New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. SATURDAY, APRIL 10,1875. GERMANY PERSECUTES THE CATHOLIC LAITY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 102, 10 April 1875, Page 10

New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. SATURDAY, APRIL 10,1875. GERMANY PERSECUTES THE CATHOLIC LAITY.

Hitherto Prince Von Bismarck and his godless party devoted all their energies to drive the Catholic clergy of the new Empire into schism. Archbishops and Bishops have been plundered, imprisoned, deposed, and banished from their native land in the name of law, because they refused to abandon their Church, and acknowledge the State to be superior to the Pope in religious matters and above the law of v?'i. ?r? r . iests have been fine <^ imprisoned iv thousands, and banished in hundreds, because they remained steadfast in the Catholic faith, and obedient to their Bishops and the Vicar of Christ. It had been hoped that the fear of the German government, the dread of the loss of the means of living, would nave terrified these ecclesiastics into apostacy. But Bismarck s expectations have been deceived, and he and his party are obliged to confess their utter discomfiture. This proud and cruel persecutor of Christianity, by the permission ot JJivine Providence, and for some inscrutable reason, was successful against the armed legions and veteran military leaders of Austria and France, but he has been compelled to recoil before the Catholic faith of German priests. In vain has he threatened, stormed, raged ; in vain has he consigned them m thousands to poverty, loathsome dungeons, and a painful exile. He has not been able to conquer them. -Backed by more than a million bayonets, dreaded by the other nations of Europe, courted by the sycophant, the selfseeker, applauded by liberals everywhere, the idol of all who worship success, this second Haman wishes to hang his Mardochai—the Catholic priesthood who refused to fall down in adoration before him -but this priesthood fears him not. .Like brave intrepid men, they look him steadily in the face, and tell him he is an usurper, a persecutor, and that they defy him. Brute force he can use, and he has used it. But there his power begins and ends. What a noble spectacle does Catholic Germany present to-day. The conqueror of ± ranee, triumphing, returns to Berlin and inaugurates a war against the most industrious, moral, peaceful and loyal of the subjects of the Empire, because they refuse to declare that l/JESAB is God. The man who can call on millions of disciplined soldiers to give effect to his word, trembles before the profession of the Infallibility of the Vicar of Christ, and determines to utterly uproot the Catholic Church of Ger many. The effort has hitherto been without the effect anticipated, and Catholicity, instead of ceasing to be, as had been anticipated, has struck her roots deeper and more firmly in G-erman aoil than ever. The result of Bismarck's policy is the opposite of what he has laboured for. So far, the German persecution has been attended with the very best results for Catholicity. The faith of many has been strengthened, and •JR piefcy and . fervour has be en roused to enthusiasm. All hope of destroying Catholicity through the apostacy of the priesthood having been thus proved to be vain, the liberals' of Germany have determined to try a new plan. By their patient endurance of persecution for justice sake, and their loyal devotion to the Holy See, albeit that devotion has cost them the loss of all worldly goods and position, the priests have made it manifest that it is idle to expect to destroy the Church through them. Baffled, enraged, those hungry wolves now turn upon the flocks, determined to worry them to the death for the faith. By the last mail we have been made acquainted with a series of proposed enactments for this purpose. We abstain from calling them laws, because law, to be really law and binding, must be founded on and in accordance with justice, whereas the proposed enactments are con-

trary to all justice. The object in view and the natural result are not doubtful. Through Bismarck's influence, an experiment has already been made in Switzerland. The new enactments of the Berlin Parliament — for the intended legislation is long before now an accomplished fact — are intended to deprive Catholics of all their churches, church property, their school buildings, hospitals, and other charitable establishments, and all ecclesiastical funds, no matter from what source derived. In a few weeks, then, the entire Catholic population of Prussia, amounting to_eight millions, and in a few months, if Bismarck can succeed in coercing the other States of the Empire, the entire German Catholic population, amounting to fifteen millions, ■will be left without Ohurch, school, hospital, orphanage, asylum, and property; all, all will have been confiscated or handed over to a few thousand wretched schismatics. In the days of the early persecutions, brutal and bloody as they were, no parallel to this atrocious and infamous injustice can be found. Even then, bad as the pagan Emperors were, respect was paid to the rights of property. It has been reserved for the liberals of the nineteenth century — the upholders of the rights of reason ! — to invade the sacred domain of property, and in the name of the Omnipotent State to dispose of what they did not create, and what does not belong to them. Under the old Roman Emperors, though monstrous acts of injustice were from time to time committed by tyrannical rulers, legislation did not make war upon the property of the people, whether individual or corporate. The Liberals, however, of this age have made progress with a vengeance. No man's property is his property, except at the good will of the State ; no body of men can have any right to the property bequeathed to it or created by itself : all belongs to the State, which may seize upon it at its good pleasure, make it its own, or bestow it upon whomsoever it pleases ! Such is one specimen of modern progress. It has been already|realized in Switzerland ; it will be soon realized also in Germany. According to the modern theory, man can have no rights, moral, political, religious, or personal, independent of the State. The State not only ignores the' law o£ God, but tramples on it, — even undertakes to repeal it. Liberty is but a name, not a right ; that is, liberty to do justice to speak the truth, to obey the call of duty. There is now only liberty to sin, to violate justice, and • utter falsehood. Governments established by the people, and paid by the people to protect their rights, find their greatest delight ia making war on the liberties, properties, and consciences of their subjects. How long is all this to last 1 Of one thing we may be certain :it will not last for ever. But who shall live to see the end %