The new Papal Encyclical has led to some sharp comments
in the German official Press. In it the work of St. Charles Borromeo is compared with that of Protestant reformers and their modern descendants, to the violent disparagement of the latter, Evangelical freedom being denounced as a pretext for a corruption of morals and perversion of discipline to which the Middle Ages hardly reached. The North German Gazette, commenting on this passage, notes with satisfaction that a Conservative journal admits that such language on the part of the Pope renders nugatory all efforts to promote outward peace between the conflicting creeds. Two months ago, as the Berlin correspondent of the Times reminds us, when Herr Bethmann Hollweg was in Rome, he was amicably discussing the affairs of the Catholic Church in Germany with the Vatican. The explanation of the altered tone now shown in semi-official utterances, the correspondent hints, is perhaps to be found in the altered posture of home politics. Now that the Prussian Franchise Bill has collapsed, the Govern- ment may be glad of any opportunity to detach Conservatism from Catholicism.
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