No. 243.
Mr. Davis to Mr. Fish.

No. 102.]

Sir: Referring to my No. 82, I have now the honor to forward a translation of the text of a bill pending in the Prussian house of deputies for the repeal of the clauses in the constitution giving to ecclesiastical corporations the right to manage their own affairs. This bill will probably be passed into a law to-day or to-morrow.

[Page 539]

I also inclose the text (translated) of a new law to be submitted to the chamber for the sequestration of monastic property.

I also inclose a translation of the petition addressed by the bishops to the Emperor on the 2d instant, and of the reply by the ministry by order of the Emperor.

In order to complete the files of the Department, I also inclose a translation of the declaration by the bishops respecting the election of a new Pope, made in February last, having accidentally omitted to send it at the time.

I have, &c.,

J. C. BANCROFT DAVIS.
[Inclosure 1 in No. 102.—Translation.]

Project of law for changing the relations between church and state.

The following is an analysis of the projected hill for abrogating the three articles of the constitution regulating the relations between church and state in Prussia:

“Since it has lately been judged necessary to regulate by legislation the indispensable limits between church and state, in order to establish the definite and fixed position of the two powers, the government has often heard the objection raised to the effect that the measures adopted by it tended to injure the arrangements of the fundamental compact, which assures the independent administration of their affairs to religious bodies. When the question was first brought forward as a legislative measure in 1873, this objection appeared plausible, for article 15 of the constitution still existed in its primitive sense, which allowed of a more or less wide interpretation. The arbitrary interference of the Catholic bishops and that of the organs of the state had even given this article a meaning which much exceeded its real sense. To define this real sense was the object of the law of April 5, 1873. It was intended to re-establish in a definite manner, and for every one, the fact that even the autonomial administration of ecclesiastical affairs was subject to the sovereign right of the state, to its legislation, and its supervision. Nevertheless, the same objection continues to be urged, and was very recently raised on the occasion of every proposed law concerning ecclesiastical affairs. Continually to repeat this accusation of unconstitutionality in the two chambers as well as in the press is the more grave, because it disquiets the people, lays the authorities and legislators open to suspicion, and causes the laws to be considered invalid and of no effect before they have been promulgated. Such a solution of the matter is not tolerable in any state, especially at a time so fruitful in serious agitations. Such a state of things must absolutely be opposed with energy and promptitude. This cannot be attained until the relations between church and state shall have been regulated, no longer by general and equivocal provisions, but by special laws alone; that is to say, by a modification of the fundamental compact. The legislature must find a, way open to assure the state at all costs against a clergy directed by Rome. Provoking and battling against the sovereign rights of the civil power, restored to liberty by fresh legislation, this power will know how to defend itself against its aggressors. This is why it is proposed to suppress article 15. This act of defense is not necessitated by the attitude of other forms of religions. The legislative provisions which already regulate their position with regard to the state suffice. Fresh laws are useless. Where there are defects, the legislature will give corporations which submit to public order the security which is due to them. The suppression of article 16 is justified by the fact that, since the religious communities have enjoyed perfect freedom in their relations with their superiors, and that the publication of ecclesiastical injunctions is now subject only to the conditions imposed by the law on publications of every kind, the confidence of the government has been seriously abused. It will be sufficient to recall the encyclical of the 5th of February, addressed to the episcopate, to understand the pressing necessity for restraining excessive liberty assured by the said article within limits compatible with the public welfare. Article 18 is but the corollary of article 15, applicable in a solitary and determined case. The suppression of article 15, therefore, necessarily involves that of article 18. The abolition of these articles will not, however, be any obstacle to high clerical positions being held by men who obey the laws, a condition which cannot be given up by a state, which, in consequence of the various religious beliefs of its population, has the greatest interest in seeing the different religious communities live in peace with one another. The projected law is composed of this single clause: ‘The articles 15, 16, and 18 of the constitution of January 30, 1850, are abrogated. The legal state of the Evangelical and Catholic churches, as, well as the other religious communities, is regulated by the laws of the state.’”

[Page 540]

The text of the articles which it is proposed to abolish is as follows:

“Article 15. The Catholic Church, as well as the Protestant Church, and every other religious society, regulates and administers its affairs in an independent way; but it remains subject to the laws of the state, and to the supervision defined by the laws of the state. Under the same conditions, every religious society keeps the possession and the enjoyment of its funds, and of the establishments and foundations destined for its worship, its teaching, and its charities. Article 16. The relations of religious societies with their superiors are free. The publication of ecclesiastical ordinances is subject only to the restrictions to which all other publications are subjected. Article 18. The right of nominating, of proposing, of electing, and of confirming ecclesiastical posts is suppressed as far as it belongs to the state, and is not based upon patronage or on special legal titles. This provision does not apply to the nomination of ecclesiastics in the army or in the public institutions. The law regulates the rights of the state relating to instruction, to the employment and removal of ecclesiastics, and fixes the limits of the disciplinary powers of the state.”

[Inclosure 2 in No. 102.]
  • Article 1. The state places under sequestration all monastic property.
  • Art. 2. The orders which have for their object the education or the care of sick persons will be tolerated for two years; after that time they will be totally suppressed.
  • Art. 3. All other orders and monastic corporations will be abolished in six months.
  • Art. 4. All property which has been given to these orders by their members will be restored to the latter.
  • Art. 5. The oldest members of monastic bodies, and those who may be incapable of working, will receive an annual pension from the state.
[Inclosure 3 in No. 102.—Translation.]

Correspondence between Catholic bishops and the Emperor.

The following is the text of the petition addressed to His Majesty on the 2d of this month by the Prussian bishops:

“Fulda, April 2, 1875.

“Most Serene and Most Mighty Emperor, Most Gracious Emperor, King, and Sire: A bill has been presented to both houses of the Diet by Your Imperial and Royal Majesty’s ministry by which the further enjoyment of the state grants accorded to the Catholic bishoprics and clergy will be made dependent upon a previous declaration of the administrators of dioceses or the clergy that they will unconditionally obey the state laws. So unconditional a declaration is incompatible with the conscience of a Christian. Indeed, the Apostles, and innumerable Christian martyrs, suffered death rather than submit to state laws and public ordinances which prohibited them from proclaiming the divine truth or demanded on their part a denial of the Christian faith. We being, therefore, unable to give that declaration without acting against our conscience or infringing upon the principles of Christianity, thus the attempt to force us to obey by withholding material means can never be regarded as admissible from a Christian stand-point.

“Moreover, the respective grants from the state to the bishoprics in question are in compliance with a legal obligation which the state undertook when it assumed possession of the secularized church property in accordance with explicit stipulations, and, to quote the well-known words of a Prussian minister, they were undertaken under a pledge of the honor of Prussia; and as regards other state grants to clergymen, they also by no means sprang from a mere liberality of the state toward the church, but have likewise a legal basis either in the secularization of cloisters and ecclesiastical institutions, or in right of patronage, or in royal promises, and the suspension of these grants just at the present moment must especially serve to stir bitter feelings in the hearts of the Catholics, since just now considerable improvements of salary from the general revenue are granted by the state with gracious liberality to the clergy of other Christian denominations.

“We feel, however, the threatened suspension of the state grant most painfully, because it is expressly described as a punishment for the attitude of the Catholic bishops and clergy with regard to the May laws, although they are unable to co-operate in the execution of these laws without violating their most sacred duties and the divine constitution of the Catholic church.

“We should fear to trespass upon the veneration due to Your Majesty if we were [Page 541] even to consider the supposition possible that it could respond to the intentions of Your Majesty to demand such an infidelity and violation of duty on the part of the appointed guardians of ecclesiastical order.

“We, therefore, do not address ourselves to the houses of the Diet, where the proportion of Christian feeling begins to vanish more and more, but address direct to Your Majesty, as the protector of the Christian church recognized by Prussia—to the Crown by which the Catholics have likewise ever stood with true loyalty during political storms—the respectful prayer that Your Majesty will deny your sanction to the intended law as being a violation of duty and acquired rights and a source of unspeakable affliction and peace-disturbing confusion.

“In deepest reverence, with most entire submission, we remain Your Majesty’s most humble, true, and obedient.”

(Here follow the signatures.)

The following is the text of the reply made by the ministry by order of the Emperor:

“Berlin, April 9, 1875.

“His Majesty the Emperor and King has deigned to charge the ministry with the reply to the petition addressed to His Majesty on the 2d instant by the Prussian bishops assembled in Fulda:

“In fulfilling the imperial instructions, we cannot avoid expressing our astonishment and regret at the fact that ecclesiastics of such high position as the right reverend bishops could make themselves the vehicle of an assertion that it would be in Prussia a denial of the Christian faith to promise obedience to such laws which in other German and foreign states have been obeyed for centuries, and are still most readily obeyed by the Catholic clergy and their ecclesiastical superiors, and unconditional obedience to which continues to be sworn there by the Catholic clergy by a sacred oath. None the less remarkable and untrue is the assertion that the laws against which recently the disobedience of the bishops has been directed in Prussia only forbid the proclamation of the divine truth. With regard to the right reverend bishops mentioning that improvements of salary are at the present being granted to the clergy of other denominations which did not at the same time benefit the Catholic clergy, a superficial glance at the bills before and the debates of the Diet would have sufficed to convince the right reverend bishops themselves of the untruth of their assertion. It can just as little be unknown to the right reverend bishops that the measure which they ask His Majesty not to sanction, at the same time using offensive expressions about its contents, could only have reached the Diet with the imperial consent. The demand that His Majesty should, notwithstanding, refuse his sanction after it had been adopted by the Diet is the more strange, since the right reverend bishops themselves will not believe that the grants, the suspension of which is in question, would have been ever made, if at their bestowal the right had been reserved to the bishops and clergy to be obedient or not to the laws of the state according to the papal will.

“With regard to the petition calling the law which withdraws the state-grants a source of unspeakable affliction and peace-disturbing confusion, those among the right reverend bishops, who, in the year 1870, before the proclamation of the Vatican resolutions, saw that such conditions would arise from those resolutions, and announced this publicly in eloquent terms, should ask themselves if they, by a true and firm maintenance of their convictions, would not, perhaps, have been able to preserve our fatherland from the confusion and disturbance of peace which they themselves warningly prophesied, and which we now, with them, deplore.

“We request your grace to kindly communicate this letter to the co-signatories of the petition.

“THE STATE MINISTRY.”

[Inclosure 4 in No. 102.—Translation.]

THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS IN REPLY TO PRINCE BISMARCK.

The following is the text of the joint declaration just issued by all the Roman Catholic bishops of Germany, in reply to Prince Bismarck’s well-known dispatch on the election of the next Pope:

“The Staatsanzeiger (official Berlin Gazette) has recently published a circular-dispatch, indited by the Prince Chancellor on the 14th of May, 1872, dealing with the election of the next Pope. This dispatch, according to the declaration of the Staatsanzeiger, is the key to the contents of that portion of the Arnim case papers withheld from the public. Proceeding from the supposition that by the Vatican council and its [Page 542] two important enactments concerning infallibility and the jurisdiction of the Pope, the relative position of His Holiness toward the secular governments has been entirely changed, the dispatch arrives at the conclusion that the interest of the secular governments in the election of a Pope has been very considerably increased, and that their right to look after such election is placed upon an even firmer basis than heretofore. These conclusions are as unjustifiable as their premises are unfounded. Considering the grave nature of the document in which they appear, and the inferences forced upon us as to the principles governing the ecclesiastical policy of the German imperial chancellerie, we, the undersigned arch-pastors, deem ourselves equally entitled and obliged to oppose publicly the erroneous views expressed in the dispatch. The dispatch contains the following assertions relative to the votes of the Vatican council:

“‘By these enactments the Pope is enabled in every diocese to exercise episcopal rights and substitute his own authority for that of the local bishop. The episcopal jurisdiction has been completely superseded by direct papal authority. The Pope no longer reserves to himself certain specified rights, as formerly, but all episcopal rights have been transferred to him. He has replaced the bishops principal, and it solely depends upon him practically to assume the functions of any of the local bishops, not excluding those affecting the relations of that bishop to his government. The bishops henceforth are only the tools, and wholly irresponsible employés of the Pope. They have become the officials of a foreign sovereign, and that a sovereign who, by dint of his infallibility, is a more absolute monarch than any other monarch in the world.’

“All these assertions are utterly devoid of foundation, being at variance with the wording of the Vatican enactments, as well as with the meaning of the same, such as it has been repeatedly interpreted by the Pope, the episcopacy, and the acknowledged representatives of Catholic theological erudition. In accordance with those enactments, the papal jurisdiction is indeed a potestas suprema ordinaria et immediata—a supreme official power conferred upon the Pope by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, through Saint Peter, and extending to the whole of the church and each individual diocese, that unity of faith, ecclesiastical discipline and government maybe duly upheld. The papal power, it is true, then, is no power confined to certain specified rights reserved by the Pope. But this is no new doctrine. On the contrary, it is a doctrine which has always been a recognized doctrine of the Catholic faith—a well-known principle of eanon law, a truth which the Vatican council, opposing the Gallican, Jansenist, and Febronian heresies, has only confirmed and explained in accordance with the verdicts of preceding councils. In virtue of this doctrine the Pope is bishop of Rome, not bishop of any other city or diocese, not bishop of Cologne, Breslau, &c. But in his capacity as bishop of Rome he is Pope, that is, is arch-pastor and supreme head of the whole church, chief of all bishops and all the faithful believers, and his papal authority, far from being restricted to certain exceptional cases, is always and everywhere in full force. It is the duty of the Pope to control the action of the bishops, and if any bishop should be prevented from attending to the function of his office, or if any other exigency should require it, the Pope is both entitled and obliged, not as bishop of the respective dioceses, but as Pope, to issue any orders necessary for the proper administration of such diocese. These papal rights have been recognized by all European states as belonging to the system of the Roman Catholic Church, and whenever any European government had occasion to enter into negotiations with the Pope, it has acknowledged him as the chief of the entire Catholic Church, including both bishops and believers, and he never has been regarded by any European government as only the owner of certain specified and reserved rights. There is, further, absolutely nothing in the enactments of the Vatican council to justify the assertion that the Pope has in consequence of these enactments become an absolute sovereign, and that a sovereign more absolute than any other monarch in the world. In the first place, the field over which the ecclesiastical authority of the Pope extends is distinct from that swayed by the temporal power of a monarch, nor do Catholics deny the sovereignty of monarchs in regard to secular affairs. But, independently of this, the designation of a Pope as absolute monarch is inadmissible, even with reference to the field allotted to him, because the Pope acts under the law divine, and is bound to adhere to the ordinances laid down by Christ for his church. The Pope cannot change the divinely-ordained constitution of the church, though the secular legislator may be able to remodel the political arrangements intrusted to his keeping. The constitution of the church, in all its essential points, is based upon the direct injunctions of the Divinity, and exempt from all arbitrary experiments of mankind. The same divine regulations which created the Pope created the bishops likewise; the bishops to have their own peculiar rights and duties, allotted to them by God Himself, to modify which the Pope has neither the right nor the power. Hence, it is a glaring mistake to assume the Vatican enactments to have superseded episcopal authority by papal power, and to have replaced by the Pope the bishops, who are henceforth only his tools and employés, without any personal responsibility. Under the eternal doctrine of the Catholic [Page 543] Church, it has been expressly declared by the Vatican council that the bishops are no tools of the Pope, no mere papal employés, without personal responsibility, but pastors appointed by the Holy Ghost to represent the apostles; to govern, as good shepherds, the flocks intrusted to them. In the 18th century of Christian ecclesiastical history, the papacy has been placed over and by the side of the episcopacy, both being divinely instituted by Christ; so it will be also in the future. The Pope’s ancient right of exercising his power of ecclesiastical government in any part of the Catholic world has never made episcopal authority illusory, nor is the new interpretation of this old Catholic principle calculated to raise apprehensions in this respect as to the future. It is universally known that the dioceses of the Catholic world have, since the Vatican council, been directed and governed by their bishops, in exactly the same manner as before that date. We specially protest against the statement that the bishops, in consequence of the Vatican enactments, have become papal employés, without personal responsibility, and we beg to observe that it is not the Catholic Church which acknowledges the immoral and despotic principle that the command of a superior officer relieves the subordinate from personal responsibility. As to the opinion that the Pope, by means of infallibility, has become an absolute sovereign, it is based upon an entirely erroneous conception of the dogma of infallibility. As the Vatican council has clearly and unmistakably pronounced, papal infallibility, in accordance with the nature of things, is confined to the field belonging to the doctrinal authority of the church, and is restricted by Holy Writ, tradition, and previous decisions of the church. The action of the Pope in governing the church has in no way been altered by the enactment of papal infallibility. The opinion that the relations of the Pope to the episcopacy have been changed by the Vatican council being entirely indefensible, the conclusion drawn from these premises, that the Pope has assumed a novel position toward the governments, is equally groundless. We cannot restrain ourselves from expressing the deepest regret that, in the above circular dispatch, the German imperial chancellerie should have advanced opinions founded upon the assertions and conjectures of Protestant scholars, and some former Catholics, rebelling against the whole legitimate episcopal authority vested in the Holy See. These assertions and conjectures have been repeatedly and emphatically contradicted and refuted by the Pope, the bishops, and Catholic theologians and canonists, as the legitimate representatives of the Catholic Church. In our respective dioceses, we have the right to demand that, if the principles and doctrines of our church are to be discussed in this wise, our opinion be taken too, and that, so long as we regulate our conduct by these principles and doctrines, our words be credited. In thus correcting the erroneous version of the Catholic doctrine contained in the circular dispatch of the Prince Chancellor, we have no wish to enter upon what is foreshadowed in that dispatch concerning the election of the next Pope. Still, we feel it our duty to protest solemnly against the attempt made to interfere with the independent election of the chief of the Catholic Church, and we declare that the validity of any papal election can be decided only by the church, to whose authority every Catholic will unconditionally submit in Germany as anywhere else.


Here follow the
signatures of twenty-three German bishops and representatives of bishops
.