Part 42

§ 197.5. =The Prussian Ecclesiastical Laws, 1873-1875.=--In order to be able to check ultramontanism, even in its pædagogical breeding places, the episcopal colleges and seminaries, and at the same time to restrict by law the despotic absolutism of the bishops in disciplinary and beneficiary matters, the Prussian government brought in other four ecclesiastical bills, which in spite of violent opposition on the part of the Centre and the Old Conservatives, were successively passed by both houses of parliament, and approved by the king on May 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th, 1873. Their most important provisions are: As a condition for admission to a spiritual office the state requires citizenship of the German empire, three years’ study at a German university, and, besides an exit gymnasial examination preceding the university course, a state examination in general knowledge (in philosophy, history, and German literature), in addition to the theological examination. The episcopal boys’ seminaries and colleges are abolished. The priest seminaries, if the minister of worship regards them as fit for the purpose, may take the place of the university course, but must be under regular state inspection. The candidates for spiritual offices, which must never be left vacant more than a year, are to be named to the chief president of the province, and he can for cogent reasons lodge a protest against them. Secession from the church is freely allowed, and releases from all personal obligations to pay ecclesiastical dues and perform ecclesiastical duties. Excommunication is permissible, but can be proclaimed only in the congregation concerned, and not publicly. The power of church discipline over the clergy can be exercised only by German superiors and in accordance with fixed processional procedure. Corporal punishment is not permissible, fines are allowed to a limited extent, and restraint by interning in so-called _Demeriti_ houses, but only at furthest of three months, and when the party concerned willingly consents. Church servants, whose remaining in office is incompatible with the public order, can be deposed by civil sentence. And as final court of appeal in all cases of complaint between ecclesiastical and civil authorities as well as within the ecclesiastical domain, a royal court of justice for ecclesiastical affairs is constituted, whose proceedings are open and its decision final.--But even the May Laws soon proved inadequate for checking the insolence of the bishops and the disorders among the Catholic population occasioned thereby. In December, 1873, therefore, by sovereign authority there was prescribed a new formula of the episcopal Oath of Allegiance, recognising more distinctly and decisively the duty of obedience to the laws of the state. Then next a bill was presented to the parliament, which had been kept in view in the original constitution, demanding obligatory civil marriage and abolition of compulsory baptism, as well as the conducting of civil registration by state officials. In February, 1874, it was passed into law. On the 20th and 21st =May, 1874=, two other bills brought in for extending the May Laws of the previous year, in consequence of which a bishop’s see vacated by death, a judicial sentence, or any other cause, must be filled within the space of a year, and the chapter must elect within ten days an episcopal administrator, who has to be presented to the chief president, and to undertake an oath to obey the laws of the state. If the chapter does not fulfil these requirements, a lay commissioner will be appointed to administer the affairs of the diocese. During the episcopal vacancy, all vacant pastorates, as well as all not legally filled, can be at once validly supplied by the act of the patron, and, where no such right exists, by congregational election. Parochial property, on the illegal appointment of a pastor, is given over to be administered by a lay commissioner.--The empire also came to the help of the May Laws by an imperial enactment of May 4th, 1874, sanctioned by the emperor, which empowers the competent state government to intern all church officers discharged from their office and not yielding submission thereto, as well as all punished on account of incompetence in their official duties, and, if this does not help, to condemn them to loss of their civil rights and to expulsion from the German federal territory.--Also in its next session the imperial house of representatives again gave legislative sanction to the _Kulturkampf_; for in January, 1875, it passed a bill presented by the Federal Council on the deposition on oath as to personal rank, and on divorce with obligatory civil marriage, which, going far beyond the Prussian civil law of the previous year, and especially ridding Bavaria of its strait-jacket canon marriage law enforced by the concordat, abolished the spiritual jurisdiction in favour of that of the civil courts, and gave it to the state to determine the qualifications for, as well as the hindrances to, divorce, without, however, touching the domain of conscience, or entrenching in any way upon the canon law and the demands of the church.

§ 197.6. =Opposition in the States to the Prussian May Laws.=--Bishop Martin of Paderborn had even beforehand refused obedience to the May Laws of 1873. After their promulgation, all the Prussian bishops collectively declared to the ministry that “they were not in a position to carry out these laws,” with the further statement that they could not comply even with those demands in them which in other states, by agreement with the pope, are acknowledged by the church, because they are administered in a one-sided way by the state in Prussia. On these lines also they proceeded to take action. First of all, the refractoriness of several of the seminaries drew down upon them the loss of endowment and of the right of representation; and in the next place, the refusal of the bishops to notify their appointment of clergymen led to their being frequently fined, while the church books and seals were taken away from clergymen so appointed, all the official acts performed by them were pronounced invalid in civil law, and those who performed them were subjected to fines. But here, too, again Bishop Martin, well skilled in church history (he had been previously professor of theology in Bonn), had beforehand in a pastoral instructed his clergy that “since the days of Diocletian there had not been seen so violent a persecution of the name of Jesus Christ.” Soon after this Archbishop Ledochowski, in an official document addressed to the Chief President of Poland, compared the demand to give notification of clerical appointments with the demand of ancient Rome upon Christian soldiers to sacrifice to the heathen gods. And by order of the pope prayers were offered in all churches for the church so harshly and cruelly persecuted. And yet the whole “persecution” then consisted in nothing more than this, that a newly issued law of the state, under threat of fine in case of disobedience, demanded again of the bishops paid by the state what had been accepted for centuries as unobjectionable in the originally Catholic Bavaria, and also for a long while in France, Portugal, and other Romish countries, what all Prussian bishops down to 1850 (§ 193, 2) had done without scruple, what the bishops of Paderborn and Münster even had never refused to do in the extra-Prussian portion of these dioceses (Oldenburg and Waldeck), as also the Prince-Bishop of Breslau, since the issuing of the similar Austrian May Laws (§ 198, 4) in the Austro-Silesian part of his diocese, what the episcopal courts of Württemberg and Baden had yielded to, although in almost all these states the demand referred to broke up the union with the papal curia. Yet before a year had passed the cases of punishment for these offences had so increased that the only very inadequate fines that could be exacted by the seizure of property had to be changed into equivalent sentences of imprisonment. The first prelate who suffered this fate was Archbishop Ledochowski, in February, 1874. Then followed in succession: Eberhard of Treves, Melchers of Cologne, Martin of Paderborn, and Brinkmann of Münster. The ecclesiastical court of justice expressly pronounced deposition against Ledochowski in April, 1874; against Martin in January, 1875, and against the Prince-Bishop Förster of Breslau in October, 1875, who alone had dared to proclaim in his diocese the encyclical _Quod nunquam_ (§ 197, 7). But the latter had even beforehand withdrawn the diocesan property to the value of 900,000 marks to his episcopal castle, Johannisberg, in Austro-Silesia, where with a truly princely income from Austrian funds he could easily get over the loss of the Prussian part of his revenues. Martin, who had been interned at Wesel, fled in August, 1875, under cloud of night, to Holland, from whence he transferred his agitations into Belgium, and finally to London (died 1879). Ledochowski found a residence in the Vatican. Brinkmann was deposed in March, and Melchers in June, 1876, after both had beforehand proved their enjoyment of martyrdom by escaping to Holland. Eberhard of Treves anticipated his deposition from office by his death in May, 1876. Blum of Limburg was deposed in June, 1877, and Beckmann of Osnabrück died in 1878.--In the Prussian parliament and German Reichstag the Centre party, supported by Guelphs, Poles, and the Social Democrats, had meanwhile with anger, scorn, and vituperation, with and without wit, fought not only against all ecclesiastical, but also against all other legislative proposals, whose acceptance was specially desired by the government. And all the representatives of the ultramontane press within and without Europe vied with one another in violent denunciation of the ecclesiastical laws, and in unmeasured abuse of the emperor and the empire. But almost without exception the Roman Catholic officials in Prussia, as well as the Protestants and Old Catholics, carried out “the Diocletian persecution of Christians” in the judicial and police measures introduced by the church laws. A number of Catholic notables of the eastern provinces of their own accord, in a dutiful address to the emperor, expressly accepted the condemned laws, and won thereby the nickname of “State Catholics.” The great mass of the Catholic people, high and low, remained unflinchingly faithful to the resisting clergy in, for the most part, only a passive opposition, although even, as the Berlin _Germania_ expressed it, “the Catholic rage at the Bismarckian ecclesiastical polity could condense itself into one Catholic head” in a murderous attempt on the chancellor in quest of health at Kissingen, on July 13th, 1874. It was the cooper, Kullmann, who, fanaticised by exciting speeches and writings in the Catholic society of Salzwedel, sought to take vengeance, as he himself said, upon the chancellor for the May Laws and “the insult offered to his party of the Centre.”--In the further course of the Prussian _Kulturkampf_, however, fostered by the aid of the confessional, the insinuating assiduity of the clerical press, and the all-prevailing influence of the thoroughly disciplined Catholic clergy over the popish masses, the Centre grew in number and importance at the elections from session to session, so that from the beginning of 1880, by the unhappy division of the other parties in the Reichstag as well as Chamber, it united sometimes with the Conservatives, sometimes and most frequently with the Progressionists and Democrats renouncing the _Kulturkampf_, and was supported on all questions by Poles, Danes, Guelphs, and Alsatian-Lorrainers, as clerical interest and ultramontane tactics required, in accordance with the plan of campaign of the commander-in-chief, especially of the quondam Hanoverian minister, Windthorst, dominated far more by Guelphic than by ultramontane tendencies. The Centre was thus able to turn the scale, until, at least in the Reichstag, after the dissolution and new election of 1887, its dominatory power was broken by the closer combination of the conservative and national liberal parties.

§ 197.7. =Share in the Conflict taken by the Pope.=--=Pius IX.= had congratulated the new emperor in 1871, trusting, as he wrote, that his efforts directed to the common weal “might bring blessing not only to Germany, but also to all Europe, and might contribute not a little to the protection of the liberty and rights of the Catholic religion.” And when first of all the Centre party, called forth by the election agitation of German ultramontanism, opened its politico-clerical campaign in the Reichstag, he expressed his disapproval of its proceedings upon Bismarck’s complaining to the papal secretary Antonelli. Yet a deputation of the Centre sent to Rome succeeded in winning over both. In order to build a bridge for the securing an understanding with the curia, now that the conflict had grown in extent and bitterness, the imperial government in May, 1872, appointed the Bavarian Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe to the vacant post of ambassador to the Vatican. But the pope, with offensive recklessness, rejected the well-meant proposal, and forbade the cardinal to accept the imperial appointment. From that time he gave free and public expression on every occasion to his senseless bitterness against the German empire and its government. In an address to the German Reading Society at Rome in July, 1872, he allowed himself to use the most violent expressions against the German chancellor, and closed with the prophetic threatening: “Who knows but the little stone shall soon loose itself from the mountain (Dan. ii. 34), which shall break in pieces the foot of the colossus?” But even this diatribe was cast in the shade by the Christmas allocution of that year, in which he was not ashamed to characterize the procedure of the German statesmen and their imperial sovereign as “_impudentia_.” And after the publication of the first May Laws he addressed a letter to the emperor, in which, founding upon the fact that even the emperor like all baptized persons belonged to him, the pope, he cast in his teeth that “all the measures of his government for some time aimed more and more at the annihilation of Catholicism,” and added the threatening announcement that “these measures against the religion of Jesus Christ can have no other result than the overthrow of his own throne.” The emperor in his answer made expressly prominent his divinely appointed call as well as his own evangelical standpoint, and with becoming dignity and earnestness decidedly repudiated the unmeasured assumptions of the papacy, and published both letters. In the same style of immoderate pretension the pope again, in November, 1875, in one encyclical after another, gave vent to his anger against emperor and empire, especially its military institutions. In place of the deposed and at that time imprisoned archbishop, Ledochowski, he appointed in 1874 a native apostolic legate, who was at last ascertained to be the Canon Kurowski, when he was in October, 1875, condemned to two years’ imprisonment. But the pope took the most decided and successful step by the =Encyclical _Quod nunquam_, of 5th February, 1875=, addressed to the Prussian episcopate, in which he characterized the Prussian May Laws as “not given to free citizens to demand a reasonable obedience, but as laid upon slaves, in order to force obedience by fears of violence,” and, “in order to fulfil the duties of his office,” declared quite openly to all whom it concerns and to the Catholics throughout the world: “_Leges illas irritas esse, utpote quæ divinæ Ecclesiæ constitutioni prorsus adversantur_;” but upon those “godless” men who make themselves guilty of the sin of assuming spiritual office without a divine call, falls _eo ipso_ the great excommunication. On the other hand he rewarded, in March, 1875, Archbishop Ledochowski, then still in prison, but afterwards, in February, 1876, settled in Rome, for his sturdy resistance of those laws, with a cardinal’s hat, and to the not less persistent Prince-Bishop Förster of Breslau he presented on his jubilee as priest the archiepiscopal pall. In the next Christmas allocution he romanced about a second Nero, who, while in one place with a lyre in his hand he enchanted the world by lying words, in other places appeared with iron in his hand, and, if he did not make the streets run with blood, he fills the prisons, sends multitudes into exile, seizes upon and with violence assumes all authority to himself. Also to the German pilgrims who went in May, 1877, to his episcopal jubilee at Rome, he had still much that was terrible to tell about this “modern Attila,” leaving it uncertain whether he intended Prince Bismarck or the mild, pious German emperor himself.

§ 197.8. =The Conflict about the Encyclical _Quod nunquam_ of 1875.=--By this encyclical the pope had completely broken up the union between the Prussian state and the curia, resting upon the bull _De salute animarum_ (§ 193, 1); for he, bluntly repudiating the sovereign rights of the civil authority therein expressly allowed, by pronouncing the laws of the Prussian state invalid, authorized and promoted the rebellion of all Catholic subjects against them. The Prussian government now issued three new laws quickly after one another, cutting more deeply than all that went before, which without difficulty received the sanction of all the legislative bodies.

I. The so called =Arrestment Act= (_Sperrgesetz_) of April 22nd, 1875, which ordered the immediate suspension of all state payments to the Roman Catholic bishoprics and pastorates until those who were entitled to them had in writing or by statement declared themselves ready to yield willing obedience to the existing laws of the state.

II. A law of May 31st, 1875, ordering the =Expulsion of all Orders and such like Congregations= within eight months, the minister of public worship, however, being authorized to extend this truce to four years in the case of institutions devoted to the education of the young, while those which were exclusively hospital and nursing societies were allowed to remain, but were subject to state inspection and might at any time be suppressed by royal order.

III. A law of June 12th, 1875, declaring the formal =Abrogation of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Eighteenth Articles of the Constitution= (§ 193, 2).

And finally in addition there came the enforcement during this session of the Chamber of laws previously introduced on the rights of the Old Catholics (§ 190, 2), and, on June 20th, 1875, on the administration of church property in Catholic parishes. The latter measures aimed at withdrawing the administration referred to from the autocratic absolutism of the clergy, and transferring it to a lay commission elected by the community itself, of which the parish priest was to be a member, but not the president. Although the Archbishop of Cologne in name of all the bishops before its issue had solemnly protested against this law, because by it “essential and inalienable rights of the Catholic church were lost,” and although the recognition of it actually involved recognition of the May Laws and the ecclesiastical court of justice, yet all the bishops declared themselves ready to co-operate in carrying out the arrangements for surrendering the church property to the administration of a civil commission. They thus indeed secured thoroughly ultramontane elections, but at the same time put themselves into a position of self-contradiction, and admitted that the one ground of their opposition to the May Laws, that they were one-sidedly wrought by the state, was null and void.

§ 197.9. =Papal Overtures for Peace.=--=Leo XIII.=, since 1878, intimated his accession to the Emperor William, and expressed his regret at finding that the good relations did not continue which formerly existed between Prussia and the holy see. The Emperor’s answer expressed the hope that by the aid of his Holiness the Prussian bishops might be induced to obey the laws of the land, as the people under their pastoral care actually did; and afterwards while in consequence of the attempt on his life of June 2nd, 1873, he lay upon a sickbed, the crown prince on June 10th answered other papal communications by saying, that no Prussian monarch could entertain the wish to change the constitution and laws of his country in accordance with the ideas of the Romish church; but that, even though a thorough understanding upon the radical controversy of a thousand years could not be reached, yet the endeavour to preserve a conciliatory disposition on both sides would also for Prussia open a way to peace which had never been closed in other states. Three weeks later the Munich nuntio Masella was at Kissingen and conferred with the chancellor, Prince Bismarck, who was residing there, about the possibility of a basis of reconciliation. Subsequently negotiations were continued at Gastein, and then in Vienna with the there resident nuntio Jacobini, but were suspended owing to demands by the curia to which the state could not submit. Still the pope attempted indirectly to open the way for renewed consultation, for he issued a brief dated February 24th, 1880, to “Archbishop Melchers of Cologne” (deposed by the royal court of justice), in which he declared his readiness to allow to the respective government boards notification of new elected priests before their canonical institution. Thereupon a communication was sent to Cardinal Jacobini that the state ministry had resolved, so soon as the pope had actually implemented this declaration of his readiness, to make every effort to obtain from the state representatives authority to set aside or modify those enactments of the May Laws which were regarded by the Romish church as harsh. But the pope received this compromise of the government very ungraciously and showed his dissatisfaction by withdrawing his concession, which besides referred only to the unremovable priests, therefore not to _Hetzkaplane_ and succursal or assistant priests, and presupposed the obtaining the “_agrément_,” _i.e._ the willingly accorded consent, of the state, without by any means allowing the setting aside of the party elected.