Autor: Bellco, Hilaire

Buch: The Great Heresies

Titel: The Great Heresies

Stichwort: Reformation; Skeptizismus - Protestantismus; Dominanz der protestantischen Kultur in Europa (Amerika, Revolution in Frankreich, Preußen)

Kurzinhalt: After his failure the process of decline, so long at work in the Catholic culture, continued throughout all the nineteenth century. England as the result of the defeat of Napoleon was able to expand uninterruptedly through her now not only ...

Textausschnitt: 107b These material outward signs of increasing Protestant power and the declining power of the Catholic culture were but the effects of a spiritual thing which was going on within. Faith was breaking down. (Fs)

The Protestant culture was untroubled by this growth of scepticism. The decline of men's adherence to the old doctrines of Christendom did not weaken Protestant society. The whole tone of mind in that society called every man free to judge for himself, and the one thing it repudiated and would not have was the authority of a common religion. (Fs) (notabene)

107c A common religion is of the nature of the Catholic culture, and so the growing decline of belief worked havoc there. It destroyed the moral authority of the Catholic governments, which were closely associated with religion, and it either cast a sort of paralysis over thought and action, as happened in Spain, or, as happened in France, violently divided men into two camps, clerical and anti-clerical. (Fs)

Still, though we can see what was at work in the eighteenth century, the men of the time did not. England through her sea-power had got a stranglehold on India; Prussia had established herself as a strong power; but no one foresaw that England and Prussia would overshadow Christendom. India was going to produce wealth and power for those who should exploit her and, with her as a base, establish their banking power and commerce throughout the East. Prussia was going to absorb the Germans and overthrow Europe. (Fs)

107d England (also through her naval power) had got hold of the French colony of Canada; but no one in those days thought colonies of much importance save as sources of wealth for the mother country, and Canada had never been that for France. Later, when England lost her own colonies in North America and they became independent, it was wrongly regarded as a mortal blow to English power throughout the world. (Fs)

108a Very few foresaw what the new republic in North America was going to mean for the future; its vast and rapid expansion in numbers and wealth immensely strengthened the position of the Protestant culture in the world. It was much later that a certain proportion of Catholic immigrants somewhat modified this position, but even so, the United States remained during their astonishing increase an essentially Protestant society. (Fs)

108b At the end of the eighteenth century and into the beginning of the nineteenth came the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. These also increased the general strength of Protestantism and still further weakened the Catholic culture. They did so indirectly, and the immediate issues were so much more exciting and so much more directly concerned men's lives that this ultimate and profound effect was little appreciated. (Fs)

To this day there are few historians who appreciate the defeat of Napoleon in terms of contrasting cultures in Europe. The French Revolution was an anti-clerical movement, and Napoleon who was its heir was not himself a believing and practicing Catholic and cannot be said to have returned to the Faith until his death-bed. Nor, for all his genius, did he clearly perceive that difference of religion is at the root of differences in culture, for the generation to which he belonged had no conception of that profound and universal judgment. (Fs)

Nevertheless the truth remains that had Napoleon succeeded the preponderating culture of Europe would have been Catholic. His Empire intermarried with and allied to the ancient Catholic tradition of Austria, giving the Church peace and ending the revolutionary dangers, would have given us a united and settled Europe, where, in spite of the very wide spread of rationalism in the wealthier classes, Europe as a whole would have returned to the Catholic tradition. (Fs) (notabene)

108c Napoleon, however, just failed; and he failed through miscalculating his chances in the campaign in Russia. (Fs)

After his failure the process of decline, so long at work in the Catholic culture, continued throughout all the nineteenth century. England as the result of the defeat of Napoleon was able to expand uninterruptedly through her now not only unquestioned but invincible sea-power. There was no rival against her anywhere outside Europe. The Spanish Empire, already fallen very low, was broken up, largely through the efforts of England, which desired unimpeded trade with South and Central America. England seized points of vantage all over the globe, some of which became considerable local societies at first called colonies but now "Dominations."

109a Prussia, through the defeat of Napoleon, became the leading power among the Germans; she annexed the Catholic population of the Rhine and became the triumphant rival of the Hapsburg-Lorraine House, the Emperor at Vienna. France fell into unceasing political experiment and breakdown, at the root of which was the profound religious division between Frenchmen. (Fs)

There was no united Italy, and such effort as was being made to create one was being made by anti-Catholics. Indeed, it is one of the most amusing ironies of history that the great power which Italy has now become was largely called into being by the sympathy Protestant Europe felt for the original Italian rebellions against the Catholic King of Naples and the authority of the Papal States. (Fs)

109b One working lifetime after the defeat of Napoleon another weighty group of events was thrown into the scale against the Catholic culture; this was the series of crushing victories won by Prussia in the field, between 1866 and 1871. In those five years Prussia destroyed the military power of Catholic Austria and created a new German Empire in which the Catholics were carefully cut off from Austria and formed into a minority with Protestant Berlin as their centre of gravity. Prussia also suddenly and completely defeated the French Army, took Paris and annexed what suited her of French territory. (Fs)

This last business, the Franco-Prussian War, was far the most important of all, and might well have proved the end of the Catholic culture in Europe, through the establishment of the Parliamentary French Republic (which went from bad to worse in laws and morals) and from the undermining of the confidence the French had in themselves. The new regime in France began to ruin French civilization and increased indefinitely the anti-Catholic faction, which obtained and kept external power over the French people. Moreover, as a result of that war, England became stronger still in the East, she took the place of France as the master in Egypt, taking over the custody of the Suez Canal (which the French had made just before their final defeat) and acquiring Cyprus. (Fs)

109c Italy was now united but weak and despised. Spain and Portugal had declined, it seemed, beyond all hope of recovery; and with France torn by her religious quarrel and having the worst kind of professional politicians in power, with the sun of Austria setting, with Prussia in full career, with the United States now recovering from its Civil War and more powerful and coherent than ever rapidly becoming the richest country in the world and with a population as rapidly expand- ing it seemed a matter of course that the Catholic culture would be beaten right out of the field. The Protestant culture had become the manifest leader of white civilization. (Fs)

110a The thing was apparent not only politically but in the economic field as well. The new machinery which transformed life everywhere, the new rapid communications of thought and goods and men, were mainly the product of the Protestant culture. The nations of Catholic culture did but copy the Protestant nations in these matters. (Fs)

So it was also with institutions; the English institution of Parliament which had arisen and was maintained under aristocratic conditions by a governing class, was imitated everywhere. It was utterly unsuited to societies with a strong sense of human equality, but such was the prestige of England that men copied English institutions upon every side. (Fs)

110b Meanwhile what may properly be called the test of the fortunes of the Catholic culture, Ireland, seemed to give the signal of that culture's final ruin. The Irish population, long dispossessed of its land, was halved by famine; the wealth of Catholic Ireland fell as rapidly as that of England rose, and no one of consequence thought it was possible that Ireland, after her awful experiences in the nineteenth century, could rise again from the dead. (Fs)

The Pope had been despoiled of his income through the seizure of his States, and was now a prisoner in the Vatican with all the spirit of the new Italian Government, his apparent master, more and more opposed to religion. The educational system of Europe grew more and more divorced from religion, and in the large Catholic countries either broke up or fell wholly into anti-Catholic hands. (Fs) (notabene)