Oldenburg 2, in Würtemberg 1. The total number of adherents, women and children included, amounted in Prussia to 20,524, in Baden to 17,203, in Bavaria to 10,100, in Hesse to 1,042, in Oldenburg to 240, in Würtemberg to 223—in all 49,342 out of a population of 14 millions. The number of Old Catholic priests in the whole German Empire is now 56. In the course of last year four of them and a good many laymen from Wiesbaden and Dortmund retracted their error and returned to the mother church; others became Protestants.
Although passed in May, 1875, the law ordering the dissolution of Catholic religious congregations has not yet been fully carried into execution, not out of regard for the establishments themselves, but because the state interest required a departure from the rule. The last term granted to Catholic sisters engaged in education expires on the 1st of October next. Their expulsion is causing the deepest grief among all classes of German Catholics, for the good sisters have, by their noble and self-sacrificing exertions, so endeared themselves to the hearts of the people that they are looked upon as—what they really are—the greatest benefactors of the people, without whose help the moral and religious training of the young will remain defective. More than all do the poor and unhappy feel their departure, for it was chiefly on orphanages and other charitable institutions that the expelled nuns exercised their salutary influence. Now that these establishments no longer stand under the direction of those ministering angels, who work only for the love of God and man, the respective parishes have to grant salaries to their successors, for which the poor as well as the rich are compelled to contribute. In a great many towns, however, they cannot be replaced at all, not only for want of means but also for want of the competent persons, and about 10,000 orphans of the poor are left destitute by the expulsion of the nuns. No wonder, then, if under such circumstances the parting scenes were everywhere heart-rending; not only sobbing children thronged round their foster-mothers in uncontrollable grief, but the inhabitants, burgomasters, and magistrates came to express their thanks for the eminent services they had rendered to their parishes, and their deep regret at seeing them driven out of home and country—their own beloved benefactresses. No exact statistics regarding the number of expelled nuns have as yet been published, nor is it possible to say what has become of them all. It is, however, computed that about 500 houses have been broken up, which must have included at least between two and three thousand inmates. The Ursulines of Dorsten transferred their establishment to Holland, where forty pupils followed them on the very day of their expulsion. The house of Posen went to Cracow; those of Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Duderstadt, Kitzlar, etc., emigrated partly to North America, partly to neighboring countries. The Sisters of Our Lady, whose convents had been established more than 200 years in Essen and Coesfeld, went 250 strong across the Atlantic, and the School Sisters either returned to their families or left off their religious habits and continued their calling as lay teachers. The names of the other congregations that had to leave this year are chiefly the following: The English Ladies (Fulda and Mayence), the Franciscans (Frankfort, Erfurt, Treves, Fulda, Aix-la-Chapelle, Bonn, Oberwesel, Emmerich), the Sisters of Mercy conducting orphanages (Posen, Breslau, Lauban, Myslowitz, Steinfeld, Bromberg, Peplin, Düsseldorf, Crefeld, Bonn, Dortmund, Berncastle, Malmedy, Lannerz, Berge-Borbeck, Mayen, Rheinberg, Paderborn, Schroda, Düren, Bitburg, Neuss, Neustadt, Osnabrück, Salzkotten), the Sisters of St. Charles (Boppard, Oberglogau, etc.), St. Vincent de Paul (Deutz, Nippes, Ehrenfeld), the Daughters of the Holy Cross, and the Poor Sisters of Christ. Those Sisters of Mercy who exclusively devote themselves to hospital work have been allowed to remain; their exact number was a short time ago 5,763.
Of all the laws enacted since 1871 against the Catholic Church in Prussia, none will be attended with more injurious effects than the law regulating school supervision and religious instruction in popular schools. Not content with having removed nearly all ecclesiastical district and local school inspectors, and appointed Protestants and “liberal” Catholics in their place, the government has also forbidden the priests to teach the Catholic religion anywhere except in church out of school hours. In a decree issued by Dr. Falk in March, 1876, the right of parents to bring up their children in accordance with their religious principles is virtually denied, at all events practically destroyed, for it places the whole teaching and supervision of Catholic religious instruction under the supreme control of the Protestant government, and thus arbitrarily cancels clause 24 of the Prussian constitution, which guarantees to recognized religious societies the right of conducting religious instruction either through their priests or laymen invested with the missio canonica. By virtue of this ministerial ordinance the government, feeling its hands strengthened and unshackled, proceeds to all kinds of arbitrary and unjustifiable changes in matters of religious teaching. It sets aside Catholic catechisms and reading-books hitherto used in schools with ecclesiastical approbation, and replaces them by works more in harmony with the spirit of the age; it commissions schoolmasters (now already about 1,000) to teach the Catholic religion only in the name and by order of the civil power, threatening them with prosecution if they ask for or accept the missio canonica from church authorities; it either dissolves Catholic schools or amalgamates them with Protestant institutions under the name of simultan-schools, all of which stand under exclusively Protestant direction; it appoints Protestant and Jewish teachers to purely Catholic schools; it compels, as was recently done in Crefeld, Catholic children to attend Protestant school prayers; it limits the hearing of Mass to two days in the week, and strictly forbids Catholic teachers to exhort their pupils to a greater frequency of the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion; in one word, it uses all possible means to Protestantize Catholic children in popular schools. Priests and parents, school boards and parishes, have sought redress of this bitter grievance in innumerable petitions and protests addressed from all parts of the country to the emperor, the ministers, to both houses of Parliament, demanding in the name of liberty, of justice, of the constitution, of natural and human rights, that the teaching of their religion should again be declared free and placed under the only rightful authority, that of the church; but neither the prayers of distressed parents nor the powerful agitation got up by the leading Catholic representatives proved of any avail, Dr. Falk invariably rejecting all petitions on the ground that the grievances complained of did not exist—an assertion which the minister, if he had ventured to do so, could not have reconciled with the truth of facts. As ministers and national liberals alike expect the realization of their plans from the destructive school policy rather than from any of the other May laws, the Prussian government feels the less disposed to make concessions on this question, as it enables them to administer the poison of infidelity to the rising generation in a quiet and imperceptible but systematic and effective manner. Catholics have therefore nothing to hope from the present rulers of Prussia towards an equitable settlement of the religious question, as party interest, and not justice, is the moving principle of the May legislators. If the faith of the next generation is to be saved, it must be done by the parents themselves; if they take the religious instruction in their own hands, if by vigilance and self-devotion they detect, counteract, and destroy the evil influence of heterodox school-teaching, no power on earth will be able to interfere with their children’s faith; but if they neglect this solemn duty, which now devolves upon them with a fearful responsibility, they will have to bear the guilt of their children’s apostasy. Happily there is little or no ground for such apprehensions, now that bishops, priests, and laity have all so manfully withstood the storm and so far passed unscathed through the crucible of the persecution. Persevering in their course of loyal attachment to the church, Catholic parents of all classes of society look after their children’s faith and teach them catechism at home, in which excellent work they are effectually assisted by the advice and practical help of numerous societies instituted for that purpose all over Prussia.
Whilst Catholics heartily rejoice at the failure of their enemies’ endeavors to destroy their church in Germany, they deeply feel the enormous losses and sufferings which the application of the May Laws has so wantonly inflicted on so many thousands of their innocent co-religionists. Apart from the innumerable convictions of bishops, priests, and laymen for so-called May-law transgressions, Prince Bismarck alone instituted more than 7,000 prosecutions for alleged offences against his person. In his eagerness to silence opposition he spared neither sex nor age, neither office nor rank, proceeding with equal animosity against statesmen and artisans, distinguished writers and poor peasants, washerwomen and children. The sums paid in fines and the time spent in prison for Kulturkampf offences are said to be enormous; our readers may form an idea of the magnitude of the penal results of the persecution by the perusal of the following statistics: Within the first four months of 1877 Prussian courts of justice pronounced sentences of imprisonment amounting to 55 years, 11 months, and 6 days, and fines to the amount of 27,843 marks. The victims were 241 priests, 210 laymen, and 136 editors of newspapers. Imprisonment of 12 years, 8 months, and 14 days was decreed for offences against the emperor, and 8 years, 4 months, 7 days for 68 Bismarck offences. Besides these penalties, the police made 55 arrests, 74 domiciliary visits, and 56 dissolutions of unions and assemblies. A compositor of a Mayence paper, father of eight children, was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for having used a disrespectful expression towards his majesty whilst in a state of intoxication; a doctor had to spend a whole year in a fortress for a similar offence; a rag and bone gatherer got five and a half months, and a poor servant-girl of nineteen years of age one month’s imprisonment.
A few more instances, taken at random from the masses of Kulturkampf convictions, will further exemplify the nature of the offences and the penalties with which they were visited. Bishop Brinckmann received one year’s imprisonment, Vicar-General Giese two years, Father Fievez three months, Father Haversath four weeks, for alleged embezzlement of diocesan money; in reality for preventing certain church funds from falling into the hands of the government, which had no claim whatever to them. In Münster 2,500 heads of families were fined for not sending their children to school on Corpus Christi day. The successive editors of the Kuryer Poznanski, the Germania, and the Frankfort Zeitung have for several years past gone to prison, some for publishing papal and episcopal documents, others for offending the emperor, Prince Bismarck, and other members of the administration. Father Isbert, of Namborn, Treves, spent 903 days in the prison of Saarbrücken for “illegally” saying Mass, hearing confessions, etc. In April, 1876, the priests of the diocese of Posen had to pay 163,463 marks for similar offences. Father Simon was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment because he removed the sacred Host from the church of the Girlachsdorf the day before state priest Pischel’s installation. Fathers Bruns of Geldern and Kroll of Adekerke were prosecuted and punished for refusing absolution to two penitents. A French priest accidentally staying in Hanover was condemned to a fine of 4,800 marks for saying Mass in a private chapel. Dean Leineweber, of Heiligenstadt, went to prison for 18 months for granting dispensations; Father Nawrocki two years for secretly administrating the parish of Goszieszy. Besides endless prosecutions, hundreds of the inhabitants of Marpingen had to pay fines for granting hospitality to pilgrims.
But the Catholic clergy had to suffer for not acknowledging the May Laws as well as for transgressing them. By the so-called Bread-basket Law, intended to starve the priests into submission, many thousands lost their income and had to bear great misery, especially in poor parishes, where church offerings usually consist of farthings. In the diocese of Fulda, for instance, the average income of a great number of parish priests fluctuated between twelve and twenty pounds a year. In other districts they fared in so far better as their parishioners indemnified them for the loss of their state emoluments and homes by voluntary contributions or gifts in kind, such as meat, bread, firewood, etc. This help, if lastingly established, might have considerably alleviated the existing distress; but unfortunately the Prussian government forbade public offerings and collections for the relief of priests in distress, on the ground that such illegal remunerations encouraged resistance to the state laws. This harsh, not to say inhuman, proceeding, however, only harmed its victims for a time; for very soon the inventive spirit of the faithful found out other means of relief, over which the most watchful officials could obtain no control. In addition to secret parish subventions the priests now receive regular assistance from the Paulinus Verein, which charitable association collects contributions not only in Germany but also from foreign countries, among which England especially has distinguished itself.
Destructive as the Kulturkampf has been to the outward organization of the church and the happiness and worldly interest of the people, its consequences have in many other respects proved an immense blessing to the Catholic Church in Germany. Instead of having been destroyed or weakened, as her enemies hoped, she has, on the contrary, become stronger and more powerful in her influence over the masses, more respected by her adversaries, better understood by Protestant Christians, better loved and obeyed by her own children. Lukewarm Catholics, formerly almost ashamed of professing their religion in public, now no longer shrink from manifesting their loyal attachment to the church; nay, more, they stand up in her defence, and edify others by the regular fulfilment of their religious duties. The devout crowds that fill the churches on Sundays and all festive occasions; the enormous increase of regular communicants; the frequent processions from widowed dioceses to cathedrals of other dioceses for the reception of the Sacrament of Confirmation; the deep and universal grief shown by the people at the death of Pope Pius IX. and their cordial rejoicing at the election of his successor; the numerous addresses of loyalty sent on every possible occasion to the banished bishops by millions of the faithful; the touching attachment of the masses to their pastors—all these and a great many more significant manifestations afford ample proof that the Catholic Church has gained, and not lost, by the Kulturkampf. And it may not be exaggeration to say that never at any time did the religious sentiment among German Catholics shine forth so brightly, their piety so fervently, their spirit of self-sacrifice so strongly, their love for their church so unboundedly, as now after seven years of relentless persecution. Giving to the state what belongs to the state, but fearlessly obeying the church in all matters that regard their eternal salvation, the German Catholics, bishops, priests, and people, stand firm and unshaken in their resolution to remain true to God and his church, and to lose wealth, freedom, life itself, rather than give up one particle of their faith.
Nor are the beneficial consequences of the persecution limited to a revival in religion; they are also felt, with almost equal power, in the political and literary life of the Catholic portion of the German nation. Purified, ennobled, raised from a state of political servility to a sense of self-dignity, the persecuted German Catholics feel their love of freedom rekindled, their sunken courage revived, and a hitherto unknown power—the power of outraged honesty and truth—growing and spreading among them, and defending their inalienable rights with energy and success, in society, in parliament, in the press, and in general literature, wherever religious and political liberty and independence are wont to assert themselves. The Catholics of Prussia now constitute a political body second only in importance to the national liberals, whose influence in the country is rapidly declining. If the wishes for a return to a religious policy, as expressed by the emperor shortly after the late attempt on his life, should be carried out by his ministers, we may live to see Prince Bismarck courting the help of the Catholic Church to save that same state which resolved upon and worked for her destruction. How valuable the support of the Catholic party would be to the perplexed German government in these critical times is sufficiently shown by the number of its representatives in the various parliaments: in the Reichstag the Catholic Centre party counts 98 members; in the Bavarian Chamber of Deputies it commands the majority; in Baden, where only one Catholic sat in parliament before the year 1870, there are now 13 Catholic deputies. The best illustration of the growth of the Catholic party in Germany was furnished at the last elections, when, in spite of the arbitrary dissection of Catholic voting districts, Catholic members were returned with overwhelming majorities wherever a sufficient number of constituents made such elections possible. The same success attended the elections of municipal officers, but unfortunately to no purpose, as the Prussian government, contrary to right and justice, annulled all elections of Catholic burgomasters and appointed its own creatures to the vacant posts.