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1264 THE LEADER. [Saturday, ¦ ' , ; _———...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Ultramontanism In Germany. (Third And Co...
secularism , adapted to the wants of princes , made some progress even in Spain and Naples . The Catholic priest 3 could not but acknowledge that times had singularly changed . As for Baden , more especially , the Papal Church was there placed under severe restrictions by the Crown in the two great branches of its authority . The placet regium ; the right of preferment exercised by the State ; the
equality of priests and laymen before the law ; the administration of the Church by a Council of State ; the examination of theologians with the assistance of a Grand Ducal Commissary , & c ., & c . ; all these rights , acquired by the Government , constituted , in the opinion of the Curialists , encroachments on the power of ordination , as well as on the power of jurisdiction attributed to the Catholic Church .
In our second article we spoke of concessions which the Baden dynasty had made to the Austro-Papist League . In these compliances to the enemies of all liberty the dynasty acted in opposition to the people . The Chamber , although elected under the triple influence of the Grand Ducal employes , the seigneurial aristocracy , and the Ultramontane priests , and although composed of by no means revolutionary elements—even this Chamber , from its first assembling in 1819 , presented a decided resistance to any attempt at strengthening the privileges of the revenants of the Middle Ages . It pronounced itself against the secret tendency of the nobility to extend its feudal rights , and against the tendency of the
priests to interfere in the most delicate relations of political and even of private life . Already then , however , ( only one year after the proclamation of the Charter !) the inclination of the Crown to seek for support in the higher clergy and in the high nobility _ against the spirit of middle-class selfgovernment , which it had evoked in a moment of despair , did not escape observation . The deputies of the Chamber saw one of their colleagues seized by the gendarme for having expressed the feelings of the people on the privileges of the higher clergy of the Roman Church , and of the territorial aristocracy . The Grand Duke prorogued or dissolved one Chamber after another , to the delight of the Papists , who were sure of their game .
Nevertheless , if the Government of Baden persecuted those who attacked Ultramontanism , it was not , in the first instance , from any very ecclesiastical motives . The Grand Duke Louis ( 1818-30 ) was too much of a Prussian corporal to be an acolyte . His paramount consideration was the security of his monarchical sovereignty ; concerning the rights of the Throne his ideas Averc stiff enough . The Episcopate , hoping to take advantage of the hatred of the Government ngainst the " demagogues , " insidiously approached the Throne : insinuated that
the State could only be saved by the severe discipline of the Church , which , while it formed true servants of God , would react favourably on the spirit of tho people . "Spiritu . il influence , " said the Episcopate of Freiburg , in a memorandum of 1827 , " should bo the first aim of a bishop : therefore , he must have at his disposal canonical punishments ; but rewards also are strong incentives to the human heart , and the bishop lias the means of dispensing them in the right of preferment , which he would not employ , the Grand Ducal
Government may be well assured , save in promoting those high interests , which arc the object of the Chief of tho State . " But the Government refused to be seduced by this language of the wolf in the lamb ' s skin . It was wolf enough itself to laugh at this affected innocence . Tho most prolix memoranda of the Episcopate were bowed out by the curteat rescripts . Tho State ceded to Ultramontanism on secondary points , where tho interests of the Crown seemed to demand the sacrifice . But the Crown would not abdicate its most important rights over tho Church .
In the relations between the priests and tho Government of Carlsruhe , a significant change took place in consequence , of tho accession of tho Grand Duke Leopold and of the French Revolution of July . Sonic years before 1830 tho Hierarchy hud been strengthened by tho intervention which tho snered armies of tho Holy Church , Austria and tho French
Bqurbona , had exorcised at Naples , at Turin , and in Spain . The contrecoup of these events waB felt in Germany also , in the redoubled activity of the Lkaouk . In Bavaria , the accession of Kinpj Louis hud inaugurated the reign of the purplo-stockinga . The Diet of Frankfort was occupied with projects for tho partition of tho territory of Baden . The necessity of " fortifying tho Catholic principle , " by breaking up
the petty States , ' was demonstrated in the pamphlets of publicists decorated with Austrian and Bavarian orders . The Government of Munich , contesting the r > lit of succession of the presumptive heir to the Grand Duchy of Baden , who was the issue of a morganatic marriage , demanded the execution of the secret treaty with Austria . In the . Duchy of Baden occult influences were at work , which were generally attributed to the powerful instrumentality of the recently-elected General of the Society of Jesus , Father Koothaan , whose constant communications with the Papal leaders on the Upper Rhine were ascertained some time after .
The new Grand Duke , Leopold , got the better of these difficulties by espousing-, at his accession in 1830 , the moderate middle-class liberalism then in vogue . At that time there existed throughout Germany a popular excitement kindled by the revolutions in France , -in Switzerland , in Poland , & c . " Down with Jesuitism and Absolutism I" was the rallying cry of the German movements . The puerile inexperience of the . Liberals , . who were then at the head of those movements , saluted the new Grand Duke of Baden as a hopeful augury for the union
and political and religious liberty of all Germany . But , although these movements were badly led , the Austro-Papist alliance , the Baden section of which had , iu 1830 , the Princes of Lowenstkin for its chiefs , was at all events totally incapable of resisting the great current of popular opinion . In vain it protested in behalf of the rights of the noblesse and of the clergy . At that time of ferment , the Episcopate also , which had never ceased to utter complaints , demands , reclamations in defence of that right of preferment which it had lost , was roundly dismissed with all its grievances by the Ministry of
the Grand Duke . But since 1832 , the general reaction which followed the fall of Warsaw , brought upon the Duchy of Baden also an . era of servitude to the crozier . The true character of the Grand Duke came out . He was a timid man , who had seen with terror the democratic spirit looming behind the liberalism of the middle classes . Drowning his mediocre intelligence in the pleasures of champagne , he left the cares of his government to his noble equerries , grand-huntsmen , and grand-drinkers , who , by their relations with the high aristocratic families , were drawn into the hierarchical conspiracy . The chateau of Carlsruhe fell more and more under the
sovereign influence of a Jesuitical camarilla , who were intriguing for the public recognition of the Order of the Society ? for the introduction of Grey Sisters , affiliated to the Order ; . for the modification of the civil code , in the sense of clerical omnipotence ; for tho expulsion of the employes of the State , who were not regular attendants upon the Papal church ; for the prevention of anti ecclesiastical communities , which were being organised in the bosom of Catholicism and Protestantism .
The political movement of the country since 1832 embraces an uninterrupted history of resistance to the united Romanist and Absolutist conspirators . The changes which the Baden dynasty introduced into tho Code Napoleon , which ever since the French invasion had been the law of tho country , wero made in the interest of police and clerical authority . A direct influence was accorded to the priests over the private life of citizens , over marriage , over the right of wardship : in short , over all the most considerable interests of family and property . The Catholic priests , acting by the orders of a hierarchy , made a political weapon of the provisons of the law . To resist these aggressions , the people began to rally round the banner of religious liberty ( Glaubensfreiheit ) , in the democratic sense of the word .
The priestly Propaganda was then ( 1832-40 ) shaking to its centre the neighbouring Switzerland , which had always been tho stronghold of Ultramontauism . The former prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of tho Faith , Pope Gregory , returned , with ardour , again to thp doctrine of pro posse pcrscqui . The thunders which ho launched against the articles of the Conference of Baden wero enough to shake the Governments that slept on the brink of the precipice .
Yet the Governments , except by fits anil starts , do not seem to have been thoroughly aroused at that time , though under the impulsion of Pope Gregory Romanism was organising throughout Germany a general levy against the secular powers ., Thp conflicts of the Archbishop of Cologne , Duostk von yi , sciiKmNo , with the King of Prussia , Frederick William III ., concerning mixed marriages , had their echo from tho Rhino to the Oder . The Episcopate
of the Upper Rhine , embracing in its circumference the dioceses of May once , Fulda , Limburg , Rottenburg , troubled the consciences of believers for a long time after with that question of " mixed marriages . " The Baden Government made no sign of the needful energy . It felt itself relieved from a heavy load when , after tho death of Frederick William HI ., his successor , tho present Crypto-Catholic and roninntio Frederick William IV ., re-instated the arrested bishops in their dioceses , and arranged tho
difficulties in compliance with the wishes of the Court of Home . But that question of " mixed marriages" was revived again later ; and without any regard to the difficulties of the Government , the Roman clergy were sometimes seized with a sudden fancy of stirring up a general coifcmotion . Since 1840 the intimate councils of the Crown and the administration of the State of Baden have been filled with the men who are now the most furious supporters of the pretensions of the Archbishopric of Freiburg , and the most determined enemies of the government of the Prince Regent .
Ultramontanism was openly employed by the Government in falsifying the elections to the Chambers . Chiefs of the police , censors of the press , governors of towns * , ¦ administrators of provinces—even members of the Ministry itself were appointed to their offices by favour of their attachment to the Papist cause . At Freiburg and at Mannheim ultra-Catholic journals , surpassing in virulence all the fury of the Veuillots , were founded and supported by the money of members of the Government . These stipendiary journals attacked daily , not only the democratic party , but the fundamental law of
the State , the code , the administration , the dynasty itself ! Very singular friends indeed ! Yet the Government , knowing the popular spirit , dared not separate from them . Notorious Jesuits ascended the pulpits of Freiburg and Heidelberg . What Hurter , the secret adept of the Papal Church , had begun in Switzerland and in the south of Germany , was continued in Baden by the Professors Buss and Zell —• precious instruments of Loyolisan . Buss , a cunning capucin-like Romanist , was , with the Baron of Andlaw and other crusaders , an active member of that party which in 1848 and 1849 was
intriguing for the re-establishment of a German Catholic Empire , under the sceptre of the House of Hapsburg . Zell , a great connoisseur of the classics , a renowned humanist , an elegant Jesuit , is the same man who a few weeks ago , at Vienna , concluded an address with these words " Domine , salvwn fac Imperatorem nostrum Franciscum Joscphum . " Under-the influence of men like Zell , the Government of Baden . consented to the establishment of the Society of Jesua in landed estates in the neighbourhood of Heidelberg : that establishment , it is true , was disguised in appearnce , but the Government was well aware that it
was the organised centre of dark conspiracies . Moreover , by the introduction of the Order of Sisters of Mercy , the Government provoked a cry of general indignation . To destroy Radicalism , the State put its agents , its gendarmes , all its governmental resources , ac the disposal of Ultramontanisra , which , marching step by step with the chiefs of the Sonderbund in Switzerland , strove to re-animate in Baden a fever of religious hate , and , in the spirit of the Inquisition , to persecute free thought . The Government was not ashamed to evoke the most savage passions of dark ages for the sole purpose of dividing the party of its political enemies—the party of the people .
But that " party" was the entire population . If there be one important element more than another which in the south of Germany has contributed to awaken the people as to the tendencies of the dynasty and of the aristocracy : if there be one thing more than another which has contributed to convert a subject into a Republican , that important element is the sombre oppression which Romanism and Royalism united sought to inflict on a people of spirit , honour , and independence . In 1848 the people ot Baden distinguished themselves by rising thrice to destroy the thronethe nobilityand clerical ) sni .
, , Peasant , citizen , soldier , all took up the musket , and it was not the Church ( far from it I ) tliac thrice saved the Crown . It was the armed force of other dynasties , it was a swarm of Prussian bayonets coming in overwhelming numbers , that protected and restored the dynasty . Tho " venerable octogenarian , " the Archbishop of Freiburg , tens knowingly the reverse of the truth , when he boasts of " tho services rendered by tho Church to tne Crown in days of wild disorder . " During the German Revolutionthe Roman Church was at tiic
, a * J 4 WJI jliiv v / ii 4 t * vii > maa * . ' ji » v *»«»»»» - ^ -- ~ - — — _ mercy of the democracy . It had not , wo may oo sure , forgotten its prcLenflions , but it was powerless . If it was not stripped of its immense property , " £ fruits of usurpation , of chicane , and fraud , it w simply because the German Revolution had lui uj into tho hands of reformers who wero too ' cariI |\ to know anything . Thus it was that in Bttden uw Church preserved its possessions , which amount something like twelve millions of florins vroTl ^ , thanks to the ignorance , the carelessness , or i
treachery of the popular chiefs . , In 1853 , the Grand Ducal Government is cngngc " close contest with the hierarchy . The Ultramontane » know the total isolation of tho Crown iroin w people . Initiated before 1818 into tho tricks ot ot «« » the Papists know well every weakness , ^^ J' j ^ every anxiety of the Government . It is tno o itself that has reared and nursed its foe . It * tuo Court that has sown tho wind—let it reap storm !
1264 The Leader. [Saturday, ¦ ' , ; _———...
1264 THE LEADER . [ Saturday , ¦ ' , ; _———— — ——— - ¦ - ¦ -- ——*^—BM * | ' lllllll " lll ' MI l ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ M ^ * ^
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 31, 1853, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_31121853/page/16/
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