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 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS

journals which strove to effect a reconciliation between the Church and the time. Their democratic Catholicism, which was optimistic, virile and invigorating, became a power in parliament and society un- der the motto, "Catholic above all," and continues to be that even now. Their ideal of a free Church in a free State, which ideal was soon to enter the history of the Papacy through another source, was opposed by the extreme absolutism of Ultramontane spirits like Louis Veuillot. While these joined Joseph de Maistre in wishing to revive the Inquisi- tion, the other group sought to win the human heart by showing that religion was the treasure and the guide it sought.

The five and a half decades which intervene between the seculari- zation and the turbulent year 1848 also strengthened Catholic self- confidence in Germany and fostered, by reason of political and spirit- ual necessity, a new endorsement of the monarchical principle in the Church, The regions of Miinstcr, the Rhineland and Bavaria became centres of religious revival before and after the dawn of the nine- teenth century. If one mentions the names of the Princes Gallitzin, Ovcrbcrg, Friedrich Stollberg, Sailer, Moehler, and Goerres, one has also listed the manifold energies of the revival, which wrestled with themselves and with the world about them. The fact that they arose, grew and found expression is easier to note than to explain. They were spirits which could be satisfied neither with the enlightenment, nor with German classicism, nor with the political doctrine of the Revolution. Least of all were they attracted to the Lutheran confes- sion, which was inwardly formless and in addition incarcerated in the structure of the state. Nevertheless a secret bond united them with all these forces, despite a frequent seeming antagonism. To this bond they owed more than they realized or conceded. That is the reason why the German "Catholic spring" at the beginning looked upon the Church, which it had sought out with reawakened affection, as a mystical community rather than as an hierarchical system. To it the mediaeval format of the Papacy was a thing of the past, without sig- nificance for the present. Though it saw clearly that the idea of the Church transcended the idea of the State, it believed none the less that both were on a footing of relative equality in the world of realities. As a consequence the Church must also not become the handmaiden

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