Comments for The Original Culture War at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 5 out of 5 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Mon, 20 May 2013 18:31:19 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-original-culture-war.html#comment-6856 Aeneas Bismarck had been a rationalist, but his friend Moritz von Blankenberg, introduced to him to his fiancée, Marie von Thadden and to Johanna von Puttkammer, who became Bismarck’s wife. Both devout Lutheran Pietists. On 10 November 1846, Marie von Thadden died, now Blankenberg’s wife. Bismarck was present and seems to have undergone a profound religious conversion. He was 31. He embraced Pietism, with its strong emphasis on justification by faith alone, through grace alone, through Christ alone, sensible conversion and an almost total disregard for the externals of religion. He had a strong sense of personal providence and a Hegelian belief in a manifestation of God in the processes of world history. Bismarck believed that Protestantism had been the making of Prussia, and not only in the obvious historical sense of its being created when Albrecht von Hohenzollern-Ansbach, the last Catholic Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights converted to Lutheranism and turned their lands into a secular duchy. Bismarck believed that Protestantism informed the institutions of Prussia and had moulded the character of its people. In short, he believed in the confessional state and an extremely Erastian one at that – He merged the Reformed (Calvinist) and Lutheran Churches into the Prussian Evangelical Church, by a raw exercise of state power. He was devoted to the House of Hohenzollern, to Prussia and to a greater Germany, very much in that order. - Michael Paterson-Seymour Fri, 20 May 2011 02:22:20 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-original-culture-war.html#comment-6848 Very interesting article! I had heard of Bismarck before, but I only knew of his attempts to reunify Germany, not how he actually did it. And I never knew he was a rabid anti-catholic, ouch. But looking at this article and Michael Paterson-Seymour's comments on it, I have a qustion... What was he, rationalist materialist, or devout lutheran? According to Marlin, a materialist, but according to Seymour and Wikipedia, a devout lutheran. Is there some debate over this? If anyone knows the answer, please share it with me. - Aeneas Thu, 19 May 2011 09:08:55 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-original-culture-war.html#comment-6842 And many imagine that it cannot happen here! Already we have schismatics appointed the highest government position with the President describing the Pro-abor, pro-homosexual marrige Biden as a "committed Cathoilic." So the powers that be dub the errant as the "good Ctholics," while those who accept the teachings of the Church are called haters. San Francisco has, in fact, offically labaled the Church a hate group for Her opposition to homosexual adoption and marriage, and the right of that city, named for one of the most famous men in the history of Christianity, to amke such a proclamation has been upheld by the highest courts of our country! It's already happening! - Thomas C. Coleman, Jr. Wed, 18 May 2011 07:12:09 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-original-culture-war.html#comment-6840 Bismarck was by no means a materialist. Under the influence of the Blankenberg circle, he underwent a profound religious conversion. Henceforth he did not doubt the power of God in the direction of the world, and he felt to the full the significance of the need for human redemption from sin “If I was not a Christian,” he told Ferrières in the stress of the Franco-Prussian War, “I could not hold my position for an hour. If I could not count on God’s help, I could sacrifice nothing for the sake of earthly masters. If I lost my faith, of what avail would be my fatherland ?” Like most Evangelical Christians, with a firm belief in justification by faith alone, Bismarck lacked any deep sense of an institutional and organised Church. Indeed, he would probably have denied that religion, as internally grounded, has any need of external form, since, so he would have argued, it finds its most adequate expression in political action. - Michael Paterson-Seymour Wed, 18 May 2011 06:33:46 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-original-culture-war.html#comment-6838 I hope Dr. Kissinger, a German-born Jew who served as a Sgt. in the U.S. Army in Europe in 1945, is not extolling the virtues of either Bismarck or Darwin, as Europe's Jews themselves felt the brunt of "the survival of the fittest" in the Holocaust of 1932 through 1945. - Manfred Wed, 18 May 2011 04:29:50 +0100