instruction from ecclesiastics of the same kind. The pupils at the Catholic schools and colleges are now forbidden, under pain of expulsion, to join pious confraternities; and we must remember that in Germany exclusion from the gymnasium means exclusion from all public preferment. Moreover, under the Prussian Government, a priest who is devoted to the interests of the Church has little chance, whatever his learning or abilities may be, of obtaining even a theological chair. At Bonn, for instance, all the professors except one belong to the old-Catholic movement, and receive their salaries, though they give no lectures; while Dr. Kaulen, a biblical scholar of great reputation, but a decided Catholic, has been for many years a privat-docent, and is likely to remain in this humble position for many years to come. All this is bad enough, but unless the government is alarmed by the energetic resistance of the Catholic population, it will only be the beginning of evil. An extract from a pamphlet of Dr. Hinschivs may give us some idea of the laws which may be in store for German Catholics. He is a canonist supposed to be in special favour with the court of Berlin; he has just been appointed to a professorship in the university of the capital, with a seat and a vote in the Prussian ministry of Public Worship, so that his utterances are invested with a semi-official character. He professes* that the "neo-Catholics" (i.e. of course all Catholics-all persons who accept the definition of the Vatican Council) "should be excluded from teaching religion in all State or communal schools that in these schools the teaching of the neo-Catholic doctrine should be prohibited; that an end should be put to the Catholic faculties of theology in the universities." In other words, he wishes to make the schools and universities antiCatholic; and to force the children of Catholic parents to attend them, or else to sacrifice their prospects in life. There is no need to dwell upon the effects of such measures if they can be carried out. Fortunately there is much to be set on the other side. The Prussian liberals, and their allies in the dependent states, may find after all that the auspicious moment for a thorough-going persecution of the Church has not yet arrived. Great hopes were entertained of the old-Catholic schism, but it has proved a ludicrous failure. Thirty out of the thirty thousand priests in Germany have rebelled against the authority of the Church. Some of them, it is true, are men of learning; but except Dr. Döllinger himself, none of them stand in the first rank "Die Stellung der deutschen Staatsregierungen gegenüber den Beschlüssen des vatikanischen Concils," 62. either of learning or ability. They have found hardly any support among the laity. Here and there a few Catholics, generally the children of mixed marriages, have joined the schismatical congregations; but their adherents for the most part are freemasons and free-thinkers, who talk loudly against the infallibility of the Pope, but feel the same contempt for the infallibility of the Church or the sacrifice of the Mass. There are signs too that the liberals who have used the old-Catholic party as a convenient excuse for interference with the affairs of the Church, are getting tired of them, and no longer care to defend men who occupy a position so absurd and illogical. The "Deutsche Merkur," which is under the influence of Döllinger, lately denounced Frohschammer for calling himself a Catholic while he professed principles which are simply infidel; and the "Allgemeine Zeitung," the paper in which Janus first appeared and the great patron of the old-Catholics as long as they had any chance of success, replied by sneering at the inconsequence of people, who rejected the infallibility of the Church, and then erected their own infallibility in its place. What right, it said, has the "Deutsche Merkur" to go a certain length in antagonism to the Church, and insist that everybody else should go just so far and no further? This amount of inconsequence was involved in the old-Catholic position from the beginning. If the infallibility of the Pope was a novelty, the appeal on the part of Catholies from a council to a handful of professors, was a novelty more startling still. Döllinger and his followers boasted, that while a Council bad transformed the constitution of the Church, they themselves were continuing to believe and teach what they had always believed and taught; and then, in the same breath, they made appeals from the Church to "science," and to "cultivated men," which are natural enough in the mouths of Protestants and Rationalists, but which sound a little strange when they come from persons who profess their strict attachment to the Catholic faith. The history of the schism, brief as it has been, has thrown additional light on the contradictory nature of oldCatholic principles, and the impossibility of remaining stationary in such an untenable position. At first the old-Catholics maintained that they were true Roman Catholics, and were faithful to the decisions of Trent and the creed of Pius IV. Since then some at least of their acknowledged leaders tell us that the Greek Church has the same, if not a better claim, to be considered Catholic as the Roman, and that there have been only seven Ecumenical Councils. In 1871 they protested that they adhered to the ancient canons and constitution of the Church. In 1872, in defiance of canons which date from the earliest times, and were repeated at council after council, they have invited a bishop of the Jansenist sect, himself uncanonically consecrated, to administer the sacrament of Confirmation in the dioceses of other bishops. Very soon the old-Catholic Congress is to meet at Cologne; and, before it is over, we may expect fresh instances of the internecine conflict which is the characteristic of the sects. A year ago the Protestant Congress at Darmstadt, after vainly trying to come to an agreement upon any positive doctrine, were at last united in a resolution to petition for the expulsion of the Jesuits; and probably the argument of the Congress at Cologne will begin and end in a similar way. But we have other and better grounds of hope for the future of the Church in Germany, than the failure of the old-Catholic delusion. Infidelity has made some way in the large towns, but even the large towns of Catholic Germany offer a very favourable contrast to the cities of France. In the former, the large majority of men hear mass on days of obligation; the working men and the shopkeepers are still in the main faithful to the Church, and ready to defend its interests. During the last eight years Catholic clubs or "casinos," as they are called, have been established in most of the towns. They meet once a week to discuss Catholic questions, and their success has done much to counteract the influence of the liberal papers. In Würzburg, for instance, which has a population of rather more than forty thousand, the Catholic "casinos" number more than five hundred members, all of them men, and most of them belonging to the middle classes. The meetings are always numerously attended. In the same place, among the students attending the university, there are two Catholic corps, the Walhalla and the Marcomanni. The members bind themselves to maintain Catholic principles. They walk together in the procession at Corpus Christi, and lose no opportunity of coming forward as consistent and decided Catholics. One of these corps, the Walhalla, counts eighty members, a very considerable proportion in a university of four hundred and fifty students, many of whom are Protestants. In the country districts, the population is a source of great strength to the Catholic cause. The German Catholic peasantry is second to none, either in intelligence or in piety. And it is precisely in the tracts of country which are Catholic to the core, that the peasants are most prosperous. In the Catholic half of Westphalia, they are more like well-to-do farmers than like peasants in the English sense of the word. They have the power to make themselves felt in a political crisis, and they do not want the will. But it is in the present condition of the clergy that we find the strongest motives for encouragement and confidence. It is not only the present character of the German priests, it is the contrast of what they are with what they were fifty years ago, which forbids us lose heart, and bears witness to the power of renovation and reformation, in the true sense of the word, which never dies in the Church of God. Fifty or sixty years ago they were corrupted through and through with Josephinism; and it seems almost a miracle, that Catholic Germany was not severed altogether from the Holy See. At the beginning of the century the printed sermons of Protestants were read from Catholic pulpits; it was a common view among the clergy, that the recital of the office was a counsel, not a precept; discussions were held in clerical conferences as to the amount of food a priest might take before saying mass.* No secret was made of these opinions. A priest in his published writings declared that the Breviary was the worst book of devotion in existence, and supposed he might take it for granted that most of the German bishops never said their office. The same exemplary ecclesiastic boasted, that he had persuaded his parishioners to give up the use of the rosary. In many churches the parts of the Mass which are uttered aloud, were sung in the vernacular. Even this did not satisfy the liberal spirit of the time. The bishops were exhorted to introduce a Missal entirely German into their dioceses; and if the Pope offered any hindrance, the bishops were to remember that each of them had in his own diocese as much authority as the Pope had in his, and to resist the despotism of Rome.† In 1830 a bishop of Limburg issued a ritual for the use of his diocese, in which even the sacramental forms were in German; ‡ and as late as 1839, Rellor, Bishop of Rottenburg, published an ordinance, in which he repeated, with additions and aggravations, the rules of the Jansenist synod at Pistoia. Among the schemes for the improvement of the Church, some implicitly denied the formal teaching of the Tridentine Council on the sacrifice of the Mass. § Happily, this state of things has passed away, and let us hope for ever. It is needless to dwell on the various influences which, beginning in great measure from Möhler and the noble school which he founded, have gradually made a Church once so full of scandals, eminent for its Catholic spirit. Whatever dangers may be in store for the German Church, she can at least rely upon her clergy. * See Guéranger, "Institutions liturgiques," ii. 709. + See Dr. Huber's article in "Freimüthige Blätter," 1835, p. 367. "Katholisches Ritual," von Jakob Brand, Bischof von Limburg. Frankfurt, 1830. § See Werkmeister's "Predigten,” ii. 320. The period of so called "enlightenment" in Germany was singularly barren in works of research or of literary merit, and the revival of learning in Catholic Germany dates from the revival of Catholic spirit. One learned historian, who contributed in no small degree to the promotion of ecclesiastical studies, has fallen away from the cause he defended for so many years, and is now labouring, though it is labour in vain, to destroy the work of his past life. But a Church, which counts among its clergy men like Kuhn, Hagemann, Kraus, Hettinger, Hergenröther, Haneborg, and many others worthy to be named with them, is well equipped for the intellectual conflict. And it is worth noticing that an unusual number of learned works has been announced since the Council. Hergenröther is preparing a book on the relations of Church and State. A "Catholic library" is promised, in which Hergenrother is to contribute a manual of Church History, and Scheeben a compendium of Dogmatic Theology, while Hettinger and Hagemann are to furnish the "Apologetik" and "Encyclopædia." Kraus has undertaken to edit a dictionary of Christian Antiquities, with assistance from Hagemann and Hefele. The attack upon the Church comes from the revolutionary party, which is plotting the destruction of the Church in every country of Europe. In Germany, the persecuting government is intoxicated with the pride of conquest, and it will require no slight obstacles to arrest its career of injustice and oppression. But of one thing we may rest assured. It will not succeed in sowing division in the Church; it will not be able to flatter or cajole Catholics into rebellion against ecclesiastical authorities. In the Catholic towns it will meet with a percentage of unbelievers who will accept or applaud its measures. But when it comes "to the Catholic people, to the Catholic clergy, to the Catholic bishops, it will find them like a wall; like a wall, as the prophet says, built for the defence of the house of God."* Since the preceding remarks were in type, the old-Catholic Congress has met at Cologne; and most significant is the lesson derivable from its proceedings. Several Catholics, even among those who saw most clearly the necessity of the Vatican Definition, regretted nevertheless the loss of Dr. Döllinger and his friends. They regarded this evil of course as far more than counterbalanced by other considerations; but they thought it an evil nevertheless. For our own part, we need not say indeed how keenly we should rejoice, if Dr. Döllinger or any * From Canon Moufang's Speech at the Mayence Congress. |