33. Monsignor Greuter

On June 22, Monsignor Greuter, indisputably the most important representative of clericalism in the Austrian House of Representatives, died in Innsbruck. He had been a member of our parliament since 1864, i.e. almost since its existence, and only in the last few years did he take a back seat - probably also due to his failing health; in the liberal periods of government, however, especially at the time of the first citizens' ministry, he was one of the foremost fighters in the parliamentary battles that were stirring up the spirits so much at the time. Greuter was a force to be reckoned with by the people's representatives and public opinion in Austria. He possessed a great deal of spirit, which he was able to bring to bear in an appropriate manner when he spoke in the name of the Jesuit principle against the ideas and trends of the time. He was most hostile to all that is called modern culture and modern science. He found the only salvation of mankind in the preservation of the Christian world order and in the restoration of what the last few years had broken away from it. At the same time, he had a keen eye for the weaknesses and excesses of the current school of thought; they were the source of his always witty attacks. And it must be said that he always retained the upper hand against every clumsy spokesman of liberalism. Only with the full inner power of the ideas of the present can one do anything against such fighters; after all, they have at their disposal the products of thousands of years of intellectual endeavor, as they were cultivated within the Church, and they use them very skillfully to portray modern thinking as the enemy of an undisturbed development of humanity. We are faced with an intellectual power with which we have long since come to terms theoretically, and which the educated have completely outgrown, but which we have to reckon with decisively in political life, because it is partly popular, while - there is no need to deceive ourselves - the current school of thought is even unpopular among the masses of the people. This is a circumstance that Greuter knew how to exploit. In any case, it is a typical phenomenon in this respect that Greuter's rooting work succeeded in persuading the women of his district to prevent the secular school inspectors from entering the school. People of his kind always find the right tone to fanatize the people, because they know how to use their intellectual resources in a clever way that flatters the unenlightened and seems beneficial to their lives. They know how to turn things around so that it seems as if the spiritual and physical well-being of the people depended on what they call the Christian world order; they know how to skillfully include in their calculations what appears to the lower classes of the people to be the most necessary: the immediate necessities of life. Hence the alliance of clericalism with socialism, which has recently resurfaced on the surface of Catholic aspirations.

Greuter was able to retire in recent years with a clear conscience, as he saw a star rise in the political sky that can be fully regarded as his spiritual legacy. Perhaps Greuter's nature would have been more difficult to integrate into the current circumstances of our parliamentary life than that of his successor, Prince Liechtenstein. The present situation demands of a clericalist, if not a different spirit, at least a different method of struggle. Greuter only appeared on the scene once in recent years; he attacked Minister Conrad because of the conditions at the University of Vienna. At that time we saw two things: firstly, how easily his words were translated into action: Conrad resigned soon afterwards, and secondly, how sharp the weapons are that Jesuitism is still able to wield against modern science. Greuter's attack on contemporary culture may well have made a far greater impression on the people than Sueß's excellent defense of it.