schaefer. catholic wissenschaft (article)
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Modern Intellectual History,4,3 (2007), pp. 433462 C 2007Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S1479244307001345 Printed in the United Kingdom
program for a new catholic
wissenschaft: devotionalactivism and catholic modernity
in the nineteenth century
richard schaeferDepartment of History, State University of New York, Plattsburgh
This article seeks to establish a new perspective for understanding Catholic intellectual
history in the German territories during the mid-nineteenth century. By analyzing
scholars efforts to revamp Catholic Wissenschaft in the context of a broader revival
movement, it reveals how both liberals and ultramontanes engaged in a form of
devotional activism which made Catholicism the measure of social action and scholarly
practice alike. Important differences notwithstanding, scholars of all stripes saw their
task as transforming Catholicism into a relevant tool for meeting the needs of the age.
Rooting their efforts in the broader Catholic revival movement in this way, the article
proposes Catholic modernity as a salient category for interpreting the significance oftheir work, and for better integrating it into the broader framework of German history.
A welcome trend in historiography has been the growing interest in the
European Catholic revival of the nineteenth century.1 In contrast with an earlier
tradition that saw Catholic resurgence as only ever reactionary, exciting new
research explores how the revival channeled resurgent popular piety into a
new array of organizations and associations in which both clergy and laity
1 For an introduction to the revival see Nicholas and Frank Tellet Atkin, Priests, Prelates
and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press,2003); Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, eds.,Culture Wars: SecularCatholic
Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
Austin Ivereigh, ed., The Politics of Religion in an Age of Revival: Studies in Nineteenth-
Century Europe and Latin America(London: Institute for Latin American Studies,2000).
Important review essays include Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Piety and Politics: Recent
Work on German Catholicism, Journal of Modern History 63 (1991), 681716; DavidBlackbourn, The Catholic Church in Europe since the French Revolution: A Review
Article,Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 33 (1991); Caroline Ford,
Religion and Popular Culture in Modern Europe, Journal of Modern History65 (1993),
15275.
433
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434 richard schaefer
worked together to create a society apart. Such organizations included men and
womens devotional societies, workers associations, reading societies, a popular
press, and political organizations. Together with a new wave of pilgrimages
and processions, these offered innovative ways for undertaking action in the
name of the faith that transcends the idea of revival as simply a traditionalist
movement. For in them, as Jonathan Sperber observes, Catholics used their
received cultural heritage, the means they knew of expression and association,
in order to oppose or to adapt to changes in their social environment . . . Their
resulting actions transformed, often without conscious intent, both social and
political structures and the cultural framework used to interpret them.2 Though
undeniably traditionalist in their self-presentation and self-understanding,
Catholics mobilized tradition using techniques of organization that were
themselves modern. This is important, as Thomas Nipperdey put it, for byadopting the most modern methods, the Church used the peoples support,
organized it and created a democratic-plebiscite basis for the new Catholicism,
despite the overall clericalization of the Church and the large role the clergy
played in many organizations.3 I propose that in thus seeking to create a
functioning counterweight to modern secular society, Catholics engaged in
what can productively be referred to as devotional activism. Building on Emmet
Larkins description of the devotional revolution that transformed the great
mass of Irish people into practicing Catholics, I usedevotional activism to referto the particular combination of piety and politics that defined the nineteenth-
century revival.4
I introduce the idea of devotional activism here in the hope that it might
help us better understand how German Catholic scholars sought to revitalize
CatholicWissenschaft in the nineteenth century.5 For this seems a promising
way of capturing the complexity and irony of a Catholic position that was in
2 Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany(Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984),1.3 Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 18001866 (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1996),365.4 Emmett Larkin, The Devotional Revolution in Ireland,American Historical Review139
(1972). See also David Blackbourn, Progress and Piety: Liberals, Catholics and the State
in Bismarcks Germany, in Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History
(London: Allen and Unwin,1987),14376.5 Wissenschaft is best translated as scholarship rather than science, which in English
usage too narrowly connotes natural science. Since Wissenschaft des Judenthumshasbeen irrevocably translated as science of Judaism and Wissenschaftsystemas scientific
system, however, I have decided to minimize confusion by referring throughout the
article to Catholic Wissenschaft. I will use scholarship when speaking broadly about
academic work and knowledge, and science when speaking about the natural sciences.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 435
its own way as innovative and modern as the modern position it so severely
criticized. To capture this dimension of Catholic thought it is not enough to
sketch the different schools of theology or the work of major figures. 6 Instead,
one must look at how efforts to reconstruct CatholicWissenschaft were deeply
rooted in the broader revival movement. Aimed at creating a Catholic subculture
cut off from the mainstream, devotional activism saw in Catholicism a viable
alternative to secular society. Whether aimed at improving the condition of
workers or coordinating the Catholic press, however, devotional activism saw
Catholics pattern their response after secular models. The irony was that by
molding to the circumstances and arguments cast by opponents, even the most
rigid critics were forced into a kind of self-justification that, if it was not exactly
self-critical in the most rigorous sense, entailed wrestling with ones assumptions
in ways that had consequences.With very few exceptions, German Catholic scholars rejected modern ways of
thinkingasdetrimentaltothefaith.Nevertheless,whenwemovefromthecontent
of what they said about Kantian philosophy, historical criticism, or scientific
materialism, to an analysis of their mode of critique seen as a kind of devotional
activism, it is possible to evaluate their work as much more than a negative
gesture. Distinguishing itself from earlier categories ofchristliche Wissenschaften
andkirchliche Wissenschaften, Catholic Wissenschaftserved as a new rubric for
expressing scholars desire to build on the momentum of the revival, influencecurrent events, and become agents of a Catholic public sphere.7 Transcending
the liberal/ultramontane divide, at least in its initial stages, CatholicWissenschaft
was a discourse that enabled scholars of all stripes to make Catholicism relevant
to solving pressing problems. To see how, I will attempt to sketch (in a somewhat
overly schematic fashion) the conditions of articulationor rules immanent to
practicestructuring the phases of its articulation:8 a nascent phase when schol-
ars laid the foundation for a confessional scholarly identity, an emergent phase
during which CatholicWissenschaftwas articulated in tandem with new kinds of
devotional activism, and a final phase during which scholars debated the implic-
ations of CatholicWissenschaftas an agenda in the face of Roman opposition.
6 Ludwig Lenhart,Die erste Mainzer Theologenschule des19. Jahrhunderts18051830(Mainz:
Schmidt, 1956); Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest
for a Unitary Method(New York: Seabury Press, 1977); Thomas F. OMeara, Romantic
Idealism and Roman Catholicism: Schelling and the Theologians(Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1982). Thomas F. OMeara,Church and Culture: German CatholicTheology, 18601914(Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).
7 Jurgen Habermas,The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1989).8 Michel Foucault,The Archaeology of Knowledge(London: Tavistock Publications, 1972).
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436 richard schaefer
Responding to real needs and real circumstances within Catholicism, the
Church and the Germanies, Catholic Wissenschaft can be interpreted as an
instance of what I tentatively dub Catholic modernity. By modernity, I am not
referring to the assumption typically associated with modernization theory
of a steadily and linearly progressing, society-wide march toward ever greater
forms of rationality.9 On the contrary, by modernity I mean a way of living with
the transient, the fleeting, the contingent.10 Characterized by an intensive
reflexivity, what S. N. Eisenstadt describes as living with an awareness of the
possibility of multiple visions that . . . [can] be contested,11 modernity requires
that all assertions of authority and identity supply their own justification.12 It
thus means abiding the fact that life can always be different. At first glance, of
course, Catholics might seem excluded from this kind of intensive self-reflexivity
precisely by their explicit rejection of modern ideas and forms of life. However,when we consider the ways Catholics met the challenges of the ageas devotional
activismit is clear that opposition to modern secular society did not exclude
them from an experience of modernity. For what is clear is that, in responding to
the challenge of mass politics, public education, workers rights, and indeed the
challenge of science and scholarship, Catholics took stock of their faith, applied
it, and transformed Catholicism into a timely and relevant resource for creating
a distinctly modern identity. This played no small part, as Raymond Grew and
Margaret Anderson have both argued, in shaping the history of democraticfreedom by fueling a conflict in which both parties were forced to adapt to
circumstances.13 The fact that Catholics did not see their conflicts as a process of
adaptation should not prevent us from examining how they played a distinctive
part in shaping the modern world.14
9 Jonathan Sperber, Kirchengeschichte or the Social and Cultural History of Religion?,
Neue Politische Literatur43
(1998
),13
35
,15
.10 Originating in Baudelaires essay on painting in modern life, this formulation has entered
historical studies in particular through Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air:
The Experience of Modernity(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982).11 S. N. Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities, in S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., Multiple Modernities
(New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002),129,4.12 Jurgen Habermas,The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures(Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press,1987).13 Margaret Lavinia Anderson, The Divisionsof thePope: The CatholicRevival and Europes
Transition to Democracy, in Austin Ivereigh, ed., The Politics of Religion in an Age of
Revival: Studies in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Latin America(London: Institute forLatin-American Studies,2000),2242.
14 Raymond Grew, Liberty and the Catholic Church in Nineteenth-Century Europe, in
Richard Helmstadter, ed., Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century (Stanford:
Stanford University Press,1997),196232,197.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 437
the first phase: german scholars and the structural
transformation of the church, 1815--40
CatholicWissenschaftemerged against the background of the transformation
of the Church from an organization based on territorial sovereignty to one basedon popular support.15 This transformation had its roots in the trend of absolutist
states to exert greater control over ecclesiastical affairs, but was precipitated more
directly by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. The dissolution
of the Imperial Church, the secularizations of 1803, and the imprisonment of
Pius VI seriously weakened the Church materially and spiritually, and curbed its
formal influence in politics. Though religion was considered a key part of the
Restoration program concluded at the Congress of Vienna, no serious effort was
made to restore the Church to its previous position or make good its territoriallosses. After 1815 the Pope was forced to accept a diminished role in European
politics and to rely on major powers such as Austria and France for the integrity
of the Papal States. So entwined did the Church seem with its status as a sovereign
power that many observers predicted the dissolution of the Church as inevitable,
should the Pope lose the remaining Papal States. Such predictions proved false,
of course. For in proportion to its political decline, the Church exerted itself
more forcefully in the areas of family, faith, and morals. Its losses were thus offset
by definite gains in the Churchs influence in the lives of Catholics. The direct
result of giving up power to secular states was that the papacy came gradually
to de-emphasize doctrine that had specific, controversial implications for state
policy. Instead, Rome increased emphasis on the faith and morals of Catholic
individuals and families as the basis of its religious authority. This, in turn,
altered the means by which the papacy asserted ideological dominance over
other parts of the Church.16 Such means included mobilizing Catholic popular
opinion against hostile states, fund-raising (Peters pence), and asserting control
over communication as the Vatican learned to take an active interest in public
opinion.17 By filling the void left by the decline in its temporal power, the papacybecame an agent of ideological Catholicism. In so doing, as Marvin OConnell
15 For an excellent treatment of this transformation in conjunction with Belgian Catholicism
see Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX (18311859):
Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in19th-Century Europe(Brussels: Belgian Historical
Institute of Rome,2001).16 Gene Burns, The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World
(Berkeley: University of California Press,1992),17.17 Vincent Viaene, The Roman Question, Catholic Mobilisation and Papal Diplomacy, in
Emiel Lamberts, ed.,The Black International(Brussels: Brepols,2002),13577.
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438 richard schaefer
notes, Pius IX was more a modern leader than he knew or than he has been
given credit for.18
Between roughly1815 and 1869, GermanCatholic scholars rethought thenature
of CatholicWissenschaftin a way that is intelligible, in part, as a response to these
deeper structural changes in the Church. This is reflected above all in the way they
claimed a special role in shaping public opinion. For the Tubingen theologian
Johann Sebastien Drey,
there must be an analogue to what in the state is called public opinion, and since in the
Church this cannot be anything other than the position of the public teacher and writer,
so must an introduction to Church government also give rules on how the Church will
preserve this instrument and what its true position toward it is.19
This view was echoed by Johann Duttlinger, who contrasted those whoseeducation and knowledge challenges and equips them to reflect on Church
matters, with the masses who blindly followed the habit of the faith, and
those who were indifferent to it altogether.20 Of course, such openness to self-
reflection stands in stark contrast to the view of Joseph de Maistre, who held
that the Catholic faith has no need . . . (and this is its principal characteristic,
which has not been sufficiently remarked), to return upon itself, to interrogate
itself with regard to its belief, and to ask itself why it believes . . .21 De Maistres
conviction that the papacy alone could and should command public opinionhelps underscore the different situation of German scholars. Certainly one can
identifyimportantandparalleleffortstobetterintegrateCatholiclifeandlearning
in other areas of Europe, perhaps the most notable being Richard Simpson and
Lord Acton, who, through the The Ramblerand later the Home and Foreign
Review, routinely challenged English Catholics to think about scholarly issues.22
The same, of course, is true of Felicite de Lamennais and his journal LAvenir.
Such parallels notwithstanding, however, German scholars capitalized on the
structural transformation of the Church in a much more comprehensive way,
18 Marvin R. OConnell, Ultramontanism and Dupanloup: The Compromise of 1865,
Church History53(1984),20017,200.19 Johann Sebastian Drey,Kurze Einleitung in das Studium der Theologie, mit Ruecksicht auf
den wissenschaftlichen Standpunct und das katholische System(Tuebingen: Minerva,1819),
239. This and all subsequent translations are my own.20 Johann Georg Duttlinger,Denkschrift fur die Aufhebung des den katholischen Geistlichen
vorgeschriebenen Colibates(Freiburg im Breisgau: Wagner, 1828),3.21
Originally published in 1819 as Du Pape, I citefrom Joseph de Maistre, The Pope, Consideredin his Relations with the Church, Temporal Sovereignties, Separated Churches, and the Cause
of Civilization, trans. Aeneas Dawson (New York: Fertig,1850),5.22 A student of Dollingers in Munich, Acton followed with great interest the situation of
Catholic scholarship in Germany.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 439
as a new space to imagine different visions of Catholic renewal and to fashion
themselves into leaders of public opinion.23
ThereformofCatholic Wissenschafthadasmuchtodowiththeintellectualand
cultural situation in the Germanies as it did with the structural transformation of
the Church. The university was by its very nature the culture-defining institution
in the Germanies, and the majority of reformers were university men from
centers such as Munich, Mainz, Wurzburg, and Freiburg, though some non-
academics contributed as well, especially as debates over education drew in
teachers, journalists, and politicians.24 Overwhelmingly affiliated with Catholic
institutions, Catholic scholars wrote for Catholic audiences and published in
Catholic journals.25 Highly cognizant of developments outside Catholic circles,
they were fundamentallyambivalent about their status, however, both celebrating
andlamenting their distance from themainstream.This ambivalence is illustratedby the case of Georg Hermes, professor of theology and philosophy at the
University of Bonn. Hermes borrowed liberally from contemporary German
philosophy, including Kant and Fichte, whose method of absolute doubt he
considered indispensable to pursuing the most important questions. Only by
doubting his own Catholicism in a similar way did he feel able to put belief
on an indisputable footing.26 He was not alone in his interest in contemporary
philosophy. Johann Michael Sailer, Anton Gunther, Carl J. H. Windischmann,
and Johann Adam Mohler all borrowed from non-Catholic counterparts, such asKant, Hegel, and, of course, Schleiermacher. What needs to be stressed, however,
is how such borrowing was driven by a desire to defeat modern thought on its
23 Important comparative work on Catholic scholars elsewhere remains to be done.
Stimulating research in English and French Catholicism includes Josef L. Altholz,
The Liberal Catholic Movement in England: The Rambler and its Contributors 1848
1864 (London: Burns and Oates, 1962); Claude Langlois and Francois Laplanche, LaScience catholique: LEncyclopedie theologique de Migne (18441873), entre apologetique
et vulgarisation(Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1992).24 Almost all held the doctors degree and the majority were priests, though this seems
not to have made a discernable difference in their views. Between 1838 and 1923 the
Historisch politische Blatterfur das katholischeDeutschlandpublished 12,256 articles. Where
authorship can be established, it is possible to determine a total of1,090authors, 581 of
whom were clerics, and 454of whom were laypersons. The journal had twenty women
contributors, but only after 1900. Dieter Albrecht and Bernhard Weber,Die Mitarbeiter
der Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische Deutschland18381923. Ein Verzeichnis
(Mainz: Grunewald, 1990).25 For reasons of space, I confine myself to the simplest biographical details when discussing
most scholars. For more details, readers are encouraged to consult the online Biographisch-
Bibliographisches Kirchenlexicon(www.bautz.de) edited by Bautz.26 Georg Hermes,Einleitung in die christkatholische Theologie(Muenster: Minerva, 1819).
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440 richard schaefer
own terms, not by a desire to make common cause against revealed religion.27
Thus Sailer was inspired to offer a critique of reason for people as they really are,
and Windischmann was motivated to attack Hegels philosophy of consciousness
through a critique of the shallowness of contemporary philosophical language.28
A distinct narrowing of the possibilities for such exchanges was signaled by
the condemnation of Hermess works in 1835.29 This had a decisive impact on the
nascent phase of CatholicWissenschaft, as scholars sought to distance themselves
from any perception that they might be directly influenced by secular scholarship.
Nowhere was this more evident than in their rejection of the Enlightenment, a
movement that had afforded rich possibilities for Catholic renewal and even
shaped a distinct Catholic Enlightenment.30 In the wake of the Hermes affair,
Catholic scholarsalmost exclusively rejected Enlightenment thought as thesource
of egotism and revolution.31 All the same, a distinct pattern of differentiatingtrue from falseAufklarungbetrayed a deeper ambivalence. Thus the Gieen
professor of theology Friedrich Hartnagel called true Enlightenment being
free of false cognition, confusion, and error, and false Enlightenment a purely
formaloppositionofthesubjectivemind.32 Similarly, Peter Volkmuth described
Enlightenment, in the real sense of the word, as raising the subjective principle
of clear concepts to the criterion of objective truth. False Enlightenment,
27 Thus I have reservations about OMearas claim that Catholic thinkers were interested
in a transcendental (in the sense of Kant) analysis of subjectivity as . . . their point of
departure. Baader, Gorres, and others never truly embraced the idealist synthesis of
consciousness with reality in the generative act of subjectivity. It was never a serious
alternative to the dominant understanding of the active intellect in Catholic theology.
OMeara,Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism,14.28 Johann Michael Sailer, Vernunftlehre fur Menschen wie sie sind, d.i. Anleitung zur
Erkenntniss und Liebe der Wahrheit, 2nd edn (Munchen: Strobel Verlag, 1795). C. J. H.
Windischmann, Uber Etwas, das der Heilkunst Noth thut. Eine Versuch zur Vereinigungdieser Kunst mit der christlichen Philosophie(Leipzig: Cnobloch Verlag,1824).
29 Christoph Weber, Aufklarung und Orthodoxie im Mittelrhein 18201850, ed. Anton
Rauscher (Munchen: Schoningh,1973).30 T. C. W. Blanning, The Enlightenment in Catholic Germany, in Roy Porter and Mikulas
Teich, eds., The Enlightenment in National Context(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981). Sebastian Merkle, Die katholische Beurteilung des Aufklaerungszeitalters,
in Theobald Freudenberger, ed.Ausgewaehlte Reden und Aufsaetze(Wurzburg: Ferdinand
Schoningh Verlag, 1965). Helmut Zander, Katholische Aufklarung Aufklarung im
katholischen Deutschland,Zeitschrift fuer Kirchengeschichte100(1989),2319.31
Franz Anton Staudenmaier, Der Protestantismus in seinemWesen undin seinerEntwicklung(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,1846).
32 Friedrich Hartnagel, Aufklarung, in Heinrich Joseph Wetzer and Benedikt von
Welte, eds., Kirchen-Lexikon, oder Encyklopadie der katholischen Theologie und ihrer
Hilfswissenschaften(Freiburg: Herder, 1857),51011.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 441
by contrast, was a subjective, one-sided deportment that led to reality-less
generalities.33 Differentiating between true and false Enlightenment in this way
helped scholars disavow secular influence. But it also helped them appropriate
key concepts of modern secular thought by emptying them of their dangerous
content and redeploying them in the name of true progress, true education,
andtrue science.34 Farfrom being ad hoc, this pattern of differentiating between
true and false variants of the chief concepts of secular rationalism was crucial
in shaping the larger discourse of Catholic Wissenschaftas a way for scholars to
vouchsafe their work as both scholarly and Catholic.
Another source of ambivalence affecting efforts to reformulate Catholic
Wissenschaftduring this period was the rising tide of cultural nationalism that
asserted the Protestant character of modern German culture.35 Against the
background of the Wars of Liberation, Fichtes Addresses to the German Nation,and the Wartburgfest, the intersection of Protestant and German helped
define the nation in ways that seemed to exclude Catholics. Karl von Altensteins
famous distinctionThe Prussian state is a Protestant state and has over one
third of Catholic subjectswas an explicit statement on the deep influence
of confession on the political realities of the day.36 Hegels observation that
the the World Spirit . . . is the Principle of the North and, from a religious
perspective, of Protestantism was likewise emblematic of the powerful tendency
towards cultural Protestantism (Kulturprotestantismus) in scholarship.37
Itssecular orientation notwithstanding, much modern philosophy self-consciously
claimed continuity with Protestantism, inspiring and being inspired by changes
in liberal Protestantism, and seeking in itself to be a reinterpretation and
33 Peter Volkmuth, Aufklarung, in Joseph Aschbach, ed.,Allgemeines Kirchen-Lexikon oder
alphabetisch geordnete Darstellung desWissenswuerdigstenaus dergesammten Theologieund
ihren Huelfswissenschaften(Frankfurt a.M.: Andreaeischen Buchhandlung,1846),389.34
Richard Schaefer, Thoughts on the Founding of a Catholic Science: Science, Society andthe Syllabus of Errors in German Catholicism, 18201869, Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell
University,2005.35 Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology,
Politics,18701914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress,1995); David Blackbourn, The
Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany,17801918(New York: Oxford University
Press,1998); Nipperdey,Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck.36 Quoted in Wolfgang Altgeld, German Catholics, in Rainer Liedtke and Stephen
Wendehorst, eds., The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and
the Nation State in Nineteenth-Century Europe(Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1999),10021,105.37 Quoted in Heribert Raab, Katholische Wissenschaft. Ein Postulat und seine Variationen
in der Wissenschafts- und Bildungspolitik deutscher Katholiken waehrend des 19.
Jahrhunderts, in Anton Rauscher, ed., Katholizismus, Bildung und Wissenschaft im 19.
und20. Jahrhundert(Munchen: Ferdinand Schoningh Verlag,1987),6191,64.
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442 richard schaefer
revitalization of the Christian religion.38 Often seen as compensating for the
belatedness of the German nation state, cultural nationalism can be seen as
responding to Romanticisms failure to submerge confessional differences in
a pan-German Christianity and thus ease the confessional tensions impeding
national unity.39 Here it is important to remember that many Romantics, though
keen to embrace the Catholic culture of the Middle Ages, were just as keen to
sublate real confessional differences to some higher, if vague, religiosity. For
Catholics, of course, Romanticism idealized a Catholic past that was out of step
with the Catholicism of the present. While the celebration of national origins
might inspire broad support for completing the Cologne cathedral as a national
landmark,40 Catholics could not easily forget the still recent secularization of
Church land and other property.41 Thus Johann Duttlinger decried those new-
moded, romantic-poetic Catholics and friends of Catholicism who celebrateonly some of the outward forms and poetry of the faith. In this context, a
deeply divisive struggle over culture centered on which older cultural facts and
points of orientation the nation should take up, and which it should exclude.42
The struggle over German culture fostered the desire for a more radically
Catholic Wissenschaft, as Catholic scholarsattemptedto discredit Protestantism
by showing how it was responsible for an array of contemporary problems,
from revolution to moral indifference.43 Constructing a genealogy of Protestant
reason whose prehistory included Greek philosophy, and whose effects includedthe Enlightenment, materialism, and modern liberalism, scholars tended almost
inevitably to focus on a set of alleged problems associated with subjectivism.
Repeatedly, subjectivism was seen as the conduit through which Protestant
theology shaped modern life and thought. For the Munich philosopher Franz
von Baader, Protestant subjectivism was the principle of revolution: because
the reformers thought to settle . . . [quarrels] radically, they
38 Nipperdey,Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck,357.39 Helmuth Plessner, Die verspatete Nation; uber die politische Verfuhrbarkeit burgerlichen
Geistes,2. erweiterte Aufl. (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1959).40 Thomas Nipperdey, Der Kolner Dom als Nationaldenkmal, in Otto Dann, ed.,Religion
Kunst Vaterland: das Kolner Dom im 19. Jahrhundert(Cologne: Bachem,1983).41 Duttlinger,Denkschrift fur die Aufhebung.42 Wolfgang Altgeld, Religion, Denomination and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century
Germany, in Helmut Walser Smith, ed., Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany,1800
1914(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),567. For more on this intra-confessonalconflict see Olaf Blaschke, Das 19. Jahrhundert: Ein zweites Konfessionelles Zeitalter?,
Geschichte und Gesellschaft26(2000).43 The classic text tracing the rise of moral indifference was Felicite de LamennaissEssai sur
lindifference, published in 1817.
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Fathers of the First Three Centuries. An exceptionally gifted young scholar, Mohler
taught church history at Tubingen, where circumstances had brought rival
Catholic and Protestant theological faculties together in one university in 1817.
As part of a historic exchange on the nature of confessional differences, Mohler
contrasted the community of believers united through the Catholic principle
with the subjectivist impulse in Protestantism and modern philosophy.49 He
argued that the Protestant and the modern philosopher failed to grasp the truth
of Christianity precisely because they set out to learn this truth according to
concepts and other instruments of the understanding alone. By setting out to
[g]rasp it in a[n] . . . egoistic manner, they thus behaved as though Christianity
required renewal in every individual in and through a rational act. The Catholic,
by contrast, knows himself to be a part of a community of Spirit, which shapes
life and knowledge in a comprehensive way. Catholics do not feel compelled toreinvent revelation anew, but to testify to it, acknowledging its pre-rational hold
on them through tradition and the life of the community. The Catholic scholar
enters into study with a Christian consciousness, since the Catholic does not wish to cease
to be a Christian during study, nor could a Catholic do so, since the individual Christian
consciousness so grows up with its essence that it would cease to be what it is . . . The true
Christianthe Catholicundertakes study in a way that affirms the prior activity of the
Spirit through the community.50
Seen in terms of the struggle to define German culture and the nation,
the articulation of a Catholic principle was a crucial means of converting
contemporary concerns into a Catholic idiom. It was the nodal point of what,
in Foucaldian terms, might be termed a system of dispersion enabling the
appearance, collation, and correlation of Catholic objects.51 It was thus a crux
for defining Catholic life, Catholic philosophy, and CatholicWissenschaft,
as distinct alternatives to their Protestant and secular counterparts. Mohler
himself used this crux to analyze the symbolic differences between Catholicism
and Protestantism in his next major work,Symbolism.52 Focusing on breviaries,hymnals, popular catechisms, and other works in which the public faith is
expressed, Mohler underscored how such texts were public facts through which
fundamental theology exerted a tremendous influence on German national life.
49 Originally published in 1825, I cite from Johann Adam Mohler and Josef Rupert
Geiselmann, Die Einheit in der Kirche; oder das Prinzip des Katholicismus, dargestellt im
geiste der kirchenvater der drei ersten jahrhunderte(Koln: Hegner,1957),12.50
Ibid.65.51 Foucault,The Archaeology of Knowledge.52 Johann Adam Mohler, Symbolik, oder Darstellung der dogmatischen Gegensatze der
Katholiken und Protestanten, nach ihren oeffentlichen Bekenntnissschriften(Mainz: Kupfer,
1832).
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 445
Similarly, the anonymous Catholic Europe, or Preservation, Progress, Peace and
Freedom offered a comprehensive analysis of the social, cultural, and political
fissures in European society, discriminating between confessional attitudes
towards questions ranging from the press to literature, from the customs union
to railroads. In the same vein, the aging Ignaz Wessenberg also wrote a series
of works on education, the theatre, and modern novels. A determined reformer
who had sought to maximize the position of German Catholics during both
the secularizations of 1803 and the Congress of Vienna, Wessenberg outlined
Catholicisms contribution to cultural progress.53 What these and other works
sought to demonstrate was that Catholicism was not at a loss for how to cope
with modern life, but capable of supplying its own competing programme for
the management of rapid social and political change.54
Catholics were not alone in their desire to use Wissenschaftas a ticket toculture, of course. In his On the Concept of aWissenschaft des Judenthums,
Immanuel Wolf called the basic principle of Judaism the idea of unconditional
unity in the universe.55 Too abstract to have been grasped at the time of
revelation, it could only be retrospectively grasped by its effects. Jewish scholars
should therefore set themselves the task of tracing the influence of this Jewish
principle on such historical phenomena as the Roman Empire and Christianity.
Like Catholic scholars, then, Jewish scholars struggled to use scholarship as a
way of legitimating Jewish culture by showing its formative role in history. Butwhile Catholic Wissenschaft saw in fervent devotion and piety a sure sign of
renewal, the Science of Judaism strove to free itself from the perceived yoke
of ritual and tradition. And while Catholic Wissenschaftdeveloped as a critique
of secular scholarship, the Science of Judaism saw modern scholarly methods
as a way of distilling essentials from the sediment of tradition. Wolf stressed
how the Mosaic theocracy and the rituals governing Jewish life had obscured
Judaisms vital principle under a sleepy lethargy. Only when one applied the
free scholarly sense to the mechanical and thoughtless ceremonials resulting
from thousands of years of habit might it be possible to rehabilitate Judaism
according to its basic principle of unconditional unity.56
the second phase: devotional activism in the 1840s
53 Ignaz Heinrich Karl Wessenberg, Uber die Vorstellungen vom Fortschreiten in der
Kultur, in idem,Betrachtungen uber die wichtigsten Gegenstaende im Bildungsgange der
Menschheit(Aarau: Sauerlaender,1836).54 Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, Introduction, inidem,Culture Wars,12.55 Immanuel Wolf, Uber den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judenthums, Zeitschrift fur
die Wissenschaft des Judenthums1(1823),124,3.56 Ibid.1416.
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446 richard schaefer
The polemic against Protestant subjectivism and the articulation of a Catholic
principle were crucial in powering the drive to revamp Catholic Wissenschaft,
but are best seen as enabling conditions. The immediate impetus for this
campaignwhat has been insufficiently attended to in all intellectual histories
of the periodwas the transformation of German Catholicism into a social
and political force in the 1840s. This transformation began in 1837, when the
Archbishop of Cologne was arrested for opposing the Prussian government
on the issue of mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants. Known
as the Cologne Troubles, the event gave rise to demonstrations and helped
foster a new militant Catholic identity.57 By the 1840s surging popular piety
and a readiness to engage in Catholic activism helped shape this militancy
into a movement.58 With the founding of the Borromaus Vereine (1844), the
Pius Vereine(1848), and theKolping Vereine(1849), Catholics lay the foundationfor an associational infrastructure typically referred to as the Catholic milieu.59
Catholic participation in the Frankfurt Parliament gave voice to an emerging
Catholic politics, and the first Meeting of Catholic Societies (Katholikentag)
provided a forum for discussing issues affecting Catholics across the German
territories.60 Non-Catholic contemporaries were some of the first to take note
of these developments. Wilhelm Riehl, for example, contrasted Protestants who
considered how. . . one could make the least dangerous compromises with the
spirit of the times with Catholics, who asked how the Church might bestcapitalize on the compromises of the age.61 And Johann Neigebaur warned that
Catholicisms drive to self-preservation would lead it to forge new and more
powerful weapons.62
It is woefully inadequate to see in these developments an expression of Catholic
backwardness, as so many did.63 The salient fact is that Catholics saw in
57 Friedrich Keinemann,Das Kolner Ereigniss: sein Wiederhall in der Rheinprovinz und in
Westfalen(Muenster: Schoningh,1974).58 Karl Buchheim,Ultramontanismus und Demokratie; der Weg der deutschen Katholiken im
19. Jahrhundert(Munchen: Kosel-Verlag,1963).59 Olaf Blaschke and Frank-Michael Kuhlemann, Religion im Kaiserreich: Milieus,
Mentalitaten, Krisen(Gutersloh: Kaiser/Gutersloher Verlagshaus,1996).60 For a good account of trends in Catholicism in the Rhineland during the Vormarzsee
Weber,Aufklarung und Orthodoxie.61 Wilhelm Riehl,Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage einer deutschen Social-Politik,
2vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1855),2.62 J. F. Neigebaur, Der Papst und sein Reich, oder die weltliche und geistliche Macht des heiligen
Stuhls,2nd edn (Leipzig: Verlagsbureau, 1848).63 A tendency to paint all Catholics as part of the religious right mars Dagmar Herzogs
otherwise brilliant treatment of Badenese politics in the 1840s. Dagmar Herzog,Intimacy
and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press,1996). The fact that many of the figures she treats, such as Hirscher, were
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 447
Catholicism not just a refuge, but a resource for responding to the challenges of
the day. Blurring the line between religion and politics, such devotional activism
took for granted the legitimacy of acting in the name of ones confession. It also
encouraged differentiations within Catholic society, however, as dissidents took
advantage of the expanded opportunities for defining and redefining Catholic
life. The exhibition of the holy coat of Trier, said to be Jesus own robe, attracted
approximately half a million pilgrims in 1844. Consisting mostly of farmers, some
tradespeople, and members of the aristocracy, it alienated the Catholic middle
class, and helped give rise to the breakaway movement of German Catholics
(Deutschkatholiken) who numbered roughly eighty thousand. In this context,
such a movement marked the limits within which variations would be tolerated,
but their departure from the Roman Catholic fold cannot simply be written
out of Catholic history. For they testify equally to a burgeoning readiness tofoment new perspectives on Catholic life that was the hallmark of the revival.64
Cast in the mode of assertive confrontation, devotional activism had always to
contend with the possibility of a hostile response. Whether one was a Catholic
worker in a Protestant shop deciding to participate in a highly visible pilgrimage,
or a Catholic scholar choosing to debate with secularist colleagues, devotional
activism always entailed a choice about whether or not to risk public action in the
name of the faith. This forced Catholics to clarify their position vis-a-vis other
allegiances, a fact that was aptly summarized by Joseph Gorres in his defense ofthe Archbishop of Cologne. According to Gorres, the Archbishop inhabited three
subject-positions. As Archbishop, he was bound to obey the rules, precepts, and
hierarchy of the Church he represented. As a Prussian subject, he was bound by
the law of the land. As a representative of his confession, however, he was also
bound by conscience, and had a duty to live up to the Catholic faith, publicly and
without regard for persecution.65 This call to publicly affirm ones Catholicism
captures the spirit of devotional activism. For Gorres, being Catholic was not
only on a par with being a citizen and a cleric, but a legitimate position from
which to challenge both rival identities.
Devotional activism was put on a new footing with the upheavals of1848. Faced
withthelossofstatesupport,butanxioustocapitalizeonnewfreedoms,Catholics
of all stripes considered how best to recast the Churchs mission. For some, Christ
liberal Catholics by other standards, testifies to the insufficiency of left and right as
foundational categories.64 Andreas Holzem,Kirchenreform und Sektenstiftung. Deutschkatholiken, Reformkatholiken
und Ultramontane am Oberrhein18441866, ed. Ulrich von Hehl (Paderborn: Schoningh,
1994).65 Joseph von Gorres,Athanasius(Regensburg: Manz,1838),4.
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448 richard schaefer
represented the first and most sublime democrat.66 For others, the revolution
was the apotheosis of an anti-Christian principle.67 For most, however, the
situation was complex, and pushed them further than ever in their search for an
applied faith. In The Present Conditions of the Church, the Freiburg theologian
Johann Baptist Hirscher proposed a democratization of Catholicism through
regular diocesan synods. Though such meetings might produce many contrasting
opinions, Hirscher saw the revival itself as providential and thus reassured readers
that nothing destructive will come out of the movement.68 Others were less
optimistic, like Ignaz Dollinger, professor of theology at Munich and perhaps the
most important figure in German Catholic thought, both for his work in Church
history but also for his outspoken criticism of papal infallibility. A delegate to
the Frankfurt Parliament, Dollinger advocated enshrining religious freedom in
the new constitution. To achieve this otherwise liberal goal, Dollinger wasprepared to use illiberal means, however. In a speech to the first Meeting of
Catholic Societies held at Mainz in 1848, he urged delegates to shape and, if
necessary, curb public opinion in favor of the measure.69 Another member of
the Frankfurt Parliament, Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler, who would soon be
named Bishop of Mainz and lead the campaign to address the social question,
spoke in an advent sermon of the danger of becoming a slaveto daily opinion. To
save themselves from the maelstrom of ideas and dizzying changes in scholarly
systems, Catholics should trust in the infallible authority of the Church.70
Still others saw the basic conception of the liberal state as simply unworkable.
Karl Ernst von Moy called it impossible that an individual entrust himself to a
society with all that he knows and has, when he knows naught of what it holds
to be good and true according to which it will issue its sovereign decisions. 71
The exclusion of religion from the state disregarded the conditions that made
individuals capable of true allegiance, and thus true community.
66 D. Thesmar, Ist Christus nicht der erste und erhabenste Demokrat(Bonn: W. Sulzbach,
1850).67 Franz Anton Staudenmaier, Die Grundfragen der Gegenwart, mit einer Entwicklungs-
geschichte der antichristlichen Principien in intellectueller, religioser, sittlicher und socialer
Hinsicht, von den Zeiten des Gnosticismus bis auf uns herab,3 vols. (Freiburg im Breisgau,
1851),3.68 Johann Baptist Hirscher,Die kirchlichen Zustaende der Gegenwart(Tuebingen: Laupp &
Siebeck, 1849),30.69 Verhandlungen der ersten Versammlung des katholischen Vereines Deutschlands am 3.4.5.
und6. October zu Mainz(Mainz: Kirchheim,1848),48.70 Published as Wilhelm Emmanuel Ketteler, Von der Autoritaet der katholischen Kirche,
inidem,Die grossen sozialen Fragen der Gegenwart(Mainz: Grunewald,1948),117.71 Karl Ernst von Moy, Glaubensfreiheit und Glaubenszwang, Wetzer and Welte, Kirchen-
Lexikon,531.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 449
Mirroring thedevotional activism takingroot acrossCatholic society, an article
appearedin 1848 urging scholarsto undertakea program forrevitalizing Catholic
Wissenschaft. Published anonymously in theHistorisch-politische Blatter fur das
katholische Deutschland, Thoughts on the Founding of a CatholicWissenschaft
declared that the present age strives to produce something authoritative, and
in so striving is in agreement with the Catholic principle.72 Since, like religion,
scholarship lifts people out of the domain of the senses into the domain of
freedom, it is the cornerstone of a healthy state organism. To heal the current
tear . . . in political life, therefore, it was essential to consider the merits of a
specifically CatholicWissenschaft. The article especially decried the primacy
given to the understanding, which made its appearance during the time of the
development of Protestantism and caused inner restlessness and confusion,
dissatisfaction with the existing and a desire for the new. And it called forscholarship that, instead of making the person in his thinking into the principle
of all reality, nourished that unconditional submission of the individual to the
universal aims of the state and Church. To that end, it urged that the organs
of Catholic Wissenschaft. . . shape themselves out of, and find the condition of
their efficacy in a Catholic folk. Rooted in the community, Catholic Wissenschaft
would thrive in the exchange with life, refining and clarifying it, drawing it unto
itself, and in turn, being inspired and embraced by it.
That this call for a new program of CatholicWissenschaftappeared first in thepages of theHistorisch-politische Blatteris not surprising. Founded in 1838, the
Blatterrode the wave of protest following the Cologne troubles and, along with
other similar journals, helped foster the dynamic sensibility that was devotional
activism. By placing their triumphs and troubles side by side with those of
Catholics around the world, it helped German Catholics appear to themselves
as participants in a world movement; by identifying and claiming to respond to
contemporary problems on a monthly basis, it embodied the claim that there
was a unified Catholic viewpoint for solving such problems.
73 Towards the
end of the 1850s and the early 1860s, a number of journals likewise embraced
Catholic Wissenschaftas an instrument for solving problems that was compatible
with community interests. In 1859 the Mainz journal Der Katholikchanged its
subtitle from a religious journal for instruction and warning to a journal
for CatholicWissenschaftand Church life. And in 1868the Wurzburg journal
Chilianeumrenamed itself a paper for CatholicWissenschaft, art and life. The
meaning of these changes was clear: Catholics were no longer on the defensive
72 Gedankenuber die Begrundung einer katholischen Wissenschaft,Historisch-politische
Blatter fur das katholische Deutschland21(1848),838,1759,86.73 Bernhard Schneider, Katholiken auf die Barrikaden? EuropaischeRevolutionen und deutsche
katholische Presse18151848(Paderborn: F. Schoningh,1998).
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450 richard schaefer
but ready to be intellectual leaders and Wissenschaftler in their own right.
Instead of warning Catholics, and defending rites and rituals seemingly so out
of step in enlightened, secular society, these journals would assert the relevance
of Catholicism to contemporary society.
The vision of a Catholic Wissenschaft rooted in and responsive to the
community animated scholars into the 1860s.74 Paralleling the devotional
activism taking root across Catholic society, Catholic Wissenschaft aimed to
provide timely solutions to contemporary problems and be a relevant tool in
the construction of a stable society in the uncertain atmosphere provoked by
the events of 1848. This faith in scholarship was nowhere more evident than
at the first Meeting of Catholic Societies. There, Joseph Mast summarized the
prevailing mood when he proclaimed, our goal is forwards, and not backwards,
and assured delegates that things will only get better when we get a capable clergymarked by virtue, eagerness, and scholarship.75 Mast was echoed by Hirscher,
who held that the Church itself must embrace modern scholarship, since it now
had responsibility over educating its clergy. Achieving the right balance between
Church teaching and scholarly freedom was not simply the responsibility of
the bishops and the theological faculty, however; it required the kind of solid
norm that only a synod could produce.76 In1848CatholicWissenschaftserved
many as a vehicle for underscoring the formative influence of community against
the Church. But it was just as common for scholars to emphasize conformityand the subordination of the individual to the community, as evidenced in
the following excerpts from contemporary theological encyclopedias. According
to Johann Hausle, as the opposite of the abstract individuality of the single
person, Catholicisms concrete efficacy lay in transforming the individual
in his intellectual and moral needs simultaneously. Catholic consciousness
74
Catholic concern for community both confirms and complicates Ralf Dahrendorf sassessment of the structuring role ofGemeinschaftoverGesellschaftin German ideology.
Indeed, Catholics saw in community a panacea that might save them from the corrosive
forces of society. But to the extent that this appeal to community also helped consolidate
devotional activism along distinctly modern lines, it cannot be seen in any simple way as
hinderingthe advent of modernity in Germany. Ralf Dahrendorf, Societyand Democracy
in Germany(London: Norton,1967),11325. It also complicates Bryan Wilsons definition
of religion as the ideology of community. While Catholics certainly overemphasized
the power of community theirs was not simply a sentimentalized picture of life in
common, but reflected the expanding infrastructure of organizations and associations
where membership carried certain benefits, both emotional and material. Bryan Wilson,Religion in Sociological Perspective(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
75 Verhandlungen der ersten Versammlung des katholischen Vereines Deutschlands am 3.4.5.
und6. October zu Mainz,24.76 Hirscher,kirchliche Zustaende,35.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 451
consisted in knowing ones mystic union with all Catholics, past and present.77
Franz Xaver Dieringer similarly stressed the power of Catholicism to grasp the
individual in his totality and forge an organic whole out of its adherents.78 No
other system, political or religious, could yield a community of emancipated
life.79
What did scholars envision as Catholic Wissenschaft? Generally speaking,
CatholicWissenschaftprovided them with a rubric for research into Catholicism
and its traditions, without feeling as though this was a retrograde maneuver. Their
confidence notwithstanding, scholars were not unaware of how incongruent
it was to qualify Wissenschaft as Catholic. Baader, for example, conceded
that the concept of national scholarship (e.g. a Prussian in contrast with a
Bavarian) was as absurd as that of a national religion.80 And Moy held it as
axiomatic that where knowledge begins, faith ends.81 Nevertheless, in view ofthe new gains wrought by devotional activism, and in view of the possibility
of a new separation of Church and state, scholars viewed Catholic Wissenschaft
as a necessary bulwark of Catholic values. For Franz Joseph Bu, professor at
Freiburg and a leading campaigner for the creation of a new Catholic university,
every scholarship leads back to God, to religion, and to theology, because every
humantruthisonlytruebasedondivinetruth.82 Scholarship ultimatelyreflected
the different confessional assumptions one brought to it because it was based on
a theological intuition of the unity underlying existence. As Carl Lorinser putit, religion is the spice that preserves scholarship from going bad.83 To the
degree that Protestantism introduced a sick, dangerous, hyper-critical turn into
scholarship, Catholics were justified in fighting fire with fire and sponsoring
a program of distinct CatholicWissenschaft.84
More specifically, CatholicWissenschaftaddressed topics such as the merits of
Latin versus the vernacular languages, the schools question, how to properly
interpret Aristotle, and how to reconcile research with Church authority.
Throughout the 1850sand 1860s, discussions of specific disciplines tended to focus
on history, political economy, the natural sciences, and, above all, philosophy.
77 Johann Michael Hausle, Katholicismus, in Wetzer and Welte,Kirchen-Lexikon,53.78 Franz Xaver Dieringer, Katholicismus, in Aschbach,Allgemeines Kirchen-Lexikon,761.79 Franz Xaver Dieringer, Kirche, in Aschbach, Allgemeines Kirchen-Lexikon,779.80 Baader, Uber das durch unsere Zeit herbeigefuhrte Bedurfniss.81 Moy, Glaubensfreiheit und Glaubenszwang, 529.82 Franz Joseph Ritter von Bu, Der Unterschied der katholischen und der protestantischen
Universitaeten Deutschlands(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1846),271.83 Carl Ignaz Lorinser, Leben und Schule,Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische
Deutschland9(1842),55880,558.84 Uber eine Grundbedingung unserer Zukunft, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das
katholische Deutschland17 (1846),78599,787.
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452 richard schaefer
Where is the Catholic philosophy for the nineteenth century. . . which can be
recommendedingoodconscienceatCatholicschoolsandmadeintoafoundation
by conscientious teachers without fear over conflicts with the Church?85 Because
philosophy was at the forefront of the attacks against dogmatism, Catholic
scholars felt themselves fundamentally obligated to defend their intellectual
habitus in philosophical terms.86 As early as 1822, Maurus Hagel set the tone
by giving himself the task of showing that it is in nowise unphilosophical
to profess Catholicism. This was echoed by many, like Franz Clemens, who
called it the key question to ask in what degree the free acceptance of Catholic
axioms hindered the development of reason,87 and Peter Staudenmaier, who
sought to expose the great presuppositions of modern philosophizing. 88 For
the author of Thoughts it was a necessary condition of the striving for a
Catholic Wissenschaftthat philosophy stand at the apex of the Catholic worldview in all disciplines.89 That Catholic scholars did not merely condemn
philosophy, but sought a new and more Catholic philosophy as an answer
to contemporary ills, reflected the prevalent belief that meaningful action
required a philosophical foundation.90 But it also reflected the ambivalence of
a position that sought to fight modern society using its instruments. In this
context, CatholicWissenschaftcould frequently lead to a kind of metacritique
regarding the concealed presuppositions undergirding modern philosophy.91
Significantly, Catholic scholars repeatedly argued that philosophy should comeback to earth. Against the trend to purify philosophy of extraneous influences
and make it presuppositionless, they stressed its embeddedness in society. As
Wessenberg put it, philosophers have overlooked or mistaken the relationship
between knowing and living.92 For the Munich historian Constantin Ritter
85 Fragmente uber Glauben und Wissen, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische
Deutschland8(1841),193.86 For a good account of the different Catholic reactions to Kant see Norbert Fischer, ed.,
Kant und der Katholizismus: Stationen einer wechselhaften Geschichte(Freiburg: Herder,
2005).87 Franz Jakob Clemens, Die neuere Philosophie, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das
katholische Deutschland8 (1840),44967,53144,451.88 Franz Anton Staudenmaier, Darstellung und Kritik des hegelschen Systems. Aus dem
Standpunkt der christlichen Philosophie.(Mainz: Minerva,1844).89 Gedanken, 87.90 Andrew Lees,Revolution and Reflection: Intellectual Change in Germany during the1850s
(The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974). Klaus Christian Kohnke, The Rise of Neo-Kantianism: German
Academic Philosophy between Idealism and Positivism(New York: Cambridge UniversityPress,1991).
91 In this it paralleled non-Catholic critics as well. Jean Paul Surber, Metacritique: The
Linguistic Assault on German Idealism(New York: Humanity, 2001).92 Ignaz Heinrich Karl Wessenberg,Die falsche Wissenschaft(Stuttgart: Paul Reff,1844),9.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 453
von Hofler, the much-praised freedom of philosophy is . . . only pretended. It
cannot hover . . . proudly unbiased above the people and their affairs.93
Only slightly less important than the drive to put Catholic Wissenschafton a
sound philosophical footing was the desire to repudiate historical research that
challenged Catholic beliefs. There was no denying that the rise of history as an
academic field of study had produced stunning results. Catholic historians, such
as Friedrich Hurter and Karl Menzel, had themselves helped shaped knowledge
of the past.94 But two works appeared in the1830s which caused Catholics grave
concern. Leopold von Rankes History of the Popes, which appeared in 1834,
offered a devastating critique of the papacys role in European politics and
predicted that the papacy would not survive the loss of its temporal states. 95
Even more damaging was David Friedrich Strausss The Life of Jesus Critically
Examined, which sought to expose the Gospels as mythical constructions rootedin the Jewish messianic tradition, open to neither rationalist nor supernaturalist
explanations. In combination, these works seemed to illustrate precisely the
dangersofscholarshipshornofitsobligationtothecommunityandreligion.They
confirmed the Protestant subjectivist impulse behind modernQuellenkritik. For
the Munich historian Constantin Ritter von Hofler, the application of philology
and other tools of source criticism was simply Protestant biblical exegetics
by another name. Historicism in this mode reduced everything to subjective
apprehension, and made every individual interpretation as good as the next. Itamounted to nothing more than looking solely for perspectives, and then using
them . . . to support the plus or minus of Christianity as one cared to, according
to those citations that supported ones position or allowed themselves to be
understood as such . . .96
To fight the effects of Protestantism in modern philosophy and history,
Catholic scholars increasingly turned to the Middle Ages for resources to shore
up CatholicWissenschaft. This turn was hardly inevitable, but was fed by a desire
to find a usable past that could overcome the legacy of Protestant reason. As
Matthias Klug has shown, the fact that secularization had literally relegated so
much Catholic infrastructure to history also fostered a strong existential bond
93 Constantin Ritter von Hofler, Uber katholische und protestantische Geschichtss-
chreibung, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische Deutschland16 (1845), 297320,
2989.94
Kevin Charles Cramer, The Lamentations of Germany: The Historiography of the ThirtyYears War,17901890, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1998.
95 Hubert Wolf, Rankes Papste auf dem Index. Dogma und Historie im Widerstreit
(Paderborn: Schoningh,2003).96 Hofler, Geschichtsschreibung,312.
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between Catholicism and the past.97 A key component in the quest for a usable
past was Antoine Ozanams Dante and Catholic Philosophy in the Thirteenth
Century, published in Paris in 1839.98 Professor of literature, republican, and
founder of the St Vincent de Paul society, Ozanam showed how Dantes poetry
employed symbolism to effectively popularize scholastic philosophy. It thus
sought to refute the charge that scholasticism was abstruse and alienated from real
life, and give a concrete example of the reciprocal influence between a distinctly
Catholic philosophy and Catholic life. Translated into German in1844, the work
energized German Catholic scholars by providing an example of a society that
seemed the living incarnation of the Catholic principle.99 It also showed how
rehabilitating scholastic thought might serve the revival in salutary ways.100 A
European movement, neo-scholasticism was the work in Germany of Joseph
Kleutgen and Franz Clemens, among others, and was only one aspect of theattempt to institute a program of Catholic Wissenschaft. Early neo-scholastics
especially did not conceive of themselves as merely turning back the clock, but
sought to defend scholastic thought as a way of solving contemporary problems.
In arguably the most important neo-scholastic journal, Der Katholik, editors
Johann Heinrich and Christoph Moufang pledged allegiance to the Catholic
principle and the spirit of CatholicWissenschaftand her steady tradition. They
assured readers, however, that they would consider only those objects of Church
history [that]. . .
are stimulating and instructive for the life of the present andthat illuminate the most burning questions and most basic needs of the day.101
Similarly, Hermann Plamann defended a return to Aquinas as true progress
inasmuch as it would pick up on lines of thought that had been forgotten after the
rise of Protestantism, and thus remained underdeveloped.102 Growing out of the
larger movement for a Catholic Wissenschaft, neo-scholasticism in this context
did not see itself as restating the medieval position, but bringing new research to
97 Matthias Klug, Ruckwendung zum Mittelalter? Geschichtsbilder und historische
Argumentation im politischen Katholizismus des Vormarz(Paderborn: Schoningh,1995).98 Antoine Frederic Ozanam, Dante et la philosophie Catholique au treizieme siecle (Paris:
Librairie classique,1839).99 See the review by Franz Jakob Clemens, Dante und die katholische Philosophie des
dreizehnten Jahrhunderts,Historisch-politische Blaetter fuer das katholische Deutschland
(1844).100 Suffering devastating critique underthe Enlightenment, even in Catholic circles, scholastic
thought only gradually regained ground against the dominant trends in German
philosophy. Gerald A. McCool,Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism(New York: 1990).101 J. B. Heinrich and Cristoph Moufang, Vorwort,Der Katholik, Zeitschrift fur katholische
Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben (Neue Folge)1(1859),18,7.102 Hermann Ernst Plamann, Die Schule des heiligen Thomas von Aquino (Paderborn:
Minerva,1859).
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 455
bear on problems. Thus it encouraged new work on Aristotle and problems in
modern philosophical terminology as a means of sharpening a distinctly modern
scholastic hermeneutic.103
Compared to the number of works devoted to philosophy and history, Catholic
reactions to the rising natural sciences were slow. Catholics were not unaware of
the tremendous impact the natural sciences were having, of course. For Johann
Nepomuk Rinsgeis, nothing was more important than to defeat the notion
that Christianity, and especially Catholicism, impedes the freedom of research
and the progress of science.104 Nevertheless, Buchner, Vogt, and, of course,
Darwin were all routinely charged with the dogma of materialism, namely of
reducing all phenomena to a material explanation.105 Starting with their critique
of Protestant reason, Catholics typicallyattacked not theresults of natural science,
but its way of thinking as already false in the thinking subject.106 As FriedrichPilgram put it, natural science grew out of the more general tangle of modern
thinking affecting every area of public opinion. Though some, like the editors
ofNatur und Offenbarung, embraced natural science oriented towards the pure
fact, they were careful to do so in the light of eternal truth, and not in the
sense of a materialism that denied a persons higher consciousness.107 Disputing
not the facts, but only the subjective capricious grasping . . . that produces and
supports the apparent contradiction between the real facts of science and faith,
Catholic critics focused their attention on deeper philosophical problems.
the third phase: a hardening of positions, 1850--69
By the early1860s, the drive to revitalize CatholicWissenschafthad to contend
with new realities. Above all, the papacy was emerging as the pre-eminent
instrument for regulating not only the Church and its machinery, but the practice
103 Die Sprache der katholischen Wissenschaft, Der Katholik, Zeitschrift fur katholische
Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben (Neue Folge) 2 (1859), 83955. Aristoteles und die
katholische Wissenschaft, Der Katholik, Zeitschrift fur katholische Wissenschaft und
kirchliches Leben (Neue Folge)6 (1862),25775.104 Johann Nepomuk Ringseis, Uber die naturwissenschaftliche Auffassung des Wunders
und die culturgeschichtliche Bedeutung Roms, Historisch-politische Blatter fur das
katholische Deutschland48(1861),60218,602.105 Ibid. 610. See also Hermann Josef Dorpinghaus, Darwins Theorie und der deutsche
Vulgaermaterialismus im Urteil deutscher katholischer Zeitschriften zwischen1854und1914
(Freiburg: Universitaetsbibliothek Freiburg,1969).106 Friedrich Pilgram, Uber Philosophie, ihr Verhaltniss zur Natur-Wissenschaft,
Historisch-politische Blatter fur das katholische Deutschland38 (1856),679700,679.107 Friedrich Michelis et al., Vorwort, Natur und Offenbarung. Organ zur Vermittlung
zwischen Naturforschung und Glauben fuer Gebildete aller Staende1(1855),14,3.
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456 richard schaefer
of Catholicism itself. In this context, scholars bid to become shapers of public
opinion was on a collision course with the growing authority of the Pope, who
affirmed his populist anti-intellectualism by promulgating the doctrine of Marys
Immaculate Conceptionin December 1854.108 Thestrugglewith Church authority
only reflected a deeper problem, however, and that was the fact that scholars
had, to some extent, talked themselves into a corner with respect to their own
mandate. By rooting Catholic Wissenschaftin the community, they left themselves
vulnerable to charges of elitism by a community that clearly favored popular
revival. This was true already in nascent form in the controversies surrounding
the exhibition of the Holy Coat of Trier in 1844. But it reached new heights in
the early1860s, as run-ins with the Pope dovetailed with popular attacks against
science and education, and threatened to lump Catholic scholars together with a
whole cadre of liberal evils. A major figure in populist attacks against scholarswas Alban Stolz, a theologian and popular writer who specialized in writing
calendars, and who in hisABCs for Big Peoplederided the learned gentleman
who gives himself airs with cognitions and scholarship. For Stolz, many average
men from the countryside have a healthier understanding in many things than a
paper-pusher or even a Mr Representative.109
The most influential and determined critic of the role of Catholic scholars in
the 1860s was Andreas Niedermayer (183572). Ordained in 1862, Niedermayer
worked for a time at the city library of Frankfurt, before moving across theMain to Sachsenhausen, where he helped administer German missions.110 For
Niedermayer, modern scholarship and its power over public opinion was the
chief source of decay in society. In The Catholic Press in Germanyhe declared,
Modern scholarship, as it formulates its own claims, is not compatible with
anything else on earth.111 In its quest for presuppositionless truth, it had
no room for Catholic truths, which it treated as a Gospel of bigotry and
civilization-stopping superstition. In this context, anyone who defended the
authority of Catholic teaching suffered a kind of intellectual excommunication.
In Science and the German ClericsNiedermayer warned that scholarship offers by
no means a safe defense against characterlessness.112 On the contrary, the more
general education pervades broader circles, the more general characterlessness
108 Viaene, Roman Question.109 Alban Stolz, ABC fur grosse Leute. Kalender fur Zeit und Ewigkeit 1864, inAlban Stolz.
Kompass fur Leben und Sterben, ed. Julius Mayer (Freiburg: Herder, 1911),8.110 Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, ed.,Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon(19902004).111 Andreas Niedermayer,Die katholische Presse Deutschlands(Freiburg: Herder,1861),14.112 AndreasNiedermayer, Der deutscheClerus und dieWissenschaft, 2nd edn (Freiburg: Herder,
1864),4.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 457
becomes.113 What was especially distressing was when a Catholic put the lectern
before the pulpit and did not commit to true Catholic Wissenschaft.114
Such sallies against the pretensions of education, though aimed at a wider
liberal foe, reminded scholars of their obligation to community standards,
and that authority was not a theoretical question, but a practical matter of
orthodoxy and obedience to the Church. Such a reminder became more urgent
in later years, as even former students demanded that their teachers clarify their
allegiances in light of the new doctrine of infallibility.115 Since many of these
attacks came from within academe, scholars had also to confront the fact that
theirs was not a unified program. An instrument of revival, Catholic Wissenschaft
built on the momentum of devotional activism but lacked specific direction
from the outset. By deploying community as the criterion of true Catholicism,
scholars did their part in organizing Catholics into a community of dissentagainst modern secular society. That was the legacy of the 1840s. By the 1860s,
however, new confrontations were the occasion for a hardening of positions
between reformers and those who stressed submission to Church authority.
When debates about specific practical questions forced scholars to take sides and
be more specific about where they saw Catholic Wissenschaftgoing, it exposed
the flimsiness of the ideology of unity structuring their thinking.
The two items topping the agenda in the early1860s were a desire to coordinate
the Catholic press and plans for a new Catholic university. The lifting of thecensorship laws in 1848led to a dramatic rise in the number of Catholic dailies,
and to a new desire to use the press as a way of shoring up Catholic opinion.116
Calls for a better Catholic press often began by attacking the alleged Jewish
element dominating the newspapers.117 In The Catholic Press in Germany, for
example, Andreas Niedermayer blamed communists, freemasons and Jews for a
pervasive anti-Catholic bias in the press. He insisted that Catholics must control
their own press, since whoever controls the word, controls the high priesthood
of humanity. The press is a language that sounds louder than average speech.
Steam power and electricity stand in her service. With hurricane force and
lightning speed, thereproduction of thoughts moves through the whole world.118
113 Ibid.114 Ibid.16.115 Katholisch, oder nicht? Offenes Sendschreiben an Herrn Dr. Joseph Langen in Bonn. Von
einem fruhern Schuler(Aachen: Albert Jacobi & Co.,1871).116 Die Presse und die oeffentliche Meinung, Der Katholik, einer religioesen Zeitschrift zur
Belehrung und Warnung,91(1844).117 For more on learned Catholic anti-Semitism see Helmut Walser Smith, The Learned
and the Popular Discourse of Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Milieu of the Kaiserreich,
Central European History27(1994),31528.118 Niedermayer,Die katholische Presse Deutschlands,7.
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458 richard schaefer
Interest in a new Catholic university received a similar push that same year
as Heinrich Floss published Essay on Parity at the University of Bonn with a
look at Breslau and the other Prussian Universities. According to Floss, excluding
theological faculties, only fourteen of fifty-seven professors were Catholic at the
University of Bonn, and only six of forty at the University of Breslau. Since both
were located in overwhelmingly Catholic regions and attracted overwhelmingly
Catholic students, Floss concluded that only hiring prejudiced against Catholics
explained the disparity; either that, or the knife of the Catholic surgeon must
be duller than that of the Protestant.119 Flosss views revived calls for a new
Catholic university, which had been discussed on and off for decades but never
seemed to get off the ground. Developing quickly into a cause celebre, the plan
was resoundingly embraced at the Meeting of Catholic Societies in1861, where a
special section for scholarship and press was set up under Johann Schulte andGeorg Phillips.120
Concern over the press and plans for a new university represented a
culmination of the desire to use Catholic Wissenschaft as an instrument for
shaping the Catholic public sphere. That this would ultimately lead scholars
into a conflict with Rome was prefigured by a controversy surrounding the
papal nuncio to Bavaria, Antonio de Luca. De Luca proposed his own plan for
the coordination of scholarly powers in Catholic Germany at a meeting in
Wurzburg in September of 1862.121
The plan proposed expanding the Catholicpress, awarding prizes for outstanding scholarship, and instituting a Catholic
Academy to bring together scholars on a regular basis. However, the plan stressed
submission to Church authority and asserted that CatholicWissenschaftthrives
on the foundation of the Church rather than in the universities. This attempt
to pull Catholic Wissenschaftaway from university scholars reflected growing
concern in Rome over German independence in matters of scholarship. 122 It
also led to controversy, as critics complained of the secretiveness and exclusivity
surrounding the plan.123
Roman unease over Catholic Wissenschaftgrew in direct response to Jakob
Frohschammers On the Freedom of Scholarship, which defended the unmitigated
right to investigate the truth. A philosopher at the University of Munich,
119 Quoted in Hans Jurgen Brandt, Einekatholische Universitat in Deutschland? Das Ringen der
Katholiken in Deutschland um eine Universitatsbildung im19. Jahrhundert(Koln: Bohlau,
1981),223. Floss was of course building on Bu,Der Unterschied.120
Brandt,Universitat.121 Ibid.122 John P. Boyle, Church Teaching Authority: Historical and Theological Studies(Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press,1995).123 Brandt,Universitat.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 459
Frohschammer held that foreign interests should have no bearing on free
research,anddefendedscholarsrighttochallengeopenlythedogmasofreligion.
He argued that it was in the best interest of religion to open itself to thorough
scrutiny, for only then could it be assured of possessing true authority.124 He
consequentlydecriedallparticularistprojectswhichencourageprejudiceandthe
corruption of thinkingas opposed to theuniversalityof scholarship. Condemned
by Rome for his ideas, Frohschammer gave Catholic scholars occasion to think
harder about their position. His attack against particularist projects effectively
placed him outside any distinctly Catholic Wissenschaft. However, his claim
that scholarship was good for religion was substantially congruent with the
movements impetus. The Frohschammer affair thus caused some profound
soul-searching on the question of free thought versus authority, and the real
implications of what scholars were trying to do in the name of the faith. 125
Unfortunately, this self-reflection only confirmed Romes assessment of the
tendency of many professors in Germany, as the Munich nuncio Gonella put
it, to elevate themselves to the status of judges and custodians of true Catholic
doctrine.126
Roman concern over the German situation was heightened by the Conference
of Catholic Scholars held in late September 1863 in Munich.127 Organized
by Ignaz Dollinger, Daniel Haneberg, and Johann Alzog, the conference was
aimed at resolving disputes and forging a consensus on the future of CatholicWissenschaft. Lasting four days and spanning seven sessions in all, the Conference
brought together the representatives of CatholicWissenschaft to discuss issues
ranging from the rise of the natural sciences to the need for a new catechism,
from the feasibility of a Central Organ for CatholicWissenschaft to prevalent
124 Jakob Frohschammer, Uber die Freiheit der Wissenschaft(Munich: J. J. Lentner, 1861),57.
See also John P. Boyle, The Case of Jakob Frohschammer, in Anthony J. Cernara, ed.,
Continuity and Plurality in Catholic Theology(Fairfield: Sacred Heart University Press,1998).
125 Alois Schmid,Wissenschaftliche Richtungen auf dem Gebiete des Katholizismus in neuster
und in gegenwaertiger Zeit(Muenchen: J. J. Lentner, 1862).126 Quoted in Boyle,Church Teaching Authority,13.127 The proceedings are published inVerhandlungen der Versammlung katholischer Gelehrten
in Munchen vom 28. September bis1. Oktober1863, ed. Pius Bonifacius Gams (Munchen:
Georg Joseph Manz, 1863). By all accounts, however, these are incomplete and omit
the most divisive debates. For critical commentary see Alexander Dru, Lord Acton,
Dollinger und der Muenchener Kongress, Hochland 56 (1963), 4958; Hugo Lang,
Die Versammlung katholischer Gelehrter in Munchen-St. Bonifaz vom 28. IX. bis 1.X. 1863, Historisches Jahrbuch 71 (1952), 24658; Georg Schwaiger, Die Muenchener
Gelehrtenversammlung von1863in den Stroemungen der katholischen Theologie des19.
Jahrhunderts, in Georg Schwaiger, ed.,Kirche und Theologie(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht,1975),12534.
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program for a new catholic wissenschaft 461
Dollingers bid to solve the national question by means of German theology
found both supporters and detractors.132 Seven delegates asked to have it entered
into the minutes that Dollingers views did not represent them. Others were
sympathetic, but feared his views would anger Rome. These fears proved to be
well-founded, for though Pius IX gave his blessing to the Conference, within
a few months he issued strict new rules forbidding scholars from convening
any such meetings in the future without direct ecclesiastical oversight.133 Romes
assertion of unilateral control over scholarship was, of course, brought home
even more forcefully with the publication of the encyclical Quanta curaand its
appendix, the Syllabus errorum, on 8 December 1864.134 The document left no
doubt about the Churchs position on philosophy, natural reason, or absolute
and moderate rationalismin no way was reason alone sufficient to answer
problems of theology or meet the deepest spiritual needs of Catholics. On thecontrary, as the source of so many errors it was precisely philosophy that
required religion. This blow significantly slowed but did not altogether stop the
campaign for a CatholicWissenschaft, which lived on in muted form to become
the basis of the Gorres Gesellschaft zur Pflege der Wissenschaft im katholischen
Deutschland, founded in 1876. By then there was no mistaking that a shift had
occurred, however. Having suffered the loss of many leading lights, such as
Dollinger, Catholic scholars were no longer in a position to declare themselves
leaders of public opinion. As the mission statement for the Gesellschaft put it,There is, absolutely, such a thing as Catholic Wissenschaft. Its distinguishing
feature is that it accepts as a norm and guiding light the divine truth as infallibly
promulgated and preserved by the Church.135
TheSyllabusaimed at curbing efforts to channel revival Catholicism in any
direction other than in uniform support for the papacy. Though it unleashed a
storm of criticism, at the time and since, one needs to remember that many of the
propositions condemned in the Syllabuswere hardly surprising. It was entirely
132 Die Versammlung katholischer Gelehrten, Der Katholik, Zeitschrift fur katholische
Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben (Neue Folge) 44 (1864), 95111; Die Gelehrten-
Versammlung in Munchen vom 28. September bis zum 1. October 1863, Theologisch-
praktische Quartal-Schrift 17 (1864), 6781; Niedermayer, Der deutsche Clerus und die
Wissenschaft.133 Heinrich Bruck, Von der Bischofsversammlung in Wurzburg 1848 bis zum Anfang des
s.g. Culturkampfes 1870, Vol. 3, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland im
neunzehnten Jahrhundert(Mainz: Kirchheim,1896),409.134
Die Encyclica Seiner Heiligkeit des Papstes Pius IX. von8. Dezember1864und der Syllabus(die Zusammenstellung der 80 hauptsachlichen Irrthumer unserer Zeit), (Koln: Bachem,
1865).135 Gorres-Gesellschaft zur Pflege der