THE ENGLISH PROTESTANT PRESS, AND THE BISMARCK POLICY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 47, 21 March 1874, Page 9

THE ENGLISH PROTESTANT PRESS, AND THE BISMARCK POLICY.

Omc benefit to the Catholic cause is ensuing from the furious Bismatckiau persecution. It is driving some ol the most able aud respectable members of the London Protestant newspaper press into the Catholic ranks. They see and are honest enough to sa} that if Bismarck succeeds in his ecclesiastical policy, a deadly blow will thereby be inflicted on religious liberty in Germany, and indirectly in every part of the world. When religious liberty is struck down, civil liberty must soon go too. To freemen in every country, therefore in i'ew Zealand as elsewhere, this B-isma-rckian war against the Church must possess the greatest interest. Substantially, a similar struggle is being carried on here, though in a different and milder way. Our Proviueial Governments by their education ' policy,' identify themselves with Prince Bismarck, and the press urg? them on — notably, the Dunedin and Auckland Press. But I have no doubt that ere long same members of the New Zealand Protestant Press will come over to our side like the London ' Spectator.' lhat able and fearless champion of legitimate liberty, thus expre33es himself on the character and tendency ©f the present JJismarckian attempt to place the Catholic Church m

Germany at the mercy of the( civil power. "There has," he nays, " been no legislation in Europe more destructive of civil and religious liberty than the Prussian ecclesiastical laws of last year. If they were enacted in this country they would deprive the dissenters of their hard earned freedom, and reduce the Roman Catholics to a spiritual bondage far more galling than that which they endured in England before the Emancipation Act." The 'Spestator' is flo Papist, nor 4 friend of Popery. Yet in spite of all, he says many of the So-called liberals of England and the pretended friends of tolefatioft and religious and civil liberty, are riot ashamed to elpfes* their •' sympathy " with Bismarck in his ecclesiastical policy^ ; or fit least to excuse his violent and unjust tcrs towards the Cathojlo Church, if they cannot positively approve of them. Prince Bisri\«rck will ere long discover what the Government Of Protestant England hare now well learnt, that it is vain to attempt to arrest ther progsss of the Catholic Church, or in other words, permanently' to checle her' power and influence by' any sort of repressive Jaw* whatever; As well try to arrest the flowing tide of the Ocean. Bismarck will won find all his " Ecclesiastical Bills" swept away into the limbo of vanities, lite the "Ecclesiastical Titles Bill" of Lord Russell— the last of that series Ql penal laws against Catholics, which so long disgraced the Statute jJook of England. When the Catholic hierarchy was re-established in*- England by Pope Pius IX., some twenty-five years ago, the London ' Times ' ia his usual vaporing and bullying way then boasted that if we had seen the first we had also seen the last of such. Bishops, Government, her said, would take care of that ; and " The Ecolesiastical Titles Bill " followed. We have seen the last of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, but n.fjt of the Catholic Bishops in England. Curiously enough, Lord Russell, the father of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill which was to crush the Catholic hierarchy in England, now comes out in his dotage to urge on the Protestant friends of liberty in England, to express "sympathy" with Bismarck in hia attempt to place the Catholic Church in Germany in chain*. Folly will not depart from some great men/ though you bray them in a mortar, and wisdom is not ulways found with grey hairs. It is difficult for any at a distance to understand the real motives' o? Bismarck in hi 3 present desperate anti-Catholic proceedings. One thing is certain : he must be terribly afraid of the power of the Roman Catholic ptiests and the Pope. His acts are a testimony to their power, which it is impossible to misunderstand. But for such acts, few at a distance could ever have dreamt that the Pope" and the Catholic priesthood held such a tremendous power in their hands ia Germany. Bismarck has let the world into that secret, and the Catholic churoh will be the gainer by his having done so. It is power against power in the highest sense. No one can doubt that as regards material or military power, Germiny stands in the first rank. If, then, she thus trembles before the spiritual power of Rome, and resorts to such desperate means to crush th-»t, what terrible power must not Rome possess ? But the power of Rome penetrates everywhere ; and Bismarck ia not the only public man who looks on its prayers with anxiety and alarm. It makes its way even into New Zealand, and troubles the great and patriotic mind of the edirors of the Dunedin ' Guardian' and ' Bruce Mera'd,' men like-minded with Bismarck himself. They would fain repress the papal power in this colony if they could or durst, and would probably not hesitate to* support a policy identical with that of Bismarck, if Mr Vogel had .a mind to propose a few good stiff Bismarekian bills at the next meeting of the General Assembly. What thsugb Bismarck be supported by all the infidels and scoffers at religion iv Europe ? Never mind that ; lie is the arch enemy of the Pope and the Catholic church. That is quite enough for the Dunedin ' Guardian' and ' Bruce Hefald' and party. This would be little were tho power of the Pope and the Catholic church a waning power, fadiug awny before the light of moderu knowledge and intelligence ; but it is the reverse. It is fast subduing the educated Protestant mind in England, and still more in America, aud to some extant in New Zealand, and even iv Germany itself. It is probably this rapid progress of Catholicism among the educated and higher ranks of Protestants in Germany that fills Bismarck's uiird with such bttrning indignation against the Catholic church, and makes him so nervously anxious to put her in fetters. One would fancy he hid never looked into the history of England, and knows nothing of the troubles England bi ought on herself by hei-vain-ittenipts to stump out the Catholic religion in Ireland — troubleg by no means yet over. When we see Bwni.irck recklessly exasperating the Catholic sulj\?ct3 of his master — 13 millions in number, aud the whole of the Catholics in Europe and America w'io share m their feel- | ings, and even exciting the alarm of sincere Protestant friends of liberty in Germany as elsewhere— we cannot hardij help concluding that he is struck with a judicial blindness, preparatory to a terrible duwiifall to himself and the formidable empire which h is been fouuded and reared under his a-ispices — by " blood and steel, by terror and brute force." L,