The Protestant and free-thinking majority in Switzerland were jealous of
the prosperity of the Catholic Church. They must, therefore, if possible,
divide, and by dividing, weaken, if not destroy, the Catholic body. The
most efficient means they could think of was the establishment of an old
or _alt-Catholic_ Church on the model of that of Germany. The idea was at
hand, and the elements were not far to seek. Among the Swiss Catholic
clergy there were none so weak as to betray their church. In the
coterminous country—France, where there are fifty thousand parochial
priests, some thirty were found already in disgrace among their brethren,
who were ready to form the nucleus of the proposed schismatical church.
The pretext was the pretended novelties introduced by the Œcumenical
Council of the Vatican, which, they insisted, changed the character of the
ancient Catholic Church. The schism once on foot, the majority in the
State affected to treat the real Catholics as dissenters, and the handful
of schismatics as the Catholic Church of Switzerland. Founding on this
idea, persecution was speedily inaugurated. First came the secularization
of several abbeys, which the revolution of the sixteenth century had
respected, in the northern cantons, and the confiscation of the Church of
Zurich, which was handed over to the _alt-Catholics_. Their next measure
was the expulsion of Mgr. Mermillod, Bishop of Hebron and Coadjutor of
Geneva. Mgr. Lachat, Bishop of Bale, was then deprived, and, on a purely
theological pretext, his public adhesion to the Council of the Vatican.
The sixty-nine parish priests of Bernese Jura, having declared in writing
that they remained faithful to the Bishop of Bale, were, in their turn,
suspended from their offices and driven, at first, from their parishes,
and afterwards from the country. As there was not a sufficient number of
foreign priests to replace the dispossessed clergy, the number of parishes
was arbitrarily reduced from seventy-six to twenty-eight. It was regulated
that nominations should, henceforth, be made by the government alone, and
by a single stroke of the pen were suppressed, both the Concordat
concluded with Rome, in 1828, and the act of re-union of 1815, by which,
when Bernese Jura, formerly French, was incorporated with Switzerland, an
engagement was made with France to respect, in every way, the liberty of
Catholic worship. France was not in a position, at the time, to enforce
the terms of the treaty. They who dared to call it to mind, accordingly,
were sent to prison or heavily fined.
Almost all the Bernese clergy, when banished from their churches and
presbyteries, sought shelter and protection on the hospitable soil of
France. From that country they returned often, under cover of night, to
their forsaken parishes, in order to administer the sacraments and perform
other religious offices for the consolation of their flocks, hastening
back to the land of liberty and safety before the approach of day. The
persecution was carried to such extremes that the Catholics were not only
deprived of their churches, but forbidden, under severe penalties, to
assemble for Divine worship, even in barns or such-like places. “As an
official of the State of Bearn,” wrote a school inspector to a school
mistress, “you are bound to strive, with all your might, that the purposes
of the said State, as regards attendance at public worship, be carried
out. If your conscience does not admit of your attending the Church which
is recognized and approved by the government, I leave you at liberty to
refrain from attending any worship, but I forbid you to go to the barn,
where the deprived parish priest officiates, because I would not have you
set a bad example to your children.”
No encouragement or word of consolation that Pius IX. could bestow, was
wanting to his persecuted children of Switzerland. In addressing Bishop
Lachat, whom he received with every mark of friendship, when he came to
represent the sad condition to which he was reduced, the Holy Father said:
“To you also it is now given to experience the greatest happiness that can
fall to the lot of an apostolic man. This happiness is thus expressed in
the New Testament: _Ibant gaudentes, quoniam digni habiti sunt pro nomine
Jesu contumeliam pati._ They went away rejoicing, because they were
thought worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus.”
The Prussian chancellor, as devoid of humanity as he was short-sighted in
statesmanship, forbad the exiled clergy of Switzerland to set foot in the
annexed Province of Alsace. The brutal conduct of the chancellor could,
however, only injure himself. It stigmatizes him as a persecutor
throughout the ages, as long as history shall be read, whilst the
sufferers to whom he refused shelter and bread, found abundant
compensation in the generous hospitality of the French nation.
_Mentita est iniquitas sibi._ The persecution brought little benefit to
either the Protestant or infidel party in the Bernese Legislature, by whom
it was inaugurated, whilst the moral power of the Catholics was greatly
increased. Travellers relate that “the Catholics of Jura treat with a
degree of contempt, as immense as is their faith, the apostate priests who
banished the true ministers of God. They assembled in barns and all sorts
of out-buildings, all remaining faithful to God, the Holy Church and their
parish priests. Faith which slept in some souls is reawakened and endowed
with new life. Bernese Jura is more Catholic than ever.”
The Central Council of the Swiss Confederation, at length, became ashamed
of the inglorious name which the Canton of Bearn was making for the common
country—the country of William Tell so highly famed for its love of
liberty and its noble hospitality. Perhaps, also, they were not
unconcerned to find that travellers from other lands protested, in their
way, against the barbarous persecution, and left their money in more
favored lands.
The Bernese government was advised, either to proceed legally and
regularly against the parish priests, or to recall them. There being
nothing on which to found legal proceedings, the exiles returned to their
country at the end of 1875. The persecution was not, however, at an end.
Neither churches, nor presbyteries, nor liberty, were restored. The
faithful clergy, rich in the fidelity of their devoted flocks, fulfilled
the duties of their ministry in the darkness of night, using every
precaution in order to escape the snares of the police, and to avoid fines
and imprisonment, which were now the punishment instead of exile.