German Catholic Disabilities

New Zealand Tablet, 22 October 1908, Page 9

German Catholic Disabilities

Catholic Emancipation is far from- being complete in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.. The Old Faith

there- still bears upon it a few remaining rags and tatters of the Penal Code, jgst as the blue-gum retains upon its limbs' the fragments of last year's "discarded bark. In the United King? | dom the chief disabilities that remain refer to certain restrictions j as to public employments, the religious Orders,— -and the acces- , sion oath, which binds the Sovereign to single 'out, for "calumny- . and insult, the Catholic faith alone of all the* ten thousand creeds within the boundaries of his far-flung Empire. In, Ger- „ many, or in any other civilised country, there exists nothing comparable to that ' relic .of barbarism,* the ' accession oath that is still forced upon ' British royalty. .Nor does the Fatherland make legal "bound or bar in regard to the State positions which Catholics may hold. Nevertheless; the triumph of our German co-religionists over the Kulturkampf has left numerous religious disabilities to be overcome. So much was made cleajr by a paper read by Hcrr Marx, at the ' Diisscldorf Congress, on ' The Present Situation of German Catholics.' ' The Jesuits and kindred Orders,' says the' Catholic Times summary, ' are yet excluded. In Prussia no religious Orders whatever can settle down without having first obtained the sanction of the Minister of the Interior and the "Minister of Worship. The' Orders cannot even receive a new member without a similar approba- ; tion. According tc the Constitution of Saxony, no convent or monasterj' can be erected, and no religious Order admitted into the Kingdom. Members of religious communities who devote themselves to the care of the sick can engage in their work only as private individuals and by permission of the State authorities. There is not a single religious Order for men in Wurtemburg* or Baden." In Mecklenburg the Government determines where, and how often, -Mass is to be celebrated. A priest who is not a native cannot say Mass in Brunswick unless he has obtained permission from the Ministry of State. In some parts of Germany attempts are regularly made to exclude Catholics from the highest public positions. But in course of time all these grievances will be redressed. The Centre. Party are kssening them one by one.'