93. Benedict XV and World War I (1914-22);    94. Teutonic Kulturkampf (1871-1918);    95. Gallic Repudiation (1870-1918)

93. BENEDICT XV AND WORLD WAR I

Giacomo della Chiesa (1854-1922) was born at Genoa of a noble family. His elementary education was received in the Genoese public schools and he at first pursued studies in civil law at the University of Genoa from 1871 to 1875. During these years, however, he was a member of a confraternity which served in hospitals, so that his decision to embrace the clerical life was not wholly unexpected. After he had ^{[p. 618]} received his doctorate in civil law in 1875, his father permitted him to enroll in the Capranica College where he obtained his theological degree in 1878. Ordained to the priesthood in the same year, he attended the Academia dei Nobili where he secured a doctorate in canon law in 1880. During 1881 he became secretary to Cardinal Rampolla, serving under him first at the Spanish nunciature (1883-87), and then in the Roman secretariat of state. Monsignor della Chiesa remained deputy secretary of state until 1907 when he was named archbishop of Bologna and consecrated by Pope Pius X himself. He was zealous in visiting the parishes of his diocese, especially during Forty Hours, and conducted a pilgrimage to Lourdes in 1913. He was created cardinal on May 25, 1914, and—following the death of Pius X on August 20—was elected to the papacy on September 3, 1914.

Character. The new pope had several physical handicaps: he was short and somewhat lame, and his voice was not particularly good. He had, however, a well-trained mind, great powers of concentration and administration, and a good sense of humor. To an English lady, at a loss during a papal audience, he gave a complete guide of what to see in Rome, complete with the times of opening and closing of the museums. If Benedict XV seems a less attractive personality than St. Pius X, it was from no absolute deficiency, but merely from the competition with sanctity. In learning and diplomatic skill he undoubtedly surpassed his predecessor, and Providence gave him to the Church at the critical period of World War I when his talents were needed.

Curial activity. It was providential also that the new Code of Canon Law, begun by St. Pius X, could be guided to completion by a pope versed in both the laws. Its appearance was clearly the most memorable event of the pontiff’s ecclesiastical administration: promulgated at Pentecost, 1917, it went into effect on May 19, 1918. During 1915 the pope ordered the addition of the invocation, Regina .Paris, to the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and on August 10 of the same year the papal document, Incruentum Altaris, conceded trination privileges to all priests for All Souls’ Day. Benedict XV assumed personal direction of a new Congregation for the Oriental Church, and his important encyclical, Maximum Illud, stressed the need for developing a native clergy and improving missionary methods.

(2) PAPAL WAR PROBLEMS

Diplomacy was the outstanding task of Benedict XV’s pontificate. He was definitely politique, and a disciple of Leo XIII and the latter’s secretary of state, Cardinal Rampolla. He was himself the guide to his own secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri (1914-30), who in turn was the diplomatic mentor of Eugenio Pacelli. The pope strove conscientiously ^{[p. 619]} to maintain strict impartiality during the war, although the English Cardinal Gasquet deemed the Roman curia on the whole somewhat pro-Austrian. Passing over Benedict’s wartime activities for the moment, it may be noted that his tact contributed to renewal of diplomatic relations with the Vatican by Great Britain, France, and Portugal—and on January 4, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson called briefly upon the pope. During the peace period Benedict XV relaxed some of the regulations for diplomatic etiquette for Catholic rulers’ visits to the Holy See. Though the secular governments were not always conciliated, papal war relief work won Benedict XV widespread popular esteem and many non-Catholic soldiers testified their gratitude.

Strict impartiality was the pope’s announced policy during the war, and the criticisms of his conduct by both sides may well represent an unconscious testimony to his fidelity in keeping his pledged word. Elected during the war, the pope took the first opportunity, November 1, 1914, to urge peace upon the belligerents. His request for a truce at Christmas was not heeded, but proposals during January, 1915, for mutual exchange of interned civilians and disabled prisoners of war were eventually put into partial effect through Swiss mediatorship. During January, 1915, the pope also deplored the “injustice” to Belgium, an injustice indeed admitted by the German chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg. On July 28, 1915, the pope issued a second peace plea, and the following September suggested five conditions: (1) preservation of French territorial integrity; (2) restoration of Belgian independence; (3) preservation of Austria-Hungary, although with some concessions to Italy; (4) re-establishment of Poland within generous limits; (5) freedom of the Dardanelles. In November, 1916, he condemned the bombing of the open city of Padua.

Papal peace note. During 1917 the pope made his major effort to terminate the war. In May he consecrated Eugenio Pacelli and sent him to the Kaiser with an urgent plea for peace on the terms of the general peace note of August 1, 1917. This urged participants that, “the moral force of right shall be substituted for the material force of arms; ... a just agreement of all for the simultaneous and reciprocal diminution of armaments; ... institution of arbitration ... subject to regulations to be agreed on and sanctions to be determined against a state which should refuse; . . . total evacuation of Belgium with a guarantee of her complete political, military, and economic independence; . . . similar evacuation of French territory; . . . similar restitution of German colonies; . . . as regards territorial questions, to examine them in a conciliatory spirit.” Unfortunately, as the pope himself admitted privately later, this note was badly timed, for it followed American entrance into the conflict and the First Russian Revolution. The first event ^{[p. 620]} heartened the Allies, the second the Central Powers, to seek the chance of total victory rather than compromise on a negotiated peace. But time proved that the real losers were all the belligerents concerned.

(3) PAPAL PEACE PROBLEMS

The Versailles Conference, and not the peace note, therefore, laid down terms after the “war to end war.” Despite this general disregard of his proposals, Pope Benedict XV, unlike certain critical Catholics, did not wash his hands of the secular groping for peace. His encyclical, Pacem Dei Minus, in 1920 lauded a league of nations, without necessarily endorsing all of the features of the league set up at Geneva and the interwoven terms of the Versailles peace pact. Indeed, the pope urged that: “It is most desirable that all states, putting aside all their mutual suspicions, unite to form only one society, or even better, one family, for the defense of their respective liberties and the maintenance of the social order.” At the same time, however, Benedict XV was not deceived by vague Liberal idealism and self-righteousness, indicted at the very peace conference by the German delegates. With some prescience these obviously partisan witnesses had protested against the dictated peace terms: “In the document before us a moribund conception of the world, imperialistic and capitalistic in tendency, celebrates its last horrible triumph.” ¹² With Christian realism and the objective impartiality of Rome, the pope perceived that nationalistic animosities would linger on. During 1920 he warned in words that proved prophetic in the light of World War II: “Remember that nations do not die; humbled and oppressed, they chafe under the yoke imposed upon them, preparing a renewal of the combat, and passing down from generation to generation a mournful heritage of revenge.”

“Grove Haines and Ross J. Hoffman, Origins of the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 96.

The Roman Question had been explicitly banned from discussion at Versailles by the fifteenth article of the secret Treaty of London. This document, signed in 1915, was given to the world from the Petrograd archives by the Communist revolutionaries. The portion pertaining to the Holy See pledged: “France, Great Britain, and Russia will support the opposition which Italy may make to any proposition, no matter what, having in view the introduction of a representative of the Holy See in the negotiations which have for their object the questions arising out of the present war.” It was in vain, then, that Monsignor Kelley, later bishop of Oklahoma City, strove to have the Roman Question brought up at Versailles by the American delegation. Cardinal Gasparri, however, asserted that the Roman Question ought not to be settled “through foreign armies,” and this also implied not through foreign ^{[p. 621]} governments. Cardinal Ehrle, the Vatican librarian, unofficially put forward a suggestion of restoration of papal temporal sovereignty limited to the Leonine City. But the Italian Government, which had seized the Palazzo Venetia in 1916, was unwilling to make any concessions whatsoever. Pope Benedict XV, however, by entirely revoking Non Expedit removed any obstacle to Catholic influence upon national politics. Don Sturzo organized his Partite. Popolare on January 10, 1919, although the Osservatore Romano asserted on June 10, 1920: “The Holy See is and remains completely foreign to the direction and attitude of the Partito Popolare Italiano, as of all political parties.” Thus Benedict XV was forced to leave a still unsolved Roman Question to his successor when he died after a short illness, January 22, 1922.

B. Secular Belligerency

(1) WORLD WAR I

The seeds of war, according to Hayes, lay in international anarchy. Blustering self-interest led to a race for the strong, and unlimited competition in domestic economics reacted upon national ambitions and was carried over into the international sphere. Areas of friction were created through myopic self-interest. No international organ existed to settle disputes save by extraordinary international conferences which uniformly failed to win general approval, in the face of rampant imperialism and nationalism.

More proximate causes, in Fay’s view, were: 1) a system of secret alliances, which made a local conflict inevitably world-wide. Although these alliances, chiefly the German-Austrian-Italian Triple Alliance and the Anglo-French-Russian Entente, were defensive in aim, the security afforded by promised support of friends rendered an offensive possible and assured that it would be on an extensive scale. 2) Militarism involved huge armies and the presence of a military class prone to push, and even to rush diplomats into war by demanding general mobilization in any emergency. 3) Nationalism, especially when heated by war propaganda, evoked worship of the fatherland, and hatred for other nations: newspapers infuriated the populace, heckled the pacifiers, and precipitated issues. 4) Economic imperialism, though somewhat exaggerated, was also a contributing factor.

Occasion. After a series of international crises in 1905, 1908, 1911, 1912, and 1913 had produced diplomatic hypertension, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, reputed advocate of a Triple Monarchy to alleviate Slav grievances within the Habsburg state, was slain by three Bosnian youths, promoters of a “Greater Serbia.” Austrian foreign minister Berchtold hoped to chastise Serbia in a .local war, but Russia announced support of the latter. Russian mobilization alarmed Austria’s ^{[p. 622]} German ally, who mobilized in turn and asked France her intentions. Receiving an evasive reply, Germany strove to skirt French defenses by passing through Belgium, which brought in Britain as guarantor of Belgian neutrality. Eventually the Entente blockade of Germany was countered by German submarine blockade of the British Isles, and the United States was drawn into the conflict.

Course. German blitzkrieg tactics called for a quick decision. Unexpected Russian speed in advance necessitated transfer of German forces from France to the eastern front. The latter was saved but at the expense of fatally impairing the Western offensive. Austrian military weakness prolonged this diversion until 1917 when czarist collapse was helped along by introduction of the Bolshevik germ. Meanwhile the British and French with difficulty sustained the western front in monotonous trench warfare. American assistance arrived in time to offset German successes in the east, and internal dissension on the German borne front made armistice imperative. When the four-year ordeal was over, the Western World was exhausted more than by previous conflicts. For this had been a popular war involving the personal sacrifice and hardships of a majority of the people; it had been an unusually destructive war affecting the lives and property of millions; it had, finally, been a demoralizing conflict which shook Liberal confidence in the “cult of progress,” and had left secular leaders disillusioned, cynical and desperate.

(2) VERSAILLES: GERM OF WORLD WAR II

Peace terms. Germany ceded Alsace-Lorraine, Eupen-Malmédy, Memel, Posen, Danzig, part of West Prussia, and after plebiscites, districts in Schleswig and Silesia. The Saar was internationalized for fifteen years, under French economic control. All overseas dominions went to Britain, France, Belgium, and Japan. The German army was held to one hundred thousand, its fleet to six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve torpedo boats. All Rhine fortifications and Baltic defenses were dismantled and Allied commissions placed in charge of German inland waterways. Germany was forced to acknowledge full responsibility for the war and promise to pay an undetermined sum in reparations—later set at 132,000,000,000 gold marks. The Centrist leader Erzberger was assigned the thankless task of signing this harsh treaty. Later the Treaties of St. Germain and Trianon reduced Austria and Hungary to small inland states, the former of which was forbidden to join Germany. Such was to be Hitler’s initial talking point.

 League of Nations. President Wilson had consented to terms not in conformity with his announced “Fourteen Points” in the hope that the ^{[p. 623]} League of Nations would rectify any injustice. The resulting League was a free association of states for the realization of certain aims, but none yielded its sovereignty and each retained a veto. The League was to formulate plans and suggest solutions in a crisis, but it remained for the several states to take what steps they thought best to enforce decisions. The supreme organ was to be an assembly with one vote for each nation-member, but effective direction rested with the council composed of the Great Powers. Russia’s ostracism and the abstention of the United States struck the League crippling blows at the start. It tended then to become an instrument of Britain and France to maintain the status quo. When these came to disagree on the status quo, it lost all political significance, although certain juridical and social agencies attached to the League continued to do useful work.

Catholic attitudes. Some Catholics regarded the League as set up by a Presbyterian President Wilson in the old Calvinist center of Geneva a direct antithesis to Benedict XV and the Roman See. They resented the exclusion of the pope from the peace conference and still smarted under the rebuffs accorded his peace proposals. But other Catholics, at least in time, came to prefer an imperfect League of Nations to none at all. In fact the non-political features of the League organization embraced many worthwhile humanitarian projects and various attached agencies performed useful social functions.

In any event, the new League of Nations was secularist, in fact, the triumph of secularism. Despite many naturally good principles, the League avoided any explicit invocation of God or any recognition of Christianity. Versailles and its League may be taken as marking the zenith of Liberalism, but this “parliament of man in the federation of the world” proved exceedingly short-lived at Geneva.

94. TEUTONIC KULTURKAMPF

Bismarck, first German chancellor (1871-90) , dominated the reigns of William I (1871-88) and Frederick (1888). A conservative junker, he was nonetheless an intelligent and progressive statesman. Once he had united Germany and defeated France, he professed no further territorial ambitions. Germany was a “sated power” and would confine her efforts to maintaining the status quo by isolating France from a war of revenge. In this objective Bismarck was quite successful: while binding Austria and Italy to Germany by the Triple Alliance (1882), he yet preserved friendship with the Russian czar through the Drei-KaiserBund (1881) and Reinsurance Treaty (1887-90). Meanwhile he kept ^{[p. 624]} on good terms with Great Britain by moderating German colonial and naval expansion. For Bismarck, the strong German army would suffice to bring the Reich political primacy, and industrial development would ensure prosperity. German industrial growth, however, accentuated social problems and provoked active socialist agitation. Regarding Socialism as a greater menace than Romanism, Bismarck eventually made peace with the latter in order to oppose the former. I-Iis attitude, however, was not merely negative, for between 1883 and 1889 he took the lead in social insurance legislation which did much to allay discontent among the laboring classes.

William II (1888-1918) would not tolerate for long the dictation of this aged mentor of the Hohenzollern; in 1890 he “dropped the pilot” and essayed thereafter to act as his own prime minister. His labor policy was even more liberal than Bismarck’s and his condescension to the proletariat, similar to that of Napoleon III, won for him for a time the title of the “Labor Emperor.” But his foreign policy was unwise. Not only did this neurotic ruler alarm Europe by irresponsible, belligerent speeches, but his surrender to the naval building mania of Tirpitz brought Germany into rivalry with Great Britain which eventually sided with France and Russia against the Central Powers. During the World War, greater tactlessness—and inept propaganda—antagonized neutrals and the United States, setting in motion forces which brought about the downfall of the Hohenzollerns.

(2) AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN AUSGLEICH [Compensation](1867-1918)

Francis Joseph (1848-1916) meanwhile was trying to preserve Habsburg rule over a multiracial realm. Evicted from Germany in 1866 and shorn of all control in Italy, Austria found her subject Slavic peoples eager to challenge her traditional pre-eminence. To avert dissolution of the monarchy into a host of petty national states—as actually happened in 1918—Austria formed a partnership with Hungary during 1867. The ensuing Dual Monarchy allowed each country domestic autonomy while preserving a common foreign and military policy. The federal parliament was continually rent by such diverse nationalist pressures, moreover, that Austrian leadership usually prevailed by default. Personal prestige and experience enabled Francis Joseph to manage a theoretically unworkable government, but his heir, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, is said to have contemplated a redress of Slavic grievances by some device of a “Triple Monarchy.” His assassination stifled such hopes, and the aged monarch’s successor was young Charles (1916-18) who spent his brief reign in trying to extricate the creeking Habsburg realm from the disasters of World War I. He failed, but terminated Habsburg tenure honorably and gracefully. ^{[p. 625]}

B. German Religious Contest

(1) ORIGINS OF THE KULTURKAMPF (1870-73)

Causes. Bismarck had dissembled his anti-Catholic prejudices pending German unification, but after 1871 he felt no need to do so longer. In 1870 the Vatican definition of papal infallibility had furnished new fuel for Protestant bigotry, and seemed a deliberate affront to the theory of the secular state. This is reflected in Bismarck’s personal declaration of war, May 14, 1872: “After the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church which have been recently promulgated, it will not be possible for a secular government to conclude a concordat with the papacy, unless that government effaces itself to the last degree and in a way to which the German Reich at least will not consent. Do not fear. We will not go to Canossa, either in body or in spirit.” The succeeding conflict was therefore visualized as a “war for civilization,” a Kulturkampf according to a term first used by Rudolf Virchow in 1873. Presumably the aim of this contest was to supplant the ancient Habsburg, Roman and Catholic traditions of Germany’s First Reich with a new outlook, a thoroughly German culture. It was expected that the Old Catholic movement might be utilized to launch a los von Rom movement within the Catholic Church itself, and the Kulturkampf was foreshadowed when Baden recognized the Old Catholic prelate, Reinkens, as bishop. Though the contest was primarily a Prussian thing, it had repercussions in other German states: Premiers Lutz of Bavaria and Jolly of Baden sympathized with Bismarck, and Baden and Hesse recognized the Old Catholic hierarchy. Bismarck’s aim may also have been partly international, and echoes of the Kulturkampf reverberated as far as the Congress of the United States.

Inaugural. An occasion for the fight was afforded by discussion of the new imperial constitution. Since the Prussian constitution of 1848 had granted the Catholic Church considerable liberty in administration, religious instruction and communication with Rome, Bishop Ketteler urged that its provisions be extended to the whole new German federation. This became the program of the states’ rights parties in Bavaria and Hanover, aided by national groups of Poles, Danes, and Alsatians. The Poles were particularly incensed at Bismarck’s order that all Polish schools teach German and in German from Easter, 1873, contrary to a privilege dating from 1842. Most of these dissenters were Catholics, following the lead of Windhorst in forming the Center coalition during 1870. They won sixty-seven seats in the 1871 Reichstag election, increased their strength to ninety-four during the Kulturkampf, and until 1933 consistently held about one hundred seats in an assembly of three hundred to four hundred—a deciding factor since no one party polled a ^{[p. 626]} clear majority between 1871 and 1933. But in 1871 Bismarck pushed through the imperial constitution with a significant modification of the Prussian religious articles. The Catholic participation in the ministry of cult was abolished, and Catholics subjected to Protestant secularism: “All public and private educational institutions are subject to supervision by officials appointed by the state.” Criticism of this administration was banned under penalty of fine or prison. When Pope Pius IX intimated that the Febronian Cardinal von Hohenlohe, named ambassador to the Vatican, might not act in such a secular capacity, it was rumored that Ultramontane pressure had influenced the Vatican decision. Accordingly on July 4, 1872, Germany declared her independence of the most virulent type of Ultramontane, the Jesuits. Not only were they banished from the Reich, but in 1873 the Sacred Heart Sisters, Redemptorists, Holy Ghost Fathers, and Vincentians were exiled as “affiliated societies”—apparently on the theory that the Jesuit “Black Pope” directed all religious. The office of Catholic military bishop was suppressed when use of a Catholic chapel by the Old Catholics was protested.

(2) ZENITH OF THE KULTURKAMPF: FALK REGIME (1873-79)

May Laws. Having failed to divide Catholics by his first measures, Bismarck mounted his attack by naming Dr. Adalberg Falk, a Freemason, as minister of Cult. By successive enactments this tool of the chancellor constructed a code similar to the French Civil Constitution of the Clergy. The first of a series of “Falk Laws” was promulgated in May, 1873, decreeing: 1) Regulation of clerical education: henceforth no one might be given any ecclesiastical office in Germany unless he had completed a course in a secular high school, studied three years of theology at a German university, and had passed an examination prepared by state inspectors. If desired, theology might be taken in a seminary, provided that its discipline, curriculum, and examinations were regulated by the state inspectors. 2) Ecclesiastical government: All episcopal nominations to benefices must be notified to the civil authorities thirty days before going into effect under pain of nullity. All benefices must be held by Germans. Disciplinary trials of the clergy in the canonical courts were subject to the inspection, revision, and in some cases, veto of the secular courts. Civil judges might cite clerics before them and depose them from office, especially for imposing censures upon clerics obedient to the Falk Laws. The German hierarchy promptly forbade their clergy to obey these May Laws, and its stand was upheld by the pope. Meanwhile Archbishop Ledochowski of Gnesen also forbade religious schools in Poland to comply with the linguistic ban. While the Center Party remonstrated in the Reichstag, the Catholic press defied ^{[p. 627]} the Government, and Catholic laymen organized mass meetings of protest.

Coercive measures were added to the original May Laws during March and May, 1874, and supplemented in March-June, 1875: 3) Catholic societies were dissolved and their press prosecuted. 4) Civil marriage was introduced into Prussia in 1874 and extended to Germany the next year. 5) Beneficiary vacancies, produced by the numerous arrests of bishops and priests for disregard of the May Laws, were to be filled by the cathedral chapters; in case of their refusal, the government would itself name administrators. But when the bishops, Melchers of Cologne, Eberhard of Trier, and Ledochowski of Gnesen, were arrested in 1874, the chapters refused to elect vicars. 6) Exile, therefore, was virtually imposed on the clergy, for in May, 1874, any priest who had been deposed by the government was forbidden to exercise his ministry or reside in his parish under penalty of loss of civil rights and exile from Germany. The few priests who sided with the government were excommunicated by the hierarchy and shunned by the laity. The bishop of Paderborn was exiled and the bishops of Breslau and Münster were arrested during 1875. 7) Clerical subsidies were discontinued for recalcitrant pastors. 8) Any religious orders, save those tending the sick, were expelled from Germany. 9) Ecclesiastical property was taken from episcopal direction and placed under committees of laymen. Catholics, however, chose trustworthy men who safeguarded the property according to secret instructions from the bishops.

Catholic resistance was heroic and prolonged, for the Falk Code, once complete, was vigorously enforced in 1876 and 1877. By the latter year, nine sees were vacant by death, deposition, or exile. A thousand parishes lacked pastors, and over two thousand priests had been fined, imprisoned, or exiled. All seminaries had been closed and detective measures taken against secret training. The episcopal heroes were Archbishop Ledochowski, named cardinal in prison by Pius IX, and Bishop Ketteler who, like Cardinal Faulhaber a half century later, was too respected to be molested. Catholic lay officials continued to be dismissed until Falk resigned in 1879.

(3) SETTLEMENT OF THE KULTURKAMPF (1879-90)

Road to Canossa. Bismarck, who had survived an assassination attempt which he blamed on the Center, was exasperated. But his persecuting majority had been composed of a coalition of Conservatives, the agrarian Junkers’ party, and the National Liberals, the burgher industrialists. As in every highly industrialized country, the German proletariat was seeking political recognition and was prone to give its allegiance ^{[p. 628]} to the new Marxist parties. Bismarck and the Conservatives began to realize that the Liberals’ laissez-faire tenets were provoking this Socialist threat. Windhorst’s Centrists were prepared to ally themselves, now with Socialists against Liberals in order to secure needed workingmen’s assistance, now with Conservatives against Socialists to block radical Marxian demands. Finally in 1879 the agrarian interests of the Junkers clashed with the tariff protecting urban industries, and the Conservatives broke up the coalition with the National Liberals. Pius IX had died in 1878, and from the beginning of his pontificate Leo XIII had extended the olive branch to William I. Though some preliminary talks through Cardinal Mazella led to no immediate result, the way to Canossa was open.

Reconciliation. But Bismarck had to decide between fighting Catholics or Socialists. He chose to make peace with the former, and in 1880 took a cautious step backward by empowering his officials to use discretion in executing the May Laws—practically suspending them. Bishops and priests were for the most part permitted to return and provisional appointments to vacancies tolerated. Diplomatic relations with the Vatican, severed in 1874, were resumed in 1882. In 1885 the German government made a friendly gesture by inviting Pope Leo’s arbitration in regard to German-Spanish claims to the Caroline Islands. In the same year Archbishops Ledochowski and Melchers agreed to sacrifice themselves to save Prussian face, as Droste-Vischering had done in the Mixed Marriage Controversy. Both resigned their sees; they were given papal curial posts later. For his part, the chancellor invited Bishop Kopp of Fulda to supervise revision of the May Laws. With the exception of the ban on Jesuits and “affiliates,” and the requirement of notification of prospective appointments to ecclesiastical benefices, the Falk Code was abolished. In 1886 also the devout Prince Leopold became regent of Bavaria and anti-Catholic laws were rescinded in Hesse and Baden. In May, 1887, the pope could announce to the cardinals that for all practical purposes the Kulturkamp f was at an end. After Bismarck’s retirement, the Jesuit “affiliates” (1893) and in 1904 even the Jesuits themselves were allowed to return.

(4) CATHOLIC EQUILIBRIUM (1890-1918)

William II, by comparison with Bismarck, was friendly toward Catholics. Disregarding Protestant agitation, he freed the Catholic clergy from peacetime military service in 1890, and during 1891 restored the clerical subsidies withheld since 1875. The Kaiser visited Pope Leo in 1893, and in 1901 intervened on behalf of Catholics at Strassburg University.

The Center Party, founded in 1870 by Windhorst, Mallinckrodt, the ^{[p. 629]} Reichenspergers and Savigny, preserved its strength after the Kulturkamp f . From 1895 it generally supported the imperial government, although from its conservative majority, a left wing, led by Matthias Erzberger, dissented in drawing closer to the progressive parties. In March, 1906, the party was stirred when one of its members, Julius Bachem, urged a broader social program: a desertion of preoccupation with exclusively Catholic issues. Controversy waxed warm between the nonconfessional viewpoint on social matters of the Cologne school, and the strictly Catholic program of the Berlin group. In 1912 Pius X in Singulari Quadam noted that only confessional labor associations might properly be termed Catholic Action, although interconfessional unions might be permitted for limited aims. In the same year the Center defined itself as a “politically non-confessional party.” It rallied to the support of the monarchy during World War I, but showed no disposition to restore it once it had fallen. The Centrist Erzberger was given the thankless task of concluding a humiliating but necessary peace. On his return he was assassinated, first victim of the Nazi Kulturkampf of the future, for despite exemplary Centrist patriotism, Catholics were accused of “stabbing in the back,” along with other internationalists, Jews and Reds, supposedly undefeated German military forces.

Catholic social activity. The Albertsverein for Catholic university students and the Caritasverband of all Catholic welfare groups had both been organized in 1897, and annual Catholic congresses continued to demonstrate Catholic unity. Other organizations took care of the needs of Catholic emigrants from Germany, especially to the United States, and the promotion of German Catholic missionary work. The Volksverein was a well-organized workers’ guild of five hundred thousand persons, and professional men also possessed their associations. The Borromeo-Verein spread good literature, and many youth groups were founded.

C. Austrian Religious Alienation (1867-1918)

(1) AUSTRIAN KULTURKAMPF (1867-82)

Retreat from the Concordat. Austro-Hungarian dualism, begun by the Ausgleich of 1867, necessitated a new constitution which threatened the understanding reached with the Holy See in 1855. From the beginning the new Liberal regime tried to weaken the privileged position of the Catholic Church. Friedrich, Graf von Beust (1809-86), during his chancellorship (1867-71) passed incompatible legislation. In May, 1868, after vainly trying to obtain approval of the Holy See, his government virtually repudiated the Concordat by decreeing: (1) that marriage jurisdiction be given the civil courts in place of exclusive canonical supervision; (2) that all religions should enjoy equal rights before the ^{[p. 630]} law; and (3) that secular direction of education in the public schools would be assumed, although private schools might be erected. The hierarchy was allowed to continue supervising religious instruction in the state schools, but all influence on education as a whole was denied them. To avoid worse, Cardinal Rauscher of Vienna accepted the accomplished fact.

A Kulturkampf nonetheless ensued. During the Vatican Council, Chancellor Beust had tried to intimidate the Holy See and at its close announced that the definition of papal infallibility had so modified Vatican status that the Concordat might be regarded as abrogated. The Liberals then prepared to follow German precedents. During May, 1874, a new Civil Code required governmental approbation for all episcopal appointments, claimed a veto over cult regulations “inconsistent with the public interest,” and subjected ecclesiastical funds and publications to a secular ministry of worship. The Austro-Hungarian government also presumed to tax wealthier benefices and religious houses for the alleged purpose of giving the surplus to poorer clerics. The Austrian hierarchy, however, remained divided on the extent of resistance to be offered to these measures. In practice, the moderate view of Cardinal Rauscher who advocated watchful waiting was followed. The Austro-Hungarian Kulturkampf reached its peak in 1876 when the government proposed to legalize the status of the Old Catholics; this, however, failed of passage.

Mitigation and gradual abandonment of these antiecclesiastical laws followed. In 1879 the foundation for the Austrian Kulturkampf was destroyed in much the same fashion as in Germany: Liberals fell from power and the Conservatives halted further secularization. During 1882 the professedly neutral state school system was somewhat modified in the Catholic interest. The Kulturkampf measures had been somewhat less severe in Hungary, but the local administration in that country continued to maintain a paternalistic control over the clergy.

(2) CATHOLIC SOCIAL ACTIVITY (1882-1918)

Anticlericalism was also rife. A Pan-German, los von Rom movement began in the Sudetenland in 1897 and alienated some Bohemian Germans from the Church, and this trend continued under Georg von Schonerer (d. 1921). Traditional Czech resentment of German domination played into the hands of nationalistic schismatics who were to set up an independent church during the twentieth century. Hungarian Catholics, moreover, were often divided on racial grounds, and many Austrians, especially the Viennese, were non-practicing.

Austrian Catholic political action was prone to sacrifice liberty to Catholic security. In defense of Catholic interests, Dr. Karl Lueger ^{[p. 631]} formed the Christian Democrat party which often allied itself with the Socialists against the Liberals. During 1891 Dr. Lueger with the assistance of an anti-Semitic group won control of Vienna’s city government from the Liberals, whom he labeled as Jewish anticlericals. As mayor of Vienna from 1896 to 1910, Lueger ran an efficient socialized administration. Though the Christian Democrats were delated to Rome for condemnation, the Holy See remained noncommittal on their political activity. The Christian Democrats remained in control of Austrian government from 1895 to 1938. Unfortunately they employed anti-Semitism as a scapegoat; the youthful Adolf Hitler used to sell the Christian Democrat Volksblatt in the streets of Vienna, and from it imbibed some of his first anti-Jewish notions.

Christian social leaders were not, however, lacking. Baron Karl von Vogelsang (1818-90) tried to organize new guilds which were to be independent of all state control. He was a strong foe of capitalism, but entertained an anachronistic and erroneous view on the immorality of interest which he identified with medieval usury. Leading exponents of the principles of Rerum Novarum were Prince Aloys von Lichtenstein (d. 1920) and Franz Schindler (d. 1922) , whose policies survived in his disciple, Monsignor Ignaz Seipel, subsequently Austrian chancellor after the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary after World War I.

95. GALLIC REPUDIATION

Conservative trend. Bonaparte (Napoleon III) had been overthrown by patriots and republicans, but the bloody Commune of Paris—March to May, 1871—had alarmed Frenchmen at the spectre of radicalism. Liberals, unsuccessful in frenzied appeals for continued war against Germany and unable to use their organization at the polls, were dismayed at what Brogan terms a “free election,” return a Catholic and Conservative majority. Politically, however, Catholics were divided among the legitimists favoring the comte de Chambord, Orléanists supporting the comte de Paris, grandson of Louis Philippe, Bonapartists and Republicans. Although the first two groups together had a majority, they failed to agree among themselves. Pending an expected monarchical restoration, they designated Adolphe Thiers as provisional “Chief of the Executive Power.”

Catholic disunity, however, proved fatal to the clerical cause. A proposal to erect the church of Sacre Coeur in Montmartre in reparation for civic bloodshed not merely antagonized anticlericals, but divided the uncompromising Veuillot group from politic followers of Bishop Dupanloup. The latter won out with a noncommittal assertion instead of an explicit acknowledgement of reverence for the Sacred Heart demanded of the assembly. Anticlericals, having impotently aired blasphemies in the Chamber, now shrieked that France had been vowed to the Sacred Heart in a dangerous “clerical aggression.” Meanwhile legitimist and Orléanist squabbles were such that in 1873 Thiers announced his conversion to Republicanism. Monarchists united long enough to replace him with a staunch clerical, Marshall MacMahon. But a promising monarchist accord broke down in 1875 when Chambord agreed to accept the Orléanist prince as his heir, but refused as prospective “Henry V” to abandon the absolutist symbol of the Bourbon fleur-de-lis. Catholics did succeed in breaking the monopoly of degrees possessed by the secularist National University (1875), and presently Monsignor D’Hulst was installed as first rector of the Institut Catholique de Paris.

Republican triumph. Though Monarchists retained a majority in the Senate after the 1875 elections, Republicans under Gambetta won a decisive victory in the Chamber of Deputies: 340 of 533. Thereafter the president and senators were placed in the odious position of resisting what appeared to be a popular demand for a republic. Even yet Catholics failed to unite. One of their premiers, Dufaure, “wore the frock-coat, eloquence, and the Gallicanism of 1830.” ¹³ He refused admission to a papal document and castigated clerical finances. On the other extreme, militant Ultramontanes led by Bishop Pie of Poitiers introduced resolutions demanding French intervention to rescue Pius IX from Italian parliamentary persecution. The bishop of Nevers saluted MacMahon as a new Joan of Arc to liberate the “France of St. Louis” from the aftereffects of the French Revolution. Such clerical electioneering signally failed to overcome Gambetta’s war-cry: “Clericalism, there is the enemy.” In the 1879 elections the Republicans captured both houses and later in the year forced MacMahon to resign the presidency to Jules Grevy, moderate anticlerical. The Republic had definitely arrived.

Denis Brogan, France Under the Republic (New York: Harper and Bros., 1940), p. 61.

Neutral state schools. The Ligue de Enseignement, founded by Freemasons to advocate neutral state schools, had been gaining support in France. Educational secularization became the object of the new minister of education, Jules Ferry. At once in 1879 he proposed a law which banned unauthorized religious, especially Jesuits, from teaching; denied Catholic colleges university status; and abolished accreditation by religious superiors. Though passed by the chamber, this bill was rejected ^{[p. 633]} by the senate in 1880. Yet several “Ferry Laws” were enacted to the detriment of religious instruction. In virtue of Article 7, henceforth basic in this secularist program, “no one is to be allowed to teach in state or private schools nor direct a teaching establishment of any kind if he belongs to an unauthorized religious order.” This was enforced against the Jesuits in June, 1880, but it proved impossible to replace at once some ten thousand brothers and forty thousand nuns. Transition to secular teachers was to take place only gradually, and even in 1914 religious survived as teachers in some local state schools.

Next in 1882 primary education in the public schools for children between the ages of six to thirteen was declared, “free, obligatory, and neutral.” Religious instruction was relegated to extracurricular periods. During 1886 the Ferry Laws were supplemented by the Goblet Law; this decreed that all teachers in the public schools be lay and must preserve absolute neutrality in teaching any question involving religion. Brothers or sisters still teaching in the public schools were to be replaced at death or resignation within a contemplated period of five years—a project not soon realized. The chief effect of these measures was financial. Catholics, obliged to support public schools by taxation, also had to erect private schools to provide religious instruction. This they did so loyally that during the next fifteen years most practicing Catholics patronized private schools, leaving the public institutions to indifferentist or Protestant groups.

Other secularist enactments

Republican survival. These measures infuriated the clericals, whose divisions yet prevented effective opposition. But a series of scandals seemed to bode the collapse of the Third Republic. From 1879 finances had been a problem and feeling was aroused in 1887 when the president’s son-in-law was detected in graft. Grevy was obliged to resign, and monarchists lent countenance to General Boulanger who began to make progresses à la Louis Napoleon, calling for revenge on Germany. In 1889 he was elected to the chamber by huge majorities on a vague program of constitutional revision. But Boulanger was a talker, poser and libertine. He let the moment slip and when the government threatened retaliation, fled to Belgium where he committed suicide over the grave of his beloved (1891) . Conservatives were chagrined, but in 1892 followed the Panama scandal: De Lesseps’ corporation to build an American canal was found to have implicated in corruption many ^{[p. 634]} members of the administration. Implication of the German Jew, Baron Reinach, provoked a wave of violent anti-Semitism abetted by some clericals. When (1894) Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish officer, was accused of selling military secrets to Germany, he was given short shrift and sent to Devil’s Island. But the “Dreyfus Case” was far from over.

“Ralliement” versus legitimism. Neglect of religious duties among the urban populace and growing anticlericalism became more pronounced under the Third Republic. Religious life, however, seemed flourishing, and the majority may have been at first willing to acquiesce in monarchical restoration. Yet the singular ineptitude of aristocratic clerical politicians denied Catholic France any sustained leadership. What native Frenchmen failed to supply, Pope Leo XIII tried to inspire. In his letters, Nobilissima Gallorum Gens (1884) and Au Milieu des Solicitudes (1892) , he urged French Catholics to “rally” to the Third Republic in order to change its unjust laws instead of engaging in dreams of an ideal monarchy. From 1885 Albert de Mun did attempt to organize a political program which would incorporate most of the Leonine social teaching, but for the most part monarchists were cool toward his proposed reforms. Cardinal Lavigerie did respond to papal suggestions dramatically, but his toast to the Republic before the French admiralty at Algiers, November 12, 1891, was snubbed by the largely monarchist military personnel. Père Naudet inspired the French Christian Democrats in the 1890’s, but they died of some intemperate polemics.

Dreyfusard Radical Bloc. The army, largely Rightist, seems to have railroaded the Jewish Captain Dreyfus to conviction for sale of military information in response to prejudices imbibed from propaganda like Drumont’s anti-Semitic Libre Parole. Revision of Dreyfus’s sentence was also opposed by the clerical paper La Croix, and the monarchist journal of Maurras, Action Française. But if many clerical monarchists hounded Dreyfus, it should be noted that Dreyfus’s lawyer, Dumange, and his vindicator, Piquard, were Catholics. Yet Clemenceau, Zola, and other anticlericals gained most of the credit for bringing to light that the real culprit was a monarchist, Major Esterhazy, who virtually admitted guilt by flight in 1898. The Dreyfus Case became one of the main issues of the 1898 elections. Many Republicans felt that the Rightist army and clerical anti-Semites were victimizing Dreyfus in order to discredit the Third Republic. With the slogan, “the Republic is in danger,” anticlericals ^{[p. 635]} subordinated their habitual internal differences to form a Dreyfusard Radical Bloc that controlled French government from 1899 to 1906. Although the army convicted Dreyfus anew in 1899—while admitting extenuating circumstances—the Radicals utilized the pardoning power of their creature, President Loubet (1899-1906), to prevent the execution of the sentence. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was eventually exonerated and reinstated in 1906.

Attack on religious associations. Under Premier Waldeck-Rousseau (1899-1902), the Radical Bloc struck back at the discredited clericals. In 1900 the La Croix press was raided and funds, allegedly collected for conspiratorial aims, seized. The Assumptionist editors of the review were fined, and Leo XIII advised them to hand over the paper to laymen. But Assumptionist involvement served as a pretext for the premier’s Associations Act dissolving every religious association failing to obtain governmental authorization to exist. Passed by a vote of 303 to 244 over the opposition of the count de Mun and Ribot of the Moderate Republicans, it was promulgated on July 2, 1901. The premier, however, applied it only to the Jesuits, Benedictines, and Carmelites who had refused to seek authorization, while the cause of other communities seeking authorization was debated in the assembly. Though sustained in the 1902 elections, Waldeck-Rousseau was forced by ill health to yield his office to the more violent anticlerical, Emile Combes.

Such decrees were enforced despite protest resignations of many magistrates and army officers and popular remonstrances. By September, 1904, Combes could claim that he had rid the country of 13,904 of 16,904 Catholic schools. Though some Catholics found ways to circumvent the program, most children were henceforth subject to secularism.

Preliminaries. Despite his attack upon Catholic education, Premier Combes continued to exercise the governmental privilege under the Concordat of nominating bishops. When St. Pius X in 1903 rejected several nominees, Combes announced that the sees would henceforth be left vacant. During 1904 he took amiss demands by the Holy See for ^{[p. 636]} the resignation of Bishops Geay of Laval and Nordez of Dijon, the latter a government supporter and possibly one of the last examples of clerical Freemasonry. During March, 1904, moreover, President Loubet ostentatiously visited King Victor Emmanuel of Italy. When the Holy See protested against this recognition of an usurper, Combes broke off diplomatic relations with the Vatican, May, 1904.

Separation Act (1905) . Premier Combes then prepared a bill termed “Law of Separation of the Churches and the State,” designed to revoke the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801. Although Combes himself was forced out of office early in 1905 on a side issue, espionage in the army, his bill was nonetheless carried through by his successor, Maurice Rouvier. As promulgated on December 9-11, 1905, the Act of Separation

The Act of Separation discontinued the annual governmental budget for worship, amounting in 1905 to 42,324,933 francs—perhaps averaging $8,000,000 a year. Pope Pius X condemned this Act in Vehementer Nos, February, 1906, but the “Eldest Daughter of the Church” had repudiated her mother.

Legal application. After the hierarchy of France failed to reach a decision in May, 1906, the pope in Gravissimo Officii, August 10, 1906, condemned the “associations of cult” which the government had ordered formed. Catholics, at last loyal to Vatican policy and united on an issue, thereupon refused to form the associations and threatened to defend ecclesiastical property by force. When officials entered church precincts to make inventories, sacrilegious acts often provoked riots. Premier Clemenceau (1906-9), while suppressing the inventories, clamored loudly for new laws “to protect the Republic against the priests.” Failing the associations, much of the property was handed over to central or local governmental agencies “to be and to remain the property of the state, département or town.”

When the state demanded that the clergy seek its permission to officiate in the nationalized church edifices, the priests, in obedience to papal instructions, refused to make application. Sometimes with the connivance of local officials they performed liturgical services without authorization; elsewhere they were denied admission. The Catholic laity raised a modest offering for ^{[p. 637]} the support of the clergy in lieu of discontinued governmental subsidies.

Modus vivendi. While Clemenceau in face of widespread popular disregard of the governmental program demanded suppression of all Catholic worship, few even of the Radicals would go so far. The Radical Bloc was disintegrating as the “Clerical Menace” seemed to fade into the background in comparison with Socialism’s threat to “sacred property” at home, and the shadow of German militarism abroad. In 1907 Aristide Briand, hitherto a Socialist, began his long career as peacemaker by coming over to the ranks of the Moderates. Alarmed at the radicalism of some Socialist proposals, he may have felt that the conservative force of Catholicity might still be valuable in French society. He negotiated a modus vivendi with the Catholics whereby the clergy were tolerated in the use of the churches, without either the authorization or prohibition of the government. After Clemenceau had been forced out in 1909 for intransigence to demands of the laboring classes, little further effort was made by the Third Republic to interfere with Catholic cult. Divine services continued by the clergy in church buildings over which they possessed no legal title, while the government pointed to the open churches in disclaiming any intent to persecute. Under these precarious conditions, the Church in France, impoverished but free, lived at the opening of World War I. The unforeseen result of clerical military service was the beginning of a better understanding between clergy and people. This was bound to affect relations between Church and state, so that during 1919 even Clemenceau would allude to the “legitimate rights of religious liberty.”

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