Many of the more learned and moderate of the German Catholics had protested against the new dogma, and some of these "Old Catholics", as they were called, tried to avoid teaching it in the Universities and schools.

Their bishops, however, insisted that it should be taught, placed some recalcitrants under the lesser ban, and deprived them of their posts.
[Footnote 78: Busch, _Our Chancellor_, vol i.p.139, where he quotes a conversation of Bismarck of Nov.1883.On the Roman Catholic policy in Posen, see _ibid_.pp.

143-145.] When these high-handed proceedings were extended even to the schools, the Prussian Government intervened, and early in 1872 passed a law ordaining that all school inspectors should be appointed by the King's Government at Berlin.

This greatly irritated the Roman Catholic hierarchy and led up to aggressive acts on both sides, the German Reichstag taking up the matter and decreeing the exclusion of the Jesuits from all priestly and scholastic duties of whatever kind within the Empire (July 1872).

The strife waxed ever fiercer.