THE PERSECUTION IN SWITZERLAND.
frillE notion generally entertained in England as to the perse- cution of the Catholics in some of the cantons of Switzer- land is, we believe, one of contemptuous disbelief. For some reason or other, Prince Bismarck,—though he has shown his own real views about intellectual liberty by adding to the law which makes the Churches themselves a department of the Civil Service, a project of law on the Press which would put the Press also quite at the mercy of the same omnipotent authority,—has so carried away the imagination of Englishmen, that whatever he does is sup- posed to be an example of the sort of " strong " govern- ment which it becomes weaker statesmen to imitate. Accordingly, the opinion is now very prevalent in England that it is entirely impossible for Protestants to live in the same community with Roman Catholics who have agreed to conaider the Pope as the personal centre of the immemorially-asserted infallibility of the Roman Church. And in spite of the evidence of our own senses, which assure us that Archbishop Manning and Cardinal Cullen are precisely as strong or as weak as they were before the Council of the Vatican, neither more nor less,—that the decree has made abso- lutely no difference in the relation between the British State and the Catholic Church,—Prince Bismarck is openly admired as the one man who knew what it was necessary to do on occasion of this decree, and did it. Consequently, when Englishmen hear of various Cantons in Switzerland following Bismarck's example, instead of expressing mortification at a prospect which bodes no good to a Federation almost equally divided between two religions, and which cannot possibly remain the united and neutral country it is if the two sections of it ever come to internecine hostility on a vital point,—they smile at the talk of persecution, and darkly hint that Germany will know bow to guarantee the spread of a salutary policy which Germany has originated. And indeed that is precisely what we fear. If the Catholics in the Protestant Cantons are really to be driven into exile in order to celebrate their religion in their own fashion, if there is any danger of the Federal Govern- ment so over-riding even the Government of the Catholic Cantons as to render a conscientious adherence to the Catholic faith, unsafe,—and as far as we see, there is some danger of the latter of these events, and a real commencement of cantonal persecution,—then we shall have before long inter- ference in the affairs of Switzerland on the part of France and perhaps Austria by way of protest, a counter-interference on the part of Germany by way of apology for what is being done, and in consequence a very pretty European dispute, which is likely enough to end, sooner or later, in the partition of Switzerland, and the annexation of parts of it to France and parts to Germany, even if it does not produce what might be either worse or better, according to the issue, a new European war. If England dreads such a result, English politicians would do well to bring to bears the great influence which English opinion will always have in Switzerland, to prevent the con- summation of the fanatical policy that is now in course of inauguration there.
In what we are about to say we may premise that we take our facts wholly from Protestant sources, knowing as we do the natural disposition of any body of believers under per- secution to exaggerate the hardships to which they are sub- jected, and the evil in the motives of those who so subjected them. Nor do we pretend that, as yet at least, the persecution has gone very far. It has resulted in a great many unjust fines, in a good deal of heavy inconvenience, in not a little exile, and in a very profound sense of injury. But beyond this, as yet, it has not gone, and such wrong may still be righted without causing any inextinguishable bitterness between the opposite religious parties. But should the persecution go much further, this will no longer be the case. And it may really happen that the religious faith of the Catholics will triumph over their patriotism, and render allegiance to a constitution under which they are systematically persecuted, almost intolerable.
What has hitherto happened has been an effort, an effort made in several Cantons where the Catholic population is somewhat inferior in number to the Protestant population, to subject the constitution of the Catholic Church to a new sort of democratic control and check. It is very remarkable that in no part of Switzerland has the struggle turned on dogma,— but rather on the right of ecclesiastics to exercise any sort of power without its being first conferred by the people. Even the promulgation of the dogma of infallibility by the Bishop of Bale, that led to his being deposed and banished by a Diocesan Conference which, as far as we can make out, had no legal power whatever to remove him, was made a cause of complaint not so much on account of anything in the dogma, as on account of the wish of the majority of the people in the semi-Protestant Cantons to assert their own authority as final in any question of conflict with the Pope. The same idea was at the root of the wish for the law adopted by the Canton of Geneva that all the Cures should be elected by the people directly. There is in all the semi-Protestant Cantons of Switzerland an almost rabid jealousy of ecclesiastical power of any kind, coupled with great indifference as to opinion. It is the right of the Bishop to do at the bidding of the Pope what the people do not like him to do, and the influence of Cures, who are appointed without any reference to the wishes of the people, which irritate the Radicals. All the measures of persecution they have adopted have been aimed at the ecclesiastical power, much more than at the religious faith, of Rome.
But this is no consolation to Catholics, who maintain that belief in a special ecclesiastical power is part and parcel of their belief in a special religious faith. What is the use of believing in the real presence, if the only persons who can work the miracle by which the real presence is secured are unattainable ? What is the use of believing in absolution and penance, if the only channels through which absolution and salutary penances can be obtained are out of reach ? Hence if the Bishop, who alone can ordain and confirm, is kept at a distance, if the priest, who alone can confess and absolve the penitent, is fined for all he does, or forbidden to say mass, by virtue of which all he does gains its effect, the grievance is serious enough. And this is the sort of grievance which the Catholics of the semi-Protestant Cantons have had to bear. In the first place, the Bishop of the seven cantons—Bale, Berne, Aargau, Thurgau, Soleure, Lucerne, and Zug—was banished without any pretence of a judicial trial by any eccle- siastical or other Court,—at the mere order of the so-called Diocesan Conference, a body created by a secret treaty of the
Cantons made in 1828, simultaneously with an open Treaty into which the Governments of Zug, Lucerne, Soleure, and Aargau had entered with the Pope, for the reorganisation of the Bishopric of Bale, and which vested the right of electing the Bishop in the Senate of the Bishopric. The open treaty with the Pope declared that " the Canons forming the Senate have the right to choose the Bishop among the clergy of the diocese." By the secret Treaty between the Cantons of the same date, they agreed that the Bishop whose election had just been entrusted to the ten Canons forming the Senate of the diocese, should always be chosen from among the candidates agreeable to the Governments. But even granting this secret treaty any validity that can be granted to it, it reserved to the Diocesan Conference no sort of power either to dismiss or to elect the Bishop. None the less this Diocesan Conference—comprising on this occasion the deputies only from the five semi-Protestant Cantons, the deputies of Zug and Lucerne, which are wholly Catholic, did not attend,—took upon itself to dismiss the Bishop of Bale in January of this year, on the ground that he had promulgated the Vatican decree, and had suspended two priests who had preached against that decree and taught its falsehood. And not only so, it interdicted the priests of his diocese from acknowledging his authority ; and in some por- tions of his diocese,—especially Berne and Soleure,—those of the clergy who did not break off intercourse with their Bishop,— and none of them we believe did, except those whom he had already suspended,—were also dismissed. The cures in both Berne and Soleure signed a protest, declaring that Monseigneur Lachat was still their rightful Bishop ; and for so doing all these priests were fined fines varying from £1 to £4, those who only signed by proxy being fined less than those who signed their own names. But in Berne the proceed- ings were much severer. The priests were given fourteen days to submit themselves, and if they did not submit they were summoned before the Court of Cassation of Berne, and were to be pronounced definitively removed. The decree of the Berne Government (dated March 18 last) declares by implication that the law giving it power to remove civil functionaries applies to the priests, and asserts
the power to remove them at will. In a petition from the Bernois of the Jura, which contains 9,800 signatures, against these arbitrary acts, the poor Catholics of the Jura deny that the State had, by the terms of any law or treaty, any power whatever to deal with the functionaries of the Catholic Church ; and that, no doubt, is the simple fact of the case. That the State can withdraw its pecuniary con- tribution towards the expenses of the Church, except so far as it may be bound by treaty with other Powers, is matter of course. But the assertion that it can appoint or remove priests or bishops is intrinsically irrational. The Catholic Church could not claim to be what it has always claimed to be, if it could. And as a result of this assertion of right by the Government of Berne, many priests have been driven across the border into France, and their flocks compelled to follow them there to hear mass.
Now, if such a persecution as this,—still, we admit, quite in the germ,—is to go on ; if the diocese of Lausanne and Geneva is to have forced upon it elected cures whom no genuine Roman Catholics will attend, and the diocese of Bale is to have its priests fined and driven into exile for acknowledging their only ecclesiastical superior, and inhibited, as the Bernese priests have been, from holding any kind of ecclesiastical function in any building devoted to religious worship,— though each priest may still say his low mass,—is it conceivable that the unity of Switzerland can remain un- broken ? Is it not certain that the Catholic Powers must intervene on behalf of a population, whom many even of the Protestant pastors of Switzerland declare to be persecuted, and if the Catholic Powers intervene on the one side, will not Germany all but certainly intervene on the other ? A greater mockery than a kind of toleration which tolerates nothing,—which does not even tolerate the fundamental assumption of the Roman Church,—cannot be conceived. And it is really very difficult to understand whence the fanatical hostility to a Church evidently sufficiently weak in most of the Cantons, has grown. In England we tolerate Romanism to the full, and how are we the worse ? In Ireland we tole- rate it to the full, and how much are we not the better? Is it not time every English journal raised its voice against a childish and meaningless persecution, which, if it goes on beyond its present very initial stage, will certainly .set the worst possible example to the Liberalism of the Continent, break up the neutrality of Switzerland, and very possibly
endanger once more, and more seriously than ever, the peace of Europe ?
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