CÆSARISM AND ULTRAMONTANISM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 54, 9 May 1874, Page 13

CÆSARISM AND ULTRAMONTANISM.

fCoiiLuiueJ) Between these conflicting claims there ein b<? no modus vivcidi. To concede or to abdicate this supreme sphi'aial oflice would be it» death. It was for this that a long hue ol ito marUr» died. It was for this that St. Thomas of Canteibury died, which the other da> was described in his " exploits." It is lor this that the Archbishop of l-'u=en lias aUo declared his readiness to die. And now the Berlin Government, it is said, is about to impose on every future Bishop the folio ,ving oath : — "The Bishops' niv hei.ceiVlh to swear obedience to the laws of the Country, to bind themselves by oath to exhort the clergy and laity to be loyal to the King, uatvioue mid obedient to the laws, and not to permit the clergy under their coutrol to teach or act in opposition to these principles." — ' lanes,' Friday, Dee. 1 ( J, 1873. The cynicism of this oath is as clear as day. The Berlin Government supports the Old Catholic heretics against the Catholic Church, on the ground that the Church has innovated in its doctrines : !■ now proposes to bind Cauiohc Bishops to obey the laws of the Statv „i'ter all the Falck innovations. It refused the innovation of au infallible Church, but Linds the Bishops of the Church by oath to obey whatsoever laws may now or hereafter be made by a fallible Stato. But Ccesarism is infallible in "me domain of the concrete." " Divu 3 Cajsor." Prince von Bismarck declared in the Chamber ot Peers thai, ' the future of au Evangelical Empire kaa shown itself clearly on the

horizon of Germany "—that is to say, the Catholic Church, which iv the direct antagonist of the Evangelical Empire, must cease from, before it. Such is, in fact, the inevitable effect of this legislation. Finally, the Emperor justifies his legislation against the Catholic Church by asserting a claim of absolute independence against all religious or spHtual authority whatsoever upon earth, which is equivalent to claiming a supremacy over all religious aud spiritual matters within the Empire ot Germany. " Ihe Evangelical creed, which, sbmust be known to your Holiness, I, like my ancestors and the majority of my subjects, profess, does not permit us to accept in ourrelations to God any other mediator than our Lord Jesus Christ." As it is impossible to suppose that the august personage whose name- is attached to this letter could intend that the Popo had claimed to be a mediator between God and man, except as the Chief Pastor of the Church of God, these words must be taken to deny the existence of any such Church under any such ministry bearing Divine authority upon earth. This denial, coupled with the assertion of supreme power over the Catholics of Germany, is equivalent to the claim of au absolute and unlimited Offisarisnx. Xlie recent ecclesiastical legislation, which violates both religion and couscience, is the legitimate consequence of this supreme Pontificate. Tins is the key to the Palck. laws, the effects of which are iv buto as follows :—: — First, they cut off appeals to the Holy See, by declaring that all causes must be determined by German tribunals. This cuts the Church in Germany from the centre of Catholic Unity, and from itsuniversal jurisdiction. Secondly, they suspend the power of excommunication upon the concurrent sanction of the civil authority, which is to deprive tbe Church of its judicial power of deciding who are and who are not of its communion. Thirdly, they give to the State the office of forming and educating the clergy, by compulsory education in the gymnasiums, lyceums, and universities of the State, leaving to the Bishops to superadd a course of theology ou men whose whole intellectual ami moral nature has been shaped by a State training, and even in their theological examinations the presence of a commissary of the State is required. Fourthly, they suspend the power of Bishops in giving cure of souls, and changing their clergy from cure to cure upon the assent of the civil power. Fifthly, they establish an Ecclesiastical Council, which is in fact the supremacy of the Crown put in commission, invested vnth a final jurisdiction over ecclesiastical persons and nutters. The effect of this is to substitute the Emperor for the Pope, and to invest him with supieme power over religion and conscience, over the Church, the Episcopate, and the clergy, as the head of all religions and of all priesthoods in the Empire. The result of all tin* is that no " officialfuuction " — that is, no spiritual act, from the excommunication of a heretic down to the teaching the cathecisni to school children — can be performed without the sanction of the civil power, uuder pain of fine or imprisonment, and, this failing, of depo»»tion. The Ober-Prasident ol Posen has called on the Archbishop of Posen to resign his Archbishopric for numerous offences against the Falok laws, which offences are so many high spiritual duties. If he refus -s to resign within eight days he is cited before the Royal Tribuna' in Berlin, 'flu Act 24 and 25 Henry VIII. made the King outright Head ot" the C lurch, and by one stroke all jurisdiction formerly belonging to the Pope was tranjferred to the Crown. The Falck laws are indirect and circuitous. They campa33 what they do not claim. They suspend all spLritu il jurisdiction on the civil power, and make the Sovereign absolute in> matters of religion. What is this but " Divus Caesar ?" It is the re-uniting ia oneperson of the two powers which God has separated, an 1 i -leni il, not. only of the supremacy of the spiritual power of the Cnureh of Cirist, but a denial that any such spiritual power of Divine nwinrwi exwts upon earth. This, as we have t-een, was form illy on j i Lit,? I»v tlu i-mperor ,in his letter to the Pope. Now, we mi.; i ' >i •-' sight wonder how such a preposterous claui could h ive been t-I up 1 1 the19th century. But there are agencies at work win ;h will ic '.>u>it for it. First, there is, perhaps, no fount y m Europe fr >-i wn ;'.i the ' Christian faith has been more entirely wipe! oat than Pra~>n. It became Christian in the 13th century ; it fell into tne L'lt'i'-n i .erosy in the 16th; it has developed into simple rationah-m in i i ■ <.■'.' -ated, and into materialuru among the millions of the people. L 1 v- i < iot a Church with spiritual authority is simply eifaced. lheci\.» jovvor, with its military organisation, is the sole idea of nower b-.-fo.'o i o eves | and the minds of the Protestant popul.it ion of I'russiv. 1' '.'■ . >ssible i fusion of the Lutherans aud Calvinism into an E»\iugflie il U 1 .' -h has prepared them for the return of the old rules— eyes rejio ejj- -ehjia. We have seen how the vivid conscieniioiu'ioas <l V\ • 'Mvinj authority and office of the Church has restruaue I and ,-avL.l it. iy from '< greater revolutionary excesses. Tnere is nothing of tusKi ' \ Co re1 strain or to ai ve Prussia. In rejecting the Chuich of GoA, •' jj deifyI ing Cflßfar. We are going back into the barbarism of iiil Old World. And this is not said a* a mere stroke of rhetoric or oi <. jnimversy. There has been for some time a school of writers in G-er.a m\ laboring to restore the Byzantine Caesarism. Just us the jivi-t^ v^re the satellites and flatterers of tho medireval Einpeiora of Gji" niv *nd as Machiavelh and Gravina and Uobbes have be „-:i the apo 3i3 i • > Rival supremacies aud modern Erastianism, so the se.ioot kiwAu it Munich us Byzantines lias been prepiring the way for tae Em i 1 1 p ■ iuv ot Uerhn. The Byzantines got their name from t'ui lit vir> labors upon the Greek Church, and tho canjn la.v of tlu- P.ti't n ite of Constantinople. They so far affected the Goverumj it ..'.Alan li !ufc> induce it to" meddle with the seminaries of the Bi-, io,;- I. •is cliis school, together with certain persons oiue lunJ.vl iiiii^ vi, who. used Prince HoUenlohe as their mouthpiece in wibpr.i.4 a ■ v ist the Vatican Council. After this their ecclesiastic il uoli i - »< < ir,-,eJ to Berlin, and the Government of Prussia was th'-u iv '<■ ii;'') nunt itself to the patronage of the "Old Catholic" her -v 1 ike all heretics, thoy sheltered themselves uuder the civil po>\c , a 1 1 >'. ■.ttered it into the attempt to carry out their Byzantine ErasUm- i ..gauut the Catholic Church ia the Empire.