The German Catholic Congress held at Mayence adopted, on Thursday,
five resolutions, three of which, at least, are most imprudent. That the Association should approve the attitude of German Catholic Bishops is only natural, and all Catholics who :accept the dogma are bound to vote that "the ecclesiastical attri- butes of priest and teacher appertaining to the Pope and the Bishops cannot be abrogated by State law ; " but to demand the re-establishment "of the independence of the Holy See "—that is, of the temporal power—to "protest against the Constitution -of the German Empire," and its foreign policy more particularly, in so far as directed against the Holy See, and to "favour the amelioration of the condition of the working-classes, by com- prehensive legislation initiated by the German Government," is to play into the hands of Prince Bismarck. He is perfectly certain to quote such resolutions, whatever they really mean, as proofs that the Ultramontanes detest the unity of Germany, and are willing, for their own purposes, to ally themselves with Socialism, the bugbear of the German middle-class,—and he will be believed.
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