The War Upon Religion: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-Christianism in EuropeCunningham, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius)
History
The War Upon Religion: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-Christianism in Europe
Cunningham, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius)
Catholic Church -- Europe; Catholic Church -- History; Church and state -- Catholic Church
In the meantime the anti-Catholics were busily elaborating their plan of
campaign. A certain professor, Emile Friedberg of the University of
Leipzig, published a rabid attack upon the Church wherein he outlined
the policy to be pursued by his party in dealing with them. Among his
suggestions, nearly all of which were ultimately adopted, were the
following: The establishment of obligatory civil marriage; suppression
of obligatory baptism; separation of Church and State; secularization of
charitable works; a penal law against "abuse of the pulpit;" measures to
prevent ecclesiastics not in harmony with the Government from using the
pulpit; a rigorous surveillance of the education of the clergy; an order
forbidding the appointment of ecclesiastics who by their civil or
political relations could create difficulties for the Government;
suppression of the Order of Jesuits; an interdict striking all
Congregations not authorized by the Government; recourse to the State
against the decisions of ecclesiastical authority; punishment of "abuse
of power" by fines, and by suspension from exercise of jurisdiction;
measures compelling the State never to place its powers at the
discretion of the Church, never to punish an ecclesiastic resisting his
ecclesiastical superiors, never to confirm the penalties ordained by the
bishops; measures to abolish the sanctification of the holy days, etc.
All these measures and many more like them are worthy of note inasmuch
as they contained the program of the real hostilities now about to
begin. The separation of Church and State, being in the eyes of the
Radicals, the supreme end, it was proposed to proceed gradually,
destroying first the means of life in the German Church, stopping up its
veins and arteries, and finally strangling all its activities, until it
should at length have become so weak and inert that any measure for its
extinction should be easy and successful. It was the proposal of men;
God, Himself, however, was to show that the last word remained in His
divine power.
_MAY LAWS._
On January 9, 1873, Falk, the Minister of Worship, placed upon the desk
of the Chamber four resolutions, the object of which was to inaugurate a
certain Civil Constitution for the clergy, and to place the Church
entirely at the mercy of the State. After having proscribed the
religious Orders, these new resolutions aimed at the destruction of the
secular clergy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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