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Gate-Crashers of Modernity: Catholics and Jesuits in the Liberalimagination

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Gate-Crashers of Modernity: Catholics and Jesuits in the Liberalimagination Michael B. Gross. The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 354 pp. $70.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-472-11383-5. Roisin Healy. The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany. Boston: Brill, 2003. 448 pp. $145.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-391-04194-3. Reviewed by Max Voegler Published on H-German (July, 2005) When, on those rare occasions, cocktail party ble with the ideals of individual freedom, with the conversation turns to the subject of papal infalli‐ principles of liberalism, and, indeed, with the bility, invariably people are surprised to learn modern nation-state. that this seemingly central aspect of Catholicism is The Catholic Church and its pontiff, Pius IX, of rather recent vintage. While to most Catholics had been the subject of liberal disdain for some and non-Catholics today, the primacy of the pope's time prior to the Council. Pope Pius's 1864 Syl‐ position within that church seems self-evident, in‐ labus Errorum declared that "progress, liberalism fallibility was only officially adopted in the Ro‐ and modern civilization" were incompatible with man Catholic church in 1870 during the frst Vati‐ Catholicism, and his 1868 decree Non Expedit for‐ can Council, and only after considerable resis‐ bade Catholics from participating in republican tance even among its own bishops. As bishops elections. In a democratic, modern and multi-con‐ cast the fnal vote in Rome on July 18, 1870--the fessional polity, liberals argued, the (progressive) day before the beginning of the Franco-Prussian state was the institution that could best steer soci‐ war--its opponents abroad, both Catholic and ety away from the trappings of an outdated feudal Protestant, began a zealous campaign. Papal infal‐ order. A Catholic Church that actively worked libility, they argued, made Catholicism incompati‐ against these efforts and expected the same of its H-Net Reviews followers could not be tolerated. Within the con‐ ner, liberals developed "new anticlerical and anti- text of German nationalism and nation-building, Catholic rhetorical metaphors and practices that this critique of infallibility and with it ultramon‐ by means of differentiation and contrast proved tane Catholicism became intimately linked with powerful ways to define and assert the bourgeois how liberal Protestants imagined themselves and claim to social hegemony" (p. 22). Gross relates "their" nation. The Jesuit order, whose members the powerful set of antipodes that governed liber‐ swore absolute obedience to the pope, were often al thinking: while Catholics were continually cod‐ placed at the center of this inverted vision. Anti- ed as "Jesuits, priests, monks, and Catholics as Catholicism and anti-Jesuitism were mainstays of stupid, medieval, superstitious, feminine, and un- liberal ideology. Anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit peti‐ German," liberals embodied "modern rationalism, tions routinely outnumbered anti-Semitic ones, bourgeois individualism, high industrialization, both in the number of petitions and the signa‐ free-market capitalism, the unified nation-state tures these petitions collected. and gender-specific public and private spheres" Two new books, Michael Gross's The War (p. 22). The idea of exploring the function that the against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti- Kulturkampf played within the liberal movement Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Ger‐ and its ideology is perhaps not quite as new as many and Risn Healy's The Jesuit Specter in Impe‐ Gross would have us believe--here it is worth rial Germany focus on the complex relationship pointing out Karl Vocelka's study of the Kul‐ between anti-Catholicism/anti-Jesuitism and liber‐ turkampf in Austria, and Healy certainly veers in alism. Both began their lives as dissertations-- this direction as well--but his arguments are much Healy's at Georgetown under Roger Chickering more refined than Vocelka's, both in their theory and Gross's at Brown under Volker Berghahn--and and in their prose, and profit from twenty years focus on very different aspects of this relationship of methodological advances.[2] within the broader liberal movement. Both stud‐ Gross begins his study by examining the ies examine confessional conflict and religious Catholic revival that began in the 1850s, which he boundaries--and the transgression of those sees as a Catholic reaction to the short-lived liber‐ boundaries--in the process of liberal state build‐ al victory of 1848. For conservative Catholics, the ing, and focus on the role that religion played in events of 1848-49 demonstrated the need to clamp establishing (protestant) bourgeois cultural hege‐ down on pluralist dissent and reinvigorate an all mony within imperial German society.[1] too indifferent population descending into moral Of the two, Gross's study makes for more ex‐ anarchy. To this end, Gross focuses on the reli‐ citing reading. As Margaret Anderson notes in her gious missions held by Jesuits, Redemptorists, blurb on the dust jacket, "Michael Gross has put Franciscans, and of other congregations between culture back into the Kulturkampf!" and she is 1850 and 1870. The missions, public spectacles certainly right. Gross argues that the Kulturkampf that "descended" on a community, usually lasted was not a liberal fuke, a temporary abandonment around two weeks and mixed sermons (usually of ideals of universal rights or a brief moment of three a day, each up to two hours long) with local acquiescence to Bismarckian Realpolitik in the pilgrimages and, above all, visits to the confes‐ process of state- and nation-building. Rather, it sional, especially so-called "life confessions," was a natural extension of liberal ideology and which could take upwards of twenty minutes per thus represented a liberal response to the dramat‐ person. In contrast to other historians who have ic resurgence in popular Catholic piety taking worked on the Catholic revival, especially place throughout the German states. In this man‐ Jonathan Sperber, Gross argues that rather than peaking in the 1850s, the activity of missions actu‐ 2 H-Net Reviews ally increased in the 1860s, though on closer ex‐ meaning by placing them in opposition to Catholi‐ amination these differences undoubtedly stem cism. In doing so, anti-Catholicism became more from the sources each used in compiling his statis‐ than just a mortar that held various liberal fac‐ tics.[3] The missions, Gross continues, were pro‐ tions together; it "reshaped German liberalism found in their methods of reawakening popular from a pre-industrial, pre-capitalist movement religiosity among the laity. Even the parish priest, into an ideology consonant with middle-class in‐ often angered by the blow these missions repre‐ dustrial development, capitalist expansion, and sented to his ecclesiastical authority, did admit modern social order after 1848" (p. 98). that they seemed to do much good. How this ideology functioned in practice is But it was not just Catholics who were affect‐ the focus of a chapter on the image of the ed by the missions. As Gross discovers, the mis‐ monastery in the liberal imagination. Like sions were "remarkable intraconfessional zones" Catholicism in general, monasteries experienced a to which not just Catholics but also Protestants revival in the decades after 1848 as the number of and even Jews focked en masse (p. 25). In these orders and their members increased by almost encounters, Gross sees a hunger for religious ex‐ half. The monastery was a powerful sign in liberal perience on all sides: students attended to learn semiotics: a closed-off, secretive space, separated about Catholicism and to "feel" religion frst hand; from the public sphere and outside of the legal regular lay Protestants came to experience a little grasp of the state--a "hotbed of superstition, sloth, fire and brimstone in their otherwise ordinary and fornication," as one liberal petition to the par‐ (Protestant) religious lives; and voyeurs of all con‐ liament speculated (p. 180). Moreover, it harbored fessions and persuasions were enthralled by the monks of dubious loyalty to the state as many spectacle. While Protestant priests were generally were foreigners. Gross begins with an analysis of horrified, especially when the missions came to the popular liberal periodical, Die Gartenlaube, overwhelmingly Protestant cities such as Ham‐ which juxtaposed caricatures of drunk priests burg, they also admitted that the missions invigo‐ and backward Catholics with pictures of modern rated "their" fock as well. Lay Protestants thrived factories and portrayals of rational economic life. on the Auseinandersetzung with their own faith Indeed, the only good monastery was seemingly that the missions provoked. Indeed, conversion one in ruins, which, in the proper setting--in the rates remained low among attendees and, Gross woods, preferably with a disheveled cemetery at‐ argues, they provided a sort of "Protestant reli‐ tached--could provide a "momentary fight from gious revival" that went hand in hand with its the modern age of bureaucratic sobriety" (p. 153), Catholic counterpart. the perfect destination for a bourgeois outing. While some Protestants felt their faith re‐ Next, Gross turns to two further examples of anti- newed by missions, for many others the missions monasticism. The frst involves a nun in Cracow, touched a nerve: such a Jesuitenpest could only Barbara Ubryk, who was accused by her superiors spell a Catholic attempt to subvert the true Ger‐ of reneging on her vows of chastity--in some ac‐ man nation, they reasoned. Jesuits and Catholics, counts she was a nymphomaniac and repeat of‐ it was argued, represented a backward, feudal, ir‐ fender--and had remained imprisoned for years rational order that was incompatible with the in her own monastery, since 1848 in some ac‐ German nation and its liberal ideals. After the fail‐ counts. After hearing of her plight, liberal ures of 1848, Gross argues, liberals turned to anti- burghers rioted at the gates, smashing property Catholicism to reinvigorate the words "light, rea‐ until the gendarmerie came to investigate.
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