p. 15 | Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 18, 1911

Note and Comment

Papal Decrees in Germany

THE publication in Germany of the recent decrees of the Vatican is just now a subject of absorbing interest. The Papal See considers itself at liberty to regulate the affairs of its subjects in all countries, without regard to how this may affect the people of those countries as subjects of president, king, or emperor. The Vatican’s most recent decrees regarding Modernism affect the liberty of German educators of the Catholic faith who are professors in German educational institutions. The German government very naturally feels that in forbidding German instructors to pursue investigations along certain lines, the Vatican is overstepping its bounds, and interfering with the rights of German subjects and with the prerogatives of the German government. In a speech in the upper house of the Prussian Diet on April 15, Count Yorck von Wartenburg said:—

When Roman Catholic professors and teachers are required to abjure what non-Roman Catholics consider to be purely scientific knowledge, there arises an antagonism between them and non-Roman Catholic investigators and teachers which must render difficult their common work in the higher educational establishments and universities. . . . If this policy be continued by the papal chair, I am convinced that it will result in the introduction into this country of the problem of the separation of church and state.

That the Roman Catholics of Germany are expected to stand by the instruction from Rome on this point was made plain by Cardinal von Kopp, prince bishop of Breslau, who stated that the papal decrees contained nothing but what “every Roman Catholic must be prepared to subscribe to.” Professor Kuster, of Marburg University, in reply to the prince bishop, declared that “through the attitude of the Vatican, relations between the two faiths [Protestantism and Romanism] are becoming worse from year to year.” The Prussian

minister for ecclesiastical and educational affairs also made reply to the prince bishop in these significant words:—

Whether it will be possible to avoid collisions between the authorities of state and church, and whether difficulties will not arise, is a moot question. We certainly have no security for the future. Count Yorck has with perfect justice pointed to the danger that the whole affair may ultimately result in the separation of church and state, which would be exceedingly deplorable. The government will use its utmost endeavor to maintain peace between the two faiths, but on the other hand it will defend the interests of the state with all possible energy and resolution.

The possibility of the separation of church and state in Germany is thus publicly suggested in parliament, and the Kölnische Zeitung declares that, while the separation of church and state is not yet the object of a popular movement, “one does not need to be a prophet to see that the situation in Germany is untenable.” And that is true of every country in the world where a union of these two institutions exists, and always has been true and always will be.