CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION IN GERMANY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 87, 26 December 1874, Page 9

CHRISTIANITY AND LEGISLATION IN GERMANY.

Ws! take from the ' Morning Post ' the following translation of a document of extraordinary interestj bearing the title of " The Present Ecclesiastical Policy of the German Empire, Particularly in the Kingdom of Prussia, Judged from an Evangelical Standpoint." It is written by a Protestant minister of the highest dis« tinction : —

" An Evangelical Christian experiences a certain difficulty in forming a judgment upon the measures which have been taken, and the laws which have been passed, in reference to the relations of Church and State since the end of the year 1871 in the German Empire, and particularly in the kingdom of Prussia. This difficulty arises from the circumstance that the measures and laws in question were ostensibly the consequence of encroachments by the Ultramontane party on the domain of the State, and of the decrees of the last Vatican Council, which an Evangelical Christian can scarcely understand, and most thoroughly condemns. Moreover, the numerous journals which were subsidised for the occasion have done their utmost to represent the recent legislation as necessary, useful, and in no way injurious to religious life." Papal Infallibility a Logical Conclusion from, the Infallibility of t7ie Chwch. — " It is true that individual Governments at first declared the proclamation of Papal Infallibility ' inopportune, 5 but people generally regarded the dogma as an important alteration in the internal organisation of the Roman Church, which increased, indeed, its concentration and capacity for action, but left its relation to the State almost unchanged. The German Chancellor himself expressly declared that this was his view also. Evangelicals, of course, rightly regretted that the Church of Rome, which had already committed itself to the anti-Scriptural glorification of the Virgin Mary in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, should now have hardened itself in a fresh error. At the same time, however, an unprejudiced judge cannot conceal from himself that the promulgation of Papal Infallibility was the logical conclusion from the Boman errors previously existing, and, as a warning to Romanising Evangelicals, that it had not changed the essence of the Roman Church, but only placed it in a clearer light. The dogma, was fully recognised in the Roman Church — and even the so-called Old-Catholics have never gainsaid it — that ' the doctrinal decisions of the Roman Church. ' are infallible. Whether the Church, as the Ultramontane party insists, is represented by the Pope, or, as the : Episcopalian party maintains, by a Council regularly convoked by

the Pope, in either event the Pope had the last and decisive voice, and he was the judge from whom there was no appeal, inasmuch as it was he alone who confirmed the decrees of the Council. It was thus, for instance, that the Pope confirmed the decrees of the Council of Trent which to-day regulate the whole constitution of the Roman Church. It was the Pope who decided on doubtful interpretations of doctrinal decisions, and a council without him, the head, does not— according to Catholic doctrine— represent the Church. So long as infallible doctrinal authority is conceded to the visible and episcopally-constituted Church, so long is it impossible successfully to dispute the infallibility of the Pope. " The so-called Old-Catholics have tried the experiment by asserting that the Pope is not the highest judge in the Church, but they have thereby abandoned the ground of the doctrines recognised in the Romish Church ; and if they contend that the Vatican decrees can have no claim to formal validity, either because they were effectuated by all kinds of machinations, or because Papal Infallibility is a new dogma not believed everywhere and by everybody, they contradict the firmly established teaching of the Roman Church upon the formal validity of ' conciliar decrees/ and in order to be consistent they should also deny the validity of the conclusions of the Council of Trent. Thus, the Old-Catholics assume, both materially and^formally, a thoroughlyuntenable position, and they will never succeed in obtaining the sympathy of truly Evangelical Christians until they totally discard the proposition of an infallible visible Church, and in this decisive manner openly declare that they no longer belong to the Roman Church. In fact, many of their members, especially in the large towns, accentuating their negation of Papal Infallibility alone, have, as regards other doctrines as well, long since ceased to adhere to the Catholic or even the Christian Church. Nor can it be denied, on the whole, that exterior considerations such as keeping up a claim to the property of the Church and similar motives are the only grounds which restrain the leaders of the Old-Catholics from publicly avowing their secession from the Roman Church; and nothing but political reasons render comprehensible the action of the Prussian Government in declaring the Old-Catholics to have preserved their equal rights as members of the Roman Church.

Origin of the Prussian Policy Towards the Church. — " This policy of the Prussian Government is mainly to be attributed to the personal decision of the Imperial Chancellor of Germany. " When in the Prussian House of Deputies and in the German Reichstag, the Centre fraction, consisting of Ultramontane Catholics, opposed the leadership of the Imperial Chancellor; when they offered an uncompromising opposition to his policy on proposals that aimed at extending the authority of the Central Government over the particular States; and when the Imperial Chancellor appeared tp have made certain, discoveries, of which there has [been no further elucidation, and which were to have Droved that the Jesuits were French in their sympathies during the Franco-German war, then it was that the attitude of the German Imperial Government towards the Catholic Church underwent a transformation; then it was that the decrees of the Vatican Council were declared to be highly dangerous to the State $ then it was that the Old-Catholics were publicly and privately favoured, and declared still to be members, with undiminished rights, of the actual Roman Church; then it was, too, that the Imperial Chancellor, hitherto reported to be orthodox in religion, united himself with religious Liberalism. That cornucopia of exceptional laws and regulations over-flowed against the Church, which striking •for the sake of equality,' the Evangelical Church as well, issue Si »othing less than the establishment in the domain of religion o f the absolute omnipotence of the State. And already the State had previously held the Evangelical Church in tight and painful &onds." . *