The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872: A Monthly MagazineVarious
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872: A Monthly Magazine
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
made themselves responsible before God for a host of evils. The
political principles which have led to these things are in conflict
with the law of God, in fact with all law and order, and can never
be recognized by Catholics as right or just. Yet are we not without
the hope that the governments which have been guilty of these
things will at no distant future forsake the unholy path upon which
they have entered.
But the members of the Catholic Congress did not confine themselves
to professing the Catholic faith, to raising a protesting voice
against the encroachments on their liberties and on their
rights--rights which should be ever inviolate; they pointed out
the fertile source from which have flown as well the most recent
evils as the more ancient ones which have done so much injury to
the Catholic life of Germany. The source of all these evils, past
as well as present, is in a science grounded on false principles,
and which appropriates to itself exclusively, but not with any
show of reason, the name of German science. These evils can be
healed only by the cultivation of real Catholic science in Germany,
and the most recent events demand absolutely that the reign of
such a science should be inaugurated at once. But so long as the
ancient institutions founded for Catholic purposes ignore, for the
most part, the object of their being; when they have gone over,
to a great extent, to infidelity or to secular management, it is
extremely important, both to pastors and people, that new seats of
science, of education, of real science and Christian education,
should be established.
Such are the principal resolutions of the Catholic Congress held
during the present year. What these resolutions contain is only
the echo and essence of the thought of the assembly expressed in
the orations and sayings of the members--the deep, unanimous,
and undoubted convictions of all. These same thoughts found
expression also in their addresses to the Holy Father, to the
Bishop of Ermeland, to the Bavarian Episcopate, to the Bishops of
Switzerland, as well as to the defenders of the Catholic faith in
Italy and Austria. But is it right to assume that the voice of
all Catholic Germany has been heard, and is heard, in the voice
of this general meeting of Catholics? True it is that they would
entirely misunderstand the essence and the spirit of the principles
of the members of those meetings who would invest their doings or
their sayings as a society with any authority; but they would err
no less grossly who would consider these meetings as mere party
meetings, or as meaning nothing as merely the coming together of a
few private individuals. From the very significance of this year’s
meeting’s resolutions, it may not be amiss to examine the question
somewhat more closely--how much importance is to be attached, what
significance and authority such Catholic meetings may have.
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