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Christian Social Reform
\
BARON WIHL. EMMANUEL von KETTELER BISHOP OF MAYENCE
FROM A PAINTING BV PROF. NOACK, MADE SHORTLY AFTER HIS ELECTION AS BISHOP.
( Courtesy of Petrus-Verlag Trier.
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QllyrtHttan i^n
Program outlined by its Pioneer !
William Emmanuel Baron Von Ketteler ! Bishop of Main2
By* George Metlake
HIS EMINENCE i, /
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1923
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Program outlined by its Pioneer
William Emmanuel Baron Von Ketteler
Bishop of Mainz
By George Metlake ^(p^CAAdJ
Preface by
HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL O'CONNELL
Archbishop of Boston
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Zbe ©olpbin Prcöß
1923
PREFACE.
THE whole life of Baron Von Ketteier, the energetic and intrepid Bishop of Mainz, is a Story of absorbing interest. It is the record of a modern apostle who wrought miracles by faith and action. He was a Christian bishop who believed in the divine power and mission of the episcopate; and, aflame with the conviction that he was sent, he went forth and never rested until what he had to do was done.
He was the pioneer of Christian social reform. Leo XIII did not disdain to call him his great pre- decessor, and framed his famous encyclical on Labor along the lines of Von Ketteler's program of action.
He realized, as no other man of his day, that in the new order of conditions the Church must not only act, but lead in social action, or lose. He stood alone for years; but he could well stand alone. Later on he moved his world simply by Standing firm. He was a living proof of what one resolute mind can accomplish in the face of enormous difficulties.
A hostile government, a populär pagan System of social action, the inertia of the many, the ex- cessive haste of some — these were a few of his obstacles. But he triumphed over all of them, and transformed Westphalia and the Rhine provinces into a model Catholic Organization for the whole world to Imitate.
(iii)
iv FR E FACE
He was a true Catholic bishop. He based all bis social principles upon Catholic doctrine. St. Thomas was bis guide in the working-out of bis practical method of social reform. He loved bis Germany — he gave bis life for her order and her prosperity, moral and social. And he loved Rome with an entbusiasm which was youtbful until deatb.
We are face to face to-day with the conditions which he met and set in order. Wbat he did we must now strive to do. His lifework, simply and tellingh' told, may well serve as an Inspiration and a guide to all who love the Church and our country.
Leo found in Von Ketteler's discourses food for lofty consideration. And Pius X bas placed a lov- ing tribute upon bis bonored tomb. What greater glory could he have than tbis? Germany and the whole World may well preserve in eternal memory and grateful recognition the words and works of one of the very greatest men of our age, Bishop Von Ketteier.
William Cardinal O'Connell,
Archhishop of Boston.
CONTENTS
FACE
Preface iii
BiBLIOGRAPHY I
Introduction 3
I. Lawyer AND Theologian, 1811-1844 7
II. CURATE AND PaSTOR, 1844-1849 I3
III. In THE National Parliament, 1848 19
IV. At THE First Catholic Congress, 1848 25
V. Social Questions of the Day, 1848 30
VI. Provost AT St. Hedwig's in Berlin, 1849-1850 . 57 VII. Ketteler's Episcopal Consecration. His Vow
OF Poverty, 1850 70
VIII. The Social Reformer on the Episcopal Throne,
1850-1877 'jd
IX. Liberty, Authority, and the Church, 1862 ... 87 X. Christianity and the Labor Question, 1864:
1. LIBERAL AND RADICAL ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE THE
LABOR QUESTION 97
2. CRITIQUE OF THE LIBERAL AND RADICAL SOLU-
TIONS OF THE LABOR QUESTION ..... • . . IO7
3. THE TRUE KEY TO THE LABOR PROBLEM II7
4. COOPERATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE SOLUTION OF
THE LABOR PROBLEM I24
XI. GeRMANY AFTER THE WaR OF 1866 I46
XII. A Christian Labor Catechism, 1869 157
XIII. The German Bishops and the Social Question. Social Program for the Clergy. 1869:
1. DOES the social QUESTION CONCERN GERMANY? I76
2. CAN AND SHOULD THE CHURCH HELP TO SOLVE
THE SOCIAL QUESTION ? 177
PAGE
3. VVHAT REMEDIES CAN BE APPLIED ? I79
4. HOW CAN THE CHURCH PROMOTE ASSOCIATIONS
AND INSTITUTIONS FOS WORKPEOPLE ? . . . . 181
XIV. At THE Vatican Council and in the Reich- stag, 1868-1871 185
XV. LiBERALISM, SOCIALISM AND ChRISTIANITY, 187I , I94
XVI. Ketteler's Socio-Political Program, 1873 . . 203 XVII. The Kulturkampf. The Social Virtues and
the Divine Law of Labor, 1873-1877 216
XVIII. The Christian Workman and the Socialistic
LABOR PARTY, 1877 220
LAST VISIT TO ROME AND DEATH, 1877 233
XIX. "The Great Preacher, though Dead, still
Speaks" 241
BISHOP KETTELER AND THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL REFORM MOVEMENT.
BiBLIOGRAPHY.
A. KETTELER S WORKS ON THE SOCIAL QUESTION
Soziale Predigten. Ed. Raich. Mainz, 1878
Arbeiterfrage und Christentum. Fourth edition, with an Introduction by Windthorst. Mainz, 1890. (French Transl. Liege, 1869.)
Die Katholiken im deutschen Reiche. Fifth edi- tion. Mainz, 1873.
Die Arbeiterbewegung und ihr Streben im Ver- hältniss zu Religion und Sittlichkeit. Fourth ed. Mainz, 1869.
Referate über die soziale Frage für die Fuldaer Conferenz. 1869. (Italian Transl. Venice, 1870.) (French Transl. in Goyau's Ketteier.)
Liberalismus, Sozialismus und Christentuju. Third edition. Mainz, 1871.
Kann ein katholischer Arbeiter Mitglied der so- zialistischen Arbeiterpartei sein? 1877. (Pub- lished in Pfülf's Life of Ketteier, Mainz, 1899.)
Religion, Sittlichkeit und Volkswohlfahrt. Ueber die christliche Arbeit. Two Pastoral Letters, 1876-77.
B. OTHER WRITINGS OF KETTELER QUOTED IN THE PRES-
ENT WORK
Freiheit, Autorität und Kirche. Seventh edition. Mainz, 1862. (Transl. into French, Magyar, Spanish, and Bohemian.)
2 BISHOP KETTELER.
Kann ein gläubiger Christ Freimaurer sein?
Fifth edition. Mainz, 1865. Deutschland nach dem Kriege von 1866. Sixth
ed. Mainz, 1867. (French Translation, 1869.) Die Centrums fraction auf dem ersten Deutschen
Reichstag. Third edition. Mainz, 1872. Briefe von und an W. E. Freiherr v. Ketteier.
Mainz, 1879. Hirtenbriefe. Mainz, 1904.
C. WORKS ON KETTELER
Pfülf, Otto, S.J. Bischof von Ketteier. Eine
geschichtliche Darstellung. 3 volumes. Mainz:
Kirchheim. 1899. Goyau, Georges. Ketteier, W. E. in La Pensee
Chretienne series. Paris, 1908. Also article on
Ketteier in Catholic Encyclopedia. De Girard. Ketteier et la Question Ouvrihe.
Avec une introduction sur le mouvement social
catholique. Berne, 1896. Decurtins, Gaspar. CEuvres Choisies de Mgr.
Ketteier. Basle, 1892. Kannengieser. Ketteier et l' Organisation sociale
en Allemagne. Paris, 1894. Liesen, Bernard. Ketteier und die Soziale Frage.
Frankf. 1888. Greiffenrath, Dr. Ketteier und die deutsche So- zialreform. Frankfort, 1893. Wenzel, Johannes. Arbeit er schütz und Zentrum.
Berlin, 1893. Mumbauer, Johannes. Wilhelm Emmanuel von
Ketteier' s Schriften. 3 volumes. Kempten, 1911.
INTRODUCTION.
OLD chroniclers relate that in the year 1184 Frederic Barbarossa, the heroic Hohenstaufen so famous in song and story, gave a great feast in the " Golden City " on the Rhine, at which forty thou- sand knights from far and near appeared to do him homage. Seven hundred and twenty-seven years went by, and another great feast was held in Golden Mainz, and from north and south and east and west of the new German Empire and from far beyond its borders fifty-two thousand " knights of labor " came to do homage, not to earthly liege, but to Christ the King, and to honor the memory of the Catholic labor apostle of the nineteenth Century, to celebrate the one hundredth birthday of Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteier. The Fifty-eighth Katho- likentag, of which this splendid workingmen's parade was the prelude, was Catholic Germany's tribute to one of her greatest sons, a mighty echo of the popularity which he enjoyed during his lifetime. The record of what Bishop von Ketteier did for his own diocese and for the Church at large, the great debt of gratitude Germany owes to him as the renewer of religious life, as the pioneer of the Cath- olic social reform movement and its scientific ex- ponent, as the champion of the religious and politi- cal rights of the Catholics, is written in indelible letters on the pages of history and in the hearts of his countrymen. His sublime personality, his emi- nent virtues, his lovable traits of character were the
4 BISHOP KETTELER.
admiration of his contemporaries and deserve to be held up for the imitation of all succeeding genera- tions. " He was for the nineteenth Century," says M. Decurtins, " what an Athanasius, a Basil, and an Ambrose were for their troubled times." ^
In dark and lowering days he grasped the pas- toral staff of St. Boniface with a firm hand and led out his sheep and went before them and showed them good pasture and stood between them and the wolves lying in wait to catch and to scatter. He stood on the watch-tower, and when he saw the enemy approach he sounded the alarm, rallied the Catholic forces and took his place in the forefront of the battle-line to hurl back the invaders.
No statues in marble or bronze were raised to him during the year of jubilee, but more fitting me- morials, memorials which this Sterling friend of the poor, the suffering, the workingmen, and the children will look down upon with favor and bless from his throne of glory. A church consecrated to the Sacred Heart was erected in the working- men's colony of Mainz ; the shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows in Dieburg, where Ketteier preached so often and prayed so much, was completely reno- vated; and a Ketteier Society was founded to raise funds for the erection of a free Sanatorium for poor children in Bad Nauheim.
It is the purpose of the following sketch to treat of Ketteier, not as the champion of the liberty of the Church and the religious reformer, but first and foremost of Ketteier the social reformer, of whom
1 Ketteier, p. xxxi.
SOCIAL REFORM. 5
the great " social Pope," Leo XIII, said : " He was my great predecessor !" ^
" Verba movent ; exempla trahunt." Ketteier was well aware of the profound wisdom underlying this old adage. He knew that reform, like charity, must begin at home. Unlike Lassalle and a host of other theorizing Socialists, he preached what he practised and practised what he preached. There was no need in his case to admonish the people to follow his good doctrine, not his bad example.
The life-story of a man like Ketteier is the best answer to the oft-repeated boast of the Socialists that they are the only ones who have stood by the poor man and the laborer, and to the taunts hurled by Bebel and Liebknecht at the members of the Ger- man Reichstag, 31 May, 1881, during the debate on the Accident Insurance Bill: " When did you begin to take notice of the workingman? When did you begin to study the Social Question? Not until the Socialists reminded you of your duty."
Ketteler's sociological writings, above all his Grosse Socialen Fragen der Gegenwart and Arbei- terfrage und das Christentum, are acknowledged classics in this category of literature. They gave the first Impulse to the Christian social reform movement, and exerted a far-reaching influence not only on the social reform legislation in Germany, but also on the famous Labor Encyclical of Leo XIII — Rerum Novarum, of 15 May, 1891. No less an authority than Windthorst ^ pronounced them to be the best exposition of the Christian point of
2 To the Swiss Catholic sociologist, M. Gasp. Decurtins.
^ Introduction to the 4th edition of Arbeiter/r. und Christeni.
6 BISHOP KETTELER.
view on the social question and the clearest pres- entation of the defects and the one-sidedness of the naturalistic position.
French and Swiss writers have long since taken up the study of Ketteier. During the last decade of the last Century, Decurtins, Kannengieser, Girard, translated the most important of his works or analyzed his economic doctrines; in 1903 Lionnet wrote an interesting sketch of his life, based on Father Pfülf's monumental work; some years later Rene Lebegue made the sociological ideas of Ket- teier the subject of an academic dissertation, and in 1908 the versatile Georges Goyau contributed an excellent volume on Ketteier to the collection of La Pensee Chretienne. If there are any English works dealing directly with Ketteier, I confess that I have not been able to trace them.
w
CHAPTER I.
LaWYER AND ThEOLOGIAN. 181I-I844.
ILHELM EMMANUEL VON KETTELER
sprang from an ancient Westphalian race. His pedigree can be traced back to the thirteenth Century. A Ketteier was the first duke of Cour- land and Semgallen, and another Ketteier, who died in 1711, was the husband of Anna Iwanowna, who ascended the Russian throne in 1730.
Born at Münster, on Christmas Day, 181 1, Wil- helm Emmanuel ^ inherited more than a baron's title and rank: ardent love of the Catholic Church, noble independence of mind, deep manly piety — traits for which his ancestors were ever distin- guished — these were the better portion of his heritage.
Carlyle speaks somewhere of the " all-but omnip- otence of early culture and nurture ". The influ- ences surrounding Ketteler's early life were cer- tainly calculated to prepare him for the great work cut out for him by Providence. Brought up in the most beautiful family life, under the eyes of a father who was every inch a nobleman, of a mother who was filled with inexhaustible love and solici- tude for the Christian training of her children, sur- rounded by respectful and respected domestics whose years of Service were as a rule measured by
^ The name Emmanuel was given him in honor of the auspicious day of his birth.
8 BISHOP KETTELER.
their span of earthly life, early familiär with the life of the independent yeoman, the industrious tenant, and the humble craftsman of his own Münsterland, as well as the very different conditions prevailing in the mines and the factories on the banks of the Ruhr — knowledge and experience broadened and intensified by study, travel, and in- tercourse with all classes and conditions of men — Ketteier early laid the foundations on which his career was built."
After a four-year course in the Jesuit College at Brieg (Switzerland), Ketteier was graduated from the Gymnasium of Münster with high honors, and studied law at Göttingen, ^ Berlin, Heidelberg, and Munich. At Göttingen his volcanic temper in- volved him in a number of student duels, one of which cost him the tip of his nose and two weeks' career. The parents of the dueller took the aflfair very much to heart. Ketteier himself thought it did not matter much whether his nose was a little shorter or a little longer; but his father was not of the same opinion and forbade his son to appear be- fore him until such time as his nose should have re- gained its normal proportions, which necessitated a long and troublesome eure in Berlin.
The reader may be surprised that a young man with a Christian home and College training like Ketteler's should have taken to the very unchristian practice of dueling during his university course,
2 On the influences surrounding Ketteler's childhood and youth see Liesen's Ketteier und die Soziale Frage.
^ Windthorst was also at Göttingen at the time, but Ketteier formed only a passing acquaintance with him.
SOCIAL REFORM.
But it must be remembered that in those days Stu- dent duels with rapiers or broadswords were fought by Catholic students without the least scruple. The ecclesiastical prohibitions were either not known or mildly interpreted, and very few indeed saw in such " little affairs of honor," which seldom took a very dangerous turn, a violation of the Natural Law. August Windthorst, a cousin of the great Centrist leader, inscribed a lasting memorial of his " left-handed dexterity " on Bismarck's right cheek, and Hermann von Mallinckrodt was looked upon as the most skilful swordsman the university of Bonn had seen for many years. In later years these men became outspoken opponents of dueling both in the army and in the universities.
In spite of the manifold temptations besetting the highways and by-ways of German university life, the young Westphalian nobleman, on his own con- fession, never committed an action calculated to sully in any way his family escutcheon. " I was not an over-zealous Catholic, but I always had the high- est regard for our holy religion, and those who re- viled or sneered at it I hated from the depths of my soul. I was a gay Student, but God preserved me from everything of which I should have been ashamed before the world." The prayers of his saintly mother and the example of his high-souled sister no doubt helped him safely through his period of storm and stress. To the memory of these his two good angels he paid a beautiful tribute in after years. " The greatest blessing," he said in one of his sermons on the Great Social Qtiestions of the Day, " that God can confer on man in the natural
lO BISHOP KETTELER.
Order is without doubt the gift of a truly Christian mother. I do not say the gift of a tender, loving mother, because, if the mother is filled with the spirit of the world, her love is not a boon but a bane to her child. But a Christian mother is of all divine gifts the greatest. . . . When such a mother has long been laid to rest and her son is seized by the storm-winds of life and, tossed about hither and thither, is on the verge of losing both faith and virtue, her noble, saint-like form will appear to him and gently yet forcibly draw him back to the path of duty. He who has learned to know Christianity and its virtues, its inner truth, its purity, its self- oblivious love in the life of a Christian mother or of her counterpart, a Christian sister; he who has tasted peace, the peace which Christ calls His peace, in the bosom of such a family — the thought of it will pluck him out of every pool of perdition into which life may hurl him. He who has once seen virtue in such transfigured Images cannot look on vice, even though he be caught in its toils, except with aversion and contempt." *
At the end of his university course Ketteier en- tered the Service of the State as referendary at the Superior Court of Münster. His marked ability and his scrupulous attention to his work gained him the good will of his superiors. An honorable career was open to him ; but he was not happy in his chosen field. There was a void in his heart which the routine of his daily life was by no means calculated to fill. He feit that something extraordinary must happen to change the course of his life.
* Predigten, II, pp. 199-201.
SOCIAL REFORM. U
Something extraordinary did happen, something the young lawyer had hardly looked for. On the twentieth of November, 1837, the Prussian Govern- ment ordered the arrest of the aged Archbishop of Cologne, Klemens August von D roste- Vischering, ostensibly for having plotted against the State, in reality for refusing to break his oath of fealty to the Church by handing over the children of mixed marriages to Protestantism.
This so-called Cologne Event {Kölner Ereignis) made a deep impression on Ketteier. He had not buried his chivalry and his love of Holy Church in law books nor bartered his independence of mind for Government favor. When his kinsman Fer- dinand von Galen was dismissed from his diplomatic post in Brüssels for declining to make official com- munication of the false charges against the im- prisoned Archbishop to the Belgian Court, he handed in his resignation, having become convinced that he could not serve a Government that de- manded the sacrifice of his conscience.^ " One must have a very good stomach," he wrote at the time, " to digest the bile stirred up by such infam- ous acts."
The name and fame of the great Görres drew Ketteier to Munich, whither his brother Richard, who had exchanged a cavalry officer's uniform for the Soutane of a seminarian, had preceded him. Here he spent the spring and summer of 1839, dividing his time between serious reading, the rare pleasures of intimate intercourse with the famous Catholic leaders, Görres, Windischmann, and
5 Briefe, p. 8.
12 BISHOP KETTELER.
Phillips, and invigorating hunting expeditions into the Bavarian and Tyrolese Alps. But he did not find what he had come to seek — certainty as to his vocation. This he owed, after God and the Blessed Virgin of Altötting, to Dr. Reisach, then Bishop of Eichstätt and afterward Cardinal. In 1841 he took up the study of theology at Munich. Before pro- ceeding to the university he made a retreat at the Jesuit College in Innsbruck. These days of earnest introspection and communion with God were de- cisive for his whole future. He made a complete sacrifice of himself, vowing to place his talents, his fortune, his influence, at the service of Christ and His persecuted Spouse.® From Munich he passed to the clerical seminary of Münster, where he was ordained i June, 1844. His first appointment was to a curacy in the little town of Beckum.
^ Erste Exercitien des seligen Bischofs von Mainz. Von ihm selbst aufgezeichnet und herausgegeben von Dr. J. B. Heinrich, Mainz, 1877.
CHAPTER II.
CURATE AND PaSTOR. 1 844- 1 849.
WHEN Ketteier was still engaged in his uncon- genial duties as Government referendary — "much paper and little heart," was his not altogether inappropriate description of Government business — he told a friend that his ideal in life was to be placed in a position in which he would be enabled to work for the moral and social uplift of the com- mon people. His dream was now realized. Beckum afforded him numberless opportunities of exercising not only spiritual but also corporal works of mercy, and he was not the man to let slip even one.
The following incident gives us a glimpse of the ardent charity which burned within him. With two other priests, one of them the future confessor- bishop of Münster, Johann Bernhard Brinkmann, he occupied a little presbytery — Priesterhäuschen, the people called it. One of his companions feil seriously ill. Sisters of Charity and Brothers of Mercy were a rarity at that time even in West- phalia; but, although many months passed before death released him from his pains, the sick man never feit the want of a nurse. Ketteier tended him as tenderly and carefully as any mother or sister could have done. Bed-making and sick-nursing he had, as he used to say, learned from his mother.
Ketteier was curate in Beckum for only two years, but to this day his memory is in benediction amongst
14 BISHOP KETTELER.
the people, and the flourishing Hospital and Chil- drens' Home in charge of the Clementine Sisters are a lasting monument to his zeal in the Service of the poor and at the same time his first contribution toward the Solution of the social question. " We had to beg for every rafter in the roof and for every stone in the walls," he wrote in 1851/ He applied to relatives and f riends at home and abroad. When repulsed, which was rarely the case, he returned to the Charge, remembering the parable of the Friend and the Three Loaves. A kind-hearted but over- cautious parish priest was so moved by his eloquent appeal for the poor of Christ that he took him into the church and out of a secret fire-and-robber- proof vault brought forth two thousand dollars and gave them to him as his contribution toward the building-fund. One-sixth of the total building ex- penses was borne by Ketteier himself. " In two substantial buildings," he could write some yeara after, " forty sick persons and all the poor children of the district are cared for : a beggar-child is something unheard of in Beckum." -
I cannot pass on without making reference to one of the most winning traits in Ketteler's character — his love of children. For the school children who lived too far from Beckum to go home for dinner he had a special recreation-room fitted out. There they gathered around the warm stove on cold win- ter days, the curate, like another Philip Neri, in their midst, telling them stories, teaching and en- couraging them.
1 Briefe, p. 227. 2 pf^if, j, p. 128.
SOCIAL REFORM.
IS
One day the curate met a little boy who was weeping bitterly. He had been rudely repulsed by a rieh farmer at whose door he had asked for a piece of bread. Ketteier called straightway at the inhospitable house. He was, of course, received with every mark of respect and the best in the house was set before him. But he simply asked for a piece of bread and butter, and when he had received it, Said : " You have honored me, because I am your curate, because I am a baron; but the bread and butter are for a poor child, for a guest who is greater than I ; for ' what you do unto the least of My brethren, you do unto Me '."
" Ever since I have been entrusted with the care of children," he said in one of his famous discourses on the Great Social Questions of the Day, " I have given the most careful attention to such as had lain under theheart of an unworthy mother." When he came across " those unfortunate children who had never known their father, perhaps not even their mother, or had seen in her an image of re- probation," he always took a very special interest in them and, if possible, placed them in good Cath- olic families. " H you have the little ones, you will win over the big ones too," was one of his favorite sayings, and as Bishop he was always troubled and displeased whenever he heard of pastors who could not gain the confidence and attachment of the chil- dren. Every year in autumn, when the grapes were ripe in the episcopal vineyard, the boys and girls of the city orphan asylums were invited to the Bishop's house and liberally treated to the luscious fruit. There was not an orphan child in his diocese
l6 BISHOP KETTELER.
that did not look up to the Bishop as its second father and friend.
One of Ketteler's favorite seminary dreams was realized in 1846, when he was made pastor of Hop- sten, a parish of some two thousand souls. Throughout his whole life he regarded the lot of a country parish priest as an ideal one. A letter written 24 May, 1855, begins with the characteristic words : " You know I am every inch a country pas- tor (Bauern-Pastor) ."
It was by no means a sinecure on which the new pastor entered. For a generation and more the people of Hopsten had been like sheep without a shepherd. The baptismal registers bore undeniable testimony to the sad consequences of these years of inefficient pastoral care. Materially his parishion- ers were hardly better off. " The whole country- side," Ketteier wrote immediately on his Installa- tion, " is rieh in sand. The people are mostly poor tenants." To add to the general misery the drought of the summer of 1847 brought famine and typhoid in its wake. In this hour of direst need the pastor was the good angel of his flock. He went in person to every well-to-do farmer and asked him how much of his harvest he was ready to sacri- fice for the famine-stricken, and from every trades- man and wage-earner he begged an alms for his poor. Many families otherwise not reckoned among the poor were especially sorely straitened, as an ex- cusable pride prevented them from making known their condition. These the pastor visited under Cover of darkness and ministered to their wants. It is impossible to estimate even remotely how
SOCIAL REFORM. I^
much of his own and of his relatives' money Ket- teier spent while the famine lasted. Wagonloads of corn, bread, and potatoes arrived at regulär in- tervals, and no one but the pastor knew who paid the bills.
During the famine year Ketteler's sister, the Countess of Merveldt, spent a few days with him at Hopsten. After dinner he invariably invited her to accompany him on his rounds through the parish. The houses of the poor and the bed-ridden were the points of interest to which he took her, and she, with true Ketteier generosity, dispensed alms tili her last penny was gone and she had to borrow money from her brother to pay her way home.
Solicitude for the poor was a passion with Ket- teier. " When I have nothing for the poor, I don't go out," he remarked to his companion, after he had roused a sleeping beggar in a Roman piazza and given him an alms.^ He never turned a beggar away unless he was certain that he was a notoriously degenerate subject. But his benevolence was not always proof even against such cases : "he chid their wand' rings but relieved their pain." A disabled Veteran of the Napoleonic wars counted as con- fidently on the Bishop's annual subsidy as on his State-pension — and he got it as regularly too.*
On 5 October, 1864, the Bauhütte, the leading organ of the German Freemasons, published what pretended to be a faithful report of a " thunder- ing " sermon preached by Bishop Ketteier against the " damned and accursed sect of Freemasons " be-
8 This incident happened on Ketteler's last visit to Rome, in 1877. * Liesen, Ketteier und die Soziale Frage.
l8 BISHOP KETTELER.
fore an audience composed almost exclusively of persons of the lower classes, boatmen, day-labor- ers, and farmers, and closed with the disdainful remark : " Perhaps the Bishop thinks that Free- masonry is dependent for its membership on dock- hands, day-laborers, and peasants. We aim higher than that." Ketteler's reply was significant and to the point: " In this respect the Catholic Church is diametrically opposed to Freemasonry. We joy- fully confess that every dock-hand, every day-la- borer, every peasant is of as much moment to us as any prince or king, and that we place human dignity far above all class distinctions. We feel nothing but inexpressible pity for those who esteem the wealthy manufacturer higher than the poor farm- hand." ^
' Ketteier, Kann ein gläubiger Christ Freimaurer sein? p. 95.
CHAPTER III.
In THE National Parliament. 1848.
THE eventful year of 1848 drew on apace. The social and political tempest, which threatened to overthrow even the last remnants of the old order, snatched Ketteier from the quiet and seclusion of the country and set him down in the very vortex of public life. Though averse to all political strife, so fervid a soldier of Christ, so true a lover of liberty, could not well remain an inactive spectator of the momentous struggle; nor could his Catholic fellow-citizens well do without his energy and tal- ents. After a spirited contest, he was elected to represent the district of Tecklenburg in the National Assembly at Frankfort. From this period begins the third phase of his life.
" Only religious motives ", he wrote after the elections, " could induce me to step out of my spirit- ual calling for a season." ^ The platform on which he was elected contained only one plank — liberty for all, but also for the Catholic Church. At Frankfort he seldom rose to speak at the sessions in the Paulskirche, and at the meetings of the Catholic Club he took part in the debates only when ques- tions relating to the Church or the School were dis- / cussed.
Ketteier had been at Frankfort for three months without having attracted any particular attention,
^ Briefe, p. 157.
20 BISHOP KETTELER.
when, by accident, as it were, his name was sud- denly heralded throughout the length and breadth of Germany and far beyond its confines. On the eighteenth of September the streets of Frankfort were the scene of bloody encounters between the revolutionaries and the Government troops. To- ward nightfall two of the ablest and most aggres- sive of the conservative deputies, Fürst Lichnowski and General von Auerswald, as they were riding out of the city in the direction of Bockenheim, where the Regent of the Empire resided, were fol-j lowed by a band of rioters. As the two deputies were unarmed they took refuge in a nearby wood, but were discovered by their pursuers, set upon, and literally torn and slashed to pieces. Auerswald died on the spot, but Lichnowski succumbed to his wounds during the night, in the Holy Ghost Hospi- tal. When Ketteier came to the Hospital next morning at his usual hour to say Mass he was ap- prised of the dastardly crime. The Impression it made on him was deep and lasting. " I saw these men," he said twenty years later in a sermon preached in the Cathedral of Freiburg, " on the evening before that terrible day in the füll bloom of their manhood, and early in the morning of the following day I found them lifeless, lying horribly mutilated in their blood."
The funeral of the two murdered noblemen and the other victims of the street riots took place 21 September, Ketteier having been selected to preach the funeral oration in the cemetery. " It was a remarkably impressive and thrilling discourse," the Allgemeine Zeitung of Augsburg said in its report
SOCIAL REFORM. 21
of the obsequies. " It is to be printed and distri- buted broadcast throughout the country." It was this Speech, in fact, that revealed to August Reich- ensperger Ketteler's greatness. " It was powerful; it penetrated to the very marrow," he told his brother Peter.^ Beside the open graves, facing the Speaker and his jaws working with ill-suppressed rage, stood Robert Blum, the radical deputy and demagogue who was court-martialed and shot a few weeks later in Vienna for fighting at the head of the revolutionary mob.
The oration, which was published soon afterward in Leipsic and is included in Ketteler's coUected sermons, belongs indeed to the best that sacred elo- quence has to show. " It is a classic model of psy- chological disposition," says Pfülf. " It was not studied, but feit." A few extracts will show that Ketteier had carefully studied the signs of the times, probed the ugly wounds of society to their depths, and was not afraid to point out the remedies to be applied if the wounds were ever to heal.
Who are the murderers of cur friends? Is it indeed those who have riddled their bodies with bullets? No, it is not they. It is the thoughts that bring forth good and wicked deeds on earth — and the thoughts that have brought forth these deeds are not the thoughts of our people. My lot is cast with the people ; I know it in its pains and in its sorrows. I have devoted my whole lif e to the Service of the people, and the more I have learned to know it, the more also I have learned to love it. No, I repeat again, it is not our noble, honest German people from whom this horrible deed has gone forth. The mur-
2 Pastor, August Reichensperger, I, p. 264.
22 BISHOP KETTELER.
derers are the men who sneer at Christ, Christianity and the Church before the people ; who try to pluck the blessed message of Redemption out of the hearts of the people; who raise rebellion, revolution, to the dignity of a principle; who teil the people that it is not their duty to govem their passions, to subject their actions to the higher law of virtue . . . the murderers are the men who set themselves up as the lying idols of the people, in Order that they may fall dowTi and adore them.
On all sides I hear the cry for universal peace — and whose soul would not joyfuUy join in the cry? — and I see men ever more and more divided against themselves, the father against the son, the brother against the sister, the f riend against the f riend ; I hear the cry for equality among men, an equality which the message of salvation has been teaching for thousands of years, and I see man striv- ing fjantically to raise himself above his fellow-man; I hear the beautiful, the sublime cry for brotherhood and love, a cry borne down to us from Heaven, and I see hatred and caliunny and lying running riot among men; I hear the cry to hold out a helping band to our poor suffering brother, — and who, so he has not plucked out both his eyes, can deny that his need is great, and who, that has not torn his heart out of his bosom, will not join with all his soul in this cry for help? — and I see avarice and covetousness increase, and pleasure-seeking grow more and more. I see men who call themselves " friends of the people " adding to the general distress, undermining the love of work, and setting their poor deluded brother at the pockets of his fellow-man, keep- irig their own money-bags tight sealed the while ; I hear the cry for liberty, and before me I see men murdered for having dared to utter an independent word; I hear the cry for humanity, and I see a brutality which fills me with horror.
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O yes, I believe in the truth of all those sublime ideas that are stirring the world to its depths to-day; in my opinion not one is too high for mankind ; I believe it is the duty of man to realize them all, and I love the age in which we live for its mighty wrestling for them, how- ever far it is from attaining them. But there is only one means of realizing these sublime ideals — return to Him who brought them into the world, to the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Christ proclaimed those very doc- trines which men, who have turned their backs on Him and deride Him, are now passing off as their own inven- tions; but He not only preached them — He practised them in His life, and showed us the only way to make them part and parcel of our own lives. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; outside of Him is error, and lying, and death. Through Him mankind can do all things, even the highest, the most ideal ; without Him it can do nothing. With Him, in the Truth which He taught, on the Way which He pointed out, we can make a paradise of earth, we can wipe away the tears from the eyes of our poor suffering brother, we can establish the reign of love, of harmony and fraternity, of true himianity; we can — I say it from the deepest conviction of my soul — we can establish commimity of goods and everlasting peace, and at the same time live under the freest political institutions ; without Him we shall perish disgracefully, miserably, the laughing-stock of succeed- ing generations. This is the solemn truth that speaks to US out of these graves; the history of the world bears it out. May we take it to heart !
It was on the same fateful eighteenth of Septem- ber, vi^hose evening hours, as Pfülf says, were pol- luted by the massacre of Auerswald and Lich- nowski, that Ketteier delivered his first parliamen- tary speech in the Paulskirche. His inborn love of
24
BISHOP KETTELER.
J
liberty and abhorrence of absolutism and bureau- cracy found energetic expression. The vexed school question was under discus'sion and eight Speakers were to be heard. The day was already far advanced when Ketteier, who was last on the list, arose to speak. He warned the State not to banish religlon from the schools and pleaded elo- quently for recognition of the rights of individua) conscience in the matter of education. " The State ", he said, amid the cheers of the assembly, " may demand a certain amount of intellectual cul- ture from every Citizen, and may insist that parents procure this culture for their children. Beyond this the State has no right to go ; it has no right to determine at the outset what course the father is to foUow in the education of his children. That would be tyranny, that would be the most shameful abso- lutism." ^
* Stimmen aus Maria Laach, Vol. 74.
CHAPTER IV.
At THE First Catholic Congress. 1848.
TWO weeks later the first of the now famous Ger- man Catholic Congresses met in Mainz. The mass-meeting of 4 October was destined to become a landmark, not only in the history of the Katholi- kentage, but also in the history of the Catholic Church and of Catholic social reform work. Twenty-three deputies had come over from Frank- fort, among them Döllinger, August Reichen- sperger, Beda Weber, Professor Sepp, and Ket- teier, all men of weight and name, prominent alike by their rank in life, their talents, and their zeal in the defence of the liberties of the Church. Döl- linger, whose Speech in August on the liberty of the Church had been universally regarded as a master- piece of logic, composition, and delivery, had been selected by the Catholic parliamentarians to be their spokesman. He was to report succinctly on the re- sult of the Frankfort discussion in regard to Church and school questions. The people of Mainz, how- ever, would not hear of this arrangement and the Committee of Speakers at length prevailed on a number of deputies to speak at the mass-meeting, unprepared as they were. Ketteier spoke on the liberty of the Church, a subject ever uppermost in his mind. He did not deny that the times cast dismal shadows ; but there was no reason to despair. " Liberty can indeed bring dreadful things, but it
26 BISHOP KETTELER.
also brings the highest goods of humanity
Religion has every reason to rejoice at liberty, for under the banner of liberty it will develop all the streng^h of its truth. . . . But just as religion needs liberty, so also liberty needs religion ; if men do not return to religion they cannot stand liberty. ..."
Here his discourse took a sudden, unexpected turn. He opened up before the astonished gaze of his hearers the outlook on a vast and practically unexplored region — the social question. " The Chairman has told you," he said, " how the Catholic societies should fulfil the tasks they have set them- selves to do. Allow me to suggest a task for the immediate future, the task of religion in regard to social conditions. The most difficult question, which no legislation, no form of Government has been able to solve, is the social question. The diffi- culty, the vastness, the urgency of this question fills me with the greatest joy. It is not indeed the dis- tress, the wretchedness of my brothers — with whose condition I sympathize, God knows, from the bot- tom of my heart — ^that affords me this joy, but the fact that it must now become evident which Church bears within it the power of divine truth. The world will see that to the Catholic Church is re- served the definitive Solution of the social question; for the State with all its legislative machinery has not the power to solve it."
" The people are in sore distress," he continued. " The starving laboring masses, whose ranks are swelling from day to day, are raising their voices in protest and demand. How can we prevent them from hurling themselves upon society, whose vic-
SOCIAL REFORM.
2^
tims they call themselves or believe themselves to be? Let us, I beseech you, show forth in our live^ the power of the Church by following in the foot- steps of a St. Francis of Assisi, who gave away his last garment in perfectly voluntary poverty. Works of love are the most convincing arguments. When men see that with us is the home of love, of an active Christian love that is ever ready to aid our suffering, needy brother, the truth of our faith will also be recognized. May the Catholic societies, in this respect also, show the world that the true spirit of Jesus Christ is not dead on the earth." ^
The Impression made by Ketteler's earnest and timely words was deep and permanent. The per- sonal appearance of the Speaker had not a little to do with this. "After Förster [the future prince- bishop of Breslau]", Beda Weber, an eye-witness, wrote at the time, " Freiherr von Ketteier rose to speak, a tall, stalwart figure, with clean-cut features, indicative of fearless, inflexible energy, paired with the old-time Westphalian fidelity to God and Church, to emperor and empire. In this resolute mind the German nation in its entirety, in its his- tory, in its Catholicism still lives on in the freshness of youth. ... In the acquisitions of the March Re- volution he sees the means of completing the dorne of the German Church sooner and more magnifi- cently than the dome of Cologne.^ Hence his words Struck his hearers with such elemental force: they heard only the echo of their own hearts.
^ Official Report, p. 51.
2 The Cathedral of Cologne was still unfinished when these words were written.
28 BISHOP KETTELER.
When I think of Ketteier the orator, I always think of him as of one who is every inch a man. ..."
In Frankfort Ketteier had laid the foundations of his fame as an orator; in Mainz he became a prophet. He was the first to draw the attention of the Catholic world to the supreme importance of the social question and to the only means of solving it. Since this memorable fourth of October the social question has formed one of the principal topics of discussion at the Catholic Congresses, which have become the rallying-point of all the Catholic socio- logical work of Germany. If Ketteier had done nothing eise, this fact would suffice to render his name immortal.
A splendid banquet brought the first Katholiken- tag to a close. The Pope, the German nation, the German hierarchy were toasted amid loud acclama- tion. A master-butcher's son arose and asked the guests to drink to the health of the honest trades- men of Germany ; a " democrat " f rom Treves arose and pleaded for a remembrance of the people, — " the people who are ready to die for liberty and for the Holy Faith " ; last of all, Ketteier arose and proposed three cheers for — the poor. He reminded the banqueters of the many poor men and women of the city debarred from joys like theirs. " God's Providence doles out to the one more, to the other less ; but only in order to give us the opportunity of balancing the difference. Therefore I do not ask you to empty a glass of wine to the health of the poor: I invite you to work with heart and hand for the welfare of the poor, to stand by poverty with a helping hand." When three thundering Hochs
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29
had been given in response to this unexpected toast, Ketteier passed round his hat and in a few minutes one hundred and twenty-five florins were collected and put into the hands of the president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society to be distributed among the poor.
CHAPTER V.
The Social Questions of the Day. 1848.
WHEN Ketteier returned to Frankfort early in November, after a month's vacation in the midst of his beloved parishioners of Hopsten, he was invited to preach a series of sermons in the Cathedral of Mainz. To this invitation we owe the six magni- ficent discourses on the Great Social Questions of the Day. In a truly lapidary style and with the calm clearness and precision characteristic of his mind, Ketteier treated the fundamental questions of the social Order according to the teachings of the Church and her approved theologians, especially St. Thomas. Two sermons were devoted to the Cath- olic doctrine of the right of property, the third to the liberty of man, the fourth to man's destiny, the fifth to marriage and family life, the sixth to the authority of the Church. The sermons, which were published immediately after their delivery, made an impression nothing short of sensational. After the lapse of more than sixty years they read as if they had been written in our own day. They have not aged with time. " The voice of the preacher rings in them still, strong as the cry of the lion in the mountains."
A deputy from Frankfort who happened to be in Mainz on 3 December, when Ketteier delivered his second sermon on the right of property, gives the following description of the impression produced :
SOCIAL REFORM. 3I
To my joy I found the people of Mainz, even in the tavems, quite worked up over the sermon preached that day in the Cathedral by Freiherr von Ketteier, West- phalian deputy to the National Parliament, before a vast conconrse of people. They were captivated to the last man by the persuasive eloquence of the Speaker. He is a living proof of what great things one resolute mind can accomplish in the face of the greatest difficulties.^
At the third Catholic Congress of Mainz (1892) the famous Swiss sociologist, Dr. Decurtins, drew attention to the fact that, when in 1848 the Com- munist Manifeste of the socialistic agitators Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was launched on the World, " Ketteier was one of the few men who re- cognized the füll significance of the social move- ment then still in its infancy," and that to him be- longs " the undying honor of having met the mani- feste of the Communists with a programme of Christian sociology that Stands unsurpassed to this day." =«
In the very first sermon Ketteier calls the social question " the most important question of the day ". In the second sermon he dwells at some length on this subject:
We cannot speak of our time, much less understand it, without ever and anon Coming back upon our social con- ditions, and especially on the cleft between those who possess property and those who do not, on the condition of our poor brethren, on the means of Coming to their relief. One may attach never so much importance to
1 Hist. Polit. Blaetter, XXIII, p. 336.
* Official Report of the Cath. Congress of Mainz, 1892.
32
BISHOP KETTELER.
political questions, to the proper moulding of political life, but the real difficulty of our Situation does not lie in them. Even with the best form of government we have not work, we have not clothing, we have not bread and shelter for our poor. Nay, the nearer political questions approach Solution, the more manifest will it become that this has been the smallest part of our task, the more imperiovisly will the social question step into the foreground and clamor for Solution. . . . If there- f ore we would understand the times in which we live, we must try to fathom the social question. He who under- stands it, xmderstands our tünes; to him who does not understand it, both present and future are a puzzle. . . . Whilst the leaders and seducers of the people aim only at getting hold of the reins of Government, the poor people themselves hope for a betterment of their material lot. The masses still believe in the promises of their leaders, believe that a new form of Government will free Ihem f rom their present misery. But when once they are convinced of their error, when once they see that neither liberty of the press, nor the right of association, nor populär assemblies, nor clever tums of speech, nor populär sovereignty are able to f eed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to comfort the sorrowful, to nurse the sick, they will wreak vengeance on their seducers and in de- spair Stretch out their hands to other anchors of rescue.'
As the social question is intimately bound up with the question of private property, Ketteier pro- ceeds to expose and defend the Catholic doctrine on this important matter.
I propose to set f orth the Catholic doctrine on the right of private property as St. Thomas developed it six hun- dred years ago. Perhaps we shall find that centuries be-
^ Predigten, II, p. 133.
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f ore OUT time the human mind, guided by faith, traced for US ways which, devoid of faith and left to itself, it seeks in vain to discover to-day.
In Order to give complete expression to the theory of property, St. Thomas examines at the outset the relation of God to His creatures. Let us foUow him in this inquiry.
St. Thomas lays down the principle that all creatures, and consequently all earthly goods, can, of their very nature, belong only to God. This proposition is a neces- sary corollary of the dogma that God drew forth all things, excepting Himself alone, out of nothing. God is therefore the true and sole proprietor of all things, and this right of God, because so intimately connected with the very existence of creatures, is inalienable, and no division, no ownership, no custom, no law can restrict this essential right of God — God possesses all rights, man none. Besides this essential and complete right of owner- ship, which can belong to God alone, St. Thomas re- cognizes a usufructuary right, and only in regard to this right of using and enjoying them does he concede to men a right to the goods of earth. Hence, when men speak of a natural right of ownership, there can be no ques- tion of true and complete proprietorship, but only of a usufructuary right. But from this it also foUows that the usufructuary right itself can never be regarded as an unltmited right, a right to do with terrestrial goods what man pleases, but always and solely as a right to use these goods as God wills and as He has ordained. In the use of these goods man must recognize the order established by God, and at no time has he the right to alienate them from the purpose assigned to them by God. Now the purpose of all earthly things is expressed with equal cleamess in the very nature of the things themselves and in the words addressed by God to the first of mankind after creation : " Behold, I have given you every herb-
34
BISHOP KETTELER.
bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat." *
To God therefore belongs, to conclude with St. Thomas's own words, the sovereign proprietorship over all things. But in His Providence He has destined some of these things for the sustenance of man, and for this reason man also has a natural right of ownership, viz. the right to use things. Two very important conclusions follow from these premises.
In the first place, the Catholic doctrine of private property has nothing in common with the conception current in the world according to which man looks on himself as the unrestricted master of his possessions. The Church can never concede to man the right of using at his pleasure the goods of this world, and when she speaks of private property and protects it, she never loses sight of the three essential and constituent elements of her idea of property, viz. that the true and complete right of property pertains to God alone, that man's right is restricted to the usufnict, and that man is bomid, in re- gard to this usufruct, to recognize the order established by God.
Secondly, this doctrine of the right of property, having its root and foundation in God, is possible only where there is living faith in God. It is only since the men who call themselves the friends of the people, although they steadily compass its ruin, and their spiritual pro- genitors have shaken mankind's faith in God, that the Godless doctrine could gain ground which makes man the god of his possessions. Separated from God, men regarded themselves as the exclusive masters of their possessions and looked on them only as a means of satis- fying their ever-increasing love of pleasure; separated from God, they set up sensual pleasures and the enjoy- ment of life as the end of their existence, and worldly
* Gen. I : 29.
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goods as the means of attaining this end ; and so of necessity a gulf was f ormed between the rieh and the poor such as the Christian world had not known tili then. While the rieh man in his refined and pampered sensual- ity dissipates and wastes his substance, he suffers the poor man to languish for very lack of the barest neces- saries of life and robs htm of what God intended for the nourishment of all. A moimtain of injustice, like a heavy malediction, rests on property thus abused and diverted from its natural and supematural purpose. Not the Catholic Church, but infidelity or atheism has brought about this State of things, and just as they have destroyed in the poor man the love of work, so are they destroying in the rieh man the spirit of active charity.
The theory which we have been developing and which follows as a necessary consequence from the relation of God to His creatures, fumishes us with the real basis for determining the true nature of the Christian conception of property. Starting from this principle, let us advance a Step farther. Man's right of ownership is, as we have seen, nothing but a right conceded to hini by God to use the goods of earth as the Creator has ordained. New the will of God in this matter can be accomplished in >J^ two ways. Men can either exercise their property, or rather usufructuary, rights in common, that is, admin- ister the goods of earth in common and divide the profits (Communism) ; or they can possess them divided, so that each man has property rights over a specified portion of them and is at liberty to dispose of the profits derived from them.
Which of these two Systems is destined for man? St. Thomas examines this question also and solves a problem which was to agitate the world six hundred years after him. Let us follow him step by step in his investigation. In the usufructuary right which must be conceded to man he distinguishes two things : first, the right of man-
36 BISHOP KETTELER.
agement and administration ; and, secondly, the right of enjoying the profits. This division needs no justification. In the State in which they are presented to us by natura, the goods of earth cannot satisfy our wants. They must be prepared by man for consumption.
In regard to the management and administration of property, St. Thomas affirms that the individual right of ownership over the goods of earth must be upheld, and that for three reasons. In the first place, it is the only way to secure good management, for every one takes better care of what belongs to himself than of that which he possesses jointly with others. Every one, he adds, shuns work and only too readily leaves to others what has been enjoined on all, as may be seen in a house in which there are many servants. It is not difficult to see the truth of this Observation. If all goods were man- aged in common, or if a division took place at regularly recurring periods of time, or even if the right of in- heritance were suppressed, good administration would be out of the question, improvement would be rendered impossible, and a powerful incentive to new discoveries would be removed. Each one would rely on the others, and laziness, so natural to man, having lost its counter- poise, would soon gain the upper band and bring about a depreciation in the goods of the earth.
In the second place, says St. Thomas, the recognition of the right of private property can alone guarantee the Order required for f ruitf ul management ; for if each one had to look out for all, general confusion would result. This truth also is incontestable. There is an incredible variety of human occupations all of which must find a special place in a general Organization if all the wants of human nature are to be satisfied. This Organization cannot be disturbed without danger to the well-being of humanity. Now, the essential element in this general Organization of labor is precisely family property, de-
SOCIAL REFORM. ^7
termining as it does in a large measure the vocation of the members of the family and preventing sudden fluctua- tions, sudden transitions of great masses of men from one kind of work to another. To what endless con- fusion would labor be subjected if this powerful bond of social Order were broken by continual divisions of property !
Finally, says St. Thomas, private property alone can preserve peace among men : for we know from experience how easily Joint possession of property leads to disputes and quarreis. This reason is as profound as it is true. If under existing conditions brothers and sisters cannot agree when the paternal inheritance is to be divided, and if the inmates of one and the same house, who share with each other nothing but the air they breathe and the water they draw from the common well, fall out and quarrel, what would become of hiunanity if a new dis- tribution of property and labor took place every day? Dissension and strife would be the order of the day.
Backed by these irrefragable arguments, St. Thomas upholds the right of private property as far as the care and management of goods is concerned, and thus Stands, consonantly with the teaching of the Church and the Commandment of God — " Thou shalt not steal " — irrec- oncilably opposed to the Communism of our day. But in regard to the enjoyment of the fruits derived from the administration of earthly goods, St. Thomas lays down a very different principle. Man, according to him, should never look upon these fruits as his exclusive property, but as the common property of all, and should therefore be ready to share them with others in their need. Hence the Apostle says : " Charge the rieh of this World to give easily, to communicate to others." '
Thus, on the one hand, we see Christianity opposing the falsa doctrines of Communism, and on the other no
^l Tim. 17:18; Summa Theolog., II, II, Q. 66, A. i & 2.
38
BISHOP KETTELER.
less strenuously combating the false doctrine of the right of OMTiership, and setting up true Communism. God created nature to nourish all men, and this end must be attained. For this reason each one should put the fniits of his property at the disposition of all, in order to con- tribute, so far as in him lies, to the realization of this end. We have now set forth to the best of our ability the ideas of St. Thomas on the right of property, and we feit justified in recognizing in them the doctrine of the Catholic Church herseif.®
Ketteier then goes on to show how the Catholic doctrine towers above the two contradictory and ir- reconcilable theories on the right of property which divide the world at present.
The false doctrine of the rigid right of ownership is a continual sin against nature, because it sees no injustice in using for the gratification of the most insatiable avarice and the most extravagant sensuality what God intended to be f ood and clothing for all men ; because it kills the noblest sentiments in the himian heart and engenders a callous disregard for the misery of others such as is hardly to be found even in the brüte creation. The notorious dictum, " property is robbery," '^ is some- thing more than a mere lie ; besides a great lie, it con- tains a terrible truth. Scorn and derision will not dis- pose of it. We must destroy the truth that is in it, in order that it may become all lie again. As long as it
' Predigten, II, pp. 120-127.
'' St. Basil, it seems, is the author of this phrase. In his Constitutiones Monasticae, C. 34, I, he says in regard to private property in a monastery : nloTvfi yäp 77 \6iä(;,ovaa KtijaiQ, " per- sonal property is theft." Proudhon very likely took it from Jean Pierre Brissot who wrote in 1780: "La propriete exclusive est un vol dans sa nature." (Pfeiffer in Caritas, Vol. 16, no. 12, P- 347-)
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contains even a particle of truth, it has power to overtum the whole order of the world. As deep calleth unto deep, so one sin against natiire calls forth another. Out of the distorted right of ownership the false doctrine of Com- munism was begotten. Communism also is a sin against nature, for, under pretence of philanthropy, it would bring upon mankind the profoundest misery, destroy in- dustry, order, and peace on earth, turn the hands of all against all and thus sweep away the very conditions of human existence.^
In radiant letters above both these false doctrines Stands the true teaching of the Catholic Church. She recognizes and makes her own wliat is true in each ; she rejects what is false in both. She does not recognize in man an unconditional right of ownership over the goods of earth, but only the right to use them in the manner ordained by God. She safeguards the right of owner- ship by insisting that, in the interests of peace, order, and industry, the division of goods as it has developed among men must be acknowledged ; she sanctifies Com- munism by making the fruits of property the common property of all.
I cannot leave this subject without pointing out in conclusion how harmoniously this conception of property fits into a higher plan of God's Providence, and how in this way all is unity and concord in the Divine order. Man is placed on earth to do the will of God. With his intellect he should make the thoughts of God his thoughts ; with his will he should convert them into acts. The thoughts and desires of man should correspond to the prayer, " Thy will be done." But in order to give man the dignity and merit of self-determination, God gave him free-will, so that man acts himianly and his
^ This is a direct reply to the " Communistic Manifesto " of Marx and Engels. Cf. Das Kommunistische Manifest. 6th Ger- man edition, Berlin, 1896, p. 19.
40
BISHOP KETTELER.
acts have a moral value only if he does the work of God on earth as a free, self-determining agent. God Himself respects the liberty of man and He does not care to take it away even if the creature uses it to his own undoing.
Let US apply these principles to our doctrine of the right of property. God created the earth with all it brings forth in order that man might derive sustenance from it. God could have attained this end by ordaining a compulsory distribution of goods ; but that was not His Intention. He wished to give füll play to man's self- determination and free-will ; He wished to hand His work over to man, to make a himian work of it, that man by doing the work of God might become God-like. He permitted inequality in the acquisition and administration of goods, that man might become the dispenser of His gifts to His fellow-man. Thus was man to be drawn into the life of that love with which God provides for US, and by distributing his goods with the same love with which God intended them for all men, man was to share in the nature of God, which is love. If in the distribu- tion of the goods of earth nothing depended on man's free-will, if all was compulsion, or if by police regula- tions or State legislation men could be forced to work for the welfare of their fellow-men, the most beauti- ful fountain of the noblest feelings of mankind would be dried up. For assuredly a life devoted to the works of self-sacrificing mercy and charity is a divine life. Consider the life of a Sister of Charity and teil me whether there are not more courage, more beauty, and love, in such a life than perhaps in the life of a whole city. O that we should return to this life of love, and embrace all who need us in this love ! Let us make the World subject to us by the power of this love and bring it back to the Gross from which it has turned away. Then, and only then, shall we preserve the f aith ; for
SOCIAL REFORM. 4I
faith in Christ can exist only where the charity of Christ is bound up with it. Let us overcome the world by works of love and lead it back to Christ, to the Catholic faith ! »
In the second sermon Ketteier continues the de- velopment of the Christian theory of private prop- erty and shows in the first place that it is a postulate of right reason.
In Order to arrive at the knowledge of truth, God has given US a twofold revelation, one natural, the other su- pernatural. We arrive at natural truths by the exercise of the natural powers of the soul, intellect and reason; at supernatural truths by the humble acceptance of all that He has told us through His ambassadors and by the help of grace merited for us by Christ. As both these revelations come from God, they cannot contradict one another, but only confirm and Supplement one another. If we apply these principles to the theory of property which I have called the Christian theory, we can call it with equal reason the natural law of property; for, even if I have adduced in its support some words borrowed from supernatural revelation, I confined myself never- theless in its development to purely natural arguments. Whoever admits the existence of God, the almighty Crea- tor of heaven and earth, and admits furthermore that nature is destined to nourish all men, must, if he wishes to reason not merely like a Christian, but simply like a human being, accept in its entirety the doctrine I have expounded to you. But these truths are also amongst those which we draw from natural revelation, from the exercise of our reason ; for only the f ool says in his heart, " There is no God !"
^Predigten, II, pp. 115 ff.
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BISHOP KETTELER.
The preacher then goes on to inquire into the cause of the errors on the right of property.
The two doctrines on the right of property which we find in the world are not only crimes against Christianity, but also against the natural law. A doctrine which makes man the god of his possessions and gives him the right to use for the gratification of his inordinate love of pleasure the fruits of his property which he ought to share with his poor brethren, is not only unchristian but also unnatural. Equally unchristian and unnatural is the doctrine of Communism which wants all the goods of earth to be administered in common. . . .
I ask you, how is it possible for doctrines which so manif estly contradict the most natural truths to arise and to spread far and wide? How is it possible that on the one band w-e see rieh men, in the face of the most ele- mentary laws of nature and without a qualm of con- science, wasting their substance riotously, while the poor are starving and children degenerate? How is it pos- sible for US to relish superfluities whilst our brothers are in want of the barest necessaries of life? How is it possible that our hearts do not break in the midst of revelry and song when we think of the poor sick who in the heat of the fever are stretching out their hands for ref reshment and no one is by to give it them ? How is it possible that we can go through the streets of our cities with joy in our hearts, when at every step we meet poor children, himian beings, Images of God like ourselves, who grow up in the deepest moral and physical degrada- tion — in their birth, in their youth, in their old age, the victims of the most heinous passions? How is it pos- sible for men to become so inhuman? And, on the other hand, how is it possible that the poor and their Godless seducers, contrary to all natural right and all common sense, embrace the absurd theory of false Communism,
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and look to it for salvation, though it is so evident that it would drag all humanity down to its ruin?
To these questions there is only one answer : it is con- tained in that doctrine of Christianity of which a pro- found Christian thinker says that it is incomprehensible to reason, but at the same time so necessarily tnie that, if man refuses to accept it, he must ever remain a mystery to himself, viz. in the doctrine of original sin and its transmission to the whole human race.^° . . . The doc- trine of original sin alone can throw the light of truth on our present Situation. According to this doctrine men feil away from God, and in consequence of this apostasy their natural powers deteriorated. The intellect be- came darkened, the will prone to evil. The devil ob- tained a certain power over man, and grace alone, which the sacrifice of Christ merited for him, enables him to attain his primitive destiny.
This fundamental doctrine of all Christianity can alone explain how even the most obvious truths can be misunderstood, the noblest feelings disowned; how man can become so inhuman. As long as Christianity bore up humanity, enlightened its mind, fortified its will to do good ; as long as Christianity permeated the whole life of man, such theories of property were impossible, such a Separation between rieh and poor was inconceivable. But the history of the world and, above all, the present State of Society clearly show what becomes of humanity with- out Christ, and without the help of that grace of which the Apostle says that its purpose is " to reestablish all things that are in heaven and on earth ".^^ Not reason, but passion, governs men and their social relations, and not reason, but the basest passions, have engendered the doctrines on the right of property which I have set f orth.
10 Pascal, Pensees, III, 8. " Eph. I : 10.
44 BISHOP KETTE LRR.
Of course the children of the world will not admit this. They laugh at the doctrine of original sin and its conse- quences ; they deny the origin and power of the passions and pretend that they are only the result of ignorance. According to them a better Organization of the school would suffice to destroy the empire of the passions ; and by a better Organization of the school they understand in the first place the Separation of the school from the Church and the diffusion of so-called general culture. As the flower finds in itself the principle of its develop- ment, so also it would suffice to put our glorious human nature on the way of true self-development, and forth- with passions and vices and crimes would disappear of their own accord from the earth and true brotherly love would be born again. This is the doctrine that is preached from the house-tops to-day ; it is held up as the acme of wisdom.
But I ask you, what assertion strikes truth more in- solently in the face than this? Tf it were true, it would follow that there must be two classes of men on earth — the men furnished with " general human culture ", a race without passions, without vices, acting only con- formably to the dictates of higher reason, and the men deprived of general culture, and in consequence the slaves of all kinds of passions and vices. Now I ask you, is this true? Or can you think of a more impudent lie? How can such assertions be made at a time when the most accurate statistics in France and Germany have proved that neither the degree of culture nor the degree of ma- terial well-being have the slightest influence on the num- ber of crimes committed in a country. But why be at pains for proofs when daily experience speaks louder than Statistical tables? Is the miser who heaps treas- ures upon treasures ; is the young man who traverses the habitable globe, learns all the languages of men, knows all peoples, and sacrifices thousands a year to his pleas-
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45
ures without bestowing even a passing thought on his poor brothers ; is the young girl who shines in society, who makes a golden calf of her body and adores it and offers it sacrifice of gold and precious stones while she pitilessly leaves her poor sisters to die of want and exposure, — are all these perhaps too Christianly educated, or do theyj lack " general human culture " ? Where is this boasted " general human culture " that makes the miser benev- olent, that fills the breast of the profligate youth, the vain-glorious maiden, with true charity for their neigh- bor? Where is the doctrine, where is the book that can implant in the human heart the spirit of Christian re- nouncement, of self-denial? Show me, show me the gen- eration imbued with true charity, reared without Chris- tianity by your worldly wisdom alone, and I am ready to cast Christianity overboard with you. The world has separated itself from Christ; it has rejected Redemption in Christ ; it has submitted to the dominion of its pas- sions ; this is the last, the prof oundest, and truest reason of our social misery. It is not because he is Ignorant and without " general human culture ", but because he has become the wretched slave of avarice and pleasure- seeking, that the rieh man despises the command of God, " Thou shalt give of thy abundance to the poor ". And it is not because he did not learn his lessons well at school, but because he serves sloth like a slave, that the poor man Stretches out his band after the goods of others and despises the command of God, " Thou shalt not steal ". Guided by their sinful passions, men are no longer able to apprehend even the simplest natural truths that run counter to these passions. Apostasy from Christianity is the cause of our wretched State : if we shut our eyes to this truth we are undone. Just as the in- dividual can make true progress only if he recognizes that he cannot fulfil the high purpose of his existence unless aided from without, so the world will not raise itself
46 BISHOP KETTELER.
out of its present desperate State until it is convinced that, without external aid, it cannot solve the great problems which it must solve at any cost or relapse into barbarism.^^
Where then are the remedies for our social ills? The World is powerless to heal them ; Christianity alone can do this. Social and moral reform must go hand in hand. This was Ketteler's answer in 1848. Later on, as we shall see, his distrust of ma- terial-reform proposals disappeared, but he never lost sight of the supreme importance of " the in- terior reform of the heart ", on which he insists so much in the sermon we are analyzing/*
For some time [he says] I have been attentively study- ing the proposals made by the world to check the onward march of pauperism, and I admit I have found none that would answer the purpose. As long as the authors do not venture beyond the commonplaces in which they clothe their proposals, one would almost believe them to be benefactors of the people who have discovered the secret of the multiplication of the loaves ; but if we pass on to their practical proposals, we cannot help pitying them. One wishes to help us by a better apportionment of taxes, another by the founding of savings-banks, a third by a thorough Organization of labor, a fourth by emigration ; some propose protection, others f ree-trade ; some clamor for the liberty of exercising any craf t, others for the parcelling out of all landed property; others again for the proclamation of a Republic, which would, so they assure us, dispose of all our ills and bring back the Golden Age. Now these proposals are no doubt of
^^ Predigten, II, pp. 136-142. ^' Cf. Goyau, Ketteler, p. 131.
SOCIAL REFORM. ^j
more or less value, and some of them may prove quite effective, but for the healing of our social evils they are only a drop of water in the ocean. Many are well aware of this and propose as a last remedy the general distri- bution of property. Whether we shall ever put this pro- posal to the test we cannot foresee, but one thing is cer- tain, that it would not make the poor rieh, but the whole World poor. In fact, whoever looks at things with un- clouded Vision will frankly recognize that all the wis- dom of the world is powerless and silent in the presence of this gigantic task.
But the more powerless the doctrine of the world is to help US, the more powerful is the doctrine of Chris- tianity. It is precisely in social questions that the fulness of its power is manifested. An incident in the life of Jesus, related by the Evangelist St. Luke, will serve to illustrate the difiference in the means proposed by Chris- tianity and by the world : " One of the multitude said to Him: Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me. But He said to him: Man, who hath appointed Me judge or divider over you?" From this incident the Saviour took occasion to warn those who stood about Him against covetousness, " for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of things which he possesses ". He then told them the parable of the rieh man who, when he had filled his barns after a plenti- ful harvest, said to his soul : " Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thy rest, eat, drink, make good cheer. But God said to him : Thou f ool, this night de they require thy soul of thee; and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided? So is he that lay- eth up treasures for himself, and is not rieh toward God." 1*
You see, my brethren, what answer Christ gives to those who, like the man in the Gospel, wish to become
^* Luke 12 : 13-21.
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BISHOP KETTELER.
rieh by a division of property, or who wish to better their social condition by purely exterior means. He is also in favor of a just distribution of goods, not by force how- ever, but by the inferior regeneration of the heart. That is the essential difference between the doctrine of Chris- tianity and the doctrine of the world.^^ The world has only extemal remedies, which do not reach down to the source of the evil; Christianity heals the disease in its source, which is the human heart. Not poverty, but cor- ruption of heart, is the source of our social misery. Ma- terial evils would be easy to heal, if only our hearts were other than they are. The two great evils of our soul are, on the one hand an insatiable thirst for enjoyment and possession, and on the other selfishness, which has destroyed charity in us. Rieh and poor alike suffer from this disease. Of what use are new assessments of taxes or savings-banks, as long as these sentiments live on in our hearts? Against this corruption the world with all its theories is powerless, whereas Christianity directs all its efforts toward the reformation of the heart. I shall try to show you from some passages in the Gospel how our Lord sets about the accomplishment of this task ; how He enters step by step into our soul ; how He penetrates into it from all sides, by all avenues, as it were, in order to free it from the twofold malady of cupidity and self- ishness.
In the passage to which I have already called your attention our Saviour shows us the transitoriness of the goods of earth and the f olly of the man who heaped treas- ures upon treasures only to leave them at the very moment when he was about to begin to enjoy them. Elsewhere
15 « fhg Communists disdain to hide their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends cannot be attained except by the Subversion of the existing social order. Let the ruling classes tremble at the thought of a Communistic revolution. The pro- letarians have nothing but their chains to lose by it. They have a world to gain !" Komtnun. Manif., p. 32.
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he cries out : " Lay not up to yourself treasures on earth, where the rust and the moth consiune, and where thieves break through and steal ; but lay up to yourselves treas- ures in heaven, where neither the rust nor the moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal ; for where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also." ^* Here again it is the heart with its covetousness and self- seeking that He wishes to heal. Here again He shows US the folly of seeking happiness in perishable goods; but He adds to His doctrine a powerful motive of action by pointing to the recompense reserved for the proper use of the goods of this world.
But the Saviour goes further still. He knows that a sublime idea takes hold of the soul more powerfuUy than even the hope of the highest rewards, and He holds up to the soul wallowing in avarice the glorious picture of per- fection. " If thou wilt be perfect," He says, " go seil what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. . . . And everyone that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for My Name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting." " Truly a doctrine to heal the wounds of the soul ! To the insatiable avarice of fallen man Christ opposes the poverty of man redeemed and made perfect; with what success the Church shows us in the lives of so many of her saints.
And again we see the Saviour proceeding still further in His efforts to eure us of our selfishness, when He says : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
1^ Matth. 6: 19-21. ^"^ Matth. 19 : 21-29.
50 BISHOP KETTELER.
thyself." ^' And if we ask Hirn who is our neighbor, He brings us to the wounded man on the road from Jeru- salem to Jericho and teaches us that every beggar by the way side, every sick man on his bed of suffering, is our neighbor.
O my brethren, let us follow this teaching but for a Single day and all social evils will vanish as if by en- chantment ; let us, rieh and poor, love our neighbor as ourselves but for one day, and the face of the earth will be renewed. Would to God we had a true compre- hension of the teachings of Christ !
But what shall I say to those other words of the Saviour: "Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me." ^" " He that receiveth you, receiveth Me, and he that re- ceiveth Him that sent Me. . . . And whosoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, amen I say to you, he shall not lose his reward." *°
Who can describe the power these words have to de- stroy selfishness in us? Who can teil how many teara these words have dried, how many more they will dry hereaf ter ? With them the Saviour has bound to the bed- side of the sick poor that host of virgins who love Him in them. All the love that men owe Him, He has tumed over to the Service of the poor and the sick.
Still, the Saviour knew the heart of man; He knew how firmly cupidity and selfishness were rooted in it, and what violent efforts would be needed to eradicate them. Hence He confronts those who do not wish to be in- fluenced by higher motives with the day of judgment and eternal punishment. He rehearses for them a scene that will be enacted in that awful hour when He shall come
^^ Matth. 22 : 37-39.
1» Matth. 25 :40.
^° Matth. 10 : 40, 42.
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in all His majesty and glory to separate the sheep from the goats, when He shall say to them that shall be ou His left-hand : " Depart from Me, you accursed, into ever- lasting fire, which was prepared f or the devil and his an- gels. For I was hungry and you gave Me not to eat ; I was thirsty and you gave Me not to drink; I was a stranger and you took Me not in; naked and you cov- ered Me not; sick and in prison, and you did not visit Me. Then they shall answer Hirn, saying : Lord, when did we see Thee hungry or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to Thee ? Then He shall answer them, saying : Amen I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to Me. And these shall go into everlast- ing punishment." ^^
But for him who should be tempted to shut his heart even to this solemn warning our Lord has recourse to a last remedy: He tears away the barriers from the place of eternal pains and invites the wretch to look. On earth He showed us the rieh profligate, clothed in purple and fine linen, seated at sumptuous feasts, and the beggau Lazarus who stretched out his hands in vain for the crimibs that feil from the rieh man's table, and whose sores the dogs came and licked. And now He showa them to US in etemity — Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, tha rieh profligate buried in hell. We hear him cry : " Father Abraham, have merey on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. And Abraham said to him: Son, remember that thou didst reeeive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And be- sides all this, between us and you there is fixed a great chaos, so that they who would pass hence to you, cannot, nor thence come thither." ^2
21 Matth. 25 : 41-46. 22 Luke 16 : 19-26.
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BISHOP KETTELER.
Such is a brief resume of the doctrines by which Christ seeks to destroy in our souls the roots of all our social evils, selfishness and avarice. He takes the egotist to the place of eternal punishment and shows him Dives in the flames thirsting f or a drop of water ; He takes him to the Judgment and shouts the words into his ears : " De- part from Me, you accursed one, into everlasting fire " ;> He takes him to the rieh man, who, when he has amassed many treasures and is about to enjoy them, hears the words : " Thou f ool, this night do they require thy soul of thee ". He shows him the treasures of earth rusty and moth-eaten and despoiled by thieves; He holds up to him the ways of perfection ; He teaches him to love his brother as himself and to see a brother in every man ; He puts Himself in the place of the poor man and transfers to the poor the love men owe to Him.
Such is the power of the Christian teaching, such the impotence of the teachings of the world in the face of social evils. But far more powerful still is Christianity, far more impotent the world in life for the healing of these evils.
In Order to heal the social evils it is not enough to f eed and clothe a f ew poor men more and to send a few dollars more by our servants to the Bureau of Public Charities : that is but the smallest part of our duty. We must bridge over the vast abyss that yawns between the rieh and the poor; we must heal the deep-rooted moral cor- ruption into which so many of our poor brethren have fallen, who have lost all faith, all hope, all love of God and their neighbor ; we must relieve the Spiritual poverty of the poor. It is with the poor as with the rieh — the source of social evils Springs within their own hearts. Just as covetousness, self-indulgence, egotism have es^ tranged the rieh from the poor, even so covetousness, self- indulgence, egotism, joined to corporal misery, have ex- cited the hatred of the poor against the rieh. Instead of
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looking for the sources of their wretchedness where they are really to be found, they persist in seeing in the rieh alone the abettors of their ills. It is with the poor as with the rest of men — they see the mote in the eye of the rieh, but they do not see the beam in their own eye; and hence we see in so many of our poor brethren a frightful degree of moral corruption, where hatred of their fellow-men, avarice, pleasure-seeking, and aversion to labor go hand-in-hand with the direst distress. Maxims and counsels, however excellent, are of as little avail as occasional succors, which are accepted and dis- sipated with the thought that much more by f ar, nay all, is due to them. Here there is need of a new force to heal their heart, the force of life and charity. The poor must be made to feel that there is such a thing as a practical charity that thinks of them, before they will believe in the theory of charity. To this end we must extend our search for poverty and the poor into their most hidden recesses, discover the sources of their misery, share their pains and their tears ; no degradation, no squalor must make us recoil ; we must bear to be mis- understood, repulsed, rewarded with ingratitude. Borne up by charity, we must renew our attacks until we have broken the thick ice-crust under which the heart of the poor is often buried and flood it with love.
Just as God does not treat the sinner — and we are all sinners — only according to His justice, but overcomes his indifference by the superabundance of His love, so we, imitating God, must vanquish our fellow-men by ex- cess of charity. This is, according to my conviction and experience, the only way to change the heart of the great masses of the poor.^^
After vividly contrasting the pretended friends of the people, the Socialistic agitators, " the men of
^^ Predigten, II, pp. 142 ff.
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BISHOP KETTELER.
the hollow phrases ", with the true friends of the people — Jesus Christ, who practised what He taught, and His followers in all ages — the preacher humbly, supplicatingly concluded : " Would to God I had gained to-day even one soul and otie life for the love of Jesus and the comfort of the poor!"
The day after this sermon he received a letter, with an enclosure of sixty florins, which ran as follows : " It is fitting that you, most esteemed and amiable preacher of God's word, should see the fruits of your preaching, in order that you may know how deeply your words have penetrated into the hearts and reins of your hearers." Ketteier handed over the money to the Sisters of Charity for the erection of an orphan asylum.
There are some exceptionally fine pasages in the sermon on " The Christian Idea of Human Lib- erty." For example, the foUowing characteriza- tion of the materialistic atheism of our day :
It has been reserved for cur time to repeat on earth the crime of the Angel who, with füll knowledge of his relation to God, dared to revolt against Him ; we have in cur midst not one or a few atheists, but a whole gener- ation of atheists. As long as the stones exist of which these walls are built, as long as the sun shines upon the face of the earth and proclaims the glory of Him who made it, as long as the dew drops from heaven to re- fresh the flowers of the field, as long as the heavenly dew of grace sinks into the soul of man to waken it to divine life and divine love, such a cold-blooded, diaboli- cal doctrine has not come forth out of the mouth of man.^*
^* Predigten, II, p. 163.
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And how beautifully he speaks of the soul's tes- timony of its own immortality in the sermon on " Man's Destiny " :
If faith in immortality, in a future life, is an illusion, how could such an illusion have ever arisen and been be- lieved? How comes it that we do not graze contentedly like dumb cattle on the earth, but that amidst all the bustle of life there is a restless longing in the heart of man, like the longing after a beloved home? How comes it that at all times the greatest and profoundest minds have clung to this faith, that noble natures, pure souls, above all, proclaim it enthusiastically ? When in the autumn and the springtime we watch the flocks of birds passing swiftly over our heads, what means the longing that draws us away to other lands? When at night we raise our eyes to the twinkling stars in the firmament, so far, so high above us, what means the swelling and straining of our heart, as though it would tear itself free from the body to seek a tearless home beyond the seas? It is the soul's testimony that we dwell in exile here, that we are destined for another, a better fatherland.^^
In the same sermon he shows the delusiveness of the Socialistic dream of universal happiness here below :
I hear it said that poverty is to disappear and that all are to be placed in a position to enjoy the pleasures of life. Granted that the impossible will happen and that poverty will be no more, is poverty the only evil that bars the way to the enjoyment of life? The vast army of those who are burdened with mental and bodily dis- eases, who are confined to the sick-room for years, or even for a whole lifetime, what is their destiny? what consola- tion can we give them? Our so-called friends of the
^^ Predigten, II, p. 176.
56
BISHOP KETTELER.
people in the marketplace do not push their way to the beds of the sick ; that is our duty. What consolation do they give us to take to the suff erers ?
I have often marveled at the wonderful strength the doctrines of Christianity are capable of imparting to the soul of man amidst the most excruciating and uninter- mitting sufferings. No more palpable proof of the divine power and truth of Christianity, it seems to me, can be found than the cheerfulness it is able to infuse into the souls of the afflicted. Standing beside the bed of such silent sufiferers, I could not but wonder and adore. In their poverty, misery, and nameless pains I never heard a Word of complaint ; they were filled with an interior joy such as I had never observed in the worldly-minded amidst all their pleasures. All I had ever seen and heard in the world of courage, strength, resoluteness, paled be- fore the courage and strength with which I beheld Chris- tian souls bearing up under their sufferings. . . . Bring the teachers of materialism to the bedside of the sick, to the dying, to the grave — and the flood of their eloquence will dry up. Nature cannot be so unnatural as to give life to creatures that cannot attain their destiny. As long as there is one sick man, one sufferer on this earth, who cannot partake of material pleasures, yet feels that he is made for happiness, our soul must acknowledge that she is created for a higher existence than that traced out by the materialistic social economist.^*
From Mainz, Ketteier hastened back to Hopsten to spend the Christmas festival vi^ith his flock. Frankfort had seen the last of him. At the I56th Session of the National Parliament, on 22 January, 1849, President Simson made the ofiicial announce- ment that Pastor von Ketteier had definitely re- signed his seat.
^^ Predigten, II, pp. 178-180.
CHAPTER VI.
Provost of St. Hedwig's in Berlin. 1849- 1850.
WITH restless energy Ketteier resumed his pas- toral work at Hopsten. The face of the parish was gradually changing. The old indifference in re- ligious matters was giving place to earnest zeal in the Service of God. The last touches to this work of renovation were given by the mission preached by the well-known Jesuit Father, Henry Behrens, in the spring of 1849. Father Behrens had been en- gaged for many years in teaching and missionary work in Switzerland when the storm of radical in- tolerance that swept over free Helvetia in 1847 set him adrift. After conducting a band of fathers and brothers to the United States, he took up his re- sidence in Münster. Here Ketteier met him and, Struck by his deep piety and solid learning, invited him to hold a little mission in his parish during Holy Week. Father Behrens preached all the ser- mons, twenty in number, and Ketteier, his brother Richard, John Bernard Brinkman, the future Bishop of Münster, and Paulus Melchers, afterward Arch- bishop of Cologne and Cardinal, heard the confes- sions. This mission was the first held for over half a Century in Northern Germany. Ketteler's ini- tiative was soon followed everywhere to the great Spiritual benefit of the people, who were prepared in this way to withstand the whirlwind of the Kulturkampf.
58 BIS HOP KETTELER.
In 1850 Father Behrens became first rector of the Jesuit College of Friedrichsburg, near Münster; then Provincial of the German Province of the So- ciety, from 1856 to 1860. When the Jesuits were driven out of Germany by the Kulturkampf, he sought and found a last home in the New World, where he did untold good as a zealous missionary tili his holy death in Canisius College, Buffalo, 17 October, 1895/
After Frankfort and Mainz it was vain for Ket- teier to think that he would be permitted to end his days as a " Bauernpastor " in an out-of-the-way Westphalian borough. When the Provostship of St. Hedwig's in Berlin became vacant in 1849, this important post was offered to Ketteier, who ac- cepted it only after repeated insistence on the part of the Prussian Government, the Prince- Bishop of Breslau, and his own Ordinary.
In the middle of the last Century the state of things Catholic in the Prussian Capital was deplor- able in the extreme. "A plot in the vineyard of the Lord overgrown with weeds," Ketteier himself called Berlin in a letter to Bishop Diepenbrock, and Ketteier never was a pessimist. "A congregation of 20,000 Catholics and nearly 5,000 soldiers," he says in one of his sermons of that period, " and only one church and only a few Masses; and for all that the church is empty. There is much talk of the need of a new church ! My dear brethren, our church is too big. The Catholics do not come to church. In other places there are ten churches for 20,000 inhabitants, and all are filled morning
1 Pf Ulf, I, p. 173.
SOCIAL REFORM. 5g
and afternoon ; here we have one, and it is empty 1, On some Sundays and holidays only a few hundred fulfil the sacred Obligation of hearing Mass." ^
It was no small source of joy to the new Provost that the few hundred who did frequent St. Hedwig's were Sterling children of the Church, ready to pro- fess their faith before the world and to make heroic sacrifice, if need be, to help on a good work. A Catholic hospital, absolutely necessary as it was, had always been looked upon as a pious dream never to be realized. No one could remember when a nun had last appeared on the streets of Berlin. To at- tempt to introduce them was regarded as presump- tuous temerity. But the nuns and the hospital did come after all.
Early in the 'forties eight young Westphalian ladies who feit called to the religious life, finding no sisterhood in their native land answering to their aspirations, journeyed to Berlin to beg passports for France from the Government. Though not nuns yet they dressed and lived together as nuns. They were detained several days in the Capital, the cynosure of all eyes. After their departure, a jour- neyman-shoemaker said to one of the curates of St. Hedwig's: " If the Berliners don't stone traveling nuns, they won't stone settled ones either." The journeyman is probably right, the clergy thought, and they signified their readiness to make the ex- periment. But those to whom they broached the matter told them they were mad, as there was not a Cent of capital on hand and not much hope of get- ting any in Berlin where there were but few well-
* Predigten, I, p. 186.
6o BISHOP KETTELER.
to-do Catholics. One morning, however, a jour- neyman-joiner called at the presbytery and, laying seventeen Thalers ^ on the table, " These are my savings from six months' work," said he; "I give them toward the founding of a convent for Sisters of Charity." The spell was broken. " What a poor journeyman can do, we can do too," the better- situated Catholics said, and in a short time enough money was collected to rent a spacious building to serve as convent and hospital. When the four nuns sent by the Bishop of Nancy arrived, they had neither chair nor table nor bed, not even wood to build a fire with. Protestant neighbors lent them mattresses to sleep on the first night. Two years later they could boast of sixty-two beds, all occu- pied, too, for they had not only not been stoned by the Berliners, but were even idolized by them. Catholics, Protestants, unbelievers, high and low, wanted to be nursed by the Sisters.*
When Ketteier came to Berlin this modest hos- pital had long been too small and he resolved to en- large it sufficiently to accommodate three hundred patients. For this purpose 60,000 Thalers were re- quired, and the Government could not be counted on for even a moderate Subvention. But Ketteier was not the man to be frightened by obstacles, how- ever great, when there was question of assisting the sick and the poor. In the spring of 1850 he made an appeal for contributions to all the Catholics of Germany, addressing himself particularly to the small tradesmen, the journeymen, day-laborers, and
^ A Thaler := 75 cents.
* Cf. Proceedings of the First Katholikentag ; Mainz, 1848.
SOCIAL REFORM. 6l
servant-girls, whom he asked to work for a few days to save the Thaler to be returned to them later on with interest.^ The success exceeded the most sanguine expectations. " My appeal," he told his parishioners from the pulpit of St. Hedwig's on Pentecost Day, " has, with the grace of God, not been in vain. I have received several contribu- tions lately which affected me deeply. One person, for example, brought me 300 Thalers, the highest sum received until now. And who was this person? . . . A journeyman contributed 35 Thalers."
The 300 Thalers were the gift of a poor Pro- testant woman, widow of a Catholic wood-cutter. During the lifetime of her husband she had been accustomed to assist at the Sunday Services in St. Hedwig's, and after his death she had kept up the practice. One of Ketteler's sermons in behalf of the hospital had made a deep Impression on her, and shortly thereafter she presented herseif be- fore him carrying 300 Thalers in silver roUs in her apron. They were the savings of a lifetime, and the Provost strenuously refused to take them. But the good woman would not be gainsaid. She had asked, she said, a sign from God that this gift to the hospital was pleasing to Him, and the sign had been given to her; and would she not be cared for by the Sisters in sickness and old age?
A twelvemonth later Ketteier could write : " The subscription begun by me a year ago has reached 50,000 Thalers, and the walls of the new hospital are well above ground." ® In the spring of 1852 the sum of 500 Thalers was contributed " by a bene-
5 Briefe, p. 199. ® Briefe, p. 228.
62 BISHOP KETTELER.
factor in Mainz ". The benefactor was Bishop von Ketteier.
On the third of December, 1886, St. Hedwig's Hospital celebrated the reception of the hundred thousandth patient. He was to receive first-class treatment free of charge. But it so happened that a sick fund paid for him and the celebration was postponed tili the arrival of the one hundred thou- sand and first patient. A splendid reception was prepared ; physicians, sisters, nurses, officials, in their best uniforms, formed a lane at the main entrance. Hall, corridors, and verandas shone re- splendent in festive decoration. The one hundred thousand and first patient was brought in — a poor old Protestant woman."^
Ketteler's incumbency at St. Hedwig's was of short duration, but the seed which he sowed brought forth fruit a hundredfold. " His forceful, impres- sive sermons — ' there's something peculiarly au- thoritative about them,' Savigny, one of the future leaders of the Centre, used to say — were universally praised," wrote Prince Bishop Förster of Breslau after Ketteler's death ; " so were also his inexhaus- tible love and solicitude for the poor of the parish. One day he brought a pillow concealed in the folds of his paletot to a poor family and found his proteges doing füll justice to a fried goose, which they had bought with the money he had sent them the day before. To a friend, who had expressed his Indignation at such a flagrant abuse of his alms, Ketteier answered mildly : " Of course the money was not meant to be used in this way, but I was
^ Wenzel, Ketteier u. die sot. Frage, p. 50.
SOCIAL REFORM. 63
glad none the less that the good people enjoyed a hearty meal for once in their lives."
His love of the poor and his " reverence for the dignity of poverty " found expression in many of his Berlin sermons. The one on Almsgiving, preached 9 December, 1849, is a beautiful com- mentary on the teaching of St. Thomas on this subject.
In Moral Theology [he says] we distinguish between commandments and simple counsels. By command- ments we mean the precepts we must follow if we wish to attain etemal happiness ; by counsels, the precepts through whose observance we are enabled to reach a higher degree of perfection.
People are only too often disposed to look on alms- giving as a good work indeed, but not as a strict Obliga- tion. Such a conception is a fundamental error in a Christian soul. I maintain, on the contrary, with St Thomas and St. Liguori, that almsgiving in general is a strict Obligation, as sacred and binding as any other Obligation the fulfilment of which is necessary for salvation.
Ketteier quotes in support of his view a number of Scripture texts * and a passage from the Summa in which St. Thomas maintains that the Obligation to love our neighbor implies not only the giving of good words but also the doing of good deeds, i. e. almsgiving."
If it is true that almsgiving is not merely a coun- sel but a strict Obligation, does it follow from thi»
' Prov. 21:13; Ecclus. 4:1, 5, 8; James 2:13. " Summa theol., II, II, q. 32, a. 5.
64
BISHOP KETTELER.
that the poor have a right to demand the assistance of the rieh ? Ketteier answers :
The truth that almsgiving is an Obligation is not in- frequently interpreted by the poor of onr day to mean that they have a right to demand alms from the rieh, to ex- tort and force it from them. This fundamental error of Communism, which tries to procure by violent meams the distribution of the superabundance of the rieh amongst the poor, is zealously propagated by the adher- ents of this doctrine, and the conduct of numbers of poor people shows only too clearly what deep roots this theory, which has always been repudiated by Christian- ity, has already taken amongst the people.
In like manner, the doctrine which teaches that alms- giving is not a duty of strict justice ( Zwangsp flicht — ■ Rechtspfiicht ) is distorted by the rieh, who argue that, because almsgiving is not an Obligation of justice, it is no Obligation at all, and that, when they give alms, they deserve praise for their good grace and condescension.
Both of these notions are equally erroneous. God has laid down two supreme laws to regulate the distri- bution of temporal goods, the law of justice in the natural order, a law that the State is obliged to pro- tect even by force, and the law of charity in the super- natural order, which it is the Church's mission to enforce by means of the individual conscience. . . . The Obli- gation of almsgiving is, therefore, a true Obligation, but not an Obligation of justice. It can be realized by an appeal to conscience only, not by coercion. He who breaks a law binding in justice is a thief, or a defrauder, or a robber ; he who violates the law of charity is no less a sinner : for the precept of charity occupies a higher place in the eyes of God than the precept of justice. Not the spirit of God but the spirit of the World has taught the world to put a false value on these
SOCIAL REFORM.
65
actions. For while the world despises and abhors theft, and justly so, while it connects the idea of shame with theft, and rightly so, hard-heartedness, uncharitableness, avarice are not generally held in the odor of disgrace, and in this the world is altogether wrong. It will not be thus on the Day of Judgment. . . .
Although from the Christian point of view the nature of the Obligation of almsgiving is well- defined and incontestable, the question as to the ex- tent, the limits of this Obligation has given rise to controversies without end. Ketteier himself avows this when he says : " Simple as the general prin- ciples in regard to almsgiving are, the matter be- comes complicated when we enter into detail and try to determine when we are bound to give alms. This must be left to the individual conscience. . . ."
Have we done our duty if we give alms to those who appeal to us, or are we obliged, with Job, to search out misery, to visit poverty in its secret retreats? St. Thomas was of opinion that, unless we are specially charged with the care of the poor, it sufficed to help such as made their distress known to us. But in his time the care of the poor was in the hands of the Church, whom God had appointed to be the Mother of the poor. She had the love and the means to care for the poor, and men were justified in assmning that she did so. Things are dif- ferent now. The State has usurped this most beau- tiful province of the Church also, thereby inflicting as deep a wound upon the Church as upon itself, upon the Church, by separating her from the poor ; upon itself, by exhausting its resources without adequately meeting the needs of the poor. Hence it appears to me to be a truly Christian duty to search out misery, and not to wait until it obtrudes itself upon our notice.
66 BISHOP KETTELER.
The question of the superfluous Is a favorite topic of controversy. As to the manner of determining it, Ketteier declares that this is an affair of each one's conscience, but that we must beware of apply- ing the Standard of the world, which fails to see superfluity even in the largest fortune. Riches must be measured with the yard-stick of conscience, and we know that the Gospel preaches detachment and the spirit of poverty.
All theologians agree [he continues] that we are bound, under pain of mortal sin, to help a poor man who is in extreme necessity, i. e. who is in imminent danger of death from want of nourishment, clothing or lodging, even at the sacrifice of what we have need of, not to satisfy our essential wants, but to preserve our Station in life.
Abstracting from the case of extreme necessity, it is certain that, by neglecting our duty, we rim the risk o£ committing mortal sin only if, on the one hand, as St. Thomas says,^** we are face to face with a pressing need, and no one is by to bring immediate succor, and if, on the other hand, we have more than we need to keep up life itself and our Station in life.^^
These rules serve to determine a minimum in the Obligation of almsgiving. Christianity aims higher, as those ages witness during which its spirit ani- mated men and institutions. Without wishing to universalize the vow of evangelical poverty, with- out pretending to make a commandment of what is only a counsel, without attempting to force on the generality of men an ideal that would be equivalent
10 II, II, q. 32, a. 5, ad 3.
11 Predigten, I, pp. 35-44.
SOCIAL REFORM.
67
to a practical realization of Communism, it preaches to all detachment from riches and brotherly love, If its precepts were followed, society would be con- verted into that glorious organism which some mod- ern thinkers have called the Christian social order}' The feast of Pentecost gave Ketteier occasion to speak on one of his favorite themes, true and falsa Communism. He says :
There must be something great about Community of temporal goods, seeing tliat it was one of the first fruits of the Holy Ghost. But how different was this com- munism in the first Christian Church from its caricature in our days. The men who practised Community of goods in those days were vessels of the Holy Ghost. Through the Holy Ghost they had become one heart and one soul, and the owners of lands and houses sold these of their own free will and laid the price at the feet of the Apostles. Hence St. Peter said to Ananias, who had lied to him as to the price of the land : " Whilst it remained, did it not remain to thee? And after it was sold, was it not in thy power?" ^^ But now those who speak of Community of goods are not men filled with the Spirit of God, but with the spirit which the world serves. They do not want to give up what is their own, but to rob others of what by right belongs to them. In those days the idea of Community of goods sprang from the spirit of love, whereas now it Springs from the spirit of avarice. It is the giant task of our age to fill up again the abyss that divides the rieh from the poor, and woe to us if it is not filled up : years will come compared to which the year 'forty-eight was only a childish plaything. But this abyss can be filled
1' Girard, Ketteier et la question ouvriere, p. 268. 13 Acts 5:4.
58 BISHOP KETTELER.
up only by the same Spirit who wrought in the first Christian Community. We must first become one heart and one soul again/*
In the midst of his labors for the spiritual and temporal welfare of the scattered Catholics of Brandenburg and Pommerania, Ketteier was sum- moned by the Supreme Head of the Church to un- dertake a still more onerous and responsible work. On 7 December, 1849, Pius IX rejected the nomin- ation of Professor Schmid of Giessen as bishop by the Canons of Mainz. After some hesitation and Opposition the chapter proposed three names to the Pope, among them Ketteler's, and on 15 March, 1850, Pius IX named him Bishop: " To provide," as he wrote to Archbishop Reisach of Munich, " for Mainz, in the person of Baron Ketteier a Bishop after God's own Heart, such a one as the Diocese so much needs. O how many prayers have I said and ordered said for Germany and for Mainz in particular."
The wishes and prayers of the Pontiff were heard. From 25 July, 1850, the day of his consecration, tili his saintiy death in the Capuchin Convent in Burghausen, Ketteier was " a Bishop after God's own Heart."
One of Ketteler's last acts before taking leave of St. Hedwig's was to lead a Corpus Christi pro- cession for the first time since the Reformation through the streets of Berlin to the neighboring Spandau. " Last Sunday," the Berlin correspond- ent of the Allgemeine Zeitung wrote 4 June, " an
"^^ Predigten, I, pp. 381-2.
SOCIAL REFORM. 6g
open air celebration took place here that can be justly called an event: for the first time since Ber- lin became Protestant, the Corpus Christi proces- sion of St. Hedwig's Catholic Church passed through the Brandenburger Tor over Charlotten- burg to Spandau. Altar-boys led the procession, which was headed by Provost Ketteier, who has just been elected Bishop o£ Mainz. The spectators maintained a very respectful attitude, many taking off their hats. I consider this a very significant sign of the times. When Frederick the Great was asked for permission to hold a procession outside the church, he answered : ' I give my permission, but whether the street-boys of Berlin will give theirs is another question.' The Government pro- mised Ketteier that measures would be taken against possible disturbances, but these precautions were fortunately superfluous. The mounted police- officers who followed the line of march at a great distance were hardly remarked by anyone."
Ketteler's brother Richard, who had followed him in the rectorship of Hopsten, had also been selected to succeed him in Berlin. He had already re- ceived the official notification of his appointment, when he suddenly resolved to follow out an old yearning of his heart for the religious life. He gave all he possessed to the poor, retaining only enough to buy a pectoral cross and chain for his brother. Then " as a poor man he applied for admission into the ranks of the poor disciples of St. Francis." He died in 1855 as Guardian of the Capuchin Convent of Mainz.
CHAPTER VII.
Ketteler's Episcopal Consecration. His Vow of poverty. 1850.
ON 30 June, Ketteier preached for the last time in St. Hedwig's; then he retired to Har- kotten, the ancestral seat of the family, to write his first pastoral and to prepare for his consecration by a good retreat.
It had been Ketteler's earnest wish to enter Mainz as unostentatiously as possible, but the Catholic leaders in and out of the city, to whom the mach- inations of the Schmid party were well-known, were of opinion that a gorgeous reception would go far toward rallying the better Catholic dement and discomfiting the trouble-makers, and they prevailed on him not to cross their plans. On 16 July, he arrived in Bingen, where a steamer dressed with flags from stem to stern and bearing the auspicious name " Concordia," took him on board. The jour- ney from Bingen to Mainz resembled a triumphal procession. Both banks of the Rhine were lined with countless throngs of the faithful. At Biebrich the reigning Duke of Nassau, though a Protestant, had ordered a splendid welcome to be prepared. The military band played; twelve guns fired Salutes; the Duke himself appeared on the balcony of his Castle to greet the new prince of the Church. Still more enthusiastic was the reception at Mainz. The whole city Avas in holiday attire to welcome the
SOCIAL REFORM.
71
successor of St. Boniface and to accompany him to the ancient cathedral, A magnificent torch-light parade brought this memorable day to a close/
On 23 July, Ketteier proceeded to the Grand- Ducal residence in Darmstadt to take the custom- ary oath of allegiance. The words he addressed to his sovereign on this solemn occasion have come down to US. " In the exercise of my holy ofifice," he Said, " I shall endeavor, to the best of my ability, to give unto God the things that are God's, and unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and I shall strive at the same time to spread these sentiments which I regard as the true foundations of States, amongst those who are entrusted to my care. I trust, on the other hand, to the Christian sentiments of your Royal Highness, that your Highness' will and your Highness' laws shall never demand of me what is contrary to the laws of God and the ordin- ances of His Church, for, in that case, I should be obliged to say : Non licet." ^
The solemn consecration took place on 25 July, the consecrator being Archbishop Hermann von Vicari of Freiburg. The saintly Bishop Blum of Limburg delivered a remarkable sermon on the oc- casion, in which he prophesied that, under Ketteler's leadership, Mainz would attain once more a signi- ficance similar to that which it enjoyed in the early ages of the German Church.*
1 Beschreibung des festlichen Empfanges und der feierlichen Consecration des hochwürdigsten Bischofs von Mainz. Mainz, 1850.
2 Pf Ulf, I, p. 217.
3 Cardinal Diepenbrock, prince-bishop of Breslau, made a similar prediction ; in June, 1850, on the eve of Ketteler's de- parture from Berlin, he wrote to Frederick William IV : " It is
72 BISHOP KETTELER.
After Bishop Blum Ketteier himself ascended the pulpit. He addressed words of truly apostolio force and tenderness to the several classes of his flock : the sinners and the erring, the poor, the par- ents, the priests. To the poor he said :
I speak to you who labor and are heavily laden with sorrow and misery and wretchedness. To you who are children of God in a very special manner, the Saviour has given me a very special mission. It is true I cannot hope to remedy all your temporal ills, however ardently I should desire to do so. But one thing I do promise you: I shall endeavor to be a good shepherd to you also, and with all the means God gives me to relieve you of your Spiritual distress and thus at the same time of some of your temporal bürden.
The effect of Ketteler's address, " simple, but pregnant with meaning," the effect above all of his Personality, was overwhelming. Twenty-six years later a noble lady "* wrote: "The twenty-fifth of July, 1850, the day on which I stood at the foot of the altar with Baron Hertens, the Military Gov- ernor of Mainz, as a pious sharer in the consecration solemnity, has remained indelibly impressed on my mind. . . . No personality has ever made such an Impression on me." ^
Ketteler's first Pastoral, which bears the date of his consecration, contains his famous " vow of
with the deepest sorrow that I see him depart, for he is a minister of God in the füll sense of the word. . . . Among the successors of St. Boniface he will hold a prominent place in the See which, in former times, was of such high significance for the German Church and the German Empire." Hochland, Oct., 191 1, p. 31.
* Dorothy, Duchess of Sagan.
5 Briefe, p. 527.
SOCIAL REFORM. 73
poverty ". Speaking of the duties imposed on him by his holy office, he said :
I must be prepared to give my lif e f or the flock of Christ, therefore surely also all eise that is of less value than lif e. I confess that, f rom this moment, all I am and all I have shall belong not to me but to you. I confess that I am in duty bound to avoid all superfluity, all luxury in my appointments, and to use for charitable purposes what- ever I can spare from my episcopal revenues. I confess that I am bound to devote all my time, all the powers of my body and my soul to the service of God and of your souls. I have vowed to God through His Church to fulfil this Obligation, and I beg you to pray to God for me, that in His great mercy He may hasten to the assistance of my weak will.®
Elsevi^here in the same document he says :
The trumpery of the world, the power of the senses shall not dazzle our eyes. No garment, however soiled, HO hut, however lowly, no himian body, however dis- figured, shall hinder us from recognizing under this outer covering the image of God and its destiny. . . , We shall render due honor to the image of God in every poor child, in every desolate human being, and shall do all in our power to rescue them from sin and raise them to the dignity of princes of God's people. . . . Believe me,, I seek among you nothing for myself. Whatever I pos- sess when I die shall belong entirely to you and your poor, and tili then I desire nothing but labor and pains in your service.''^
What he promised he adhered to most conscien- tiously all his life. " The greatest simplicity
^ Hirtenbriefe, p. 6. ^ Hirtenbriefe, p. 12.
74
BISHOP KETTE LER.
reigned in his household," says Dr. Liesen, Ketteler's secretary.
A sofa, half a dozen cane-chairs, a larger writing- table, and an ordinary table made up the whole furniture of his sitting-room. The little bed-room with its piain bedstead has caused more than one visitor to exclaim: What? That was the bed-room of the noble Bishop of Mainz! Silverware, Ketteier never possessed; even the silver table-ware that belonged to the Bishops of Mainz he allowed to be used two or three times at most during the twenty-seven years of his administration. The or- dinary midday meal consisted of soup and two courses: supper, of one dish; a light wine from the Palatinate mixed with water was his regulär beverage; a second wine appeared on the table only on feast days or when guests were present. At the door of the episcopal resi- dence, whether the Bishop was at home or not, bread and money were distributed to the poor every Wednesday and Saturday. . . . He was a faithful member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and no one paid his dues more regularly than he. Immediately on receipt of his salary he put a fixed sum in a poor-box he had made for that purpose. He looked on this money as the property of the poor, and to use it for any other purpose would have been in his eyes a violation of duty. " Since I am a Bishop of Mainz," he wrote in 1862, " I share my in- come, as is my duty, with the poor." ®
Once, in 1864, when the Frankfurter Journal held up the Catholic clergy as a " money-hungry caste," as " the blood-suckers of the people," the Mainzer Journal letorted: " If our multi-million- aire manufacturers and all our other banknote-
^ Liesen, Ketteier u. die soziale Frage, pp. 9-10.
SOCIAL REFORM. 75
bristling magnates would but enlarge their hearts and spend about a tenth-part of their annual re- venues for the benefit of the people, as the Bishop of Mainz does every year with almost the whole of his income, the labor question would be happily solved, and we should see productive associations paying yearly dividends to the workmen and chari- table institutions for the sick and the infirm la- borer springing up everywhere; and whatever is good and useful in the modern Systems of Schulze- Delitzsch and of Lassalle would bring forth the most beautiful fruits on the soll of Christian charity."
Beautifully in harmony with his whole life is Ketteler's last will and testament. "All my furni- ture," he says, " as well as the rest of the inventory, of my house, my linen, my clothes, and similar ob- jects, shall be distributed among the poor by the local St. Vincent de Paul Society. Besides the money to be found in my writing-desk I am pos- sessed of no property. What I was possessed of I used for charitable purposes. Whatever ready money may be on band shall likewise be given to the poor through the St. Vincent de Paul Society." The same Society was to dispose of the few valu- ables that had been presented to him on various oc- casions, amongst others a cross valued at 1,200 marks, the gift of an Austrian Archduke.
After Ketteler's death one of his bitterest foes, the Liberal Kölnische Zeitung, was forced to con- fess : " It is almost literally true that the mighty Champion of the Ecclesia militans died poor!"
CHAPTER VIII.
The Social Reformer on the Episcopal Throne. 1850-1877.
TWO days previous to Ketteler's consecration another great churchman of the time, Arch- bishop von Geissei of Cologne, had written to his auxiliary bishop, Dr. Baudri :
The poor Bishop has a hard piece of work cut out for him. Eyewitnesses of his entrance into Mainz told me of conversations they had overheard on that occasion, which are an index of the prevalent religious depravity. Old Catholic Mainz has sunk very low. May God help the new Bishop to raise it up again ! The divisions among the clergy are deep and wide — it will be no easy task to heal them. Energy and resolution alone will be able to do it.^
There was indeed need of the help of God and of all the boundless energy and zeal of a Ketteier to set things right in the Diocese of Mainz. Josephin- ism, the Revolution, the French domination, Ron- geanism, had worked havoc with the ancient Cath- olic glories of Mainz. A strong anti-Catholic spirit had gradually taken possession of the educated classes of the episcopal city; in most of the other eitles and towns of the Diocese the Catholics were in a helpless minority. The number of really zeal- ous pastors of souls had woefuUy decreased. Cath- olic aspirants to the priesthood were required to
1 Pfülf, I, p. 221.
2 -1
o J
SOCIAL REFORM.
pursue iheolog.
not .t Catbölic :,
>\ e oa tor anything rather .
::' Many joined the Bui^^n. -
.^lit of missing Masson Sundays, sel^ ceived the Sacraments, drank hard, fought ut- and studied as little as possible, For many yeaj.^ the Catholic students h -1 to artend the lectures of the Protestant Prof- and several
members of the C' % (^ -^ts
pected of holding \ > i
the State 'av her authoriiie? w»?'.,- ..rjit; collcc;:. »ns :ri <'iundershc Hes'iian froances. Parish r as mere State officials and
Ketteier began the work withdrawing his theologians froi i and open- ing a clerical seminary in Main/ ■ i;ied with an excellent staflF of professors — Riffel, Heinrich, Moufang, Haffner, men who attained an interna- tional reputation for ■;■ ' "' and learning.
When all M'a«. ready f -ig, the Pi'shop
gave notice of his .• the Government in
Darmstadt and at tbr ...;.. ;:iiie asked for financial aid. The Government thought that the nu>st ef- fective means of frustrating the Bishop's plans v,\-?.- tn wrap itself in profound silence. But K " ■'t only a churchman, he was aho a i lat the State could not legally . i . j i ■ r cf th e Step he was con 'emp ^'^■''
•* . ious of Germ an «tudents.
*•> ■■i'. , f..
SOCIAL REFORM. j'j
pursue their philosophical and theological studies at Giessen, a Protestant university town that could not even boast of a Catholic church. Here they were prepared for anything rather than the sacred ministry. Many joined the Burschenschaften,^ made light of missing Mass on Sundays, seldom re- ceived the Sacraments, drank hard, fought duels, and studied as little as possible. For many years the Catholic students had to attend the lectures of the Protestant Professor of Philosophy, and several members of the Catholic Faculty were justly sus- pected of holding unsound doctrines. The hand of the State lay heavy on the Church. The Grand-Ducal authorities were more concerned with the Sunday collections in Gundersheim or Bingen than with the Hessian finances. Parish priests were looked upon as mere State officials and treated accordingly.
Ketteier began the work of Catholic revival by withdrawinghis theologians from Giessen and open- ing a clerical seminary in Mainz provided with an excellent stafF of professors — Riffel, Heinrich, Moufang, Haffner, men who attained an interna- tional reputation for piety, zeal, and learning. When all was ready for the opening, the Bishop gave notice of his intentions to the Government in Darmstadt and at the same time asked for financial aid. The Government thought that the most ef- fective means of frustrating the Bishop's plans was to wrap itself in profound silence. But Ketteier was not only a churchman, he was also a lawyer. He knew that the State could not legally prevent him from taking the step he was contemplating, and 2 Political associations of Germr.n students.
■j^ BISHOP KETTELER.
SO, without more ado, and in spite of an injunction from Darmstadt, where the Ministry had suddenly recovered the power of speech, the solemn opening of the seminary took place i May, 1851. Forty- seven students reported, while not a single one re- gistered at Giessen. This coup d'etat, as Goyau calls it, was a severe blow to the tyranny of the Josephist Bureaucracy and marked the beginning of better days for the Church in Hesse. " With the founding of the Seminary," he wrote to his clergy 6 January, 1852, " I am confident that a source of blessing for the Diocese has been opened and a headspring of corruption stopped up. I need not teil you that, having law and conscience on my side, I shall never give up the Seminary. I should sub- mit only to open violence, and then suspend all ordinations. The Catholic people are going to have priests or no priests, but not Burschen ^ who pass as priests." " There is nothing more import- ant on earth," Ketteier used to say, " than to co- operate in the formation of pious priests." He trembled at his first ordinations because of his im- perfect acquaintance with the candidates and the unsatisfactory guarantees offered for their future. His heart was lighter, and the faithful shared his joy, when the young clerics were safely installed under the shadow of the episcopal throne. He visited them frequently, had long heart-to-heart talks with each one of them, and every year gave a series of Conferences on the duties of the priestly State. He spoke with great earnestness and im- pressiveness, but always as a loving father to his
^ Members of a Burschenschaft or association of students.
SOCIAL REFORM. jg
children, for he was resolved, as he said on one occasion, " to force the young men by love to be- come good priests ". All the great festivals he celebrated in their midst. On Holy Thursday he waited on them at table and accompanied them on their visits to the Holy Sepulchres in the parish churches of the city. He was never absent from the examinations, which he always followed with the liveliest interest.
In Order to carry out as closely as possible the prescriptions of the Council of Trent in regard to the training of candidates for the priesthood, Ket- teier established a " Convictorium," a kind of pre- paratory seminary, in Mainz, and when this became too small, a second one in Dieburg. " I love to re- call his many visits to the Convict," writes Mgr. Forschner. " He often took part in our walks, and gave US his roomy courtyard to play in. We spent many a Sunday afternoon there, and the Bishop often watched us at our merry games from his window." *
The Bishop's efforts to secure a zealous clergy for his diocese bore the most abundant fruits. At the end of the first quarter of a Century of its existence the Seminary of Mainz could boast of having given five hundred priests to the Church of God.
After leaving the Seminary the young priests continued to be the object of the Bishop's deepest solicitude. All were obliged to pass several examin- ations in the various brauch es of sacred learning; pastoral Conferences were inaugurated, and ample opportunity was given to all to make at least a few
* Forschner, Ketteier, p. 55.
8o BISHOP KETTELER.
days' retreat every year. He could hardly grasp the idea of a bad priest, so sublime was his con- ception of the priesthood. He wept when he heard of the apostasy of a young priest.
When Ketteier came to Mainz there were no Re- ligious Orders in the diocese. In less than ten years ample provision was made in this direction. In 1853 the Brothers of Mary took up the work of the Catholic education of boys; he reorganized the Sisterhood of the English Ladies and founded the School Sisters of Divine Providence and the Brothers of St. Joseph; with the aid of the famous novelist, Ida von Hahn-Hahn, whom he had re- ceived into the Church in Berlin, a House of the Good Shepherd was opened; Franciscan nuns were won for house-to-house attendance and care of the sick, and the Sisters of Charity were gradually placed in charge of the majori ty of the hospitals. Capuchins were invited to Mainz, and after a fruit- less attempt to create mission bands of secular priests, the Jesuits were recalled in 1858. From All Saints' Day tili Easter Sunday one mission fol- lowed the other without Interruption, for the Bishop was of opinion that no parish should be without this blessing for more than six years at a time. " The annual missions have just come to a close," wrote a correspondent of the Historisch-Politische Blätter in 1853 ; " the most zealous missionary of all was the Right Reverend Bishop himself. In many places he preached every day, and heard confessions from four or five o'clock in the morning tili nine or ten in the evening almost uninterruptedly." Periodi- cal retreats and Conferences for laymen, conducted
SOCIAL REFORM. gl
by such renowned preachers as the Capuchin Father Cyprian and the Jesuits Roh, Haslacher, and An- derledy, kept alive the flame of zeal enkindled by the missions. For the country people the Bishop's frequent Confirmation tours — he visited even the smallest parish once every three years — were noth- ing Short of mission renewals. His sermons for these occasions were scrupulously prepared tili the very end of his lif e, and the people flocked in crowds from far and near to hear him.
After the Confirmation solemnity he visited the school, examined the children, encouraged the teachers, dispensed praise and blame as the cir- cumstances required. Everyone had free access to him. He had a kind word for all, especially for the poor and the erring. All looked on him as their father and friend, and at the end of his life he could truly say : "There is not a child or poor little granny in my diocese but knows me " — and loves me, he could have added with equal justice.
In 1854 Ketteier and the Hessian Minister, von Dalwigk, signed an agreement regulating the re- lations between the Church and the State. Al- though neither this agreement nor a second one negotiated in 1856, was ever approved by the Holy See, peace was maintained in the Grand Duchy tili the days of the unfortunate Kulturkampf, which laid such rüde hands on many of the Bishop's noblest works for the salvation of souls, embittered the closing years of his administration, and Struck wounds that have not been healed to this day.
Such is a brief sketch of Ketteler's efforts for the Spiritual regeneration of his flock; but he was
82 BISHOP KETTELER.
mindful also of the promise he had made on the day of his consecration that he would do all in his power to relieve their temporal distress as well. From his Divine Master he had learned the great lesson that " charity to the soul is the soul of char- ity " ; like Hirn too he saw the hunger and naked- ness and wretchedness of the multitude and had compassion on them. In a memorial addressed to the Hessian Ministry, 31 December, 1851, relative to the admission into the Grand-Duchy of Sisters of Charity, Ketteier lays down his program of prac- tical social reform in a few pregnant sentences.
In view of the ever-increasing distress and poverty, in view especially of the growing demoralization of thö younger generation, I consider it a duty of my calling to labor to the best of my ability for the amelioration of conditions in our hospitals and asylums for the poor and for the erection of institutions for the care of neglected children. The pious foundations of our an- cestors have long since become inadequate, and the an- nual deficits in the poor-funds cannot be met by taxa- tion — a bürden that will become heavy enough in time in any event. The people must be made to take an in- terest in the existing charitable institutions and inspired with enthusiasm to undertake the founding of new ones. Not a few labor under the pitiable delusion that the problem of pauperism is solved by the paragraph on the Statute Books which requires every Community to take care of its poor. . . . Distress is nowhere more terrible than where poverty and sickness meet ; in such cases the Community can indeed supply a doctor and pay for medi- cines, but who tends to the sick, who looks after the cleanliness of their persons and their surroundings, who furnishes them with proper food and drink? And these
SOCIAL REFORM. 83,
are oftentimes more important factors for their recovery than physicians and prescriptions. To remedy these evils infirmaries must be erected not only in the cities and towns but also in the rural districts, and placed in Charge of the Sisters of Charity. This is being done in many parts of Prussia with wonderful success, and I entertain the firm hope that the Grand-Ducal Ministry will also prefer a relief System founded on charity to one dependent on a staff of officials hired by the Poor- Law Board.
The Grand- Duchy is still very far indeed from being provided with a sufficient niunber of asyltmis for the poor, hospitals for the sick and institutions for the proper education of neglected children. In fact, the re- sponsible authorities are constantly at a loss what to do with the boys and girls daily thrown on their care. Oftentimes they take them from bad parents only to en- trust them to worse foster-parents, who look on their charges as a welcome means of bettering their income. Even the meagre allowance for board must yield them profit. We are undoubtedly sorely in need of institutions devoted to works of Christian charity. To call these to life higher forces than are implied in an increased tax- rate are required, forces which an Institution like that of the Sisters of Charity is well calculated to sxmimon up, for in the hands of the Sisters each one will see his alms multiplied.^
In spite of the greatest difficulties — ever>^ per- mission to set a good work on foot had to be wrung from the Government — the Bishop succeeded in carrying out his program. Mainz was the first city to ask the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul to take Charge of its hospitals, and before long these angels
' Briefe, p. 227.
84
BISHOP KETTELER.
of charity were to be seen in every lown of the diocese. A Girls' Orphan Asylum was erected in Neustadt and a Boys' Protectory in Klein-Zim- mern. The latter Institution still has the repu- tation of being one of the best organized of its kind in Germany. Toward its maintenance Ketteier con- tributed thousands of florins from his own revenues every year, and Countess Hahn- Hahn gave the pro- ceeds of all her literary work.
Many years before the national and international societies for the protection of girls were thought of, Ketteier founded a home for girls without employ- ment and the Society of Our Lady Help of Chris- tians for the Protection of Servant Girls. The Pastoral in which he recommended these works to his diocesans shows how carefully he had studied every phase of the servant-girl problem.®
Ketteier was one of the most enthusiastic Pro- moters of the Gesellenvereine — Associations of Journeymen — the life-work of the saintly Kolping/ At the Fifth Katholikentag, which met in Mainz in 1851, he made an earnest appeal in their behalf and suggested the founding of brauch associations in his diocese. He placed a room in the Seminary at the disposal of the organized journeymen, sup-
' Hirtenbriefe, p. 248.
■^ When Kolping espoused the cause of the journeymen, his first plan was to help them by means of confraternities. While at the University of Munich (1841-42) he took frequent walks with a long-headed man, to whom he revealed his plans and aspira- tions. This man pointed out to him the supreme necessity of providing the journeymen with an Organization calculated to im- prove not merely their religious but also their economic and so- cial condition. This long-headed man was Ketteier. Kolping took his advice and the blessing of God has attended his work. Gasteiger, Christ.-Soc. Bewegung, p. 13.
SOCIAL REFORM. 8$
plied them with good reading matter, contributed often and generously to their funds, and remained their patron and benefactor tili the end of bis life, One of the Bishop's pet projects was the found- ing of a Society for the erection of inexpensive but solid and healthy artisan's dwellings in the indus- trial centres. From personal examination of hous- ing conditions in Mainz and Offenbach he knew that the families of workingmen were either the victims of real estate speculators or left to the gen- tle mercies of the facto ry owners. " I call on all whom God has enabled to Yixe in good, healthy dwellings," he says in a circular letter which was never published, " to help their poorer brethren, by their generous Cooperation, to enjoy the same in- estimable benefit." Lack of sympathy and the ap- proaching Vatican Council prevented him from tak- ing further steps toward the realization of his plans. But when Dr. Haffner wrote to him in Rome that he intended to carry out his old project on a small Scale in Offenbach, he was all afire again. " When I come back," he wrote, " I shall support the project with all my heart. ... I am gradually getting too old to make experiments on a large scale for the Solution of the social problems, such as I carry about in my head and my heart. I am thoroughly convinced, nevertheless, that this will be one of the great and glorious tasks of the future, however little it has been appreciated until now. Any op- portunity to promote even a fraction of this great work during the remainder of my life will be em- braced by me with the greatest alacrity. My whole soul is taken up with the new forms which
86 BISHOP KETTELER.
the old Christian truths will create in the future for all the relations of the human family, while nothing depresses me more and paralyzes, as it were, the wings of my soul, than the conduct of those who persist in ignoring this divine power of the Church." «
* Briefe, p. 411.
CHAPTER IX. Liberty, Authority, and the Church. 1862.
WHILST Ketteier was engaged in the great work of the Spiritual regeneration of his diocese, his enemies were by no means inactive. They pressed on him from all sides and, like the Jews when re- building the walls of Jerusalem, he was obliged " to do the work with one hand, and with the other to hold the sword ". In the public press and from the platform the Liberal agitators attacked him with the fiercest animosity. No lie was too brazen, no calumny too black, no Insinuation too poisonous for the Frankfurter Journal, the Frankfurter Zeitung, and the Mainzeitung, to take up and fling at the great Bishop.
How was it possible for a man of Ketteler's type, whose life was immaculate, whose every action re- flected the purity and sincerity of his soul, who spent himself and was spent in the service of his fellowmen, to be singled out to be the butt of such vile assaults? " If you disturb the muddy waters of a stagnant pool with the vigorous strokes of your oar," Baron vx)n Hertling answers, " you need not be surprised if all the vermin, roused from their sloughy repose, turn angrily upon you." Another, and perhaps the principal, reason for the antagon- ism Hertling sees in the elements of which the Li- beral party was composed in the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last Century. The old Liberais had passed
88 BISHOP KETTELER.
away. No line of demarcation yet divided the new Liberal bourgeoisie from the Social Democrats, organized and disciplined Labor from the rag-tag of the big cities. The Proletariat was still the will- ing tool of Liberalism, especially wherever the latter gave vent to its anti-Catholic instincts. Liberal- ism gave the order, and the Proletariat carried it out to suit its own tastes/
So long as his own person was the object of these attacks and his episcopal dignity was not involved, Ketteier seldom troubled himself about them. His daily life, which all who would could observe, was the best armor of defence. But when the Church or her august Head or any of her doctrines, institu- tions or rights were assailed, no champion in the lists ever leveled lance with truer aim. Neither the reputed prowess nor the high Station of his foe ever made him pause : he feared neither the ciam- ors of the mob nor the f rowns of kings. In him the words of the old Roman on the " justum et tenacem propositi virum " were verified : ^
Non civium ardor prava iubentium, Non vultus instantis tyranni Mente quatit solida.
With Nehemias he could say : "All these men thought to frighten us, thinking that our hands would cease from the work, and that we would leave off. Wherefore I strengthened my hands the more." '
When Minister Lamey, of Baden, set up the tyrannical formula, " Law is the public conscience
1 H ist. -Pol. Blaetter, vol. 124, p. 852 f.
2 Horace, Car. III, 3. ^ \l Esdras 6:9.
SOCIAL REFORM. 89
superior to private consciences," Ketteier, in two able Pamphlets, vindicated the rights of individual conscience and relegated the machinery of legisla- tion to its proper sphere. When Minister JoUy, Lamey's successor, tried to force an archbishop of his own choice on the Catholics of Baden, it was the Bishop of Mainz who defended the electoral rights of the canons of Freiburg. When a number of " intellectuals " of Mainz disgraced a public festival by insulting the Franciscan Order and habit, Ketteier, in an " Open Letter to the Citizens of Mainz ", taught them better manners and at the same time paid a glowing tribute to the Poverello of Assisi and his devoted sons. When the greatest pedagogical expert of the day, the free-thinking Adolf Diesterweg, began his campaign against the Christian school, Ketteier was the first to give the alarm and marshal the Catholic forces against him. In seven Pastoral Letters he took up the cause of the Holy Father, encouraged the Catholics to be firm in their allegiance to him and to contribute generously toward his support when the Pied- montese usurper robbed him of his patrimony.
It would take us too far afield to give even a partial account of Ketteler's activity in defence of the Church, for during the twenty-seven years of his episcopate he wrote no less than ninety-two pas- torals, brochures, pamphlets, and longer newspaper articles of a controversial or apologetic nature, not a few of the more important ones going through three and four and even seven editions. How, with all this, and his intense and unremitting pastoral solicitude, he found time to write his epoch-making
90
BISHOP KETTELER.
works on the social question, was a subject of won- der even to those who were intimately acquainted with him. But it is high time that we take a closer view of these works themselves.
To Ketteier undoubtedly belongs the merit of having been the first to estimate at its proper value the social program of the Liberal party. Be- fore joining issue with them on this question, how- ever, he thought it advisable to clear the way by a general settling of accounts. This he did in the work entitled " Liberty, Authority , and the Church: A Discussion of the Great Problems of the Day " (1862).
The success of the book was instantaneous. Be- fore the end of the year seven editions were ex- hausted and it had been translated into French, Magyar, Spanish, and Czech. " This first larger work of the gifted Bishop of Mainz," says Pfülf, " is typical of all his literary activity : the size mod- erate, at most 260 pages small octavo; short chap- ters; the arrangement of the parts simple; the dic- tion clear, in short, smooth sentences; with few and always brief foot-notes ; intelligible to all, never fatiguing; not confusing, but illuminating; no un- healthy extremes, no appeals to the passions, but clear, logical trains of thought, clothed in words that could come only of a warm heart." * Some one has said of Ketteier that if he had not been one of the greatest bishops, he would have been one of the greatest journalists of all times."^ This peculiar
* Pfülf, II, p. 161.
^ The Berliner Tageblatt called him a " born Journalist, who al- ways handled the written word with elegance and dexterity."
SOCIAL REFORM.
91
talent of his is nowhere better displayed than in the work we are considering. It has been happily called " a leader in book-form ". Indeed every Word is a thought, and every thought a telling practical truth.
The author's purpose in writing Liberty, Au- thority, and the Church is set forth in a letter to the Countess Hahn-Hahn : " My little work must be in your hands by now ; it was a long time appear- ing. I have handled some thorny questions, on which it is easy to go astray ; but it seems to me they must be discussed and cleared up. The press has taken the lead in the fight against the Church and is doing fearful service in the cause of the devil. May God help us to confront it with an equally powerf ul press devoted to the service of truth ! We are living in an entirely new world; evil is blazing new paths ; good must also find new ways to fight evil : and God will help us in the end, if only we are not too miserable." °
Ketteier foresaw the approach of the great temp- est. The lull which followed on the revolutionär^ days of 'forty-eight did not deceive him. The skirmishes on the banks of the Rhine, in Baden, Württemberg, and Hesse, were only preludes, re- hearsals of the decisive battle to be fought on the sands of Brandenburg. The Catholic forces must be drawn together; the plans of the enemy must be fathomed, and united action achieved. The strongest ally of the Church will be the Catholic press, if properly organized.^ To the Catholic
® Briefe, p. 273.
^ Ketteier is the author of the famous dictum : " If St. Paul were alive to-day, he would publish a newspaper." Pfülf, III, P- 347.
92
BISHOP KETTELER.
press, therefore, and to Catholic publicists the Bishop chiefly addresses himself. " In order to have a streng and united Catholic daily press," he says in the introductory chapter, "clearness is above all things necessary. Clearness as to our Situation, the dangers that threaten us, the demands we must make on the Zeitgeist; clearness as to the true and the false, the just and the unjust in the aspirations of the age ; clearness as to our own point of view. . . . To bring our by no means inconsiderable in- tellectual forces to bear with advantage on the enemy, we must know above all ivhat we want." Hence he chose for his motto the words of St. Columbanus :
Cognosce causam belli, Fortem non nescias hostem Et libertatem in medio arbitrii. Si tollis hostem, tollis et pugnam ; Si tollis pugnam, tollis et coronam ; Si tollis libertatem, tollis dignitatem.^
To aid in bringing about this much-needed clear- ness, Ketteier examines the favorite catchwords of the day — progress, enlightenment, liberty, fratem- ity, equality — in the light of the eternal principles of divine truth. He is a decided advocate of self- government and corporate rights ; he combats ab- solutism and centralization, especially the absolut- ism practised by the Liberais under the guise of liberty. He claims for the Church liberty to ad- minister her own affairs, but protests against con- founding with this autonomy of the Church athe-
* Columbanus ad Fratrem Epist. IV.
SOCIAL REFORM. 93
ism of the State, disguised under the name of Separation. He rejects Revolution, and to the State " by the grace of man " he opposes the State " by the grace of God ", and the authority ordained by God for the civil as well as the ecclesiastical order. He emphasizes the social significance of the Chris- tian family founded on and hallowed by the Sacra- ment of Matrimony, and demands liberty and pro- tection for it against the encroachments of absolut- ism, especially in the shape of a Godless compul- sory educational System. The social question in the more restricted sense of the word is not treated, but the fundamental principles on which Catholic social action must be built up are exposed with the greatest warmth and persuasiveness/
With wonderful clearness and penetration he lays down the principles that should guide Catholics in the face of political and social novelties. He says :
In the first place, Catholics and the Catholic press must avoid everything calculated to make people believe that we regard certain institutions, certain social and political forms of other days, as inaccessible to improve- ment, or that we praise them unreservedly and hold them up to future generations as the only possible remedy for all the ills of society. Christian truths, it is true, primarily regard the moral progress of man ; but
^ In chap. ^i, Ketteier treated of Freemasonry and its rela- tions to Christianity. But though he did so " in a polite and dignified manner," as the editor of the Bauhütte, the leading Or- gan of German masonry admitted, he became involved in long controversies with various champions of the masonic idea, which led to the publication (in 1865) of Ketteler's brochure " Kann ein gläubiger Christ Freimaurer sein?" five editions of which were sold out within the short space of three weeks.
94
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social and political progress also depends on them, and no one can foresee what social or civil transformation Christianity will efTect in mankind when once it shall have penetrated and informed all with its spirit.
Secondly, we must distinguish between the genuine and the counterfeit in the tendencies of the age in which we live, look to the Christian truths for the Solution of the great problems of the day, and, by opposing these luminous truths to the deceptive mirages of the spirit of the age, piirsue a high and noble ideal.
ßut in Order not to stray from our course, we must, thirdly, whilst endeavoring, with all the enthusiasm, all the vigor and all the energy of which we are capable, to bring about the triumph of the Catholic view of life, at the same time devote ourselves humbly and whole- heartedly to the current of Catholic teaching. It is with the truths of revelation as with the axioms of mathe- matics, the laws of thought and the maxims of morality. All these laws, all these fundamental rules are in them- selves vmalterable ; but how infinitely varied is their ap- plication. With the same laws which the child observes in measuring his little slate, the savant computes the movements of the heavenly bodies. It is the same with the dogmas of the Church : they are truths revealed by God, the etemal Truth, and therefore like truth they are immutable. Whatever is true, is true eternally. Never- theless they are but foundations, pillars upon which man must build his personal and his social life, guided by the hand of that Providence which directs the march of his- tory. It is our duty to build up the whole life of the human race in all its manifold relations on the founda- tion-stones of these divine truths.
But the more anxious we are to become f ellow-builders of this divine edifice, the more iirmly must we ourselves take our stand on its God-laid foundations.^"
1° Freiheit, Autorität u. Kirche, 5 ed., pp. 5 ff.
SOCIAL REFORM. 95
In conclusion Ketteier, like another Paul, sum- mons all the faithful to rise from sleep and arm themselves for the battle.
For this divine and salutary authority [of the Church] the spirit of the world wishes to Substitute another. After robbing them of all true liberty, it would subject all men to the yoke of its own despotic law. It de- frauds mankind of the sweet yoke of Christ and the authority ordained by Him, only to lay on it, with the aid of legislative majorities and the combined action of the press, a yoke of its own making.
This tendency has made prodigious headway in the World, and everywhere we see the enemies of the Church drawing in their nets in order to deprive Christianity as soon as possible of all freedom of motion in the future.
The first condition for the development of Christian life and thought in our day is that the Church, while remaining subject to the general laws of the State, be in- dependent, and that to the school be assigned its proper place in relation to the family, the State, and the Church. The Chief Opponent of these legitimate Claims is absolut- ism, old and new, but especially absolutism in its new dress, modern unbelieving Liberalism.
May the clergy understand the signs of the times and Champion the cause of God not only with the old weapons on the old battlefields, but with all just and honest means at their disposal. Our Christian people must be in- structed. They must be initiated into the great problems of the day ; they must be made to see the boundless hyp- ocrisy of modern Liberalism, to see through the diabolical plot to draw the school into the Service of anti-Christian- ity. From every pulpit these questions must be dis- cussed, and these thoughts developed ; countless news- papers must spread them broadcast among the people. What could we not do if we had but a small portion of
gß BISHOP KETTELER.
the zeal of the enemies of God, a zeal which impels them to rush breathlessly through the world to carry the poison of their doctrines into the remotest hamlet !
Not only the clergy, however, but all who love Chris- tianity, must work in the same spirit. In the public press, in political assemblies, in the stations and walks of life, whatever they be, in which God has placed them, with all the means at their conunand, they must fight for the great interests of mankind. If it is disgraceful to court idleness when the enemy invades our country and our home to burn and to pillage, how much more dis- graceful is it to stir neither hand nor foot while the highest goods of humanity are called into question !
Now that revolutionary absolutism is aiming at noth- ing less than to get hold of the reins of sovereign power in Order to hurl our dear, good people into the abyss of infidelity and anarchy, is it not more beautiful, more glorious, more meritorious by far in the sight of God to take up arms for Christianity against such an enemy, than, in sluggish repose, to celebrate the high deeds of our ancestors, who marched to Jerusalem to rescue from the unbeliever the places made sacred by the Blood of Christ ? He who remains indifferent in this struggle will one day at the tribunal of God hear those words ad- dressed by the householder to the slothful laborers, "Why stood you there all the day idle?" ^^
^^ L. c, pp. 145 ff. Matt. 20:6.
CHAPTER X.
ChRISTIANITY and THE LABOR QUESTION. 1864.
I. LIBERAL AND RADICAL ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE THE LABOR QUESTION.
KETTELER'S earnest appeal to the Catholics to be up and doing, to take a lively interest in the great questions of the day and to apply to their Solu- tion the eternal principles of the Christian f aith, was not made in vain. Edmund Joerg, the editor of the Historisch-Politische Blaetter, began immediately to collect material for his masterly History of the Socio-Political Parties, a work which was for many years considered the Standard one on the subject. Baron von Schorlemer-Alst, one of the future pillars of the Centre Party, consulted with Ketteier on the best way to organize the Westphalian peasantry. The Fourteenth Catholic Congress, which met in Frankfort, 21-24 September, 1863, under the pre- sidency of Wilderich von Ketteier, adopted a reso- lution brought in by Dr. Heinrich, a Canon of Mainz and one of Ketteler's ablest and most zealous disciples, urging the Catholics " to study the great social question, which cannot be brought to a satis- factory Solution except by the light and in the spirit of Christianity." At the Convention of Catholic Theologians which began its sessions a few days later at Munich, Doellinger's motion " that the clergy devote themselves to detailed scientific study of the social question," was enthusiastically wel-
98
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comed and unanimously carried. Finally, in the winter oi 1863 Ketteier himself set to work to de- fine the position of Christianity in regard to the labor question and at the same time to supply the nascent Christian social-reform movement with a sorely needed program.
In Order to form a just idea of the significance of this work, it will be necessary to cast a rapid glance at the development of the social-reform movement in Germany up to 1864. When the gen- eral distress and famine of 1847, the natural con- sequence of the uncontroUed spread of Liberal In- dustrialism, and the Revolution of 1848, which was as much a social as a political uprising, forced the social question on Germany, the Liberais, thanks to the banishment of the Socialist agitators, thanks also to the listlessness of the Christian and con- servative elements, as well as to the bold initiative of Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch,^ got the start in the race for the leadership of the masses. After sev- eral futile attempts had been made in Berlin and other eitles to help the workingman out of his misery, Schulze-Delitzsch founded the first German Loan Association in Eilenburg (1851). The ex- periment proved a success and served as a model for all similar undertakings. By lecture courses and cleverly written economic treatises Herr Schulze popularized his ideas and brought about the rapid spread of his Craftsmen's Associations. Favored
^ Hermann Schulze, bom i; Delitzsch, Province of Saxony, 1808. In the civil service tili 1852 ; leader of the Progressists tili his death in 1883. Works : Vorschuss und Kreditvereine als Volksbanken (1855) ; Die arbeitenden Klassen und das Assozia- tionswesen (1858) ; Kapitel zu einem deutschen Arbeiterkate- chismus (ugainst Lassalle, 1863).
SOCIAL REFORM. 99
by the democratic tendencies of the time and the restless activity of his political friends, the Pro- gressist wing of the Liberais, who sought to win popularity through their leader, he soon became the lion of the day. In a few years he found him- self at the head of the powerful Federation of German Workingmen's Associations (1859).
Schulze flattered himself that he could solve the social problem on the basis of tlhe Manchester» theory of absolute economic liberty. He made his own the motto of Quesnay, physician in ordinary to Louis XV : " Laissez aller, laissez passer, le monde va de lui-meme." Nothing was more detrimental in his eyes than to impede the free play of the na- tural economic laws. Only by looking out for him- self can the individual be of use to the Community. In the game of political economy egoism is trump. Hence he was in principle opposed to all interfer- ence on the part of the State in the regulation of the economic relations of men. Self-help, not State- help, is what the workingman needs, he used to say. The workingman, in order to help himself, must be free to exercise any craft, to settle anywhere within the country and to combine with his fellows for mutual protection. But effective self-help is made possible only by education. The masses were clamoring for bread; Herr Schulze told them, " First culture, then bread." And forthwith he and his friends began to flood the country with Societies for the Education of the Workingman. By education was, of course, meant a smattering of culture after the Liberal, anti-Christian pattern. Once educated, the workingman would be able to
lOO BISHOP KETTELER,
hold his own in the battle of life, or rather the battle for life against capital.
The whole Liberal worid listened devoutly to Herr Schulze's theories, believed and adored. Even certain Catholic Journals echoed his senti- ments, and " swore no higher," as Edmund Joerg put it. He was hailed as " King of the Social Realm," and nothing seemed able to shake his throne. Then, suddenly, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, Ferdinand Lassalle came down on him with the " demon-like force of his logic," and with merciless hands plucked to pieces the laurel crown an admiring bourgeoisie had presented him with as the " vanquisher of the red spectre." " Don't let loose the beast!" had been Schulze's repeated warn- ing to his foUowers, when the ominous growlings of the Socialists began to be heard here and there. But the " beast " was let slip after all and the so- cial war was on in Germany.
Few men were ever better equipped by natura and training to lead or rather mislead the masses than Ferdinand Lassalle (1825 -1864). As an un- believing Jew he was a match for the dechristian- ized Liberalism of Schulze-Delitzsch and the Man- chesterians. He fought them with their chosen weapon, science without God. To a critical genius, the like of which it would be hard to find, he joined uncommon erudition and a recklessness bordering on brutality. Nothing was sacred to him either in the World of ideas or the world of sense. Even Heinrich Heine started back before this apparition of the spirit of revolutionary Young Germany. Fresh from the impression of his first interview
SOCIAL REFORM. lOi
with Lassalle in Paris in 1 846, the old scoflfer wrote to Varnhagen von Ense: " Like myself you have helped to bury the old order of things and assisted at the birth of the new. Yes, we have given it birth and are frightened at it . . . Herr Lassalle is a genuine and typical son of the new age." Not even a man like Bismarck could resist the magnetic attraction of Lassalle's personality. Many years after the great demagogue's tragic death, Bismarck said of him in the Reichstag: " He was one of the , most brilliant and amiable men I ever met."
Lassalle first attracted attention by his successful management of the famous Hatzfeld divorce case. Though scarcely twenty years old at the time, he passionately espoused the cause of the Countess Hatzfeld, fought it for ten years through thirty- six Courts, and ended by securing a princely fortune for the Countess and a yearly income of 5000 thalers for himself. A purloined casket, which contained documents of the highest value to the Countess, played an important part in the final stages of the suit. Accused of complicity in the theft, Lassalle defended himself so cleverly that he was trium- phantly acquitted, his tool, a certain Dr. Mendel- sohn, having to pay the penalty alone.
After his return from Paris, where he had gone " to enjoy life in Babylon," to study Greek philo- sophy and, incidentally, to change his inherited name Lässal into the more aristocratic Lassalle, he threw himself body and soul into the revolutionary movement of 1848, affiliating himself with the Secret Society of Communists, the precursor of the Internationale, whose guiding spirits were Marx
I02 BISHOP KETTELER.
and Engels. Repeatedly imprisoned for exciting the populace against the authorities, he disappeared for a while from the political stage, devoting his time to pleasure-seeking in Paris, Switzerland, and Ostende, and to the composition of his curious phil- osophical work, Heracliius the Obscure of Ephesus
(1857)-
During the Italian War he tried to gain the good- will of Bismarck and the Prussian Government by a brochure entitled The Italian War and Prussia's Mission, in which he demanded the restoration of German unity under the hegemony of Prussia. In 1861 he published his most ambitious work, The System of Acquired Rights. In it he repudiates every moral foundation of justice and rights, — the only source of right, according to him, being the oonsciousness of the generality of the people.
Soon after the appearance of this work Lassalle began his short but eventful career as a Socialistic agitator. In numerous labor meetings in Berlin and Frankfort he eloquently championed the cause of the " disinherited " and could soon count his followers by the tens of thousands. In February of 1863 the Central Committee for the summoning of a general Congress of German workingmen re- quested Lassalle to draw up a politico-social pro- gram for a contemplated labor Organization. This he did in his Open Reply, the first text-book of German political Socialism. He laughed to scorn the idea of harmony between capital and labor; to the ruling third estate, the bourgeoisie, he opposed the fourth estate, the Proletariat, as the " rock on which the Church of the future was to be built ".
SOCIAL REFORM. 103
The two distinctive features of Lassalle's program are: the assumption of the so-called Insurmount- able, or Iron Wage Law {Eherne Lohngesetz), ^ and the emancipation of labor from the thraldom of capital by the Organization of Productive Co- operative Associations with the help of the State, In Order to secure a majority in Parliament, with- out which State aid was out of the question, he de- manded universal, equal, and direct suffrage. More " revolutionary " perhaps than his coöperative associations was his demand for the abrogation of all indirect taxation.
Very few of Lassalle's socialistic ideas origin- ated in his own brain. His faith in the ultimate triumph of the fourth estate he had imbibed from Hegel ; Marx furnished him with the basis for his destructive criticism of the Manchester school ; the theory of the insurmountable wage law he owed to Ricardo,^ and he was indebted to Louis Blanc for the idea of coöperative societies. But he cham- pioned them with such enthusiasm and plausibility that many of the clearest minds of the day were partially won over to them. Strange to say, while Bismarck, as late as 1878, declared in the Reichstag that he was not convinced of the impracticability of State-subventioned coöperative associations, Las-
^ " The iron law of wages or Ihe subsistence theory, was the application to wages of the theory of price being due to the cost of production. Labor was likened to a commodity and thus its price could be ordinarily no more than its cost of production, namely, such wages as would enable the workman to live and rear a successor." Devas, Political Economy, 3rd ed., p. 473.
3 "The Iron Wage Law," says Prof. Lujo Brentano, "was formulated by Turgot, made the centre of a rystem by Ricardo and shouted out into the world by Lassalle." {Frankfurter Zeitung, 25 Dec, 1907.)
I04
BISHOP KETTELER.
salle had never really taken them seriously, having proposed them " merely as a sop to the mob who were eager for something definite, something pal- pable," as he wrote to his friend Rodbertus. Of Ketteler's attitude on this question we shall have occasion to speak hereafter.
The Open Reply was furiously attacked by the Liberais of every shade. But Lassalle, who said of himself that " he had taken the field armed with all the science of the Century," returned blow for blow with interest, the most telling being the Organiza- tion of the All gemeine deutsche Arbeiterverein in May, 1863, and his subsequent election to the presidency.
Lassalle's most important Socialistic work, Herr Bastiat-* Schulze von Delitzsch, der oeconomische Julian^ oder Kapital und Arbeit, gave the death- blow to the Manchester dogma of self-help. "From the moment I put this work in the printer's hands," Lassalle says in the introduction, " you [Schulze] may look upon yourself as dead, and from the mo- ment it has found a few thousand readers, as buried, too." Time proved his words to have been more than an idle boast.
In his habits and outward appearance Lassalle was anything but a labor leader. " He, the Demo- crat," says Georg Brandes, " dressed like a dandy d quatre epingles, but tastefully withal. . . . His
* Frederic Bastiat (1801-50), French political economist ardent Opponent of Proudhon.
5 Julian Schmidt (1818-86), whose uncritical History of Ger- man Literaiure Lassalle had handled very pungently in 1860; Schmidt himself was relegated to the ranks of the " literary mob ".
SOCIAL REFORM. IO5
diners and soupers ranked with the most select af- fairs in Berlin. There was no contradiction in this, but rather a contrast such as we might look for in a rieh and complicated nature, in a Jacobin endowed with a keen sense of the beautiful, in a revolution- ary soldier fighting with gorgeously decorated weapons, in a man who has not wholly put off the child." «
Radical Socialists distrusted Lassalle even during his lifetime and after his death openly accused him of double-dealing. "At first," says Bernhard Becker, " his agitation was frankly social-demo- cratic, as is shown by his Frankfort address pub- lished in the Labor Reader. Little by little, how- ever, it received a Prussian monarchical flavor. He drew closer to Bismarck and the Kreuzzeitung. Be- guiled by his vanity, he had hoped, for a while, at the head of his labor party to be a match for the all-powerful Chancellor; but he was soon un- deceived." What the daring demagogue's ulterior plans were and what use he intended to make of his tremendous influence, no one knows. He did not live to see the disintegration of his party through the incompetence of his successors and the intri- gues of the Countess Hatzfeld, and its final ab- sorption by the Socialistic Labor Party of Bebel and Liebknecht. He died in Geneva, 31 August, 1864, of a wound received in a duel with the Wallachian Bojar Racowitza, his rival for the hand of Helene von Doenniges.^ His followers made a demigod
* Brandes, Lassalle, ein literarisches Charakterbild, 1877. "^ Helene von Doenniges died by her own hand, 4 Oct., 191 1, a few days after the death of her third husband, Sergius
I06 BISHOP KETTELER.
of him and Socialists still celebrate the anniversary of his death and make pilgrimages to his grave in the Jewish cemetery in Breslau.
Such is a brief sketch of the man whose name the Liberais insisted on linking with that of the great Bishop of Mainz in a wilfuUy calumnious manner. At the beginning of the Kulturkampf all sorts of sensational stories on their supposed personal rela- tions were busily circulated and piously believed. The N ationalzeitung unblushingly asserted that Lassalle had been introduced to Ketteier by the Countess Hahn-Hahn and secretly baptized by him; that the Bishop had expressed the deepest concern at the death of the Socialist leader and accompanied his remains from the Station in Mainz to the boat that was to bring them to Düsseldorf. Ketteier categorically denied all these reports. He had never seen Lassalle, he said, alive or dead, had never spoken with him, and consequently could not have baptized him. Countess Hatzfeld had indeed visited him in Mainz and besought him to take Steps in Munich to facilitate the marriage of Lassalle and Helene von Doenniges. This he had refused to do and there the matter ended.
Previous to this, in January, 1864, Ketteier had addresed an anonymous letter to Lassalle asking his advice on a plan he had been entertaining for some time of founding five small coöperative associations with private capital, a System which seemed to him preferable to State Intervention. Lassalle sent an
Schewitsch, a Russian Journalist and revolutionary, who had left her penniless. This stränge pair had made their home in New Yorl. for many years.
SOCIAL REFORM.
107
evasive answer and asked the unknown correspond- ent to reveal himself. Ketteier thereupon sought the desired information from the well-known his- torian and political economist, Victor Aime Huber.^ No further correspondence, anonymous or other- wise, passed between the " Labor tribune " and the Bishop, but their common Opposition to Liberalism, political and social, Lassalle's well-feigned if not real love for the workingman and his " respectful recognition on several public occasions of the truth and depth of Christianity," as well as his just ap- preciation of the Middle Ages, resulted in Ketteler's judging perhaps too favorably of his intentions and aspirations.
2. CRITIQUE OF THE LIBERAL AND RADICAL SOLU- TIONS OF THE LABOR QUESTION.
In the spring of 1864, at the most critical stage of the controversy between Schulze-Delitzsch and Lassalle, when all the world wondered what would be the outcome, when Christian sociologists were at a loss as to what course to steer and the State looked on in helpless bewilderment, Ketteler's epoch-making woik, Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christentum — Christianity and the Labor Qu.es- tio n — app ea r ed .
To-day it is nothing unusual for the highest dig- nitaries of the Church to take an active part in the discussion of the labor question. It was not thus fifty years ago. In the introduction to his work Ketteier deemed it advisable to set forth at length the reasons which induced him to speak on this
*Pfülf, III, pp. 260-64; 11, pp. 183-85.
I08 BISHOP KETTELER.
matter. His apology is such a splendid monument to his nobility of mind and heart, and bears such unmistakable witness to his truly apostolic con- ception of the episcopal office, that we cannot re- frain from reproducing it in part at least.
Many will perhaps say that, as bishop, I have no right to meddle in such matters, or at any rate that I have not sufficient grounds for doing so. Others will likely say that I should at most address myself to the faithful. I share neither of these views. The labor question touches the material needs of the Christian people : this consideration alone, it seems to me, gives me the right to discuss it publicly. Viewed in this light the labor ques- tion is also a question of Christian charity. What- ever concerns the spiritual and temporal distress of man our Divine Saviour has eternally and indissolubly boimd up with His religion. The Church has everywhere and at all tünes acted on this principle.
The material and moral improvement of the working classes — this is the problem under discussion. Various means have been proposed. What is more important than to examine these from the Christian point of view? Can we approve of them? Can we lend, or must we refuse, our Cooperation ? What special means has Chris- tianity to off er? All these are questions intimately con- nected with the Christian religion ; as a Christian and as a bishop I am entitled to pass judgment on them.
When I was about to receive episcopal consecration, the Church put this question to me : "Do you promise to be kind and merciful to the poor, the strangers and the unfortunate, in the name of the Lord?" And I an- swered : " I promise." How could I af ter such a solemn promise remain indifferent in regard to a question that bears on the deepest needs of such a numerous class of men? The labor question concerns me quite as much as
SOCIAL REFORM.
109
the welfare of my flock, and far beyond these narrow limits, as the welfare of all workingmen, who are my brothers in Christ.
After warning his readers not to expect an ex- haustive treatment of the labor question — it was too early in the day for that — Ketteier defines the term workingman. It applies not only to the laborer properly so-called, that is the day-laborer and mill- worker, but to those also who, though conducting a business of their own, possess so little capital that their condition is no better than that of the man forced to live on his daily wages. In this sense mechanics, small tradesmen and property-holders must be classed as workingmen.®
" The labor question is essen tially a question of subsistence. Now there is no doubt that the ma- terial existence of almost the whole laboring class, that is the great mass of the Citizens of all modern States, the existence of their families, the daily bread necessary to the workingman, to his wife and children, is subject (in our time) to the fluctuations of the market and the price of merchandise." ^**.
^ Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christentum, p. 7.
i" Ketteier here attributes the social distress of the wage- earning classes to the action of the so-called Iron Law of Wages (See above). So far he agrees with Lassalle and many other political economists of his day. " The theory of the Iron Wage Law," H. von Scheel wrote in 1878, " is in fact irrefragable so long as the presuppositions for it continue ... so long as the workingmen do not free themselves from the domination of the capitalists by corporative Organization." (Scheel, Unsere so- zialpolitischen Parteien, p. iii.) That Ketteier understood the iron wage law theory in this sense is evidenced by the fact that he adds the words "in our time" to his definition. {Arbeiter- frage, p. 17). The means proposed by Lassalle and the So- cialists for breaking through " this cruel law " are fundamentally different from those proposed by the Bishop, as will be seen in
HO BISHOP KETTELER.
This is, according to Ketteier, the gist of the labor question. Unlimited economic liberty and the pre- ponderance of capital he makes responsible for this lamentable State of things.
There is much to be said in favor of economic liberty; but it must be kept within proper bounds. It has increased production immeasurably ; it has improved the productions themselves to a certain extent and by lowering their price has brought many luxuries within the reach of even the poorer classes. But by exceeding its proper limits it has degraded labor to the level of an article of mer- chandise. Capital daily increases the number of hired workmen and, aided by the machine, de- preciates the value of human labor.^^
Ketteier then proceeds to examine the " Liberal " Solution of the labor question. The remedies pro- posed by Schulze-Delitzsch and the Manchester school he divides into three groups : i. Unrestricted free-trade, unrestricted liberty of exercising any Graft, and unrestricted right of settlement. 2. Self- help ; education of the working-classes. 3. Work- ingmen's associations organized on the principle of social self-help, such as loan and supply associations.
His criticism of these proposals is sharp, but just. The first group, he says, will not improve the con-
the text. The Socialists did not officially abandon the iron wage law theory until 1891 at the Convention of Erfurt, and then only very reluctantly, because it had served them so well as an argu- ment against the present System of society.
^^ L. c, p. 20. " Of course," Ketteier remarks in a note, " I have no intention of attacking the use of the machine as such. To have made the powers of nature subservient to man is a tri- umph of mind over matter, which, rightly employed, can free man more and more from the necessity and slavery of material work."
SOCIAL REFORM. m
dition of the working classes, but rather aggravate it. Wages will descend to the limits of the strictly necessary, and even the wages thus reduced will be the exclusive portion of those who are in füll pos- session of their physical and intellectutal powers/* The second group is equally ineffectual. The real difficulty of the labor question lies in this, that the workingman cannot, properly speaking, help himself: he is dependent on others for his daily sustenance. Besides, " no amount of com- monplaces about self-help and the dignity of man, without a firm belief in the dogmas of Christianity — original sin, Redemption, immortality, eternal re- ward and punishment — will ever be able to make the immense bürden of daily labor in the sweat of his brow rest lightly on the Shoulders of the work- ingman. Whoever wishes to make use of labor as means for the moral uplift of man, must seek in the teachings of Christ the true significance of labor. Self-help based on the materialistic conception of life is a f olly : it converts the laboring man's life into one long unsatisfied hunger. Self-help based on the Christian conception of life, according to which labor is not only a necessity, but also a duty, a punishment for sin and a means of sanctification, is no new doctrine, no invention of the eighteenth or the nineteenth Century, but as old as the human family, inculcated by God Himself and practised by the Son of God in the Workshop of Nazareth.^*
Associations for the education of the working classes, inasmuch as they provide trades' schools, will be of some
^^ L. c, p. 34. 13 L. (.., pp. 37 ff.
112 BISHOP KETTELER.
use; they will also belp some exceptionally clever heads to get on in their trades; but they will be far more in- jurious than beneficial to the great mass of workingmen, because they spread infidelity, self-conceit, and love of pleasure. Religion has no place in the educational scheme proposed by the Liberal economists, who ignore Christianity altogether, or, if they do take notice of it, it is but to give vent to their hatred and contempt. The majority of workingmen are still in touch with Chris- tianity and the Church, but the directors of the societies for their education belong to those classes of our city population who have long since bidden f arewell to Chris- tianity and all supernatural revelation. In these circles all is confusion : a wild chaos of contradictory views on the reasons of things, from the flattest and grossest ma- terialism to a certain sentimental deism, is cooked to- gether into an intellectual hotchpotch. It is hard enougb for men to be satisfied with the bare necessaries of life — food, clothing, and dwelling; with their false culture the Liberais will make this State of things absolutely in- supportable. The Godless rieh man can at least make the sorry attempt to fill up the void in his heart by plung- ing into the enjoyment of his earthly possessions ; but to rob the empty-handed workingman of God and Christ is to deliver him up a prey to stupidity or to despair. This will infallibly be the effect of the Liberal education of the workingman.^*
Ketteler's predictions came only too true. The societies which he condemned were responsible for the wholesale distribution of the atheistical writ- ings of a Buechner, a Vogt, and a Haeckel, amongst the working classes. They were the hotbeds of Socialism. One of their most glorious products is — Bebel.
1* L. c, pp. 44 ff.
SOCIAL REFORM. II3
The remedies proposed in the third group — loan and supply associations — have only a relative value, says Ketteier. At the outset they will secure some advantages to the workingman, but their value will decrease in proportion as their number multiplies. Besides, they contradict the Liberal principles of self-help and economic liberty and are borrowed from the much-maligned guilds of the Middle Ages.
Thus what is true in these Liberal proposals is not new; what is new is not true; and, taken all together, they cannot in any appreciable manner al- leviate the distress of the laboring classes."
" The general aim of the Liberais is to bring about the dissolution of all that unites men or- ganically, spiritually, intellectually, morally, hu- manly. Economic Liberalism is built up on me- chanical rationalistic notions. It is nothing but an application of the doctrines of materialism to humanity. The working classes must be reduced to atoms and then mechanically put together again. This is the fundamental, the generative principle of modern political economy. We could not deny its truth if men stood to each other merely in the relation of numbers. The highest number con- sists of Units, of absolutely the same value; place them where you will, at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end, they are always in the right place. If it were the same with men, we could not do better than divide the whole of mankind on the five continents into units and then throw these to- gether in any manner we chose. The combination would always be perfect; the relations would in-
15 L. c, p. 50.
114 BISHOP KETTELER.
variably be excellent. This pulverization method, this chemical Solution of humanity into individuals, into grains of dust of equal value, into atoms which a puff of wind might scatter in all direc- tions, is as false as are the suppositions on which it rests. The fact is that men are not merely num- bers of the same value. Herr Schulze-Delitzsch himself admits that absolute social equality is non- sense and in utter 'contradiction to the natural« Order." '"
So much for the remedies proposed by Liberal economists. What proposals does the Radical Party make? Lassalle formulates them as f ollows : We must give the worker a share in the property of the business, so that, in addition to his salary, he may share in its profits ; we must make a joint-proprietor, a shareholder of him. To accomplish this, capitcd is necessary. The workingman therefore needs capital. This capital must be provided by the State. The workingmen must strive to obtain a majority in the Legislative Chambers in order to obtain the capital required for the Organization of Productive Coöperative Associations through the ordinary Channel of legislation.
What shall we say to this proposal? Is it prac- ticable? Ketteier thinks not. Let us suppose, he says, that the Radicals have gained the victory; that they have a working majority in the legislative body. What will happen in the very first Session? " Each workingman, each productive association, each labor union, will claim the right to be heard first and to be favored before the rest. The floor
16 Op. cit., pp. 33 and 57.
SOCIAL REFORM. 115
of parliament will become a battlefield where the vilest selfishness and the basest passions will en- gage in deadly combat. Whoever imagines that the deliberations of such an assembly could be carried on with calmness and dignity, that those workingmen who must necessarily be barred for an indefinite period from the benefit of State-subsidies would bear their miserable lot with heavenly pa- tience tili their turn came, does not know the human heart and its passions." ^^
But even supposing the plan of the Radicals to be feasible, the vast amount of capital required to carry it out would necessitate a serious encroach- ment upon the rights of private property. Can such an encroachment be justified? Ketteier answers :
If the Liberais are right, if there is no personal God, no connexion between laws made by men and the lex aeterna, the eternal law whose source is the Divine In- telligence, then the right of private property, together with all the laws that regulate it, is purely and simply a matter dependent on the will of man and on the will of man alone, and I do not see what reasonable objection could be raised if at some time or other a majority com- posed of such as possess no property decreed that the property-holders must lend them a portion of their prop- erty. Nay more, what is to hinder this majority from going to greater lengths still and claiming as their own what had been granted them as a loan? The question of the nature and origin of the right of private property will be simply a question of majorities. The majority will also decide the question of the right of bequeathing property by will. The decisions of the majority are the
17 Op. cit., pp. 84-7.
Il6 BISHOP KETTELER.
only bases of what is called the modern State. What grounds have we f or believing that this principle will not be applied to a revision of the right of ownership? Teil me why the majesty of the populär will should bow before the strong-boxes of the opulent Liberais? If it has the right to trample our conscience in the dust, to sneer at our faith, to deny God and Christ, it would be supremely ridiculous to maintain that it must remain rooted to the spot, as if by enchantment, before the gold of the millionaire.
If the Liberais on the strength of their principle of absolute populär sovereignty can decree away the an- cient rights of the Church and insult our consciences as they please, other majorities will succeed them who will take the same stand as they, and with the same right will not only grant millions to subsidize labor-unions, but for other things besides.
Viewed from the Standpoint of the Liberais and the principles taught in the name of the Government in so many of our universities, the lawfulness of the remedies proposed by Lassalle cannot even for a moment be called in question.
The case is different with those who believe in God and Christ and are therefore convinced that men do not make laws arbitrarily, but ought to find them in the principles of right based on the order established by God, and promulgate no others ; that laws receive their bind- ing force not from the will of men, but from the etemal will of God. They do not merely ask, What has the majority decided? but, What tuas it authorized to decide? We believe that a decision to help the working classes by means of subventions such as Lassalle proposes would ex- ceed the competence of a legislative body and encroach on a domain over which the State exercises no power. ^^
^^ Op. cit., pp. 72-7.
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Comparing the proposals of the Liberais and the Radicals with each other, Ketteier pronounces the following judgment on them : "Lassalle is right against Schulze-Delitzsch and Schulze-Delitzsch is right against Lassalle. Each is right in his critic- ism of the other; both are for the most part wrong in the proposals they make to help the working- man. Both are right when they deny; both wrong when they affirm. We are not surprised at this; it is in harmony with the general character of the spirit of the world, which can indeed criticize, pick flaws, and tear down, but can not create, build up, and shape, because it is cut off from all communi- cation with the Truth and the Life." ^*
3. THE TRUE KEY TO THE LABOR PROBLEM.
After having thus shown that the remedies pro- posed by the Liberais and the Radicals are inade- quate to solve the great problems of the day, and, far from relieving the wretched condition of the working classes, tend only to aggravate it, Ketteier asks :
Is there no help, then, for the workingman? Must we look upon the evils that bear htm down as irre- mediable? Are we condemned to stand by and see gut people hastening to decay without being able to tum their course? Certainly not. Since the Son of God came down upon earth, the creative spirit of Christian- ity has solved, so far as this is possible in our present State, all the great questions that have at different times agitated mankind, even that ever-recurring one, What shall we eat? what shall we drink? wherewith shall we
19 Op. cit, p. 62.
Il8 BISHOP KETTELER.
be clothed? It broke the chains of the slaves of old, who were rated with the beasts of binden, and clothed them again with human dignity. The anti- Christian spirit of our day is determined to reestablish ancient slav- ery under a new form, and, powerfully aided by an un- believing and materialistic science, is in a fair way to succeed. By making man descend from matter, it har- dens his heart against the sufferings of his fellow-men. We trample upon matter ; we destroy it if necessary, we kill the animal that is to serve us as food. If man is nothing but a transformation of matter, an evolution of the animal or vegetable kingdom, pray teil me the limits beyond which it will not be permitted to trample him un- der f oot like a plant, to kill him like a beast of the field, and where we must begin to reverence and love him as a human being? Egoism will soon break down the barriers set up by a shallow humanitarianism, and the neiv slavery, founded as it will be on the vilest worship of matter, will become harsher and more cruel than the old. When the great doctors of the primitive Church attacked slavery, they said to the masters : " God gave man dominion over nature and dominion over the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air; but He did not give thee the same power over thy f ellow-man ; as man he is thy equal." On the seventh of February, 1249, when peace was concluded between the Teutonic Knights and the converted Prussians, the Papal Legate spoke these sublime words : " The newly-converted have been taught that all men are equal, except for sin, and that sin alone makes them wretched and reduces them to slavery." Modem materialism seeks to rob man of the grandeur that lies in this thought by making him the equal of the brüte ; it boasts of this as if it were a new revelation, though well aware that, if consequentially carried out, it must necessarily bring us back to that State in which man could be treated as a dumb animal.
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The working class has to bear the whole weight of these unhappy aberrations. Here it is again the mission of Christianity to deliver the world from this neo-pagan slavery by bringing her divine energy and her ever new life to the task.^°
Before detailing the specific remedies the Church has to offer for the Solution of the labor question, Ketteier compares the condition of the working classes in ancient times and in th& ages of faith. He says :
Christianity puts man in füll possession and enjoy- ment of all his powers. It restored to him his in- dividuality füll and entire. Paganism had no concep- tion of the worth of man as an individual. For the Greek and the Roman the rest of mankind had no value. Even among their own people they did not recognize the true worth of man. Among the Greeks half of the nation, woman namely, was looked upon as of inferior condition. Nor was the dignity of the child better un- derstood. It could be sold or put to death for a variety of reasons. The man was altogether absorbed by the Citizen, and his value was measured by his degree of use- fulness to the Conmionwealth. Man as such could hardly be said to exist. . . . ^^
The enlightened Greeks, whose culture is still held up to US as a model, despised manual labor. The free- born among them regarded the exercise of a trade as dishoiiorable and degrading. The idea of self-help by means of work was unknown to them. Manual labor was left to the slaves. The gods of Greece, whom the most populär poet of Germany has so highly extolled,^'^
20 Op. cit., pp. 100-103. 21 Op. cit., p. 120.
22 Ketteier alludes to Schiller's well-known poem Die Goetter Griechenlands.
I20 BISHOP KETTELER.
had no heaxt for the laborer and the slave. The Greek philosophers taught that slavery was an Institution founded on the natural order, and as such could not be abolished. They had not even the faintest idea that the great body of toilers could be elevated to the position they occupy under the Christian dispensation. In their eyes the slave was a chattel like any other, a part of their private property, an instrument at the service of the free man. The most celebrated were of opinion that every slave was radically corrupt and knew no other mo- tives of action than fear and sensuality. The ideal Plato himself counsels his disciples to treat their slaves harshly, to chastise them frequently; and he took contempt of his slaves to be a sign of a well-bred man. In such esteem was the workingman held when the gods ruled in Greece. It was the same in Rome. The Romans shared the views of the Greeks on slavery and work. In the be- ginning agriculture and certain trades were indeed in honor among them ; but this State of things was of short duration, and in the end all manual labor, agricultiire, and trades, were lef t to the slaves, who were treated even more horribly and inhumanly than were the slaves of Greece. The cruelties committed day after day in every part of the Roman Empire would revolt the civilized World to-day, because the hearts of men have been re- fashioned by the breath of Christianity. The sole reason for a slave's existence was the satisfaction of the lusts of his master. And so it came to pass at last that the Ro-- man knew no greater pleasure than to witness those bloody festivals in the arena at which slaves were torn to pieces by famished lions and tigers, or drained each other's blood in gladiatorial combats — to contemplate their gaping wounds, to revel in their agony, to hear their death-rattle, this was the Roman's holiday. Such ivcls the condition of the workingman under the gods of Rome.
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His lot was not more enviable amongst the other pagan peoples, the ancient Germans not excepted. Amongst these also work was the duty of the slaves. War and the chase were the occupations of the freemen, who, when not thus employed, gave themselves up to sluggish idle- ness or played and drank the time away. Even agricnl- ture was despised in pagan Germany. The fields were cultivated by the women and the slaves.
Amongst the Jews alone was the case dififerent — an additional proof of the providential mission of this peo- ple. We find a kind of slavery here also; but just as the Jewish people was set in the midst of the Gentiles as a witness and a montmient to the mercies of God, an- nouncing to the world the Coming of the Saviour who was to free both soul and body f rom the chains of slavery, so also was slavery itself to a certain extent abolished among them, despoiled at any rate of its pagan acces- sories of degradation and cruelty. Jewish slavery held as unexampled a position in the ancient world as did the Jewish conception of labor. The Jewish master worked side by side with his slave; he allowed him rest on the Sabbath and was obliged to grant him certain rights.
From this sad state Christianity freed the world. It did not merely deliver the souls of men from the bonds of sin and error, but completely changed the condition of the working classes. The great truth proclaimed in Holy Writ, " God created man to His own image ; to the image of God He created him," was so deeply buried under the degradation and misery of the great mass of mankind, the slaves, that all remembrance of it had vanished. Jesus Christ proclaimed it anew to all men, even to the poorest and most unfortunate. With His divine band He broke the chains that had been so tightly riveted that they were looked upon as part and parcel of the nature of things, as a condition native to man; and forthwith they began to fall off from the hands and feet
122 BISHOP KETTELER.
they had bound so long. More wonderful still than the fact of this deliverance was the manner of it. Moehler justly remarks that perhaps the most remarkable feat ac- complished by Christianity was this, that it brought about the emancipation of the slaves without their having made a Single attempt to procure it by violent means. Ec- clesiastical history does not record even one instance in which the preaching of the Gospel caused the slaves to revolt against their masters or to rid themselves violently of them. St. Paul shows us by a typical example how Christianity went about its work of emancipation. Ones- imus, a slave, after robbing his master, fled to Rome, where he was converted to Christianity. St. Paul sent him back to his master with an epistle in his favor which may well be called the anticipated declaration of freedom to all the slaves in the new Christian empire. If the Christians were supposed to treat their slaves as St. Paul directed Philemon to do, the peaceful end of slav- ery could not be far off. " If thou count me a partner," the great apostle wrote, " receive him as myself ; not now as a slave, but instead of a slave, a most dear brother, especially to me, but how much more to thee." And these were not vain words : " Trusting in thy obedience," St. Paul could add, " I have written to thee, knowing that thou wilt also do more than I say." ^^ The Chris- tians did in fact do more. They treated their slaves not only as brothers in Jesus Christ, but gradually gave them their liberty also. Thus Christ overcame slavery by the etemal truths which He proclaimed. The externa! traces of a malady disappear in proportion as the body recovers its health. The same process took place in humanity under the influence of Christianity. God has placed a spiritual, a heavenly leaven in the world which gradually raises and leavens the whole mass. He heals men from within, because all extemal ills have their
23 Philemon, i6, 17, 21.
SOCIAL REFORM. I23
source within ; He heals the soul first, because the soul is the seat of all the bodily ills with which man is af- flicted. Thus in the course of the centuries the chains of slavery were loosed by a wonderful internal, spiritual process. During the Middle Ages its reign had ceased in almost every Christian State. Christian workingmen and Christian industry replaced the slaves of paganism, and a conception of labor and its dignity underwent such a transformation that what was a disgrace to the heathen became a source of virtue and honor to the Christian.^*
What Christianity accomplished during the early centuries of its reign, it still has power to accom- plish to-day. It solved the most tangled problem handed on to it by ancient paganism, the problem of slavery, by informing mankind with its divine ideas and infusing into it its spirit of charity, It will also solve the vexed questions of our day, not so much by having recourse to more or less me- chanical remedies, as by enlightening the minds and regenerating thehearts of men,by infusing its spirit into them, without which even the best reform meas- ures will be futile.^^ True political and social wis- dom will return in the wake of divine wisdom, and then governments and legislative bodies will see their way to promoting a wholesome reform of our present social and economical conditions. Thus
2* Op. cit, pp. 149-156.
26 " I am well aware that in this domain (i. e. social reform) all the desired reforms cannot be realized by State intervention alone. To the church and the school there is left a wide field for independent action, by which the legislative tneasures must be supported and fructified if they are to serve their purpose fullyP (William II, at the opening of the Council of State, 14 Feb., 1890.)
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Christianity alone holds the true key to the social question.^®
4. COOPERATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE SOLUTION OF THE LABOR PROBLEM.
What has the Church to offer the workingman? In the first place, says Ketteier, she will continue her solicitude for the aged and the invalid. Chris- tian charity will, as it has done in the past, found retreats for the poor, the sick, the incurable, and gather the orphans under her protecting wing. This peculiar province of the Church will never be taken f rom her. Efforts are indeed being made, and greater ones will be made in after times, by her enemies, in spite of their vaunted doctrine of self-help and their contempt for almsgiving, to com- pete with her in this field or to dispossess her alto- gether; but without the aid of the supernatural graces and gifts with which God has endowed His Church it will be impossible to bestow that loving care on the poor invalid workingman which alone can make life in an asylum bearable and in some measure a Substitute for the home. The daily and hourly care of the sick is such a trying task that human nature, left to itself, cannot bear the strain. Even parental and filial love oftentimes succumbs under this bürden. ^^
In this connexion Ketteier makes a remarkable Suggestion. " The Church lands appropriated by the State during the secularization era are of very great value. Their revenues are helping to replen-
2« Op. cit., pp. 104-106. 2'^ Op. cit., pp. 106-111.
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ish the public treasury and indirectly to lighten the bürden of taxation. The secularization was a foul robbery committed in total disregard of all the principles on which the right of ownership is founded. The Church has for all times relin- quished her claims to her former possessions. Sub- sidiarily, however, the poor have a right to the property of the Church, for, according to Canon Law and the intention of the donors, the patri- mony of the Church is at the same time the patri- mony of the poor. Thus it would be a kind of atonement for this spoliation if the secularized property were converted into a poor-fund by the State. The good that might be done in this way is incalculable. Though this idea may appear to be anything but in harmony with the spirit of the age, I have given expression to it here because of the undeniable truth underlying it." ^^
In the second place the Church offers the work- ingman the inestimable benefit of the Christian family, together with the rock on which it is built, the Sacrament of Matrimony. To preserve to the children of the working classes the Christian fam- ily, the Christian parent-heart, is an indispensable condition for the Solution of the labor problem. True, the Christian family does not guarantee higher wages to the laborer; but it gives his wages a far higher value. The Christian family is the most necessary of all organizations, an Organiza- tion founded by God Himself, without which all others, call them what you will, have no value for the workingman. Its sanctifying influence pre- 28 Op. cit., p. 15.
126 BISHOP KETTELER.
serves him even before his birth, and afterward in the days of his youth and of his manhood, from the dreadful consequences of vice. In times of dis- tress, of sickness, of want of work, what can re- place the inexhaustible love and spirit of sacrifice of a truly Christian wife, the tender devotion of sons and daughters who believe that the command- ment to honor father and mother is a divine com- mandment with a divine sanction?^^
The third boon held out by the Church to the workingman are her truths and precepts, and with them true culture of the mind and the heart. The truths of Christianity give him a deep insight into his dignity as man and teach him to rate his daily toil higher than the material price paid for it. Far from being encouraged to neglect the concerns of life, he is reminded that sloth is one of the Seven Capital Sins ; that he must give a strict account of his stewardship over the goods entrusted to him ; that the man who thinks he is on earth " to eat and to drink and be drunk," and nothing more, " shall be beaten with many stripes," that, whether he have five pounds or only one pound, he must make the most of his opportunity. In season and out of season she strives to impress on him the su- preme necessity of temperance, self-denial, con- tinence, and all those other virtues whose observance cannot but be conducive to his temporal as well as his eternal well-being and without which " self- help " is a hoUow phrase.^"
In the fourth place the Church offers her power- ful Cooperation for the Organization of labor.
2ö Op. cit, pp. 117-119. 3 0 0p. cit., pp. I2i-i3a
SOCIAL REFORM. I27
The fundamental characteristic of the labor move- ments of our day, that which gives them their import- ance and significance and really constitutes their essence, is the tendency, everywhere rife among the workingmen, to organize for the purpose of gaining a hearing for their just Claims by united action. To this tendency, which is not only justified but necessary under existing economic conditions, the Church cannot but gladly give her sanc- tion and support.
It would be a great folly on our part if we kept aloof from this movement merely because it happens at the present time to be promoted chiefly by men who are hostile to Christianity. The air remains God's air though breathed by an atheist, and the bread we eat is no less the nourishment provided for us by God though kneaded by an unbeliever. It is the same with unionism: it is an idea that rests on the divine order of things and is es- sentially Christian, though the men who favor it most do not recognize the finger of God in it and often even tiim it to a wicked use.
Unionism however is not merely legitimate in itself and worthy of our support, but Christianity alone com- mands the indispensable Clements for directing it prop- erly and making it a real and lasting benefit to the work- ing classes. Just as the great truths which uplift and educate the workingman — his individuality and personal- ity — are Christian truths, so also Christianity has the great ideas and living forces capable of imparting life and vigor to the workingmen's associations. It is not without a deeper reason that we apply the word body to certain associations. The body represents the most per- fect Union of parts bound to one another by the highest principle of life, by the soul. Hence we call such asso- ciations bodies, or corporations, which have, so to speak, a soul that holds the members together. Now it is just here that Christian associations differ from all others.
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The immediate end of an association may be purely ma- terial, a matter of every-day lif e ; if the Clements of which it is composed are Christian, it will receive through them a higher bond of union. . . . The associations so much in vogue to-day have no other bond of union than their own immediate objects. Supply-associations furn- ish their members with cheaper bread ; loan-associations offer them capital at a lower rate of interest, etc. Selfish- ness with its constant tendency to encroach on the rights of others threatens at any moment to prevent the realiza- tion of this common object. When, on the contrary, men Combine in a Christian spirit, there subsists among them, independently of the direct purpose of their association, a nobler bond which, like a beneficent sun, pours out its light and warmth over all. Faith and charity are for them the source of life and light and vigor. Before they came together to attain a material object, they were already united in this tree of life planted by God on the earth ; it is this spiritual union that gives life to their social union. In a word, Christian associations are living organisms; the associations founded under the auspices of modern Liberalism are nothing but agglomer- ations of individuals held together solely by the hope of present mutual profit or usefulness.
The future of unionism belongs to Christianity. The ancient Christian corporations have been dissolved and men are still zealously at work trying to remove the last remnants, the last stone of this splendid edifice: a new building is to replace it. But this is only a wretched hut — built on sand. Christianity must raise a new structure on the old foundations and thus give back to the workingmen's associations their real significance and their real usefulness. ^^
31 Op. cit., pp. 130-136.
SOCIAL REFORM. I2q
The associations especially recommended by Ket- teier to the sympathy and support of all who have the Christian Solution of the labor problem at heart are the Craftsmen's Unions and the Journeymen's Associations. The former, then still in their in- fancy, were doomed to be but short-lived, owing to lack of support on the part of the Government ; the latter, founded, as we have said elsewhere, by Father Kolping in 1845, Ketteier justly calls a Catholic contribution to the Solution of the labor question, and he prophesies a glorious future for them.""
In the fifth place Ketteier proposes the Organiza- tion of Coöperative Associations as one of the most effective means of relieving the working-classes. He placed the greatest hopes in the ultimate suc- cess of the coöperative idea if supported by Chris- tian charity. At the same time he did not shut his eyes to the very serious difficulties standing in the way of its realization.
It is superfluous [he says] to insist on the importance of Productive Associations of Workingmen. We can- not foresee whether it will ever be possible to make the whole labor world, or even the bulk of it, share in the benefits they ofifer. But there is something so grand in the idea itself that it deserves otir sympathy in the high- est degree. So far as it is realizable it holds out the most palpable Solution of the problem under discussion, assuring as it does to the workman, over and above his daily wages, which competition has practically reduced to a minimum, a new source of revenue. Lassalle wishes
»2 In 1907 there were 1161 societies with a total membership of 193,000. ^
I30
BISHOP KETTELER.
to carry out this project with the help of capital ad- vanced by the State. This expedient, at least if carried out on a large scale, appears to us, as we have said be- fore, an unjustifiable encroachment on the rights of pri- vate property and impossible of realization without the gravest danger to the public peace. Professor Huber ^^ relies partly on the initiative of the workingmen them- selves, partly on private donations, and is in favor of be- ginning ever3rwhere on a small scale. The question of coöperative societies is, therefore, primarily a question of funds. The great manufacturers of to-day are rieh capi- talists or companies with millions at their command. The enterprises of the poor workingmen with little or no capital will be literally crushed and trampled upon by the giant business concerns which are becoming more nu- merous every day. Where can the workingmen get the necessary capital to compete with them? If Lassalle' s plan is unjustifiable and impracticable, as we are con- vinced it is, and if there are no other means available than those proposed by Huber, one were inclined to give up the whole idea of coöperative production as a beautiful but harren day-dream, or, at any rate, to cast aside all hope of realizing it to such an extent as would bring relief to any considerable part of the vast army of wage-earners. . . .
As often as I weigh these difficulties, the certainty and the hope spring up within me that the forces of Chris- tianity will take hold of this idea and realize it on a grand scale. Vast sums will be required, and 1 am far from entertaining the notion that the working-classes will be suddenly and everywhere relieved from their distress by this means. But I see this consvunmation in the future and hope that Christian souls will begin to lay
33 There is an excellent sketch of this eminent Christian eco- nomist in Janssen's Zeit und Lebensbilder, Vol. I ; cf. Goyau, L'AUemagne religieuse ; le Protestantisme, pp. 191-193.
SOCIAL REFORM. I^I
the füundations for it, now in one place, now in another. Christianity is a force that works from within, advances slowly, but infallibly succeeds in accomplishing the most sublime and unlooked-for things for the welfare of man- kind. No doubt many things will happen before the influence of Christianity has gained sufficient ground to attain the desired end. It took centuries before the an- cient Romans could be induced to set their slaves free. Perhaps many a Schulze- Delitzsch will have to appear on the scene and announce salvation to the working- classes, before the last tower built by the last of them crumbles to pieces and brings home to the workingman that he has been duped once more and that his hopes were vain. Perhaps the world will even have to give Las- salle's program a trial. The disastrous consequences sure to result from this dangerous experiment, especially if it is directed by unscrupulous demagogues, will con- vince it that the (Social-) Democrats are just as power- less to eure it of its ills as are the Liberais, because their philanthropical ideas, too, are built on the quicksands of human speculation and not on the rock of Christianity. We cannot, therefore, teil how and when Christianity will help the working-classes by means of coöperative so- cieties. However, we do not doubt that it will one day realize what is true and good and feasible in the idea. It is true, at the present moment the class that could do most in this matter, viz. the rieh merchants, the cap- tains of industry, and the moneyed men generally, is for the most part estranged from Christianity and committed body and soul to the principles of Liberalism. But Christianity counts faithful followers here, too, and its enemies need not always remain such. There was a time when the ancient patrician families of Rome were far removed indeed from Christianity; when a Roman matron daily employed hundreds of slaves to adom her person; but a time came when the children of these
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families liberated their slaves, with their fortunes cov- ered Italy with institutions for the poor, and even sacri- ficed their lives for the love of Christ. Christianity is so wonderful ! Its enemy of yesterday falls down to- day at the f oot of the Gross, and the son gives his blood for the love of the God whom his f ather blasphemed ! The resources of Christianity are so boundless that, if God wills to incline the hearts of Christians to these ideas, the capital required for the creation of productive- associations will be gradually provided. There are two Systems of taxation. The one is used by the State, the other by Christianity. The State levies taxes by f orce — it makes revenue-laws, draws up tax-rolls, sends out tax- collectors; Christianity levies taxes by the law of char- ity ; its assessors and collectors are f ree-will and con- science. The States of Europe are staggering under the huge burdens of public debt in spite of their compulsory System of taxation, and their financial embarrassments have given birth to that mystery of iniquity — gambling on the stock-exchange with all its attendant moral corrup- tion. Christianity, on the contrary, with its System of taxes, has always found abimdant means for all its glorious enterprises. Look at our churches and mon- asteries, our charitable institutions for the relief of every himian ailment and distress, our parishes and bishoprics spread over the surface of the globe; think of all the money that has been gathered for the poor, for our schools, our Colleges and ancient universities ; and remember that all this with scarcely an exception is the result of per- sonal sacrifice, and you will have some idea of the life- giving power of Christianity. What Christianity was in times past, such it still is to-day. If we were to count up all the works of charity founded and supported by voluntary contributions during our own lifetime, what a vast sum should we not arrive at? During the last five
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years ^* alone the Catholics of the world have sent twenty million florins to the Holy Father. How can we, in the face of these facts, suppose that Christianity will not be able to raise the necessary funds for setting on foot enterprises for the benefit of the working-classes ?
After describing the grave dangers to the faith and morals of the workpeople from our present capitalistic industrial System, and how they might be obviated by coöperative production, Ketteier concludes :
In our day, just as in former days, there is no dearth of men who feel impelled to do good to their f ellow-men. It seems to me there could hardly be anything more Christian, more pleasing to God, than a society for the Organization of coöperative associations on a Christian basis in districts where the distress of the work-people cries loudest for relief. 1
Above all things, it is necessary that the idea of co- öperative associations and the ways and means of or- ganizing them be examined on every side. For only when their importance for the working-classes shall have been recognized on all hands, not least of all by the people themselves, and their feasibility demonstrated, can we hope that the attempts to establish them will be multiplied.^'*
Although Ketteier does not expressly treat of the duties of the State in regard to the working-classes (this question did not enter into the scope of his work) , he insists on the right of the workman to the protection of the civil power and repeatedly gives'
3* 1859-1864. Ketteier was one of the most zealous promoters of the collections for the papal treasury. Cf. Pfülf, II, pp. 4 ff. 88 Op. cit., pp. 138-148.
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expression to his deep regret that legislative bodies have frequently displayed not only culpable in- difference, but also downright hostility, to the just demands of the largest section of the body politic. " Whoever works for another," he says, " and is forced to do so all his life, has a moral right to demand security for a permanent livelihood. All the other classes of society enjoy such security. Why should the working-classes alone be deprived of it? Why should the toiler alone have to go to his work day after day haunted by the thought: ' I do not know whether to-morrow I shall still have the wages on which my existence and the existence of my wife and children depend. Who knows? perhaps to-morrow a crowd of famished workmen will come from afar and rob me of my employment by underbidding me, and my wife and children must beg or starve.' The wealthy capitalist finds pro- tection a hundredfold in his capital — competition is scarcely more than an idle word for him — but the workman must have no protection : hence the fierce abuse so persistently heaped on the trade-guilds. I am far from pretending that the guild System had no weak points. Authority has often been abused; but it has not on that account been abolished. Many abuses, too, crept into the trade-guilds for want of proper supervision and timely adjustment to new conditions ; but the system itself rested on a, right principle, which should have been retained, and could have been retained without detriment to a healthy development of industrial liberty." °'
5' Op. cit, pp. 26 ff.
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Later on, as we shall see, Ketteier found occasion to particularize certain urgent reforms which the State must help to carry out.
We cannot bring this imperfect analysis of Christianity and the Labor Question to a more fitting dose than by using the author's own words: " What I have written is addressed not only to Catholics, but to all who have a heart for the work- ing-classes and share our faith in Christ, the Son of God . . I am convinced that the great social questions, of which the labor question is only one, would be easy to solve if it were not for the un- happy schisms that divide Christendom. May God restore to us what we all still profess when we pray : ' I believe in one holy Catholic Apostolic Church.' " "
The publication of Christianity and the Labor Question was an event whose importance cannot be overestimated. Within a few months three edi- tions were called for.^^ Twenty-five years after- ward, Windthorst wrote: " We all venerate Bishop von Ketteier as the champion and doctor of Catholic social aspirations. . . It will ever redound to our glory that it was a prince of the Catholic Church who, at a time when Economic Liberalism con- trolled public opinion, had the courage to raise the banner of Christian social reform." ^° " The book has made the rounds of Germany," the Mainzer Journal could write, 19 June, 1864, " ^^^ because of the deep earnestness with which it treats the
*^ Op. cit, p. 160.
'8 It was translated into French by Ed. Cloes, of Liege, in i86g.
'* Introduction to the 4th ed., Mainz, 1890.
136
BIS HOP KETTELER.
labor question and the clear flashes of light it throws on the most perplexing parts of this most perplex- ing question, has won the approbation even of its enemies. . . We have no doubt that very many, es- pecially among the clergy, the public officials and business men, as well as among the aristocracy, will be impelled by the study of this book to lend a willing hand, each in his sphere, for the ameliora- tion of our wretched labor conditions." *^
The hope here expressed was not vain. A num- ber of excellent Catholic pamphlets and books on the social question were published within the next few years. It was recognized on all hands that a new element had been introduced into the discussion of the labor question which could not be ignored, and that Liberalism had to reckon with an Oppo- nent that bade fair in time to become more formid- able even than Lassalle, because he had truth and singleness of purpose on his side. As early as 1869 Schulze-Delitzsch complained of the " rapid spread of Ketteler's ideas in the Rhineland."
Nevertheless, Ketteler's ideas were in many re- spects so new, so far ahead of the times ; his pro- posals so daring and his declaration of war against Liberalism so open, that comparatively few even in the Catholic camp had the courage to follow his lead then and there. Some looked upon the labor question as " the question of the future," and pre- ferred not to wrestle with it just then. To others it was a spectre which had better be let alone : they themselves, at any rate, had no wish to drive it away. However, sincere and touching proofs of
40 Pf Ulf, II, p. 189.
SOCIAL REFORM. I37
appreciation were not wanting at the time. Letters of congratulation and thanks poured in on the Bishop from all sides, from prelates and wide- awake curates, from university professors and sim- ple workingmen, from Catholics and Protestants. A Protestant gentleman of Hamburg, President of the German Craftsmen's Union, hastened to thank him in the name of all his associates for his fear- less defence of the rights of the workingman and for having demonstrated to the world in his own person " that Christian charity knows no bounds." " The reading of your splendid book," a Protestant whitewasher wrote from Berlin, " has been a real refreshment to me. I shall continue to study it ..." A Catholic rope-maker duly acknowledges " the genuinely Christian efforts of His Grace to help the working-class," but he hasn't much faith in modern Christian charity, and doesn't expect too much help from that quarter. He ought to know; for he had struggled for twenty years to keep above water, but had gone down in the end without any one having made an attempt to save him. His sad Story occupies eight closely-written foolscap pages. Perhaps the most touching letter of all is that of a Protestant mechanic of Breslau. " My Sunday work to-day," he writes, " consisted in reading your Labor Question and C hristianity , and I wish to end it by answering a few of the questions you put. The disintegration of the family is the cause of our ever-increasing social misery. . . We are living very much like heathens : we do not fulfil the pur- pose for which God created us ; therefore we must perish. . . If I cannot see you in this world, I wish
138 BISHOP KETTELER.
to visit you in the next and thank you for being a lover of men."
These and numerous other heartfelt effusions in- demnified Ketteier for the vile abuse heaped upon him from other quarters. Thus the Liberal Jour- nals persistently accused him of inflaming the masses with hatred and contempt for the existing order of things and of championing the cause of Socialistic Radicalism. In 1871 this charge was openly re- peated in the German Reichstag by a spokesman of the National-Liberals. Ketteier replied : "I cannot expect Herr Fischer to give himself the trouble of reading my book. But in case he should feel inclined to take cognizance of its Contents, I shall be happy to present him with a copy. He will certainly find no * courting of the masses,' nor ' speculation on the instigation of the masses ' in it. I am a Christian and a priest and in this double capacity I have a double right not to remain indif- ferent to the weal and woe of the working-classes. Therefore I reject with disdain any attempt to In- terpret my sympathy for the people as ' a specula- tion on the instigation of the masses.' " *^
The Social- Demokrat, the leading Socialist Or- gan, laughed at the Bishop for " trying to achieve great things with small means," but was delighted nevertheless to see that he stood up for universal suffrage, even though he did so with a reservation.
What did Lassalle himself think of Ketteler's book? On 23 May, 1864, a Socialist celebration took place in Ronsdorf, near Barmen ; about 9CX) workmen had come together mainly to hear and see
<i Pfülf, II, p. 196.
SOCIAL REFORM. I39
Lassalle, who, as usual, completely carried them away by his eloquence. After outlining the work done by the General Association of German Work- ingmen, he devoted fuUy thirty minutes to Ketteier, " a man," he said, " who is regarded as a saint on the banks of the Rhine," who "has for years devoted himself to scientific research," and whose words " are not only listened to with respect as those of a savant, but with reverence." " Thereupon," so an eye-witness afterward informed the Bishop, " Lassalle read several passages from your book.*' . , . He was in ecstasy, and the audience applauded vigorously ; some one even cried : ' Long live the Bishop of Mainz.' . . . True, he continued, you had raised two objections against his proposals. . . But your first objection was not founded. . . . Your second did not exist for him and the audience. . . He did not breathe a syllable about the capital remedy proposed by you for the ills of the laboringman and of all men — Christianity. In fact throughout his discourse he never once mentioned religion or morality." *^ Evidently Lassalle held Ketteier in high esteem, but could not resist the temptation to make capital out of his book for his own cause.
Two years later, Ketteier had occasion to give expression to his opinion of Lassalle and the As- sociation founded by him. Three Catholic work- men of Dünwald (near Cologne), asked him whether they could in conscience continue to belong
*2 The passages were Ketteler's criticism of Economic Liberal- ism and his description of the degradation of labor.
*3 Raich, Briefe, pp. 296-298; Pfülf, II, pp. 192 flF. ; Goyau, op. cit., pp. xxxv-xxxviii.
I40 BISHOP KETTELER.
to the General German Workingmen's Association. Though in the midst of a Confirmation tour, he sent a long letter in reply, which breathed the tender- est love and sympathy for the cause of the working- classes. Without giving a definitive answer to their query — a matter that pertained, he said, to their diocesan bishop — ^he tried to make them un- derstand that a good Catholic could not belong to an association which had departed from the pur- pose of its founder and was directed by men notor- iously hostile to Christianity and the Church. From the original draught of this letter, which was published after Ketteler's death/* it is evident that the Bishop judged far more favorably of Lassalle's Personality and aspirations than most of his Catholic contemporaries. Quite different, as we shall see, was his verdict on the Socialistic Labor Party, which arose long after Lassalle's death.
But to return to the year 1864. In spite of the many and great difficulties that stood in the way, Ketteier was firmly resolved to carry out the idea so warmly espoused by him of Productive Associa- tions for Workingmen. Among his papers Father Pfülf found a number bearing on this subject. One is of special interest, as it gives evidence of the vastness of the social reform schemes that oc- cupied his mind at the time. After showing the necessity of workingmen's associations under exist- ing economic conditions, he briefly discusses the ef- forts that had been thus far made in this direction. The trade-unions, he says, " are justified as Oper- ations are justified on a diseased body : they pre-
** Raich, Briefe, pp. 332-8.
SOCIAL REFORM. I4I
suppose a state of sickness ; but, the malady being there, they are relatively good. Therefore the obstacles placed in their way by the law must be removed. On the other band, we must not aid in deluding the workman into the belief that in trade- unions alone is salvation." Of the Schulze- Delitzsch Associations he has this to say : " They have awakened and furthered the idea of associa- tion : this is a great boon, a return to the dark Middle Ages ! They have been helpful in many ways to the workingmen. In some respects they have the advantage over the trade-unions. But they have been abused, enlisted in the war on re- ligion, and the directors have often used them mereiy as a means to enrich themselves. . . How- ever, if honestly managed, they can always be of some Service."
He then passes on to the discussion of the Pfo- ductive Associations properly so-called, where the workmen are at the same time the sole proprietors of the business. He is fully alive to the difficulties and dangers of such enterprises, but thinks that Christian charity will overcome all obstacles. He next dwells at some length on Business Partner- ships, at the head of which there is one owner and manager, who keeps some of the shares representing the business capital for himself and sells the rest on easy terms to his workmen. " The advantages of these associations are obvious : on the one band, the better class of workmen will in time become part owners of the business, whilst, on the other, the drawbacks of the Productive Associations are ob- viated by uniformity of management and sufficiency of capital."
142
BISHOP KETTELER.
The promotion of this quadruple system of asso- ciation, by adopting the good features of each, is, in the Bishop's eyes, " one of the most important tasks of the age, one of the most beautiful tasks of the Christian nations." He is determined to make a beginning himself by founding a grand central association for the Organization of workingmen's associations. From his own revenues he is ready to contribute 5,000 florins annually for six years. "In addition to this I am prepared ..." Here the manuscript breaks oflF. No doubt he was on the point of mentioning a still greater sacrifice he was willing to make for the success of the enterprise. He also projected the founding of a People's Bank to be controlled entirely by workingmen.*^
All these beautiful dreams were doomed never to be realized. A deeper study of economic and other conditions gradually convinced Ketteier himself of their impracticability. Then, without more ado, he began to limit his plans to the attainable. He was ready to support any undertaking that would as- sure to the workmen an income over and above their daily wages. This would at any rate solve the sub- sistence question, he thought, and the social question too, in so far as it was a " stomach question ". From his letter to Lassalle we see that he had 50,000 florins on band with which he intended to Start a number of such associations for the Grand- Duchy of Hesse. A combination of untoward cir- cumstances prevented him from carrying out his plan at the time; the necessity of employing almost
*^ Pfülf, II, pp. 197-199.
SOCIAL REFORM. I43
the whole of his income for the maintenance of the diocesan orphan asylums and other charitable in- stitutions, wars, the Vatican Council, the Kultur- kampf, old age, forced him to give it up altogether. Besides, the time was not yet come for such schemes to be successfully carried out. Men had to be edu- cated up to them. The Catholics had so far done little to organize the Catholic workingmen ; they did not seem to think it necessary. No one did more to enlighten them on this point than Ketteier. Organization was the magic word on which he cen- tred all his hopes for the Solution of the labor question — Organization supported by the Church and the State. In sermons, occasional addresses, talks to his seminarians, he reverted to this theme. On 19 November, 1865, the Gesellenverein cele- brated the anniversary of its foundation. Ketteier preached the sermon, his subject being " The Real Enemies and the Real Friends of the Workman." A few days later the Social-Demokrat reproduced the most salient passages of the discourse, remark- ing introductorily that " the Bishop of Mainz had spoken words of extraordinary significance, which deserved the widest circulation." What pleased the labor organ most was Ketteler's insistence on the necessity of labor organizations and of legisla- tive protection for them. The following notes jotted down by Ketteier in 1865 cover in the main the same ground and deserve to be recorded, as they reveal the position of his mind on the labor ques- tion less than a year after the publication of his A rheiter frage :
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Who must help? Some say : The Church alone can help. True, inasmuch as no one can help without the Church; otherwise, onesided. Many must help.
I. What can the Church do? 1. The moral founda- tions : awaken in employers and employed the sense of the all-importance of the moral goods of mankind ; 2. in conjtmction therewith arouse the spirit of charity.
IL What can the State do? 1. Associations ; 2. super- vision ; 3. prohibitive measures ; 4. occasional subventions.
The State should make laws to facilitate Organization and for the protection of labor (working hours, wages) ; advance capital only exceptionally ; provide factory- inspectors.
III. What the State cannof do.
IV. What can all do?*«
At a time when very few, if any, German socio- logists even thought of transplanting the English trade-unions to Germany, Ketteier pointed to them as the basis for the Organization of the working- classes.
" Corporate self-help," he wrote in 1865, " must take the place of the individual self-help of Liberal- ism, without however excluding reasonable support on the part of the State. To this end I maintain the necessity of an Organization to which all the workmen must belong. As basis, the Gewerkschaft (Trade-Union). Examine its Organization. En- courage it to make proposals. Then elaborate a Constitution for the working-classes. The Union must assure protection, material and moral, to its members in the sense of corporate self-help. The
*8 pfüif, II, p. 204.
SOCIAL REFORM. I45
various Unions form district federations.*^ These federations are courts of appeal for the members; they administer the common funds and form the connecting-link between the State and the Union. Recognition of the district federations by the State. . . . '«
The " pulverization process " inaugurated and promoted by economic Liberalism could be best counteracted, Ketteier thought, by professional Or- ganization. Such organizations would moreover ofTset the centralizing tendencies of the State, be- cause each would enjoy autonomy within its proper sphere and be secured against the Invasion of its rights from without by constitutional bulwarks. Even the working-classes, he was sure, could be educated for a certain degree of autonomy, which, by wise control, could be kept within proper bounds. Can we aspire to such a general Organization of classes and prof essions ? he asks. Study and experi- ence had taught him that there was no hope of carrying them out for the present. But as he waS' no mere social theorizer, no mere dreamer of Uto- pian dreams, and as the distress of the working- classes was growing worse from day to day, the Bishop quietly pigeonholed his grand plans of uni- versal reform and looked about him to see where the need was greatest and what could be done to relieve it.
*^ Equivalent to the English Trade Councils. *8 Pf Ulf, II, p. 202.
CHAPTER XI.
GeRMANY AFTER THE WaR OF i866.
THE year 1866 marked a turning-point in European history, but notably in the history of the Catholic Church in Germany. The Austro- Prussian War did not merely alter the map of Ger- many : it made a change also in the relative positions of Catholicity and Protestantism. In the old Con- federation of German states which included Austria, the Catholics had been in the majority. By the Treaty of Prague the moral and numerical support of 10,000,000 of their Austrian fellow Catholics was suddenly taken from them, and over-night they found themselves in the unenviable position of a one-third minority. For them the Situation was critical in the extreme. During the war their sym- pathies had on the whole been with Austria and its Catholic dynasty. What would be their lot under the hegemony of " Protestant " Prussia, especially of Prussia at the mercy of triumphant Liberalism actuated by the fanatical notion that it was Prussia's mission to decide for all times the world-war against Rome in favor of Protestantism and unbe- lief? Men's consciences were distraught, their minds obscured, their passions excited. The his- tory of the past seemed a record of ruins ; and the future augured no good. Right counsel was in- deed at a premium, as the editor of the Historisch- Politische Blätter wrote at the time. Ketteier was
SOCIAL REFORM. I47
the man to give it; and he feit himself called upon to do so. He had carefully worked out the intri- cate Problems for himself; and the results were published in a volume entitled Germany after the War of 1866, of which the Frankfurter Zeitung ^ wrote: " Bishop von Ketteler's latest book is by no means written from the specifically Catholic point of view, but in a truly statesman-like spirit."
Germany after the War of 1866 quickly became the book of the day. Edition after edition issued from the press. Mgr. Pie, then Bishop of Poitiers, afterward Cardinal, had it immediately translated into French. From the correspondence between David Urquhart, the English diplomat and Oppo- nent of Palmerston, and the author, and from an interview which Lord Denbigh, then on a European journey, sought with Bishop Ketteier, it was evi- dent that European statesmen began to reckon with the latter as a political power. Count Leo Thun, the aged Austrian statesman, repeatedly consulted him regarding the attitude which a Catholic min- ister of the Crown was to observe in the face of modern political paganism.^ The Hohenzollern, William I, despite the fact that the Bishop had to teil him many an unpalatable truth, appeared favor- ably impressed by the utterances of the churchman, in an audience during a short stop-over of the King at Mainz, in the following summer.
What the majority of the Catholics thought of Ketteler's work was expressed by a reviewer in the Katholik (Mainz), who wrote: " There is no doubt that Germany after the War of 1866 takes a chief
1 12 February, 1867. ^ Briefe, pp. 270-271.
148
BISHOP KETTELER.
place among the literary publications of the day. If ever a good word was spoken at the right time, it is this word. And that a Catholic Bishop has spoken it can only fill us with joy. . . . Such a frank, fearless, Christian, German word is not merely opportune, it is necessary, as necessary as a piece of bread to a famished man, as a fresh breeze to a navigator af ter a deathly calm ; it is as cheering as the bright sun after a dark and stormy night." *
But not everywhere was the volume welcomed with the same enthusiasm. It shared the fate of other works from the same pen, and, if to many it was a beacon-light, to others it became a blinding flash that caused them to stumble. Some misin- terpreted and misunderstood it. There were those who imputed false motives to the author. In the opinion of others he was too favorable to Prussia, or eise to Austria; some accused him of abject Submission to the conqueror of Sadowa; others, of exciting the Catholics to hatred and mistrust of Prussia. Even a cursory glance at the contents of the book will show the injustice and one-sidedness of these criticisms, inspired as they were by party blas and personal antipathy.
Ketteier severely reprehends the unprincipled worship of success indulged in by so many, and which bade fair to become an epidemic. " The principles of morality and right apply also to higher politics, and injustice remains injustice even though through God's Providence good may come of it." * In the conflict between Austria and Prussia " formal
3 Vol. 47, p. 377.
* Deutschland nach dem Kriege von iS66, 6th ed., p. 1$.
SOCIAL REFORM.
149
right was evidently on the side of Austria." ^ But Prussia's Injustice lies even deeper: " There was no need of taking advantage of the extreme embarrass- ment of the Hapsburgs in order to push Austria out of Germany by an agreement with the agents of the Italian Revolution and the assistance of the revolutionaries in Hungary." ° " We shall never cease to deplore this deed — not because we are hostile to Prussia, but because we sincerely love it. . . . We should cover our face in shame and weep bitter tears for the action of our German Father- land. ..."
The war of 1866 with the annexations that fol- lowed in its wake Ketteier regarded as a violation of historical rights and of the fundamental prin- ciple of the law of nations.' On the other band, he emphatically condemned the blind, irreconcil- able Opposition to Prussia which was being heralded in so many quarters at that time, Austria's politics had not been straightforward in all respects, and might have been more conciliatory in many. The Progressive Party had pushed the Prussian Govern- ment to the wall. Austria, aware of this, might have made a concession to Bismarck without any violation of right and without detriment to its na- tional honor. Neither does Ketteier forget to ac- knowledge all that is praiseworthy in the Prussian System of Government, especially the liberty en- joyed by the Church under the Constitution, which he does not hesitate to call " a real Magna Charta of religious peace for a religiously divided country like Germany."
5 Op. cit., p. 44. « Ibid. 'f Ibid., pp. 57-58.
ISO
BISHOP KETTELER.
Politically Ketteier was in favor of a united Ger- many under the leadership of Prussia. Austria was to be treated, not as a foreign power, but as the natural ally of the new empire.® In this way the injustice of Sadowa might in some measure be atoned for and the sympathies of the Middle and South German States gradually gained.
But it was not really Ketteler's object to arouse political agitation by his brochure; his purpose was rather to banish the pessimism, the despondency and pusillanimity which had unfortunately taken hold of so many of his fellow countrymen and fellow Catholics in regard to the aims of the government.
We de not favor that dismal view of life which, when- ever injustice trivunphs, forthwith thinks only of the retributive justice of God. . . . If we look on the war just ended as a misfortune fraught with the gravest dan- gers for the future of our country, this is but another reason for every German who loves his country to apply all his energies to the task of finding a way out of the threatening destruction.''
No Single action of man on earth can be said to be in every respect disastrous. ... In public life a great calamity is often the source of the greatest blessings. This truth will teach us not to ignore in such events the germs of good, of a beneficent renovation, in a word, the
^ Ibid., p. 84. " Prussia would have every reason, and it would be to its own advantage, to make this alliance as firm as pos- sible and as advantageous as possible for Austria." In the light of recent events these words, written as they were more than forty years ago, are nothing short of prophetic. Ketteier, as has been often remarked, saw further than all the German statesmen of his time.
s Op. cit., Fp. 67-68.
SOCIAL REFORM. 151
finger of God. We are therefore not to give ourselves over to murmurings of discontent, to making sour faces and indulging in lamentations, or to sit down idly with folded arms. However painful the visitations permitted by God may be, it is His purpose that they should benefit us; and they will be truly salutary, if we but recognize His designs in them and strive to turn them to good ac- count. Animated by this cheering trustfulness we Chris- tians are courageously to face the vicissitudes wrought in the world around us, and thus escape that pessimism, that dismal view of things, which paralyzes the energies of the soul and makes us fancy that it is all over with the World if God does not govern it according to our narrow hiunan views.^°
In his forecast of the future, Ketteier would not lose sight of the workingman's interests. The last chapter, perhaps the finest of the whole book, which bears the significant title " Christ — Antichrist," sete forth the necessity of dealing on a dogmatic and Christian basis with the Solution of the labor ques- tion. He writes :
Other foundation for the State and the life of the State no man can lay, but that which is laid by God, Christ Jesus.
All economic efforts not based on religion and moral- ity only widen the gulf that separates capital from labor, the rieh from the poor, and bring that vast mass of men who live by the labor of their hands to a State in which they will be in want of the most indispensable necessaries of life, a State which is not only in itself barbarous, but which must necessarily end in frightful social conflicts between poverty and riches such as we
10 Op. cit, pp. 8-12.
152
BISHOP KETTELER.
meet with in the States of antiquity when they were on the verge of dissolution.
We will briefly resume the consequences of modern economic Liberalism and of the theories to which it owes its birth :
On the one hand, accumulation of capital ; on the other, a proportionate increase in the number of those whose only means of gaining a livelihood is their daily labor ;
The share in the benefits resulting from the Co- operation of capital, industry, and labor, reduced for the workman to the barest necessaries of lif e ;
Wages determined solely by the daily market-value of labor, by the supply and the demand, as in the case of merchandise, with this difference, that, when merchan- dise is supplied too abundantly, it can be stored up against better times, whereas the workingman is forced to deliver his goods, that is, his labor, at any price no matter what the supply or demand may be, unless he cares to face the prospect of perishing with hunger ; hence the tendency among workmen to underbid one another in times of industrial Stagnation; hence also the decrease of wages below the barest necessaries of life, which is nothing eise than slow death by starvation,
When his circvunstances improve a little, the work- ingman easily yields to the temptation of making up for his previous privations by over-indulgence, with the re- sult that, when hard times come again, he feels his de- stitution all the more keenly. According to a report laid before the English Parliament " on the means of sub- sistence of the poorest classes of work-people in Eng- land," whole sections of the population lack about a fourth-part of what was set down as the minimum in- dispensable for subsistence. The same report mentions several counties — not of Ireland, but of England — where more than half of the inhabitants are without sufficient nourishment for the preservation of health and rigor. . . .
SOCIAL REFORM. I53
Such for the majority of workingmen are the neces- sary consequences of the principles of economic Liberal- ism; and when we remember that perhaps eighty out of every hundred human beings belong to the working- classes, we cannot close our eyes to the gravity of the social conditions toward which we are hastening.
For these unhappy results of its own doctrines modern
economics has no satisfactory remedy to offer
Some of the remedies advocated are so immoral and cruel that we should not have expected to hear mention made of them except in a pagan Society. We will show by two examples to what extremes we have arrived on this point.
The remedies proposed by the Malthusians against over-population may be summed up as follows: Popula- tion tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, subsistence cannot increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio ; by increasing faster than the means of subsistence, man- kind brings want and misery on itself, and is in part, directly or indirectly, doomed to destruction. A child born in an overpopulous country has no natural right to the means of subsistence. A System of universal relief is an evil, because it can serve no other purpose than to increase the population and the prevalent distress. The only way out of the general misery is to restrain the in- crease of the population. The Government has a right to interfere in this matter by wise legislation and police control; for the rest, poverty must be left to itself as much as possible.
Irreligious and anti- Christian political economy has brought things to such a pass that men are not ashamed to give public expression to such revoltin g principles as these. If there is an excess of population, " a portion of the human race must be sacrificed. This is a necessity of nature. Why give any further thought to it?" "A child born in an overpopulous country has no natural
^54
BISHOP KETTELER.
right to the means of subsistence — the laws and the police force must stop the increase of the inhabitants — poverty must be left to itself." It is by the appli- cation of such principles that men are turned into sav- ages; and yet how widespread they are! The very lan- guage of these economists is an outrage on Christian sentiment ; they speak of the workingman as one does of a thing that can be bought and sold, of stock in trade.
Another influential representative of modern economics, Stuart Mill, has set up the following system: Every hu- man being has a right to be supported by its progenitors until it can look out for itself. To beget a being which one cannot or will not support is a crime. Undoubtedly, Society must come to the aid of its suffering members, but it can insist that those who are supported at the public expense abstain from marriage. The only remedy for our social ills consists in propagating everywhere reasonable and voluntary moderation in regard to the number of children to be brought into the world. The Government has the right to promote this moderation by legal measures. Relief is out of the question until we regard the poor who beget children with the same feeling as we do drunkenness or any other physical disorder.^^
To this pass, we repeat, has irreligious and anti- Christian political economy brought us, that such crimes ■can be publicly taught. We are not surprised that in England, in consequence of these doctrines, infanticide is practised to such an extent as to remind us of the morals of China. ^^ In scientific treatises and public lectures
11 Ketteier refers his readers to F. A. Lange: /. St. Mill's Ansichten über die Soziale Frage, 1866, and Historisch-Polit. Blaetter, Vol. 57.
1' Ketteier quotes in support of this assertion the official " Christmas Report for 1865," published by Dr. Lancaster, Coroner of Middlesex, and Ch. Perin, De la Pichesse, Vol. II, p. 128.
SOCIAL REFORM. I55
the abomination of impurity is unblushingly held up as a means for decreasing the number of childreii, and child-murder is preached as a remedy for the distress of the working-classes. Impurity and infanticide — these were the lowest depths to which corrupted paganism descended.
Christianity brought us the sublime ideal of the pure family, of the family in which, as the Apostle says, " the nuptial bed remains undefiled " — a word that of itself includes a world of blessings for the human race ; and the Short time that has elapsed since we turned our backs on Christianity has sufficed to throw us back into the horrors of paganism. In Christian families, however poor in this world's goods they may be, children with their God-like souls are the choicest benediction of heaven, the source of the purest joys of life, and a Chris- tian father knows no sweeter consolation on his bed of death than to bless his virtuous offspring. In Christian families marriage is a moral, an august, a holy relation ; a sublime chastity, watched over by the eye of God alone, protects the child from the first moment of its exist- ence. This is still everywhere the case where the con- science is moulded by Christianity. Of all these price- less goods modern economics takes no account. By fav- oring the selfishness of capital in its most sordid shape, by promoting the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, it drives to despair the workingman who is condemned to fight empty-handed against overwhelming odds, and leaves him no other resource than counsels the most degrading, immoral, and barbarous : the murder of infants, " who have no right to existence ", or im- purity " to prevent them from being born ".
This helplessness of economic Liberalism in the face of social misery finds its counterpart in the efforts of Social Democracy, with this difference, that the Socialists frankly sympathize with the working-classes in their
156 BISHOP KETTELER.
distress. For the rest, their Systems too are nothing but doctrinarian experiments of no real value for the Solution of the labor problem. We are therefore justi- fied in maintaining that, on the one band, the difficulties resulting from the condition of the laboring-classes are alarmingly on the increase and that, on the other, all the theories of modern economics are radically in- capable of providing a remedy. When the moral bond of Union between men has been torn asunder, it is im- possible to fill up the abyss that separates the rieh from the poor: there is nothing left but the struggle for life and death.
Thus in every sphere of human activity the world is drawing near to the final Solution; and this Solution is to be found in Christ Jesus, in the doctrines and moral principles of Christianity.
In science, in international law, in political and so- cial life, everywhere man is confronted by obligations imposed on him by God. If he fulfils them in Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ, he will find progress, perfection and true happiness; God will be glorified in humanity, and hmnanity will realize its supreme destiny. If he seeks to fulfil them in defiance of Christ and His law, he will find corruption, decay, death, the hand of all against all and the curse of God.
Other foundation no man can lay, but that which \s laid, Christ Jesus.
" Christ or Anti-Christ — that is the alternative." ^»
^2 Deutschland nach dem Kriege von 1866, pp. 231-331.
CHAPTER XII.
A Christian Labor Catechism. 1869.
ii /"^AST thy bread upon the running waters," V.^ says Ecclesiasticus, " for after a long time thou shalt find it again." Twenty years had elapsed since Ketteier delivered his famous social sermons in the Cathedral of Mainz, six years since he had appealed to the Catholic world in Liberty, Author- ity and the Church to study the great social ques- tions of the day and to bring the eternal principles of Christianity to bear on their Solution, and four years since the publication of Christianity and the Labor Question; but, for reasons already pointed out, the positive results were very meagre indeed. " True and right ideas must be put before the world over and over again in "order to assure them the victory," was a saying often repeated by Wind- thorst, and he used to add facetiously : " In Ger- many italways takes twenty-five years for true ideas and views to break their way through." In a won- derful passage in Germany after the War of 1866 on the power of ideas Ketteier gives expression to a similar opinion, and so he was not discouraged when he saw that his preaching and writing on the social question did not straightway set the world on fire. He continued to cast his bread upon the running waters, confident that he should find it again. And he did find it again.
The year 1868 marks the real birth of the Catho-
1^8 BISHOP KETTELER.
lic Social Reform Movement. In the spring of that year Joseph Schings, a young but extremely well- informed curate of Aix-la-Chapelle, founded the Christlich- soziale Blätter, the first Catholic periodi- cal exclusively devoted to the study of the great so- cial Problems of the day. A few months later three Catholic societies met in Convention in Crefeld, organized themselves into the Christian Social Party and chose the Christlich-soziale Blätter for their official organ. Needless to say, the socio- logical principles of the new party were those ex- posed with so much warmth by the Bishop of Mainz. Of greater importance for the Solution of the so- cial question than even these highly praiseworthy efforts was the Conference of German Bishops held at Fulda in September, 1869. To Ketteier belongs the honor of having originated the idea of these Conferences which have proved such an immense blessing on the Catholic Church in Germany/ In 1867 the Bishops came together to discuss ways and means for the establishment of a German Catholic University — a pet project of Ketteler's which like so many another of his was never to be realized ; the approaching Vatican Council brought them to- gether again two years later. Ketteier thought the time was come for the Episcopacy to pronounce authoritatively on the attitu-rle of the Church on the social question, and so among the subjects for deliberation we find the following: "The care of the Church for factory work-people, journeymen, apprentices and unemployed servant-girls ". The
^ Pfiilf, II, p. 379; and the same author's Cardinal v. Geissei, II, pp. 569 s.
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President of the Conference, Archbishop Melchers of Cologne, commissioned Ketteier to work out a report on this point of the program.
Ketteier seems to have devoted every spare mo- ment of his busy days to the preparation of this report. He had not yet finished it when his annual Visitation tours brought him into the neighborhood of Offenbach, into the heart of the industrial dis- trict of Hesse. Before returning to Mainz he in- vited the faithful, especially the workingmen, to at- tend the closing devotional exercises at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Woods (Liebfrauen-Heide). About 10,000 workingmen responded and on 25 July, the anniversary day of his episcopal conse- cration, he delivered his famous sermon on the " Labor Movement and its Relation to Religion and Morality," of which Decurtins said more than twenty years after, that it was " one of the most im- portant and noteworthy utterances ever made on the social question and its Solution from the Catho- lic point of view." ^
It was the Bishop's object to show what was legitimate and what was unlawful and dangerous in the world-wide labor movement and the reform demands put forward by the workingmen.^ He in- tended to answer these questions " briefly, but with perfect openness, with that blunt openness which the truth has a right to demand." The whole dis- course is admirably adapted to the capacity of the audience — a characteristic which marks all of Ket-
2 (Euvres Choisies de Mgr. Ketteier, p. Ivii. ^ Die Arbeiterbewegung und ihr Streben, im Verhältnis zu Re- ligion und Sittlichkeit, 4th edit., p. 4.
l6o BISHOP KETTELER.
teler's sermons and addresses — but with such a sure grasp of the subject-matter, such a deep knowledge of actual life, that, even at this distance of time, it makes a deep and lasting Impression on the reader. The sermon is too long to reproduce in füll, but I cannot help hoping the reader will be pleased to have the main part of it.
After devoting some paragraphs to the lawful- ness and necessity of labor organizations, Ketteier continues :
We will now examine one by one the reforms which the laboring-classes wish to realize by their united efforts. Step by Step we shall see that religion is intimately bound up with the labor question, with every demand made by the workingman, and that godlessness is the greatest enemy of the working-classes.
The first demand of the working-classes is : increase of wages corresponding to the true value of labor.
This is, on the whole, a very fair demand ; religion also insists that human labor be not treated like an article of merchandise and appraised simply according to the fluctuations of offer and demand.
Economic Liberalism, making abstraction of all relig- ion and morality, not only degraded labor to the level of a commodity, but looked on man himself, with bis capac- ity for work, simply as a machine bought as cheaply as possible and driven until it will go no more. To combat the dreadful consequences which resulted from the ap- plication of such principles the Trade Unions arose in England and, in time, spread into other countries. They are beginning to take root in Germany too, and not a few of you belong to them. The chief weapon of the Trade Unions against capital and the grande Industrie is the Strike, by means of which, in spite of many reverses and seeming def eats, they have succeeded, as the English-
SOCIAL REFORM. l6l
man Thornton has but quite recently proved, in increasing wages 50, 25, and 15 per cent. . . .
Just as these efforts may be to reclaim for human labor and the laborer the human dignity of which economic Liberalism had robbed them, it is evident that they will not procure you any real advantages, my dear workmen, and will not be crowned with any lasting success unless they go hand-in-hand with religion and morality. Two considerations will make this clear.
In the first place, you cannot close your eyes to the fact that there must be a limit to wage-increase, and that even the highest wages attainable under f avorable condi- tions cannot do more than provide you with a decent sub- sistence. The natural limits of wages are determined by the productiveness of the business in which you are em- ployed. The intellectual and material capital sunk in the business will be withdrawn and diverted into other Channels the moment wages become so high that the in- vestment ceases to pay. In that case work is at an end. Hence, in spite of combinations among workmen, there is a limit to wages, and it would be a fatal mistake if you did not make this clear to yourselves and if you al- lowed yourselves to be misled by exaggerated promises into the belief that an indefinite increase of wages was possible.
The highest wages you can hope for will, therefore, merely assure you of a respectable competency provided you make temperance and economy the rule of your life. And these priceless goods — temperance and economy — the working-classes will be possessed of only if their lives are guided by the spirit of religion. It is a fact absolutely beyond dispute that the welfare of the work- ing-classes is not merely a matter of wages; there are f actory districts where wages are very high, but the pros- perity of the people very low, while in others, where wages are by no means so high, the blessings of life are far more in evidence.
l62 BISHOP KETTELER.
One of the greatest dangers for the workingman in this respect is drunkenness, pleasure-seeking, fostered and promoted by those well-nigh countless saloons and taverns which crop up like mushrooms wherever work- people are found in large numbers, and which are un- fortunately too freely tolerated, or even encouraged, by Governments for mercenary motives. . . . Saloons are nothing but a base speculation for cheating the working- man out of his hard-earned wages. A few brief months given up to intemperance amply suffice to absorb the biggest pay. Of what use, then, are high wages to one who is the slave of intemperance ? And yet, on the other hand, what moral power is not required to keep the workman f rom debauchery and intemperance ! Perhaps no labor to which toiling man has ever been condemned on earth is so exacting, so unintermitting, so fatiguing as mill or factory work. How easy for a man who is tied down without respite for the same nmnber of hours to the same mechanical work every day of his life to be tempted, when released at last from this deadening toil, to seek compensation in intemperance and dissipation ! Unusual moral energy is required to be sober and thrifty under such circumstances. Religion alone can infuse this high moral sense into the workman. If therefore higher wages are to profit you indeed, my dear workmen, you must, above all, be true Christians.
Secondly, in your efforts to obtain higher wages, you have need of religion and morality in order not to carry your demands too far. We have already seen that there is a limit to the increase of wages. Hence. in our tüne, when the movements among the working-classes for the amelioration of their material condition are assuming larger proportions from day to day, it is of the highest importance not to exaggerate this demand : the working- man can be only too easily imposed upon and the power of Organization used to wrong purposes. The object of
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the labor movement must not be war hetwccn the work- man and the employer, but peace on eqidtable terms be- tween both.
The impiety of capital, which would treat the work- man like a machine, must be broken. It is a crime against the vvorking-classes ; it degrades them. It fits in with the theory of those who would trace man's descent to the ape. But the impiety of labor must also be guarded against. If the movement in favor of higher wages oversteps the bounds of justice, catastrophes must necessarily ensue, the whole weight of which will recoil on the working-classes. Capitalists are seldom at a loss for lucrative Investments. When it comes to the worst they can speculate in government securities. But the workman is in a far different position. When the busi- ness in which he is employed comes to a standstill, un- employment Stares him in the face. Besides, exorbitant wage-demands afifect not only the large business concerns controlled by the capitalists, but also the smaller ones in the hands of the middle classes and the daily earnings of master-workmen and handicraftsmen. But if the work- ing-classes are to observe just moderation in their de- mands, if they are to escape the danger of becoming mere tools in the hands of ambitious and unscrupulous demagogues, if they wish to keep clear of the inordinate selfishness which they condemn so severely in the capital- ist, they must be filled with a lofty moral sense, their ranks must be made up of courageous, Christian, religious men. The power of money without religion is an evil, but the power of organized labor without religion is just as great an evil. Both lead to destniction.
The second claim put forward bv the working-classes is for shorter hours of labor.
I cannot teil just how far you have to complain in this district about the length of the working day. One thing, however, is certain : working hours and wages have shared
i64
BISHOP KETTELER.
the same fate. Wherever capitalists, ignoring the dignity of man, have acted on the principles of modern political economy, wages have been reduced to a minimum and working hours have been prolonged to the limits of hu- man endurance — and beyond them. Day and night, like a machine, the workman cannot be kept going ; but f or all that the impossible was expected from him. Hence, wherever the hours of work are lengthened beyond the limits fixed by nature, the workingmen have an indis- putable right to combat this abuse of the power of wealth by well-directed concerted action.
But here again, my dear workmen, the real value of your efforts depends on religion and morality. If the workman uses the hour thus put at his disposal to fulfil in the bosom of his family the duties of a good father or a dutiful son, to tend to the aifairs of the house, to cul- tivate the plot of ground he calls his own, then this hour will be of untold value to himself and his family. If, on the contrary, he throws it away in bad Company, on the streets, in the tavern, it will neither profit his health nor his temporal and spiritual prosperity. It will simply serve to undermine his Constitution, to disfigure the image of God in his soul, and to dissipate his wages all the more quickly and surely.
The third demand of the working-classes is for days of rest.
This claim, also, is perfectly legitimate. Religion is not only with you here, but, long before you, it vindicated the necessity of regularly recurring days of repose. God Himself inscribed them on the tables of the Law : " Re- member thou keep holy the Sabbath Day."
In this respect, too, our modern economists have com- mitted, and still commit, a crime against the human race that cries to Heaven for vengeance. The culprits are not merely the wealthy entrepreneurs who force their work- men to work on Sundays, but also all tradesmen, land-
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owners and masters generally who deprive their servants, hands or Clerks of their well-earned Sunday rest. A number of labor leaders have quite recently openly ex- posed the hypocrisy of Liberalism in this matter. It has always been a favorite trick of the capitalists to throw the veil of the tenderest philanthropy over their ruthless abuse of the workman and to hold up the urgent demand of the Church for days of rest as prejudicial to the in- terests of the working-classes. With what minute exact- ness were not the Sundays and holidays counted up, and with what a sugared mien was not the grand total of possible gain calculated if these days were given up to work ! From this the inf erence was drawn that the money-magnates were animated by the purest feelings of charity and that the Church was hard-hearted and cruel and hostile to the prosperity of the people. To this the Organs of the labor party replied that there was another means of securing these advantages for the laboring-man without having to work him to death. This means would be to give him as much pay for six days' work as he now receives for seven. The profit to the laborer would re- main the same, and he would not sacrifice his human dignity, into the bargain. Who can deny the truth of this Observation? If the capitalists were right, it would be inhiiman to allow the workman even the indulgence of sleep. The immense profit to be derived from night- work could be demonstrated to you with the same hypo- critical mien as the benefit of Sunday work. Just as man has need of a certain nvunber of hours out of the twenty-four which make up the day for repose, so also has he need of one day of rest out of the seven which make up the week. He has a right to this for the sake of his soul, in order that he may have leisure to think of his relationship to God, to recoUect that he is not merely a son of toil, but a child of God as well. He has a right to this for the sake of his body, for whose health and
l66 BISHOP KETTELER.
vigor he must have a care. Just as a master who em- ploys a workman a whole day is obliged to give him time for the necessary night-rest and to calculate his wages accordingly, in the same way the factory owner, who uses up the brawn and muscle and brain of a workman for a whole week, is bound to give him the necessary weekly day of rest and to estimate his wages accordingly. The time devoted to repose must be added to the time spent at work, inasmuch as it has become necessary by reason of the work done and is a prerequisite of the work to be done.
But, my dear workmen, it is not enough that the labor leaders and the labor organs insist on days of rest. Each one of you must work to this end by scrupulously keep- ing holy the Sabbath Day. There are still, unfortu- nately, very many workmen who, without being obliged and simply for lucre's sake, work on Sundays. Such man sin not merely against God and His commandment, but really and truly against the whole body of workpeople, because by their base cupidity they furnish the employers with a ready-made excuse for refusing days of rest to all without exception. May all the workpeople, not except- ing the servant-girl whom a heartless mistress over- burdens with work, and the humble railway-employee for whom wealthy corporations have made Sunday a dead letter, with one voice reclaim this right as a right of man. To what purpose have the so-called rights of man been laid down in our Constitutions so long as capital is free to trample them under foot?
It is certain that you have religion on your side in your demand for days of rest ; it is certain also that all the eflforts of the working-classes would be of no avail if they were not sustained by the power of religion and the divine precept : " Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath Day." But it is no less certain that this weekly day of rest will profit you, your health, your soul, your families.
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167
frort! whom your work keeps you away so much during the week, only if you remain intimately united with the Church. Without religion the days of rest will serve no other purpose than to bring ruin on the workman and his family. What is called " blue Monday " is nothing eise but Sunday spent without religion. . . . Your own ex- perience is able to furnish you with examples enough of the vast difiference between a workingman's family in which the day of rest is spent in harmony with the prin- ciples of religion and one in which religion is ignored. A Christian Sunday is a blessing ; a Sunday passed in the saloon, in bad Company, in drunkenness, in impurity, is a curse.
A fourth demand of the working-classes is the prohibi- tion of child labor in f actories.
I regret to say that this demand is not as general as it ought to be, and that many workmen send their children to the mills and factories in order to increase their in- come. It would be more correct to say that it is a de- mand made by certain spokesmen of the labor organiza- tions. Fritzsche, the president of the Cigar Makers' Union, has been especially active in this matter. He brought in a motion in the parliament of the North German Confederation to have child labor prohibited by law. Unfortunately his motion was thrown out. Child labor was restricted but not forbidden. I deplore this action of the legislature profoundly, and look on it as a victory of materialism over moral principles. My own observations are in füll accord with the Statements of Fritzsche on the bad effects of factory labor on children. I know right well what arguments are brought forward to excuse it, and I am also aware that even some who are well-disposed toward the working-classes wish to see child labor tolerated to a certain extent. Children are in duty bound, these men argue, to help their parents in the labors of the house and the field, why debar them
l68 BISHOP KETTELER.
from the factory? These people forget that there is a vast difference between work at home and work in a fac- tory. Factory work quenches, as it were, the family spirit in the child, and this is, as we shall see presently, the greatest danger that threatens the working-classes in cur day. Moreover, it robs the child of the time it should devote to innocent, joyous recreation so necessary at this period of life. Lastly, the factory undermines the bodily and spiritual health of the child. I regard child labor in factories as a monstrous cruelty of our time, a cnielty committed against the child by the spirit of the age and the selfishness of parents. I look on it as a slow poisoning of the body and the soul of the child. With the sacrifice of the joys of childhood, with the sac- rifice of health, with the sacrifice of innocence, the child is condemned to increase the profits of the entrepreneur and oftentimes to earn bread for parents whose dissolute life has made them incapable of doing so themseives. Hence I rejoice at every word spoken in favor of the workingman's child. Religion in its great love for chil- dren cannot but support the demand for the prohibition of child labor in factories. You, my dear workmen, can second this demand most efficaciously by never permit- ting your own children under fourteen years of age to work in a factory.
The fifth demand made by the working-classes is that women, especially mothers of families, be prohibited from working in factories.
Jules Simon says in his warmly conceived and highly instructive book L'ouvriere: * " Our whole economic Or- ganization is suffering from a dreadful malady, which is the cause of the misery of the working-classes and must be overcome at all costs if dissolution is to be checked — I mean the slow destruction of family life." After de- scribing conditions prevailing in many industrial districts
* Paris, 1863.
SOCIAL REFORM. 169
of France repeatedly visited by him, where women work in the factories and family life is but an idle word, he comes to the conclusion that higher wages for workpeople are useless so long as they are not accompanied by a thorough regeneration of morals, and that, on the other hand, all moral reform must begin with the restoration of family life.
All the abuses described by Jules Simon, abuses which have assumed even greater proportions in England than in France, do not exist to so wide an extent in Germany, at least not in the valley of the Rhine, where, as far as I know, mothers of families are nowhere employed in factories. . . .
Two things follow from what has been said thus far: the workpeople are beginning to understand more and more the supreme importance of the family for their own prosperity, and the close connexion between religion and the urgent reforms demanded by the working-classes — reforms which will never be fully realized except in and through religion. Religion also wants the mother to pass the day at home in order that she may fulfil her high and holy mission toward her husband and her chil- dren. All that Jules Simon, all that the friends of the workman have ever said concerning the significance of the family, is infinitely surpassed by what you heard in your youth and still hear out of the mouth of the Church on the sanctity of the Christian family. There is no doubt that the labor question is above all a question of morality and religion. The more intimately you are united with the Church, the better wives you will have for yourselves, the better mothers for your children, the more cheering will your home life be, the more effectuallj will the ties of family keep you from the dangers of the tavern, the cheap eating-house and the dens of shame.
A sixth demand made by many and which follows as a corollary from the previous one is, that young girls should not in future be employed in factory work.
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Various reasons have been urged in favor of this de- mand. Thus it has been pointed out that, as a general rule, girls can work for far lower wages because they require less to live on, and that therefore wholesale girl labor must of necessity have a damaging effect on the wages of men.
But the principal argument against the employment of girls in factories is the prejudicial influenae of factoiy work on the morals of the working- girls and conse- quently on the families of the future. Workmen them- selves have repeatedly called attention to these sad con- sequences. In their meetings such striking argiunenta- tion as the following has been heard : " We want good and happy families ; but to have good and happy families we must have pure, virtuous mothers; now, where can we find these if our young girls are lured into the fac- tories and are there inoculated with the germs of impu- dence and immorality?" I cannot teil you, my dear workmen, how deeply such words Coming from the ranks of the working-classes touched and gladdened my heart. Ten years ago, when the labor movement was still in its infancy among us, such sentiments were hardly heard anywhere except from our Christian pulpits. The Lib- erais were insensible to the moral dangers to which the daughters of the workman were exposed. When these poor creatures were utterly corrupted in the factory, their employers still had the effrontery to pose as their bene- factors — because, thanks to them, they were earning so many cents a day. The dangers of factory life to the morals of the young working-girls and therefore to the family of the workman are beginning to be recognized more and more even by the factory-owners themselves. This is a happy sjmiptom and shows once more that the labor question, like all the other great social questions, is in the last analysis a question of religion and morality.'
' Op. cit., pp. 7-19. Here Ketteier details the guarantees that
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After a soul-stirring appeal to fathers and broth- ers to leave no stone unturned to safeguard the virtue of their daughters and sisters, Ketteier lays down a few short, pregnant rules for distinguishing the true social reformer f rom the sham one, the true f riend of the workman f rom his deadliest enemy :
Beware of those who scoff at religion ; beware of those who wish to lead you away from religion and to hinder you in the Performance of your religious duties. They are your deadliest enemies, because, as we have seen, every step forward in behalf of the workman is accom- panied by religion and morality. Hence, if any one pro- tests that he is anxious to help you and at the same time attacks your religion, you may be sure he either knows nothing about the labor question or he is an impostor. There are men in our midst who act as though they were able to convert their sneers at religion into bread and money. The transf ormation that does take place is this : their every thought and word and deed are converted into slanderous invectives against us Catholics; their aspira- tions after liberty and progress, their patriotism, their enlightenment, their love for the people, their solicitude for the welfare of the people — all is metamorphosed, in the case of these men, into blasphemy, into slanders against religion and us Catholics. Beware of these men : they are not leaders of our workpeople, but deceivers and seducers.®
" These are the words," Ketteier concludes, " which I wished to address to you, my dear work- men, at the close of my sojourn among you. They are intended to express in some way, however im-
mast be given before young girls can be permitted to engage in factory work.
® Op. cit., pp. 21-22.
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perfectly, my heartfelt affection for you and my warm interest in your welfare. You see from them that, as Catholics, you can take a large share in the labor movements of to-day without detriment to the principles of your holy faith. But you see also that all your efforts will be vain if they are not based on religion and morality." ^
On 5 August the Liebfrauenheide Address ap- peared in print dedicated " to all the Christian workmen of the diocese of Mainz ". A fourth edi- tion became necessary before the end of the month. The Kölnische Volkszeitung, the Christlichsoziale Blätter, and other Catholic Journals, welcomed it enthusiastically. " The manly öpenness and truly Christian boldness with which your Lordship ut- tered truths which our Catholic bourgeois could not have endured to listen to from any one but you, touched me so deeply that I read your brochure through twice at a sitting," a priest of the arch- diocese of Cologne wrote to Ketteier. Quite char- acteristic is the criticism of the Arbeitgeber, one of the leading Socialist organs :
" This little work contains a rare and curious medley of sound and unsound economic views, of digested and undigested economic material, inter- mixed with real and sectarian, or rather Roman morality, true and untrue notions and estimates, impregnated with that religion which smells of in- cense, whose light is reflected from the sanctuary lamp on Images of Saints and cast on the outer World through painted windows. If this were not so, the author would not be Baron von Ketteier.
" Op. cit., p. 24.
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Only a brain which has subjected itself with incom- parable military Subordination to the dogmas of the Roman Church and is withal endowed with un- common intelligence could have produced a work like this." ^ The impression made on the Catholic laboring world by Ketteler's address was a lasting, an indelible one. In 1909 the fortieth anniversary of the event was solemnly commemorated on the Liebfrauenheide by divine Services and appropriate discourses in the presence of a great concourse of people who had flocked thither from Hesse and the adjacent parts of Prussia and Bavaria.
Whilst Ketteler's Christian Labor Catechism, as the Liebfrauenheide address has been called, was making the rounds of Germany, Bebel and Lieb- knecht, two friends of Marx's, encouraged by the dissensions in the ranks of the Lassalleans, called a labor meeting in Eisenach for the purpose of " uniting the various German workingmen's so- cieties." Here the Social-Democratic Labor Party was organized as a branch of the International Workingmen's Association,'' with almost identical Statutes. Article 8 of the socio-political program adopted at this meeting demanded " the abolition of all press, association and coalition laws; the adoption of the normal working day; the restriction of female labor and the prohibition of child labor." To this the Congress of Gotha (1875), at which a Union between the Lassalleans and Marxians was
8 Pf Ulf, II, p. 439.
8 Founded in St. Martin's Hall, London, 28 September, 1864. Marx's program was adopted and definitively sanctioned by the Congress of Geneva in 1866.
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effected, added the demand for Sunday rest from work (but insisted that all elections should in future take place on Sundays or holidays) and for factory laws ^" — both anticipated by Ketteier, as we shall have occasion to refer to again.
Ketteier had gradually come to be looked up to as the natural adviser in all matters bearing on the social question. The Protestant sociologist Dr. Huber sent him a number of his writings with the request to make their Contents known, through some qualified person, at the next Katholikentag. " The deep reverence," he wrote, " which I have for years entertained for your Lordship in every respect, but especially on account of your vigorous and dignified championship of the interests of our poor people, gives me ground to hope that my request will be granted. In spite of various differences of opinion, I do not hesitate to call myself a fellow-laborer of your Lordship in the same field, the field in which the issues of the future chiefly lie . . . I have repeatedly declared before the world that the Church of which you are so worthy a prince and servant — that the Catholic Church has an altogether eminent mission to fulfil for the social regeneration of the world." ^^
Dr. Hermann Rösler, Prof. of Political Economy at the University of Rostock, presented Ketteier with a copy of his well known work On the Funda- mental Doctrines of Adam Smith' s Economic Theory (1868), hoping, as he said, that " the ideas set forth therein would find the approval of such
^° Hitze, Die Soziale Frage, pp. 113 ss. 1' Pfülf, II, p. 187.
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an eminent authority." Dr. Rösler's sociological and political works were very populär in Protestant Germany until the author became a Catholic in 1878 — then they were ignored.^"
In France and Belgium, where his controversial writings were already well known, Ketteler's Chris- tianity and the Labor Question began to be seriously studied. The Paris Avenir National discussed his social reform proposals in an excellent series of articles, while the Journal des Villes et Campagnes thought Ihem deserving of the attention of the Com- ing Vatican Council/^
An English Protestant Peer, Lord Stanley of Alderley, a great admirer of Ketteler's works, es- pecially of his Liberty, Authority and the Chtirch, and a sincere friend of the Irish Catholics, wrote to the Bishop of Mainz on 16 August, 1869, request^ ing him to address an open letter to him against the proposed secularization of the property of the disestablished Irish Protestant Church. It was Lord Stanley's opinion that this property should be chiefly used for the unconditional endowment of the Catholic parishes as some compensation for all the sufferings endured by the Catholic clergy during the last three hundred years. It is not known what Ketteier replied, but from other docu- ments we know that he fuUy shared the opinion of the noble Lord in this matter.^*
12 Dr. Rösler (1834-1894) was in the Service of Japan from 1879 to 1893, helping to reorganize the Japanese Government. He is the author of the Japanese Commercial Code. He secured toleration for the Catholic Missions from the Mikado.
ispfülf, II, p. 432.
1* Cf. Freiheit, Auctorität u. Kirche, 27; Pfülf, II, p. 433.
CHAPTER XIII.
The German Bishops and the Social Question. Social Program for the Clergy. 1869.
THE historic Conference of Fulda began its ses- sions on i September, 1869. All the North German and nearly all the South German Bishops, nineteen in number, were present. The afternoon of 5 September was devoted to the discussion of Ketteler's paper " On the Care of the Church for Factory Workpeople, Journeymen, Apprentices and Servant Girls."
The subject of this report [the Bishop said] is the so- called social question — the gravest question our age has to solve.
I propose to answer the following questions:
1. Does the social question concern Germany?
2. Can and should the Church help to solve it?
3. What remedies can be applied?
4. What can the Church do to apply them?
After a vivid description of the wretched condi- tion of the working-classes in the great industrial centres of Europe, especially of England, " the classical land of industrial progress," — a descrip- tion which shows that he had carefully studied the most reliable publications on the subject — the Bishop continues :
I. DOES THE SOCIAL QUESTION CONCERN GERMANY?
As regards Germany, the social evil is not so widespread as in England, though the danger grows f rom day to day.
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177
But we must not for a moment entertain the notion that the modern industrial System will be replaced in the near future by another and a better one. The concentration of capital will go on in Germany as elsewhere, bringing in its wake the successive suppression of the craftsman and the small tradesman, and increasing the number of dependent workmen and proletarians. We must be pre- pared for this. No human power can stop this develop- ment of things. The same causes will necessarily pro- duce the same effects, in Germany as in the rest of the World.
II. CAN AND SHOULD THE CHURCH HELP TO SOLVE THE SOCIAL QUESTION?
There is only one answer to this question. If the Church is powerless here, we must despair of ever arriv- ing at a peaceful settlement of the social question.
The Church can and should help ; all her interests are at stake. True, it is not her duty to concem herseif di- rectly with capital and industrial activity, but it is her duty to save eternally the souls of men by teaching them the truths of faith, the practice of Christian virtue and true charity. Millions of souls cannot be influenced by her if she ignores the social question and Contents herseif with the traditional pastoral care of souls. . . . The Church must help to solve the social question, because it is in- dissolubly bound up with her mission of teaching and guiding mankind.
(a) Did not the teaching Church concem herseif at various times in her Councils with the abuses of capital and did she not for dogmatic reasons proscribe usury and the taking of interest on account of the social conditions of the time? Why should not the Church occupy herseif with similar questions at present?
{b) The social question touches the deposit of faith. Even if it was not evident that the principle underlying
178 BISHOP KETTELER.
the doctrines of economic Liberalism, which has been aptly styled " a war of all against all," is in flagrant con- tradiction with the natural law and the doctrine of uni- versal charity, there is no doubt that, arrived at a certain stage of development, this System, which, in a number of countries, has produced a working-class sick in body, mind and heart, and altogether inaccessible to the graces of Christianity, is diametrically opposed to the dignity of a human being and a fortiori of a Christian, in the mind of God, who meant the goods of earth to be for the Support of the human race and established the f amily for the purpose of perpetuating man and educating him physically and morally, and above all to the command- ments of Christian charity which ought to regulate the actions not of individuals only, but of every social Or- ganization ; theref ore this System deserves to be rejected for dogmatic reasons.
Liberal economists themselves admit that freedom of competition must be limited, unless we wish to look for- ward to a general sauve qui peut on the field of battle where the weak are exterminated by the strong.^^
{c) Moreover, in the face of the materialistic concep- tion of the workingman, according to which he is no longer a man, but a mechanical force, a machine, a thing that can be abused at pleasure, it is the mission of the Church to impress on the employer the maxim of St. Paul : " If any man have not a care of his own, and es- pecially of those of his house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." ^^
[d) To save the souls of countless workmen entrusted to her by Christ, the Church must enter the field of social reform armed with extraordinary remedies. She must exert herseif to the utmost to rescue the workmen from a
15 Röscher, System der Volkswirtschaft, Stuttgart, 1861, I, p. 175-
1 6 I Tim. 5 : 8.
SOCIAL REFORM. I 79
Situation which constitutes a real proximate occasion of sin for them, a Situation which makes it morally impos- sible for them to fulfil their duties as Christians.
{e) The Church is bound to interfere ex caritate, as these workmen are in extreme need and cannot help them- selves. Otherwise the unbelieving workingman will say to her: Of what use are your fine teachings to me? What is the use of your referring me by way of con- solation to the next world, if in this world you let me and my wife and my children perish with hunger? You are not seeking my welfare, you are looking for some- thing eise.
(/) By solving this problem, which is too difficult for mankind lef t to his own resources ; by accomplishing this work of love, which is the most imperative work of our Century, the Church will prove to the world that she is really the institution of salvation founded by the Son of God ; for, according to His own words, His disciples shall be known by their works of charity.
{g) Finally, the Church must take the part of the workman, because if she does not, others will, and he will fall into the hands of those who are either indifferent or hostile to Christianity and the Catholic Church.
III. WHAT REMEDIES CAN BE APPLIED?
Here it could be objected that the labor question, as well as the remedies proposed for its Solution, is still too tangled and has not matured sufficiently for the Church to handle it thoroughly, calmly and with any well- founded hope of success. This objection is altogether unfounded. The question is ripe. All parties admit the existence of the evils of which I have spoken, and these evils will go on increasing indefinitely unless some- thing is done to check them. No power on earth can arrest the onward march of the modern System of economy. We are forced to reckon with the whole sys-
l8o BISHOP KETTELER.
tem, and it must be our endeavor to mend it as much as we can, to find a corresponding remedy for each of the evils resulting from it, and to make the workman share as largely as possible in the benefits it offers.
It would be diificult indeed to know how to attain this end, if we left the matter to the theoretical and, for the most part, sterile discussions of certain political labor parties; but the question appears much simpler and even in part settled, if we look at the practical results obtained by benevolent entrcpreneurs who zealously es- tablish and promote associations and institutions for the welfare of their workpeople. . . . Noble-minded Chris- tian men have succeeded in relieving the misery of the workman, in healing his physical and moral wounds, in spreading culture, religion and morality, the pleasures and benefits of the Christian f amily life among the labor- ing Population. If institutions of this kind existed everywhere, the labor question would be settled to all intents and purposes.
Here Ketteier quotes the Official Report of the Prize Jury of the Paris Exposition (1867), edited by M. Leroux, French Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, to show what had been already accom- plished for " the material, intellectual and moral uplift of the working-classes in the industrial cen- tres of Europe." To the eleven headings under which the social reform works are here grouped, the Bishop added a twelfth of his own :
Legal Protection for the Workman.
1. Prohibition of Child Labor in factories.
2. Limitation of working-hours for lads employed in factories in the interest of their corporal and intellectual welfare.
SOCIAL REFORM. l8l
3. Separation of the sexes in the Workshops.
4. Closing of unsanitary Workshops.
5. Legal regulation of working-honrs.
6. Sunday rest.
7. Obligation of caring for workmen who, through no fault of theirs, are temporarily or forever incapacitated for work in the business in which they are employed.
8. A law protecting and favoring Coöperative Asso- ciations of Workingmen.
9. Appointment by the State of factory inspectors. Such are, in broad outline, the remedies which, as ex-
perience proves, eliminate or at any rate diminish the evils of our present industrial system and bring real re- lief to our workpeople. Let this system of associations and welfare institutions be carried out everywhere with due attention to local needs and the social question will be solved.
IV. HOW CAN THE CHURCH PROMOTE ASSOCIATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS FOR WORKPEOPLE?
1. It cannot be the mission of the Church to found as- sociations and institutions for workmen herseif and take their direction into her own hands ; but by sympathy, en- couragement and approbation, by Instruction and Spirit- ual Cooperation, she can further their development in the highest degree.
2. The Church must arouse interest in the laboring classes especially amongst the clergy, who are only too often indifferent in this regard because they are not con- vinced of the reality and gravity of the social evil, be- cause they have no real grasp of the nature and extent of the social question and no clear ideas about the re- medies to be applied.
The labor question cannot be ignored any longer in the courses of Philosophy and Pastoral Theology in our seminaries. It would be an important step in the right
l82 BISHOP KETTELER.
direction if a certain nvimber of ecclesiastics could be induced to make a special study of political economy. They would have to be provided with traveling allow- ances to enable them to study labor conditions on the spot and to gain personal knowledge of the welfare institu- tions already in existence. The results of their investi- gations and observations would be communicated to their brethren in the ministry at periodic Conferences estab- lished for the purpose.
3. Priests appointed to parishes in industrial districts should be both able and willing to take an intelligent and practical interest in the welfare of the workpeople.
4. If the bishops encourage the clergy to study the social question, perhaps some day a man will rise up who will be for the factory workpeople what Kolping has been for the journeymen. Such a man's mission would be, to enlighten the workman in the true sense of the Word, to fill him with manly courage and trust in God, to gain as many Christian hearts as possible for the cause of the workman and to unite them for action. Such a mission entrusted to the right man could not but be productive of the greatest blessings.
5. Finally, the press must be used to arouse the in- terest of the general public in the Christian Solution of the labor question.^ ^
If the Catholic clergy of Germany have taken such a prominent part in the social reform move- ment of the last forty years, and if there are so many really able political economists and practical sociologists among them at present, this is due in the
1^ Ketteler's Fulda Report was first published in the Christ- lichsoziale Blätter, 6 Nov., 1869; Italian translation appeared in Venice, 1870. It has been repeatedly reprinted since. " In the history of the social question and of the social action of the Catholic Church," Prof. Hitze wrote in 1886, " this report will always retain a prominent place." {Arbeiterwohl, 1886, no. 7.)
SOCIAL REFORM. 183
first place to the splendid initiative of the Bishop of Mainz and the other princes of the Church as- sembled at Fulda on the eve of the Vatican Council.
An immediate result of the Fulda deliberations was the appointment in each diocese of a commis- sion to inquire into the condition of the working- classes. A Joint report was to be drawn up and presented to the bishops at their next Conference.
On the same day on which Ketteier made his re- port on the social question to the German bishops, the Twentieth Catholic Congress met at Düsseldorf. Here too the social question stood in the fore- ground. A permanent section for social questions was created whose object it was to be " to promote the Organization of Christian-Social Societies for the economic and moral improvement of the work- ing-classes and the spread of Christian-Social liter- ature." The principles and reform proposals laid down by Ketteier in his Liebfrauenheide Address were unanimously adopted as the basis for all Catholic social action, and Christian men of every Station of life were invited to take a real practical interest in the working-classes.
The number of Christian-Social Societies con- tinued to increase from day to day. At a Conven- tion held in Essen in the spring of 1870 one of the Speakers could point with justifiable pride to an army of 195,000 Catholic men already enroUed under the banner of Christian social reform. Vis- ions of a glorious social regeneration arose before the eyes of the assembly. " The Christian-Social Societies," continued the Speaker, " will soon count their members by the hundreds of thousands. A
l84 BISHOP KETTELE R.
respectable army ! I see a bright future before us. Thirty thousand German priests will put their hands to the work." ^*
The bright future was a long time Coming. The Prussian Government laid its mailed hand on the Catholic societies, exiled bishops and priests, and declared every manifestation of Catholic life and activity to be treason. The fight for the liberty of the Church drew the minds of men from the Work- shop, the coal mine and the iron mill to the school room, the pulpit and the altar. " We must first win liberty for the Church," Windthorst said in 1875, when approached on the subject of factory legis- lation, " and then we can throw ourselves into the social reform movement." ^®
i^"The Catholic clerical party," the Sozialdemokrat com- mented on this Convention, " especially the clergy, shows more clearly every day that it is determined to interfere in the labor movement." (1870, no. 13.)
^® Wenzel, Arbeiterschutz und Zentrum, p. 21.
CHAPTER XIV.
At THE Vatican Council and in the Reichs- tag. 1 869-1 871.
ALTHOUGH Ketteler's attitude at the Vatican Council has no direct or even indirect bear- ing on his social reform work, except perhaps in so far as he seriously entertained the idea of sub- mitting a Catholic social reform program to the as- sembled Fathers, it will not be out of place to say a Word on this subject.
When Pius IX informed the bishops of the world of his Intention to summon a General Council in Rome at no distant date, Ketteier welcomed the announcement with the greatest enthusiasm. " The Coming Council," he wrote at the time, " will be the most important event of the Century — at any rate among the constructive events ; other events have been great principally in the destructive Or- der." And to the faithful he wrote: " Pray with- out ceasing that the General Council which the Holy Father has announced, to the unspeakable joy of all who love Christ and His Church, may take place according to the fulness of the love and the mercies of God and that nothing may intervene to prevent it."
The nearer, however, the date set for the open- ing of the Council approached, the fiercer became the storm of Opposition to the Church and her visible Head, artificially aroused by the anti-
l86 BISHOP KETTELER.
Catholic press and a clique of discontented, proud- minded, restive, Catholic (in name only) savants, clerical and lay. It was especially against the proposed dogmatization of the infallibility of the Pope that the agitation was directed. The weirdest spectres were conjured up to terrify the masses and a significance out of all proportion to the reality was attached to the dogma in order to win over the politicians and diplomatists. The agents of the French emperor were particularly busy in this di- rection and the German Freemasons and Liberais warmly seconded them. The notorious Janus pamphlet had done its work : so much noise had not been made and so much dust had not been raised within the memor}^ of man over a religious question. When the confusion was at its height (February, 1869), Ketteier came forward with another of his timely brochures: The General Council and What It Means for Our Tune, which was rapidly spread in five editions throughout the German-speaking world/ Written in his characteristically clear, im- pressive style, it could not fail to set the minds of all honest inquirers at ease and keep them from wandering dangerously astray. It was above all the Bishop's own unequivocal profession of faith in the divine guidance of the Church and in the infallible teaching authority of her Head, the Vicar of Christ on the throne of Peter, that encouraged clergy and people to look with confidence and cheer- fulness into the future, however dark the prospect might appear.^
1 French, Italian, and English translarions were immediately prepared.
' Cf. Das allgemeine Cuncü. Part VI : Die Frage aller Fragen.
SOCIAL REFORM. 187
What Ketteier professed on the eve of the Vatican Council he had professed throughout his life. The doctrinal infallibility of the Pope in mat- ters of faith and morals was taught with his ex- press approbation in the clerical seminary in Mainz. He never had the slightest sympathy with Gallican- ism and he deeply deplored the stand taken by Döllinger and his school. " Shortly before his departure for the Council," says Dr. Heinrich, " I spoke to him about the violent attacks directed against the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and the new objections daily urged against it. At the end of our conversation he said with great earnestness : ' Nothing can shake my faith in this doctrine '." *
On 23 May, he declared in a plenary meeting, that he had always believed in Papal Infallibility, but he insisted on a thorough examination of the theological proofs put forward to justify its dog- matic definition as well as of the arguments ad- vanced by the Opposition. Though he circulated in the Council a pamphlet, ad instar tnanuscripti, of the learned and pious Jesuit Quarella, which in a few points seemed to militate against the doctrine of the infallibility, he did not accept all the theories of this work. " When Your Lordship," Victor de Bück, S.J., wrote to Ketteier, 12 November, 1872, " at my special request, sent me a copy of the pamphlet in question, you accompanied it with the foUowing words : ' This work does not express my ideas. I had it printed in order that it might be examined '." *
3 Katholik, Vol. 57, p. 257. ^ Brie je, p. 557.
l38 BISHOP KETTELER.
It is true the Bishop was not very favorably in- clined toward a formal dogmatic definition o£ Papal Infallibility and belonged to the so-called minority er inopportunists in the Council : " In our time," he wrote to Bishop Dupanloup, " it is not oppor- tune to increase the number of dogmas." His mind was naturally of a practical bent and he thought that the Council should concern itself chiefly with practical decrees for the sanctification of the Church, with the application of the practical prin- ciples of Christianity to the lives of the faithful. I£ he erred in this, it was an error of the intellect, for his heart was fiUed with the tenderest love of the Church, and all his desires, all his prayers were directed to the one object, that the holy will of God might be done. His whole attitude was deter- mined by his severe conscientiousness, his straight- forwardness — the consueta aninii rectitudo, which Archbishop Dechamps praised in him — not by party-spirit. " In Germany," says Baron von Hert- ling, " he was looked upon as the head and leader of the ' right wing ' of the Catholic forces, as an ultramontane of the strictest observance. To find himself in, or at any rate to be regarded as belong- ing to, another camp in Rome certainly meant no small sacrifice to him, but he made it because his conscience demanded it of him, and later on he de- clared more than once that he never even for a Single moment regretted the stand he had taken." ^
After the Council, when his enemies made his conduct the subject of their invidious comments, a number of ecclesiastics, who had had every occasion
2 Hist. Polü. Blaetter, Vol. 125, p. 300.
SOCIAL REFORM. 189
to watch him closely du ring his stay in Rome, stepped forward unasked to bear witness to the absolute loyalty and correctness of all his move- ments. He kept aloof, they said, from everything that looked even remotely like cabal or intrigue; he openly before all men walked the way his con- science pointed out. That it was no pleasant and easy way is evidenced by the concluding lines of a letter to Archbishop Dechamps, dated July, 1870: " Throughout my whole life I have cheerfully battled with the enemies of the Church and should have done so without flagging to the end of my life; but the unhappy dissensions that divide the Bishops weary me out and break my spirit, so that I would fain lay down my pen." ®
When the discussion of the question of Papal In- fallibility arrived at the point where it became necessary to decide one way or the other, Ketteier was not opposed to the definition ; he only wanted to have it formulated somewhat differently from the wording which had been agreed upon by the ma- jority and, in order to make its reception all the easier, promulgated, not as a separate decree, but as an integral part of the Constitution on the Church. Hence, as he believed that he could not vote either with Non placet or with an uncondi- tional Placet, and a Placet ad modum was not ad- missible in the definitive session, he quitted Rome on the eve of the final vote (17 July) after a written declaration that he submitted beforehand to the decisions of the Council.'^
^Briefe, p. 555-
"^ Ketteier, Das unfehlbare Lehramt des Papstes nach der
I90
BISHOP KETTE LER.
Ketteier had hardly returned from the Vatican Council when the Franco-German War broke out. During the eleven months, from August, 1870 to July, 1871, twenty-seven thousand French pr'soners of war were confined in his episcopal city of Mainz. The Bishop was as solicitous for their welfare as if they had been of his own flock. He appointed a number of prominent ecclesiastics who could speak French fluently to look after the sick and the dying. Later, when French chaplains arrived, he gave hospitality to two of them in his own residence and saw to the welfare of the others who were always received with kindness as guests. The Seminary Church was reserved for the soldiers to facilitate their ready approach to the sacraments, and special arrangements were made with the clergy of St. Christopher's Church, so that the six hundred offi- cers quartered in the town might have Mass regu- larly. On Whit Monday 150 soldiers were solemnly confirmed in the Cathedral.^
As soon as it became known that the question of a definitive Constitution for the new Empire was being discussed by representatives of the German States, Ketteier addressed a letter to Bismarck, then at Versailles, drawing the attention of the Chan- cellor to the manifest advantages that must accrue to Germany if the relations of the Church and the State were established on the basis of the Prussian Constitution of 1850. This Constitution had
Entscheidung des Vai. Conc, 3rd edit., Mainz, 1871, p. 71 s. See also Ketteier, Die Minorität auf dem Concil. (a reply to Lord Acton's "Letter to a German Bishop"), Mainz, 1870.
* Jos. Strub, C. S. Sp., Rapport sur les Prisonniers de Guerre Frangais internes ä Mayence, Paris, 187 1.
SOCIAL REFORM. I9I
brought freedom to the Church and the inestim- able blessing of religious peace to the State. But the " Iron " Chancellor, whilst, as it seemed, per- sonally well disposed toward the Bishop of Mainz,' had already set his face in another direction, and this first attempt to divert the approaching storm proved abortive. Pressure of business, Bismarck declared in a later interview, had prevented him from answering the Bishop's letter.
The terrible war was still on when the Liberal and Masonic organs began a campaign of calumny and abuse against the Catholic Church, its head and members, the like of which it would be hard to find in the annals of national history. These at - tacks become more virulent still as the time for the general elections drew near. It was evident to every observing mind that the most vital interests of the Church, nay the very existence of the Church in Germany would depend in large measure on the attitude of the first Reichstag. On 13 February, Ketteier addressed a circular letter to his clergy on the approaching elections, pointing out their supreme importance and admonishing them to do their duty as Citizens and as shepherds of their flocks.^" Two weeks later he preached a vigor- ous sermon on the duty of voters. The discourse made a deep Impression in the country at large. About the same time it became known that five elec- toral districts had requested him to become their candidate for the Reichstag. After some hesita- tion he decided in favor of Tauberbischofsheim in
9 Pfülf, II, p. 253.
i*' Ketteier, Hirtenbriefe, p. 653 ss.
192
BISHOP KETTE LRR.
Baden, where the Liberais had put up a very strong man and were sanguine of success. The election returns (8 March) showed a handsome majority of over 4000 for the Bishop of Mainz.
Shoulder to Shoulder with Windthorst and Mal- linckrodt, August and Peter Reichensperger, Ket- teier championed the cause of true civil and reli- gious liberty in Berlin. In spite of his sixty years he was as assiduous in attendance and as active in debate as the youngest member. On 3 April he de- livered a powerful speech on the proposed Constitu- tion and in consequence became involved in a long controversy with various Liberal press organs.^^ This incident convinced him that he could not re- main in parliament much longer without compro- mising his episcopal dignity. The Liberal majority was made up almost exclusively of Rome-hating, Rome-baiting fanatics, of apostate Catholics courted by the Government, of unbelieving Jews, of Free- masons, Free-thinkers and rationalistic Protestants, who were determined to listen to no arguments but to carry their point by the brüte force of numbers. On 25 April he returned to his diocese and in the following December resigned his seat in the Reich- stag in favor of an orthodox Protestant gentleman who had warmly espoused the cause of the Centre and of religious liberty. In a splendid little work entitled The Centre Party and the First German Reichstag, Ketteier gave his constituents a faith- ful account of his parliamentary activity, exposed his reasons for accepting a seat in a legislative body
^'^ Remarkable were also Ketteler's Speeches on the notorious Lutz " pulpit-paragraph " and on the dogma of Papal Infallibility.
SOCIAL REFORM.
193
and made no secret of the reasons which induced him to resign it. Before bidding farewell to Berlin the Bishop made two more attempts to convince Bismarck of the folly of his anti-Catholic policy; but to no purpose. Equally fruitless was an inter- view with the emperor, whose attitude toward the Catholic Church had undergone a change for the worse since the Treaty of Frankfort. He declared the dogma of Papal Infallibility, the Syllabus, etc. to be dangerous to the welfare of the State, and accused the Catholics of having begun hostilities. Evidently someone had poisoned His Majesty's mind."
12 Pastor, Aug. Reichensperger, II, pp. 49 s.
CHAPTER XV.
LiBERALISM, SOCIALISM, AND ChrISTIANITY. 187I.
THE pseudo-Liberalism which held the reins of power in Germany and which the Bishop had had occasion to study in action on the floor of par- liament, was the subject of Ketteler's famous dis- course before the thousands of his countrymen whom the twenty-first Catholic Congress had as- sembled in Mainz, 11 September, 1871.
While there is nothing so necessary for the develop- ment of the new German Empire as religious peace [he began], nearly all the parties have set upon us and are determined at all costs to conjure up a religious conflict. . . . We must not be surprised at this. It is nothing new. There never was a time when truth and justice ruled unopposed in the world. The great men of every age have always been the great fighters for justice and right. . . .
Since, therefore, we must fight, our highest concern must be to fight well. To this end it is above all neces- sary to understand the age in which we live, to know the means we must employ to fight successfully for truth and justice. Every age has its own peculiar character, while the great principles always remain the same. He who does not understand the special character of his time and is satisfied to act on general principles, for the most part simply beats the air, strikes over the heads of his contemporaries. This is a tactical mistake only too frequently made by us. Because we are sons of that Church whose very essence it is to announce, to preserve,
SOCIAL REFORM.
195
and cultivate, for the salvation of the whole human race, the great principles, the great fundamental truths on which all human things are based, it happens but too easily that we stop at these principles without giving ourselves the trouble of studying how they may be best applied to the ever-changing condition of things around US. In this way we become unpractical and fall back upon truisms and commonplaces, which are excellent in themselves but do not hit that particular nail on the head which must be hit in our time.
To help the Catholics to a proper understanding of their Situation and to show them the way to ulti- mate victory in the approaching desperate conflict, Ketteier makes them acquainted with the foe — Liberalism. No one before or after him has given US so true, so living a likeness of the party that undertook to give the coup de gräce to the Catholic Church in Germany. He describes Liberalism in its infancy, Liberalism in its manhood and Liberal- ism in its refractory offspring, Socialism — " which is causing it so much grief, which it would gladly fasten on us Catholics, but which clings tight to it and can triumphantly prove the legitimacy of its descent." ^
There is one truth [the Bishop said] that we must never lose sight of. Socialism, which in itself is one of the most pernicious errors of the human mind, is perfectly legitimate, if the principles of Liberalism are legitimate. If Liberalism were right in its principles, Socialism would be right in its deductions. If I admitted the prin- ciples of Liberalism, to be logical I should have to be a Socialist. Perhaps I should still have my doubts about
1 Cf. Leo XIII. Encycl. " Quod Apostolici Muneris " of 28 Dec, 1878, and " Diuturnum Illud " of 29 June, 1881.
196
BISHOP KETTELER.
the efficiency of the means proposed by Socialism for lightening the burdens of mankind, but at any rate I should feel bound to give therm a trial. We Christians possess the exclusive privilege of knowing certain means, not indeed of making men perfectly happy here below, but of providing them with a degree of happiness surpass- ing by far all that others can offer them. Outside of Christianity there is nothing but experimenting, and, if I were a Liberal, I should experiment with Socialism.
Liberalism makes a present God of the State. The Liberais speak none the less of religion and Church. This is the plainest nonsense. Socialism steps up and says : " If the State is God, the historical development of Christianity is a colossal imposition. I, for my part, will have nothing to do with religion, Church or liturgy."
Liberalism wishes to rob matrimony of its religio iis character, yet strives to preserve it as a civil contract. Socialism comes forward and says : " If God has not regulated marriage, what right has man to force his pre- scriptions on us? Our will is our law; our ever-chang- ing passions are a natural law with which no man has a right to interfere."
Liberalism says: "There is no divine eternal law above the law of the State; the law of the State is ab- solute. The Church, the family, and the father, have no other rights than those which the State thinks fit to grant them through its legislative organs. But private property is inviolable. There are exceptions to this, of course. The State can deprive the Church of her goods, because her proprietary rights are based on the civil law ; for the same reason all Catholic institutions may be de- spoiled — but as regards our personal property, no one dare lay hands on that." Socialism answers : " Nonsense. If the State is the only source of right and law, it is also the source of private property. Whatever is regulated by the State is right. We demand a revision of the laws
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relating to property and inheritance. At present the good things of life are in the hands of a few; the bulk of men live in poverty and wretchedness — a cruel and in- human State of things. The title to property is derived from personal labor. Landed property belongs to the whole human race. ..."
If the premises are true, if the State is the present God, if the law is absolute, who can dispute the right of the State to reform the laws regulating private property? What the State has done as the present God, to speak vi^ith Hegel, it can undo again in the same capacity.
Liberalism laughs at the word eternity; it sneers at the consolations of religion. Material enjoyment is man's only destiny. This is why it tries to monopolize all the wealth of the world. It finds it quite natural that ninety per Cent of humanity should be excluded from the banquet in order that the elect remnant may live in satiety.
The Socialists ansvi^er : " We also laugh with you at eternity; we also sneer at the idea of a recompense in the other world to make up for the miseries of the present one. You have taught us in your press and in your schools what we ought to think of such specimens of priestcraf t. But if there is no eternity, if our life ends with this life and if our happiness consists exclusively in the gratification of the senses, it is an unpardonable crime to prevent ninety per cent of hiunanity from fol- lowing their vocation and to advise them to sacrifice them- selves in the interests of the other ten per cent. There- fore all must be given an equal share in the goods of earth ; all must do their share of work and be paid ac- cordingly. To-day it happens only too frequently that lazy, unscrupulous coupon holders have all, and the work- man has nothing, nothing of all those things which can make man happy; this State of things is intolerable." These conclusions are not true, because the principles of
198
BISHOP KETTELER.
Liberalism are false, because Christianity is right when it says that there is an eternity, that sensual enjoy- ment is not the end of man and cannot render him happy, that God is his end, that God alone can satisfy his hunger after happiness. But if Liberalism were right, Socialism would be logical, Liberalism would be nothing but a monster of selfishness.
Liberalism wants to make all men equal. This it pro- mised in Opposition to the inequality of the past. It be- gan its leveling process by tearing down the barriers which separated classes and estates. But instead of keeping its promise, it has set up a more brutal distinction between men than any known tili then — money. This distinction is all the more humiliating because it is not counterbalanced by distinction of rank as in former times, nor toned down by the spirit of Christianity and time-honored customs. The abyss yawns deeper from day to day. Behind Liberalism Socialism Stands with clenched fists. " Very well," it cries. "All men are born equal and must become equal again. The abolition of class distinction is of no avail so long as property re- mains in the hands of a few, thus making equality an idle phrase. Property destroys social equality; it de- stroys educational equality; it destroys equality in the acquisition and possession of the goods of this life; it destroys political equality, because the very right of fran- chise is controlled by money ; it destroys civil equality in public as well as in private life, because those who have not are in the power of those who have ; it destroys equality before the law of which you speak so much, because the rieh man has far other means at his disposal for obtaining the protection of the law than the poor man; it destroys equality in regard to the holding of Government offices from which the poor are altogether excluded ; it destroys equality of military service, for who will dare to compare the one year of voluntary service,
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which is an amusement for the rieh, with the three years of the poor day-laborer and artisan? It destroys, in a word, all equality in regard to the enjoyment of material things, for which man has been created and sent into the World. Away with your pretended equality ! Away with your economic principles, whose sole aim is to concen- trate the wealth of the earth in the hands of a few !"
All that Socialism says is true as against Liberalism; but in the last analysis it is false, because Christianity is right, and because neither Liberalism nor Socialism has any real idea of true liberty and equality, above all of true equality, which is not merely a matter of position and Standing, but is dependent on other things of which Liberalism and Socialism know nothing. It was of these other things that St. Paul was thinking when he asked Philemon to treat his servant Onesimus no longer as a slave, after he had become a child of God by Bap- tism, but to receive him and love him as a brother. The more deeply Christianity enters into the lives of men, the more truly equal they become in the possession and enjoyment of goods so high that temporal inequality vanishes before them. But if the principles of Liberal- ism were true, if the goods of earth were alone worth possessing, its promised equality would be nothing but fraud and delusion, and Community of goods would be an absolutely necessary condition of equality. But, I re- peat, this would be an illusion too, because Liberalism and Socialism are both wrong.
For many years we have heard the cry of Liberalism: " Everything through the people." Hegel says : " The people as far as it is the State is the absolute power on earth." With this catchword the Liberais have fought against the authority derived from God and laughed to scorn the formula " By the Grace of God." This for- mula, it is true, has been unspeakably abused by despot- ism; but for all that it expresses the grand old truth
200 BISHOP KETTELE R.
proclaimed by the Apostle, that all authority comes from God, that every magistrate, whether elected by the people or not, exercises an authority derived from God, com- municated and legitimized by God; because God has or- ganized society in all its constitutive parts, and con- sequently set up authority and power as necessary condi- tions for the development of the human race.
With the maxim: " Everything through the people," Liberalism has ruined all the foundations of the social order. This magic f ormula is a fatal illusion. The doc- trines of Liberalism, ancient and modern, are not and never were the doctrines of the people properly so-called. Through the press and the school Liberalism has indeed penetrated into certain strata of the people, but its doctrines have not gone forth from the people. No party has ever shown itself so utterly incapable of un- derstanding the people such as it is, such as it lives in its hamlets and villages and towns, as Liberalism. Its f avorite phrase : " Everything through the people," is very useful for its subterranean Operations, but it is a hollow phrase. When it says " Everything through the people," translate it " Everything through Liberalism and nothing through the people."
Socialism takes up this colossal lie of Liberalism and cries " To be sure, everything through the people, but it is we who are the true representatives of the people. You represent the ten per cent who possess the fatness of the land, we, the ninety per cent, who work in the sweat of our brow. Hegel says that the people are the absolute power on earth ; it is we who are the people ; we are the State ; we are the present God — we workmen, not you capitalists and bankers."
If the principles of Liberalism, I repeat again, are true, Socialism is right. Modern Liberalism is incon- sistent. The little manoeuvre which consists, in theory, of constantly speaking of the people, govemment of the
SOCIAL REFORM. 201
people, Church of the people, etc., and, in practice, of robbing it of liberty and making a fool of it — this manoeuvre, I say, cannot go on much longer. The peo- ple will not always be led by a fool's line. Once more, Socialism is right against Liberalism ; but bef ore the judgment-seat of reason and Christianity both one and
the other are wrong
This is the Situation ; these are our f oes. Their power lies in their strong Organization and in the influence they exercise on the press and the elections. We must fight them with their own weapons. A single good Organiza- tion is better than a thousand speeches. Good organiza- tions, good newspapers, good elections — these are the pieces of ordnance with which we Catholics must take the field against our enemies. . . . The future belongs to Christianity — that is seif -evident ; and neither to Liberal- ism nor to Socialism. But perhaps we shall have to pay dear bef ore we learn how to fight properly in the time in which we live. Our weakness to-day consists solely in our manner of fighting '
Under the title, Liberalism, Socialism, and Chris- tianity, this Speech was published soon after the Katholikentag and, like Ketteler's other Kultur- kampf brochures, was read with avidity by hun- dreds of thousands. It was this speech that earned for him the name of " Fighting Bishop " {der streit- bare Bischof). The anti-Catholic press was es- pecially fond of making use of this designation in a malevolent and spiteful manner. " The Nordd. Allgem. Zeitung," Ketteier wrote to the Germania a few months before his death, " is in the habit of giving me the title of ' the fighting Bishop of
2 Liberalismus, Socialismus, und Christentum. Mainz, 1871, third edit.
202 BISHOP KETTELER.
Mainz.' I can accept it only upon the supposition that it looks on those who are constrained to defend the highest goods of man as of a fighting disposi- tion. My fighting spirit goes no farther than that I claim for myself and my fellow Catholics the right to live according to our Holy Faith." ^
3 Briefe, p. 532.
CHAPTER XVI. Ketteler's Socio-Political Program. 1873.
ON 10 March, 1873, Bismarck delivered his fam- ous Kulturkampf speech in the Prussian Hou&e of Lords. After proclaiming his divorce from the Conservatives and his Liberal predilec- tions, he attacked the Vatican and the Centre party with a fierceness for which even the most enthus- iastic Rome-haters were not prepared. He vented his spieen especially on Ketteier, whom he regarded as the author of the Centrist program and the most active and zealous promoter of " Papal politics ". "At what does this program aim?" he asked.. " Consult the writings of the Bishop of Mainz. They are cleverly written, pleasant to read and in everyone's hands. It aims at the introduction of a political dualism into the Prussian State by setting up a State within the State, by forcing the Catho- lics to follow in public and private life the direc- tions of the Centre party."
The work referred to by the Chancellor and the tenor of which he distorted so shamelessly is Ket- teler's third political brochure: The Catholics in the German Empire: Draught of a Political Pro- gram. From the introduction we learn that it was written toward the close of the Franco- German War, but that for political and other reasons its publication was postponed tili the spring of 1873. The original founders of the Centre party and the
204
BISHOP KETTELER.
framers of its program had no knowledge of its Contents before the general public had. This dis- poses of Bismarck's assertion as to the episcopal authorship of the Soester Programm of 13 Decem- ber, 1870. In a letter to the Germania, published 19 March, Ketteier replied to the Chancellor's other calumnious declarations. " The best proof of the arbitrary character of Prince Bismarck's estimate of my program/' he said, " is the fact that, ever since 1848, I have never claimed any more for the Church in Germany than was granted to the Chris- tian denominations by the Imperial Constitution of Frankfort and the Prussian Constitution of 1850. Not one word of mine can be adduced to the con- trary. . . . Prince Bismarck has apparently no idea whatever of the office and work of a Catholic Bishop. He shows in his own person how hard it is even for men of uncommon mental endowment and experience of the world to rid themselves of the narrowest sectarian prejudices. . . . " ^
The program itself, however, is the most crush- ing answer to Bismarck's ravings about political dualism and Papal intrigues. The Catholics, though streams of Catholic blood had helped to bind together the foundation stones of the new empire, were calumniated as enemies of the empire {Reichs- feinde), as ultramontanes, as spies of a foreign power, as men without a country, ready to betray the land of their birth to the French, the Pope, or the Pole. Ketteier, who was in the eyes of the Liberais the arch-ultramontane, intended his pro- gram to be an answer to these accusations, a wit-
1 Quoted by Pfülf, III, p. 265.
SOCIAL REFORM. 20$
ness to the real aims and aspirations of the German Catholics after the gieat war.^ " I doubt whether any minority," he says, " has ever been treated more inhumanly, more intolerantly, more unjustly by a might-before-right majority than we Catholics have been treated in the new German empire. All this, however, shall not prevent us from loyally ful- filling our duties toward the German empire and doing all in our power to promote its welfare." ^
The State the Catholics had helped to make so powerful had suddenly turned on them, bent on crushing them; and yet they longed to place their best efforts at its Service. But how could a perse- cuted minority do positive, constructive, political, and social work? Ketteier answered : Organize, concentrate your forces, back up the assertion of your rights with a strong political party ; when the enemy shall have learned to respect you, he will be ready to listen to your political and social reform proposals.
In Ihe public life of our time only those are strong who know what they want and how to get it. Numbers without Organization are powerless ; but united even a minority is strong. Our influence in the new German empire will be exactly in proportion to our union and Organization ; disunited we will become once more the sport, the plaything of ovüc enemies, as we have so often and for the same reason been in the past. If, there- fore, the principles we have stood for until now are dear to US, if we love the religion we profess, if we wish to band on this priceless heritage to our posterity, if we wish to keep a Christian fatherland, we must meet our
2 Die Katholiken im deutschen Reiche, 3rd edit., p. vii.
3 Op. cit., p. viii.
2o6 BISHOP KETTELER.
enemies with united forces. Every deputy whom we send to the legislative assemblies, every Journal supported by our money, must accept our program. We must or- ganize in such a manner that every Catholic, whether burgher or peasant, will be perfectly acquainted with our demands and ready to Champion them boldly and reso- lutely in his own particular sphere of activity. In this way alone can we hope to gain the influence to which we are entitled. But when I speak of a program for the Catholics, I am f ar f rom thinking of a program intended to represent exclusively Catholic interests. Every one of my proposals proves the contrary. Whatever political rights I Claim for the Catholics in the German empire, I demand with equal candor for the other religious bodies. The principles laid down by me can be ac- cepted by all Protestants ; nay, they must be accepted by all who advocate genuine equality before the law for the various Christian denominations, and who do not mean by religion a colorless undenominationalism, but the Christian faith as historically and legally established in Germany. There is nothing to prevent such a pro- gram from becoming the program of all believing Chris- tians, and I could call it a program for all right-minded Christian men.*
A reproduction of the program will enable the reader to form his own judgment on its significance, on its all but prophetical character.
PROGRAM.
I. Unreserved recognition of the German imperial power as at present legally constituted. II. Firm national alliance with Austria, the German Eastern Empire.^
* Op. cit., pp. 2-3.
^ The Alliance between Germany and Austria was made in 1878.
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III. Honest recognition of the independence of the Federate States without detriment to the necessary unity of the Empire and to the imperial laws,
IV. In the Empire as well as in the separate States the Christian Religion shall be the basis of all in- stitutions connected with the exercise of religion, without prejudice to religious liberty.® V. The approved Christian bodies regulate and ad- minister their own affairs independently and re- main in possession of their religious, educational and charitable institutions and funds.'^
VI. Guaranteed individual and corporative liberty in contradistinction to the counterfeit liberty of ab- solutism and liberalism. VII. Liberty of higher, intermediate, and elementary Instruction under State supervision regulated by law, and Organization of the public schools not according to the good pleasure of the State au- thorities, but according to the real religious, in- tellectual and moral condition of the people.^ VIII. Corporate Organization in contradistinction to the mechanical constitutional forms of Liberalism; self-government in contradistinction to bureau- cracy pure and simple.
IX. In particular a territorial, provincial, and depart- mental Constitution built up on these principles. X. Amendments to the Imperial Constitution:
a. Creation of an Upper House.^
b. Creation of a Supreme Court as an unassail- able bulwark of the entire German judiciary,
«This is Art. 14 of the Prussian Constitution of 1850.
"^ This is Art. 15 of the Prussian Constitution ; abrogated in 1873-
8 Cf. Art. 24 of the Prussian Constitution. _ " Ketteier wants an Upper House composed of representa- tives of the various classes — clergy, nobles, merchants, peasants, workmen, etc.
2o8 BISHOP KETTELER.
as a bulwark of the public law of the land, and
as a legal check for the imperial and State ad-
ministrations.^"
XI, Regulation of the public debt, diminution of the
public burdens, proper adjustment of taxes. We
propose the f ollowing ameliorations :
a. Introduction of a stock exchange tax.^^
b. Introduction of an income tax for Joint stock companies.^^
c. State management of railways.^'
d. Reduction of the war budget.
e. Exemption of the necessaries of life from taxation.
XII. Corporate reorganization of the working-classes, Legal protection of the children and wives of workmen against the exploitation of capital. Protection of the workman's strength by laws regulating hours of labor and Sunday rest. Legal protection of the health and morality of work people in mines, factories, Workshops, etc. Appointment of inspectors to watch over the carrying out of the factory laws. XIII. Prohibition of all secret societies, especially of Freemasonry.^*
i<*This Court was created ii April, 1877, with its seat in Leipsic.
1^ Stock Exchange taxation laws were passed in 1885, 1894, 1900, 1905.
12 Law of 27 July, 1885.
12 Realized at the end of the 'seventies.
^* " We do not demand," says Ketteier, " the suppression of Freemasonry ; but we have a right to demand that it engage with US, with open vizor, in fair combat under the general laws of the State. Therefore we demand :
1. that the State prohibit all secret societies.
2. that, consequently, Freemasonry also must divest itself of its secret character,
3. that all exceptional laws in favor of Freemasonry be abro- gated, and that Freemasonry, like all other political parties, be
SOCIAL REFORM. 20Q
The Program is followed by brief but masterful commentaries in which are embodied the results of Ketteler's life-studies and social and political ex- perience. Absorbingly interesting as they all are — they have been called " a storehouse of political wisdom " — we must confine ourselves to a short analysis of the one on Article XII, which deals with the Intervention of the State in the labor question.
The labor question [says the Bishop] cannot be omitted from a reform program, because it is the most important question of the day. But we shall consider it here only in so far as the State is called upon to coöperate in its Solution by means of legislation. The State has a two- fold task to perform: to tender to the working-classes the assistance of the law for the formation of corpora- tions; to protect the workingman and his family by legislative enactments against all unjust exploitation.
1. The working-classes have a right to demand from the State that it give back to them what it deprived them of, viz. a labor Constitution, regulated labor.
It is impossible to form a correct idea of the condi- tion of the working-classes without taking into account how far this condition is bound up with the defects and evils with which modern society and the modern State are affected. The labor question is only a branch of the social question — the question that touches society in its entirety. Hence all that we have said concerning the dissolution and reorganization of society in general and the constitutional regulation of the various social classes
placed_ under the surveillance of the ordinary administrative authorities,
4. that the Government inspection of the lodges be exercised only by such officials as are in no way connected with Free- masonry." {Die Kath. im d. Reich, p. 115 s.) These demands are as urgent to-day as they were forty years ago.
2IO BISHOP KETTELER.
on the basis of self-government, applies also to the work- ing-classes.^^ The legal reorganization of the laboring and artisan classes, if prudently carried out, will go far toward solving the labor question.
The working- classes have passed through the same phases as the old State and the old social order. The Physiocrats of the last Century made the Organization of labor responsible for all the economic evils of the people, instead of looking for their true origin in its degeneration, its egotistical ossification, in the patent fact that this Organization had not been developed to meet changed conditions. And so they annihilated the grand Constitution of labor handed on to them by the Middle Ages, instead of reforming it and incorpora- ting with it all those portions of the toiling masses that were still excluded from it. This demolition they called restoration of the natural order — le gouvernement de la nature. Organization of labor was in their eyes con- trary to nature. They were confident that the destruc- tion of the old Organization of labor and the Inaugura- tion of their pretended order of nature would bring about world-wide welfare and contentment among the working-classes. They applied their so-called System of nature with such fanaticism that the French National Convention forbade the artisans to discuss their interests in common, because they looked upon such a proceeding as an obstacle to freedom of trade and of intercourse between man and man, and as a revival of the guild System. ^^ The politicians acted in exactly the same manner in their province. Complete disorganization of the State, of society, and of labor — the powers of the State vested in a bureaucratic officialdom on the one
1'' See Art. VIII of the Program and the corresponding commentary.
^ö Englaender, Geschichte der französ. Arbeit erassociationen, I, pp. 17-20.
SOCIAL REFORM. 211
side, on the other, unbridled competition amongst the people dissolved into isolated individuals under the sole control of an absolute monarch or an equally absolute National Assembly — this is the natural law of the Re- volution. Such too is the spirit of Liberalism, not merely the spirit of its economic teachings but also of its politics and of its social theories. The tendency of our times to retum to corporative forms, far from being a product of Liberalism, is on the contrary a re- action against the unnaturalness of its pretended natural law. . . .
A first Step toward the reorganization of the work- ing-classes was made by the Law of 4 July, 1868/' ' on the juridical Status of industrial and agricultural asso- ciations '. Economic Liberalism and industrial develop- ment have reduced the workman and the handicrafts- man to the condition of hired laborers. As wages form part of the cost of production, the employer endeavors, by the aid of competition, to lower wages as much as possible, just as he tries to get any other wäre he has need of at the lowest possible price. . . . The result of this sale of work to the lowest bidder is that the wages paid are as a rule sufficient to meet the needs of the day and the hour, but give the laborer no guarantee whatever for the future.
The new law allows the workman to combine with his fellows for industrial purposes, and in this way affords him a means of escape from the condition of a wage- earner pure and simple. But only a small fraction of the wage-earners are in a position to join such indus- trial associations. Besides, the object of the law was not the general Organization of the working-classes, but merely the formation of isolated industrial associations; it must be supplemented by new laws, if the working-
^'' Passed by the Norddeutsche Bund, extended to the whole Empire in 1873, and superseded by the Law of I May, 1889.
212 BISHOP KETTELER.
classes are to enjoy a stable and secure existence for the future.
2. In the second place, the workingman has a right to demand from the State protection for himself, for his f amily, for his work and health, against the superior f orce with which capital endows its possessor. By satisfying all the demands of economic Liberalism, the State has not only made a hired laborer of the workingman, but has also delivered him up, weak and defenceless, to the mercy of the capitalist. Some maintain that the wives and children of the workmen have need of the protection of the law, but not the workingmen themselves, because these are at liberty to fix the terms on which they will let out their brawn and muscle, and because every legal regulation of work would be equivalent to a restriction on their personal liberty. This is as one-sided as to say that coalitions alone are sufficient to safeguard the liberty of the adult laborer when entering on an agree- ment with his employer. These coalitions cannot supply the place of a legal Organization, as is piain from the numerous unsuccessful strikes and their deplorable con- sequences, to say nothing of the fact that coalitions are in themselves a Symptom of social disease. By wise legislation the State can bring about the peaceful Or- ganization of the working-classes, and it certainly has no right to leave this result to be accomplished by a long-drawn-out struggle between capital and labor. But is the workman under the present system always at füll liberty to enter on an equitable agreement with his em- ployer? Certainly not. It may be so when the demand for labor is very great ; but when the offer f ar exceeds the demand, the workman is not free ; he must, on the contrary, accept unconditionally the terms of the em- ployer.
We possess a kind of legislation for the pro- tection of workpeople, says Ketteier, in the Trade-
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213
Law of 21 June, 1869. But the provisions of this law, besides being altogether insufficient, are a dead letter in most of the German States. Hence new Protective Acts must be passed and a legal control established to assure their observance.
The Trade- Law prohibited the employment of children under twelve years in factories : Ketteier wants the age of employment for children in fac- tories and away from home to be raised to fourteen. But even this age does not seem to him to be ad- vanced enough, " as children of fourteen cannot do without the pure atmosphere of the family and have not yet acquired the moral strength necessary to resist the influence of bad environment."
Married women must be forbidden to work in factories or at other employment away from home. Girls may be permitted to work in factories only on condition that their Workshops are completely separated from those of the men. " Unless the Christian family is restored to the working-classes all other remedies will be vain. But if the mother is snatched from her sacred home duties and turned into a wage-earning workwoman, there can be no question of a Christian family. For the same rea- sons we look on the employment of girls away from home as in general deplorable."
The Trade-Law forbade the employment of young people on Sundays and limited the working day for lads of fourteen to sixteen years to ten hours : Ketteier insists that work in factories and other industrial concerns be prohibited on Sundays and holidays and that the ten-hour day be extended to all workpeople without exception. " But all
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BISHOP KETTELER.
these laws will afford no efficacious protection to the working-classes unless their observance is every- where assured by legal control. Whether the best means of control would be to appoint factory in- spectors as is done in England, or to choose Super- visors from among the workpeople themselves, as some propose to do, or to combine both Systems, is a question we do not venture to pronounce upon. Whatever be the method adopted, however, the control must be extended to moral and sanitary conditions in the Workshops." ^*
" If this program had been carried out at the time," writes Dr. Greiffenrath, " on his knees the laborer would have thanked the Government. The Social-Democratic movement was still in its begin- nings and the cupidity of the masses was not yet aroused ; all hearts went out in hope and confidence to the new empire; Prussia still rested in the main on its ancient foundations, it still had its Christian schools and its Christian marriage laws." ^^
Ketteier did not deceive himself as to the recep- tion his program would be likely to meet with even amongst the Catholics.^" " We do not expect our program to be accepted on the spot, or even in the near future; our actions, however, are not governed by the passing needs of the hour and the fluctua- tions of the Zeitgeist, but by eternal principles, upon
18 Op. cit., pp. 79-94.
"^^ Ketteier u. die Soziale Frage, p. 12.
2^* The idea of the purely political character of the Centre party (and, in consequence, of a political program for the same), so strongly advocated by Ketteier, was still more or less foreign to the ränge of thoughts of the average Catholic. (Cf. Ket- teier, Die Centrums fraciion, pp. 14-17.)
SOCIAL REFORM. 215
which alone the peace and happiness of nations are based and which, after seasons of revolutionary up- heaval, always rise to the surface again." ^^
The time, however, when his reform proposals were to be, in part at least, realized, was not so far distant as the Bishop had supposed. In the meantime, instead of the social reform so sorely needed, Germany received the Kulturkampf.
2^ Die Katholiken im deutschen Reich, p. viii.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Kulturkampf. The Social Virtues and THE DiviNE Law of Labor. 1873-1877.
THE Kulturkampf shows us Ketteier once more at the füll height of his activity. Where there was need of energetic defence of the Catholic Position, where an attack was to be led against the enemy's lines, where the faithful had to be enlight- ened, warned, or encouraged, the Bishop of Mainz was on the spot. He never held back to see whether another would take the initiative. Thus he came to be looked upon by friend and foe alike as the real leader in the fight. His pamphlets, like Mal- linckrodt's speeches, were devoured by hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic readers. This exposed Position invited the poisoned shafts of his adver- saries ; it also drew toward him the loving vener- ation and unfaltering trust of his fellow com- batants. " In the ' best room ' of my father's house, the piain old house with the gable-end in High Street in Kreuznach," writes Johannes Mumbauer, the latest editor of Ketteler's works, " there has hung, ever since I can remember, a large glazed and framed lithograph picture representing five manly earnest faces : in the top row, August and Peter Reichensperger; in the bottom row, Ludwig Windthorst and Hermann von Mallinckrodt, and in the centre, between these four, a Bishop with won- derfuUy penetrating eyes, Wilhelm Emmanuel von
SOCIAL REFORM. 21 7
Ketteier; under the portraits these words are en- graved : ' The Champions of Truth, Freedom and Justice.' Many a time, in those dark and dismal years when blind fanaticism had deprived my na- tive town of regulär pastoral care, and when it was left to the parents alone to implant in the youthful heart love and fidelity to Holy Church, my father, a man of simple, deep-rooted faith, to whom the fortunes of the Church were his own, placed me be- fore this picture and said to me: ' If the Catholic Church is preserved to us in Germany, and if you are able later on to practise your faith unmolested, it is owing, after God, to these men, especially to Bishop Ketteier.' I remember quite well what sor- row feil on all of us when the word was passed f rom mouth to mouth : ' The Bishop of Mainz is dead.' And what the boy feit standing before that picture and what he solemnly and with throbbing heart promised his father, he could never forget : ' My unshaken devotion to the Church is insepar- ably bound up with the name of Ketteier.' "
In their long night of trial the Bishop of Mainz stood faithfully by his brother Bishops of Prussia. He was present at all their historic meetings in Fulda at the tomb of St. Boniface; all their " Pro Memorias," Addresses, Pastorais, Petitions to the king and the parliament bear his signature and not a few of them were productions of his pen.
The expulsion of the Jesuits touched him to the quick. He had invited them to Mainz, where they had done excellent service in the pulpit, the press, and the confessional, and now they were forced to take up the exile's staff. In defence of their honor
2l8 BISHOP KETTELER.
and their rights he wrote one of his most populär works : "The Imperial Law of 4 July, 1872, con- cerning the Society of Jesus and the Regulations for its Execution." From the pulpit of his cathe- dral church he protested against the iniquitous measure and commended clergy and people for their publicly expressed disapprobation of it. Two years later he defended the Jesuits against the silly ac- cusation that their superiors can command what is sinful.
Ketteler's Kulturkampf writings are an epitome of the history and philosophy of the great religious struggle in Germany. The first, dated February, 1873, "The Prussian Law on the Relation of the Church to the State," ran through six editions in the Space of a few weeks. Equally successful was the illuminating brochure, published in the following year, in which he subjected " the views of the Prussian Minister of Worship, Herr Dr. Falk, on the Catholic Church as expressed in his speech of 10 December, 1873," to a criticism nothing short of annihilating. In the third, " The Breach of the Religious Peace and the only way to its Restora- tion " (1875), he showed that, whilst under the old Empire the demand of the Protestant minority, that the decisions of the majority should not be valid in religious questions, was loyally acted upon by the Catholic majority, now, on the contrary, the Pro- testant majority arrogated to itself the right to de- cide in matters touching the innermost life of the Catholic Church. The only way to secure a last- ing peace, he said, was to return to the old well- approved principle of allowing each religious body
SOCIAL REFORM. 219
to regulate its own affairs. In 1876 he discussed the question, " Why a Catholic cannot lend his au- thority or influence to enforce the May Laws." The last appeared in the spring of 1877. It bears the title " The Introduction of Creedless Protestantism into the Catholic Church."
On 23 April, 1875, the Grand-Duke of Hesse, much against his will, for he was not only a good man and well-disposed toward his Catholic subjects, but also a great admirer of the Bishop of Mainz, affixed his signature to the Hessian Kulturkampf Laws, which were a faithful copy of the Prussian May Laws. Then followed the darkest and saddest days of Ketteler's life, illumined for a space by the celebration of his silver episcopal jubilee, when the Catholics of Germany vied with one another to do him honor. " The amount of work done by the Bishop during these distressful years, in the pulpit and the confessional," says Baron von Hertling, speaking from personal knowledge, " is simply in- credible."
Ketteier had done all in his power to prevent the passage of the odious law. As soon as its pro- visions had been made public, he had sent an ener- getic protest to the Ministry in Darmstadt. After criticizing the Bill from the Standpoint of strict justice, he examined it also on the side of liberty. " The Catholic Church," he said, " can live and work cheerfuUy and beneficently under all forms of government, provided only they give her free- dom. If the threat to separate the Church from the State is carried out, the Church will sufTer great material losses, and perhaps loss of souls too, but
220 BISHOP KETTELER.
if liberty is honestly granted to her in her various spheres of action, especially in the sphere of edu- cation and instruction, she will live and thrive. On the other hand, under a System that robs her of the freedom given to her by God, that makes of her and her ministers mere tools of the secular power, that renders the religious training even of the clergy impossible, hinders the cultivation of Catholic science, the development of the religious life, the practice of Christian perfection, and that, while pretending to respect her outward forms of worship, degrades her and de-Catholicizes her inner life — under such a System the Church can- not thrive. She has to choose between gradual de- cay in disgraceful self-abasement or martyrdom."
Without waiting for an answer to his protest from the Ministry, Ketteier proceeded to attack the Bill in a brochure entitled, " The Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church in Hesse," in which he arraigned the proposed measures before the bar of history, justice, and common sense, and proved them guilty on every count. A week after its publication the Frankfurter Zeitung wrote: " The first edition of Bishop Ketteler's latest work on the Kulturkampf is already sold out; a second edition is in the press — a clear proof of the im- portance attached to the utterances of Wilhelm Emmanuel by the Liberal party; a proof also of the unanimity with which the Ultramontane forces rally around their leader."
An audience with the Grand Duke was as ineflfec- tual to stop the catastrophe as protests and pole- mics. There was some consolation, however, in the
SOCIAL REFORM. 221
fact that Ludwig III had received him kindly as ever and had brought the interview to a close with the words : " I cannot for the moment rescind the Church Laws, but ^t is my will that they be carried out with the greatest possible consideration." The conciliatory attitude of the Sovereign no doubt took much of the sting out of the Hessian Kulturkampf, but for all that the consequences were heartrending enough.
Despite the ever-increasing pastoral labors how- ever, despite the constant vexations on the part of petty bureaucratic tyrants, the machinations of the Old Catholics, the fines and threats of imprison- ment, the bereavement of so many parishes, the banishment of devoted nuns and brothers from the schools and hospitals, the ruin of innumerable works he had spent himself to rear and bring to perfection, Ketteler's interest in the social question never abated. With keen and penetrating glance he followed every phase of its development. The latest sociological works were always to be found on his table, and on his journeys he invariably carried such works with him. His secretary had to collect and arrange all the important newspaper articles dealing with the subject, no matter from what point of view — Catholic, Protestant, Con- servative, Liberal or Socialistic. Among his papers Father Pfülf found numerous sketches with head- ings such as the following: " Means to help the Working Classes," " The Social Question a Stomach Question," " The Black and the Red International," " Universal Direct Suflfrage," " Civil Marriage and its Consequences for the Working Classes," " The
222 BISHOP KETTE LER.
Christian Woman. the Christian Mother, Christian Children."
By a beautiful coincidence the last Pastorais which the Bishop addressed to his flock (1876 and 1877) were " Social Pastorais." They are un- doubtedly amongst the finest and maturest produc- tions of his pen. " On my episcopal Visitation tours last year," he begins the one for 1876, " I often spoke to you on the relation of the Christian virtues to the welfare of the people. We rightly look on the Christian virtues as the road to Heaven ; but perhaps we are not sufficiently alive to the fact that they are also the right road to temporal happi- ness, nay, that, for the generality of mankind, they are the prerequisite conditions of prosperity here below."
After explaining the true meaning of the term " welfare of the people " as contained in the words of Holy Writ: " Give me neither beggary, nor riches: give me only the necessaries of life," ^ he treats of the virtues of temperance, economy, and chastity, to which he adds, as being of the high- est importance for the public welfare, " the Chris- tian choice of a State of life ". " Of all the re- medies required to solve the so-called social ques- tion," he says, " the first and most indispensable by far is the promotion of family life. The philan- thropist who does not see this is a fool and with all his well or ill-meant remedies only beats the air."
The greatest of the social virtues, the virtue of " Christian labor," he reserved for his next Pas- toral, which is dated i February, 1877. " It is with
1 Prov. 30 : 8.
SOCIAL REFORM.
223
work," he writes, " as with other valuable things, whose importance we overlook because they are so common. What is more common than light? Yet it is one of the most beneficent gifts of God, which not only allows us to see the objects of the created world, but also moves us to raise our thoughts to the Source of Eternal Light and Truth. What is more common than bread? Yet it is not merely one of the necessary things of earthly life, but also the real and true symbol of the spiritual food that gives eternal life to the world. So too there is something grand, something mysterious about work. Revelation alone can teach us its true significance."
He then proceeds to treat of labor as a " divine law ", promulgated by God even before the Fall, whose observance became painful only when im- posed as a punishment for sin ; as a law for all men, but directly and immediately laid on the male portion of mankind ; as a law the observance of which alone entitles us to eat, to enjoy the things of earth. He next describes the manifold ways in which this law is violated by men and women in every Station in life and the sad consequences of such transgressions. In conclusion he lays down five " Christian labor rules " : — to work because it is the will of God ; to combine work and prayer ; to work willingly, honestly, and well ; to work with- out complaining; to work in the state of grace; for " just as the sap of the vine is communicated even to the tiniest branches, so grace and benediction flow out of the infinite fulness of the merits of Christ to every drop of sweat that moistens the brow of the Christian toiling in union with Jesus for God."
224 BISHOP KETTELER.
In the closing sentences Ketteier sums up the ex- periences of his whole life in the field of social thought and action. They read like his social testament.
The most fatal error of our time is the delusion that mankind can be made happy without Religion and Christianity. There are certain truths which cling to- gether like the links of a chain: they cannot be torn asunder, because God has joined them. Among these truths are the f ollowing : there is no true morality with- out God, 110 right knowledge of God without Christ, no real Christ without the Church. Where the Church is not, there true knowledge of God perishes. Where true knowledge of God is not, there morality succumbs in the struggle with sin, with selfishness and sensuality, with the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. But where morality is not, there is no means left of making the people happy and prosperous. In such a State men are ruled by their passions. They are the slaves of the tyrants of avarice and lust, in whose Service the powerful oppress the weak, and the weak, in their turn, rise up against the powerful, and, if they con- quer, become the willing tools of the seifsame tyrants — their passions; war without end will be waged between the rieh and the poor ; peace on earth among them is im- possible. Intimately, inseparably is the welfare of the people bound up with religion and morality. A per- fectly just distribution of the goods of earth will never take place, because God has intrusted the higher moral Order to the free will of men, only a portion of whom subject their wills to the will of God ; but in a truly Christian nation the differences between the rieh and the poor will always be adjusted in the best possible manner.^ ,
2 Hirtenbriefe, p. 923.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Christian Workman and the Socialistic Labor Party. 1877.
IN the spring of 1877 Ketteier set to work on a new social brochure, in which he proposed to answer the question : Can a Catholic workman be a member of the Socialistic Labor Party? The plan had been sketched and a portion of the first part had been twice recast when pressure of diocesaa business and preparations for his approaching ad limina visit to Roma forced him to Interrupt the work; on his way home from the Eternal City death overtook him. The fragment, which Father Pfülf has preserved for us/ is of such paramount importance for a füll understanding of Ketteler's ideas on the labor question that we cannot refrain from setting the greater part of it before the reader. It begins:
New that the Socialistic Labor Party is daily growing in numbers and in influence, every Catholic workingman is confronted with the question: Can I be a member of this party? Wherever he turns for work he is met by an invitation to join its ranks. Therefore, if he wishes to act as a conscientious and intelligent man, he must be able to give a satisfactory answer to this question. And not only the workingman, but every one who takes a serious interest in the most important happenings of
1 Pfülf, III, pp. 293-302.
2 26 BISHOP KETTELER.
the day must be able to define bis position in regard to this question.
I feel all the more called upon and in a measure obliged to discuss it because a great change has come over the labor movement since I wrote my first brochure : Christianity and the Labor Question. By the fusion of the two parties which were then struggling for su- premacy — a fusion effected at Gotha, 25 May, 1875, under the name of the Socialistic Labor Party and on the basis of a common platform — the old associations have not only gaineJ in numbers and consistency, but have also in many respects altered their character com- pletely. A movement national in character and confined almost exclusively to Germany has given place to one that embraces the workingmen of every land and is really and truly international ; a movement whose chief aim was the realization of certain practical reforms for the amelioration of labor conditions has been suc- ceeded by one that relegates practical reform proposals to the background and aims at the transformation of existing social conditions in regard to the acquisition and distribution of wealth and at the Inauguration of the so-called " Socialistic era ". Hence it would be un- fair to apply to present conditions what I wrote in 1863.
But in Order to be able to answer the question, whether a Catholic workman can join the Socialistic Labor Party, ive must acquaint ourselves with the aims and aspiratlons of this party. We must know what the Socialistic Labor Party and the masses who adhere to it really want. To dispel the prevailing ignorance in this matter is the object of these lines.
To make bis answer to the proposed question as' clear as possible, Ketteier divides the claims put forward by the Socialists into three classes — ^such as are perfectly legitimate; such as are only in
SOCIAL REFORM. 22/
part justifiable, and such as are unjust, bad, and to be rejected. After warning his readers that only those who stand on the solid foundation of Chris- tianity will be able to follow him with profit in his inquiry, he takes up the discussion of the legitimate Claims of the labor party. " The platform, above alluded to, of the Socialistic Labor Party," he says, " treats of the practical demands of the German workingmen in its last and shortest article. The article in question begins with the words : ' The Socialistic Labor Party of Germany demands, for the tiine that the present social System lasts. . . .' " Eight Claims are then enumerated.
The words, " for the time that the present social System lasts ", as well as the place assigned to these Claims, are characteristic. They give us to understand that, in the eyes of the framers of the Socialistic plat- form, these Claims are merely something incidental'; they will cease to be of any consequence as soon as the Socialistic State becomes a reality ; and that this new State, described in broad outline at the beginning of the pro gram, is the true aim of the party. This must be carefully borne in mind if we wish to form a correct judgment on the actual tendencies of the So- cialistic movement.
A natural consequence of this is that the labor claims which could have been satisfied immediately have not only been well-nigh pushed out of view, but have also been very superficially formulated. The labor move- ment, which, at bottom, is perfectly justified, is thus in danger of becoming a sterile, revolutionary agitation. There is great danger of its calling forth a reaction, which will throw away the good together with the bad and pay no attention even to legitimate demands.
228 BISHOP KETTELER.
There is danger too of the laboring masses becom- ing the dupes of the leaders. If we were to take each workman aside and ask him confidentially what he thought would improve his condition, he would not talk to US of vague transformations of society, but of prac- tical demands analogous to those contained in the eight points of the program. This would be the case all the more surely because with these demands alone the labor masses have been set in motion and with them the labor leader still parades before the public. . . .
Ketteier ranges the legitimate claims of the Ger- man workingmen under three heads — Organization of the working classes, State support for working- men's associations, legal protection of labor and of the laborer against every kind of oppression.
Only the first of these demands is fully treated. The line of argument is, in the main, the same as that followed in Christianity and the Lahor Ques- tion. Absolutism, the French Revolution, and Liberalism, economic and political, were according to Ketteier the progenitors of the labor question and of Socialism. Socialism, he says, is right in de- manding a reorganization of the laboring classes, but wrong in thinking that the proposed Socialistic State will answer the purpose.
The dissolution of the old organizations which had Sprung up spontaneously within the natural classifica- tions of the population, set in as soon as the State as- pired to be the sole Organization and looked with jealous eyes on all others within its domain. / This absolutistic tendency commenced with the rise of absolute mon- archies and has been handed down to us through the French Revolution by the governments which have suc-
SOCIAL REFORM.
229
ceeded one another since then. The forms were dif- ferent, but the principle that the State is all has never changed. Modern Socialism is a legitimate child of the same mother. In its labor State there is no room for natural Organization, because it knows but one me- chanical combination, which is itself. Hence it is not really social, but anti-social, that is, instead of bring- ing men together in a variety of groups, as nature pre- scribes, it forces them all into one group, the State. But this forced union is a union that does not unite at all; one might just as well try to unite the pro- ductions of nature by destroying the individuality of their species and throwing them all together into one mould. We should never succeed in uniting them, but simply in depriving them of their living unity. It is the same with men. They abhor uniformity as thoroughly as na- ture does. But what are the living species among men other than the various classes which they form of their own accord in virtue of a natural law which arranges all things in different groups, and which was evidently established by God? . . .
No class has suffered more from the dissolution of all natural organizations than the laboring class. No class Stands so much in need of what human organi- zations give to man — help and protection. The help and protection given to man by Organization enable him to develop his whole personality, to make füll use of the powers and faculties within him. . . He who has wealth finds help and protection in his wealth. On the other band, he who has neither money nor position in the world finds help and protection only in the Society of such of his fellow men as are similarly cir- cumstanced. In the State alone he will not find the help and protection necessary for the satisfaction of his thousand daily wants. Out of this State of Isolation all the material evils with which the laboring classes are
230
BISHOP KETTELER.
afflicted have arisen. . . . Fully alive to his own help- lessness, the workman is only too ready to join any and every movement that promises to help him, and to throw himself into the arms of every fool or lying demagogue. .
To organize the laboring classes on a constitutional basis is therefore the grand task to be accomplished. A giant task indeed and one which, I am afraid, our age is not prepared to midertake successfully. Its efforts will have to be limited to the collection of materials for the future edifice.
To insure any degree of real and lasting success every attempt to reorganize the laboring classes must be based on the following principles:
(1) The desired organizations must be of natural growth {naturwüchsig), that is, they must grow out of the nature of things, out of the character of the people and its faith, as did the guilds of the Middle Ages.
(2) They must have an economic purpose and not subserve the intrigues and idle dreams of politicians and the fanaticism of the enemies of religion. The Social- ist Labor Party has avoided neither the one nor the other of these rocks.
(3) They must have a moral basis v^^ith the conscious- ness of class-honor, class-responsibility, etc.
(4) They must comprise all the indiviJuals of the same class.
(5) Self-government and control must be combined in due proportion.
These are the prerequisite conditions for a reorgani- zation of the working-classes. As long as the spirit of Liberalism with its hostility to the Church, the institu- tion in which the great moral forces of humanity find their sustenance, predominates, it will not succeed. If, on the contrary, Church and State lived on good terms and helped each other, there could be no question of failure.
SOCIAL REFORM. 23 I
After briefly passing in review the efforts thus far made to organize the working-classes — co- operative and productive associations, the various associations bearing the name of Schulze-Delitzsch and the trade-unions ^ — Ketteier passes on to the consideration of the other legitimate claims of the Socialists; but Father Pfülf was able to find only some fragmentary notes written in pencil and al- most illegible. As they present nothing new we pass them over.
In the second part Ketteier evidentiy intended to treat of the Socialistic conception of labor as ex- pressed in the first article of the Gotha platform, for he jotted down a remark to the effect that the Labor Party is right in endeavoring to restore to labor its true value and dignity, but that it wants to attain this end by unjustifiable means — the forcible distribution of wealth.
In the third part Ketteier explains in piain and simple language the general principle on which CoUectivism, or Marxian Socialism, is based, viz. that private ownership must be confined to objects of enjoyment {consumption goods), whilst all means of production {production goods) are to be owned and worked by the State, and in conclusion points to the last and deepest reason why every self-dependent, liberty-loving man must oppo'se, with every fibre of his being, the destruction of simple property. " Even if all the Utopian dreams of the Socialists were realized," he says, " and every one was fed to his heart's content in this uni-
2 See the concluding paragraphs of Chapter IX of the present work.
232
BISHOP KETTELER.
Versal labor State, I should, for all that, perfer to eat in peace the potatoes that I grow myself, and to clothe myself with the skins of animals reared by me, and be free — than to live in the slavery of the labor State and fare sumptuously. This makes the Collective theory so utterly detestable. Slavery come to life again; the State an assemblage of slaves without personal liberty. . . . Profound miscon- ception of the evil that is in all men ! He alone can lend a helping band who is able to vanquish evil within and around him." ^
Ketteier had just begun bis last Confirmation tour, 14 April, 1877, when the foUowing letter reached him from Augsburgs
In the name of the Christian Workingmen's Associa- tion of Augsburg, the undersigned express to Your Lordship their deepest veneration and at the same time their most heartfelt thanks for the warm sympathy Your Lordship has on so many occasions manifested for the interests of the working-classes. . . .
The Bishop replied, under date of i May, 1877:
Your friendly appreciation of my endeavors has touched me deeply. I was especially rejoiced to find in your letter a proof that you and the members of the Association seek to realize the aims and aspirations of
3 This thought frequently recurs in Ketteler's writings. He jotted down the following remark on the fly-leaf of a book : " Two ideas are wanting to our contemporaries : (i) The idea of evil in odl man. The man of our days knows evil only as an isolated phenomenon, and that in others ; not, however, the evil that is in all men, not hereditary evil. All his calculations are false, because he does not take this factor into account. (2) The idea of Divine Assistance. He knows only self-help."
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SOCIAL REFORM. 233
the working-classes only in the dosest rniion with Re- ligion and with Christ. It is the only true way.*
These were Ketteler's last words on the social question — a faithful echo of his first words on the same question spoken twenty-nine years before over the dead bodies of Auerswald and Lichnowski, " With Christ, in the Truth which He taught, on the Way which He pointed out, we can make a paradise of earth, we can wipe away the tears from the eyes of our suffering brother, we can establish the reign of love, of harmony and f raternity, of true humanity."
Last Visit to Rome and Death. 1877.
On the Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph, 21 April, 1877, Ketteier addressed a Pastoral Letter to his flock on the approaching episcopal jubilee of the Holy Father and the manner in which they ought to celebrate it. " The fifty years that have elapsed since the episcopal consecration of our Holy Father," he wrote, " were not years of rest and peace, but years of uninterrupted heavy cares, trials and labors, years of conflict and suffering. Except- ing a martyr's death, what has he not suffered? And now he has passed the age allotted to man; but his cares also, and his struggles and sufferings have reached their culmination." In conclusion he exhorts the faithful to pray for the common Father of Christendom " so humbly, so trustingly, and with hearts so pure " that their prayers must be heard.'
* Briefe, p. 536 s.
^ Hirtenbriefe, p. 925.
234 BISHOP KETTELE R.
The Bishop was determined to represent his diocese in person. He had, it is true, repeatedly visited the Eternal City, but Pio Nono's days were drawing to a close and he wished to take leave of him, little suspecting that his own end was so near. He arrived in Rome on 1 1 May and took up his residence in the Anima. " I cannot teil you," he Said to the Rector on their first walk to St. Peter's, " how happy I feel when I am in Rome." ® The holy places had always had a great attraction for him, but he had never visited them with such rev- erential love before. Beads in hand, he went from church to church, from shrine to shrine. He could be Seen praying for hours at a time at the tombs of the Apostles or in his favorite church of St. Augustine. On 13 May he preached in the Anima and on 16 May at a meeting of the German and Austrian pilgrims in the Palazzo Altemps; they were his last public speeches. His last printed word was a brilliant refutation in the Germania of a number of misrepresentations relative to his Roman visit disseminated by the Liberal Kölnische Zeitung.
On 17 May the German pilgrims, a thousand strong, with seven bishops and a great number of noblemen at their head, were assembled in the spacious Sala Ducale for their audience with the Pope. Not wishing to tax the aged Pontiff's time and strength unnecessarily, Ketteier had not asked for a private audience but merely sent in his name
* To a priest who was fond of dilating on his visit to London and the wonders of the Crystal Palace Ketteier remarked : " My dear friend, the next time you undertake an extended trip, go to Rome. Rome is the London of priests."
SOCIAL REFORM.
235
with the rest of the pilgrims from Mainz. Shortly after twelve o'clock the Pope was carried into the hall and took his place on the throne. After the Latin address had been read by the banished Arch- bishop of Cologne, the leaders of the various depu- tations advanced. When the jubilee gift of the diocese of Mainz was about to be presented and the Word " Mainz " Struck the ears of the Pope, he said in a loud voice: " But where is the Bishop of Mainz ?" Told that the Bishop was present but Standing somewhat back, he called out repeatedly : " Ketteier! Ketteier!" The Bishop had to step for- ward, and whilst he bent down to kiss the Pope's extended hand, his Holiness expressed his joy at seeing him again. "Ah, Ketteier, Ketteier," he said over and over again, and kept him by his side during the rest of the audience.
After the audience the Cardinais, the Bishops and other prominent visitors were entertained by the Pope in the rooms of the Vatican Library. His Holiness had, as usual, a kind and cheering Word for everybody, but Ketteier was again the object of his special attention. How well he re- membered the time, he said, when he nominated Ketteier to the see of Mainz. He was in Gaeta at the time, and when the list with the three names, Provost Ketteler's at the head, was presented to him, one of the Cardinais present had remarked : " Ketteier is known throughout Germany as an ex- cellent priest; everybody speaks well of him; Your Holiness can depend on him." The Pope then spoke of the Bishop's labors in his diocese and of his many battles with the enemies of the Church,
236
BISHOP KETTELER.
" Tu aliquando proeliabaris proelia regis," he added, alluding to Ketteler's career, "nunc proe- liaris proelia Dei." " Sequimur exemplum Sancti- tatis Vestrae," Ketteier replied. With the ex- quisite compliment : " You wield a good pen, my son," the Pope brought the conversation to a close. On the evening of the same day Ketteier was sum- moned to a private audience with the Holy Father, who was " all affection and benevolence ", as the Bishop afterward remarked. Thus closed one of the proudest and happiest days of Ketteler's life. It had scattered to the winds all the idle or mali- cious newspaper gossip about the supposed strained relations between Mainz and Rome, since the days of the Vatican Council.
On the evening of the third of June Ketteier bade adieu to the beloved City on the Seven Hills. He was impatient to be back in the midst of his chil- dren. There was so much still to do while it was day. After a short stop-over at Meran and at Innsbruck, he traveled on to Altoetting, in Bavaria, whence he intended to pay a visit to an old friend of his, Baron Clemens von Korff, who had just en- tered the Capuchin novitiate in Burghausen. At the Shrine of Our Lady of Altoetting, where the will of God in his regard had been made manifest to him thirty-seven years before, he offered up the Holy Sacrifice for the last time. On the way from Altoetting to Burghausen the fever which he had contracted in Italy and which his iron Constitution and his indomitable will had until then successfully resisted, broke out in the worst form of typhoid. He arrived at the monastery " tired unto death ",
SOCIAL REFORM. 237
as he told the Father Provincial, and asked for a bed.
In the circle of his friends Ketteier had often ex- pressed the wish to be able to retire to the solitude of some cloister to prepare for death. His wish was unexpectedly realized. For thirty-three days the fever burned and raged and shook the giant frame of the sufferer like a reed, but it could not break his spirit or cloud his intellect. " To will what God wills is Heaven on earth " — this favorite maxim of his mother he had made his own in life and he remained faithful to it in death. When one of his friends expressed the hope that God would grant him life and health again, " No," he replied, " Death is standing at the door. God's holy will be done."
On the thirteenth of June, at 9 o'clock in the morning, shortly after having received Holy Com- munion and while the monks were reciting the prayers for the dying, he expired in the peace of the Lord, without a struggle, without a sigh, the cross in his right-hand, his eyes raised to Heaven, his lips parted in prayer — the band of death had not disturbed the imposing calm and majesty of his dying hours.^
When the great Bishop died, the affliction of the Church in Germany was just entering upon its acutest stage; not even the faintest ray of light gave promise of better days to come. Thousands
■^ For an account of Ketteler's sickness and death see Liesen, Letzte Lebenswochen des hochsei. Bischofs von Mainz. Also Pfülf, III, pp. 315 ff. and Dr. Heinrich's funeral oration in Schleiniger' s Muster des Predigers, pp. 897 ff.
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of parishes were without pastors and there was hardly a bishop left in Prussia. Ketteler's de- position and banishment had long been planned; his enemies were only waiting a favorable oppor- tunity for decisive action.* But God in His infinite love and mercy took him away before this heaviest blow of all, which would have broken his episcopal heart, descended upon him. " If he continue to live, he shall leave a name above a thousand, and if he rest soon, it shall also he to his advantage^ ®
In his testament Ketteier intimated that he should like to be buried in the Lady Chapel of his cathe- dral church. " I do not mean to say," he added, " that I am worthy of such an honor, or that I was a good dient of the Mother of God. All I can say is that I always had the desire to be one." Here accordingly he was laid to rest on the eighteenth of July, all Mainz and thirty thousand strangers assisting at the funeral.
Five years later a beautiful monument arose over his tomb. A stone slab resting on six low columns bears the life-size figure of the Bishop in alto- relievo of the finest Carrara marble. A baldachin of white sandstone, let into the wall, forms the background. The Bishop is clad in his pontifical vestments, in his left-hand he holds the crozier, in his right, the Book of the Gospels; a lion is couched at his feet. The Latin inscription teils the visitor that " Wilhelm Emmanuel, Freiherr von Ketteier, for twenty-seven years Bishop of the Church of
^ Twice Warrants for Ketteler's arrest had been issued, but both were recalled, or any rate never carried out. ^ Ecclus. 39 : 15.
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Mainz, a man mighty in his words and deeds, rests here in expectation of the resurrection."
There are always fresh flowers on the tomb, placed there by the mothers and daughters of Mainz as a tribute of gratitude to the eloquent champion of the Christian family.
" Oltre il rogo non vive ira nemica." When the voice of the " fighting Bishop " was hushed and his pen, which the Vicar of Christ had pronounced to be good, had been laid aside forever, friends and foes at home and abroad united in offering a sin- cere tribute of admiration to the rare consistency of his character, to tlie magic of his personality, to his unswerving devotion to his ideals, to his love of justice and his hatred of iniquity. " The fight- ing Bishop, who sat on the throne of Willigis for more than a quarter of a Century," the Frankfurter Zeitung wrote on receiving the news of Ketteler's death, " is a silent corpse. The Ecclesia militans Stands at the bier of one of her leaders whose loss she will not easily forget and whose place she will long seek in vain to fiU. Well may they hang their flags at half-mast and chant funeral hymns, they who have lost him. And if the greatness of their loss has not already come home to them, if they did not experience it in the days when they trembled for his life, they will realize it when, as the battie proceeds, this warrior of indomitable will and Piercing vision shall be missing from the lines. Germany had had few bishops who can compare in knowledge and practical wisdom with this West- phalian nobleman." Of all the eulogies bestowed on him that of our gloriously reigning Pontiff is
240
BISHOP KETTELER.
the most beautiful by far. " We were rejoiced to hear," he wrote 12 July, 191 1, to the president of the committee charged with the preparations for the commemoration of the centenary of Ketteler's birth, " that not merely the Citizens of Mainz, but the Catholics of all Germany, were anxious to do honor to his memory with thankful hearts, knowing as they do with what enthusiastic ardor he ever defended the right of religion and of the Apos- tolic See; with what wisdom he expounded the Christian teachings, especially on the social ques- tion, for whose Solution, as he showed so con- clusively, the Catholic Church offers such marvel- ously efficacious and salutary remedies ; with what zeal he championed the cause of the men and wo- men whose lot in lif e is daily toil ; knowing also what glory his splendid words and deeds shed on the city whose bishop he was. We welcome the ap- proaching celebration all the more joyfully because we entertain the firm hope that the memory of such a beloved pastor, and the illuminating example of his works will inspire the congressists to adopt re- solutions corresponding to the needs of the times and to renew their ardor in the practice and de- fence of religion." ^"
1*^ Official Report of the 58 Katholikentag, Mainz, 6-10 August, 191 1. For Latin text see Acta Apost. Sedis, Vol. III, no. 14, p. 521-
CHAPTER XIX.
" The Great Teacher, though Dead, yet Speaks."
^i\\THEN death surprised Ketteier," says V V Goyau, " the German Centre, the Catho- lics of Germany, possessed, thanks to him, a social doctrine and a social platform." ^ He could have added : And the social reforms demanded by Ket- teier have been for the most part realized.
We have seen how the hands of the Catholic rep- resentatives in the German parliament were tied by the Kulturkampf. The Liberais had an overwhelm- ing majority in the Imperial Diet and in the vari- ous State Legislatures, and every bill brought in by the Centre, no matter what its nature might be, was a prior; doomed to be voted down. The legis- lative mills were so busy turning out anti-Catholic laws that there was no time for social work, even if the Government had been minded — which it was not — ^to promote it.
As soon, however, as an opening appeared, the Centre came forward with a Labor Protection Bill, 19 March, 1877. It was the first bill of the kind ever placed on the table of the Reichstag ^ and bore the name of Count Ferdinand von Galen, a nephew of Bishop Ketteier. In scope it was identical with
^ Goyau, Ketteier, p. xlvii.
2 The first Social-Democratic Labor Bill was introduced on II April, 1877.
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BISHOP KETTELER.
Art. XII of Ketteler's socio-political program. The debate showed how woefuUy behind the times the Liberais and so-called Progressists were in regard to the social question. One Liberal, a certain Herr Rickert, frankly admitted that the whole Bill was as a sealed book to him ; that he could not see what " the Christian social order of the world " had to do with factory legislation. To another it looked like " a chapter from some medieval chronicle, a story of Franks and Burgundians." Bebel wanted to know " whether the Christian social order of the World dated from the time when Gregory VII ruled supreme, or when Leo X squandered indulgence money in Rome; from the Peasant War, or from that epoch of Christianity when the first Christians lived a communistic life?" Lasker called the Bill " a piece of foUy ", and Secretary of State Hoff- man regarded it as a " provocation of the Govern- ment, as a serious attack on the economic policy heretofore pursued by the Chancellor." The same statesman was at a loss to know where, in a rational factory law, a place could be found for the demand for rest on Sundays and Feast Days. For these and other equally weighty reasons he asked that the Bill be killed then and there without doing it the honor of committing it. As the majority of the House did not think it advisable to quash in so brutal a manner a Bill behind which stood loo rep- resentatives of the people, this Suggestion was not acted on. The Bill was accordingly referred to a committee of 21 members — 10 Liberais, 10 Con- servatives and Centrists, and one Socialist. The ten Liberais and the solitary Socialist succeeded
SOCIAL REFORM.
243
in burying it, not however before the Liberal and Socialist press and the comic sheets had pounced upon it and its author, whom they called " the Apocalyptic Count ", as a welcome subject for cheap sati re.
And what did Bismarck think of the Galen Bill? On 10 August, 1877, he wrote to the Minister of Commerce that in his opinion legislation for the protection of the workingman's health, for the pro- tection of youth, for the Separation of the sexes, for the keeping of the Lord's day, for the appoint- ment of factory inspectors, would not restore peace between the employer and the employees ; every limitation put on the conduct of a factory would on the contrary merely diminish the wage-paying capacity of the employer, and certainly handicap Germany in the race for the world-market.^
The parliament which had treated the first Chris- tian Labor Bill with such supreme disdain was dis- solved II July, 1878. At the general elections which followed, the Liberais lost 29 seats and the Progressists 9, while the Centre was returned the strongest party with 103 members, ten of whom were Protestant " guests ". A Conserv^ative was chosen president and a Centrist, Baron von Franck- enstein, vice-president, of the next Reichstag. On I July, 1879, Dr. Falk was dimissed from the Min- istry of Worship and in the same month the Gov- ernment made the first overtures to Windthorst. The ship was being gradually cleared for action.
On 17 November, 1881, William I sent the fam- ous message, known as " the great message ", to
3 See Germania, 30 July, iqil (No. 172).
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BISHOP KETTELER.
the Reichstag, in which the Government made its own the demand for social reform and inaugurated the era of workmen's insurance. This is not the place to discuss the merits and the weak points of the insurance laws enacted between 1883 and 1889.* They are stamped with the stamp of Bismarck: overrating of the mechanical forces of the State and underrating of the ethical forces of human na- ture. Materialist as he was, the Iron Chancellor flattered himself that he could solve the labor question with money and kill Socialism with a watchman's club.^ Hence his persistent Opposition to the reform proposals of the Centre party, which even the ruinous strikes in the Rhenish-West- phalian coal regions at the end of the 'eighties could not make him abandon. The ship had evidently to be cleared again.
On 4 February, 1890, William II inform ed Prince Bismarck and the Minister of Public Works that he was determined to continue the work begun by his grandfather and to secure further protec- tion to the economically weaker classes of his people by the application of the principles of Christian morality. The Chancellor was directed to take the necessary preliminary steps for the holding of an International Labor Conference in Berlin.
* The sickness insurance law was passed 15 July, 1883; the accident insurance law 6 July, 1884; and the old age and in- firmity insurance law 22 June, 1889.
^ The Anti-Socialist Law was passed 19 October, 1878, against the Votes of the Centre, the Alsatians, the Poles, and some in- dependent groups. It proved a complete fiasco. It feil with its father Bismarck. " When Bismarck thought he had driven out Beelzebub by the Socialist Law," the Frankfurter Zeitung wrote in 1904 (No. 105), "he came back with three million devils."
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The Conference was still in session when Bis- marck was dismissed from office (20 March). The labor question was the rock upon which he finally split. The general elections, with social reform as the main issue, had broken up his bloc majority.
The greater part of the speech from the throne at the opening of the Reichstag on 6 May was de- voted to labor-protective legislation, and the Em- peror expressed the firm hope that salutary laws would, with the help of God, be enacted without unnecessary delay. Thus urged on, the legislators went about their task with energy and good will. The Liberais and Progressists, that is, what was left of their once mighty phalanx, all but openly apol- ogized for their unmannerly behavior toward Count Galen. Things had changed since then, they said, and, as His Majesty had spoken, it was their duty to foUow his directions. And so, on i June, 1891, after fifteen years of almost uninterrupted parlia- mentary struggle, in which the greatest statesmen and political economists of the age were engaged, the incubus of Liberal industrialism was lifted from the workpeople of Germany and Ketteler's social reform program received the sanction of law."
But it was to receive a higher sanction still. If we wish to test Ketteler's fidelity to the true tradi-
^ The Socialists voted against the Labor Protection Law. lu his excellent work, Germany and th? Germans, Vol. II, p. 353, Dawson pays a well-deserved tribute to the men who carried Ketteler's program through the Reichstag. The higher interests of the laboring classes, he says, never had sincerer defenders than the Catholic representatives, who, more than any other party, stood up for factory legislation, for Sunday rest, for prohibition of work to children under a certain age and of night-work to women and for workpeople's Insurance.
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tions of the Church on the social question, we need only turn over the pages of the encyclical Rerum Novarum. " The Pontifical authority, believing the moment come for giving the right direction to the Catholic social movement, confirmed point by point the teachings of the Bishop." ^
The men who fought the great battles for the protection of the workingman and his family were animated by Ketteler's spirit. The Catholic Con- gress of Mainz and the celebrations held in a thousand cities, towns, and villages of Germany to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Ket- teler's birth, proclaimed to all the world that his spirit is abroad to-day more than ever. In the Centre Party, whose destinies he helped to shape, in the Volksverein with its seven hundred thousand members, in the Christian Labor Syndicates, in the Catholic Workingmen's Associations, in the Artisans' Guilds, in the innumerable other profes- sional organizations, which are spread like a net- work over the length and breadth of Germany, the spirit of Ketteier still lives and " the great teacher, though dead, yet speaks."
'' E. de Girard, Ketteier et la question ouvriere, last chapter.
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