Like his brother the Duke of Ratibor, Chlodwig was from the first a strenuous supporter of Bismarck's anti-papal policy (the "Kulturkampf"), the main lines of which (prohibition of the Society of Jesus, etc.) he himself suggested. Although he sympathized with the motives of the Old Catholics, he did not join them, believing that the only hope for a reform of the Church lay with those who desired it remaining in her communion. In 1872 Bismarck proposed appointing Chlodwig's younger brother, Cardinal Prince Gustav Adolf von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, as Prussian envoy to the Holy See, but Pope Pius IX refused to receive him in this capacity.