ROME AND BERLIN.
IT is difficult in this Jesuit controversy to assign the palm of foolishness to Rome or to Berlin. Nothing can be more injudicious, from a political, and even an ecclesiastical point of view, than the Pope's exhortation to all good Catholics to keep on praying, in the hope that "a stone from heaven may crush the [German] Colossus," or the apparent admission contained in his ques- tion, "What has changed the Catholic Bishops from loyal subjects into dangerous conspirators ?" He perhaps meant only to ask why they should be treated as conspirators, but the Allocution has already been seized upon in Germany as proof positive that the Papacy is not only hostile to the German Empire, which was perhaps inevitable, but that it is striving to dissolve the newly won unity of the German people. A suspicion of that kind not only irritates all German Protestants and Liberal Catholics, but arrays against Catholicism the spiritual force of a patriotism entertained by Catholics and Protestants alike, a force so potent that it may pave the way for a considerable schism. On the other hand, Prince Bismarck, with all his ability, has clearly got himself into an impasse, from which he can escape only by beating down the strong fabric which bars his way, or by a more or less humiliating retreat. Moved, it would seem, by the Federal Council, which did not consider his own Bill strong enough, he has accepted the measure of direct persecution introduced by the leaders of the majority. Under this Bill, the Government is directed, not authorised, to dissolve the Order of Jesus and its affiliated Societies, to remove its mem- bers from all control of education, and to sentence them to reside under surveillance in certain appointed places ; that is, is compelled to punish nearly 3,000 persons for their religions opinions by the civil power. The Prince, indeed, alleges that he is not attacking the Order for opinions, but for disloyal conduct in intriguing for the overthrow of the German Empire conduct of which he has the proofs in his hands ; but thie must be merely an excuse to justify himself in the eyes of the Liberal world. If he had the proofs, he would produce them, and leave the guilty members of the Society to the judgment of the Courts of Law, which would inflict much more severe sentences than one of residence in a specified place. He would avoid such a ridiculous measure as a decree of dissolution, which cannot prevent the Jesuits from remaining by voluntary obedience an organised body, and by dispersing them rather increases than diminishes their spiritual force. The Act is clearly intended as a menace to the Vatican— which will reply, we imagine, by a decree dissolving the Ger- man branch of the Society, and making all its members regular clergy—and is utterly useless, unless he is prepared to apply the same coercion to the parish priests who teach the Ultramontane opinions, that is, unless he is prepared to abolish religious liberty among one-half of the German people. He clearly cannot do that unless he can carry out a schism, and must either found a new Church—a task unsuited to our times, and probably impracticable—or remain passive, that is, must be defeated in the eyes of Germany and mankind. The case of the Bishop of Ermeland exhibits the difficulty in its most easily intelligible form. The Bishop excommunicated two Catholic Professors. He was required by the civil depart- ment of religion and education to retract his excommunication. As that act, however, whether wise or foolish, just or unjust, had been performed by the Bishop in the exercise of his spiritual function, a function recognised by the national laws, it was impossible for him to comply, and he has written back a, somewhat haughtily worded refusal. The Government, under these circumstances, must either acquiesce in that refusal, that is, acknowledge itself defeated, or punish the Bishop of Erme- land by secular means for a purely spiritual act, that is, must awowedly persecute a Catholic divine for maintaining by spiritual weapons only the discipline of his Church. That is persecution, clearly, and persecution attempted solely because the victim believes as fourteen millions of his countrymen, at all events profess likewise to believe. It is precisely as if the English Chancellor of the Exchequer were to levy a double income-tax from Mr. Spurgeon because he had recommended the exclusion of a heretical brother from the Baptist communion. There is no pretext here of an injury done or intended to the State, of an alliance with the foreigner, or of intrigue against the Sovereign ; the act is a purely spiritual one, and carries with it no secular consequences, and the punish- ment can be made consistent and equitable only by its extension to all Catholics who do not consent to take their religion from the State. It may be argued that the mere withdrawal of State support, which is as yet the only penalty threatened, is no such great penalty, after all ; but that only makes the Chancellor's action the more dangerous to the State. Severe persecution cows all but the strongest spirits, and raises in the masses a kind of presumption that there must somehow or other be a reason for such tyranny ; but petty persecution has no result except a belief in its objects that they cannot expect common justice at the hands of a Government so prejudiced and so small. If that belief were confined to the clergy it would not perhaps much matter, but the laity see very clearly that if the State can punish a Bishop for uttering an excommunication, it can punish a priest for giving advice, that is, it can terminate the religious freedom which the followers of this creed consider essential to their spiritual well-being. They are, in fact, ordered under penalties to believe as the State believes. How English Liberals, and particularly Liberals who deny the right of the State to profess a belief, can approve such a policy is to us unintelligible, or intelligible only on the ground that their hatred and dread of Catholicism overcome their poll- tical principles. Even on that ground, however, the action of the German Parliament is injudicious as well as oppressive. Supposing the Catholic doctrines bad and per- nicious to those who hold them, they will only hold them all the more strongly because they are denounced by the State. All the pride of individuality and all the love of freedom will be roused in support of the faith under which, as most Englishmen believe, those qualities are usually far too strongly suppressed. We have seen the process in Ireland, where a people persecuted for centuries with a severity impossible in Germany learned from that very persecution to identify their Church with all that was noblest in their own aspirations, to consider it their defender and volun- tary scape-goat, to regard a priesthood quite sufficientlyarrogant and curiously divided from them by foreign training as the natural leaders of the popular party. It was the same with our own Puritans ; as long as they were oppressed, they were held to be the champions of the people; and it will, if the policy continues, be the same in Germany, with this result, that one-half the population will regard the Empire as a doubtful advantage purchased at an almost intolerable price. The plainest facts of British history ought to teach German Liberals the danger of the path they are pursuing. Centuries of war did not alien- ate the Scotch and the English nations as centuries of common glory have left us alienated from the Irish people whose minds were poisoned by persecution. What Scotchman but is proud of the Empire he for eight centuries resisted, and what Irish Catholic is proud of the Empire he for six centuries helped to build ? The single explanation of that difference—for the Highlander is Celt and Catholic—is that in Scotland we adopted the policy of which Cavour was proud, and in Ireland the policy to which Bismarck unwillingly consents.
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