And precisely at this fatal moment in the history of the world it is that, in Germany, a number of men, among them a few who have deserved well of the church, blinded to a degree which it seems hard to account for, have raised the standard of rebellion against their mother, the church, because the Œcumenical Council did not think fit to decide as they thought best, because it decided as it pleased the pastors of the church and the Holy Ghost. The foundation-stone of the church, laid by Christ himself, to preserve unity and love within it for ever, has become a stumbling-block to them. They have made shipwreck of the faith, and burst the bonds of love that held them in union with their brethren in the faith. Following the example of those who before them rebelled against the church, they call themselves defenders of the faith, while denying the very principle on which all faith reposes. Proclaiming human science the supreme authority in matters of religion, placing it above the highest authority in the church, above the Pope and the council, above the assent of the whole Catholic world, they have ceased to be servants of God and of his church; they have gone over to the rationalism and naturalism which are striving so hard to do away with Christianity entirely, and to constitute themselves in its place a new cosmopolitan religion.
The turpitude of their rebellion against the church is equalled only by that of the means which they have adopted to defend it and to spread its principles. Repeating the worst and most perfidious slanders of the past against the church, and giving them out as the result of science, they proclaim to the world that the Apostolic See has for a thousand years been the seat of well-concocted fraud and deceit, and that in the most sacred of matters; that the Catholic Church is dangerous both to the state and to morals; and that the decree solemnly proclaimed by the Œcumenical Council, that Christ will for ever preserve his visible representative on earth from all error in faith and morals--a belief which has always been the key-stone of Catholic faith, Catholic life, and Catholic practice--is a doctrine inimical to the rights of the state. Under these pretexts, they require the state to deprive the Catholic Church of its rights, and of the liberty which has been guaranteed to it by the state, and not to recognize the church represented by the bishops and the Pope, but themselves, who have renounced all allegiance to it, as the legal Catholic Church, the only one recognized and promised protection by the state. Moreover, they desire that those Catholics who have remained faithful to the church shall be looked upon as recreant to the state, accusing them of want of patriotism. Designating all those peoples embraced in the Catholic Church by the name of the _Romanists_, they, in the name of what they designate Germanism, demand their oppression and extirpation.