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Show I GERMANY TURNING TO ST. BONIFACE. i ! l I Great Recessional Wave in Lutheran Germany Prussia No j Longer a " Protestant State." ! r . ! 1 Standard and Times: One of the i most significant phenomena in the re- ligious firmament is the great reces- ! : t-ional wave in Lutheran Germany, j i For a quarter of a century this process j I of retreat and diminution has been go- I Sng under a dual form. In the very A ' g home and cradle of Lutheranism the , erosive action of triumphant Catholi- I f cism has been crumbling the cliffs of I I Jieresy so that they drop in masses into j t the ocean of nothingness, and at the f - fame time filling their places with the ' substance of the true faith. When one 1 remembers the noisy cackling that pre- j 1 vailed for a while over the pretended j J teligious secession in Austria, and then t "i examines the statistics now flowing in i Jrom Protestant Germany, it will be A easy to understand why so much was ! t-ought to be made of the little "ruse de j tufrre" called "Los von Rome." f It has long been customary with j j ' writers and speakers on social condi-tions condi-tions to reler to Prussia as a Protes- I t tant state. Most certainly the impres- j '. Fion that its claims to be so described j is genuine was strengthened by the !j )roceedings of Bismarck and his emis- ary, Dr. Flack, in the matter of the ) Kulturkampf. Lutheranism being the Hate relipion in many German prov- Jnces, the assumption that it based its j claims to repress" the Catholic popula- j tion on a numerical preponderance was natural. But it no. appears that while" the Lutherans were playing the perse- I tutor they had no such warrant. , 1 I'- is from a jeremiad in the Lutheran Observer of this city that we get a ; ; tabulated ullagone revealing the dis- ma I shrinkage of Lutheranism in its ' , own natal place. Its harrowing figures I are taken from an authoritative work, Pieper's "Kirkliche Statistik." There j is no chance of impugning Pieper's -! facts of figures, it is sorrowfully ad- ' lnitted, moreover, since he is a Lutheran Luther-an "pastor emeritus' 'and his work is j accepted as one of the scientific au- ! ihorities published in Tubingen and ' Leipzig by Mohr. In a chapter on re- f .' rpective percentages of increase in the , ;' I'atholic and Protestant populations i from the .vea.rlS71 (just about the be- t pinning of the Kulturkampf move- I inent) until 3895. Pieper gives the fol- 5 lowing sets of figures ("Evanlical" ; meaning Lutheran): ;. , . Evangelical. Catholics. Prussia itf.ijs 33.112 Saxonv w 4 t;i .v J Bavaria 22.16 ls!W ; urtemburg IS. 32 12.27 1 Baden 2HS5 rS.9 I I Hesse JS.92 27.94 : J Klsass-Lorrnine .. 31.41 .88 : ; " This shows a total increase for the ', twenty-four years on the Evangelical 1 ft Fide of 135.95 per cent, and on the Cath- , olic of 2G5.9S. Coming down to Prussia f I'fpcr, the very heart of German Pro- f tstantism. we find a very curious j state of things for a system that as- Fumed to rule and domineer and im- i 1'iison people of other belief on the pretense of the right of the majority. I Pieper shows by his statistics that in I J, 'here were in Prussia ten and one- ; I third millions of Protestants and eleven mjllions of Catholics, and . that from : 3 S71 to 1S95 the Catholic increase was i Ppr cent and the Protestant increase U 5-S per cent. Going down to still ; c loser details, the inquirer finds a con- 'i ditions of things in the process now i going on that may well appal the fol- lowers of the "great reformer." The j transformations in certain of the Prus- ' I ian provinces and these formerly the ? most ultra Lutheran are simply stupe- ! I fying in their extent. Take, for ex- i i ample, the respective percentages of increase in-crease in the following sections: Evangelical. Catholic. East Prussia li.i 27.! West Prussia IS. 7 35.8 Berlin lMi.6 413.4 Brandenburg 42. a 3i"7.8 omerania 11.9 12u.: Poscu 13.9 33.4 Siiesia : IS. 2 424 Saxony 35.5 49.9 Sclileswig-Holatein .. .. 37.3 1109.2 ' What can account for the enormous alterations of religious conditions in such places as Benin and Schleswig-lio.stein? Schleswig-lio.stein? Pieper endeavors to explain the phenomena phe-nomena by the fact of emigration. The west, he says, is draining the east. Ihere is no doubt on this head; but neither is there any of the fact that the force of the movement is exerted quite as strongly on the Catholic population pop-ulation of the Fatherland as on the Protestant. Pieper says that the influx of Catholics from the east is greater than the efflux of Protestants to the west. But, unfortunately for this attempt at-tempt at explanation, he has no figures or facts to adduce in support of it. It is nothing more than a random guess. Is it not much more reasonable to trace in those startling changes a falling away from the cult of Lutheranism and an enthusiastic movement toward the old faith of the Fatherland? The significance of Pieper's statistics seems to stagger the writer in the Lutheran Observer. He asks Lutheran readers to bear in mind the following rpoints in order to realize the full meaning mean-ing of the story which Pieper's tables tell: "(1) That Prussia contains about two-thirds of the entire German population, popu-lation, and in many of its separate states and great cities has been regarded re-garded as the veriest stronghold fif Protestantism. Yet in the space of twenty-four years the Catholics Increased In-creased in that territory more than 6 per cent faster than the Protestants. (2) That in the kingdom of Saxony, which was almost the very cradle of the Reformation, and in Hesse, which was its valiant defender, the Catholic per cent of increase is in the one case nearly four times, and in the other about one and a half times as great as that of the Protestants. (3) That the Protestant excess in Bavaria, Ba-varia, where - the Catholics are .nearly twice as numerous as the Protestants, and in Wurtemberg, where the Protestants Protest-ants are more than twice as numerous, and in Baden, where the Catholics have nearly two-thirds of the population, is relatively less, and is both relatively and absolutely less significant. "As for the much larger Protestant increase in Elsass-Lorraine the excess is due to the removal of the French, that is. the non-Protestant, elements of I the population after 1871; to the pres- ence of the fifteenth army corps drawn mostly from Northern Germany; and to immigration from all parts of Germany." Ger-many." It is hardly wonderful, considering what he finds here confronting him, that the writer in the Lutheran Observer Ob-server begins to doubt the propriety of describing Germany any longer as an "Evangelical" country. This in a ra-tiona ra-tiona Idoubt, but its solution is more interesting to Catholics by reason of the greatness of what it signifies in a spiritual sense rather than by any abstract ab-stract question of niceties of nomenclature. nomen-clature. To get a great nation back again into the fold of Boniface would be a glorious achievement for the twentieth twen-tieth century to inscribe on its banner. And to such a sublime hope indeed the index finger of an eventful time seems surely pointing. |