Würzburg Bishops' Conference (1848)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contemporary commemorative image of the Würzburg Bishops' Conference with images of the episcopal participants and their cathedrals
Host: Georg Anton von Stahl (Bishop of Würzburg)

The Würzburg Bishops' Conference of 1848 was a four-week working meeting of the German Catholic bishops in Würzburg . It can be seen as the birth of the German and Austrian Bishops' Conferences .

history

The meeting began on October 21, 1848, after the Archbishop of Cologne had invited Johannes von Geissel just three weeks beforehand, and ended after an unforeseen long deliberation on November 16. Participants were 25 diocesan bishops or their representatives as well as selected theological advisers, not lay people . The conference location was the seminary in Würzburg , and for the last three days the Minorite Monastery in Würzburg . The host was the Bishop of Würzburg, Georg Anton von Stahl .

The bishops submitted to a strict work discipline with eight conference hours a day. The liturgical highlight was a pontifical mass in the Würzburg Cathedral under the direction of the Primate Germaniae , the Salzburg Archbishop Cardinal Friedrich zu Schwarzenberg . A remarkable charitable sign was the feeding of 300 Würzburg poor, in which the bishops personally participated in the table service.

The short-term invitation, the large number of participants and the long duration of the meeting testify to the urgency of the issues at hand. The end of the imperial church order with its spiritual states was not half a century ago, the reorganization of the German dioceses only 25 years ago. Since May 18, 1848, the Paulskirchenparliament has been meeting in Frankfurt and negotiated controversially about a new national and constitutional order in Germany. The bishops did not want to watch this explosive event inactive. They formulated fundamental statements on the relationship between church and state , the church school supervision , the legal status of the clergy and questions of the social order. They adopted three memoranda : one to all believers, one to governments, and one to clergy.

In an endeavor to official national synod did not happen because this papal authorization was required (Pope was 1846-1878 Pius IX. ), The Curia but national church feared tendencies, and since the Bavarian bishops in the Freising Bishops' Conference and the Bishops of the Habsburg monarchy in the Austrian Bishops' Conference went their own way.

Attendees

The above lithograph from 1848 shows in the 1st row from the left:

2nd row from the left:

3rd row from the left:

Auxiliary Bishop Franz Großmann from the Principality of Warmia , who represented Bishop Joseph Ambrosius Geritz , is missing from the image . Other advisory clergymen were also present, including the Provost of Kulm, Eduard Herzog .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ digitized version
  2. ↑ Wurzburg Catholic Sunday paper B 7432 no. 6 of 10 February 2008 155 Year

Web links