CARDINAL MERCIER-THE MAN

PATRIOTISM IN THE CHURCH

By REV. THOMAS M. SCHWERTNER, O. P., S. T. LR., Editor The Rosary Magazine

HE great cataclysm of the World War threw

THE

up on the horizon of public notice many men whose names had been known previously only in restricted circles. And of these, none has loomed greater, or maintained his place in the popular heart more securely, than the Primate of Belgium, Desidere Cardinal Mercier. And the reason of this is not far to seek. For during those first fateful weeks of the war it soon went abroad like wildfire that the Germans, under Von Bissing, had intercepted and suppressed the Christmas Pastoral Letter which the Cardinal, as a good Catholic bishop, had sent according to his custom to his faithful children. It was without doubt a powerful and trenchant arraignment of the conduct of the Germans during their first weeks on Belgian soil. And because it was so unimpeachably

true it nettled the invaders all the more.

During the long correspondence that ensued between the Cardinal and the German Governor, though the commanding officer lost his temper many times, the frail old man never flinched. He boldly threw in the face of the invaders the outrages that they heaped upon those men of peace, the priests, who of all others could have pacified the hearts and minds of a religious but excitable people like the Belgians. Writing to his fellow workers on Epiphany, 1915, he says, like an Egyptian high-priest calling out the faults of the dead monarch over his coffin:

8

As a matter of fact on the evening of January 1st, and throughout the whole of the following night, German officers entered the presbyteries and carried off, or vainly tried to wrench from the priests' hands, the Pastoral, and in defiance of episcopal authority, forbade you to read it to your congregations, threatening you or your parish with the direst penalties.

"Even our dignity was not respected, for on January 2nd, before daybreak, at six o'clock, I received an order to go immediately that same morning and explain to the Governor General my letter to the clergy and people. The following day I was forbidden to give Benediction in the Cathedral at Antwerp. I had been forbidden to visit the other Belgian bishops. "As a citizen, as a shepherd of souls and as a

member of the Sacred College of Cardinals, I protest, my dear fellow workers, that your rights as well as mine have been violated.

"Whatever may be alleged to the contrary, experience has proved that this Pastoral Letter has provoked no occasion for sedition, but on the contrary, it has contributed largely to the appeasing of the people's minds and to public tranquillity."

The famous Pastoral Letter of 1914 entitled "Patriotism and Endurance," is one of the noblest patriotic documents ever evoked by any war. Like his predecessor, Cardinal Frankenberg, who resisted in turn Austria, France and Prussia, and finally died in exile, whose "Declaration" is looked upon even today as one of the best statements of the Belgians' right to live out their national life in their own way; like Cardinal de Broglie, Bishop of Ghent, stout opponent even in exile of William, King of Holland and Napoleon, whose famous "Pastoral" is still read with a beating heart by the Belgians, Cardinal Mercier's "Christmas Letter" is not only vibrant with burning love of country, but sets forth the question at issue with that clearness and force which all were led to expect from a writer like him. Later on, in defiance of German ursurpation, and in vindication of his own episcopal rights, he sent other Pastoral Letters to his flock; one on September 26, 1915, entitled "A

Call to Prayer"; another on March 7, 1916, "My Return from Rome"-in which he explained how he had sought to lay clearly before the Sovereign Pontiff the attitude of the Belgian Church toward the German invader—, another on October 1st, 1916, “The Voice of God", and still another during the Lenten season of 1917, entitled "Courage My Brethren." In all of these official documents, as also in the vast correspondence which he carried on with the German authorities which can be read in "Cardinal Mercier's Own Story" (George H. Doran Co., New York) he never whittled down his first contention that German soldiers had absolutely no right on Belgian soil. He himself in an interview with the Governor General remarked, apropos of his opposition to their occupation of the country:

"You imagine that in our ministry we have no other ambition than to spare ourselves momentary worry and anxiety, or to win some immediate success. A thousand times, No! Utilitarianism, even socially, is not our ideal. If St. Paul had spoken like you, we should never have had St. Paul. We should possess neither his Epistles nor his example. If the theory, 'What is the good of that? What practical advantage do you hope to gain by that?'-if this theory, I say, had always prevailed, we should not have had the Catholic Church. It required three centuries of

martyrs to consolidate and propagate the idea that there is something higher than individual and national interests."

To these stinging words, the German Governor indignantly replied: "Oh, the martyrs-that is another matter!"'

"By no means, replied the Cardinal; "fundamentally, it is the same thing. A martyr is not one who gives his life just for the pleasure of sacrifice; he is one who upholds an incontrovertible truth and makes himself its bondslave, even to offering his liberty and his life in its defense. It would have been easy for the martyrs to burn, perchance secretly, a few grains of incense before an idol. But this act, materially insignificant, yet for the moment very profitable to the doer, would have been an avowal that he had no absolute belief in the truth that he professed; and at once the eternal would have been reduced to the level of the transitory. When the Church was founded the truth preached was religious truth-the Gospel of Christ. Truth today is right, and the superiority of its kingdom over passing interests. In either case, there is antagonism between utilitarianism and the necessary triumph of absolute right-truth. Thus, I have nothing but contempt for those sophisms to which you in your recent correspondence and with you certain theologians in