§ 187.3. =Liberal-Scientific Tendencies.=--=Von Wessenberg=, as vicar-general of the diocese of Constance introduced such drastic administrative reforms as proved most distasteful to the nuncio of Lucerne and the Romish curia. He also endeavoured unsuccessfully to restore a German national Catholic church. In the retirement of his later years he wrote a history of the church synods of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which gave great offence to the ultramontanes.--=Fr. von Baader= of Munich expressed himself so strongly against the absolutism of the papal system that the ultramontane minister, Von Abel, suspended his lectures on the philosophy of religion in A.D. 1838. He gave still greater offence by his work on Eastern and Western Catholicism, in which he preferred the former to the latter.[546] The talented =Hirscher= of Freiburg more interested in what is Christian than what is Roman Catholic, could not be won over to yield party service to the ultramontanes. They persecuted unrelentingly =Leop. Schmid=, whose theosophical speculation had done so much to restore the prestige of theology at Giessen, and had utterly discredited their pretensions. When his enemies successfully opposed his consecration as Bishop of Mainz in A.D. 1849, he resigned his professorship and joined the philosophical faculty. Goaded on by the venomous attacks of his opponents he advanced to a more extreme position, and finally declared “that he was compelled to renounce the specifically Roman Catholic church so long as she refused to acknowledge the true worth of the gospel.”
§ 187.4. =Radical-Liberalistic Tendencies.=--The brothers =Theiner= of Breslau wrote in A.D. 1828 against the celibacy of the clergy; but subsequently John attached himself to the German-Catholics, and in A.D. 1833 Augustine returned to his allegiance to Rome (§ 191, 7).--During the July Revolution in Paris, the priest Lamennais, formerly a zealous supporter of absolutism, became the enthusiastic apostle of liberalism. His journal _L’Avenir_, A.D. 1830-1832, was the organ of the party, and his _Paroles d’un Croyant_, A.D. 1834, denounced by the pope as unutterably wicked, made an unprecedented sensation. The endeavour, however, to unite elements thoroughly incongruous led to the gradual breaking up of the school, and Lamennais himself approximated more and more to the principles of modern socialism. He died in A.D. 1854. One of his most talented associates on the staff of the _Avenir_ was the celebrated pulpit orator =Lacordaire=, A.D. 1802-1861. Upon Gregory’s denunciation of the journal in A.D. 1832 Lacordaire submitted to Rome, entered the Dominican order in A.D. 1840, and wrote a life of Dominic in which he eulogised the Inquisition; but his eloquence still attracted crowds to _Notre Dame_. Ultimately he fell completely under the influence of the Jesuits.