# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1855_S267
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the History of the Roman Catholic Associations, etc. 267

associations and institutes considerably increased their influence. It was prompted to this by
the religious and political storms which threatened it especially in Germany,
namely through the German-Catholic schism and the Free Congregations
on the one hand, and through the Revolution of the year 1848 on the other.
After the dissidents had been forced back, by way of legislation, into the narrowest
bounds, and the general political reaction had also
favored, indeed required, a religious reaction, the Roman church saw
a more fortunate time for itself dawning. A look back over the last five years
shows us the Roman hierarchy engaged in such strenuous and successful activity
that whoever knows its antichristian character from no other source might, at first
glance, almost believe in its immortality and, almost in earnest, call Rome the "eternal
city." New monasteries have been founded since 1850 — for instance at Annaberg
near Kotel, at Neustadt, and at Lammsdorf in Silesia, for Franciscan monks.
In the last five years the most varied associations were founded for home
mission work, for spiritual exercises for priests and teachers, for services and
aid of every kind. Episcopal synods were held to deliberate
on what the present age requires of the Roman church.
In the legislative bodies people took an active part, came out more sharply
against mixed marriages, meddled, rightly and wrongly, in public
education and schooling, as especially here in the United
States, undertook literary productions, intervened in manifold ways in
family life, and altogether sought, with worldly prudence, to clear the way everywhere for Roman
propaganda. What has occurred in this period of confessional
resurgence in the Roman church with regard to ecclesiastical associations,
and what their more specific tendencies and outward forms
are, shall be discussed below with the greatest possible conciseness; the data
are taken from a periodical widely read in Germany.

The so-called "Catholic associations," which sprang up in almost all the larger congregations
belonging to the Roman church, held, under the
chairmanship of Catholic priests or of Catholic laymen firm in the faith, regular
and frequent meetings, for which original and impressive
lectures were used to interest town and country dwellers alike. As the
chief purpose of these associations, people cited: the mutual
uplift and edification to be striven for, and the fostering of active participation in the highest
and eternal purposes of mankind, the safeguarding of the old faith and
of the old customs against the opponents of Christianity, against the children of this
world, who believed neither in God nor in an eternity. The living word,
spoken in the meetings, was meant to reinforce the reading of Catholic
devotional writings and the blessings of church attendance, and to
bind those of churchly mind more closely to one another. F. J. Buss states, in
his work "The Task of the Catholic Portion of the German Nation, or
of the Catholic Associations of Germany" (Regensburg, by J. Manz, 1851),
that the Catholic associations are scattered seeds of a spiritual, moralizing