Catholicism in Germany

GERMANY, August, 1905.

While Freemasonry in France seems on the point of triumphing over Christianity by the destruction of all religious education and a law of alleged Separation of Church and State, it is interesting to recall that only thirty-five years ago Catholicism in Germany was as much menaced as it is in France today. Churches were closed, prisons were full of priests, bishops, and archbishops, and Bismarck, like M. Briand of France, swore he would never, never go to Canossa.

In 1871 there were only fifty-eight Catholics in the Reichstag, representing 720,000 electors; in 1903 there were more than a hundred, representing 1,800,000 electors; and today this Catholic Centre forms the ruling majority in the country. The Emperor understands this perfectly, and hence his amenities towards the Church and the Holy See.

I have no doubt that the great Catholic Congress was held recently at Strasburg with his knowledge and approval, not to say at his suggestion. The event is significant coming so soon after his own investiture, at Metz, with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, conferred upon him by the papal legate in the presence of the German cardinals and archbishops, and the highest military dignitaries of the empire.

At this Catholic Congress of Strasburg, forty thousand delegates of the federated societies of Germany paraded the streets with banners and music. The whole city was decorated, papal colours being most conspicuous. These popular federated societies count half a million members, grouped in nine hundred associations, that have 350 press organs of their own.

What makes the strength of these Catholic organizations in Germany is that they represent all classes of society—princes, peasants, artisans, nobles, and bourgeois—whereas Socialism finds its recruits almost exclusively, amongst the proletariat, cultured and uncultured, chiefly the latter.

At the Congress, Prince d'Arenberg renewed the usual protestations against the Piedmontese occupation of Rome, and the Bishop of Strasburg rejoiced that, "in spite of the devastations of the French Revolution, the ancient faith was still flourishing in Alsace, whence he hoped it might soon extend its salutary influence."

These events are significant following the diplomatic humiliation inflicted on France when M. Delcassé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was peremptorily dismissed at the behest of Germany.

Not long since the Socialist Bebel saucily told M. Jaurès the French would never have a pension for old age until the Germans gave it to them. Nothing, too, would please William more than to play the rôle of a paladin of religious liberty to the oppressed French Catholics.

Nor is there anything to prevent the resuscitation of the Germanic Confederation as it existed in the Middle Ages. The Habsburgs and the Austrian Empire might never have arisen, and the Hohenstauffens might still be reigning, if they had had sense enough to keep their hands off the Papacy. Napoleon, too, might have founded a dynasty as long-lived as that of the Bourbons, had he not also fallen into the same evil ways, and sought to dominate the whole Church by enslaving the Sovereign Pontiff. His nephew, the third Napoleon, in his youth, unfortunately became the bondsman of secret societies, whom he aided and abetted in the spoliations of 1870 which preluded his fall.

The Third Republic, too, will be shattered on the same rock, though not before having caused irretrievable wrong to France, I fear.