Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
The Protestant and free-thinking majority in Switzerland were jealous of the prosperity of the Catholic Church. They must, therefore, if possible, divide, and by dividing, weaken, if not destroy, the Catholic body. The most efficient means they could think of was the establishment of an old or alt-Catholic Church on the model of that of Germany.
All those on whom he might have counted for establishing a schism in the Church had already joined, with all the encouragement which the minister could bestow, the alt-Catholic sect, which, as has been shown, was destined to prove a failure. It is almost superfluous to say that the parishioners studiously avoided all communication in things spiritual with the nominees of the State.
He soon discovered that the clergy were grossly calumniated, and that the alt-Catholic Church in which he trusted never counted more than thirty priests; that this number increased not, and that the hundreds of thousands of adherents of whom the pseudo bishop, Reinkens, boasted, were only some twenty thousand to thirty thousand, scattered over all Germany. These had no principle of cohesion.
It is comparatively an easy undertaking to create trouble and disturbance in the church. It is not so easy, however, to establish a schism. The Prussian chancellor learned this fact when he beheld the failure of his alt-Catholic scheme in Germany. Having tried the same game in Turkey, his projects, notwithstanding the aid and countenance of the Mussulman Power, proved abortive.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking