I sum up in the command that we should seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and that all other things shall be added unto us. A man and a people religiously convinced, a nation steadfastly determined to realize its ideals, will always reach their goal. This I have learned from life; this too is the teaching of our own history and that of all nations.
Our Reformation was a democratic revolution against theocracy. Its faults, the faults of a first attempt, do not prove its principles and essence to have been wrong; and, when I think of our Revolution of October 28, 1918, I reject the view that, merely because the Reformation was ultimately crushed by force, its overthrow shows it to have been a mistake and ourselves to have been politically inert and incompetent in statecraft. The task of finding a solution for the general religious crisis awaits us all, our thinkers and our Churches. Our Republic must ensure full liberty of conscience to every citizen so that discussion may be free and every conviction be expressed. Unlike Austria it must, moreover, carry through the separation of Church and State and, in education especially, the reforms which that separation implies.
No Church, least of all the Roman Catholic, has ever welcomed separation from the State even though religion may gain by it, as it has gained in many lands. Therefore we must be prepared for resistance. It will demand much diplomatic tact and clear definition of our educational policy. In order that the separation might be accomplished without conflict I decided before the end of the war that our Republic should at once be represented at the Vatican. I foresaw that, after the war, the ecclesiastical question would be acute. The object of separation is to set the Churches free from the State and the State free from the Churches, and to make religion a matter of unconstrained conviction. Under Austria, the Church relied on the police power of the State, whose officials were obliged to profess the official religion. In consequence the Church suffered and came to rely more upon the police than upon its doctrines and religious life. The State suffered likewise in that it relied upon the Church, not upon itself and its own worth. To “de-Austrianize” ourselves means, first of all, to separate the Church from the State.
