EMPEROR WILLIAM AS A ROMAN CATHOLIC.
The sympathies of the German Emperor are slowly but surely forming themselves in the direction of the Roman Catholic Church, if we are to credit statements made in the leading organs of the Vatican party on the Continent of Europe. Various reasons are given for this. The principal one is the support he has received from the Center or Roman Catholic party in his dominions. His imperial ambitions, his purpose to build a mighty navy, his opposition to the Social-Democratic party, and his view that royalty rules by right divine have been encouraged and supported by the Center. The votes of that group have helped him in the Reichstag when he could get support nowhere else. Germania (Berlin), the Clerical organ, and the equally Clerical Kölnische Volkszeitung have rallied to his aid again and again, reflecting in this attitude that of the party leaders. As a writer in the Clerical Correspondent (Paris) says:— Catholics exult, and their joy is the more intense in that Protestant bitterness is so keen. They dream of creating a Roman Catholic Germany, of creating a new Catholicism, more solid and less destructible. It is a renaissance that will succeed an evangelical reform. This is a sentiment common to many German Catholics. . . . But the Catholics wish to dominate the Protestants, to take away from them their preponderance. The instrument to this end must be the Center party, now so potent in the Reichstag. It is pointed out that the organs of the Social-Democratic party, from Vorwärts (Berlin) down, are attacking the Roman Catholic party as a force that menaces the democratic idea in Germany. The Center, however, is growing, thanks to the support of Emperor William himself:— Thus a Catholic movement is definitely shaping itself in Germany. The Catholic Congress at Mannheim showed how strong a tie united the church's faithful in the four quarters of the empire. All in the unity of their belief, despite differences of political opinion, have grouped themselves about the Center party, which has placed itself at the head of the movement and has united elements hitherto irreconcilable. And if the Center has managed to effect9this difficult fusion, if it has succeeded in transforming it into a veritable political demonstration, a congress in which religious interests only were to have been discussed, the credit is due to imperial policy and to the personal wishes of the Emperor. And William II. is going a great deal further than this, if the opinions freely expressed by one authority have any foundation in fact. His imperial Majesty will intensify the surprise with which he has filled the world by appearing in the new character of a pillar of the Roman Catholic Church. Our authority quotes a Roman Catholic paper as follows:— Emperor William has a lucid mind. He is perspicacious enough to be aware of the ever divine and living power of the Catholic Church in the face of the impotence and weakness of Protestantism, which is dying of decay. There is every reason to believe that the Emperor has made or will make this observation, which is a thing self-evident, and that he will have the courage to give his support, in every German Protestant state, to the Catholic Church, and to bring all Germany back to the old mother church, that is to Catholicism. He would thus give to Germany a splendor and a power known to her only in the days of Charlemagne. The Emperor, as he says himself, wishes to maintain religion among the people. Now that can only be the Catholic religion. For Protestantism can be sustained no longer. It is suffering from inward ruin, it is stricken with consumption. Hence it can be said that the Emperor, in his speech at Aix-la-Chapelle, spoke as a Catholic Emperor.—Literary Digest, Oct. 18, 1902.