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Anti-Catholicism in Germany, Britain, and the United States: A Review and Critique of Recent Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Marjule Anne Drury
Affiliation:
Doctoral candidate in the department of history at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

Extract

The past two decades have seen an efflorescence of works exploring cultural anti-Catholicism in a variety of national contexts. But so far, historians have engaged in little comparative analysis. This article is a first step, examining recent historical literature on modern British and American anti-Catholicism, in order to trace the similarities and distinctiveness of the turn-of-the-century German case. Historians are most likely to be acquainted with American nativism, the German Kulturkampf, continental anticlericalism, and the problems of Catholic Emancipation and the Irish Question in Britain. Many of the themes and functions of anti-Catholic discourse in the West transcended national and temporal boundaries. In each case, the conceptualization of a Catholic ‘other’ is a testament to the tenacity of confessionalism in an age formerly characterized as one of inexorable secularization. Contemporary observers often agreed that religious culture—like history, race, ethnicity, geography, and local custom—played a role in the self-evident distinctiveness of peoples and nations, in their political forms, economic performance, and intellectual and artistic contributions. We will see how confessionalism remained a lens through which intellectuals and ordinary citizens, whether attached or estranged from religious commitments, viewed political, economic, and cultural change.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2001

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References

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35. Franchot relates an episode in which the Catholic Church was sued after burying two children on Bunker Hill, despite the fact that it had purchased the plot for use as cemetery. Going deeper than a “violation of city health regulations,” Franchot reads this as the “pollution of a Protestant terrain made sacred by the civil religion of the Revolution” (Roads to Rome, 148–49).Google ScholarMausbach, Josef in Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, translated from the sixth German edition (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1914), briefly mentions confessional strife over cemeteries in Germany (4142).Google Scholar

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48. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 106; on Catholic schools, 119ff.Google Scholar

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50. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 114.Google Scholar

51. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 101.Google Scholar

52. The phrase is taken from German Protestant theologian Friedrich Paulsen; see his 1908 work Philosophia Militans, discussed in Rösener's, WernerDas katholische Bildungsdefizit im deutschen Kaiserreich,” Historiches Jahrbuch 1, no. 112 (1992): 104–27Google Scholarand in Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 56;Google Scholarfor nineteenth-century British and American criticism of Catholic scholarship, see also Allitt, , Catholic Converts.Google Scholar

53. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 102. Allitt argues that the 1907 antimodernism encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis had “all but guaranteed the intellectual segregation of Catholics for the next fifty years” (Catholic Converts, 107).Google ScholarGerman critics blasted it as a “cultural Inferiorität program,” quoted in Rost, Hans, Die Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben der Gegenwart (Cologne: J. P. Bachem, 1908).Google Scholar

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56. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 116.Google Scholar

57. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 118–19.Google Scholar

58. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 118.Google Scholar

59. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 107; see also fn. 89.Google Scholar

60. The literature on religion and its pronounced influence upon the politics and society of imperial Germany is plentiful. As introduction, I refer the reader to the works of Anderson, Margaret, Blackbourn, David, Blaschke, Olaf, Hölscher, Lucien, Hübinger, Gangolf, Lehmann, Hartmut, Liedhegener, Antonius, Loth, Wilfried, Mergel, Thoms, Mooser, Josef, Nipperdey, Thomas, Rauscher, Anton, Schieder, Wolfgang, Sperber, Jonathan, and Weber, Christoph (see fn. 1 for bibliographical information).Google Scholar

61. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 156;Google Scholarsee also Nipperdey's, ThomasReligion im Umbruch, where he observes the persistence of “confessional duality as a fundamental political fact,” long after the Kulturkampf had ended.Google Scholar

62. Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 7375;Google ScholarHäbinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism” 157.Google Scholar

63. Anderson, , “Piety and Politics” and “The Limits of Secularization”; Helmut Wasler Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict; and Blackboum, Marpingen and Populists and Patricians.Google Scholar

64. The phrase is Blackbourn's; on the proliferation of Catholic Vereine, see Loth, Wilfried, Deutscher Katholizismus and Jonathan Sperber, “Bürger, Bürgertum, Bürgerlichkeit, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft.”Google Scholar

65. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber” and Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians, 143.Google Scholar

66. Populists and Patricians, 143.Google Scholar

67. Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 235.Google Scholar

68. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 162.Google Scholar

69. See Anderson, Margaret and Barkin, Kenneth, “The Myth of the Puttkamer Purge and the Reality of the Kulturkampf,” Journal of Modern History 54 (1982): 647–86;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAnderson, , “The Kulturkampf and the Course of German History,” Central European History 19 (1986): 195225;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBlackbourn's, DavidClass, Religion and Local Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980) and Populists and Patricians;Google ScholarBecker, Josef, Liberaler Stoat und Kirche in der Ära von Reichsgründung und Kulturkampf (Mainz: Gruenewald, 1979);Google ScholarBecker's, Winfried “Liberaler Kulturkampf-Positionen und politischer Katholizismus,” in Innenpolitsche Probleme des Bismarck Reichs, ed. Pflanze, Otto (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1983);Google ScholarSmith, H. W., German Nationalism and Religious Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995);CrossRefGoogle ScholarLoth, Wilfried, Katholiken im Kaiserreich (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1984);Google ScholarZeender, John, “Recent Work on the German Center Party,” Catholic Historical Review 70 (1984): 428–41.Google Scholar

70. See Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 159.Google Scholar

71. Nipperdey, , Religion im Umbruch, 1516.Google Scholar

72. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 152–53.Google Scholar

73. Loth, , Deutscher Katholizismus; Hübinger, “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 161–63.Google Scholar

74. Schloβmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 164ff; though by no means typical, the frequency with which Schloβmacher discovers Catholics and non-Catholics making common cause in the struggle against ultramontanism is not insignificant. What united them was a belief that ultramontanism was only one trend, and indeed a dangerous one, within Catholicism. See fn. 79 below.Google Scholar

75. Schloβmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 165.Google Scholar

76. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 166.Google Scholar

77. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 162, 190.Google Scholar

78. Schloβmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 172; Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians, 161.Google Scholar

79. On the minority of Protestants who perceived a distinction between Catholicism generally and militant ultramontanism, a small group compared to most in the Evangelischer Bund, who rejected such distinctions in favor of a wholesale attack on Catholicism, see SchloBmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland”; on the Bund, see Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 47.Google Scholar

80. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 167.Google Scholar

81. Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 78–79; Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians, 162; Schloβmacher, “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland” 165.Google Scholar

82. The quote comes from Catholic theologian Josef Mausbach, who responds to Protestant critiques of Catholic dogma, including the polemics of Hoensbroech, Paul, in Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, translated from the sixth German edition (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1914), 337–38;Google Scholarsee also the Belgian economist Laveleye, Emile de, Protestantism and Catholicism, in their Bearing upon the Liberty and Prosperity of Nations (Toronto: Belford Bros., 1876), 20, 44.Google ScholarNeither his national origin, nor his Catholic roots, prevented Laveleye's writings from becoming classic texts in the rurn-of-the-cenrury German debate about Catholic culture (see Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 7677).Google Scholar

83. Quoted from Hoensbroech, in Schloβmacher, , “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 164; in a similar vein, the Protestant pastor from Dresden, Johannnes Forberger, recalled the Sun King when he said of Pius IX, “Die Kirche binich.” His proclamation of infallibility in 1870 was, according to Forberger, nothing less than an attempt to revive “Roman caesarism.”Google ScholarSee Forberger, , Der Einfluβ des Katholizismus und Protestantismus auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung der Völker in Flugschriften des Evangelischen Bundes, Leipzig: 21. Reihe 241–252): 245/246, 1906, 54. Forberger's several publications with the Bund are, I suspect, among the more cautious anti- Catholic works coming from this quarter.Google Scholar

84. Nipperdey, Thomas explains that while nationalist interpretations began to overshadow such analyses, in France for example, “in Germany this type of reasoning survived among Protestants.” In large measure this continued influence could be traced to the impact Laveleye's 1870's publications had on the later German debate.Google ScholarSee “Max Weber,” 77–78. See also Münch, Paul, “The Thesis before Weber: An Archaeology”; Baumeister, Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 76–77. Indeed, there evolved something of a circular relationship between the older discussion, Laveleye, and the polemics of the Evangelical Alliance. The Alliance was eager to avail itself of theories, not only from Laveleye, but from eighteenth-century participants in the discussion of religion and political economy, especially when anti-Catholic conclusions had been drawn by Catholics. Thus, Johannes Forberger, in his introduction to Einfluβ, defers to the Catholic Aufklärer Johann von Ickstatt, whose own anonymously published “Warum ist der Wohlstand der protestantischen Staaten so gar viel gröβer als der katholischen?” (1772) was republished by the Alliance in 1900.Google ScholarSee Munch, , “Welcher Zusammenhang besteht zwischen Konfession und ökonomischem Verhalten?,” 62 (see fin. 1); Baumeister, Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 102 n. 287. Throughout his analysis Forberger also makes frequent reference to Laveleye.Google Scholar

85. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 77–78;Google ScholarForberger, and Laveleye, passim; summing up the late-nineteenth-century Protestant view, Catholic nations were simply ‘under a narcotic,’ Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 306.Google ScholarThe resonance of such arguments over time is indeed striking; for a recent treatment see Landes, David, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998).Google Scholar

86. Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 19–40; Forberger, Einfluβ, 53–54.Google Scholar

87. Laveleye, argues that Catholicism left men morally unfit to govern themselves, Protestantism and Catholicism, 19ff.Google Scholar

88. Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 20.Google Scholar

89. On the demonization of the Jesuit order, see Anderson, , “Piety and Politics,” 698. As in the case of antebellum America, the frightful power of the Jesuits was located in their caste-like organization. Celibate and devoted entirely to Rome, they were viewed as an occupying army in their own country, ‘uninvested’ in the nation, without property or family responsibilities. Living among the citizenry while eschewing all patriotic attachments, there was no question of where their loyalty lay.Google ScholarSee Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 19, 47, 55–57;Google ScholarBaumeister, , Paritüt und katholische Inferioritüt, 82; on the “deficiency in personality” that allegedly afflicted the celibate, see Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 291. The most disastrous results of Jesuit infiltration could be found, according to Forberger and others, in Iberia. There, the hypnotic power of Jesuit fanaticism had transfomed “a once blossoming land full of heretics into a desert” (Forberger, Einfluβ, 35).Google Scholar

90. For Laveleye, , France's rejection of the light of the Reformation went a long way toward explaining its subsequent political chaos and moral decadence. He compares the Revolutions of 1789 and 1776: the rank corruption of the ançien Regime, the cynical irreligion propagated by Voltaire, and the misguided fanaticism of men like Robespierre were the results of Catholic oppression; in Laveleye's view, these wither in the face of colonial America's Puritan traditions and the “incomparable moral tone” that inspired the American revolutionaries, and indeed endured, not in spite of, but precisely because of, the separation of church and state (Protestantism and Catholicism, 2440).Google Scholar

91. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 144, 145–48;Google ScholarAnderson, , “Limits of Secularization” and “Piety and Politics,” the latter of which helps to clarify the controversy over when precisely the revival of Catholic piety occurred and includes a review of Jonathan Sperber's Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth Century Germany (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984);Google ScholarSchieder, Wolfgang, “Kirche und Revolution: Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte der Trierer Wallfahrt von 1844,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 14 (1974): 419–41;Google Scholarsee also Busch's, Norbert recent analysis of the evolution of the Sacred Heart cult in Katholische Frbömmigkeit und Moderne: Die Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschkhte des Herz-Jesu-Kultes in Deutschland zwischen Kulturkampf und Ersten Weltkrieg (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 1997).Google Scholar

92. Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 108.Google Scholar

93. On the “strongly elitist thrust” of this discourse, see also Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 149–59.Google Scholar

94. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 149ff. and Helmut Wasler Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 25ff., 65ff., which includes a look at the Protestant cultural assumptions informing nationalist German scholarship and the concomitant intellectual limitations and academic marginalization of Catholic historical and literary works in imperial Germany. Compare Allitt's analysis of the dearth of scholarly contributions coming from British Catholic circles; despite his conversion to Catholicism, Cardinal Newman nevertheless “lamented that the great classics of English literature were Protestant to the core and that English was in effect a Protestant language” (Catholic Converts, 12).Google Scholar

95. Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 25ff.Google Scholar

96. On Protestant Innerlichkeit vis-à-vis the “visibility of Catholic kitsch,” see Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 21; Forberger underscores both the spiritual and economic inefficiency of the “throng of external Catholic customs” and holydays, Einfluβ, 47, 41ff.; the well known Protestant theologian Adolf von Harnack equated the administration of sacraments with “conjuring tricks,” “like medicine” (Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 312, 318); In his discussion of “puerile Catholic ceremonies,” Laveleye refers to the account of a visitor to Brazil, where the people were “nourished exclusively on grotesque processions, with coloured saints, lighted tapers, and cheap nosegays,” (Protestantism and Catholicism, 49);Google Scholaron the British mockery of Catholic relics, see also Colley, , Britons, 36.Google Scholar

97. As quoted by Mausbach, , Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 41.Google Scholar

98. Hübinger, , “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 172; Sperber describes Bildung as a “secularized version of German Protestant ideals,” (“Bürger, Bürgerrum, Bürgerlichkeit, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft,” 276); As a unique and integral part of German conceptions of cultural Protestanism, Bildung was an important conduit for that survival of religious sensibility in post-Christian culture illuminated by Nipperdey in Religion in Umbruch, 124–53.Google Scholar

99. The intention was, as Hübinger explains, a kind of “reconciliation between faith and knowledge,” (“Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 174). By contrast, the dogmatic and anti-intellectualist trends in Catholic teaching and culture, according to critics, hampered the development of the morally autonomous personality. The Roman Church demanded what the Protestant theologian Herrmann described as an “absence of conscience,” (Mausbach, , Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 4–5);Google ScholarForberger, , in his Moralstatistik und Konfession (Halle: Verlag des Evangelischen Bundes, 1911, pamphlet 315/317), offered the following analysis: the individual Catholic was lamentably prone to “moral helplessness,” for “the Catholic principle is not the development of the Christian personality, but rather its integration within the organism of the Church. The highest religious virtue for the Catholic is not faith but obedience” (39).Google Scholar

100. Mausbach on the suggestion of Strauβ, David Friedrich, (Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 290–91); similar conflations of art and religion were advanced, for example, by Goethe (Hübinger, “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 172).Google Scholar

101. For many critical observers, the interrelationship between Catholic spiritual immaturity, lack of industriousness, and uncivilized behavior was self-evident. Laveleye informs his readers that the Catholic herdsmen of Appenzell gathered “only at mass, at wrestling match, and at public house” (Protestantism and Catholicism, 13). As with stereotypical criticisms of the Irish, it seemed that lower-class German Catholics were only to be found getting brainwashed, getting violent, and getting drunk.Google Scholar

102. Busch; review by Weichlein, Siegfried, for H-Soz-u-Kult Digest, 07 1998.Google Scholar

103. Blackbourn, , Marpingen, 164; Blackbourn argues that “key sections” of the Catholic educated middle classes were “desperately embarrassed” by the excess of ultramontane devotionalia (Populists and Patricians, 203). Indeed, contemporary critics also doubted the appeal of popular piety for educated Catholics. Laveleye theorized that Catholicism “produces such complete indifference in religious matters, that even the requisite strength honestly to leave the Church is wanting” (Protestantism and Catholicism, 50). That few Catholics did leave the church, especially during the heightened solidarity of the Kulturkampf period, see for example Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 23. This theory from Laveleye seems to gain a certain credibility when one considers the biographical evidence uncovered by Thomas Mergel, who argues that a “creeping secularization” was occurring within the cultural milieu of the Rhenish Catholic patriciate; see Part I, chaps. 5 & 7; Part ÜI, chap. 4 in Zwischen Klasse und Konfession (see fn. 1).Google Scholar

104. Smith, Helmut Wasler, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, 54.Google Scholar

105. Mausbach, , Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 3.Google Scholar

106. Mausbach, , Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, 1314.Google Scholar

107. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 149–50.Google Scholar

108. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber,” passim.Google Scholar

109. Rost, , chap. 1, in Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben der Gegenwart.Google Scholar

110. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 74–75.Google Scholar

111. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 145.Google ScholarFor recent and important correctives to the gloomy picture of Catholic socio-economic achievement, see Mergel, Thomas, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession and Antonius Liedhegener, “Marktgesellschaft und Milieu: Katholiken und katholische Regionen in der wirtschaftlichen Enrwicklung des deutschen Reichs, 1895–1914,Historisches Jahrbuch 113 (1993): 283354. Yet the fact is that contemporaries perceived a crippling socio-economic retardation among the German Catholic population as a whole, of which Mergel's Rhenish bourgeoisie was only a tiny percentage.Google Scholar

112. Rösener, , “Das katholische Bildungsdefizit im deutschen Kaiserreich,” 104 (see fn. 52);Google ScholarBaumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 43–44;Google ScholarNipperdey, , Religion im Umbruch, 3842.Google Scholar

113. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 61; Forberger, Einfluβ, 10.Google Scholar

114. Forberger relies on multiple variables in both Einfluβ and Moralstatistik, as do Laveleye and Rost;Google Scholarsee Baumeister's, reference to this “bundle of arguments” (Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 45) and his discussion of Ludwig Cron's statistical survey (Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 63–67);Google ScholarNipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 76.Google Scholar

115. For example, Forberger, , Einfluβ, 9.Google Scholar

116. According to Laveleye, , it was agreed that the Scots and Irish were of the same race, and both had long been subject to the English; yet though the Irish had at one time been more culturally advanced, once the Scots had accepted the Reformation they had “outrun even the English” (Protestantism and Catholicism, 11–12). Laveleye also points out the relative prosperity of Protestant Ulster.Google Scholar

117. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 74. Thus the stark contrasts drawn by Laveleye between the Protestant and Catholic districts of the Swiss canton Appenzell: the former were depicted as always “neat … the click and whirl of looms are heard from every open window, and the little folk go singing on their way to school. The streets are clean, the markets well supplied, and everyone you meet is warmly clad. But in the upper [Catholic] country things look poor and bare. Few villages are seen. The people dwell in scattered huts, with styes and stables on the ground” (Laveleye, Protestantism and Catholicism, 13).Google Scholar

118. Forberger, , Einfluβ, 53.Google Scholar

119. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 201.Google Scholar

120. Hansen, Georg, Die drei Bevolkerungsstufen (München: J. Lindauer, 1889), 170;Google ScholarBaumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 45, 82;Google ScholarMausbach, , 50;Google ScholarForberger, , Einfluβ, 51.Google Scholar

121. Forberger, , Einfluβ, 48;Google ScholarMausbach, , Catholic Moral Theology and its Antagonists, 270.Google Scholar

122. Forberger, , Einfluβ, 49;Google ScholarBaumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 81.Google Scholar

123. Forberger, , Einfluβ, 41ff;Google ScholarBaumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 81;Google ScholarLaveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 1314.Google Scholar

124. Forberger, , Einfluβ, 5152.Google Scholar

125. Tschackert, Paul, as quoted by Forberger, Einfluβ, 52.Google Scholar

126. Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 16.Google Scholar

127. Forberger, , Einfluβ, 27ff.Google Scholar

128. Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 15.Google Scholar

129. Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 1115.Google Scholar

130. Laveleye, , Protestantism and Catholicism, 14; it was observed that Catholic Appenzell “shuts her gates to all the world … and holds in pure contempt the arts by which her [Protestant] neighbours thrive.”Google Scholar

131. Mergel's, Thomas reconstruction of the culture of the Rhenish Catholic patriciate and its commercial participation leads one to conclude that educated and successful middle-class Catholics had come to share more in common with their Protestant and liberal socio-economic counterparts than with their lower-class and less educated coreligionists.Google ScholarSee Mergel, , Zwischen Klasse und Konfession, esp. Part 1, chaps. 4, 5, & 7; Part II, chap. 4.Google Scholar

132. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 203Google Scholar

133. Blackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 201.Google Scholar

134. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 5.Google Scholar

135. Nipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 5. The Protestant theologian Karl Sell's views on the papal Index were typical: the policing of scholarship made it “absolutely impossible for educated Catholics, with few exceptions, to form an independent opinion regarding others,” (Mausbach, Catholic Moral Theology and its Antagonists, 34);Google ScholarSchell, Herman understood the predicament all too well, complaining that it was entirely unnecessary for “a research conclusion to first be certified by a Jesuit” (Schlofimacher, “Der Antiultramontanismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland,” 178). Despite the logical overlap of both participants and themes, however, the “reform Catholic” movement was primarily a theological discussion; the larger issues surrounding the problem of the Catholic socio-economic lag focused above all upon the everyday conduct of Catholics and the practical consequences of a Catholic cultural climate shaped by both explicit church teachings and implicit maxims and attitudes.Google ScholarSee Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 86ff.;Google ScholarBlackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 203.Google Scholar

136. Hertling, Georg von, “Das katholische Bildungsdeficit in Bayern,” in Historischpolitische Blätter für das katholische Deutschland, G. Görres and J. Jörg (publs.), 117 (1896), LX, 682; see also 119 (1897), LXXXÜ, 899, on what he considers Herman Schell's unfortunate use of the term “Inferiorität”; Nipperdey, “Max Weber,” 75.Google Scholar

137. Mooser, , “Christlicher Beruf,” 128; Hübinger, “Chapter 7: Confessionalism,” 174.Google Scholar

138. Mooser, , “Christlicher Beruf,” 125.Google Scholar

139. Mooser, , “Christlicher Beruf,” 132.Google Scholar

140. Mooser, , “Christlicher Beruf,” 133; on the efforts to provide nontheological scholarships, see also Baumeister, Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 62;Google ScholarRost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 79ft.Google Scholar

141. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 6162;Google ScholarBlackbourn, , Populists and Patricians, 201.Google Scholar

142. See note 52.Google Scholar

143. Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 50, 40–59;Google ScholarNipperdey, , “Max Weber,” 75.Google Scholar

144. Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 52.Google Scholar

145. Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 52–53; Rosener, “Das katholische Bildungsdefizit,” 107Google Scholar

146. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 20, 36–38, 54–56, 57ff.;Google Scholaron the climate of mistrust, Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 49.Google Scholar

147. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 20;Google ScholarBaumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 96. Baumeister asserts that Rost's understanding of the origins of the problem is limited almost entirely to “external” factors and refers only to “internal” circumstances in passing; though I would not assign too much weight to a single remark, I do believe that Rost's several critical observations about Catholic attitudes give his work in its entirety a self-reflective tone that deserves greater consideration.Google Scholar

148. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 62.Google Scholar

149. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 60.Google Scholar

150. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 61Google Scholar

151. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 65;Google Scholarcompare his analysis to that of Forberger, , Moralstatistik, 6, 38 and Einfluβ, 41ff.Google Scholar

152. See also Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 91.Google Scholar

153. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 66.Google Scholar

154. Rost, , Katholiken im Kultur- und Wirtschaftsleben, 8085.Google Scholar

155. Baumeister, , Parität und katholische Inferiorität, 107.Google Scholar

156. McGreevy, , “Thinking on One's Own,” 128.Google Scholar

157. Sowell, Thomas, Race and Culture, xii, 3, 7–10;Google ScholarSowell, , Markets and Minorities; Landes, Wealth and Poverty of Nations, where Landes argues that cultural receptivity has played a significant role in the progress of nations and peoples throughout world history.Google Scholar

158. The phrase is from Landes, Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 15. Sowell has observed that elite members of lagging minorities the world over often have been persuaded by outside criticisms of the “unprogressive attitudes” of their cultural group (Race and Culture, 13).Google Scholar