The liberals raised the slogan “separation of Church and State,” but in reality separation was not their political goal; their real goal was the subjugation of the Church to the modern (i.e. secular) State.
State power—liberalism’s old love
The plan of creating a “new man” as drawn up and implemented by the French revolutionaries found its continuation in the nineteenth century in the “culture wars” which came to be waged throughout Europe—from Germany to Portugal.
The name originates from the German term Kulturkampf (literally: the “war for culture”) as applied to the campaign launched by Bismarck in the 1870s, which found strong support among the German liberals. To the liberals of the day (this not only in Germany) the notion of freedom meant the building of the so-called modern state. But this “modernity” had to be achieved by means of a ruthless war waged on the Catholic Church, which was regarded as the embodiment of obscurantism and backwardness. Thus modernity and freedom (so understood) required the iron hand of the state, which, even as in the culture wars that were to follow, constantly broadened the scope of its powers. Thus, in the culture wars of the nineteenth century—as in the current ones—the ruling liberal elites came to regard notions such as the freedom to choose one’s path in life (e.g. pursuing a religious vocation) or the unhampered right of parents to raise their children in accordance with the dictates of their conscience (e.g. sending them to church-run schools) as unimportant from the standpoint of the higher aim, which was to create—with the aid of extraordinary legislation and the state gendarmerie—a “new and better culture.” The liberals raised the slogan “separation of Church and State,” but in reality separation was not their political goal; their real goal was the subjugation of the Church to the modern (i.e. secular) State.
The Kulturkampf in Germany
The unification of Germany was won thanks to Protestant Prussia’s military victories over Catholic Austria (1866) and France (1870). As a result, many liberal and Protestant circles came to see the new German Reich as proof not only of the superiority of Prussian arms, but also of Protestantism’s cultural superiority over benighted Catholicism. Such was the view of the leading German historians of the day (e.g. G. Droysen, H. Sybel, H. Treitschke), for whom Prussia’s victories at Sadova and Sedan also represented the triumph of the “spirit of 1517” (i.e. the spirit of the Reformation) over the “spirit of Rome.” The liberal and Protestant press hailed the year 1871 as marking the rise of the “Holy Evangelical Empire of the German Nation” as opposed to the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation,” which had existed till 1806.
The logic of the liberals was simple. Since the Prussian (German) state had proved its superiority over the Papists on the battlefield, everything had to be done to protect the German fatherland from the threat of the “perverse spirit of Romanism,” while at the same time imbuing the unified Germans with the “higher” culture of Protestantism and liberalism. As the liberal deputy Rudolf Virchow (one of the fathers of German physiology and coiner of the term Kulturkampf) stated in the Prussian parliament in 1872: “We must oppose whatever is un-German, Roman, and ultramontanist. (…) I consider this to be the real task facing us today: to oppose this alien entity that is thrusting itself upon us and appears in the form of this political faction [the Catholic Center Party—G.K.], as a separate body in our parliament.”
The ideological zeal of the liberals dovetailed perfectly with the political interests of Bismarck who sought to weaken drastically not only Catholic political action in Germany but also the Church herself. Throughout the 1870s the Prussian parliament and the German Reichstag enacted a raft of extraordinary laws aimed at systematically removing the Church from the educational system while enabling the state to interfere in the internal autonomy of the Church (from the dissolution of most religious orders to meddling in the curricula of the seminary colleges).
By the end of the 1870s, most of the Catholic bishops in Prussia—the largest state of the Reich extending from the Rhine to the Pregel—had been either imprisoned or exiled, and hundreds of parishes had been left without pastors (thus, for example, citizens were deprived of the right to a church wedding or funeral).
In the 1880s, Bismarck revoked the most restrictive repressions imposed on the Church, but one could hardly call this a total shift away from the anti-Catholic logic of the Kulturkampf. For example, the proscription against members of the Society of Jesus—even if they were German citizens—remained in force throughout the entire territory of the Reich until 1917.
In the Polish territories seized by Prussia during the Partitions, the Kulturkampf took a different form, representing yet another chapter in the policy of Germanization of the Polish population. The Prussian authorities (Bismarck himself) were well aware that the Church on the Warthe and Vistula served as the depository of the national customs, language, and culture of the Poles. But the “Iron Chancellor” was forced to concede that the “Polish-speaking Prussians”—as he called the Poles under Prussian rule—had declared themselves firmly on the side of the persecuted Church. Despite their pastors being driven out by the Prussian gendarmes and the arrest of Mieczysław Ledóchowski, Archbishop of Poznań and Gniezno, they stood fast to their Church. As historians of the period correctly observe, the defeat of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf in Prussian occupied Poland played an important role in awakening the Polish national consciousness among all layers of Polish society that lived in those territories.
The Third Republic’s anticlerical campaign
Bismarck’s culture wars soon found its imitators in France, which by 1875 had once again become a republic. In 1876 liberals of various shades had won a majority in the French parliament. They were united within one great “diocese without borders” (i.e. the Masonic lodges), which wasted no time in passing a raft of anti-Catholic laws. Most of these—following the example of Germany—were aimed at depriving the Church of any influence in the education of France’s youth. From the late 1870s on, schooling became universal, fully subsidized by the state, and secular. School textbooks were suitably modified. Henceforth they would reflect the ideology that informed the creators of a forced program of national secularization. It rested on the “theory of two Frances.” The first was the benighted France of the Crusades, the St. Bartholomews’ Nights, and the Sun-King; the second was the progressive, civilized France whose articles of association were the French revolution and the declaration of the First Republic in 1792.
To realize this ideological goal, it was worth sacrificing fundamental civil freedoms—even necessary. “A person who deliberately separates himself from society and makes a pledge to have nothing to do with it cannot be a teacher. (…) When a civil entity disappears, so do its civil prerogatives.” Such was the view of Justin Louis Émile Combes, Prime Minister of France in the years 1902-1905, who oversaw the implementation of France’s particularly harsh policy of secularization. He oversaw the closing of thousands of Catholic churches and the forceful eviction of religious orders from France. In many instances, his “anticlerical mania” (as the contemporary press characterized his policies) prompted him to resort to the police and the gendarmerie. Frequently he had military cordons thrown around the monasteries and religious houses, which the faithful laity had tried to defend by surrounding them with a living wall. Eloquent were the cries of “Vive la liberté!” invariably accompanying the religious as they were led away into exile.
Progress and civilization had thus to be forced upon the nation “by blood and steel.” But there was surveillance of the citizenry as well. In 1905, Combes resigned from office in an atmosphere of scandal over the so-called Affaire des Fiches. The prime minster had overseen the gathering of confidential information about officers of the French army. For security reasons, the secular state found it necessary to determine whether or not the officers attended Holy Mass, sent their children to church-run schools, or had priests or religious in the family. What made the scandal spicier was the fact that the task of gathering this information, which was recorded on index cards (fiches), was entrusted to the Masonic lodges. Officers who on the strength of these cards were designated as “clericals” (because, for example, they went to church every Sunday) could not count on promotion in the service.
Following Combes’ resignation in 1905, the liberal majority in the French parliament solidified the gains of the secular republic by forcing through a law providing for the separation of Church and State. All church property (including sacred buildings) subsequently passed into the hands of the State. Churches were henceforth to be administered by special “religious organizations” (associations cultuelles) made up of the laity (including atheists). In the years 1906-1907 the secular state conducted inventories of all church holdings. Escorted by gendarmes, government functionaries arrived to catalogue every article contained in the churches, including the contents of the tabernacles. In many localities of France, the faithful sought to prevent the intended profanation by raising living walls around their churches. Deadly clashes ensued.
The anti-Catholic face of the Risorgimento
In the Latin countries the liberal culture wars were a drawn-out process extending over many years, beginning in the 1850s. On the Apennine Peninsula the process coincided with the unification of Italy consequent upon Piedmont’s successive annexations (including that of the thousand-year-old Church State). Overseeing this endeavor from the 1850s on was the Prime Minister of Piedmont, Emilio Cavour. This liberal statesman (he was also a Freemason) was not only the author of a successful strategy aimed at broadening the powers of his country in Italy. He was also the forger of the slogan “a free Church in a free State,” which was supposed to characterize his relations with the Church State. However, in light of the political decisions that Cavour and his successors (after the final unification of Italy in 1871) enacted in this sphere, the slogan turned out to be mere propagandistic verbiage. Under Cavour’s premiership (1850-1855), Piedmont saw the widespread dissolution of religious orders and state confiscation of church property. As always, what advocates of the separation of church and state really want is to divest the Church of her holdings.
The policy continued even after the unification of Italy. Throughout the 1870s the successive Italian governments closely observed the progress of the Kulturkampf in Germany and transplanted its “fruits” across the Alps, introducing, for example, mandatory civil weddings and removing the Church from the system of education.
Thus anti-Catholicism—above all aversion to the Papacy—profoundly marked the program of the risorgimento (the political unification of Italy). The leaders of the risorgimento (many of them members of the Carbonari or the Masonic lodges) frequently accused the popes of the nineteenth century of anti-patriotic attitudes i.e. of refusing to join in the war for unification, meaning, for example, that the Bishop of Rome should declare war on Catholic Austria or the Catholic monarchy of the Sicilian Bourbons. Needless to say, no pope would have considered let alone executed such an action.
The “culture wars” on the Iberian Peninsula
Across the Pyrenees, the top-down process of secularization began in Portugal. In 1910, with the toppling of the monarchy by an armed coup d’état, the reins of power fell into the hands of anti-Catholic republican politicians, who wasted no time in launching their own version of the culture wars. Its main architect and realizer was Alfonso Costa, who made no bones about his admiration for the French prime minister Émile Combes (hence his nickname “the little Combes”). Like the French statesman he was also a Freemason.
That same year (1910) Portugal saw the eviction of most of her religious orders (first to go were the Jesuits, the bête noire of all secularizers), the confiscation of church property, the removal of chaplains from the army and hospitals as well as crucifixes from all public buildings. Even “ostentatious devotional displays” were punishable by imprisonment. Under this paragraph fell all religious processions (e.g. on the Feast of Corpus Christi) as well as public recitations of the rosary. The year 1911 saw the passing of a formal decree, after the French example, providing for the separation of Church and State. Protests mounted by the Church were brutally suppressed. By late 1911 Portugal had not a single bishop. The Republican authorities had exiled them all—the Patriarch of Lisbon being the first to go. We can say, then, that Our Lady’s apparitions at Fatima in 1917 represented a double miracle; for, by urging the faithful to pray the rosary, Our Lady was summoning the people to an action that had been banned by the authorities of the secular state. This also explains the efforts exerted by the state authorities to belittle, deride, and falsify the events that occurred at Fatima.
In Spain the radical anti-Catholic campaign began with the declaration of the republic in 1931. The model differed little from the above-mentioned examples (dissolution of religious orders, confiscation of church property, secularization of schools, etc.) But in 1936 the “policy of separation” entered a new phase— the physical extermination of believers (starting with the bishops and priests; in all, during the years 1936-1939, there perished about seven thousand members of the religious). But the persecution of the Spanish Church in the years 1936-1939 belongs to another chapter: namely, the communist version of secularization. The recent policies of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (known as zapaterismo) are the direct offshoot of the republican “culture wars” waged prior to the outbreak of the Spanish civil war.
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