In 1945 when he was liberated by the Americans, Konrad Adenauer told them that there are two Germanies: the Germany of Austria and Roman Civilisation and the Germany of Prussia, Militarism and the will-to-power. He would devote his life to ensuring the victory of the former over the latter. He also warned that if Berlin ever again became the Capital of Germany Prussia would be spiritually reborn.
Adenauer was a wily politician but in this respect he allowed his skills to defeat his objectives. The obvious way to eradicate Berlin as the capital of Germany would be to fix the capital of the Federal Republic in a more appropriate location belonging to the authentic pre-Prussian history of Germany such as Frankfurt. There was even a parliament building constructed there. But Adenauer in the end went for Bonn, a place without historic resonance and so obviously temporary. Frankfurt was an SPD town and Bonn was in Adenauer’s heartland. With the 48-49 Airlift and the fall of the Wall in 1989 Berlin acquired sufficient heroic status to shake off the stigma of Prussianism and retrieve its position as Capital of Germany.
Prussia was the first Protestant state. It was born out of the opportunistic secularisation of the lands of the Teutonic Order (not a nice organisation in the first place) by its Grand Master. Albert of Hohenzollern was invested with the Duchy of Prussia by Sigismund I the Old of Poland on 10th February 1525. Through the carelessness and impiety of the White Eagle the Black would rise to dominate Germany, devour its patron with the complicity of Russia and Austria, and in 1871 usurp the Imperial crown. As Dom Gueranger lamented,
“Christendom is no more. Upon its ruins, like a woful mimicry of the Holy Empire, Protestantism has raised its false evangelical empire, formed of nought but encroachments, and tracing its recognized origin to the apostasy of that felon knight Albert of Brandenburg.”
Finally, in 1914, under the psychotic Wilhelm II, Prussia would lead Russia and Austria (last representatives of the temporal power of Rome and Constantinople) to annihilation in the bloodbath of the Great War.
But this was not the end. After 1918 Prussia remained in the bloated condition of 1869 within the new German republic. The Black, Red and Gold flag of Austria and the Liberal Nationalists was adopted but when the Nazis came to power the Black, White and Red of 1871 was restored. In early 1933 faced with deadlock between the new Nazi led government and the Reichstag, President Hindenburg dissolved the legislature and called new elections. In the meantime the Reichstag building in Berlin was set on fire either by a Dutch Communist or by the Nazi’s themselves (opinion remains divided). Hitler needed to win the confidence of the old Prussian military establishment if he was to win for himself dictatorial powers. Hindenburg had already suspended normal protections from arbitrary arrest in response to the fire. Hitler chose to hold the inaugural session of the new chamber in the Garrison Church in Potsdam the burial place of Frederick William I and Frederick II (the embodiment of amoral Prussian statecraft). He wore mourning clothes and behaved with extravagant deference to Hindenburg.
Two days later he managed to push the Enabling Act through the Reichstag giving him dictatorial powers for four years. On the day before the death of President Hindenburg in August 1934 it was decreed by the cabinet that the office of President would lapse and Hitler would become head of state and government as Leader and Chancellor of the German Reich. The army swore a personal oath of loyalty to him in this capacity. This final fateful act was un-elicited and not expected by Hitler.
The Garrison Church in Potsdam was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945 and the ruins later demolished. On 14th April 2005, the anniversary of its destruction, a new foundation stone was laid. New bells have already been cast for the church and temporarily mounted. They have interesting names such as: East Prussia, Königsberg, Silesia, Breslau, Pomerania and Stettin. Its reopening is scheduled for 31st October 2017 the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation.
Sicut canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum, sic imprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam.
I have just been re-reading Newman’s Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England. Was there ever a preacher of his stature, I wonder, who also used humour so successfully in public speaking? Fulton Sheen has humour, but he uses it as a technique to lessen tension, and as a captatio benevolentiae; with Newman it arises spontaneously from the excess of his indignation; it is part of his clear vision of the incongruity between what is and what ought to be.
But the main thing that struck me on this reading was how open he is in his detestation of the Whig party. It is not simply this or that Whig policy that he speaks against, but the party itself. The idea that priests should stay out of party politics was clearly not one that was familiar to him. Perhaps we need priests to speak out against the Whig party today; which I suppose, in England, means against the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
In Sense and Sensibility, the man who jilts Marianne Dashwood is called John Willoughby. Yet she and her more careful elder sister and their mother consistently refer to him as ‘Willoughby’. This strikes me as strange. One would have expected ‘Mr Willoughby’, and, on a much closer acquaintance, ‘John’. Was it common in the early 19th Centuries for genteel ladies to address male acquaintances by their surname?
I was surprised to learn today from Copleston’s ‘History of Philosophy’ that there was an ‘anti-clerical’ government in Portugal in 1761 that burnt several priests (yes, that certainly sounds anti-clerical.) Does anyone know how it came about? Aeliane, you know everything…
Having spent several hundred pages excoriating the French Revolution, Edmund Burke becomes at last ironically emollient:-
I do not deny that among an infinite number of acts of violence and folly, some good may have been done. They who destroy every thing certainly will remove some grievance. They who make everything new, have a chance that they may establish something beneficial.
When I read this, I couldn’t help thinking of Vatican II. Of course, there can never be a true revolution in the Church, since her constitution is divinely guaranteed. Still, they changed almost everything they could: the Vulgate, the rite of Mass, the rites of all the sacraments, the rites of all the sacramentals, the rite of exorcism, all the hours of the divine office, the code of canon law, the constitutions of all the religious orders, the rosary, the calendar. Among all these quasi-revolutionary acts, was anything good achieved? The only thing that comes immediately to my mind is the restoration of the authentic hymns in the breviary, undoing the classicizing revision of the 17th Century. However, the authentic hymns had always been maintained in the breviaries of religious orders, anyhow.
The phrase ‘partial’ or ‘imperfect communion’ has come into vogue in official Catholic discourse since Vatican II to refer to the relation which baptised non-Catholics have to the Church. It was put into Unitatis Redintegratio without being defined, as if it were an unproblematic phrase, being put forward there as the reason why the Catholic Church accepts such people as brothers (UR 3). The modern Catechism quotes this same passage of Vatican II, again without defining the phrase.
Obviously there is a sense in which baptised non-Catholics are closer to us than, say, Jews and Muslims. So St Augustine remarked that Catholics use the word fratres, brothers, of the Donatists, and not of the pagans. The problem is in the word ‘communion’. It suggests that the baptised non-Catholic as such has a share, albeit a lesser one, in the good things of the Church, in particular in the life of grace and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Now this can only be true when the non-Catholic in question is in good faith; if he is not, but is a formal heretic, he is to that extent in a worse position than the Jew or Muslim. It is probably a good idea in our dealings with a baptised non-Catholic to assume good faith, as an application of the principle that we should always interpret people’s behaviour in the best way possible. But are we to assume not just that some given baptised non-Catholic but that all such people are in good faith? How would that fit with the honour due to God, who has not hidden His church under a bushel? Yet it seems that some such assumption would have to be made if we are to make a blanket statement such as ‘Protestants are in partial communion with the Catholic Church’.
I suggest, then, that not the doctrine of Unitatis Redintegratio, but its vocabulary is unsatisfactory. Rather than ‘partial communion’ it might be better to say, ‘a baptismal relationship’.
Ecumenism does not further the unity of Christians. In fact, it reduces the chances of all those validly baptised but not consciously subject to the Episcopate in union with the Pope from becoming subject to them. The first and most important reason for this is that it implicitly denies the importance of Christian unity. When it was said “you are a heretic and/or a schismatic. Come back to Christ’s Church or you will die in your sins” the urgency of Christian unity was made abundantly clear. By presuming misinformed good faith on the part of the irregularly baptised (as was previously done only until the age of fourteen) the authorities implicitly deny or at least greatly scale back the visibility of the Church. This of course is self-fulfilling. By making such an assumption the visibility of the Church is indeed diminished. Ecumenical dialogue is equally self-defeating because by engaging in this practice either a) the nature of the Church’s teaching and credentials are made clear and the subjective guilt of the other party secured while paradoxically by virtue of the dialogue he is mislead into thinking there is no true urgency to his conversion, or b) the faith is obscured and distorted in a spirit of dishonest irenicism. In the second instance the other party’s guilt my be diminished but the ‘Catholic’ party sins gravely.
There is no prospect of corporate reunion for members of groups without valid Apostolic Succession and so there is no purpose in trying to discover how we might not really disagree so very much about a, b or c. The key point is that these persons are failing in their duty of submission to the hierarchy established by Christ, they are cut off from the sure norm of doctrine and from the sacraments. They are thus morally incapable of remaining in a state of grace indefinitely, already in material heresy, very likely in formal heresy and (if not invincibly ignorant) specifically culpable for this as well as for all the other sins weighing upon them and without the Eucharist and Penance to assist them on the way. Those who belong to true particular churches not in communion with the See of Rome have all embraced heresies of one sort or another. They obviously deny the universal ordinary jurisdiction and infallible magisterium of the Roman Pontiff and therefore of many Ecumenical Councils as well. The Dissident Byzantine Churches deny the indissolubility of marriage, the simplicity of the Divine Nature, the doctrine of Deification, and (usually) the Filioque. The other schismatic eastern Churches deny the Hypostatic Union in one way or another. It is simply not the case that we really agree on these topics and it is all a matter of misunderstanding. That was true in enough instances to make a difference up until 1439, not anymore. Consequently, for these Churches to reunite corporately with the Catholic Church every single one of their bishops would have to detest and abhor these errors and that will only happen through a miracle of grace and through the clear proclamation of the Gospel on out part (the same method required to facilitate individual conversion) not through ecumenical dialogue.
The decision to pursue ecuminism is a prudential decision of one General Council and a few Popes. Just as many General Councils decided to launch Crusades and demand the execution of heretics. Just as Vatican II insisted that Latin be preserved as the language of the Roman Rite and no unnecessary changes be made to it. Just as Lateran IV forbade the founding of new religious orders. Just as Martin IV excommunicated Michael VIII and Clement XIV dissolved the Jesuits. One need not agree with every prudential decision of a Pope or Council. When the consequences have been manifestly scandalous and self-defeating it is time to think again.
The best part of finishing a Dickens’ novel – courtesy, perhaps, of the good people at librivox.org – is that one can find out what Chesterton had to say about it.
A shame they never met; it would have been quite possible, if Dickens had lived to a good old age rather than dying in 1870 at 58.
Laodicea 