The Vatican council and its definitions : a pastoral letter to the clergy

Contents

isnr.

A/ewwan. A letter adiressed to f<!s Grrace theDi/ke of Norfolk > Oh occasion of Mr. (Jla^istoBes »'«c<f»»t «^_

pp&t(jlat:iovi. IST5T l^e.

CHAPTER I. The World and the Council

External history of the Council, 2 ; The alleged indifference to the Council, 13 ; Internal history, 24 ; Protest of tlie Cardinal Presidents, 33 ; Definition by acclamation, 36 ; Definitions binding on all the faithful, 39.

CHAPTER II. The Two Constitutions

Analysis of the Constitution De Fide CathoHca, 43 ; Preparation for the definition of the Infallibility of the Eoman Pontiff, 51 ; Analysis of the First Constitution on the Church of Christ, 54 ; Six points of the definition of Infallibility, 57.

I. Meaning of the phrase loqui ex cathedrd, 58.

II. Faith and morals the object of Infallibility, 59 ; Five points of the Charter of the Church: 1. The perpetuity and universality of the mission of the Church as a Teacher of mankind. 2. The deposit of the Divine Faith and Law entrusted to the Church. §. The Church the sole interpreter of the Faith and of the Law. 4. The Church the sole Divine Judge over the reason and wiU of man. 5. The Perpetual Presence of our Lord with the Church, 59. The doctrinal authority of the Church not confined to matters of revelation, 67 ; Truths of Science, 67 ; Truths of History, 68 ; Dogmatic Facts, 68, 69 ; Minor censures, 73.

VI CONTENTS.

III. The efficient cause of Infallibility, 79 ; Witness of St. Ambrose, a.d. 397, 79 ; Witness of St. John Chrysostom, a.d. 407, 80 ; Witness of St. Augustine, a.d. 430, 80 ; Witness of St. Cyril, A.D. 444, 80; Witness of St. Leo, a.d. 460, 81; Witness of St. Gelasius, a.d. 496, 81 ; Witness of Pelagius II., a.d. 590, 81; Witness of St. Gregory the Great, a.d. 604, 82; Witness of Stephanus Dorensis, a.d. 649, 82 ; Witness of St. Vitalian, a.d. 669, 83.

IV. The Acts to which the divine assistance is attached, 86.

v. The extension of the Infallible authority to the limits of the doctrinal office of the Church, 90.

VI. The dogmatic value of Pontificial acta ex bathedrd, 91.

CHAPTER III. The Terminology of the Doctrine of Infallibility

Personal, 94, 112; Independent, 97,113; Separate, 98, 1 13 ; Absolute, 102, 113.

CHAPTER IV. Scientific History and the Catholic Rule of Faith

Evidence of history, and the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, 114; Cumulus of evidence for the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff undiminished by historical doubts, 116 ; Difficulties of human history, 119; The German Bishops at Fulda, 120; Heretical assumptions of 'scientific history,' 126; History improperly called a science, 131 ; Definition of science, 131 ; ' Theology only improprie a science, 133; Modern Gnosticism, 135.

CHAPTER V. Result of the Definition

Bishops witnesses of the objective faith of the Church, 139 • Tradition of England, 140 ; Sir Thomas More, 141 ; Cardinal Fisher, 142 ; Cardinal Pole, 142 ; Harding, 143 ; Campian, 144 ; Nicholas Sanders, 145 ; Kellison, 145 ; Southwell, 147 ; Alban Butler, 148 ; Charles Plowden, 149 ; Bishop Hay, 151 ; Bishop Milner, 151 ; Predicted disasters irom the Definition, 152.

Appendix

I. The Latin Postulatum of the BiBhops for the Definition of the

Infallibility, 163; English Translation of the same, 167.

II. Letter of H. E. Cardinal Antonelli to Count Darn, 173.

III. Protest of the Cardinal Presidents, 181.

IV. Constitutio De Fide Catholica, 182 ; Translation of the same,

192 ; Constitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia Christi, 204 ; Translation of the same, 211.

V. Eules laid down by Theologians for Doctrinal Definitions, 220.

VI. The Case of Honorius ; Note of the Archbishop of Baltimore on the question of Honorius, 223.

VII. Letter of the Grerman Bishops on the Council, 225.

AND

ITS DEFINITIONS.

Chapter I

the wobld and the council.

Reverend and deak Brethren,

From the opening of the Council until the' close of the Fourth Public Session, when leave was given to the Bishops to return for a time to their flocks, I thought it my duty to keep silent. It was not indeed easy to refrain from contradicting the manifold errors and falsehoods by which the Council has been assailed. But it seemed for many reasons to be a higher duty, to wait until the work in which we were engaged should be accomplished. That time is now happily come : and the obligation which would have hitherto forbidden the utterance of much that I might have desired to say has been by supreme authority removed.

To you therefore, Reverend and dear Brethren, I at once proceed to make known in mere outline the chief events of this first period of the Council of the Vatican.

I shall confine what I have to say to the three following heads :— First, to a narrative of certain facts external to the Council, but affecting the estimate of its character and acts; secondly, to an appreciation of the internal spirit and action of the Council; and thirdly, to a brief statement of the two dogmatic Constitutions published in its third and fourth Sessions.

First, as to the external history of the Council. As yet, no narrative, or official account of its proceedings, has been possible. The whole world, Catholic and Protestant, has been therefore compelled to depend chiefly upon newspapers. And as these powerfully preoccupy and prejudice the minds of men, I thought it my duty, during the eight months in which I was a close and constant witness of the procedure and acts of the Council, to keep pace with the histories and representations made by the press in Italy, Germany, France, and England. This, by the watchful care of others in England and in Eome, I was enabled to do. In answer to an inquiry from this country as to what was to be believed respecting the Council, I considered it my duty to reply : ' Read carefully the correspondence from Rome published in England, believe the reverse, and you will not be far from the truth.' I am sorry to be compelled to say that this is, above all, true of our own journals. Whether the amusing blunders and persistent misrepresentations were to be charged to the account of ill will, or of want of common knowledge, it was often not easy to say. Two things however were obvious. The journals of

THE WOELD AND THE COUNCIL. 3

Catholic countries, perverse and hostile as they might be, rarely if ever made themselves ridiculous. They wrote with great bitterness and animosity : but with a point which showed that they understood what they were perverting; and that they had obtained their knowledge from sources which could only have been opened to them by violation of dut3^ Their narratives of events which were passing under my own eyes, day by day, were so near the truth, and yet so far from it, so literally accurate, but so absolutely false, that for the first time I learned to understand Paolo Sarpi's ' History of the Council of Trent :' and foresaw how perhaps, from among nominal Catholics, another Paolo Sarpi will arise to write the History of the Council of the Vatican. But none of this applies to our own country. I am the less disposed to charge these misrepresentations, in the case of English correspondents, to the account of ill will, though they abundantly showed the inborn animosity of an anti-Catholic tradition, because neither correspondents nor journalists ever willingly expose themselves to be laughed at. I therefore put it down to the obvious reason that when English Protestants undertake to write of an Oecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, nothing less than a miracle could preserve them from making themselves ridiculous. This, I am sorry to know, for the fair name of our country, has been the effect produced by English newspapers upon foreign countries. Latterly, however, they seemed to have learned prudence, and to have relied no longer on correspondents who, hardly knowing the name, nature, use, or purpose of anything

B 2 about which they had to write, were at the mercy of such informants as English travellers meet at a table-d'hote in Rome. Then appeared paragraphs without date or place, duly translated, as we discovered by comparing them, from Italian and German newspapers. They were less amusing, but they were even more misleading. By way of preface, I will give the estimate of two distinguished Bishops, who are beyond suspicion, as to the truthfulness of one notorious journal.

Of all the foreign sources from which the English newspapers drew their inspiration, the chief, perhaps, was the ' Augsburg Gazette.' This paper has many titles to special consideration. The infamous matter of Janus first appeared in it under the form of articles. During the Council, it had in Rome at least one English contributor. Its letters on the Council have been translated into English and published by a Protestant bookseller, in a volume by Quirinus.

I refrain from giving my own estimate of the book, until I have first given the judgment of a distinguished Bishop of Germany, one of the minority opposed to the definition, whose cause the 'Augsburg Gazette ' professed to serve.

Bishop Von Ketteler, of Mayence, publicly protested against ' the systematic dishonesty of the correspondent of the "Augsburg Gazette." ' ' It is a pure invention,' he adds, ' that the Bishops named in that journal declared that Dollinger represented, as to the substance of the question (of infallibility), the opinions of a majority of the German Bishops. ' And this, he said, ' is not an isolated error, but part of a system which consists in the daring attempt to pubhsh false news, with the object of deceiving the German public, according to a plan concerted beforehand.' . . . ' It will be necessary one day to expose in all their nakedness and abject mendacity the articles of the " Augsburg Gazette." They will present a formidable and lasting testimony to the extent of injustice of which party men, who affect the semblance of superior education, have been guilty against the Church.' * Again, at a later date, the Bishop of Mayence found it necessary to address to his Diocese another public protest against the inventions of the 'Augsburg Gazette.' 'The " Augsburg Gazette," ' he says, ' hardly ever pronounces my name without appending to it a falsehood.' * It would have been easy for us to prove that every Roman letter of the " Augsburg Gazette " contains gross perversions and untruths. Whoever is conversant with the state of things here, and reads these letters, cannot doubt an instant that these errors are voluntary, and are part of a concerted system designed to deceive the public. If time fails me to correct publicly this uninterrupted series of falsehoods, it is impossible for me to keep silence when an attempt is made, with so much perfidy, to misrepresent my own convictions. ' f

* The Vatican, March 4, 1870, p. 145.

t The Vatican, June 17, 1870, p. 319. ' The Archbishop of Cologne has condemned a pretended Catholic journal in which the dogma of the Infallibility is attacked, and the proceedings of the Council misrepresented and vilified. The sentence of the Archbishop on this matter derives the greater weight from the fact of his having, as he states, formed part of the minority in the memorable vote of July 13. The Arehbishop says : " The clergy of this Diocese are

Again, Bishop Hefele, commenting on the Roman correspondents of the ' Augsburg Gazette ' says : ' It is evident that there are people, not Bishops, but

aware that a weekly paper, the Rheinischer Merkur, constantly attacks, in an odious manner, and with ignoble weapons, the Holy Church, in the person of its lawful chiefs the Pope and the Bishops, and in its highest representative the (Ecumenical Council ; so that men's minds are disturbed, and the hearts of the faithful alienated from the Church. It also openly advocates the abolition,, by the secular authority, of the Church's liberty and independence. I therefore hold it to be my duty, in discharge of my pastoral office, to expose the anti-Catholic character of the said paper; not because I regard it as of any greater importance than those other more noisy organs of the press which are the exponents of hatred against religion, but simply because the paper above-named pretends to be Catholic. It is on that account that, as Catholic Bishop of this city, I feel called upon to denounce the falsehood of the assumption of the name of Catholic by a journal which is labouring to overthrow the unity of the Church by separating Catholics from that rock on which she is founded. This declaration is also due from me to those my Eight Reverend Brethren in the Episcopate who belonged with me to the minority in the Council. The journal in question assumes to be the exponent of the sentiments of that minority, but it never was in any way, directly or indirectly, recognised by it or any of its members ; it has been, on the contrary, repeatedly blamed and denounced. Wherefore I exhort all the Eev. Clergy of the Archdiocese to be mindfiil of their duty as sons of the Catholic Church ; and not countenance in any way whatsoever, either by taking it in or reading it, the journal above-named, which outrages our holy Mother, rejects her authority, and desires to see her enslaved. I also exhort you on all fitting occasions to warn your flock» of the dangerous and anti-Catholic character of that journal, so that they may be^ dissuaded from buying or reading it, and may escape being deluded by its errors. I had resolved to order an instruction to be given from the pulpit upon the more recent decisions of the Council, and especially upon the infallible teaching of the Pope, and tc explain therein the true sense of the Dogma ; and thus to remove the prejudices that have been raised against it, as if it were a nove] doctrine or one in contradiction to the end of the Church's constitution, or to sound reason ; and to meet generally the objections raised against the validity of the Council's decision." '

having relations with the Council, who are not restrained by duty and conscience.' * We had reason to believe that the names of these people, both German and English, were well known to us.

Now the testimony of the Bishop of Mayence, a^ to the falsehoods of these correspondents respecting Rome and Germany, I can confirm by my testimony as to their treatment of matters relating to Rome and England. I do not think there is a mention of my own name without, as the Bishop of Mayence says, the appendage of a falsehood. The whole tissue of the correspondence is false. Even the truths it narrates are falsified : and through this discoloured medium the English people, by the help of Quirinus and the ' Saturday Review,' gaze and are misled.

To relieve this graver aspect of the subject, I will add a few livelier exploits of our English correspondents. On January 14, an English journal announced that the Bishops were unable to speak Latin ; and that Cardinal Altieri (who laid down his life for his flock in the cholera three years ago), in whose rooms the Bishops met, ' was beside himself.' ' What is there,' the correspondent of another paper asked, ' in seven hundred old men dressed in white, and wearing tall paper caps?' 'The Oriental Bishops,' he says, ' refused to wear white mitres : ' reasonably', because they never wear them. ' The Bishop of Thun attacked the Bishop of Sura with a violence which threatened personal collision.' There is no Bishop of Thun. The same paper, July 7, says, ' I was positively shocked, yesterday, at finding that the Roman * The Vatican, March 4, 1870, p. 145.

O THE VATICAN COUNCIL.

Catholic Hierarchy of my own country is a sham ; at least, so far as regards its territorial and independent pretensions. Every one of them, including the Archbishop, is in charge of a Vicar Apostolic, Cardinal Maddalena, titular Archbishop of Corfu, within whose diocese, it would appear, our island is situated.' This has more foundation in fact than the other statements, for until the Archbishop of Corfu could find a carriage, we used daily to go together to the Council. A leading journal, in May last, announced : ' At a recent sitting of the Council, Cardinal Schwarzenberg made a speech which created even a greater uproar than the former one of Bishop Strossmayer.' In this speech he defended Protesl^ants with such vigour that ' the presiding Legate, Cardinal De Angelis, interrupted the speaker, and a warm dispute between the two Cardinals ensued. The President strove repeatedly, but in vain, to silence the Cardinal with his bell : and at length the Bishops drowned his protest in a storm of hisses, in the midst of which the Cardinal was carried from the tribune, half fainting with excitement, to his seat.' The Cardinal was indeed called to order, but no such tragedy was ever acted. ' The Papal authorities,' says another journal, ' have housed the Bishops with discriminating hospitality. Those who could not be absolutely trusted have been lodged with safe companions, in the proportion of one weak brother to half-a-dozen strong.' 'The Jesuits have had the manipulation of the flock and have done it well.' The distribution of the Bishops was made by the Government, and months before the Council opened, with as much theological manipulation as the filling of a train from Paddington. Again, we hear on May 17, that ' Cardinal Bilio, the Prefect of the Deputation for Dogma, and author of the Syllabus, has passed over to the opposition.' When the Holy Father heard of this defection ' he was seized with faintness,' and told the Cardinal ' to go on a tour for the benefit of his health.' The ' Times ' at last confessed : ' To find out the truth of what is going on .... is diflicult beyond conception.' . . . ' Every day, even every hour, brings up its story, .... which, in nine cases out of ten, will prove an ingenious hoax.' Therefore nine-tenths of these histories are labelled ' hoaxes.' The ' Times ' adds : ' To pick one's way amidst these snares, without becoming the victims of delusions, is what no man can feel quite sure of.' A warning of which I hope the readers of newspapers will fully avail themselves. The ' Standard,' wiser than its fellows, said in February : ' It is a thousand pities that English correspondents should childishly swallow cock-and-bull stories of what never did and never could have occurred in the Council, and thus damage their own reputation for accuracy, as well as inferentially that of their colleagues.'

Another journal damaged something more than its reputation for accuracy, when, after having announced that the Roman Clergy, that is, the Parish Priests of Rome, had, all but eight, declined to petition in favour of the definition, it was again and again called upon to publish the fact that the Roman Clergy unanimously petitioned for the definition, in a form

SO explicit that the Clergy of England and Scotland afterwards adopted it as their own and presented it to the Holy Father. The newspaper in question was never pleased to insert the correction. But these are flowers plucked at random. I will now endeavour to give shortly a more connected outline of the Vatican Council, as drawn by the newspapers of the last eight or nine months ; and as their representations will be one day read up as contemporaneous records for a future history, I wish to leave in the Archives of the Diocese a contemporaneous record of their utter worthlessness, and, for the most part, of their utter falsehood.

As the highest point attracts the storm, so the chief violence fell upon the head of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. On this I shall say nothing. Posterity will know Pius the Ninth ; and the world already knows him now too well to remember, except with sorrow and disgust, the language of his enemies. ' If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household ? ' No one has this privilege above the Vicar of the Master; and it is a great joy and distinct source of strength and confidence to all of the household to share this sign, which never fails to mark those who are on His side against the world.

The Council was composed, at first, of 767 Fathers. We were told that their very faces were such as to compel an enlightened correspondent, at the first sight of them, to lament ' that the spiritual welfare of the world should be committed to such men.'

Then, by a wonderful disposition of things, for the good, no doubt, of the human race, and above all of the Church itself, the Council was divided into a majority and a minority: and, by an even more beneficent and admirable provision, it was so ordered that the theology, philosophy, science, culture, intellectual power, logical acumen, eloquence, candour, nobleness of mind, independence of spirit, courage, and elevation of character in the Council, were all to be found in the minority. The majority was naturally a Dead Sea of superstition, narrowness, shallowness, ignorance, prejudice ; without theology, philosophy, science, or eloquence ; gathered from ' old Catholic countries;' bigoted, tyrannical, deaf to reason; with a herd of ' Curial and Italian Prelates,' and mere ' Vicars Apostolic'

The Cardinal Presidents were men of imperious and overbearing character, who by violent ringing of bells and intemperate interruptions cut short the calm and inexorable logic of the minority.

But the conduct of the majority was still more overbearing. By violent outcries, menacing gestures, and clamorous manifestations round the tribune, they drowned the thrilling eloquence of the minority, and compelled unanswerable orators to descend.

Not satisfied with this, the majority, under the pretext that the method of conducting the discussions was imperfect, obtained from the supreme authority a new regulation, by which all liberty of discussion was finally taken from the noble few who were struggling to redeem the Council and the Church from bondage.

From that date the non-oecumenicity of the Council was no longer doubtful. Indeed, ' Janus ' had told the world in many tongues, long before it met, that the Council would not be free. Nevertheless, the minority persevered with heroic courage, logic which nothing could resist, and eloquence which electrified the most insensible, until a tyrannous majority, deaf to reason and incapable of argument, cut discussion short by an arbitrary exercise of power ; and so silenced the only voices nobly lifted up for science, candour, and common sense.

This done, the definition of new dogmas became inevitable, and the antagonism between the ultra-romanism of a party and the progress of modern society, between independence and servility, became complete.

Such is the history of the Council written ah extra in the last nine months. I believe that every epithet I have given may be verified in the mass of extracts now before me.

A leading English journal, ten days after the Definition of the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, with great simplicity observed, ' It is curious to compare the very general and deep interest taken by all intelligent observers in the early deliberations of the Council with the equally mai'ked indifference to the culmination of its labours. Every rumour that came from Rome six or seven months ago was canvassed with great eagerness, even by men who cared little for ordinary theological disputations: while the proclamation of the astonishing dogma of papal infallibility has produced in any but ecclesiastical circles little beyond a certain amount of perfunctory criticism.'

The main cause of this contrast isj of course,

THE WOKT.D AND THE COUl-fCIL. 13

not far to seek. The writer proceeds to assign the cause, and in so doing passes at once, with a gravity befitting the occasion, to a disquisition on Sir William Hamilton's theory of perception, and on ' the gigantic gooseberry.'

Such is the earnestness and the sincerity with which English journals, even of high repute, have treated the subject of the CEcumenical Council.

Let me, also, assign the cause why the un-Catholic and anti-Catholic world took so clamorous an interest in the opening of the Council, and in the end affected so ill-sustained a tone of indifference. I know of no public event in our day the explanation of which is more transparent and self-evident. It is this.

When the Council assembled, it was both hoped and believed that the ' Roman Curia ' and the ' Ultramontane party ' would be checked and brought under by the decisions of the Bishops. A controversy had been waged against what was termed ' Ultramontanism,' or ' Ultra-Catholicism,' or ' Ultra-Romanism,' in Germany, France, and England. When I last addressed you I used the following words, which I now repeat, because I can find none more exact. They have been fulfilled to the very letter.

' Facts like these give a certain warrant to the assertions and prophecies of politicians and Protestants. They prove that in the Catholic Church there is a school at variance with the doctrinal teaching of the Holy See in matters which are not of faith. But they do not reveal how small that school is. Its centre would seem to be at Munich ; it has, both in France and in England, a small number of adherents. They are active, they correspond, and, for tlie most part, write anonymously. It would be difficult to describe its tenets, for none of its followers seem to be agreed in all points. Some hold the infallibility of the Pope, and some defend the Temporal Power. Nothing ajDpears to be common to all, except an animus of opposition to the acts of the Holy See in matters outside the faith.

' In this country, about a year ago, an attempt was made to render impossible, as it was confidently but vainly thought, the definition of the infallibility of the Pontiff, by reviving the monotonous controversy about Pope Honorius. Later we were told of I know not what combination of exalted personages in France for the same end. It is certain that these symptoms are not sporadic and disconnected, but in mutual understanding, and with a common purpose. The anti- Catholic press has eagerly encouraged this school of thought. If a Catholic can be found out of tune with authority by half a note, he is at once extolled for unequalled authority and irrefragable logic. The anti-Catholic journals are at his service, and he vents his opposition to the common opinions of the Church by writing against them anonymously. Sad as this is, it is not formidable. It has effect almost alone upon those who are not Catholic. Upon Catholics its effect is hardly appreciable ; on the theological Schools of the Church, it, will have little influence; upon the Ecumenical Council it can have none.' *

Many publications had appeared in French, Eng-

* Pastoral on ' Tlie CEcumenical Council, 1869,' &c. pp. 132, 133.

lisL., and German, from which it became evident that a common purpose and plan of co-operation had been formed. Certain notorious letters published in France, and the infamous book ' Janiis,' translated into English, French, and Italian, proclaimed open war upon the Council within the unity of the Catholic Church. This alone was enough, to set the whole anti-Catholic world on fire -with curiosity, hope, and delight. The learning, the science of the intellectual freemen of the Roman Church were already under arms to reduce the pretensions of Rome.

A belief had also spread itself that the Council would explain away the doctrines of Trent, or give them some new or laxer meaning, or throw open some questions supposed to be closed, or come to a compromise or transaction with other religious systems; or at least that it would accommodate the dogmatic stiffness of its traditions to modern thought and modern theology. It is strange that any one should have forgotten that every General Council, from Nicfea to Trent, which has touched on the faith, has made new definitions, and that every new definition is a new dogma, and closes what was before open, and ties up more strictly the doctrines of faith. This belief, however, excited an expectation, mixed with hopes, that Rome by becoming comprehensive might become approachable, or by becoming inconsistent might become powerless over the reason and the will of men.

But the interest excited by this preliminary skirmishing external to the Council, was nothing compared to the exultation with which the anti-Catholic opinion and anti-Catholic press of Protestant countries, and the anti-Koman opinion and press even of Catholic countries, beheld, as they believed, the formation of an organised ' international opposition ' of more than a hundred Bishops within the Council itself. The day was come at last. What the world could not do against Rome from without, its own Bishops were going to do against Rome, and in the world's service, from within. I shall hereafter show how little the world knew the Bishops whom it wronged by its adulation, and damaged by its praise. They were the favourites of the world, because they were believed to be fighting the Pope. In a moment, all the world rose up to meet them. Governments, politicians, newspapers, schismatical, heretical, infidel, Jewish, revolutionary, as with one unerring instinct, united in extolling and setting forth the virtue, learning, science, eloquence, nobleness, heroism of this ' international opposition.' With an iteration truly Homeric, certain epithets were perpetually linked to certain names. All who were against Rome were written up ; all who were for Rome were written down. The public eye and ear of all countries were filled, and taught to associate all that is noble and great with ' the international opposition;' all that is neither noble nor great, not to say more, with others. The interest was thus wrought up to the highest pitch; and a confident expectation was raised, and spread abroad, that the Council would be unable to make a definition, and that Rome would be defeated. I can hardly conceive a keener or more vivid motive of interest to the anti-Catholic world than this. For this cause Rome was full of correspondents, ' our own,' ' our special,' and ' our occasional.' Private persons forsook great interests and duties, to reside in Rome for the support of the ' international opposition.' A league of newspapers, fed from a common centre, diffused hope and confidence in all countries, that the science and enlightenment of the minority would save the Catholic Church from the immoderate pretensions of Rome, and the superstitious ignorance of the universal Episcopate. Day after day, the newspapers teemed with the achievements and orations of the opposition. The World believed that it had found its own in the heart of the Episcopate, and loved it as its own. There was nothing it might not hope for, expect, and predict. In truth, it is no wonder that a very intense interest should be excited in minds hostile to Rome by such a spectacle as the outer world then believed itself to see. And such, we may safely affirm, were the chief motives of its feverish excitement, at the opening and during the early period of the Council.