Joseph Bernhart

“ Fame was like a charming lullaby that spoke of approaching better times. But the battle with Rome had begun, the seed of disunity sprouted, and as days and years went by the sower saw ripening a terrible harvest he had not desired. In his person the whole Germanic spirit had revolted in its dual nature, which is compounded of childlike candour and barbaric savagery. A nature which was religious to the core drew a sword against the objective truth of religion, out of yearning for holiness and out of pious shudder- ing in the presence of a just God enthroned above an unjust world. ”

“ But is there not behind all this a smile that comes from the depths of knowledge of human nature? Precisely because tides and insignia are of no value, Rome uses them as the steward in the Gospel used the mammon of iniquity with which he made friends. All these wearers of honours do no injury to the Papal court; and hundreds of people in all the world, who covet or possess a place in the spodight, are indebted more deeply to Rome by such distinctions than they would otherwise be. Everything serves the great business of the Church even human vanity. ”

“ It lives out of the hand of its God, Who is holy, just and wise, even though He permits His people to fall into misery and allows the enemy even Jahwe's own enemy to triumph. For all things are but tools in His hand and serve His end. But this end: the day will come when it shall be attained and one of His holy people shall be His instrument, the founder of a Divine do- minion over all nations for all rime. Heavy, stifled eras seek to breathe by taking refuge in a bygone age of gold, or in the liberating visions of hope. ”

“ Indeed, it is ceaselessly active, constantly busy, scrupulously diligent even, restless on every Sabbath day, because it does not believe as Rome believes, or as Luther, as Calvin, and all who have yearned to stand in the light of the Eternal Throne, have believed; and it musters up a brilliant display of energy, intelligence, beauty, success, material comfort, in order to do battle with that terrible nothingness upon which there can be no point of rest even for thought or feeling. Thus humanity becomes creative by reason of terror. ”

“ ROME, THE ESCORIAL, AND VERSAILLES
Michaelangelo's dome above St. Peter's Cathedral was finished in 1590. The most majestic crown which ever a metropolitan city wore seems to reach heaven without leaving earth. The reality which it symbolizes has never faded, is alive and forever in consonance with it- self. When the silver trumpets blare down from under its mighty span, they stir hearts which beat in unison with the dead of many gen- erations and with millions of living brethren who in all parts of the world profess the same faith. ”

“ The idea of world empire had not died. Lamentations over the dissolution of the Imperial state were heard anew. But in gazing backward and indulging the hope that a Hohenstaufen monarch would return, men also conjured up a dream-image of a ruler who would bring peace to all the world. Dante was the creator of that image, or at least its most fiery prophet. In composing an elegy for the dead Henry he did not join one side or the other in the conflict over the decadent Imperial throne. He was neither Guelph nor Ghibelline. The object of his desire was the humanization of mankind. ”

“ But Rome believes. For Rome the world has a foundation. It adheres to permanence amidst change, and summons change to find its meaning in permanence and to draw sustenance from it. It stands for the Eternal Something which is always true to and in conformity with itself. Therefore it is rigid, is a sign of contradiction and a scandal in a world of change and motion. It moves others through the calm with which it endures, just as rock in a stream is a source of movement in that it throws back the foaming flood. ”

“ Have I been elected to an eternal happiness which I cannot earn with my poor human power? Shall I ever be worthy to appear before the Eyes of God? Who can stand in the Presence of Him, the Holy One? With all his temperament Luther clings as firmly to God as his body does to the chains of concupiscence. Now that he has reached the years of maturity this uncontrollably sensual peasant son who has fettered himself with irrevocable vows, feels the power of the flesh strike like fire from within. ”

“ Only the Roman bishop can rightly be called universal. He alone has the power to issue new laws, to establish new congregations, to remove bishops without a synodal decree, to divide rich dioceses and to consolidate poor ones. His alone is the right to confer the Imperial insignia. He alone can give all princes his foot to kiss. His name is mentioned in all prayers of the Church the name of "Pope," by which he is called, is reserved to him alone. He has the right to depose Emperors; no synod can be termed general without his assent. ”

“ Unless all the witnesses err, the strength of the best men in the Church consisted in these things: faith, deep awareness of the Kingdom of God, and personal possession of the new reality which dispelled the old as morning ends a dream. Cyprian and countless others round about him went to the place of judgment knowing that the sun was setting for them over the Empire and all earthly things, but confident within that theirs was a universe having neither beginning nor ending and resting upon itself as firmly as the ground over which a stream flows. ”

“ When he mercilessly enforced the ancient law of clerical celibacy despite all revolts of the flesh and all the tears of those whom the law affected, he gave historical validity to the teaching that a state, the officials of which are unmarried and continent, is unconquerable. More than any other statesman he had the courage and the power to regard politics as the art of the impossible. Though he often failed because reality was stronger than he, it is even more evident that he triumphed over reality in his own time and, by his influence, in later ages. ”

“ All too strong a reliance upon secular means, on power, splendour, renown and everything which the pious soul frowns on and the saint smiles at, tempted them to form an alliance with the Caesaristic, semi-Asiatic despotism which prevailed at the Court of Louis. The two great objectives of their society — to fight the battles of the Papacy and to keep the mighty of this world within the Church — were confused, to the injury of both. So eager were the Jesuits to render service to the Court that they forgot die duty of rendering service to the higher absolutism of ethical law. ”

“ He saw in the world-embracing community of the Church the result of an historical development which blended good with evil as a net contains good and bad fish, as a herd consists of sheep and goats, as a field is sown with wheat and weeds, but which is holy none the less because God is its Founder and its Shepherd. With a heavy heart, and also after a tragic farewell to his own convictions, the most illustrious teacher of the Church abandoned his former view that one must not make honest heretics Catholics by force. ”

“ The European "nations" shook the Empire to its foundations. France demanded hegemony, brought the exiled Papacy under its control, and spread a new conception of the state among the peoples. Philosophy followed a course that led to pure secularism, and another course that led to the absolute self-sufficiency of the individual soul. Both estranged it from the Church. Apocalyptic feelings preyed on men's emotions, carrying them now to epidemics of despair concerning the world and its rulers, and now to the burning hope that an Emperor- Messiah, or a Pope like unto an angel, was to come. ”

“ There- fore is renunciation of the world a tremendous thing, even as is the act of plunging into the very heart of the world.
The gods of Rome were old; and the new divinities which the city welcomed were merely such as rise when men already confront the deities with an incredulous smile. The added fact that the emperor was paid divine honours was not much more than a political gesture in which respect for the might of Rome, for its unity as the empire which transcended all peoples and gods, found expression. ”

“ It lies in the nature of Utopia never to come true; and yet it is precisely the fact that it cannot be realized which gives it tremendous power. It is always a yonder and never a here. It can never be reached, and still it leads us on, lighting the way and begetting history like the pillar of fire into which Jahwe changed Himself so that He might go before His people in the days of their tribulation. ”

“ He derides and despises reason in the things of religion. With heroic self-sufficiency, he places his confidence in the voice that speaks from within. He thunders at the cunning of those who would seek God in thought, and understands Him through a faith possessing religious force as One who is exalted above all that is human. Study, brooding and the discipline have not quieted his inner torment; no measure of good works has sufficed to bring him peace ”

“ As he looked back over history, he saw that evidence for the divine origin of the Papacy was supplied also by the very fact that it had survived all the weaknesses and upheavals in its history. "The more conscientiously unadulterated historical truth is explored, the more clearly will every unprejudiced mind see that despite the many shadows which can be discerned on the human figures of the Popes and their associates, that history as a whole speaks with sovereign insistence to the mind of man of a Church of Christ that is divine." ”

“ The arts of the Renaissance, if one excludes a few of its products, were no longer in- spired by the power of religion to give expression to its convictions, but grew out of the states of mind in which self-reliant man may find himself. To these artists religion became merely the subject-matter, the object, and the complex of symbols by which they gave expression to human points of view arising from within themselves. ”

“ The leadership of empires and states must not only make kings mighty or subjects happy and well fed. A feeling that all transitory things are mere symbols, a desire to dispose human affairs according to the Divine plan, sent Asiatics, Greeks and Romans on a quest for a practical politic of the highest kind the realization of an innermost world law believed and known to be good, and the attainment of dimly visualized possessions of unchanging value and permanence. From Isaias to Dante and on to Kant, all wise men and all kings worthy of their name have striven to give peace to the world. ”

“ This one must bear in mind in order to understand why it was that the provincial churches did not cease to cherish their bond with Rome and despite the Popes to honour the Papacy as a gift from God. Anyone who asks himself whether hunger and love, money and the drawn sword alone make history or whether this is not also the product of the finer energies of the mind and soul; any- one who doubts that the trends of time are moved not by warriors and their fists alone but also by the intangible needs of the inner man ”

“ The Church could not surrender to the new spirit, because she could not believe in this chaos even though it bore splendid fruit, and be- cause she had also seen the splendid fruit of order. Nevertheless for a thousand reasons she dared not fail the new world. To look at the cosmos from the human point of view alone, to leave God out of the picture at least hypothetically this became the great temptation even for believing mankind. The certitude of mysticism, which the sixteenth century had brought forth in Catholic life, could not become everybody's certitude. ”

“ The Word of revelation makes use of the thought, the conscience and the inner lives of men rich in grace. But the definition of teaching is not arrived at, as it were, by volcanic eruption, but is the result of long effort presided over and scrutinized by sovereign authority. The new is measured by the stable, the living by the traditional, the intuition of a pious soul by the old rule, the personally experienced by common sense, and the right of the manifold by the logic of unity. ”