By one of these Bills all the Catholic " seminaries
" for boys will be abolished, and every Catholic will have to attend the State grammar schools. When they reach the age of college students they will be allowed to study in Catholic colleges, but before they become eligible for livings they will be examined by the State in classics, literature, philosophy, history, and natural science, and not allowed to take the living without passing the examination. This is, of course, intended to secure their attendance in the ordinary University classes, and probably will, to a great extent, secure it. But the most stringent provision follows, that even after passing the examination, no priest may be appointed to a living if the State objects,—and this apparently, as far at least as we know at present, quite without relation to the source of the salary,—applying as much to the salaries used by voluntary Congregations who pay their own priest, as to State salaries. Further, no priest can be appointed only provisionally,— so as to be still under the power of his Bishop, and to be liable to have his appointment cancelled if he is not subservient enough,—for more than a year. And again, no priest can continue to officiate if deprived of his living by a judicial sentence for offences against the Law of the State ; and a tribunal to try such offences is estab- lished. An appeal to this Court is given to any priest deprived by a Bishop, and if any priest is legitimately so deposed, the Bishop is to be fined £150 (1,000 thalers), unless he fills the vacancy with a candidate acceptable to the State within a year. The Bishops, too, are to be made, as far as law can make them, absolutely independent of the Pope. We should no more disapprove of a com- pulsory literary pass examination for the priesthood than for one for the medical profession ; but for the rest, the object of these measures really is to make the Roman Catholic religion, as held by IT1tramontanes,—who are, since the late decree, the only Roman Catholics—unlawful in theory and in practice unmanageable.
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