Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
The past two decades have seen an efflorescence of works exploring cultural anti-Catholicism in a variety of national contexts. But so far, historians have engaged in little comparative analysis. This article is a first step, examining recent historical literature on modern British and American anti-Catholicism, in order to trace the similarities and distinctiveness of the turn-of-the-century German case. Historians are most likely to be acquainted with American nativism, the German Kulturkampf, continental anticlericalism, and the problems of Catholic Emancipation and the Irish Question in Britain. Many of the themes and functions of anti-Catholic discourse in the West transcended national and temporal boundaries. In each case, the conceptualization of a Catholic ‘other’ is a testament to the tenacity of confessionalism in an age formerly characterized as one of inexorable secularization. Contemporary observers often agreed that religious culture—like history, race, ethnicity, geography, and local custom—played a role in the self-evident distinctiveness of peoples and nations, in their political forms, economic performance, and intellectual and artistic contributions. We will see how confessionalism remained a lens through which intellectuals and ordinary citizens, whether attached or estranged from religious commitments, viewed political, economic, and cultural change.
1. This survey will draw primarily from the following works: Colley, Linda, Britons, Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London: Bath, 1992);Google ScholarRomani, Roberto, “British Views on Irish National Character, 1800–1846: An Intellectual History,” History of European Ideas 23 (1997): 193–219;CrossRefGoogle ScholarFranchot, Jenny, Roads to Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994);Google ScholarMcGreevy, John T., “Thinking on One's Own: Catholicism in the American Intellectual Imagination, 1928–1960,” Journal of American History (1997): 97–131;Google ScholarAnderson, Margaret, “The Limits of Secularization: On the Problem of the Catholic Revival in 19th century Germany,” Historical Journal 38 (1995): 647–70;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAnderson, , “Piety and Politics: Recent Works on German Catholicism,” Journal of Modern History 54 (1982): 681–716;Google ScholarBaumeister, Martin, Parität und katholische Inferiorität (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1987);Google ScholarBlackbourn, David, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993);Google ScholarBlackbourn, , Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987), chaps. 7 & 9;Google ScholarHübinger, Gangolf, “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” in Imperial Germany, A Historiographical Companion, ed. Checkering, Roger (London: Greenwood, 1996), 156–84;Google ScholarLoth, Wilfried, ed., Deutscher Katholizismus in Umbruch zur Moderne (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1991);Google ScholarMergel, Thomas, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession: Katholisches Bürgertum im Rheinland, 1794–1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994);Google ScholarMooser, Josef, “Christlicher Beruf und ‘bürgerliche’ Gesellschaft: Zur Auseinandersetzung über Berufsethikund wirtschaftliche ‘Inferiorität,’” in Deutscher Katholizismus im Umbruch zur Moderne, ed. Loth, W. (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1991), 124–42;Google ScholarMunch, Paul, “The Thesis before Weber: An Archaeology,” in Weber's Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts, eds. Lehmann, Hartmut and Roth, Günther (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1993), 51–71;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMünch, , “Welcher Zusammenhang besteht zwischen Konfession und ökonomischem Verhalten?,” in Konfession-eine Nebensache?, ed. Hans-Georg Wehling (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1984), 58–74;Google ScholarNipperdey, Thomas, “Max Weber, Protestantism and the Context of the Debate around 1900,” in Weber's Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts, 73–81;Google ScholarNipperdey, , Religion im Umbruch: Deutschland, 1870–1918 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988);Google ScholarSchloβmacher, Norbert, “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” in Deutscher Katholizismus im Umbruch zur Moderne, 164–98;Google ScholarSmith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995);CrossRefGoogle ScholarSperber, Jonathan, “Bürger, Bürgerrum, Bürgerlichkeit, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft: Studies of the German (Upper) Middle Class and Its Sociocultural World,” journal of Modern History 69 (1997): 271–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. See for example Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 100;Google ScholarBlackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 149–50.Google Scholar
3. See for example Nipperdey's stimulating chapter “Die Unkirchlichen und die Religion,” where he discusses the marked “religious tone” that often characterized post-Christian and even anti-Christian trends in German cultural life, 124–53, in Religion im Umbruch; Franchot, Roads to Rome.Google Scholar
4. I refer here to the work of Sowell, Thomas, Race and Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1994);Google ScholarLandes, David, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998);Google Scholarand Innes, Stephen, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995).Google ScholarSee also Josef Mooser's article in Loth's, WilfriedDeutscher Katholizismus (see fn. 1). Culturalist explanations for economic growth have certainly been disputed.Google ScholarSee for example the economic historian Jones's, E. L.Growth Recurring: Economic Change in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Since the 1904 publication of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the Weber thesis has been hotly debated. The problem of illuminating some of the precise mechanisms by which culture can influence the everyday choices and economic behavior of members of lagging ethnic or religious minority groups continues to be an issue and one beyond the scope of this essay.Google ScholarFor one recent critique of Weber see the sociologist Hamilton, Richard F., Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic: a Commentary on the Thesis and its Reception in the Academic Community (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales, Instituto Juan March des Estudios e Investigaciones, 1995). This author finds the culturalist argument persuasive, while conceding the difficulty in measuring the impact of, say, a sermon condemning modern education upon the future educational choices of parishioners. Nevertheless, as turn-of-the-century rural and small-town German Catholic parents considered the merits of higher education for their children, the strength of religious-cultural and group-conformist pressures weighing in against the university as a “factory of atheism” seems compelling and of considerable historical significance. See especially, 35ff.Google Scholar
5. National elites have often relied upon negative portrayals of diplomatic rivals and/or domestic pariah communities to fan patriotism; we will see that in important, if different, senses Great Britain, the Unites States, and the German Empire were recent and self-consciously Protestant nations, in which Catholicism took on what McGreevy, John T. calls a “strategic, antithetical role.”Google ScholarSee McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 111.Google Scholar
6. Colley, , Britons, 18; see also 5, 15, 19, 373–74.Google Scholar
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8. Colley, , Britons, 5.Google Scholar
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10. Colley, , Britons, 29;Google Scholarsee Nipperdey's, (Religion im Umbruch) and Hübinger's (“Chapter 7: Confessionalism”) observations in the German discussion below.Google Scholar
11. Colley, , Britons, 22–23.Google Scholar
12. Colley, , Britons, chap. 1, 11–54, on the influence of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, popularly known as The Book of Martyrs, Patrick Allitt refers to the book as “the central text of Protestant Anti-Catholicism for the next three hundred years.”Google ScholarSee Allitt, Patrick, Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), 18.Google Scholar
13. Colley, , Britons, 32; Nipperdey on “Die Unkirchlichen” in Umbruch; Hübinger, “Chapter 7: Confessionalism.”Google Scholar
14. Colley, , Britons, 35; see chap. 1.Google Scholar
15. Colley, , Britons, 329. For a classic study of the impact of Irish immigration in urban Britain,Google Scholarsee Neal's, FrankSectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 1819–1914: An Aspect of Anglo-Irish History (New York: St. Martin's, 1988).Google Scholar
16. Colley, , Britons, 330.Google Scholar
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18. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 195, 207.Google Scholar
19. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 193.Google Scholar
20. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 193, 198.Google Scholar
21. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 193, 195, 197.Google Scholar
22. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 194–98.Google Scholar
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24. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 203–204.Google Scholar
25. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 202.Google Scholar
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27. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 203.Google Scholar
28. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 203.Google Scholar
29. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 199.Google Scholar
30. Romani, , “British Views on Irish National Character,” 203.Google Scholar
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32. Not to mention Native American converts to Catholicism. Franchot tells us that despite the rampant narivist xenophobia, an estimated 700,000 Americans converted to Catholicism in this period (Roads to Rome, xx–xxi). According to Allitt, middle-class converts in Britain and the United States were not only ostracized, but themselves retained an antipathy toward lower-class Catholics. Thus we learn that the wife of Thomas Arnold (son of the Rugby headmaster of the same name and brother ofMatthew Arnold) blasted Cardinal John Henry Newman for persuading her husband “to ignore every social duty and become a pervert”; the convert George Tyrell could not help but “recoil at the dirt and tinsel” of Catholic churches, and his mother was pained that “a son of mine should go to mass with the cook” (see 5–6).Google Scholar
33. Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 24–25.Google Scholar
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35. Franchot relates an episode in which the Catholic Church was sued after burying two children on Bunker Hill, despite the fact that it had purchased the plot for use as cemetery. Going deeper than a “violation of city health regulations,” Franchot reads this as the “pollution of a Protestant terrain made sacred by the civil religion of the Revolution” (Roads to Rome, 148–49).Google ScholarMausbach, Josef in Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, translated from the sixth German edition (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1914), briefly mentions confessional strife over cemeteries in Germany (41–42).Google Scholar
36. Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 80.Google Scholar
37. Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 127.Google Scholar
38. Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 64, 80.Google Scholar
39. Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 96.Google Scholar
40. Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 80, 100.Google Scholar
41. Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 57.Google Scholar
42. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 107.Google Scholar
43. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 99–100.Google Scholar
44. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 98, 100, 103.Google Scholar
45. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 11.Google Scholar
46. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 97, 107–108, 118.Google Scholar
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48. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 106; on Catholic schools, 119ff.Google Scholar
49. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 105.Google Scholar
50. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 114.Google Scholar
51. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 101.Google Scholar
52. The phrase is taken from German Protestant theologian Friedrich Paulsen; see his 1908 work Philosophia Militans, discussed in Rösener's, Werner “Das katholische Bildungsdefizit im deutschen Kaiserreich,” Historiches Jahrbuch 1, no. 112 (1992): 104–27Google Scholarand in Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 56;Google Scholarfor nineteenth-century British and American criticism of Catholic scholarship, see also Allitt, , Catholic Converts.Google Scholar
53. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 102. Allitt argues that the 1907 antimodernism encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis had “all but guaranteed the intellectual segregation of Catholics for the next fifty years” (Catholic Converts, 107).Google ScholarGerman critics blasted it as a “cultural Inferiorität program,” quoted in Rost, Hans, Die Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben der Gegenwart (Cologne: J. P. Bachem, 1908).Google Scholar
54. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 106–107.Google Scholar
55. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 115–19.Google Scholar
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60. The literature on religion and its pronounced influence upon the politics and society of imperial Germany is plentiful. As introduction, I refer the reader to the works of Anderson, Margaret, Blackbourn, David, Blaschke, Olaf, Hölscher, Lucien, Hübinger, Gangolf, Lehmann, Hartmut, Liedhegener, Antonius, Loth, Wilfried, Mergel, Thoms, Mooser, Josef, Nipperdey, Thomas, Rauscher, Anton, Schieder, Wolfgang, Sperber, Jonathan, and Weber, Christoph (see fn. 1 for bibliographical information).Google Scholar
61. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 156;Google Scholarsee also Nipperdey's, ThomasReligion im Umbruch, where he observes the persistence of “confessional duality as a fundamental political fact,” long after the Kulturkampf had ended.Google Scholar
62. Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 73–75;Google ScholarHäbinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism” 157.Google Scholar
63. Anderson, , “Piety and Politics” and “The Limits of Secularization”; Helmut Wasler Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict; and Blackboum, Marpingen and Populists and Patricians.Google Scholar
64. The phrase is Blackbourn's; on the proliferation of Catholic Vereine, see Loth, Wilfried, Deutscher Katholizismus and Jonathan Sperber, “Bürger, Bürgertum, Bürgerlichkeit, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft.”Google Scholar
65. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber” and Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians, 143.Google Scholar
66. Populists and Patricians, 143.Google Scholar
67. Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 235.Google Scholar
68. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 162.Google Scholar
69. See Anderson, Margaret and Barkin, Kenneth, “The Myth of the Puttkamer Purge and the Reality of the Kulturkampf,” Journal of Modern History 54 (1982): 647–86;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAnderson, , “The Kulturkampf and the Course of German History,” Central European History 19 (1986): 195–225;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBlackbourn's, DavidClass, Religion and Local Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980) and Populists and Patricians;Google ScholarBecker, Josef, Liberaler Stoat und Kirche in der Ära von Reichsgründung und Kulturkampf (Mainz: Gruenewald, 1979);Google ScholarBecker's, Winfried “Liberaler Kulturkampf-Positionen und politischer Katholizismus,” in Innenpolitsche Probleme des Bismarck Reichs, ed. Pflanze, Otto (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1983);Google ScholarSmith, H. W., German Nationalism and Religious Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995);CrossRefGoogle ScholarLoth, Wilfried, Katholiken im Kaiserreich (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1984);Google ScholarZeender, John, “Recent Work on the German Center Party,” Catholic Historical Review 70 (1984): 428–41.Google Scholar
70. See Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 159.Google Scholar
71. Nipperdey, , Religion im Umbruch, 15–16.Google Scholar
72. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 152–53.Google Scholar
73. Loth, , Deutscher Katholizismus; Hübinger, “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 161–63.Google Scholar
74. Schloβmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 164ff; though by no means typical, the frequency with which Schloβmacher discovers Catholics and non-Catholics making common cause in the struggle against ultramontanism is not insignificant. What united them was a belief that ultramontanism was only one trend, and indeed a dangerous one, within Catholicism. See fn. 79 below.Google Scholar
75. Schloβmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 165.Google Scholar
76. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 166.Google Scholar
77. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 162, 190.Google Scholar
78. Schloβmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 172; Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians, 161.Google Scholar
79. On the minority of Protestants who perceived a distinction between Catholicism generally and militant ultramontanism, a small group compared to most in the Evangelischer Bund, who rejected such distinctions in favor of a wholesale attack on Catholicism, see SchloBmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland”; on the Bund, see Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 47.Google Scholar
80. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 167.Google Scholar
81. Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 78–79; Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians, 162; Schloβmacher, “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland” 165.Google Scholar
82. The quote comes from Catholic theologian Josef Mausbach, who responds to Protestant critiques of Catholic dogma, including the polemics of Hoensbroech, Paul, in Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, translated from the sixth German edition (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1914), 337–38;Google Scholarsee also the Belgian economist Laveleye, Emile de, Protestantism and Catholicism, in their Bearing upon the Liberty and Prosperity of Nations (Toronto: Belford Bros., 1876), 20, 44.Google ScholarNeither his national origin, nor his Catholic roots, prevented Laveleye's writings from becoming classic texts in the rurn-of-the-cenrury German debate about Catholic culture (see Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 76–77).Google Scholar
83. Quoted from Hoensbroech, in Schloβmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 164; in a similar vein, the Protestant pastor from Dresden, Johannnes Forberger, recalled the Sun King when he said of Pius IX, “Die Kirche binich.” His proclamation of infallibility in 1870 was, according to Forberger, nothing less than an attempt to revive “Roman caesarism.”Google ScholarSee Forberger, , Der Einfluβ des Katholizismus und Protestantismus auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung der Völker in Flugschriften des Evangelischen Bundes, Leipzig: 21. Reihe 241–252): 245/246, 1906, 54. Forberger's several publications with the Bund are, I suspect, among the more cautious anti- Catholic works coming from this quarter.Google Scholar
84. Nipperdey, Thomas explains that while nationalist interpretations began to overshadow such analyses, in France for example, “in Germany this type of reasoning survived among Protestants.” In large measure this continued influence could be traced to the impact Laveleye's 1870's publications had on the later German debate.Google ScholarSee “Max Weber,” 77–78. See also Münch, Paul, “The Thesis before Weber: An Archaeology”; Baumeister, Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 76–77. Indeed, there evolved something of a circular relationship between the older discussion, Laveleye, and the polemics of the Evangelical Alliance. The Alliance was eager to avail itself of theories, not only from Laveleye, but from eighteenth-century participants in the discussion of religion and political economy, especially when anti-Catholic conclusions had been drawn by Catholics. Thus, Johannes Forberger, in his introduction to Einfluβ, defers to the Catholic Aufklärer Johann von Ickstatt, whose own anonymously published “Warum ist der Wohlstand der protestantischen Staaten so gar viel gröβer als der katholischen?” (1772) was republished by the Alliance in 1900.Google ScholarSee Munch, , “Welcher Zusammenhang besteht zwischen Konfession und ökonomischem Verhalten?,” 62 (see fin. 1); Baumeister, Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 102 n. 287. Throughout his analysis Forberger also makes frequent reference to Laveleye.Google Scholar
85. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 77–78;Google ScholarForberger, and Laveleye, passim; summing up the late-nineteenth-century Protestant view, Catholic nations were simply ‘under a narcotic,’ Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 306.Google ScholarThe resonance of such arguments over time is indeed striking; for a recent treatment see Landes, David, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998).Google Scholar
86. Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 19–40; Forberger, Einfluβ, 53–54.Google Scholar
87. Laveleye, argues that Catholicism left men morally unfit to govern themselves, Protestantism and Catholicism, 19ff.Google Scholar
88. Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 20.Google Scholar
89. On the demonization of the Jesuit order, see Anderson, , “Piety and Politics,” 698. As in the case of antebellum America, the frightful power of the Jesuits was located in their caste-like organization. Celibate and devoted entirely to Rome, they were viewed as an occupying army in their own country, ‘uninvested’ in the nation, without property or family responsibilities. Living among the citizenry while eschewing all patriotic attachments, there was no question of where their loyalty lay.Google ScholarSee Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 19, 47, 55–57;Google ScholarBaumeister, , Paritüt und katholische Inferioritüt, 82; on the “deficiency in personality” that allegedly afflicted the celibate, see Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 291. The most disastrous results of Jesuit infiltration could be found, according to Forberger and others, in Iberia. There, the hypnotic power of Jesuit fanaticism had transfomed “a once blossoming land full of heretics into a desert” (Forberger, Einfluβ, 35).Google Scholar
90. For Laveleye, , France's rejection of the light of the Reformation went a long way toward explaining its subsequent political chaos and moral decadence. He compares the Revolutions of 1789 and 1776: the rank corruption of the ançien Regime, the cynical irreligion propagated by Voltaire, and the misguided fanaticism of men like Robespierre were the results of Catholic oppression; in Laveleye's view, these wither in the face of colonial America's Puritan traditions and the “incomparable moral tone” that inspired the American revolutionaries, and indeed endured, not in spite of, but precisely because of, the separation of church and state (Protestantism and Catholicism, 24–40).Google Scholar
91. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 144, 145–48;Google ScholarAnderson, , “Limits of Secularization” and “Piety and Politics,” the latter of which helps to clarify the controversy over when precisely the revival of Catholic piety occurred and includes a review of Jonathan Sperber's Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth Century Germany (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984);Google ScholarSchieder, Wolfgang, “Kirche und Revolution: Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte der Trierer Wallfahrt von 1844,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 14 (1974): 419–41;Google Scholarsee also Busch's, Norbert recent analysis of the evolution of the Sacred Heart cult in Katholische Frbömmigkeit und Moderne: Die Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschkhte des Herz-Jesu-Kultes in Deutschland zwischen Kulturkampf und Ersten Weltkrieg (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 1997).Google Scholar
92. Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 108.Google Scholar
93. On the “strongly elitist thrust” of this discourse, see also Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 149–59.Google Scholar
94. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 149ff. and Helmut Wasler Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 25ff., 65ff., which includes a look at the Protestant cultural assumptions informing nationalist German scholarship and the concomitant intellectual limitations and academic marginalization of Catholic historical and literary works in imperial Germany. Compare Allitt's analysis of the dearth of scholarly contributions coming from British Catholic circles; despite his conversion to Catholicism, Cardinal Newman nevertheless “lamented that the great classics of English literature were Protestant to the core and that English was in effect a Protestant language” (Catholic Converts, 12).Google Scholar
95. Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 25ff.Google Scholar
96. On Protestant Innerlichkeit vis-à-vis the “visibility of Catholic kitsch,” see Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 21; Forberger underscores both the spiritual and economic inefficiency of the “throng of external Catholic customs” and holydays, Einfluβ, 47, 41ff.; the well known Protestant theologian Adolf von Harnack equated the administration of sacraments with “conjuring tricks,” “like medicine” (Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 312, 318); In his discussion of “puerile Catholic ceremonies,” Laveleye refers to the account of a visitor to Brazil, where the people were “nourished exclusively on grotesque processions, with coloured saints, lighted tapers, and cheap nosegays,” (Protestantism and Catholicism, 49);Google Scholaron the British mockery of Catholic relics, see also Colley, , Britons, 36.Google Scholar
97. As quoted by Mausbach, , Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 41.Google Scholar
98. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 172; Sperber describes Bildung as a “secularized version of German Protestant ideals,” (“Bürger, Bürgerrum, Bürgerlichkeit, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft,” 276); As a unique and integral part of German conceptions of cultural Protestanism, Bildung was an important conduit for that survival of religious sensibility in post-Christian culture illuminated by Nipperdey in Religion in Umbruch, 124–53.Google Scholar
99. The intention was, as Hübinger explains, a kind of “reconciliation between faith and knowledge,” (“Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 174). By contrast, the dogmatic and anti-intellectualist trends in Catholic teaching and culture, according to critics, hampered the development of the morally autonomous personality. The Roman Church demanded what the Protestant theologian Herrmann described as an “absence of conscience,” (Mausbach, , Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 4–5);Google ScholarForberger, , in his Moralstatistik und Konfession (Halle: Verlag des Evangelischen Bundes, 1911, pamphlet 315/317), offered the following analysis: the individual Catholic was lamentably prone to “moral helplessness,” for “the Catholic principle is not the development of the Christian personality, but rather its integration within the organism of the Church. The highest religious virtue for the Catholic is not faith but obedience” (39).Google Scholar
100. Mausbach on the suggestion of Strauβ, David Friedrich, (Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 290–91); similar conflations of art and religion were advanced, for example, by Goethe (Hübinger, “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 172).Google Scholar
101. For many critical observers, the interrelationship between Catholic spiritual immaturity, lack of industriousness, and uncivilized behavior was self-evident. Laveleye informs his readers that the Catholic herdsmen of Appenzell gathered “only at mass, at wrestling match, and at public house” (Protestantism and Catholicism, 13). As with stereotypical criticisms of the Irish, it seemed that lower-class German Catholics were only to be found getting brainwashed, getting violent, and getting drunk.Google Scholar
102. Busch; review by Weichlein, Siegfried, for H-Soz-u-Kult Digest, 07 1998.Google Scholar
103. Blackbourn, , Marpingen, 164; Blackbourn argues that “key sections” of the Catholic educated middle classes were “desperately embarrassed” by the excess of ultramontane devotionalia (Populists and Patricians, 203). Indeed, contemporary critics also doubted the appeal of popular piety for educated Catholics. Laveleye theorized that Catholicism “produces such complete indifference in religious matters, that even the requisite strength honestly to leave the Church is wanting” (Protestantism and Catholicism, 50). That few Catholics did leave the church, especially during the heightened solidarity of the Kulturkampf period, see for example Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 23. This theory from Laveleye seems to gain a certain credibility when one considers the biographical evidence uncovered by Thomas Mergel, who argues that a “creeping secularization” was occurring within the cultural milieu of the Rhenish Catholic patriciate; see Part I, chaps. 5 & 7; Part ÜI, chap. 4 in Zwischen Klasse und Konfession (see fn. 1).Google Scholar
104. Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 54.Google Scholar
105. Mausbach, , Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 3.Google Scholar
106. Mausbach, , Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 13–14.Google Scholar
107. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 149–50.Google Scholar
108. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber,” passim.Google Scholar
109. Rost, , chap. 1, in Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben der Gegenwart.Google Scholar
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111. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 145.Google ScholarFor recent and important correctives to the gloomy picture of Catholic socio-economic achievement, see Mergel, Thomas, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession and Antonius Liedhegener, “Marktgesellschaft und Milieu: Katholiken und katholische Regionen in der wirtschaftlichen Enrwicklung des deutschen Reichs, 1895–1914,” Historisches Jahrbuch 113 (1993): 283–354. Yet the fact is that contemporaries perceived a crippling socio-economic retardation among the German Catholic population as a whole, of which Mergel's Rhenish bourgeoisie was only a tiny percentage.Google Scholar
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130. Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 14; it was observed that Catholic Appenzell “shuts her gates to all the world … and holds in pure contempt the arts by which her [Protestant] neighbours thrive.”Google Scholar
131. Mergel's, Thomas reconstruction of the culture of the Rhenish Catholic patriciate and its commercial participation leads one to conclude that educated and successful middle-class Catholics had come to share more in common with their Protestant and liberal socio-economic counterparts than with their lower-class and less educated coreligionists.Google ScholarSee Mergel, , Zwischen Klasse und Konfession, esp. Part 1, chaps. 4, 5, & 7; Part II, chap. 4.Google Scholar
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135. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 5. The Protestant theologian Karl Sell's views on the papal Index were typical: the policing of scholarship made it “absolutely impossible for educated Catholics, with few exceptions, to form an independent opinion regarding others,” (Mausbach, Catholic Moral Theology and its Antagonists, 34);Google ScholarSchell, Herman understood the predicament all too well, complaining that it was entirely unnecessary for “a research conclusion to first be certified by a Jesuit” (Schlofimacher, “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 178). Despite the logical overlap of both participants and themes, however, the “reform Catholic” movement was primarily a theological discussion; the larger issues surrounding the problem of the Catholic socio-economic lag focused above all upon the everyday conduct of Catholics and the practical consequences of a Catholic cultural climate shaped by both explicit church teachings and implicit maxims and attitudes.Google ScholarSee Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 86ff.;Google ScholarBlackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 203.Google Scholar
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142. See note 52.Google Scholar
143. Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 50, 40–59;Google ScholarNipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 75.Google Scholar
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146. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 20, 36–38, 54–56, 57ff.;Google Scholaron the climate of mistrust, Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 49.Google Scholar
147. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 20;Google ScholarBaumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 96. Baumeister asserts that Rost's understanding of the origins of the problem is limited almost entirely to “external” factors and refers only to “internal” circumstances in passing; though I would not assign too much weight to a single remark, I do believe that Rost's several critical observations about Catholic attitudes give his work in its entirety a self-reflective tone that deserves greater consideration.Google Scholar
148. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 62.Google Scholar
149. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 60.Google Scholar
150. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 61Google Scholar
151. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 65;Google Scholarcompare his analysis to that of Forberger, , Moralstatistik, 6, 38 and Einfluβ, 41ff.Google Scholar
152. See also Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 91.Google Scholar
153. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 66.Google Scholar
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157. Sowell, Thomas, Race and Culture, xii, 3, 7–10;Google ScholarSowell, , Markets and Minorities; Landes, Wealth and Poverty of Nations, where Landes argues that cultural receptivity has played a significant role in the progress of nations and peoples throughout world history.Google Scholar
158. The phrase is from Landes, Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 15. Sowell has observed that elite members of lagging minorities the world over often have been persuaded by outside criticisms of the “unprogressive attitudes” of their cultural group (Race and Culture, 13).Google Scholar