current figures for the Catholic population are based on detailed
estimates rather than on an actual count.
Summing up the history of the papacy from the Congress of Vienna to the fall of the temporal power, one finds statistical gains in Protestant countries offset perhaps by relative losses in Catholic lands, both largely due to the closely related forces of toleration and immigration. While the hold of the popes on the States of the Church was constantly weakening, their power over the domestic policies of foreign governments was increasing; and the transition from autocracy to parliamentary rule accelerated this process, at least in non-Catholic territories. The unparalleled spread of ultramontane ideas (see Ultramontanism) brought about a centralization of authority at Rome such as would have appalled the 18th century. This centralization was, however, for the time not so much legal as doctrinal. In 1854 Pius IX. by his sole authority established a dogma (see Immaculate Conception); and the infallibility implied in this act was openly acknowledged in 1870 by the Council of the Vatican (see Vatican Council and Infallibility). Thus were the spiritual prerogatives of the papacy exalted in the very summer that the temporal power was brought low. (W. W. R.*)
V.—Period from 1870 to 1900.
The few months that elapsed between the 18th of July 1870 and the 18th of January 1871 witnessed four events that have been fraught with more consequence to the papacy than anything else that had affected that institution for the past three centuries. They were as follows: (1) The proclamation of the Infallibility of the Pope on the 18th of July 1870; (2) the fall of the Napoleonic empire and the establishment of the third French republic on the 4th of September 1870; (3) the occupation of Rome by the Italian forces on the 20th of September 1870, resulting in the incorporation of the remaining states of the Church in the kingdom of Italy; and (4) the foundation of the German Empire by the proclamation, on the 18th of January 1871, of the king of Prussia as hereditary German emperor. These changes, which so greatly disturbed the current of all European relations, could not fail to react upon the papal policy in various ways. They brought its existing tendencies into greater relief, set before it new aims and diverted it into new channels. Essential modifications could not, of course, be at once effected or even indicated in a power whose life-blood is tradition, and whose main strength has always lain in calmly abiding the issue of events and in temporizing. The eight years that Pius IX. was permitted to see after the loss of his temporalities entirely harmonize with this character. The veil that hides the negotiations which, during the closing months of the Franco-German War, were carried on between Bismarck and the pope, through the agency of Cardinal Bonnhose, has not yet been lifted, and perhaps never will be. According to Bismarck and the Temporal Power. Prince Bismarck’s own account of the matter, as given in his Gedanken und Erinnerungen, these Temporal negotiations were initiated by the chancellor, who. Power. between the 5th and 9th of November 1870, entertained pourparlers with Archbishop Ledochowski on the question of the territorial interests of the pope. The chancellor, acting, as he himself says, in the spirit of the adage, “one hand washes the other,” proposed to that prelate that the pope should give earnest of the relations subsisting between him and Germany by influencing the French clergy in the direction of the conclusion of peace. The cool reception his endeavours met with, both at the hands of the French ecclesiastics as well as in Rome, satisfied Bismarck “that the papal hierarchy lacked either the power or the good will to afford Germany assistance of sufficient value to make it worth while giving umbrage to both the German Protestants and the ItaLIan national party, and risking a reaction of the latter upon the future relations between the two countries, which would be the inevitable result were Germany openly to espouse the papal cause in Rome.” These utterances are eminently characteristic. They show how far Bismarck was (even at the close of 1870) from comprehending the traditional policy of the papacy towards Germany and German interests, and how little he conceived it possible to employ the relations between the future empire and the Vatican as a point of departure for a successful and consistent ecclesiastical policy. Rome, in a certain sense, showed itself possessed of far greater foresight. The German politicians and the Prussian diplomatists accredited to Rome had worked too openly at undermining the papal hierarchy, and had veiled their sympathies for Piedmont far too lightly to lead the Vatican to expect, after the 20th of September 1870, a genuine and firm intervention on the part of Prussia on behalf of the temporal power of the Holy See. To satisfy the demands of Bismarck in November 1870 would have cost the Vatican more than it would ever have gained. It could neither afford to trifle with the sympathies of the French Catholics nor to interrupt the progress of those elements, which would naturally be a thorn in the side of the young German Empire, thus undo Bismarck’s work, and restore the Vatican policy to its pristine strength and vigour. It was soon to be perceived how carefully the Curia had made its calculations.
The address of the Catholic deputies to the emperor William in Versailles on the 18th of February 1871, pleading for the restoration of the States of the Church and the temporal sovereignty of the pope, and for the reconstitution of the Catholic group formed in the Prussian Landtag in 1860 as the Centrum or Centre Party in the new Reichstag (April 1871), must not be regarded as the origin but rather the immediate occasion of the Kulturkampf. The congratulations which the pope sent to the emperor William on receiving the announcement of the establishment of the German Empire (March 6, 1871) were a last exchange of civilities, and the abolition of the Catholic department in the Prussian ministry of public worship (July 8, 1871) quickly followed, together with the appointment of Falk as Kultusminister (Jan. 22, 1872), and the School Inspection Law of the 9th of February 1872.
On the 30th of January Bismarck took the opportunity of inveighing against the formation of the sectarian Centrum as being “one of the most monstrous phenomena in the world of politics,” and he left no room for doubt in the minds of his hearers that he regarded the leadership of Windthorst as constituting, in his eyes, a peril The Kulturkampf. to the national unity. In his Memoirs (ii. 126) he declares that the Kulturkampf was mainly initiated by him as a Polish question. This declaration, in view of the development of affairs, must appear as strange as the chancellor’s confession (Memoirs, ii. 129 seq.) that he endeavoured to persuade the emperor of the advantage of having a nuncio accredited to Berlin (in lieu of the Catholic department of public worship). The refusal of the emperor William to entertain this project shows that in such matters his judgment was more correct than that of his counsellor, and the incident proves that the latter had anything but a clear insight into the historical position. He was drifting about with no higher aim than a “hand-to-mouth” policy, whilst the Holy See could feel the superiority with which the consciousness of centuries of tradition had endowed it, and took full advantage of the mistakes of its opponent. The chancellor never realized the gravity of the onslaught which, with his Kulturkampf, he was making upon the conscience and liberty of his Catholic fellow citizens. He dealt with the great question at issue from the standpoint of the diplomatist, rather than from that of the statesman well versed in ecclesiastical history and possessing an insight into what it implies; and by his violent, inconsiderate action he unwittingly drove into the ranks of Ultramontanism the moderate elements of the Catholic population. This conflict, moreover, brought Ultramontanism the enormous advantage that, even after the abolition of the May Laws, it had still left to it a well-disciplined press, an admirable organization, and a network of interests and interested parties; and all these combined to make the Centrum the strongest and the most influential political party in Germany for the remainder of the 19th century. Owing to these circumstances, the rise and further development of the
