ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 



C89 



ier, and to admonish you to make dutiful submission. 

 This was done on the 20th of October of last year, 

 and on the 4th of January of the present year, in 

 terms of the most paternal affection. 



Your Keverence delayed very long to return a pre- 

 cise answer. Your dilatory letters of the 29th of 

 January and the 14th of March were treated by the 

 archbishop with the most forbearing patience. 



At length ensued your declaration of the 29th of 

 March, which you, at the same time, made public ; 

 wherein you refused, not only to acknowledge the 

 decrees of the Vatican Council, but you propounded 

 and defended entirely heretical principles of faith, 

 and likewise launched the most hateful accusations 

 against the Church. 



In the resolution hereupon communicated to your 

 Eeverence on the 3d of this month, your attention 

 was distinctly and emphatically drawn to the inevi- 

 table results of your conduct. 



Nevertheless, no intimation of any sort up to this 

 day has been made that your Eeverence docs not in- 

 tend to persist in your contradiction to the decrees 

 of the Church. 



After your Keverence has thus opposed, and still 

 continues to oppose, a conscious and obstinate de- 

 nial to clear and certain decrees on faith of the Cath- 

 olic Church; after you have further turned a deaf 

 ear to the manifold repeated fatherly exhortations 

 and warnings of your chief pastor ; nay, after you 

 have publicly maintained your opposition to the 

 Church, and gained adherents after the great dan- 

 ger thereby caused to the faithful has at length out- 

 weighed the long-cherished consideration for your 

 high position in the Church and state, as also for 

 your undoubted merits in the professor's chair, in 

 science, and in public life it became necessary, for 

 the salvation of your soul, and as a warning to 

 others, that the excommunicate major awarded by 

 the laws of the Church to the crimen Ticereseos externce 

 etformalis, and recently affirmed by the General 

 Vatican Council relative to its decrees of the 18th of 

 July, which you have by the ecclesiastical transgres- 

 sion above named ipso facto incurred, should be de- 

 clared by a special sentence, and proper publicity 

 given, as we hereby warn vou of, to this ecclesiasti- 

 cal judgment. DR. JOSEPH V. TKANT, 



Cathedral Provost and Vicar-General. 



MUNICH, April 17, 1871. 



Some priests in various parts of Germany 

 adopted the views of Dr. von Dollinger, and 

 were joined by the ex-French Carmelite Hya- 

 cinthe. These assumed the title of Old Catho- 

 lics, and convened a congress at Munich in 

 September. It met under the leadership of 

 Dr. Dollinger, and comprised some priests, and 

 a larger number of laymen, but no bishop from 

 any country joined tbe movement. As a priest- 

 hood could not be kept up without an episco- 

 pate, proposals for union were made to the 

 Jansenist Church in Holland. The resolutions 

 adopted by the congress were, however, more 

 revolutionary than was at first proposed, and 

 embraced the abolition of the mass, of celibacy 

 of the clergy, and of the invocation of saints. 

 Herr von Lutz, Minister of Public Instruction 

 and Worship, was, however, favorable to them. 

 He sustained those excommunicated by the 

 bishops, and adopted a course of hostility 

 toward the latter which drew from the Arch- 

 bishop of Munich, on the 26th of September, 

 an elaborate discussion of the whole relative 

 position of Church and state in Bavaria. . 



The ministry of the newly-formed German 

 Empire also adopted a course which caused 

 TOL. XL 44 A 



complaints in the Reichstag, and directly from 

 Catholic bishops and subjects. The Bishops 

 of Bonn, Breslau, and Ermeland, for enforcing 

 the decrees of the Vatican Council, were men- 

 aced by the Minister of Worship. This led to 

 an address to the Emperor from all the Catho- 

 lic archbishops and bishops of Prussia, at Ful- 

 da (September 7th), to which, however, only 

 an evasive answer was returned. 



On the 18th of May the papal guarantees 

 were promulgated by the Italian Government, 

 having been adopted by the Senate by a vote 

 of 105 to 20. 



The Pope, in a brief on the 15th, condemned 

 some professors at Rome who had avowed 

 their adhesion to Dr. von Dollinger. Their 

 address attracted some attention at the time, 

 but it appeared that, with hardly an exception, 

 they had been appointed to their positions by 

 the Italian Government, since September, 1870, 

 and that they had styled themselves professors 

 of botany, of mineralogy, of chemistry, of sur- 

 gery, and one as professor of veterinary pathol- 

 ogy. On the same day, the Pope issued an 

 Encylical Letter, rejecting formally the guar- 

 antees, of which the following is an extract : 



But the subalpine government, while on one hand 

 it hurries to make the city of Borne the scorn of the 

 world (" Urbem properat Orli facere fabulam" St. 

 Bern., Ep.) on the other j labors to beguile Catholics, 

 by puffing up and arranging certain idle immunities 

 and safeguards that, in its language, it calls guaran- 

 tees^ to the end that these be substituted to us for 

 the civil sovereignty of which, by a long series of 

 intrigues, and by parricidal arms, it has robbed us. 

 Already, venerable brethren, we have pronounced 

 our sentence on these immunities and safeguards. 

 We have branded their folly, their guile, ana their 

 mockery, in our letter, dated the 2d of March last, 

 to our venerable brother Constantine Patrizi, cardi- 

 nal of the Holy Eoman Church, dean of the Sacred 

 College, and acting as our vicar in Eome, which was, 

 in due time, printed and published. 



But, according to the manner of the subalpine gov- 

 ernment, joining a base and unceasing pretence of 

 consideration, to a shameless contempt of our pon- 

 tifical authority and dignity, and treating our protes- 

 tations, our expostulations, and^ our censures, as of 

 no account it has proceeded, in its Parliament, to 

 act on these aforesaid safeguards as if they were 

 serious, and has had discussions on them ; and gone 

 forward in urging and advancing them, notwithstand- 

 ing the sentence expressed by us on tneir emptiness. 

 In this discussion lull proof was given both of the 

 truth of our judgment on the nature and meaning of 

 those " safeguards," and of the vain attempt of the 

 enemy to conceal the fraud and malice that were in 

 them. Truly, venerable brethren, it is hard to be- 

 lieve, incrediUle est, that so many errors openly 

 against the Catholic faith, and against the very foun- 

 dations of natural law, as were uttered on occasion 

 of that debate, could have been put forth in the cen- 

 tre of this Italy, which has ever especially gloried, 

 and now glories, in devotion to the Catholic re- 

 ligion, and to the Apostolic See of the Eoman Pon- 

 tiff. And, in very deed, by the singular protection 

 God grants His Church, the convictions of far the 

 larger part of the Italians are very different. They 

 groan, with us, and deplore this new phase of unac- 

 cepted sacrilege, and they assure us, day by day, by 

 increasing proofs and avowals, that they are asso- 

 ciated, in spirit and in understanding, with the faith- 

 ful in other parts of the world. 



Wherefore, we anew address our voice to you, 



