The More Recent Past
Two years are significantly important during the more recent period of Church history in Switzerland: in 1798 French troops concentrated in particular on those areas that had remained Catholic and caused considerable destruction there in the name of the Revolution and “enlightenment”; and in 1848 the old Swiss Confederacy became the new federal state of Switzerland and led to the dissolution of many monasteries and ultimately to the so-called “Kulturkampf” (cultural battle) in 1870.
The Ökumenischen Kirchengeschichte (Ecumenical Church History) writes (p. 229) that this event, which mainly affected the Roman Catholic Church … was the final episode in the history of the Swiss Confederacy in which religion played a central role.
It was preceded by the Sonderbund War of 1847, when the Catholic cantons of Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg and Valais issued a call to arms to protect Catholic tradition against the liberalism in the Protestant cantons. The civil war was over after 26 days with the Sonderbund (special alliance) beaten and the secularisation of social life becoming reality. The weapons may have been silenced, but the more heated were the battles in the cultural battle. Pope Pius IX mobilised his forces and his political Catholicism was aimed against “modernism”, against the separation of Church and state and against allowing civil marriage, which was laid down in the revised federal constitution of 1874.