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
On February 6, 1874, the Archbishop was arrested in his palace, and
without trial or sentence, was carried away to Ostrowo, where he was
cast into prison. On April 15 the High Court passed its sentence upon
the Archbishop, already in prison, as on March 31, Archbishop Mechers
had been sentenced and imprisoned. On March 6, Bishop Eberhard of Treves
received the same fate, and three days after soldiers and guards
surrounded his Grand Seminary, banished its directors and professors and
confiscated all its property.
In the meantime a dissension had arisen in the Camp of the enemy. Arnim,
who had served Bismarck during the Council of the Vatican, had come into
disfavor with his powerful employer, and began to show revolutionary
tendencies. One of the results of this discord between the Chancellor
and his former tool was the disclosure of certain shady operations of
Bismarck prior to 1870. Certain documents were brought forth showing
that, in 1869, Doellinger had influenced the Bavarian Prince Hohenlohe
to begin the war against Rome, and that at that time Bismarck was
laboring in every part of Europe to arouse the Governments against the
definition of papal infallibility. It was shown also that from June 18,
1870, this Arnim, whom Pius IX. called the "New Architofel," had
suggested against the Church all the measures of which Bismarck had made
use during the year that followed. These revelations coming thus in
1874, in the very heat of the persecution, gave additional evidence that
the Council and the infallibility were only pretexts, and not the real
causes of the Kulturkampf, an event which had been in preparation long
before the Council was convened.
The greater indignities perpetrated upon the heads of the Catholic
Church in Germany now followed each other with such rapidity and
violence as to overshadow the thousands of minor grievances. On July 27,
1874, Bishop Janiczewski, auxiliary of the See of Posen, was imprisoned
at Kosmin for fifteen months for having assumed the episcopal office
without the permission of the Government. The same day, Mgr.
Koryskowski, delegated by the Archbishop of Gnesen to administer the
affairs of that diocese, was sent into exile at Stargard. The Canon
Woiyewski was imprisoned for having continued in his capacity as
ecclesiastical judge after the imprisonment of his Archbishop. Bishop
Martin of Paderborn was deposed from his bishopric; he refused to read
the sentence which was nailed to the door of his prison cell; he was
liberated, however, but conducted to the frontiers at Wesel. On January
18, 1875, the Seminary of Fulda, the most ancient establishment of its
kind in Germany, was closed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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