Publication of Janus--Hotter Controversy--Bishop Maret's Book--Père
Hyacinthe--the Saviour of Society again--Dress--True Doctrine of
Concordats not Contracts but Papal Laws--Every Catholic State has
Two Heads--Four National Governments Condemned in One Day--What a
Free Church means--Fulda Manifesto--Meeting of Catholic Notables in
Berlin--Political Agitation in Bavaria and Austria--Stumpf's Critique
of the Jesuit Schemes.
Little more than three months remained before the opening of the
Council, when the intellectual movement respecting it received a new
impulse. A book under the title of _The Pope and the Council_, by
Janus, issued from the German press; and conjecture at once ascribed
the principle authorship to no less a person than Döllinger, although
it was assumed that he had availed himself of aid. The profound
impression made by this work may be accounted for, partly by the
excitement in the midst of which it appeared, and partly by its own
force. It combined a minute knowledge of the inner history of the
Church, with comprehensive views of the questions, both doctrinal and
constitutional, which were now raised.
After a few clear passages from modern utterances of authority. Janus
strikes the keynote rather higher than he is prepared to sustain
it--"So they find themselves under a delusion, who believed that in the
Church, the spirit of the Bible, and of old Christianity, had got the
upper hand of that spirit of the middle ages according to which she was
a penal establishment, able to send men to prison, to the gallows, or
to the stake."
Beginning with the _Magna Charta_ which Innocent III condemned, while
he excommunicated the Barons, Janus cites case after case in which
the establishment of free institutions, and especially of freedom of
worship, brought down the solemn condemnation of the Pope. The case
of Austria in 1868 is the latest. With the quietness of scientific
knowledge, he states what at the time would have required from an
English writer arguments and proofs in detail, namely, the simple but
most important fact that the oft-quoted word of the Apostle, "We must
obey God rather than men," means, in the Jesuit sense, We must obey
the Pope as the representative of God upon earth, and the infallible
interpreter of the Divine will, rather than any civil superior, or any
law of the State (p. 33).
The tone of Janus is calm and scholarly, without being cold; and
the acuteness of his analysis is such as is found only where clear
intellectual insight is united to trained habits of weighing language
with reference to possible interpretations by such casuists as are
formed by the Curia and the Jesuits.
He clearly proved that the Church was on the eve of one of the greatest
constitutional changes ever effected in any commonwealth. If, in the
past, the forged Decretals of the pseudo-Isidore had facilitated
inroads upon the constitution of the Church, how much more would an
authentic article of the creed, containing in itself the power of
making any number of other articles, and assuming as its basis the
unlimited authority of the Pope, pave the way to far-reaching civil and
ecclesiastical encroachments! When Archbishop Manning said of Janus
that by some it was "regarded as the shallowest and most pretentious
book of the day" (_Priv. Pet._, iii. p. 114), he greatly moderated
the tone of his Continental friends. Most bad things that could be
said against a book, or its writers, were said in very bad language.
The Archbishop himself could not let it pass without twice calling it
"infamous," and that in a pastoral.
The excitement in Germany now reached a point at which the bishops
began to be alarmed. The "good Press" undertook to extenuate the
importance of the changes dreaded, and threw doubts on the probability
of their being adopted. The perplexity became greater when, in France,
appeared a book in two volumes from the pen of Monsignor Maret, said
by some to be the most learned prelate in the country, and who, at
all events, was Dean of the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne. He
combated the proposed innovations with French tact and skill, raising
a voice, if not for the old Gallican doctrines as a whole, at least
for some remains both of them and of the liberties with which are
identified the names of the most renowned Churchmen in France since
the Reformation.[156] The book made a profound but passing impression.
It was called _Religious Peace and the General Council_; but the
Jesuit historian Sambin (p. 47) styles it a brand increasing the
conflagration. The question raised was that between a constitutional
but oligarchical government and a personal one for the Church. Maret
holds that in her constitution a check upon the monarch was provided
by the "aristocracy," that is, the bishops (vol. ii, p. 107). The
democracy is formed by the priests and the laity. But we may point
out that this is very loose language. _Democracy_ means a people with
power, not a populace excluded from all functions of government. The
people in the Papal Church are absolutely stripped of all part in
government. They are a mere populace. The clergy are disfranchised
officials. That Church is a society with a populace, but without
a democracy. Before the Vatican Council, it had a constitutional
aristocracy. Since then, the bishops are nobles without any but
delegated power. Maret clearly states the familiar fact, that in the
earlier centuries both clergy and laity took part in the election of
bishops. But when he comes to speak of the part taken by kings in their
election, the facts glide out of sight, as noiselessly as writers of
his school generally say that they are wont to do in the hands of a
Jesuit. A reader might imagine that kings first got the idea of a right
in the election of bishops by some grant of the Church; whereas even
the Bishops of Rome were for a long time elected on imperial or royal
order, coming from Greek or Goth, from Arian or orthodox prince, as the
case might be.
Maret quotes Cardinal de la Luzerne as saying that a General
Council, in which the order of priests was not represented, would be
illegitimate though not invalid (vol. i. p. 125); and gives it as the
general opinion of theologians that their presence was _necessary_. He
also admits that the presence of laymen in the Councils is attested by
a large number of documents.
Von Schulte reviewed this work in the _Literaturblat_ of Bonn (v.
pp. 2 and 54). Looking at it in a popular sense, Schulte thought it
was a book to mark an epoch. It was likely to produce a great effect
among the clergy, little among the laity. Time has not justified this
anticipation. The fact is, all the younger clergy had been educated
out of French ideas and sympathies, and such of the young laity too as
had been brought up by priests. Men were but beginning to find how the
Christian Brothers, and convent schools, and episcopal seminaries had
changed France.
The _Civiltá_, in reply, objects even to Maret's formula, _the Pope
with the bishops superior to himself alone_. Such an objection implies
that in Council all the bishops add to the Pope nothing at all. So
many mitres without any heads in them would add at least as much. We
believe, indeed, that great thinkers have doubted whether a judge with
his wig is not superior to the same judge without his wig. But the Pope
with all the bishops is not superior to the Pope without any bishop!
The Jesuit writer says that he thinks he expresses the mind of Maret
with exactness when he puts it thus, _The supreme power resides in the
Pope together with the bishops; in the Pope as supreme, whose strict
duty it is nevertheless, to obey; in the bishops as subordinate, who,
nevertheless, have the right to command_ (_Civiltá_, VII. viii. p. 257
ff.).
The choicest auditories of Paris had often crowded noble Notre Dame,
quaffing with delight the sparkling eloquence of the Carmelite preacher
Hyacinthe. Now the ear of the country was thrilled for a moment, by
a cry from that eloquent voice. "By an abrupt change," he wrote to
the General of his order on September 20, 1869, "for which I blame
not your own feelings, but a party in Rome, you now accuse what you
did encourage, and blame what you did approve, commanding me to hold
a language, or to preserve a silence, which would not represent my
conscience."
Placed in this difficulty, he must forsake General, order, and convent.
He continues: "My profound conviction is, that if France in particular,
and the Latin races in general, are delivered over to social,
moral, and religious anarchy, the principal cause is, not assuredly
Catholicism itself, but the manner in which it has been understood and
practised for a long time."[157]
St. Peter's Day, always a great day in Rome, was, of course, of
surpassing importance in the year of the Council. The _Civiltá_
celebrated it in an article very like one of the Pope's Speeches.
This article yields an example of a dualism in the government of
the universe which must glide in as the unconscious but inevitable
complement of the doctrine into which Papal writers fall, in explaining
away what to others seems the blight of Providence on whatever they
rule according to their own principles. They begin by separating the
God of Providence from the God of grace. They end by turning the
bounties of Providence into the bribes of the evil one. It will be seen
that in what follows national prosperity comes from the devil. The
increase of our fields, the blessing in our basket and our store, are
in reality a curse. This, though unseen to the poor Pope who teaches
such things, presents a true and a very hurtful form of Manicheism. It
is another proof that they who readily forge and hurl bad names are not
safe from the errors which those names when correctly used denote.
In June the Curia had to set up a strong resistance to the movement
originated in Austria for the abrogation of the Concordat. That
instrument, which had formed the diplomatic triumph of Cardinal
Rauscher and had crowned the professional reputation of Schulte,
had legally restored to the Papal Church much of what it calls its
liberties; but the clergy complained that they never practically got
all that was promised upon paper; In the _Frond_ biographies of the
Cardinals, that of Rauscher describes the condition of the Church in
Austria, under the Josephine laws, as deplorable! Instead of leaving
her, like Protestant Prussia, to manage her own affairs, without having
defined either what "manage" or "her own" meant, Austria, knowing
how Rome interprets, had taken a different course. There was left,
according to our authority, no canon law, but only such legislation as
was imbued with Febronianism and Caesarism. Bulls, briefs, rescripts,
and even the pastorals of bishops were subject to the royal _placet_.
Marriage was withdrawn from under the control of the Church. The
State pushed into everything, "and the Catholic Church had none of
the liberties claimed by the tolerance of the age for all religions."
Rauscher had succeeded in getting these grievances redressed, but
now the national spirit was rising against his work. His Concordat
bound Austria to concede to the Church "all rights and privileges to
which by the divine order and by canon law she is entitled." Probably
the Emperor but imperfectly comprehended what that implied. Rauscher
comprehended it. He was as honest a man as any Papal priest is likely
to be. He was the adviser of the Emperor, and his sworn personal
friend. Any one may tell what such friends do for princes who will only
master what Rauscher managed to bind his sovereign to. The minister,
Von Hasner, put the plea for the abrogation of the Concordat on ground
exceedingly offensive to the Pope and those around him. When the
Concordat was contracted, said Hasner, Rome was an independent State.
Now, it has ceased to be so, and is sustained only by foreign arms.
The reply from the Vatican was: So long as the Pope is sustained by
Christian arms, he can never be sustained by those of foreigners.
The reply of the politician would have been that in 1855, when the
Concordat was concluded, the Papal State was as much dependent upon
foreign arms as in 1867, the only difference being that at the former
time the arms holding a great portion of it were those of Austria.
On the anniversary of the Pope's accession, his speech, addressed to
the Sacred College, contained the following passage: "The two societies
of which the world consists," said his Holiness, are, first, the Tower
of Pride, i.e. Babel; secondly, the society whose prototype is seen "in
the upper room, on the day of Pentecost, where Peter, the Apostles,
and thousands of the faithful of different nations, heard one and the
same language and understood it." Those who wish to form a clear idea
of what these two organs of two hostile societies are--the Babel tongue
and the Pentecostal tongue--must just keep their eyes open as we go on.
(_Civiltá_, VII. vii. p. 130.)
The Pope, on June 25, calling governments before "his tribunal," and
sitting in judgment, pronounced censure on the governments of Italy,
Austria, Spain, and Russia. Italy was discussing a law to subject
students even for the priesthood to the conscription. Austria was
miserably wronging and injuring the Church. Spain was doing likewise,
or worse. And Russia was persecuting the Polish bishops and sending
them into exile. The high spirits of the Court at this moment appear
in the comments on these sentences. We give a few specimens from the
_Civiltá_ (VII. vii. p. 135, etc.)--
From no other lips could those words burst forth, save from those
of him who is set by God as ruler of His Church, with divine power,
above all human powers.... Only the Pope can thus menace, reprove,
and instruct, because he only is set in a region above all human
greatness between heaven and earth.... When science gloried in
being Catholic, and authority in being derived from God, both were,
when they spoke, echoes of the word of the Pope. But science and
authority have become unchristianized. The Pope has remained what
he was--the herald, the oracle of the Lord.
The article proceeded to show that the Pope had menaced in the same
breath one republic, Spain; two constitutional monarchies, Italy and
Austria; and one absolute monarchy, Russia. This could not be done
unless the Pope was king. Then follows a specimen of history as it
flourishes under Pius IX. The Roman Emperors used to imprison the
Popes, in order to reign in Rome; and Constantine, _not wishing to
imprison_ the Pope, abandoned Rome. But a king not Pope, and a Pope not
king, never were able to live here together, and never will be able to
do so. (_Civiltá_, VII. vii. p. 131 ff.)
Great attention was awakened by the prominence given by the _Civiltá_
(p. 210) to a publication of Bishop Plantier, of _Nimes_. It was
"splendid and profound." Plantier spoke of the suggestion that the
two doctrines of Papal infallibility and the assumption of the Virgin
should be defined by acclamation. He alleged that such a mode of
definition could be conveniently and infallibly adopted, and asked
if the Council should adopt it, what would be the harm? He ridiculed
the idea that the assistance of the Holy Spirit would be given to a
decision by vote and not to one by acclamation. The appearance of this
in the _Civiltá_, after all that had passed, quickened the fears of the
anti-infallibilists and also of the anti-opportunists lest the Pope
should be determined to carry through the definition by acclamation.
Early in September the bishops of Germany met at Fulda, and issued
a collective pastoral. They solemnly deprecated the rumours spread
abroad as to the intentions of the Council. The bishops went on to
asseverate that the Council would never define any new doctrine which
was not contained in holy writ or in tradition, but would define
only principles which were written "on all your hearts by faith and
conscience" (_Friedberg_, p. 276). The Catholics of Germany took this
solemn language in its apparent meaning; and the persuasion that their
bishops would stand fast, and that the Curia would not ride roughshod
over such a body, tranquillized most men. Only ecclesiastics appear
to have suspected that the assurance might amount to little more than
carefully dovetailed words.
The German bishops, in giving the assurance that nothing but what
the faithful believed would be defined, probably hoped that the fact
of their having to give such an assurance would weigh at Rome, as a
hindrance to the plans in contemplation. If so, they only furnished
one more proof of the truth which we in England have been told by Dr.
Newman, that _no pledge from Catholics is of any value to which Rome is
not a party_.[158]
If the German bishops read as little as Dr. Friedrich says they do,
they perhaps do not read the _Unitá Cattolica_. There is no doubt that
it, at least, speaks language agreeable in the highest quarters. In its
number for the preceding 1st of May, it commented on the same assurance
as having been flung before the French people. "If the Council," says
this real echo, "should only define what all believe, the Council would
be useless, for in points which all believe all are agreed." To say,
it proceeds, that an OEcumenical Council should express what all the
faithful think, is to confound the Teaching Church with the Learning
Church. "The pen falls from our hands, and we have not courage to
contend against such nonsense."
After having put this assurance before their nation, certain of the
bishops felt it necessary to address a private appeal to the Pope,
drawn up by Dinkel, Bishop of Augsburg, representing the great danger
to the Church in Germany which the proposed alterations would involve,
and praying him to abandon "the far-reaching projects which were
ascribed to him."[159] A similar appeal was sent to his Holiness by
the prelates of Hungary, in which country a notable commencement had
been made in restoring the laity to a part in the management of Church
affairs.[160]
In June 1869 a remarkable meeting of Catholic notables was held in
Berlin; with an account of which Sepp opens his book. The chair was
filled by Peter Reichensperger, since noted for his Ultramontane zeal,
and Herr Windhorst, now the Ultramontane leader in the Reichstag, was
present, with even Dr. Jörg, of Bavaria, whose allusion, in the winter
of 1874, to the attempt of Kullman on the life of Bismarck called forth
a remarkable speech from that statesman. These gentlemen, thinking, or
professing to think, that their bishops would defeat what the Curia had
planned, adopted an address expressive of confidence in them, and of
their hope that the threatened collision between the Church and their
governments and nation might be averted.
Sepp himself went to Prague to present the document to Cardinal Prince
Schwarzenberg. The latter read it slowly, thought it over, and said,
"It is far too weak. With Rome you must hold very different language
from that." In further conversation Sepp said to the Cardinal, "You
have in Prague the first canonist in Germany (Schulte), the man who
drafted the Austrian Concordat, and surely he can be employed in
similar work for the Council." The reply was: "You have in Munich the
greatest Catholic theologian in Germany, and the gentlemen in Rome will
not hear of his being invited" (_Sepp_, p. 4).
Large numbers of priests had been returned to the Bavarian Parliament,
all burning with zeal against Prussia, and against union under it. In
1868 the clerical agitation had gone so far that, in November of that
year, President Badhauser, when closing the Landsrath, addressed the
members in unwonted language--
When the government of the country and its organs, the chamber
which represents the people, and the new laws, are daily held up to
suspicion, mockery, and contempt, when the peasantry are excited
against the townspeople, and when men, throwing off all patriotic
shame, feed themselves with hopes of foreign intervention,
threatening our German warriors with the chassepots, then must
every honourable man condemn such proceedings; for the venom daily
instilled will, in time, poison the honest country people, as
occurrences in Upper Bavaria already show.[161]
Secret associations for Ultramontane objects were formed even among
children. Those of the clergy who would have warned the authorities
were still kept still by secret terrorism. The meeting of the Council
and the necessity of overthrowing Prince Hohenlohe were closely
connected with this turmoil. And the Liberals plainly said, "The whole
Catholic world is to be fanaticized, to enable the great Catholic
powers, after crushing Prussia, as they hope to do, to carry out a
grand reaction."[162]
The _Vaterland_ went so far, when Napoleon III took his last
_plébiscite_, as to tell its readers that a French intervention in
Germany would soon follow, that it was eagerly looked for, and that
all would join France to break the hated yoke of Prussia. Morally,
Prussia was already at an end, but it was for France to put an end
to her physically. "Who can tell if we shall have any North German
Confederation, Zollverein, or Prussian monarchy in 1871?"[163] Similar
hopes of great events often pointed to the year of the Council, or the
year after. The _Civiltá_ did not scruple to tell Napoleon III that he
owed the new _plébiscite_ to Mentana. So far from concealing the Pope's
direct action in a question affecting the stability of a throne, his
confidential writers exaggerated his influence.
In Austria a struggle had set in against the supernatural order. Laws
on civil marriage, education, and registry of baptism were passed by
the legislature, and tardily assented to by the Emperor. The Bishop of
Linz issued a manifesto saying that he would not acknowledge the new
illegitimate laws--of course under the plea of obeying God rather than
man. Turning on the Emperor, he said that he had pledged his faith
to the Concordat as a man and as a kaiser. Other prelates, in milder
language, set Papal above Austrian law. Finally, as we have already
seen, on June 22, 1868, the Pope himself laid the new laws under his
condemnation.
A Catholic meeting against the school law was being held in the church
at Schlanders, and while the curate was making a speech Count Manzano,
the local authority, declared the meeting closed. Cries of "Down with
him! kill him!" were raised. He was thrown to the ground, beaten on the
breast, and barely escaped to the barracks of the gensdarmes.
When the Council was closely approaching, great excitement broke out
in Austria against the religious orders. The spark which kindled the
blaze was the discovery of a nun confined in the Carmelite convent of
Cracow. She had been kept in one cell for twenty years, with incredible
privations and in bestial filth. The rage of the public forced the
government to go as far as some show of action. Orders were issued for
the inspection of convents. Sentences of bishops condemning priests to
confinement in ecclesiastical prisons were declared invalid unless the
culprit voluntarily consented. The bishops were also required to give
in lists of the voluntary prisoners.
These measures were resented as an "insult to the episcopate." The
Bishop of Brünn won himself an honourable mention in the _Civiltá_ by
a circular in which he repelled the pretensions of the government,
refused the list required, and told the superiors of monasteries to pay
no heed to the orders. While this second government was set up, beside
that of the country, the voice of Rome cheered it on in taking the
upper hand. The same voice railed against the constitutional ministers,
the parliament, and the laws.
The combative Bishop of Linz, in a great meeting, said that he did not
cast any doubt on the religious feeling of the Emperor, but he was now
nothing more than a constitutional sovereign. Instead, therefore, of
merely saying that they had confidence in the Emperor, they must come
to his aid. This was repeated in Rome, with the explanation that it
had been said that the bishop in this appeal for aid to the Emperor
was only uttering the sentiments of his Majesty as expressed to the
bishop. Thus were bishops commended by the organ of the Papal Court for
breaking the laws of their country, and credited with influencing the
mind of the sovereign in a sense hostile to the constitution.[164]
The Ultramontane party had frequently, during the year (1868) been
encouraged by correspondents in Paris to expect a war of France against
Prussia. On March 10, the _Unitá_ contained a letter expressing fears
that Austria and Italy might agree to remain neutral, but quoting a
passage from the _Volksbote_ in favour of French invasion of Germany.
On April 23 it was said that for a year past the Emperor had allowed no
opportunity of rousing the war spirit to pass. A week later a crusading
significance was given to the approaching anniversary of Joan of Arc.
It was announced that more than twelve archbishops and bishops would
attend--among them Cardinal Bonnechose--and that the Empress would
grace the scene. On May 1 the fact that the appearance in Paris of
Benedetti, the French ambassador at Berlin, was officially said to have
no connection with political prospects, was noted for a smile. On
the 13th the display at the festival of Joan of Arc at Orleans, with
a great array of prelates, was described as "one of the noblest ever
connected with war and religion, well adapted to excite a nation which
aims at uniting the cross with the sword." On June 19 it was said that
the mission of General Fleury to Florence was with reason taken as a
sign of approaching war.
Yet, while the Emperor of the French was looked to as leader against
the foe whom the Church had marked out for the first victim, every sign
of discord in France, every outbreak or disorder was eagerly paraded
as proof of the anarchy to which all countries must come under any
régime but that of the Church. At the same time every crime, riot, or
difficulty in Italy was magnified and dwelt upon with the same moral.
"Let the Chamber invoke the authority of the Council, and proclaim its
canons as the laws of the State," was the demand of the _Unitá_ eight
months before the Council met (March 21). Another saying was, There are
three Italys--the Italy of Pius IX, which prays; the Italy of Mazzini,
which conspires; the Italy of Menabrea, which trembles (March 27).
Menabrea was then Premier. Again--
The Council is drawing near, and Babylon is trembling, hell is
blaspheming, and before long the world will hear the infallible
word of truth and righteousness. Hallelujah!... The revolution
which for nine years has been bent on marching to Rome is
disgraced, senseless, divided. The traitors are betrayed, the
robbers plundered, and the rebels plotted against by rebellion.
Hallelujah! (March 28).
The _Unitá_ found that the threefold opposition of governments,
rationalists, and heretics showed itself most strongly in May, the
month of Mary, which only means that the Immaculate has set her heel on
the three heads of the Hydra. Here the mention of governments as one
head of the Hydra is no slip of the pen, that is, governments which
dwelt in Babylon, as we have just read, or in the tower of Babel, as
it is more frequently expressed. Three days later (May 23) the _Unitá_
cries, "It is time for Catholics to be up in defence of the Council. It
is the only plank of safety for shipwrecked society." The _Memoriale
Diplomatique_ says that "governments are less and less disposed to
interfere in religious questions, unless their rights are infringed;
but such reserve is war against the Council, which _being infallible
cannot infringe any right_." The italics here are our own; and would
that we could print the words on the mind of every rising man in
England. That would save vast waste of words.
The courage of the _Civiltá_ was stimulated by the French elections
in the summer, and its hatred of United Italy boiled over. The ever
faithful _Univers_ had given the watchword to the electors. "The
temporal power, and liberty of higher instruction!" In the cry "liberty
of higher instruction," we have the popular side of the original
call of the _Civiltá_ for universities all over Europe, canonically
instituted. One hundred and twenty deputies were pledged to the
program, and the French electors ought to be proclaimed as having
deserved well of Catholicism. "The illustrious Louis Veuillot," as the
_Civiltá_ styles him, had shown that what the Voltairians wanted was
the separation of Church and State, from which would follow the decay
of Christian worship to such a point that it might be feasible to
annihilate it.
Noble, Catholic, chivalrous France is contrasted, by the _Civiltá_,
with vile Italy. The latter, in a serious catalogue of crimes, is said
to have "reduced the bishops to the extreme of poverty, has at its own
caprice impeded the divine word, and showed more than sixty dioceses
widowed of their pastors." The French voters had said, "We go to the
urn as the delegates of the universal suffrage of Christendom." "The
monstrous edifice of Italian unity must crumble," says this Romanist,
who was no Roman. It is founded on the ruins of the temporal power of
the Pontiff, which cannot perish. (VII. vi. 611 ff.)
The plea of the Liberal Catholics for freedom of conscience became more
and more offensive to the Catholics. The Fathers of Laach, in censuring
the address of the laymen of Coblentz, went so far as to say that the
treatment of the Jews in Rome "showed no want of humanity or civil
tolerance." These educated laymen well knew that the proper condition
of heretics, according to the same principles, ought to be much worse
than that of the Ghetto Jews. The latter, not being baptized, were
theoretically not subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, but the
others, as Bellarmine shows, _though not of the Church, belonged to the
Church_. Stumpf, writing in the Bonn _Literaturblatt_, did not content
himself with questioning the intolerant doctrine of the Jesuits; he
directly attacked it. He took an important step further--one, indeed,
which seems like a new life in the Roman Catholic intellect. He told
the Jesuits plainly that their exclusive principle of one _fold_
rendered religious freedom and unity impossible. Here he touched the
distinction between the grand and the huge, which Romanists carefully
keep out of sight, and which the sincerest advocates of liberty in
their ranks had hitherto overlooked. They took for a grand conception
of the unity of Christians, as consisting in submission to one human
head. That conception is narrow and illusory. It fails of grandeur by
monstrous disproportion. Stumpf goes on to declare that the absolute
dominion of the Church over the State, although the favourite doctrine
as he admits, in Rome, is in contradiction to the fundamental principle
of Christianity. He would no longer be content, as a Liberal Catholic,
to plead for freedom of conscience merely as a compromise. He says, We
now represent a principle. The theocratic principle menaces society,
and that principle will never be satisfied till the acknowledgment of
civil rights is made to depend upon the profession of the Catholic
faith. He adds that a promise to compromise _till we had the power_
would content no one, because the modern world has learned that nothing
is settled till the principle is settled. He says, We are determined to
have the Church a Church, and the State a State. But this a postulate
which demands, as its condition, individual freedom. According to him
it was Christ that introduced among men the idea of independence, and
that of a limit existing to the power of the State, by distinguishing
His own kingdom of love and grace from that of law and compulsion.
"When the Church authorities," says Stumpf, "do admonish the rulers
of the State, their first counsel should be to consider it their
highest duty to protect freedom of conscience. They ought to warn them,
before any other kind of unrighteousness against the use of force,
for or against any form of religion which is not inconsistent with
the maintenance of moral law"; and he adds, what we shall emphasize,
"_privation of civil equality is an employment of force_." Such, he
says, was the counsel given by the early Christian teachers; and though
later teachers reversed it, their course is not to be justified before
the law of Christ.
The _end_ of the State, as viewed by Stumpf, is much loftier than
that assigned to it in the Papal theory. In the great collection of
families called by men a State, he does not see a body politic without
a moral mission, existing, according to the ruinous theology of Rome,
only for temporal ends--a body politic which would be unworthy of God
or man. According to Stumpf, the end of the State is _the maintenance
of general moral order_. This theory does not bind the families of a
country acting in their collective capacity, to prescribe the creed
and cult of individuals. No more does it bind them, on the other hand,
to resign all moral aims, leaving every moral question to be decided
for them without any appeal to the common conscience, to fruits or
to the Bible, by a power which would strip the State of every moral
quality, and would also prescribe the creed and cult of all. The
theory of Stumpf holds that the collective authority of the nation, in
the affairs common to all the families of that nation, is called to
regulate action so far as action affects the common good, but does not
hold that it is called to regulate belief. Claiming for the Church the
full right of asserting and urging moral principles, Stumpf, with great
solemnity, claims for the legislator freedom to frame law according to
his own conscience, and to his belief in what tends to the maintenance
and the perfecting of moral order. This he has to do without the
direction of any ecclesiastic, but knowing that he must give account to
God. _No omnipotent word of Church authorities can or shall deter us
from this work._ Then he interjects, Would it not be pleasant to have
to consult the theologians of the _Civiltá_ and the _Stimmen_? The
Jesuits, he alleges, had no conception of any exercise of moral power
upon one another but in the way of commanding and obeying. The Church
in the middle ages, by her influence in secular affairs secularized
herself, and lost her moral influence, which was never recovered
to Christianity till the States had done what the Jesuits call
apostatizing from Christ, and so opened the way for a return of true
moral Christian influence. The early Church, he truly and nobly points
out, was able, in the face of the omnipotent heathen authorities, to
pervade society with her true moral influences; and he contends that
nothing can give back to the Church her position as the first force in
culture, but the recognition of the independence of the State.
One very curious part of this grave and forceful essay is the protest
of the layman against the twisting of Scripture by the Jesuits. He puts
together a number of the texts upon which they ring the changes, making
them prove their own ideas by the simple process of putting those ideas
into them, and reiterating them again and again. The first of the texts
which he quotes is, "Teach all nations." He, apparently, is not aware
that this is now as handy a weapon with those theologians as "obey God
rather than man." In their lips "teach" means "make laws," and "all
nations" means, not _every creature_, but, collectively, all States.
Therefore the words "_teach all nations_" are, in the lips of the
Jesuits, a commission to the Pope to give laws to all countries, or,
in highflown language, "to exercise the supreme magisterial office."
The Jesuits had saucily told the laymen of Coblentz to ask the nearest
theologian for an explanation of the relations between the natural
order and the supernatural. But this particular layman gave them as
good as they brought. When men write as he does, they have begun to be
Catholics, have ceased to be Papists, and are, however unconsciously,
in process of ceasing to be Romanists.
* * * * *
The Allocution of June 22, in which the constitution and new laws of
Austria were condemned, had proved as distasteful to Liberal Catholics
as it had been agreeable to the Jesuits. "The Curialistic notion,"
says the author of _Reform in Head and Members_, "that the law of the
Church must be the inviolable rule for all laws and statutes, and
for all and every kind of activity in the life of the State, runs
through it like a black thread. The Austrian _Magna Charta_ of civil,
political, religious and scientific freedom was called a sacrilegious
law. Moreover, the Pope," he proceeds to say, "had declared that these
laws themselves, together with _all that should arise out of them_, are
and ever will be invalid and of no effect.... Every enlightened person
among the Catholics of Germany and France concealed himself in silence
and in mourning at this rude opposition of Rome to the public law of
the entire Western world." Count Beust, in a despatch dated about ten
days after the Allocution was delivered, said that "the Holy See had
extended its animadversions to subjects 'which we by no means can allow
to be under its authority.'" We shall hereafter see how clearly and
completely Count Beust had now grasped the question as between the
Papacy and the life of nations.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 156: Monsignor Maret boldly quotes Eusebius as saying (Book
II. cap. xiv.) that Peter was not only the greatest and strongest of
the Apostles, which is like what he says, but that he was the prince
and patron of them all, which he does not say. That is said for him by
the Latin translator. The one word προἡγορον, "spokesman," or
champion, of Eusebius is deliberately turned into the two, "prince and
patron"--_Principem et patronum_.--_Maret_, vol. i. p. 97.]
[Footnote 157: See the original, _Vitelleschi_, p. 266.]
[Footnote 158: _Letter to the Duke of Norfolk_, p. 14.]
[Footnote 159: _Friedberg_, p. 19.]
[Footnote 160: See Lord Acton, _Zur Geschichte_.]
[Footnote 161: _Weltbegebenheiten_, 336.]
[Footnote 162: Ibid. i. 327.]
[Footnote 163: Ibid. 340.]
[Footnote 164: _Civiltá_, VII. viii. pp. 209 ff.]