Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/780

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

alienate the clergy from the cultivated classes of civil society. Universities have been superseded to a considerable extent by cloistral schools and special seminaries for the instruction of ecclesiastics, who, in consequence of such intellectual isolation, are as ignorant of the achievements of modern science and the chief currents of modern thought as though they lived in the ninth instead of the nineteenth century. Quite recently the German Imperial Government suggested the desirability and indicated the intention of establishing a Catholic faculty of theology in connection with the University of Strasburg; but the project was disapproved by the Alsatian bishop and met with general opposition on the part of the Catholic press in Germany, so great was the distrust of any intimate association with the centers of higher secular education. Also the convention of Catholics held at Cologne during the last week in August, 1894, expressed no word in favor of the afore-mentioned plan, but passed a resolution urging the immediate founding of a university at Fulda, which should be sanctioned by the Pope, controlled by the bishops, and wholly independent of the state. The kind of instruction which young men would receive in such an institution may be easily imagined. The hexahemera of the fathers and the works of Albertus Magnus would be the text-books in natural science, while theology and philosophy would be nothing but a rehash of the quiddities and quodlibets of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.

Two books recently published may be cited as fair specimens of the sort of researches to which the professors of the proposed Fulda University would probably devote their time and talents. The first of these volumes is entitled Wunder und göttliche Gnadenerweise bei der Ausstellung des heiligen Rockes zu Trier im Jahre 1891; aktenmässig dargestellt von Dr. Felix Korum, Bischof von Trier, of which a fourth edition has just been issued by the Paulinus printing office in Trier (Treves). When it was announced in 1890 that the "holy coat" of Trier would, after a lapse of forty-six years, be again exhibited for the adoration of the faithful, many sincere Catholics could hardly believe that, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, such an appeal to the crassest religious credulity would be made, or that it would meet with any general response. Nevertheless the exhibition took place in the following year and was crowned with immense success. Vast crowds of people flocked to the sacred shrine, and rumors went forth throughout the land of persons who had touched the garment and proved its miraculous virtue by being healed of their infirmities. This immense concourse of devotees presented to the eyes of the bishop a "glorious spectacle" and is characterized by him as in itself a "moral miracle"; a mind less blinded by bigotry, and therefore more capable of tracing the logical con-