Petri Privilegium

Front matter

PETRI PRIVILEGIUM:

THREE PASTORAL LETTERS TO THE

CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE

The Centenary of Saint Peter and the General Council (1867)

THE

CENTENARY OF SAINT PETER

AND

THE GENERAL COUNCIL:

&c.

BY

HENRY EDWARD

ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER.

LONDON:

1867.

Moral significance of the Centenary, 4; Five Special Acts, 5; Words of the Sovereign Pontiff on June 17, 1867, 6; Assembling of the Bishops, 9; The Centenary and the Council of Trent, 12; Visitation of the Limina Apostolorum, 15; Petrus in suis successoribus vivit et praesidet et judicium exercet (Concil. Ephes. sess. iii.), 16.

Privilegia Petri, four propositions from Scripture, universal tradition, the Fathers, and Councils, 17; Three classes of evidence for the infallibility of the Church, 21; Infallibility active and passive, 23; Cathedra Petri, 24; The supreme office of teaching and ruling, 27.

Allocution of the Sovereign Pontiff, June 26, 1867, 28; Answer of the Bishops, 30; Their recognition of the Supreme and Plenary office of the successor of St. Peter, 34; Allegations of Protestant critics, 35; the Encyclical of 1864, 37.

Nationalism and Gallicanism, 41; Condemned by Innocent XI. in 1682, and Alexander VIII. in 1691, 47; the Church in France of to-day, 53; The ordinary medium of Divine Faith, 57; Decrees ex Cathedra, 59.

'The order of truth is abiding,' St. Leo., 67; Reasons for convoking the General Council, 69; The Supreme Pontiff and General Councils, 71; The evidence of the first six General Councils, 73.

The Council of Trent, 75; Popular misunderstandings, 77; Two elements of the discipline of the Church, 81; The order of nature and the order of grace, 83.

The Christian society of the world menaced, 85; The wounds of the past, 87; The Protestant Reformation, 89; Spiritus Domini replevit orbem terrarum, 91; The Pope in presence of a hostile world, 103.

Public Documents of the Centenary.

1. Allocution of His Holiness, June 26, 1867, 109. 2. Homily of His Holiness, June 29, 1867, 116. 3. Salutation or address of the Bishops, July 1, 120. 4. Reply of His Holiness, 139.

Reverend and dear Brethren,—

I should not rightly fulfil the office which binds me to you, and to the flock committed to my charge, if I were not to endeavour to make you share, so far as I am able, in the great events which have marked the Eighteenth Centenary of S. Peter's Martyrdom. I need hardly tell you that, next after the feeling of joy which filled my mind, as I looked upon the assembly of more than half the bishops of the world gathered around the throne of the Vicar of our Lord, there was nothing more present to me than the wish that you could have been eye-witnesses, with me, of these great acts of the Church; or, at least, that I might be able to convey to you somewhat of the consolation, confidence, and light which I trust they bestowed on me. This I will endeavour now to do. But at the outset I must disclaim both the intention and the power to set before you any adequate picture of the beauty, majesty, and splendour of those solemnities. I can only say that all was proportionate to the greatest kingdom upon earth, the Holy Catholic Church. Of all that spoke to the eye, therefore, I shall be silent. I could not describe it if I would; and I leave it to others who have the gifts of observation, and memory, and delineation required for the task. Some have already written of these great solemnities; others will do so hereafter. I shall confine myself entirely to that which did not meet the eye. I mean the moral significance, and, I may say, the moral beauty, majesty, and splendour of the late events in Rome.

The first thought which arose in my mind was the contrast of the spectacle displayed on the Janiculum eighteen hundred years ago, and the solemnity then before me in S. Peter's. On the day of the martyrdom of the Apostle, the people of Rome hurried with rude and cruel curiosity across the Tiber. A multitude of faces, distorted by hate and passion, surrounded the cross of Peter. There, tradition says, he hung head downwards in shame and agony. The other day, pastors and faithful from all the world came up to his tomb on the same Janiculum, and surrounded in loving veneration the throne of his successor. In this victory of the Cross, and in the perpetuity of the victory, there is the hand of God revealed. No human power could so change the will in man.

Although I feel it impossible to describe the events of those days, nevertheless there are five acts so marked in their character that I may at least enumerate them:

First, was the Procession on the Festival of Corpus Christi, in which the Sacrament of our Lord's Pre- sence was borne in the hands of His Vicar, attended by half the episcopate of the Catholic Church:

Secondly, the Consistory, in which the Sovereign Pontiff announced his intention to convene an Œcumenical Council:

Thirdly, the eighteenth Centenary of S. Peter's Martyrdom, held over the tomb of the Apostle. The splendour and beauty of that solemnity was probably never equalled. It was royal and pontifical in all the fulness of majestic grandeur.

Fourthly, was the Feast of S. Paul in his Basilica out of the walls, where the relics of the Apostle of the Gentiles are enshrined. This Basilica, which for grace and beauty surpasses S. Peter's as much as it is surpassed by S. Peter's for majesty and grandeur, was once under the protection of the kings of England. Since the unhappy schism of our country, no protector has been named. S. Paul's still awaits a happier time.

Lastly, on the following day, the Holy Father gave audience to the bishops, to receive from them the Address or Response, in which they united themselves in heart and mind to their supreme Head. The gravity and moral grandeur of that act we shall endeavour to estimate hereafter. When the address had been read, and when the Holy Father was about to bestow the Apostolical benediction and bid farewell to the bishops, the Angelus of noon sounded. He rose, and began the Angelical Salutation, half the bishops of the world responding. Such a Salutation was, perhaps, never before offered to the Mother of God on earth. At Ephesus there were four hundred and thirty bishops, but the Vicar of her Divine Son was not there. So, simply and grandly, ended the Centenary of 1867.

There was, however, one other event over which I cannot pass in silence. The 17th of June was the anniversary of the Pope's creation. After the Mass in the Sistine, the Holy Father went to unvest in the Pauline Chapel. The Cardinal Vicar, in the name of the Sacred College, made the usual address of congratulation, ending with the words that they wished the Holy Father 'health and many years to see the peace and triumph of the Church.' His Holiness immediately answered, in words which, unfortunately, were not taken down; but as nearly as possible they were as follows:—'I accept your good wishes from my heart, but I remit their verification to the hands of God. We are in a moment of great crisis. If we look only to the aspect of human events, there is no hope; but we have a higher confidence. Men are intoxicated with dreams of unity and progress; but neither is possible without justice. Unity and progress based on pride and egotism are illusions. God has laid on me the duty to declare the truths on which Christian Society is based, and to condemn the errors which undermine its foundations. And I have not been silent. In the Encyclical of 1864, and in that which is called the Syllabus, I declared to the world the dangers which threaten Society, and I condemned the falsehoods which assail its life. That act I now confirm in your presence, and I set it again before you as the rule of your teaching. To you, Venerable Brethren, as Bishops of the Church, I now appeal to assist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. When the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness, they had a pillar of fire to guide them in the night, and a cloud to shield them from the heat by day. You are the pillar and the cloud to the people of God. By your teaching you must guide the faithful in the darkness; by your example you must shield them from the burning sun of this world. I am aged and alone, praying on the mountain; and you, the Bishops of the Church, are come to hold up my arms. The Church must suffer, but it will conquer. "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, entreat, rebuke with all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time"—and that time is come—"when they will not endure sound doctrine." The world will contradict you, and turn from you; but be firm and faithful. "For I am even now ready to be sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand." "I have," I trust, "fought a good fight," and "have kept the faith:" and there is laid up for you, and I hope for me also, "a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me at that day."' The power and emotion with which these words were spoken moved every one who heard them.

There is, perhaps, hardly any Pontiff who has governed the Church with more frequent exercises of supreme authority than Pius the Ninth. The creation of Hierarchies, the definition of the Immaculate Conception, the declarations on the Temporal Power, the condemnations in the Encyclical of 1864, manifest, in a singular degree, the plenitude of his supreme office as the Ruler and Doctor of the Universal Church. Nevertheless there is, perhaps, no Pontiff who has united the whole episcopate so closely to himself, or has called them so often to his side. In 1854 the bishops were invited to assist at the declaration of the dogma, for which the whole Church had so long waited with desire. Two hundred and fifty assembled about his throne in witness of the faith of the Universal Church in the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Mother; and bore home to their flocks the pious belief of their hearts as an article of faith defined by the Vicar of her Divine Son.

Again, in 1862, when the conflict of the temporal power was at itshighest, Pius the Ninth proclaimed the canonisation of the martyrs of Japan, and invited the bishops once more to Rome. About two hundred bishops obeyed his bidding, and, in words never to be forgotten, united themselves to him in the conflict he had so long sustained for the rights and liberties of the Holy See; which are the rights and liberties of the Universal Church.

And now a third time he has summoned the bishops of the whole world. You will all remember when the intention was first made known. It was when the two years of the Convention were expiring; when all human help was departing from him, and men thought the time was come for the downfal of the temporal power. The French armies were to be withdrawn in December 1866. Then it was that the Holy Father invited the bishops of the world to surround him in Rome in June 1867. Men of the world counted it to be madness. While they were prophesying revolution, anarchy, and I know not what, the Holy Father, with calm confidence in God, began to make preparations for celebrating the Centenary of S. Peter's Martyrdom over the tomb of the Apostle. The event has justified his confidence, and taught a lesson both to the world and to ourselves: to us, that we be more courageous, and to the world, that it be less pretentious in its prophecies. It has manifested, with an evidence which no one has dared to deny, the life and the power of the Catholic Church. We had been listening to daily discourses on the decline and fall of the Church as a power among the nations. At the moment when men were exchanging gifts and congratulations, as they believed, over its dead body, the Head of the Church spoke, and the bishops, literally from the four winds of heaven, assembled round him. It was not a command, it was not even an injunction; it was a simple invitation, an expression of his wish. Five hundred bishops, with a multitude of the priesthood and faithful of the Church, came up from north, south, east, and west, over land and sea, to the Successor of S. Peter. There were bishops from China, and the far east of Asia; from California, and the far west of America; from the far north of Tartary, and of Canada; from Australia and the islands of the Southern seas. There were present the chief pastors of at least thirty races and nations. No voice but one in all the world could have called together such an assembly—the voice of the successor of Peter, to whom the whole world was committed, of the Vicar of Him to whom 'all power in heaven and on earth is given.'

It is not, then, in the majesty and splendour which meets the eye that the magnitude and grandeur of this event is to be measured. Taken only as a demonstration of moral power, and of the superiority of the moral over the material order of the world, the assembly in Rome at this moment, in the face of all menace of wars and of revolutions, has surely a significance far wider and deeper than any event in our times. More than this: no event, since the last General Council was closed, has manifested so luminously to the intellect, and, I may say, so palpably to the sense, the unity, universality, unanimity, and authority of the only true Church on earth. I am not only bound, but glad, to acknowledge the truthfulness, justice, and candour of those who, though not of the Catholic Church, have written from Rome the description of what they saw. With one or two exceptions, not worthy of notice, their narratives have been honourable, manly, and straightforward. Certainly the late events in Rome ought to awaken in any Christian heart a noble and a generous sympathy. They were an exhibition of the Christian Faith and Church in acts of Divine worship, and of charity to all mankind, divested of every accent of controversy. Whosoever believes in Christianity and desires the spread of the kingdom of our Divine Lord upon earth, must have a sympathy in the great assembly of the Church the other day. Even those who are separated from the Catholic and Roman Church recognise it as the great foundation of Christendom. They who reject parts of its doctrine hold the Creed of the Apostles, which it has guarded from the beginning; they who rest their faith upon Councils, Fathers, and Scriptures, know that the custody of all these is ultimately in the Catholic Church. They who repose their Christianity upon the testimony and facts of history, know that the last and highest witness for the Christian revelation, in its succession and even in its origin, is the Catholic and Roman Church. It is impossible, therefore, that they can look without sympathy upon this majestic demonstration of its indefectible life and immutable identity.

It may without exaggeration be said, not only that, since the Council of Trent, no such manifestation of the unity and universality of the Church has been seen, but that the eighteen years of interrupted and lingering toil of that Council in a valley of the Tyrol never exhibited at any time such a demonstration of the world-wide organisation and central authority of the Church as these last three weeks in Rome. Trent is not the tomb of the Apostle. Legates presided there: here was the Vicar of our Lord in person. At the Council of Trent, hardly a hundred bishops were present: on the Centenary of S. Peter's Martyrdom, five hundred bishops of the Church surrounded the throne of his successor. But it may be said that the Centenary was but a pageant: the Council of Trent is a power, which for three hundred years has governed the Church. This is most true: nor can three days be compared with three hundred years; nor a Canonisation and a few Allocutions be weighed against eighteen years of supreme authority in defining the faith and legislating for the Church. Let us compare, therefore, this great Pontifical act only with the visible manifestations of Trent; and it will be within the bounds of moderation to say that neither the opening nor the closing of that Council so drew to itself the eyes of the whole world, nor so reflected the unity and universality of the Church, as this Centenary.

But if it would be unreasonable to compare these few days of festival in Rome with eighteen years of legislation in Trent, it would be equally unreasonable, and most superficial, to estimate the moral significance of this Centenary by the ceremonies and solemnities of those three weeks. This event may be taken, I believe, to be the opening of a new period, and to contain a future which may reach over centuries: and it is to this I would call your thoughts.

And first, this solemn celebration of the anniversary of S. Peter's Martyrdom has in it a confession of faith, which must exercise a powerful action both upon the Church and the world.

The words of our Divine Master, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,' never yet received a more majestic interpretation. They are blazoned round the dome which hangs above his sanctuary. But the other day, the reality which they prophesy was there. The bishops of the Universal Church assembled round his tomb. There they were, resting upon him as the rock and foundation of their power throughout the world. Fathers, doctors, and Councils have, in all ages, saluted Rome as the Chair of Peter; but here, in honour of his martyrdom and of his successor, five hundred bishops came from the farthest regions of the earth to declare their faith in the Divine centre of the Catholic unity, and their vital adherence to it. The words of antiquity seemed to be impersonated. S. Cyprian's axiom of unity was there visible; 'There is one God, and one Christ, and one Church, and one Chair founded upon the Rock (super Petram) by the voice of the Lord.' 'To manifest unity, He has ordained by His authority that unity should take its rise from one [Apostle].' The words of S. Augustin were there before us: Peter 'personated [the Church] because of the primacy he held among the Disciples;' and of S. Optatus, that 'Peter alone received the keys;' and of S. Leo, that our Lord has willed that whatsoever He gave to the Apostles they should possess alone through Peter; and of S. Ambrose, 'where Peter is, there is the Church.' In the midst of this nineteenth century, when faith is waxing faint even in nations once Catholic, and men have been deriding, and foretelling the downfal of the successor of S. Peter, as a relic of mediaeval superstition, and the shadow of an old usurpation, the bishops of the world come together, to reaffirm their faith in the supremacy and prerogatives of the Prince of the Apostles, in the person of his successor; and their absolute adherence and submission to his Chair and to his authority.

In this assembly of bishops in Rome there was also contained the recognition and fulfilment of some of the highest obligations of the episcopate. By a law of great antiquity, resulting from the primacy of jurisdiction and the plenitude of pastoral care which was committed to S. Peter, and in him to his successors, the bishops, as pastors of the flock, are bound to appear personally, at fixed intervals of time, before the tomb of the Apostle. By the Constitutions of Benedict XIV., it is ordered that all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops shall visit the Limina Apostolorum: those of Italy and the neighbouring shores every three years; of Germany, Spain, England, and the north of Europe every four years; of the remoter parts of Europe every five years; of Asia and the more distant countries every ten years. The duty of this visit consists of three parts: first, personal presence at the tomb of the Apostle; second, the act of reverence and obedience to the Roman Pontiff; and thirdly, the account which every bishop is bound to render in writing to the Pastor of pastors, of the state of his diocese, both of his clergy and flock, descending into the minutest details of their number and condition. This visit is a recognition of the supreme jurisdiction of the Vicar of our Lord over the Universal Church. It is a direct account, rendered by each bishop to the Pastor who represents the chief of the Apostles. If the Sovereign Pontiff were at Gaeta or at Avignon, the visit would be made there, or wheresover he may be. Under the splendour and beauty of this Centenary, therefore, there was this world-wide recognition of the supreme pastoral care of the chief Pastor upon earth; and an account, minute and universal, of the state of the whole Catholic Church, as of one fold under one shepherd.

It is certainly not without a Divine disposal that, high and above all other events at this moment, should be manifested the universality of the Church resting upon Peter. In an age when men are wandering, or feeling their way uncertainly, believing that a Church exists, but not knowing where to find it, the two notes which S. Augustin held up before the Donatists, the diffusa per orbem, and the Cathedra Petri, are visibly seen, not as texts in a page, but as living facts before our eyes. I hope that it will be not unacceptable to you if I draw together old truths with which, Reverend and dear Brethren, I know you to be familiar: nevertheless, this moment gives them a special seasonableness, and a new explicitness and application to our times.

What I conceive is brought vividly before us is the perpetual office and action of Peter as the source of unity and infallibility to the Church; and at the same time the eminently practical and pervading influence of this Divine order. With those who are out of the Church, Peter is a historical name, a person in the past, a subject of patristic learning, a symbol of unity and authority. To Catholics, Peter teaches and rules at this hour. His prerogatives are wielded by successors, but the powers are his. He is the source of jurisdiction, the organ of truth, the centre of unity. Pontiffs come and go, but Peter abides always. As one of the greatest of his successors has said: 'Simon may die, but Peter lives for ever.' The Catholic theology, therefore, and the Councils of the Church, when they speak of Peter and of his prerogatives, are using no rhetorical phrases, no oriental and allegorical exaggerations. They use the words of strict law, and of exact rights. They express the first principles of the Divine unity and authority of the Church of God. When Bellarmin enumerates the eight-and-twenty prerogatives of S. Peter, he is defining the exclusive primacy of power and office which lies at the foundation of the Church, and endures to this day. To pass over all others, there are five prerogatives exclusively belonging to him, which descend to his successors. He was the first of the Apostles, and is so always designated. He had a special name which, both in prophecy and by promise, made him the rock of foundation. He had, first and alone, the plenitude of all power. He had a special stability of faith, by the singular assistance of the prayer of our Divine Lord; and an office, of which that stability is the condition, to confirm his brethren; and lastly, he had the supreme and sole charge of the whole flock on earth. In virtue of these prerogatives Peter became, and, in his successor, is to this day, the source of mission, the centre and bond of Churches, the note of unity, the test of truth, the fountain of jurisdiction.

If there be, then, any truth evidently declared in Scripture and in universal tradition, in the writings of Fathers, and in the decrees of Councils, it is that which may be summed up in the following propositions:—

(1.) That to Peter, first and alone, was given by our Divine Lord the plenitude of all power, both of teaching and of ruling, together with the charge of the whole flock on earth.

(2.) That this power was so given to him that he was able to act alone and supremely, apart from the other Apostles; whereas the other Apostles were unable to act except in subordination to him.

(3.) That to him a special assistance was granted, to sustain him in the knowledge and declaration of the faith, and a special office committed to him to confirm and to sustain the faith of the Apostles; so that the deposit of faith was doubly secured, first in the person of Peter, and next in the college of the Apostles in union with him.

(4.) That this Divine foundation and institution of the Church is perpetual; that Peter lives on in his successors, and the college of the Apostles in the episcopate; so that both the Chair of Peter is indefectible and infallible, and also the episcopate in union with it.

Such are, in fact, the principles which were embodied in this great solemnity; and that I may more fully and completely express this confession of faith, I will take the words of another, more capable than I am to convey its full force.

'Rome, through its bishop, successor of the Apostle S. Peter, forms the centre of unity to the whole Church. Hence those marks and notes, which are for the purpose of designating the kingdom of God on earth, must, in virtue of such title, attach to the Roman Church, as chief among all particular Churches, the union of which constitutes the Church Universal. And as it is especially in this characteristic of Rome, as being the foundation, that the force of cohesion resides which makes the Church one united and harmonious whole, in Rome, too, should be found the conditions of the Church's unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity. Take from the Church the primacy which Peter brought and bequeathed to Rome, and the Church has ceased to exist; it has vanished from men's eyes, has lost its infallible teaching, and can no longer guide mankind in the way of salvation.

'It was in a visible way that Jesus Christ designated the Apostle Peter from the rest; and in like manner it is from its visible head, and from its union with him, that the Church derives that complete fulness of organisation which constitutes its beauty and its glory. The Roman Church possesses, immediately and intrinsically, the attributes which characterise the kingdom of God; all others share in them only by their union with it. For Rome is the One only Church to which all others must conform, by reason of its preeminent primacy, and because within it the Apostolic traditions have been preserved. Rome, with its arenas dyed with Christian blood, showing on the line of its Pontiffs twenty-seven confessors in the purple of martyrdom; Rome, that for centuries was one wide field of slaughter, to which the children of the Cross came from all quarters of the Roman world to vindicate their glorious title at the price of a cruel death. Rome is the Holy Church, which Christ has given for a foundation, in the person of him to whom His own prayer secured indefectibility of faith for all who believe in Him; the Church which has preserved, pure and intact, holiness of teaching; from which descends the order that presides over the administration of the holy sacraments; and whose holy laws guide mankind to salvation. Rome is the Universal Church, whose gospel messengers have traversed the whole world; whose faith is proclaimed throughout the earth; which has accomplished what pagan Rome attempted in vain, and subdued that world to itself, However numerous and brilliant its victories, war never subjugated so many nations to it as Christian peace has ranged beneath its laws. This unparalleled greatness and glory Rome owes to the Apostles; to the Prince of the Apostles, above all: hence it is the Apostolic Church; and more, the Princely Apostolic Church. If in ancient days it could come with a claim to the homage of mankind, and point with just and holy pride to its twenty-five Pontiffs, how much more to-day, when it can claim the world's reverence and admiration with its two hundred and fifty-three bishops who have sat successively in the Prince of the Apostles' Chair.

'Nor is this enough; the Church of Rome is imperishable. Placed in the swiftest stream of events, amid the vicissitudes of ages and of empires, amid the raging billows of every passion, exposed to every fury, constantly assailed by emperors, Gothic kings, Greek exarchs, Lombards, and Franks—by paganism, schism, and heresy—there it has ever remained, immoveable on that Rock of Peter: that rock, itself unshaken, of Apostolic and universal unity. What could Nero do against it, or Domitian, or Decius, or Dioclesian? What could the gates of hell do against it, or what can they now?'

The evidence from inspired and uninspired writings for the infallibility of the Church may be distinguished into three classes.

First, those which declare the perpetual stability or infallibility of S. Peter, or of S. Peter and his successors.