THE RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND A GREAT RELIGIOUS FUNCTION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 46, 14 November 1907, Page 12

THE RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND A GREAT RELIGIOUS FUNCTION

Not Xenophon's retreat o£ the ten thoiisand ; yet a retreat of ten thousand men. So, indeed, might be styled the German Catholic Congress which was held in the closing days of August in the romantic old city of Frankenland — Wursburg on the Main. Ten thousand men, there gathered together, went through all the exercises of a retreat with the orderliness and regularity of a Jesuit or Benedictine novitiate — 10,000 men gathered from all the various provinces of that Empire of sixty millions, gathered from all its various professions. The long-suffering Polo was there, fresh with laurels won in his noble fight for Catholic education; the Hamburg or Berlin merchant had abandoned for a while his widespread business and his anxious search for new markets ; the) Rhinelander from his wine-clad hills ; the Westphaiian from his rich mines ; the Alsatian and the Bavarian from their river valleys and golden harvest fields — all had wended their way to this quiet city of the waters, built at the foot of the Marienburg, the Holy Mount consecrated to the Mother of God, under whose protection stands this old city and its staunch Catholic population.

Not these only, but others too, though in smaller numbers, yet from more distant countries, had come hither to join in this great retreat. Frenchmen from beyond the Rhine, Italians from beyond the Alps, and even Americans from beyond the ocean, mingled there with the elite of Catholic Germany. All these had gathered together; they had come hither in quest of a high ideal — a twentieth century quest of the Holy Grail, an ideal of such importance to the Catholic world that its discussion by such a body of men cannot but command our deepest interest and claim our most careful study. Thirty years ago the Catholic Church of Germany was passing through

Its Baptism of Fire.

A modern Titan was once more attempting the impossible feat of heaping Pelion on Olympus, and by this means scaling the forbidden heights where there dwells the Counsel of the AllWise, the All-Mighty. The world is witness of the 'fact; and history has registered the complete failure and overthrow of this sacrilegious attempt. The mailed hand that smote the proud descendant of the Hapsburgs, and laid low the Imperial crown of the Buonapartes, the hand at whose beck two million warriors had sprung to arms, was stayed when it attempted to invade the sacred threshold of conscience and of faith. Windthorst, the Reichenspergers, Mallinckrodt, and countless others of smaller fame, yet of no less resolute courage, rose up ; and in a warfare that united all that was best in the Catholic Manhood of the newly-born Empire drove back the Man of Blood and of Iron, who had never before known retreat. Those days are now past and gone. The armor of the brave has been hung up, the trappings have been laid aside, and the sword, which for twenty-five years knew no rest, has once more been sheathed, and a peace, honorable and well earned, once more reigns within the confines of that mighty Empire. * But the institutions which had sprung up during that fierce conflict have not been allowed to die. No longer, indeed, is it their aim and purpose to meet outside foes, but a- great constructive work remains to be done, a task no less arduous than that which faced them of old — the task of building up within the Catholic body the spirit and the ideals of a truly Catholic life. Arfd thus it came about that the German Catholic Congress of 1907 found itself confronted with the great task of finding ways and means by which the Catholic ideals might be kept alive in the family, and from thence transplanted "into

The Political and Social Life of the Nation.

A stupendous task, indeed, when "one considers the world in ■which we of to-day live and move. In a world which has hailed with joy the negations of Strauss and Renan, which has showered its brightest rewards on Darwin and Haeckel, and even found a place in its temple of fame for a Zola, what place can there be for our Catholic ideals? Carlyle, indeed, has taught us what true hero worship ought' to be. Yet neither his generation nor ours

has listened to his teaching, and the' fact remains that those men are now on the pinnacles of fame whom he from the first denounced as dangerous impostors. The men who gathered at Wursburg realised the difficulty of their task, yet nothing daunted they set to work, discussed, argued, resolved, and scattered their resolutions broad and wide over the Fatherland from the Ehine to the Oder.-. The foreign Press, including representatives from Austria, Russia, Belgium, Holland, England, and Spain, did the rest, so that the work of those 10,000 men has penetrated into at least half the Catholic world.

And what was the solution which these men of oiir own time gave to this old riddle? -It was partly the old solution and partly a new one. , It was assumed from the first that the Catholic family is the soil where the Catholic, ideals jmist be grown and nurtured. And, in connection with this, it avus recognised that the Catholic families must be reached individually by those who share in this noble work. The Catholic schools were, as of old, the subject of many- stirring speeches ; university education was encouraged and promoted ; the foreign missions received a new impetus ; associations for Catholic servants, the Catholic Press, Catholic merchants, were encouraged and extended. This alone would have been a result justifying the holding of such a Congress. But as Lowell has it — New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth. A greater question still remained. For many years past wise thinkers, laymen as well as clei'gy, had asked themselves whether the" time had not come for A New Apostolate — an apostolate of laymen ; whether, in view of the fact I;hat v the numbers of priests and bishops are no longer sufficient to cope with the enormously increased needs of these modern times, it was not advisable that laymen should begin to take a more active part than they have hitherto done in the spreading of the Gospel Message, in the ' Instauration of all things in Christ V To reach the people nowadays, in the industrial nations of the Continent a priest must do what is called ' social work.' This presupposes in him a long and careful study of political and social economy, of labor legislation, etc. It demands a great amount of his time and of his" energies. In spite of the many difficulties that strew this particularly thorny path the German clergy, as far back as a quarter of a century ago, under the leadership of the great Bishop von Ketteler, set to work on these lines. It was the carrying of the great Catholic ideals into the everyday life of the worker, and the results of this great and noble work stand before the world to-day in the shape of a Church in which priest and jpeople are linked by a bond stronger than death. But, as the president of the Congress said in his opening speech, the realisation of the Catholic ideals in public life is a gigantic task which in itself requires a whole army of workers. Bishops and priests, were they ever so eager, learned and distinguished, cannot completely master this task, from the very fact that their numbers are limited. It behoves, then, the laymen to come out into the open, and join hands with the priests, and to become workers with them in this noble apostleship.

The idea is not new in Germany, nor is it anywhere else,but Germany alone can boast of practical work done in this direction ; she alone can point to an organised army of laymen working in public life for the realisation of Catholic ideals. The German Popular Catholic League — the league of the workers — has now a membership of 565,000, 'and storms of applause were evoked at the Congress when it was announced that the work of the Congress had already been forestalled, and that no less than 14,000 educated laymen were -acting as officials to that vast organisation, and were trying to permeate' its public acts with' the spirit, of our Holy Catholic Faith. Many were the speeches made at the Congress, some of them coming from the most 'renowned orators of' the Parliament or of the Bar, but the speeches that evoked the most enthusiastic * applause were those which declared that it is * • , A Sacred Duty of the Catholic Layman \ to step across the borderland of his family duties and carry his Catholic conviction and his Catholic faith into public .life, and. to do -his best, in whatever sphere he may be placed — be it in the legislatures, or in the law - courts, or in the lecture rooms — to permeate his surroundings with those ideals that are borne mpon the wings of hope and charity, and of faith— of faith in a living God and His representative on earth, the Holy Catholic Church. Well indeed may one call such a Congress a retreat. For these:. ' lay^, sermons ' were interspersed Avith high Masses and low Masses, and pilgrimages, and devotions of every kind, where the sacred fire was kindled anew that carried them through the

Kulturkampf, and from which the thousands carried away an assurance* which nothing can shake and which history will justify that the light, which Bismarck would have sought to quench, far from becoming ' a light that failed,' will grow brighter-still, now- that it has been set up on high by the hands of the layman as well as of the priest. It is also a sign of the times, and a portent of great things to come, the usher in, maybe, of a peaceful' revolution in the Church — a revolution not against the stream of her history and tradition, but .a fuller development of that mission which Christ confided to the Disciples as well as to the Apostles when he said ' Go ye and teach ye all nations.' . S.P.C.