On the other haiul, the territorial rearrangement of OVr- many by the Congress of Vienna placed nearly all the ( Jer- man Catholics, except those of Austria and Bavaria, under Protestant governments. The great wars of ISGGand 1870 severed the coiniection between Catholic Austria and the German Catholics, and ))laced Protestant Prussia and a Protestant emperor at the head of the tJerman nation- ality. The laws of all the German states place the Ro- man Catholics on a level with Protestants; but diver- gent opinions on the limits of the ecclesiastical and the secular powers have repeatedly led to fierce conflicts be- tween the Church and the German governments, espe- cially Prussia. The two Prussian archbishops of Co- logne and Posen were imprisoned in 1837, and kept prisoners until 1840, for refusing obedience to royal or- dinances concerning mixed marriages. A new conflict began in 1872, which occupies a prominent place in the modern history of Roman Catholicism, under the name Kulturkampf, and was not yet ended at the beginning of 1879. The Prussian government, alarmed at the in- crease of power which the Vatican Council had placed in the hands of the pope, deemed it necessary to divest the bishops of the influence which they had thus far exerted upon the national schools; to check the abso- lute control of the lower clergy by the bishops; and to extend, the jurisdiction of the State over both bishops and lower clergy. The bishops regarded some of the laws adopted in Prussia for this purpose as inconsistent with their duties towards the Church, and refused to submit to them. In consequence of the conflicts which were caused by this attitude of the bishops, a number of the Prussian bishops were deposed from their sees ; and several other sees which became vacant by the death of their occupants could not be filled on account of the insuperable disagreement between the Prussian government and the pope. At the beginning of 1879, of the twelve archbishoprics and bishoprics of Prussia, only two were actuallj' filled. During the progress of this conflict, the bulk of the Catholic population of Ger- many showed a marked sympathy with the bishops; and the universal snfTrage which has been adopted in Germany for the elections to the Reichstag yielded in no country of the world so compact a host of ultramon- tane deputies as in Germany. Thus the Catholic dis- tricts of Germany came to be looked upon as a bulwark of the Roman Catholic Church in general. Previously the German Church had won within the Catholic Church a great prestige for superiority in the province of liter- ature ; end not a few of its literary productions had been translated into the languages of most of the other Cath- olic nations. The elevation of Dr. Hergenrcither, a uni- versity professor, to the cardinalate by pope Leo XIII, in April, 1879, was regarded as an encouraging tribute to the science of Catholic Germany by the head of the Church. — The Roman Catholic Church has suffered the greatest numerical losses in Russia. At the second partition of Poland, in 1793, nearly all the dioceses of the United Greeks in the former Polish empire were incorporated with Russia. The empress Catharine II made incessant efforts to reunite the United Greeks (who, during the Polish rule, had been induced to rec- ognise the supremacy of the pope) with the Orthodox Greek Church ; and it is said that, during her reign, no no less than seven millions of United (ireeks separated from Rome. No exertions to this end were made by the emperors Paul I and Alexander I; but Nicholas I and Alexander II followed in tlie footsteps of Catha- rine. In 1839, 3 bishops and 1305 priests, representing a population of more than 2,000,000, declared, at a synod held at Plock, in favor of reunion with the Russian State Church. After this only one United (ireek dio- cese remained (Chelm), with a population of 250,000, nearly all of whom, in the years 1877 and 1878, likewise joined the Russian Church. As the Russian government forbids secession from the State Church to any other
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH V6 ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
religious denomination, a return of the United Greelis to the communion of Home is for tlie present impossi- ble. l\oman Catholic writers unanimously assert that measures of the utmost severity and cruelty have been resorted to to bring about this separation from Rome; and their statements are fully contirmed by nearly all writers who are not Russians. — In the United States of America the Roman Catholic Church enjoys a degree of independence which it lias hardly ever possessed in anj' other country. Owing to the rapid increase of the j)opulaliiin in general, and to the large influx of immi- grants, it has already attained a high rank among the national divisions of the Roman Catholic Church. See Roman Catholic Chukcii in the Unitkd States.
The missionary labors of the Catholic Church in non-Christian countries received a great impulse by the foundation of the Order of the Jesuits. The latter sent out a larger number of missionaries than any other re- ligious order has done before or after its foundation. In some coiuitries of Eastern Asia the Catliolic missions appeared, at times, to become a complete success. In Japan the Church embraced, at one time, more than 200,000 Ciiristians, and coimted among her adherents several princes. In China the Jesuits obtained a great influence at the courts of several emperors, and the per- mission to establish missions throughout tlie empire. In tlindostan, Corea, Anani, and other countries, numer- ous congregations were collected, and many natives be- came priests and members of religious orders. Many of these missions have had to suffer bloody persecutions; but most of them have survived, though in a crippled form and with reduced numbers, to the present day. Pope (Jregory XV estal)lished for the chief and central direction of the Catholic missions, in all parts of the world, the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, which consisted of 15 cardinals, 3 prelates, and 1 secretary. Pope Urban VIII connected with this institution, in 1627, a seminary for the training of foreign missiona- ries (Collegium Urbanum de Propaganda Fide), which still exists, and has always been famous for the large number of nationalities represented among its pupils. Eesides the seminary of the Propaganda, the Roman Catholic Church has seminaries specially devoted to the education of foreign missionaries at Paris, Lyons, and in several other places; and at present most of the religious orders educate some of their members in their own institutions for the missionary service. For the financial support of the Catholic missions, a central So- ciety for the Propagation of the Faith was established in 1822 at Lvons, which has of late bad an annual income of about 5,000,000 francs. This society has branches in nearly all countries of the world ; only Aus- tria and Bavaria have preferred to establish their own societies for the support of foreign missions. A chil- dren's missionary society, called the "Society of the Holy Childhood of Jesus," devotes its revenue chiefly to the efforts for the baptism and Catholic education of pagan children. It has branches in all countries. It is a(hiiitted by all Catholic writers that the sums an- nually contributed for the support of the Catholic mis- sionaries fall far below the aggregate amiual income of the Protestant missionary societies.