The Persecution Of The Church In The German Empire.
The Catholics are suffering today, in the very heart of Europe, a
persecution which, if less bloody, is not less cruel or unjust, than that
which afflicted the Christian Church in the beginning of the IVth century,
under the reign of the brutal old emperor, Diocletian. The prisons of
Germany are filled with confessors of the faith, who, in the midst of
every indignity and outrage, bear themselves with a constancy and heroism
not unworthy of the early martyrs. And it is strange, too, that this
struggle should be only a renewal of the old conflict between Christ and
Cæsar, between the Son of Man and the prince of this world. In fact, anti‐
Christian Europe is using every exertion to re‐create society on the model
of Grecian and Roman paganism. This tendency is manifest in all the
various realms of thought and action.
We perceive it—and we speak now more particularly of Germany—in
literature, in science, in the manner of dealing with all the great
problems which concern man in his relations with both the visible and the
unseen world; and it looms up before us, in palpable form and gigantic
proportions, in the whole attitude of the state toward the church. There
has never lived on this earth a more thorough pagan than Goethe, the great
idol of German literature, to whom the very sign of the cross was so
hateful that in his notorious Venetian Epigram he put it side by side with
garlic and vermin. The thought of self‐sacrifice and self‐denial was so
odious to his lustful and all‐indulgent nature that he turned from its
great emblem with uncontrollable disgust, and openly proclaimed himself a
“decidirter Nichtchrist.” “Das Ewig Weibliche”—sensualism and
sexualism—were the gods of his heart, in whose praise alone he attuned his
lyre. And Schiller, in his _Gods of Greece_, complained sorrowingly that
all the fair world of gods and goddesses should have vanished, that one
(the God of the Christian) might be enriched; and with tender longing he
prayed that “nature’s sweet morn” might again return.
Both the religion and the philosophy of paganism were based upon the
deification of nature, and were consequently pantheistic. Now, this pagan
pantheism recrudescent is the one permanent type amid the endless
variations of modern German sophistry. It underlies the theorizing of
Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel, as well as that of Feuerbach, Büchner, and
Strauss. They all assume the non‐existence of a personal God, and transfer
his attributes to nature, which is, in their eyes, the mother of all, the
sole existence, and the supreme good. This pantheism, which confuses all
things in extricable chaos, spirit with matter, thought with sensation,
the infinite with the finite, destroying the very elements of reason, and
taking from language its essential meaning, has infected all non‐Catholic
thought in Germany. When we descend from the misty heights of speculation,
we find pantheistic paganism in the idolatry of science and culture, which
have taken the place of dogma and morality. It is held to be an axiom that
man is simply a product of nature, who knows herself in him as she feels
herself in the animal.
The formulas in which the thought is clothed are of minor importance. In
the ultimate analysis we find in all the conflicting schools of German
infidelity this sentiment, however widely its expression may vary: that
nature is supreme, and there is no God beside. The cosmos, instead of a
personal God, is the ultimate fact beyond which science professes to be
unable to proceed; and therefore the duality of ends, aims, and results
which underlies the Christian conception of the universe must necessarily
disappear. There is no longer God and the world, spirit and matter, good
and evil, heaven and hell; there is not even man and the brute. There is
only the cosmos, which is one; and from this it necessarily follows that
the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal power is unreal and
should cease to be recognized.
Now, here we have discovered the very germ from which the whole Prussian
persecution has sprung. In the last analysis it rests upon the assumption
that the spiritual power has no right to exist, since the truths upon
which it was supposed to be based—as God, the soul, and a future life—are
proven to be myths. Hence the state is the only autonomy, and to claim
authority not derived from it is treason. Thus the struggle now going on
in Prussia is for life or death. It rages around the very central citadel
of the soul and of all religion. The Catholics of Germany are to‐day
contending for what the Christians of the first centuries died—the right
to live. To understand this better it will be well to consider for a
moment the attributes of the state in pagan Greece and Rome.
Hellenic religion, in its distinctive forms, had its origin in the
deification of nature and of man as her crowning work, and both were
identified with the state. Hence religion was hero‐worship; the good man
was the good citizen, the saint was the successful warrior who struck
terror into the enemies of his country, and thus the religious feeling was
confounded with the patriotic spirit. To be a true citizen of the state,
it was necessary to profess the national religion; and to be loyal to the
state was to be true to its protecting gods. The highest act of religion
was to beat back the invader or to die gloriously on the battle‐field.
Indeed, in paganism we find no idea of a non‐national religion. The pagan
state, whether imperial, monarchical, or republican, was essentially
tyrannical, wholly incompatible with freedom as understood in Christian
society. To be free was to be, soul and body, the slave of the state.
Plato gives to his ideal Republic unlimited power to control the will of
the individual, to direct all his thoughts and actions, to model and shape
his whole life. He merges the family and its privileges into the state and
its rights, gives the government absolute authority in the education of
its subjects, and even places the propagation of the race under state
supervision.
The pagan state was also essentially military, recognizing no rights
except those which it had not the power to violate. Now, the preaching of
Christ was in direct contradiction to this whole theory of government. He
declared that God and the soul have rights as well as Cæsar, and
proclaimed the higher law which affirms that man has a destiny superior to
that of being a citizen of any state, however glorious; which imposes upon
him duties that transcend the sphere of all human authority. Thus religion
became the supreme law of life, and the recognition of the indefeasible
rights of conscience gave to man citizenship in a kingdom not of this
world. It, in consequence, became his duty as well as his privilege to
obey first the laws of this supernatural kingdom, and to insist upon this
divine obligation, even though the whole world should oppose him.
This teaching of Christ at once lifted religion above the control of the
state, and, cutting loose the bonds of servitude which had made it
national and narrow, declared it catholic, of the whole earth and for all
men. He sent his apostles, not to the Jew, or the Greek, or the Gentile,
but to all the nations, and in his church he recognized no distinction of
race or social condition—the slave was like the freeman, the beggar like
the king.
This doctrine, the most beneficent and humanitarian that the world has
ever heard, brought forth from the oblivion of ages the all‐forgotten
truth of the brotherhood of the race, and raised man to a level on which
paganism was not able even to contemplate him; proclaiming that man, for
being simply man, irrespective of race, nationality, or condition, is
worthy of honor and reverence. Now, it was precisely this catholic and
non‐national character of the religion of Christ which brought it into
conflict with the pagan state. The Christians, it was held, could not be
loyal citizens of the empire, because they did not profess the religion of
the empire, and refused to sacrifice to the divinity of Cæsar. They were
traitors, because in those things which concerned faith they were resolved
not to recognize on the part of the state any right to interfere; and
therefore were they cast into prison, thrown to the wild beasts in the
Amphitheatre, and devoured under the approving eyes of the worshippers of
the emperor’s divinity. This history is repeating itself in Prussia to‐
day.
Many causes have, within the present century, helped to strengthen the
national feeling in Germany. The terrible outrages and humiliations
inflicted upon her by the pitiless soldiers of the first Napoleon made it
evident that the common safety required that the bonds of brotherhood
among the peoples of the different German states should be drawn tighter.
The development of a national literature also helped to foster a longing
for national unity. In the XVIIth, and even down to nearly the end of the
XVIIIth, century, French influence, extending from the courts of princes
to the closets of the learned, gave tone to both literature and politics.
Leibnitz wrote in French or Latin, and Frederick the Great strove to
forget his own tongue, that he might learn to speak French with idiomatic
purity—an accomplishment which he never acquired.
As there was no German literature, the national feeling lacked one of its
most powerful stimulants. But in the latter half of the XVIIIth century,
and during the first half of the XIXth, a literature rich, profound,
thoroughly German, the creation of some of the highest names in the world
of letters, came into existence, and was both a cause and an effect of the
national awakening. Goethe especially did much, by the absolute ascendency
which he acquired in the literature of his country, to unify and harmonize
the national mind.
Still, a thousand interests and jealousies, local and dynastic, old
prescriptive rights, and a constitutional slowness and sluggishness in the
Germanic temperament, stood in the way of a united fatherland, and had to
be got rid of or overcome by force before the dream of the nationalists
could become a reality.
Prussia, founded by rapine, built up and strengthened by war and conquest,
has always been a heartless, self‐seeking state. The youngest of the great
European states, and for a long time one of the most inconsiderable, she
has gradually grown to be the first military power of the world. Already,
in the time of Frederick the Great, she was the formidable rival of
Austria in the contest for the hegemony of the other German states. This
struggle ended, in 1866, in the utter defeat of Austria on the field of
Sadowa. Hanover, Saxony, Hesse‐Cassel, and other minor principalities were
at once absorbed by Prussia, who, besides greatly increasing her strength,
thus became the champion of German unity. But German unity was a menace to
France, who could not possibly maintain her preponderance in European
affairs in the presence of a united Germany. Hence the irrepressible
conflict between France and Prussia, which ended in the catastrophe of
Sedan.
The King of Prussia became the Emperor of Germany, and German national
pride and enthusiasm reached a degree bordering on frenzy.
By a remarkable coincidence the Franco‐Prussian war broke out at the very
moment when the dogma of Papal infallibility was defined, and immediately
after the capitulation of Sedan, Victor Emanuel took possession of Rome.
The Pope was without temporal power—a prisoner indeed. The feeling against
the newly‐defined dogma was especially strong in Germany, where the
systematic warfare carried on by the _Janus_ party against the Vatican
Council had warped the public mind. France, the eldest daughter of the
church, was lying, bleeding and crushed, at the feet of the conqueror. The
time seemed to have arrived when the bond which united the Catholics of
Germany with the Pope, and through him with the church universal, might
easily be broken.
The defection of Döllinger and other rationalistic professors, as well as
the attitude of many of the German bishops in the council, and the views
which they had expressed with regard to the probable results of a
definition of the infallibility of the Pope, tended to confirm those who
controlled the policy of the new empire in the opinion that there would be
no great difficulty in forming the Catholics of Germany into a kind of
national religious body wholly subject to the state, even in matters of
faith. If we add to this the fact that the infidels of our day have a kind
of superstition which leads them to think that all religious faith has
grown weak, and that those who believe are for the most part hypocritical,
insincere, and by no means anxious to suffer for conscience’s sake, we
shall be able to understand how Bismarck, who is utterly indifferent to
all religion, and who believes in nothing except the omnipotence of the
state, should have persuaded himself to destroy the religious freedom
which had come to be considered the common property of Christendom.
Already, in the month of August immediately following the close of the war
with France, we find the Northern German press, which obsequiously obeys
his orders, beginning to throw out hints that Rome had always been the
enemy of Germany; that her claims were incompatible with the rights of the
state and hurtful to the national development; and that, in presence of
the newly‐defined dogma of Papal infallibility, the necessity of resisting
her ever‐increasing encroachments upon the domain of the civil authority
had become imperative. The watchword given by the official press was
everywhere re‐echoed by the organs of both infidel and Protestant opinion,
and it at once became evident that the German Empire intended to make war
on the Catholic Church.
There was yet another end to be subserved by the persecution of the
church. Bismarck made no secret of his fears of a democratic movement in
Germany after the excitement of the French campaign had died away, and he
hoped to avert this danger by inflaming the religious prejudices of the
infidel and Protestant population.
On the 8th of July, 1871, the Catholic department in the Ministry of
Public Worship was abolished, and the government openly lent its influence
to the Old Catholic movement.
According to the Prussian constitution, religious instruction in the
gymnasia is obligatory; but where a portion or all of the students were
Catholics, the state recognized that their religious instructors should
not be appointed until they had received the approbation of the bishop.
Dr. Wollmann, who had for a long time held the office of teacher of
religion in the Catholic gymnasium of Braunsberg, apostatized after the
Vatican Council, and was, in consequence, suspended from the exercise of
the priestly office by his bishop, who declared that, since Wollmann had
left the church, he could no longer be considered a suitable religious
instructor of Catholic youth. Von Mühler, the Minister of Public Worship,
refused to remove Wollmann; and since religious instruction is compulsory,
the pupils who could not in conscience attend his classes were forced to
leave the school.
This act of Von Mühler was in open violation of the Prussian constitution,
which expressly recognized in the Catholic Church the right of directing
the religious instruction of its members.
To require that Catholics should send their children to the lessons of an
excommunicated priest was to trample upon the most sacred rights of
conscience. By declaring, as in this case, that those who rejected the
dogma of infallibility were true Catholics, the German government plainly
showed that it intended to assume the competency of deciding in all
matters of faith, and consequently to wholly ignore the existence of any
religious authority distinct from that of the state.
Bismarck’s next move was not less arbitrary or tyrannical. He proposed to
the Federal Council and Reichstag a law against what was termed the abuse
of the pulpit, by which the office of preaching should be placed under the
supervision of the police.
This law, which was passed by a feeble majority, was simply a renewal of
the attempt to suppress Christianity made by the Jewish Council in
Jerusalem when the apostles first began to preach in the name of Jesus,
without asking permission of the rulers of the people: “But that it may be
no further spread among the people, let us threaten them, that they speak
no more in this name to any man. And calling them, they charged them not
to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus” (Acts iv. 17, 18).
The injustice of this law was very well shown by the Saxon member of the
Federal Council, who pointed out the fact that, whilst liberty of speech
was denied to Catholic priests, socialists and infidels were permitted
every day to attack the very foundations of all government and
civilization.
This, however, is but the necessary consequence of the theory of the
_state‐God_. To preach in the name of any other God is treason; whereas
atheism is the correlative of the omnipotence of the government. That the
present tendency in Germany is to put the nation in the place of God is
expressly recognized by the _Allgemeine Evang. Luth. Kirchenzeitung_,
which is the organ of orthodox Lutheranism. These are its words: “For the
dogmatic teaching of Christianity they hope to substitute the national
element. The national idea will form the germ of the new religion of the
empire. We have already seen the emblems which foreshadow the manner in
which this new worship is to be organized. Instead of the Christian
festivals, they will celebrate the national memories, and will call to the
churches the masses to whom the road is no longer known. Have we not seen,
on the anniversary of Sedan, the _eidolon_ of the emperor placed upon the
altar, whilst the pulpit was surrounded with the busts of the heroes of
the war?
“During eight days they wove crowns of oak‐leaves and the church was
filled; whilst out of ten thousand parishioners, scarcely a dozen can be
got together to listen to the word of God. Such is the religion of the
future church of the empire. Little more is needed to revive the ancient
worship of the Roman emperors; and if the history of Germany is to be
reduced to this duel between the church of the emperor and that of the
Pope, we must see on which side the Lutherans will stand.”
The next attack on the church was made under cover of an enactment on the
inspection of public schools. A project of law was presented to the House
of Deputies, excluding all priests from the inspection of schools, and at
the same time obliging them to undertake this office whenever asked to do
so by the state authorities. This latter clause was, however, so openly
unjust that it was rejected by the House. But the law, even as it stands,
is a virtual denial that Catholic schools have any right to exist at all,
and is an evidence that the German Empire intends to destroy Christian
faith by establishing an atheistic system of popular education.
And now war was declared against the Jesuits. The Congress of the Old
Catholics, which met at Munich in September, 1871, had passed violent
resolutions against the order; and later the Old Catholic Committee at
Cologne presented a petition against the Jesuits to the imperial
Parliament.
The debate was opened in the month of May, 1872. A project of law,
restricting the liberties of religious orders, and especially directed
against the Society of Jesus, was brought before the Federal Council and
accepted by a large majority. When it came before the imperial Parliament,
amendments were added rendering it still more harsh and tyrannical. The
order was to be shut out from the empire, its houses to be closed, foreign
Jesuits were to be expelled, and the German members of the society were to
be confined to certain districts; and the execution of these measures was
to be entrusted to the Federal Council.
On the 4th of July the law received the approval of the emperor, and on
the 5th it was promulgated.
Thus in the most arbitrary manner, without any legal proceedings, hundreds
of German citizens, against whom there was not the slightest proof of
guilt, were deprived of all rights and expelled from their country.
Besides, the measure was based upon the most ignorant misconception of the
real condition of the church, and was therefore necessarily ineffective.
The religious orders and the secular priesthood do not represent opposite
tendencies in the church; their aims are identical, and, in our day at
least, the secular priests are as zealous, as active, and as efficient as
the members of the religious orders.
What end, then, was to be gained by expelling the Jesuits, whilst devoted
and faithful priests were left to minister to the Catholic people, whose
faith had been roused by this scandalous persecution of men whom they knew
to be guilty of no crime except that of loving Jesus Christ and his
church? The blow struck at the Jesuits was, in truth, aimed at the church,
and this the bishops, priests, and entire Catholic people of Germany at
once recognized. They saw now, since even the possibility of doubting was
no longer left to them, that the German Empire had declared open war
against the church; and Bismarck, seeing that his half‐way measures had
deceived no one, resolved to adopt a policy of open violence. With this
view a new minister of Public Worship was appointed in the person of Dr.
Falk, who drew up the plan of the famous Four Church Laws to which he has
given his name, and which was adopted on the 11th of May, 1873.
In virtue of these laws—which it is unnecessary to transcribe in full—the
state arrogates the right of appointing to all ecclesiastical offices,
since the government claims authority to approve or annul all nominations
made by the bishops; and the President of the Province (_Oberpraesident_)
is bound to interdict the exercise of any religious function to
ecclesiastics appointed without his consent. The bishop who makes an
appointment to the cure of souls without the consent of the civil
authority is fined from two hundred to one thousand thalers; and the
priest who, appointed in this way, exercises spiritual functions, is
visited with a proportionate fine. This is an attempt to change the very
nature of the church; it is a denial of its right to exist at all.
The third of these laws creates the “Royal Court of Justice for
Ecclesiastical Affairs,” which claims and possesses by act of Parliament
the right to reform all disciplinary decisions made by the bishops in
relation to the ecclesiastics under their jurisdiction. This same court
has by law the right to depose any ecclesiastic whose conduct the
government may see fit to consider _incompatible with public order_.
The Pope is interdicted from the exercise of disciplinary power within the
territory of the Prussian monarchy.
The state takes control of the education of the young men destined to the
priesthood. It requires them to pass the _arbiturienten‐examen_ in a
German gymnasium, and then to devote three years to the study of theology
in a German university, during which time they are not to be permitted to
live in an episcopal seminary; and thereafter they are to pass a public
examination before the state officials. All educational establishments for
the clergy, especially all kinds of seminaries, are placed under the
superintendence of the government, and those which refuse to submit to
this supervision are to be closed. The education of priests, the fitness
of candidates for holy orders, appointments to the cure of souls, the
infliction of ecclesiastical censures, the soundness of the faith of the
clergy, are, in the new German Empire, matters to be regulated by the
police.
This is not a struggle between Catholicity and Protestantism; it is a
battle between the Atheist State and the Kingdom of God. The Protestant
Church in Germany does not alarm Bismarck, because it is feeble and has no
independent organization, since its ministers are appointed and ruled by
the emperor, and it is also well understood that very few of them have any
faith in positive religion.
But the orthodox Protestants of Germany thoroughly understand that the
attempt to crush the Catholic Church is meant to be a fatal blow at the
vital principle of all religion. This is recognized by the _Allgemeine
Evang. Luth. Kirchenzeitung_ in the article from which we have already
quoted. “It is a common remark,” says this organ of orthodox Lutheranism,
“that the blows struck at the Church of Rome will tell with redoubled
force against the evangelical church. But what is meant to injure, only
helps the Roman Church. There she stands, more compact than ever, and the
world is amazed at beholding her strength. Once the word of the Monk of
Wittenberg made her tremble, but to‐day the blows of power make her
stronger. Let us beware of illusion; it is certain that in the Protestant
North of Germany there has grown up a public opinion on the Church of Rome
which provokes the respect even of the liberals. We have enough to do,
they say, to fight the socialists; it is time to leave the Catholic
bishops in peace.”
To Be Concluded Next Month.
The Veil Withdrawn.
Translated, By Permission, From The French Of Mme. Craven, Author Of “A
Sister’s Story,” “Fleurange,” Etc.