Chapter V
The Second Public Session--Swearing a Creed never before known in a General Council--Really an Oath including Feudal Obedience.
The same tone of disappointment in which the Civiltá had said that as the discussion of the Draft was not concluded, no Decree would be promulged in the second session, pervaded the additional remark that the world would describe as a vain ceremony the recital of the creed with which it had been resolved to fill up the day. Writers of different shades, as if by concert, did describe it as a religious ceremony,--a mere ceremony, an empty ceremony, a vain ceremony, and a tedious ceremony.
So far from taking this session as a vain show, we take it for one of the most distinctive footmarks left in the deposits of history by the mammoth which we call the Papacy. Without contrivance of man--in contravention, indeed, of arrangements made with patient forethought--the Vatican Council was compelled, under guise of reciting a creed, to exhibit its bishops as if barons swearing allegiance to a prince in peril of losing his estates. The creed recited was one never before seen or heard of in any General Council. An apparent accident set the faith of the early Church, and the modern composite oath and creed, before the eye of history in a contrast sharper than any artist could have devised.
A cause similar to that which led to this day being employed in setting face to face the old creed and the new, had at Trent led to the act that formed the reverse of the medal. At Trent, on the day fixed for the third session, no Decree was ready for promulgation, just as none was ready at the Vatican on that fixed for the second.
Consequently, at Trent, after much reluctance, the Fathers, rather than let the day appointed pass without a session, consented to fill up the time in doing what many of them felt would expose them to ridicule--in reciting the creed. Thus did they create an example which the Curia now followed. Two unforeseen accidents, linked together only by the association of precedent, led to the placing of the Catholic creed as it existed up to the Council of Trent, and the Romish creed as framed after Trent, side by side in a framework so impressive as to ensure the exhibition of the two in contrast to all ages.
At Trent the Fathers said that they would set forth as the firm and sole foundation, against which the gates of hell should not prevail, the creed used by the Roman Church, which was the principium, wherein "all who confessed Christ" of necessity concurred,--an expression which seems as if it was the last breath of catholicity on the lips of the Papal society. Another slight reminiscence of catholicity appears when it is said that the creed is given in the exact words in which it is read "in all churches,"--a terminology proper to apostolic pens, or to the lips of our glorified Lord, speaking to His servant John, when the word "churches" was the Christian vernacular, and "church" as a collective was rarely used, and only in the very largest sense possible.
Led by a way which they knew not, the Fathers at Trent set up a memorial of the faith of the Christian Churches as they found it in the creed. Led also by a way which they knew not, the Fathers at the Vatican set up an everlasting remembrance of what their predecessors at Trent had done with the faith.
The Cardinals arrived on the morning of the Epiphany, dressed in red; but they changed to the white proper to the day. Patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, abbots and generals of orders, were all in white, except the Orientals, who had never surrendered to the primacy of Rome on the sacred subject of vestments. The Pope entered the hall, as he had done at the first session, between Antonelli and Mertel.
After Mass, Dominicis-Tosti and Philip Ralli, the two Promoters of the Council; reverently drew nigh to the throne, and addressing the Pontiff, said:--
Inasmuch as, by ancient appointment of the Fathers, the sacred Councils of the Church have been wont to set the Confession of the Faith in the forefront of all their doings, as a buckler against every heresy, we, therefore, the Promoters of this Vatican Council, do humbly pray that profession of the Catholic faith in the form prescribed by thy predecessor of sacred memory, Pius IV, be made this day, in public session by all the Fathers of this Vatican Council.
The Pontiff replied, "We enjoin and command accordingly."
Then arose the sovereign from his throne, took off the sacred mitre, and, with loud and clear voice, recited for the first time in the history of man, as the belief of a General Council, the creed of Pius IV. Near the end of it, he came to the clause which swears obedience to the Roman Pontiff. This he omitted. The conclusion swears to maintain the faith just recited, and, as much as in the confessor lies, to enforce it "on all those committed to him." The Pope simply said to enforce it "upon all," and then he closed according to the regular form,--"I, Pius, promise, vow, and swear, so help me God, and these God's Holy Gospels."
Bishop Fessler, Secretary of the Council, and Bishop Valenziani, now came to the throne. The Pontiff handed to them the creed of Pius IV, just as he had handed his own Decrees at the first session. Valenziani, ascending the pulpit, recited it, in his own name and in that of all the Fathers. When he came to the portentous obedience clause, omitted by him who owes no account to man, tribunal, or nation, the bishop, read, "To the Roman Pontiff, successor of the blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ, I promise and swear true obedience,"--as if it was an installation in a feudal order. No wonder that Canon Pelletier, writing in Frond (vol. vii. p. 170), should say that this act of homage, "in the circumstances of which all are aware, had an immense importance." Valenziani then concluded the form as the Pope had done, only, instead of enforcing obedience "upon all," it was "on all committed to him."
Patrizi, the Senior Cardinal present,[266] now rose, came to the throne, knelt, laid his hand on the volume of the Gospels, and lifting up his voice, said, "I, Constantine, Bishop of Porto and Rufina, promise, vow, and swear according to the form now read, so help me God, and these God's Holy Gospels"; and he kissed the book.
Then Cardinals and Patriarchs, one by one, after them Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Generals of Orders, in regular gradation of rank, first two and two, and, later, four and four,[267] came successively to the throne, and during the space of two hours, knelt down, laid the hand on the book, repeated the above words, each inserting his own name, kissed the book, and so swore allegiance to the King of the Vatican, under the form of a profession of the simple and loving faith of Christ. The two creeds, recited at Trent and in St. Peter's, are below, in parallel columns--the one representing what the Council of Trent found, and the other representing what it left. Future epochs will have to mark subsequent innovations. We put the clause forming the basis of the new dogmas in italics. The other italics are those given in Dr. Challoner's recension[268]:--
THE CATHOLIC CREED BEFORE THE ROMISH CREED AFTER THE THE REFORMATION REFORMATION
"I, N., with a firm faith, "I, N., with a firm faith, believe and profess all and believe and profess all and every one of the things which every one of the things which are contained in that creed are contained in that creed which the holy Roman Church which the holy Roman Church maketh use of; namely-- maketh use of; namely--
"I believe in one God, the "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible: things visible and invisible: and in one Lord Jesus Christ, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages: born of the Father before all God of God; Light of light; ages: God of God; Light of light; true God of true God; begotten, true God of true God; begotten, not made; consubstantial not made; consubstantial to to the Father, by whom the Father, by whom all things all things were made; who, were made; who, for us men, for us men, and for our salvation, and for our salvation, came down came down from heaven, from heaven, and was incarnate and was incarnate by the Holy by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and Mary, and was made man. was made man. Was crucified Was crucified also for us under also for us under Pontius Pilate; Pontius Pilate; He suffered He suffered and was buried, and was buried, and the third and the third day He rose again, day He rose again, according according to the Scriptures; to the Scriptures; He ascended He ascended into heaven, sits into heaven, sits at the right at the right hand of the Father, hand of the Father, and is to and is to come again with glory come again with glory to judge to judge the living and the dead; the living and the dead; of of whose kingdom there shall whose kingdom there shall be be no end. And in the Holy no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Life-giver, Ghost, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who together with and the Son, who together with the Father and the Son is the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who spoke adored and glorified, who spoke by the Prophets; and (I believe) by the Prophets; and (I believe) one holy catholic and one holy catholic and apostolic apostolic Church, I confess one Church, I confess one baptism baptism for the remission of for the remission of sins, and sins, and I look for the resurrection I look for the resurrection of of the dead, and the life of the dead, and the life of the the world to come. Amen." world to come. Amen.
"I most steadfastly admit and embrace apostolical and ecclesiastical traditions, and all other observances and constitutions of the same Church.
"I also admit the holy Scriptures, according to that sense which our holy Mother, the Church, has held, and does hold, to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; neither will I ever take and interpret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.
"I also profess that there are truly and properly seven sacraments of the new law, instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord, and necessary for the salvation of mankind, though not all for every one; to wit, baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, orders, and matrimony; and that they confer grace; and that of these, baptism confirmation, and orders cannot be reiterated without sacrilege.
"I also receive and admit the received and approved ceremonies of the Catholic Church, used in the solemn administration of all the aforesaid sacraments.
"I embrace and receive all and every one of the things which have been defined and declared in the holy Council of Trent, concerning original sin and justification.
"I profess, likewise, that in the Mass there is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. And that in the most holy sacrament of the eucharist there is truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is made a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood; which conversion the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation.
"I confess, also, that under either kind alone, Christ is received whole and entire, and a true sacrament.
"I constantly hold that there is a purgatory, and that the souls detained therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.
"Likewise, that the saints reigning together with Christ are to be honoured and invocated, and that they offer prayers to God for us; and that their relics are to be held in veneration.
"I most firmly assert that the images of Christ, and of the Mother of God, ever Virgin, and also of the other saints, are to be had and retained, and that due honour and veneration are to be given to them.
"I also affirm that the power of indulgences was left by Christ in the Church, and that the use of them is most wholesome to Christian people.
"I acknowledge the holy catholic and apostolical Roman Church, The Mother and Mistress of all Churches; And I Promise [and Swear] True Obedience to the Bishop of Rome, successor to St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ.
"I likewise undoubtedly receive and profess all other things delivered, defined, and declared by the sacred Canons and General Councils, and particularly by the holy Council of Trent. And I condemn, reject, and anathematise all things contrary thereto, and all heresies which the Church has condemned, rejected, and anathematised.
"This true Catholic faith, Out of Which None Can Be Saved, which I now freely profess, and truly hold, I, N., promise, vow, and swear most constantly to hold and profess the same whole and entire, with God's assistance, to the end of my life; and to procure, as far as lies in my power, that the same shall be held, taught, and preached by all who are under me, or are entrusted to my care by virtue of my office. So help me God and these Holy Gospels of God."
Among the seven hundred men who repeated this set of propositions, unknown to Holy Scripture, we may feel assured that there were not wanting some who as they approached the end of the old, thought, That was the faith as it was professed before Luther; and as they entered upon the new, thought Where was this religion before Luther?
What a contrast between the old and the new! If ever it was true, it is here true, that the old is better. Under the old creed, the conscience is not hampered by any question about the authority of traditions, either apostolic so-called, or such as were confessedly ecclesiastical. The conscience is not perplexed with a fear of interpreting Holy Scripture differently from the unanimous opinion of the Fathers. It is not weighted with seven sacraments, not contracted with scruples about mere rites and modes of administration, not burdened by having to take for gospel every word which some past Council has said on some specified doctrine; not bewildered by a professed repetition ofttimes of the sacrifice once offered up forever, full, perfect, and sufficient; not materialized by transubstantiation of the substance of the bread and wine, not mystified by taking half a sacrament for a whole one, and by asserting that the deliberate evasion of Christ's sacramental command was a true performance of it; not secularized by the mercantile reckonings of purgatory; not let down from filial Christianity towards servile polytheism by the worship of saints, relics, and images; not demoralized by the traffic in indulgences; not narrowed by the domination of one municipal Church over all others; not cramped and degraded by identification with the sins and follies of one human head, much less by an allegiance to that head, as a lord of the faith and a sovereign of the conscience; not envenomed by anathematizing all who do not accept every article that we ourselves accept.
Trent diminished the comprehensiveness of the Papal Society by many new and some grotesque conditions. The present Pontiff has added others, and so far has the shrinking process been now carried that a reductio ad absurdum cannot be logically far off. Believing too much, which comes to believing too little, ends in believing nothing. All these successive submissions of conscience to "authority," of spiritual inquiry and private judgment to priestly dictation, end in the paralysis of the believing faculty. They render a man capable of nothing but submitting.
The ordinary oath of the Papal bishops has often been shown to be in substance the oath of a feudal vassal to his liege lord. It has but a flavour of any evangelical office or work of the soul-winning ministry of Christ. The Emperor Joseph II clearly saw that any man bound to the Pope by that oath could not be reckoned as the subject of any other prince, except by one of those generous fictions which on behalf of the Pope, by way of exception, governments have admitted. But even that oath was not enough; the confession of faith in God must, for all the clergy, be turned into an oath of loyalty to the Bishop of Rome--an oath to a human head in a creed!
The process of taking the oath lasted, as we have said, two hours. The crowd was not great. The session did not raise enthusiasm in any one. Friedrich, who viewed the act of homage from the gallery for theologians, said that nothing could be more tedious. He did not feel flattered with his company in that gallery. Formerly, only doctors were known at Councils as theologians, and, as we have seen, they had real work to do. Now, he says, the chaplains and secretaries of bishops, and even the men who carry the red caps of the Cardinals, figure as theologians--"an edifying company." Even the Stimmen had only a few sentences for this session; and the Civiltá, though read principally by persons who may be supposed to have already seen the creed of Pius IV, filled up room by printing it at full. Quirinus wondered whether this "profusion of superfluous oaths was reconcilable with the scriptural prohibition of needless oaths." They had seven hundred and forty-seven oaths taken.
Only the genius of M. Veuillot sufficed, so far as we remember, to cheer the gloom of the day. It was the Epiphany, and in the portions of Scripture included in the offices of the day, he saw the interpretation of the ceremony. The royally robed potentates who bowed before the enthroned priest-king were the kings of the Gentiles prostrating themselves and worshipping the Church, presenting their gold, and frankincense and, myrrh. The words of Isaiah, "The nations shall come to Thy light, and the kings to the brightness of Thy rising," had the same grand meaning. So he cries (i. 79):--
Behold St. Peter's! The throne of the Pontiff and the Cardinal at the altar, and between throne and altar eight hundred bishops! Behold the prophecy and behold the fact!
M. Veuillot remarks that in the galleries were present diplomatists and princes who had fallen; but the Church abides! In the crowd, he says, was an Italian "revolutionist, Signor Minghetti, once a subject and minister of the Pope. He bowed with propriety under the benediction of his Father and his master, who was betrayed by him; but he abides!" The fallen princes represented those who, having supported the Papacy, both temporal and spiritual, had been brought to ruin by its bad teaching and worse example. Signor Minghetti and his bow represented those who, rejecting the temporal Papacy, wished to conserve at least the show of the spiritual Papacy. It is for future time to tell whether they to whom he will bequeath the tangled undertaking, will take their place with ex-kings, ex-dukes, ex-princes, and so forth, in the gallery of failures, or whether they will take their place among the wise men who, rejecting the spiritual as worse than the temporal Papacy, and risking all to found States on the principles of the Word of God, have built up great and happy realms. Italy not does think a principle worth running any risk for. She thinks it practical to say to the Papacy, We have found thee unfaithful in the unrighteous mammon, and therefore do we take it from thee, but we commit to thy trust the true riches.
The Acta Sanctæ Sedis say that no date was fixed for the next session. The confidence in the readiness of the Fathers to swallow a large pamphlet of creed in a few days was shaken. "No one," is it pensively added, "could foresee when Decrees would be in readiness, because many Fathers might probably be lengthy in their discourses."[269] The learned editor seems as if he would fain emulate the flight of M. Veuillot, but he soars with weighted wing. In a long apostrophe to Rome, he styles Pius IX "the captain who gloriously fills the place of thine ancient Caesars."[270] In one of his speeches made to Roman professors, Pius IX calls himself "the Cæsar who now addresses you,[271] and to whom alone are obedience and fidelity due."
It is evident that the Curia left this session under the damping effects of a disappointment. It is also evident that some of the bishops felt that they had now performed two sessions, with a month between them, and that the only distinct impression left upon the mind was that they had been twice exhibited, before the whole world, at the feet of a man more richly robed than themselves, seated on a throne in the house of God, and calling himself Father of kings and princes, and Governor of the world. Canon Pelletier points out the great advantage which the Church had obtained by having the Creed of Pius IV "consecrated" in a General Council.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 266: The Dean of the Sacred College, Cardinal Mattei, was unable to attend the sittings.]
[Footnote 267: Acta Sanctæ Sedis.]
[Footnote 268: The Grounds of the Catholic Faith, p. 3. The obedience clause in Challoner, not being meant for the clergy, does not contain the word swear. For the same reason is the final clause, which implies authority, omitted. The translation of that clause given here is from Mr. Butler's version.]
[Footnote 269: Acta S.S., v. 327.]
[Footnote 270: "Sub co duce qui locum veturum tuorum Cæsarum gloriose occupat."--Ibid. 324.]
[Footnote 271: Discorsi, i. p. 255.]
Chapter VI
Speech of the Pope against the Opposition--Future Policy set before France--Count Arnim's Views--Resumed Debate--Haynald--A New Mortal Sin--Count Daru and French Policy--Address calling for the New Dogma--Counter Petitions against the Principle as well as the Opportuneness.
On the Sunday following this disappointing session, the Pope received fifteen hundred persons in a public audience. Even the language of M. Veuillot does not exaggerate the effect of his speech upon that occasion. "What he said on the Council will loudly resound through the Catholic universe." What he said cut the bishops of the Opposition, and Liberal Catholics generally, to the heart. We quote from the version of M. Veuillot:--
Would-be wise men would have us treat certain questions charily, and not march against the ideas of the age, but I say that we must speak the truth, in order to establish liberty. We must never fear to proclaim the truth or to condemn error. I want to be free, and want the truth to be free. Pray then, weep, force the Holy Spirit, by your supplications, to support and enlighten the Fathers of the Council, that the truth may triumph and error may be condemned.
After his first version of the speech, M. Veuillot said that a word had been "unfortunately omitted." The Pope had said that those who opposed certain measures were
blind leaders of the blind. Well, if the leaders want not to lead any but the blind, and cannot see their game, the Church, preserving her own liberty, will know how to win without them or against them, the game which they obstinately set themselves to lose (i. pp. 86 and 100).
This was treated, not as a mere gust of temper, but as a calculated appeal through the press to the clergy, and to the devout generally, against the bishops of the Opposition. Yet the longing of the Pope for his liberty was natural. He had always believed himself to be infallible. The Jesuits told him that the full recognition of that attribute, and the free use of it, were the only remedies for the misfortunes of the Papacy, and for the troubles of mankind. He read in the Civiltá how all nations were at this moment looking to him as the one saviour, capable of lifting them out of the Slough of Despond into which the Reformation first and the Revolution next had plunged them. He heard of faithful bishops, learned authors, able journalists, one after another, intimating in prophetic strains an era of glory to follow the recognition of his rights. All asked, how could the world do otherwise than stumble and fall so long as the divinely appointed guide was not recognized? All asserted that nothing could prevent the world from rising up, healed and created anew, when the Vicar of God, acknowledged by the Church, in the plentitude of this authority, should speak the word, Let there be light, at which chaos would flee away, and when he should follow it up with the supreme word to kings and nations alike, which all must learn to obey. Heretics would resist, but the faithful, under the banner of the Vicar of God, would certainly prevail. Nothing stood in the way of all this blessing and glory but a few bishops.
These bishops were represented as being partly calculating men, unwilling to get into trouble with their governments; partly cowards, who actually feared that the standard of his Holiness might fall in the struggle. Some were represented as jealous priests, paltering about the little prerogatives of their Sees, instead of merging all in the glories of the Holy See. If, in a matter so great, the Pope chafed at delay caused by such inconsiderable men, it was not more than might be expected from human nature so incensed, and so persuaded, even in the case of one less vehemently suspected of vanity and self-will than is Pius IX. He said that some thought that the Council was to set everything to rights, and some that it would accomplish nothing. "I am but a poor man, a poor feeble man, but I am Pope, Vicar of Jesus Christ, and head of the Catholic Church, and I have assembled the Council, which will do its work."[272]
M. Veuillot also was becoming a little impatient. He apparently wanted to see the beginning of the "clearing away" of which he had spoken in 1867. The following passage, tracing out the policy that might save the Second Empire, is a specimen of skilled writing, clear to his clerical readers, dim to heedless Parisians. The new minister (Ollivier) must accept this program:--
To break with the Gallican, revolutionary, and Cæsarian prejudice (which are all one) by frankly recognizing the liberty of the Church; to assure all liberty by and through the assertion of this liberty, as mother and mistress; to prepare the accessions necessary to the honour and the conservation of peace; to permit men to be made against this perpetual plague of revolution which exudes only courtiers of the mob, or courtiers of Cæsar; this is the grand game he has to play. In the interest of the Emperor and the dynasty, I wish he may win it. Alas! during the last twenty years the game has been lost, more than once, by the fault of the chief player! But Providence is pleased to be obstinate, and to leave the game open, with favourable cards in the same hands (vol. i. p. 98).
In the gloaming of these January evenings, two men, might be seen walking somewhere between the Ripetta and the Via Condotti, and the tall figure of one of them was that of Count Harry von Arnim. A letter which he on one such occasion handed to the other was published, in 1874, by the Presse, of Vienna,[273] and bore the date of the day before the impatient speech of the Pope. To whom the letter was addressed is not stated. Alluding to the petition of the bishops, Count Arnim says: "You see they are modest, and organization is as defective as courage." He feels the want of practical tact in the bishops. If they had meant to succeed in their opposition, they ought to have impugned the composition of the Council, and the Rules imposed upon it. Had they first of all rent the net which the Vatican and the Gesu [the Jesuit establishment] had cast over the wise but timid heads of the bishops, infallibility would have fallen through the meshes. The Count is not sure that the Curia will persevere with the dogma of infallibility; and does not see of what advantage it would be to them, when they can at any time call a Council and prescribe to it how and what it is to speak. Some of the Fathers feel as if they were in some sort the Pope's prisoners since they have entered on the course into which they had been drawn. They had allowed themselves to be led so far in a certain direction during the last twenty years, that it was only when they saw that it was to be turned to earnest, that they began to ask how they could make black white at home, and how the Catholic people would take it. That was the feeling that produced "Fulda." People belonging to the Curia say that the bishops need a couple of months in the air of Rome to inspire them with the grand conceptions of the place; and after that all will be of one mind. He cannot understand how the German Catholics are going to let five hundred Italians, and among them three hundred boarders of the Pope, dictate laws to them in spite of their own bishops. Under the pretence of Catholicity, exclusive Romish-Italian formulæ are imposed on the Catholic mind of all nations.
If Rome resented the obstinacy of the provincials, some of the provincials began to open their eyes at what they found in Rome. Friedrich quotes one well acquainted with the Curia, whose words may be matched out of Liverani. "The Cardinals," said this authority, "are red-stockinged ... not fit, with the exception of four or five, to be curates in a village church." Friedrich himself had begun to think that their principal function was "parading." But at that Court did not everything depend upon parading? Many of the Cardinals might be no better men than the tongue of Rome (not a scrupulous one) made them, and no greater theologians than Liverani and Friedrich said that they were, but some of them assuredly had great abilities, and all had shown themselves to be blessed with the faculty of getting on, which is generally some qualification for ruling. Disgusted by the low appearance of the monks and their mendicity, Friedrich yet confessed that, in present circumstances, such swarms of them had an advantage, as keeping a certain sort of population out of mischief. How different the view of M. Veuillot! To him the monks were the ideal of Christ's benefit to mankind. Free from the world, from the care even of a name or a tomb, the world "must allow their crushing sandals to pass over the poisons which its pride has sown" (i. p. 223). It remains to be seen whether the plants springing from seeds that quickly fall from a free Bible, a free soul, a free pulpit, and a free press, will die crushed as poison plants under the sandals of the monk, or whether they will yet flourish like grass of the earth, and the fruit of them shall shake like Lebanon, when fakir and monk shall together be remembered among the things that fatally decay in the shade of a growth which, though at first the least of herbs, becomes afterwards the greatest of all trees.
In the street Friedrich met Graf A., doubtless one who then proudly filled a proud post, but who now unhappily lies under a heavy cloud. The Count told him that a petition in favour of bringing forward the question of infallibility, drawn up in Manning's sense was already signed by five hundred bishops. Another of Friedrich's touches is, that Janus always lay on Darboy's table, and Hergenröther's Anti-Janus on that of Ketteler. After calling the latter work very dishonest, he says "The upshot of this book is, that the Pope alone is invested with divine authority, and before this Baal of the Jesuits, the majority of the Council means to bow the knee. Will not that amount to decreeing the death of the Church? She may lay herself down crying, 'Jesuits, you have conquered me.'" As a specimen of what bishops even in Council assembled had come to, he quotes the memorable words of Hergenröther, "The bishops have nothing to do but to set the conciliar seal to a work which the Jesuit Schrader has prepared."
"Happy bishops," cries the poor theologian, himself tormented by opinions, and unable to let others believe for him. "Happy bishops! you may give dinners, see works of art, take your siestas, parade in pluvial and mitre, for the Jesuit Father has taken care of all the rest; and, then, setting to the conciliar seal is not hard work! There is nothing to do but to say Placet, and all is over." Much depended on the interpretation men gave to their oath. Canon Pelletier (Frond, vii. p. 170) says, not unnaturally, that at the moment when the Fathers prostrated themselves at the feet of the Pope, the majority was formed. All who understood "obey" in the sense of the Court, would vote what the Pope told them to vote. But Ginoulhiac, of Grenoble, soon to be Primate of France, had taken care, beforehand, to protest against such an interpretation. Though expressing some fear in citing it, he did cite the language of Bellarmine, to the effect that so free must a Council be that the bishops, their oath notwithstanding, must not only say what they think, but must even proceed against the Pope should he be convicted of heresy.[274] Such language, in the mouth of Bellarmine, as contrasted with that of Deschamps, Manning, and the other zealots of infallibility, marks the progress made by the Papal claims in our day.
The General Congregations were resumed on January 8, when two new Drafts on discipline were distributed. The Congregation of the 10th was remarkable for striking speeches, and for an unforeseen turn of the debate. Haynald, Archbishop of Colocza, replied to the few who had defended the Draft, especially to Martin, and Räss of Strasburg. He charged them with having attempted to deprive the Fathers even of the liberty left to them by the Rules, for they had reproached them for discussing what was laid before them. Did not even the formula at the head of the Decree, for speaking on which Strossmayer had been called to order, say, "the Council approving"? which surely implied that it was open to it to disapprove. Martin had said, We shall say "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us;" But, rejoined Haynald, though Martin may know that we are to say so, we do not know it. This speech was described as one of remarkable power, second in that respect only to the speech of Strossmayer. Cardinal Capalti, one of the Presidents, listened with outstretched neck, and both hands behind his ears; but so skilfully was the discourse constructed, that Haynald escaped being called to order. He was often applauded, especially at the conclusion. It is said that Cardinal Bilio, who was responsible for the Draft, being, for a Cardinal, strong in German, knew three words of it,--Deutsche (German), and freie Wissenschaft (free science). He leaned back, often repeating, with an inward shudder, Deutsche, freie Wissenschaft.
Bishop Maignan, of Chalons, who followed Haynald, did not mount the pulpit, but stood before the Presidents. His speech was also spoken of as having been very striking. He attacked the Draft, especially its phraseology. What, he asked, was meant by anima est forma corporis (the soul is the form of the body)? The Greek Bishop of Grosswardein defended the Draft, saying that at first he had doubts, but that the more he studied it the more he was satisfied. As he had previously said, in the meeting of German and Hungarian prelates, "I do not like many dogmas,"[275] when he next appeared among them some one said, "Greek faith is no faith," and he appeared among them no more. A Chaldean prelate, Kajat, speaking with a fine, clear voice, said, "It was scarcely becoming for a General Council to be occupied with matters so local as the opinions of this or that German professor"; and repeated the unwelcome words, "Free science," as Haynald and Maignan had done. The debate now seemed as if it might prove very searching. The minority had strong, if ill-grounded, hopes, but a new proof of the way in which the Rules played with deliberation was now sprung upon them. If a free assembly can close a discussion when it deems it already ample, it can also continue it so long as the conscience of its members cries out for a hearing. After the speech of the Bishop of Grosswardein, up rose the President, and said that, in pursuance of power given in the Rules, of Withdrawing a Draft Decree when disputed, the Draft should now be withdrawn from the Council, and should be remitted to the Committee, to be moulded by it. What! could not the Council go on with its investigation? Had it not control over a proposition once laid before it? No; the Twenty-four, with the theologians of the Court, were now in sole possession of the proposed measure!
Had the Council been free to form itself into a committee, or to select one from among its own members after this discussion, doubtless some of the men who had shown that they were capable of sifting the clauses would have been put upon the committee, beside the few who had defended the Draft. But that was the very danger which the Nine had foreseen, and against which they had provided by a permanent committee, elected before the question was argued. This provision was effective for its end, reducing the part left to the bishops to that of making Latin speeches in rows, according to rank and seniority. One other liberty they had--the momentous one of saying Ay or No. Had not the Council been weighted with creatures of the Court, that single liberty might have sufficed to stay the great organic change necessary to the scheme of reconstruction. We do not know whether the sitting we have just described[276] is the one of which Quirinus stated that Cardinal Antonelli withdrew from it much disgusted, saying to a diplomatist that if the Council went on so it would never have done.
While, therefore, the Curia, disgusted with the bishops, had seen their perfect work torn to pieces day by day, now the bishops, astounded at the Curia, saw the future creed shut up in secret even from them! In its absence, they began on the fourteenth to discuss discipline. That was a notable day. It witnessed the creation of a new mortal sin. The Acta do not contain the document by which this was done.[277] In Councils that were really general, a Christian bishop would have considered it a duty to tell his clergy and people what he said, and what he heard others say, about the faith of Christ. But on this day, Pope Pius IX turned this sacred duty of the bishop into a mortal sin. Secrecy, the genius of the Papacy, and publicity, the child of light, now closed for a life and death grapple. Any man of that assembly who should hereafter tell out of it what passed within it was to be guilty of mortal sin. The oath imposed before the opening upon the officers, and the injunctions of secrecy upon the bishops, had not availed. The step taken by the Pope was a loud acknowledgment that truth had leaked out. In a surly way this is admitted by the Acta Sanctæ Sedis. Shameless journals--effrontes ephemerides--had reported, as having been spoken and done in the Council, things partly true and partly false. "This had probably arisen from some one or another, who lightly held the pontifical secret, having given information, so taking upon himself to ignore the dignity of the Apostolic See in treating ecclesiastical questions."[278] Vitelleschi, Roman as he is, asks,--If the Council is a supreme assembly, who is entitled to impose this penalty of mortal sin? Men of the Curia, accustomed to the making of innocent acts into sins, and of sins into licensed actions, would not scruple to read such a document in the face of such an assembly. Such is their state of conscience, that, far from feeling any shame, probably they would enjoy the idea of the shame and confusion of conscience which they were inflicting on the bishops. But men brought up in England and America could sit there, while this new yoke was fastened upon them, and say not a word! The bishops were really to be pitied. They were entangled in the creed. Their oath had shut them in. There is no hint of a protest having been raised by any one. To speak of these gentlemen in one aspect as citizens of free nations, and in another aspect as prefects of the Pope, is scarcely any longer accurate. It is but by a fiction of the frailest sort that men so tied and bound by the chain of the foreign potentate can be called citizens. We have seen that the Civiltá holds it as-beneath their dignity as ambassadors to the citizens elsewhere than in Rome. Still, professing to be citizens, they were to be pitied. And if they were to be pitied, still more was human society to be pitied that had to bear the influence of seven hundred masters of a multitude whose consciences had come to such a pass. "A bishop," says Quirinus, "who should show a theologian, whose advice he wanted, a passage from the schema under discussion, or who should repeat an expression used in one of the speeches, incurs everlasting damnation.... A Papal theologian whom I questioned on the subject appealed simply to the statement of Boniface VIII, that the Pope holds all rights in the shrine of his breast" (p. 164).
Count Daru, who now appears on the political stage in Paris, afforded some entertainment to Don Margotti, who is to Italy what M. Veuillot is to France, the leading Papal journalist, having, according to a saying of the Français, more power than all the bishops. According to Quirinus the redoubtable pair are "the two modern Fathers." Count Daru said, on January 11, that "our national maxims in matters of religion, the independence of the civil power, and liberty of conscience, cannot be menaced." This was child's play to Don Margotti. In his view, France needed the new Pope-Suzerain almost as much as Italy needed the restoration of the old Pope-King. Don Margotti[279] contends that the doctrine of modern parliaments is that they are themselves infallible. This he proves by a text from Emile Ollivier. That oracle on one occasion had said "We are justice!" but Don Margotti prefers an infallible Pope to an infallible people. Menabrea, Sella Minghetti, and such as they in Italy, according to him, represented God, the State. Margotti, therefore, looks on the mot of Ollivier as
providential, for it proves the necessity of an infallible Pope The world absolutely needs a permanent and infallible authority; if the authority is not the Pope, up starts Ollivier, and ascribes it to himself. It is time that infallibility should be defined, that we may have no more such absurdities as Ollivier proclaiming "We are justice!" Oh, let the dogmatic definition of infallibility speedily sound from the heights of the Vatican, and free us from modern justice, which calls itself now Baroche, now Ollivier!
Freeing us from modern justice and from M. Emile Ollivier are two different matters, though it is natural for Don Margotti to hail as providential an opportunity of treating them as one. The assumption of infallibility by parliaments is rather a favourite notion of Jesuit writers. They seem to mean that any authority which will not acknowledge its subordination to the Vicar of God must claim to be itself infallible. Yet, we might deem our own Parliament wiser than the Pope and his Curia, and morally superior, and still not think them anything more than erring mortals, with infallibility some way off. An English member of Parliament, repeating the Jesuit oracles, says that our Parliament claims to be infallible.[280] It would seem that no assertion of the Jesuits is too ridiculous to be seriously repeated by their Oxford converts, though many are kept back, but for other reasons than their absurdity. The decree in which the Parliament does declare its acts irreformable would be a great curiosity. So would even such an expression as the following, quoted by Don Margotti (January 18) from the archbishops and bishops of the province of Vercelli:--
Most Blessed Father, now and always shall we be found, in obedience and reverence to your Holiness, approving, and disapproving, whatever you, from your apostolic chair, do approve and disapprove; from which chair Jesus Christ Himself speaks in the Holy Spirit to the bishops and people of the whole world.
The meeting of the Italian Parliament having been postponed, to give time to a new ministry to prepare measures, Don Margotti, viewing the paralysis of the Parliament as a moral effect of the presence of the Council, said (January 22):--
The word of Rome imposes silence at Florence, and the Council of the Vatican does just as our Lord once did when He closed the mouth of the Sadducees. Gentlemen, you have talked enough. Now stand still, and hear the great word of God. Your day is past, the day of the powers of darkness; and now the days of the Lord will dawn, the days of truth and light.
The Address in favour of a definition of the dogma of infallibility had now become the talk of all. Vitelleschi (p. 85) states that it was carried round by the Archbishop of Westminster, and the Fathers of the Civiltá Cattolica, as the Jesuits are called who form the editorial college of the great magazine. A letter, inviting adhesions, and signed by several bishops, chiefly belonging to the class who had not any national ties, was circulated with the address. The signatures to that document itself were headed by the names of Manning, Spalding of Baltimore, and Senestry. What had been felt from the first was now openly declared on all hands, although the utterance of it had often been charged as a great sin upon the Liberal Catholics. We mean, that the object of the Council was the definition of Papal infallibility, and that all the rest was manoeuvring. Brief as are the historical notes in the Acta Sanctæ Sedis they state that we may almost say that the whole Council was convened for the sake of the fourth session.[281]
Vitelleschi notes the fact that the citations given in the Address to prove that earlier Councils had propounded Papal infallibility, were not apposite. Quirinus says that the Address "bristles with falsehood." Veuillot, on the other hand, finds its arguments cogent,--indeed, unanswerable. Vitelleschi remarks that the writers speak with indifference or contempt of schisms which might arise from the measures they demanded. Friedrich calls it a compound of untruth and slander. Veuillot urges that the contradictions to the doctrine had now reached such a head as rendered its definition absolutely necessary. Yet all this contradiction had arisen since the personal organ of the Pope gave the signal for an acclamation.
That liberty of the Church which existed nowhere else upon this sinful earth, except in Ecuador, did exist in Rome; and, therefore, all other liberties were secured; that is, the liberty of doing everything not forbidden by divine authority. But printing in Rome, except by licence, was forbidden by the authority that never can be in contradiction to evangelical law. The Address for making that authority into an infallible one was, however, circulated in print, without imprimatur of any sort. This sign was understood on all hands. It was not to be mistaken. The divine authority asked for signatures. The canvass for them was keen.
Vitelleschi relates that the promotors of the Address were charged with dragging a question forward prematurely, which in the natural course of things, would have come on for discussion when the prerogatives of the See of Rome should be considered. To defend themselves, they said that the step they had taken was sanctioned by the Cardinal Presidents. This "indiscretion," he proceeds to say, "exposed the Roman Curia to the reproach of itself begging for its own apotheosis, devoid of feelings of the simplest propriety." Even the clergy, he thinks, were disconcerted at this proceeding, except the Jesuits. These were urged on by a fatality to proclaim "the infallibility of Clement XIV, who abolished them, and that of Pius IX, who had almost done so too, while they must find a formula to interpret the judgment of the next Pope who shall abolish them once more."
This Roman noble accounts for the strange vehemence of Manning on the ground that he had been a Protestant:--
He had seen his own religion from within, and not from without; and had seen the Catholic religion from without, and not from within. In Protestantism he had seen only the infinite internal divisions and subdivisions; and in Catholicism he had admired only the magnificent effect of its unity. He had not appreciated the good results produced by the former, through moderate liberty and the constant exercise of private reason and conscience; and he had not felt the dangers which, in the latter, flow from excessive authority. He is enamoured of authority, as much as the slave is of liberty. This want of equilibrium, and of a just Catholic feeling in his dealings respecting the Council, was charged against him, even by the most faithful and devoted of the clergy in Rome (p. 89; Eng. ver., 60).
A counter Address was sent in from German and Hungarian prelates; one from French, one from Italians, one from Americans, and one from Orientals. But these, not being in the interest of the Court could not be printed without a licence, and could not hope to obtain one. Even Cardinal Rauscher had failed to attain leave to print a short treatise on the Papal infallibility in Latin, and had to send it to Vienna.[282] So the Opposition had to dispense with type. Then, what were they to do with their Address, when complete? The course of their opponents was clear--they had only to send in theirs to the Commission on Proposals; and some, in their bitterness, said that that Commission had been formed for no other purpose than that of receiving and forwarding it. But these Opposition addresses did not propose anything to be done, but simply requested the Pope not to have a certain thing proposed. The bishops had no power to move in the House that the subject should not be considered, or to move that it should be deferred till the meeting of the next General Council. Care had been taken that they should not have "the negative right of proposition" any more than the positive. Then, what could they do? Nothing whatever, but what they had done already, namely, petition the Pope. Their former petition, indeed, had received no answer. Still, that was a request for the recalling of a fait accompli, or, at least, for its modification. This, on the other hand, was only a request that a thing suggested should not be done. "Can any more singular relative position be imagined," says Vitelleschi,[283] "than that of a man who receives a number of people into his house, with a design of proclaiming his apotheosis, and at the same time receives from them a pressing supplication to renounce that honour?"
None of these various Addresses stated that the signers opposed the new dogma only on the ground of opportuneness. This ought to be carefully noted. The opposite is now almost always either asserted or assumed; but the documents have not perished.[284] Such a position was skilfully avoided. It is quite true that the only grounds, formally stated in all the Addresses but one, are grounds which might be concurred in by men who objected to making the opinion of Papal infallibility into a dogma, though they did not object to it as an opinion. But the German Address was clearly distinguished from the others. It plainly and forcibly demurred to the principle, though couching its objections in terms of great courtesy. After alluding to questions of opportuneness, the German and Hungarian bishops proceed:--
We cannot pass in silence over the fact that other grave difficulties exist, arising out of the dicta and the acts of the Fathers of the Church, out of genuine historical documents, and out of Catholic doctrine itself, which, unless they can be entirely removed, it would be impossible that the doctrine commended in the above named address should be propounded to the Christian people as being revealed of God. Our spirit recoils from the discussion of these difficulties; and, confiding in Thy benevolence, we implore that the necessity of such deliberations may not be imposed upon us.
This is signed by men who speak of themselves as "prostrate at thy feet." This passage, however, stood in the German Address alone. The others wished to get as many signatures as they could, and perhaps fancied that they gained ground with the Curia by omitting plain objections to the principle. The American Address indicated the existence of differences on the point of principle, by alleging as its first reason against raising a discussion on infallibility, that such a discussion would "clearly show a want of union, and especially of unanimity among the bishops." The German, French, and Italian Addresses put forward another point, namely, that the dignitaries belonging as they did to the most important Catholic nations, and knowing the probable effects of the proposed measures, felt that those effects, even with the best men, would be damaging to the cause of the Church, and would supply unfriendly ones with occasion for new invasions of her rights.[285] The German address, as printed in the Documenta, has forty-six signatures, including two Cardinals and the Primate of Hungary; one American prelate Mrak, of Sault Sainte Marie, in Michigan, closed the list. The French Address has thirty-eight names, and among these are three Portuguese prelates and four Orientals. The Italian Address has seven names, the American twenty-seven--among which two Irish Sees, Kerry and Dromore, are represented, and a single English one, Clifton. The Oriental Address has seventeen.[286]
M. Veuillot, speaking of the Opposition Addresses as one whole, said that of all who had signed it, not two, perhaps not one, was opposed to infallibility in principle (i. p. 149). Later he had the candour to attack the bishops for having impugned not only the opportuneness of the definition, but the doctrine itself (i. p. 180). Archbishop Manning, however, even after the close of the Council, said, "I have never been able to hear of five bishops who denied the doctrine of Papal infallibility."[287] This particular statement is advanced as evidence of a general one, that the question raised among the bishops "was a question of prudence, policy, expediency; not of doctrine or truth." A question not of doctrine or of truth! Forty-six prelates in a petition expressly directed against Dr. Manning's own Address had put the question as one not only of prudence, but of revealed truth, alleging against any attempt to define the dogma three classes of obstacles--those arising out of Catholic doctrine, out of the dicta and acts of the Fathers, and out of historical documents. Perhaps we ought, with the forty-six prelates, to say genuine historical documents. But Englishmen must be forgiven if in their limited intercourse with the Papacy they have not yet found it necessary to put labels on such words. The Donations of Constantine, and the Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore, are historical documents, and also genuine as specimens of forgeries.
The fate of the Opposition petition is wrapped in mystery. Who presented it? how was it received? what became of it? are questions to which the satisfactory answer must be left to time. Some asserted that the Pope refused to receive it. Quirinus says that he returned it (p. 174). M. Veuillot told how it was delivered at the Vatican by an ordinary messenger, and that a monsignore received it with ordinary papers. This public affront to two Cardinals and nearly a hundred and forty bishops was aggravated a few days later by the remark that it was not yet known whether the monsignore had ever thought well to deliver the Address. Still later it was said that the Pope being consulted as to what was to be done with it, said that it might go to the Commission on Proposals, he intending, personally, to ignore it (i. p. 202). At a yet later date, January 28, Friedrich learned that every one being afraid to present it. Cardinal Schwarzenberg sent it by his chamberlain, who delivered it to Monsignor Ricci, the Pope's chamberlain. The Pope was excessively angry, and ordered it to be sent to the Commission.
When M. Veuillot trumpeted forth this example of how to deal with cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, did he mean to suggest that other Courts might treat them with like neglect,--Courts to which these officials hold themselves related as citizens only in an inferior order, an order which "obliges" them only when the higher order does not contravene? The documents in question bore the signatures of the Sees of Prague, Vienna, Munich, Cologne, Mainz; those of Milan and Turin; those of Paris, Rheims, Orleans, and the principal Sees of Portugal; those of New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Halifax, and St. John; those of Kerry and Dromore, and of Clifton; and from ancient countries the signatures of Antioch, Babylon, Tyre, Sidon, and Seleucia. Not often in the history of manners have titles representing so many ancient claims and such considerable modern station been treated with equal discourtesy.
The Univers of January 30[288] said that when the minority thought that the majority were about to come to a decisive vote, they sent Bishop Freppel, or some one else, to propose conciliation; but when reassured, they began their opposition afresh. It further said that Cardinal Hohenlohe acted in Rome in the interests of his brother, the Minister, and that his theologian, Friedrich, who had been chosen by Döllinger, was the writer of the letters in the Augsburg Gazette; that Cardinal Hohenlohe, with Schwarzenberg and Haynald, had succeeded in making an impression at certain embassies; and that the Austrian ambassador put the petition against infallibility before bishops, and asked if they had signed it.
Not content with the far-reaching policy which aimed ultimately at a cosmopolitan counter-revolution, the party of movement desired to begin forthwith by a local counter-revolution. Italy was to be reconstituted as a confederation of four States--the Papal States, Naples, Tuscany, and Piedmont. This, cries Friedrich, is a new task for a Council,--a Council called to make a revolution![289] But the bishops knew more of the world than the Curia.
Party spirit now ran high. Those who had adopted the tactics of opposing infallibility only on the ground of opportuneness, while they really objected on principle, found that they had gained nothing in point of conciliation, and had lost almost everything in point of moral power. How could ordinary consciences understand a man who admitted, or seemed to admit, that a doctrine, affecting the representative of God on earth, was true, and yet denied that it ought to be proclaimed? Compared with this position, that of the Pope was bold sensible and Christian. "We must never fear to proclaim the truth or to condemn error." Many, as well as Dupanloup, who first departed from the false line that he had seemed to mark out, found that they must object to the principle. Even if they had not previously studied the question at all, the glaring attempts now made to palm off admissions of primacy for assertions of infallibility opened their eyes. An ex-Anglican like Manning might easily accept that or grosser fallacies, but others had been taught to distinguish. The party of movement, on the other hand, raised a cry for action, which swelled higher at every sign of opposition. Their allegations are briefly expressed by Sambin (p. 105):--
Pontifical infallibility is the sign to be spoken against. If it is defined, the question is near to its settlement. The Catholic social Liberalism of France, and the scientific Liberalism of Germany, are indeed menaced. It is, therefore, a question of life or death for Liberalism, as for Gallicanism and Febronianism.
The opposition to "the divine prerogatives of the Pontiff," says this author,[290] "had now become so pronounced that it was necessary to act."[291] Saviours of society always come to that point on the eve of the coup d'état.
M. Veuillot, who had long endeavoured to smother the opposition by asserting that no opposition existed, now declared that the opposition was so grave that it made the proposed definition a necessity. Quirinus says that the Address in favour of infallibility owes its preponderance of signatures principally to the three hundred boarders and the South Americans, while the counter-address represents "the overwhelming predominance in numbers of souls, in intelligence, and in national importance" (p. 173). One topic of constant complaint on the part of the Opposition was the disproportionate number of bishops to people in Italy as compared with other nations. For the seven hundred thousand people then in the Papal States there were sixty-two bishops, while for the twelve million Catholics of Germany there were fourteen. One million seven hundred thousand in the diocese of Breslau had but a single prelate, and he was not placed on any committee whatever. The nine millions of ignorant and superstitious people in Naples and Sicily had no less than sixty-eight bishops. On the other side of this question, M. Veuillot played off the name of London. If Paris and Vienna, Munich and Lyons, Milan and Turin, were on the wrong side, the Archbishop of London was on the right one.
Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore, issued a project for a decree which, without formally defining the dogma of infallibility, should bind all to an interior assent to the infallibility of Papal decrees in faith or morals. He pointed out the evils attendant on a formal definition, and that in a manner which afterwards enlivened the controversy between Dupanloup, Deschamps, and himself. The work wherewith Deschamps regaled his Christmas Day was that of proposing no less than ten anathemas;[292] for if the Fathers could not propose things in Council, they could send a suggestion to the committee. Ten new anathemas dated expressly on the Nativity of our Lord by a Christian bishop! That day Reisach died.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 272: "A French prelate, commenting upon the text of this discourse, sneered at the simpletons who allowed themselves to be led by a one-eyed man (un borgne). It is well known that the Bishop of Orleans has lost an eye by study."--Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, quoting the Moniteur of March 24.]
[Footnote 273: We quote from the Cologne Gazette, April 4, 1874, which, quoting the Presse, says, "The Count will remember the walks in the gloaming, and another by the baths of Diocletian, and so will be able to tell where the letters come from."]
[Footnote 274: Le Concile, etc., par Mgr. L'Evêque de Grenoble. Paris, 1869.]
[Footnote 275: How strong this language was considered in Rome may be judged from what the Civiltá said of the Minister of Public Instruction, Signor Bonghi: "In the sitting of May 14, 1873, Bonghi, then a private member, dared to say, blaspheming like a true son of Lucifer, 'The Catholic Church has multiplied her dogmas too much'" (IX ix. 242).]
[Footnote 276: We have taken the outline of this sitting from the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, and in the filling up we have principally followed Friedrich.]
[Footnote 277: The Freiburg edition does, p. 162; also Guérin, p. 113; Friedberg, p. 461; and the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, v. p. 337.]
[Footnote 278: V. p. 337.]
[Footnote 279: Unitá Cattolica, January 16.]
[Footnote 280: Contemporary Review, February 1876.]
[Footnote 281: Vol. vi. p. 3: "Cujus causa quasi diceres concilium ipsum, tanta episcoporum frequentia, fuisse convocatum."]
[Footnote 282: Tagebuch, p. 108.]
[Footnote 283: P. 91; Eng. ver. 61.]
[Footnote 284: Documenta, i. 250 ff.; Friedberg, 473 ff.]
[Footnote 285: Documenta ad Illustrandum, i. p. 251.]
[Footnote 286: Bishop Martin's Collectio Documentorum gives nearly the same numbers, but seems to omit the American Address. It give Schwarzenberg's note fixing the sum at 136. Dupanloup frequently calls it 140. See his reply to Deschamps.]
[Footnote 287: Priv. Pet., iii. p. 27.]
[Footnote 288: Quoted Tagebuch, p. 155.]
[Footnote 289: Tagebuch, p. 155.]
[Footnote 290: Ibid.]
[Footnote 291: P. 112.]
[Footnote 292: Martin's Collection, p. 91.]
Chapter VII
Matters of Discipline--Remarks of Friedrich on the Morals of the Clergy--Also on the War against Modern Constitutions--Morality of recent Jesuit Teaching--Darboy's Speech--Melcher's Speech--A Dinner Party of Fallibilists--One of Infallibilists--Gratry--Debate on the Morals of the Clergy.
The Draft Decrees on discipline now in the hands of the bishops affected their remaining rights. It had taken three hundred years to develop the practical effects of the legislation of Trent in curtailing those rights. Paolo Sarpi may say that the prelates entered Trent as bishops and left it as parsons; but it was long before new regulations had worn down old procedure so far that an Archbishop of Paris, for instance, could be treated in the manner in which we have seen Darboy treated. The bishops, however, now feared, says Vitelleschi, lest their office should be further mutilated.
According to Friedrich (p. 88), when, at one of the first meetings of the German and Hungarian prelates, Strossmayer said that the matter before them was the resignation of their collective rights and the centring of the whole in the hands of the Pope, he was ridiculed; but when he repeated that statement, on Saturday, January 8, it was received with universal assent. On the other hand, Roman ecclesiastics were alarmed at the pretensions of the bishops. Two Dominicans begged Cardinal Hohenlohe to use his influence to prevent the Germans from speaking as extravagantly as the French. "It is really frightful," they said; "what is to become of Rome? These bishops want spiritual decentralization." Friedrich now thinks that he begins to see what is the religious principle of the Roman clergy--domination, as a means of existence. The bearing of this remark on spiritual decentralization rests on the fact that spiritual causes referred to Rome bring money to the bureaux, and the bureaucracy are the clergy.
The professional observations of Friedrich on the Drafts touching discipline give insight into certain interior aspects of Romanism, which affect not only its own condition, but, through it, affect all society. We therefore let him speak directly (p. 89 ff.)--
The first chapter on the Office of a Bishop closes so abruptly that only at the end is it said that bishops must be examples for the flock. It is, however, praiseworthy that they are told to take the lead of the faithful even in knowledge. Alas for this pious wish: It will be as it has been! Further on, the words "let ecclesiastical discipline be maintained" strike the eye, and that in respect of the mulieres subintroductæ, or γυναἱκες σονεἱσακτοι, in which character the parsonage cooks appear. This regulation is the most insulting imaginable; the most degrading for the parish priest, the most lowering and humiliating for the curates; altogether a dark spot in Church life. No regulation stands in such glaring contrast with Canons and Councils. It is a great offence against Christian morality, by which it is forbidden that any one should be placed in proximate occasion of sin; but in this manner the independence of a clergyman, and the placing of him in proximate occasion of sin, are connected together. The Fathers of the Council must themselves say whether this is or is not the greatest of cankers in the life of the clergy. They can tell whether it is necessary to direct the attention of the Council to this sore spot. One of the Fathers of the Council himself told me that he once spent a night in a parsonage where the rural dean (Dechant) and the cook were parents of both curates. It is said in the Draft, De vita et honestate clericorum: "If a clergyman, unmindful of his own dignity, is given to immodest defilements or to impure concubinage, or dares either in his house or elsewhere to have a woman of whom suspicion may be entertained, or to seek her company, let him be proceeded against, with the penalties prescribed by the sacred Canons, especially by the Council of Trent, and that without noise or the forms of a trial, only by simple inquiry into the truth of the facts." But what will this avail? Those directions have long existed, yet things go on as of old, and any such directions must necessarily be insufficient. Why is not the regulation of the ancient Church once more taken up, and carried through with a firm hand, according to which every woman, except nearest relations, was suspected, and was not to be admitted to the house of a clergyman? If our Church-princes of to-day will not return to the old regulation, which indeed sufficed not to hinder all excesses, and if they are incapable of finding new and better ones, it would be preferable, at all events, and would involve less responsibility for them, if they allowed their clergy to marry outright rather than give them up to arrangements which place their reputation in so ambiguous a light. The fact that this subject had to be brought forward here in its regular place is sad enough, and should be taken as proof that we cannot go on in the present way. Has it not already come to this, in certain dioceses, that the bishops find themselves obliged to hush up, rather than to punish?
Further on, in the same chapter, it is said, "While they preach to the people due reverence and obedience towards the powers of this world, let them all with one mind and heart, taking counsel together and uniting their deliberations and strength, earnestly maintain the rights of the Church and of this Holy See, so that their common guard and defence may more perfectly assure the interests of the common cause; but let them admit of nothing which will lower the honour and dignity of their rank, and let them keep the admonitions of the Council of Trent on this point under their eye." These sentences are doubtless well meant; but, practically, will be without result. Nothing is gained by such general propositions. This being self-evident, nothing should be said in Decrees of a Council beyond the laying down of positive directions. The conclusion of the chapter is vague, but, perhaps, very dangerous. "We require princes and magistrates to cover and protect the sacred chief pastors (antistites) and ministers of the Church, and their most excellent work, with their powerful patronage and defence, that due honour, respect, and obedience may be paid by all to the ecclesiastical authority. Knowing that bishops promote not only the cause of the Church, but also that of their nations, and that above all the boldness and wickedness of men who perversely seek to mislead minds and corrupt manners may be restrained and constrained by them in the exercise of their pastoral office."
First of all, what is meant here by most excellent or highest work (optimum operant)? who are included in by all (ab omnibus)? Not only is honour to be paid to the spiritual authority by all, but obedience. According to the notes, by all includes princes and nations; that by the Council princes and nations may be moved to venerate the sacred pastors, and to render them obedience and reverence. Are we to understand that the unbelievers and misbelievers in a State are to pay obedience to the bishops? Does this wrap up the mediæval notion that heretics after all are under the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, as Bishop Martin lately gave himself out as the bishop of the heretics in his diocese? Also that unbelievers have no moral right of existence, and so on? And what is meant by the concluding words? Do they imply that the bishops have a right of interfering with the freedom of the press, of belief, and of conscience as granted by modern constitutions? A General Council should speak clearly and definitely.[293]
But who would have believed that in the second chapter on the Residence of Bishops a condemnation of the constitutional usages of modern times should be attempted, even indirectly? It provides that bishops must not be absent from their sees more than two, or at the utmost three, months in a year, whether continuously or at intervals. Such absence cannot be allowed even for causes otherwise admitted as lawful--alias jure admissis--except by express permission of the Pope, or, in the United Greek Churches without the permission of the Patriarch. One is here compelled to ask, Could not those cases have been foreseen in which seats in Upper Houses are permanently connected with many bishoprics. Why this needless increase of requests for dispensation? But, according to the Civiltá Cattolica, it is only as compelled by existing circumstances that bishops can properly take part in the objectionable constitutional life. It is said in the notes that the necessity of an express apostolic permission is to be remembered as being even now required by the constitution of Boniface VIII--Sancta synodus--even if there exists one of the four grounds of absence admitted as legitimate by the Council of Trent in its twenty-third session. These four grounds were, visiting the thresholds of the apostles (i.e. Rome), attending provincial synods, attending a General Assembly in which ecclesiastics are wont to sit, or discharging an office or duty to the State connected with the Churches themselves. But (says the note) because the Decrees of Urban VIII contemplate assemblies of a kind which do not at present exist, mention of this as a just cause of absence was omitted in the Decree, in which also was omitted, for a similar reason, mention of discharging an office or duty to the State. Thus the Chambers which have taken the place of those ancient assemblies do not exist for the Curia, or it feels bound to ignore them--quite in harmony with Jesuit fantasies. Should the session of the Chamber last more than three months, those Bavarian bishops who are members of the Reichsrath would require an express permission from the Pope to fulfil their duty to the State. They might receive from the Pope a prohibition against staying any longer at the Reichsrath and fulfilling their obligations as citizens. Very edifying for our governments and States! They, however, would know how to help themselves, and would simply withdraw such a seat from the bishop.
Friedrich then dwells on the new contrivance of centralization by which every metropolitan is ordered, before publishing the acts of a Provincial Synod, to send them to Rome. The Curia is not to give them any formal approbation, but to correct them, should anything seem to call for correction. After this they are to be issued as the acts of the Provincial Synod. To execute this feat of shaping provincial decrees within the chambers of the Curia, Pius IX had appointed a new Board or Congregation. Friedrich calls this a new censorship. That would appear to mean that whereas formerly only private authors required an imprimatur, now even the collective episcopate of a province requires one. It would, however, seem to involve more than a censorship, because the new matter inserted in Rome has to go before the world under the provincial names. Authors were not compelled to father the corrections of the censor. They could leave the work unpublished.
That sense of impending danger to the Church which, of late years, had weighed on many Catholics, arose not a little from the moral teaching of the Jesuits, whose influence, under the smile of the Pope, they saw gradually rising. Out of regard for the honour of the Church, many Roman Catholics suppressed the horror they felt at what they discovered in the books of the Jesuits. Only those who have read some books--those which reflect the modern phases of their moral teaching--can appreciate the weight that must have lain on the hearts of some good men when striving to uphold before their imagination the Church as the perfection of beauty. Among the disciples of the Church of Rome are many who hold close to the Christian side of her theology, and seem to forget its Pagan side; many who avoid what is material in her cult, and, by aid of that same theology, cherish spiritual worship; many who turn to the noble morals of the Gospel, from the lower and ever deteriorating morals of the schools; and many to whom the secular spirit of the Papacy and the earthly empire aimed at by the Jesuits are repugnant.
Friedrich learned, in Rome, that those who confess to the Jesuits are not to be trusted. Any one who will read even one hundred pages out of the seven hundred of Gury's Casus Conscientiæ would not think of trusting--would only think of pitying any creature into whose head the principles of that bad book had been put. Friedrich evidently does not repeat any light talk when he says that he heard it stated, upon good authority, that the Jesuits in Rome were in the habit of employing women as lures to procure the overthrow of men who stood in their way, which women would then return to the Jesuit confessionals as penitent Magdalenes; and this, he adds, the Pope knows right well. When Vitelleschi speaks of the evils arising from severity against errors of the intellect, and indulgence to errors of the will, he means what we should describe as strictness as to Papal principles, and laxity as to moral practices.
According to Vitelleschi, Darboy had only to stretch out his hand to take a Cardinal's hat. The impression that this was the case, and the terms on which he was known to stand with the Curia, gave great interest to his first appearance in the desk, which took place on January 19. How gladly would the Curia have seen him stretch forth his hand in the direction where the hat hung; but no, he reached it out in that direction where he had only reproaches to gather.[294]
We are told that we are not to make long speeches, but I have a great deal to say. We are told again not to repeat what has been said by others; but at the same time we are kept shut up in this Hall, where for the most part we cannot understand one another; we are not allowed to examine the stenographic reports of our speeches, and the only answer made to our representations is always the same, "The Pope wills it." I do not know, therefore, what has been said by the speakers who have preceded me.
He then went on to speak of the rights of the bishops, of their degradation by the Roman centralizing system, of "the caves wherein the Roman doctors have buried themselves from the light of day," etc. Two sayings are ascribed to him after this speech. The first, "Like Condé, I have thrown my marshal's baton into the midst of the enemy;" and the second, "This Hall is deaf, dumb, and blind." Hard as it was for the Curia to listen to Darboy, with his diocese of two millions of nominal Catholics, it is said that they were even more pained by the language of Melchers of Cologne, whose diocese counted one million, and from whom animadversions were not expected. The fear of the French troops forsaking Rome saved the Archbishop of Paris from the tinkling of the mystic bell; but it arrested the metropolitan of the Rhine Province.
Melchers strongly objected to the increase of centralization in Rome, and advocated decentralization. He declared that, as now employed, dispensations from Rome were not necessary. Cardinal De Luca interrupted him, and told him that he was not speaking to the point, and that he must send his proposals to the Commission. He replied that he had sent his proposals to Rome long ago, and had received no answer; and then proceeded with his speech. An attack on centralization and on dispensations, from such a prelate, was a practical matter in Rome, as much as in Manchester would be a movement to cut off all the customers in some great county.
On January 23 and 24, Cardinal Hohenlohe gave two dinner parties--the first to Fallibilists, and the second to Infallibilists. At the former, Hefele, who now reappears on the scene, no longer as theologian, but as Bishop of Rottenburg, complained that he had lost the important sitting of that morning through an order from Cardinal Antonelli to attend the baptism of a child of the ex-Duke of Parma, which eleven other prelates who like him had apartments in the Quirinal were also obliged to attend, and at which six Cardinals gave their presence.
Archbishop Melchers of Cologne did not flatter Friedrich by telling him, what he already knew, that his Grace had forbidden his theological students to go to the faculty at Munich. His Grace, says Friedrich, did know the name of Döllinger, but not that of Reithmayer; and as to those of the younger professors, not the name of one. The Archbishop of Munich was not able to resist the temptation of telling Friedrich, as a good story, that when the bishops at Fulda, in the previous autumn, spoke of recommending Friedrich's Church History to the clergy, as a work which they ought to procure, his Grace of Cologne confessed that he did not know the name of the book. The pendant which the author archly hangs to this tale is, that when the copy of that work which he had presented to his Grace of Munich fell, after some years, again into his hands, it had never been opened.
Bishop Förster of Breslau mentioned how Ketteler was going to propose, in the meeting of German and Hungarian prelates, that they should disavow the letters in the Augsburg Gazette; but, said Förster, we stand too high, and besides, the letters contain too many truths. Some one at table threw out the idea that the best thing to be done would be to give the Drafts of Decrees to the bishops, and let them go home and study them for a year or two, and then return and discuss them. They had come to Rome without books. Points of the greatest gravity in doctrine and discipline were laid before them for decision, and, as every one knew, it was difficult to find help in the libraries of Rome. Even that of the Vatican was closed, not only upon every holy day, but also on all those days on which General Congregations were held. The bishops were not allowed to take either books or manuscripts out of the libraries; still more, both in the Vatican library and the Vatican archives, the order had been given that nothing bearing on the Council should be delivered to them. Their regret at this was lessened by the discovery that the libraries contained scarcely any modern theological works, especially German ones. In his day, Addison remarked that books were not the attractions you went to see in an Italian library. But, of recent years, a real library of books, in addition to the old celebrated one of manuscripts, had been added at the Vatican. It was not catalogued, and was not open to the public. Some one in the company stated that it was now understood that theologians were to be brought into the Council in order to defend the Drafts of Decrees. So far as the Theologi Minores, or doctors, were concerned, Friedrich thought this improbable; and as to the higher theologians, or bishops, he wondered who they were to be. Can any one fancy, he said, such a man as Senestrey being treated as a theologian? At Trent, with the ideas then prevailing of what constituted a theologian, he would not have been dreamed of; but he passes in Rome as learned because he is a pupil and a favourite of the Jesuits; and by their standard, indeed, adds his countryman, he may even pass as holy, understanding so well as he does the principle that the end sanctifies the means.
As to what Friedrich next relates, we can only say that the ascertained fact for history, in her present stage, is that the following are things which a learned professor, with a position and character to take care of, deliberately publishes, things which the gravest men receive. Friedrich relates how when Senestrey was seeking the bishopric, King Maximilian II was in Rome, and often visited Theiner, whose fame all Germans prized. His rooms in the Vatican, off the Via dei Giardini Pontificali, well known to scholars, are often pointed out to visitors going up towards the sculpture gallery by the present circuitous approach. Here the royal visitor would chat with the learned Prefect of the Archives, and enjoy the landscape. At that time Theiner had no better friend than Senestrey, who, knowing that Theiner was in bad odour with the Jesuits, showed himself very hostile to them, so that even his experienced friend confessed to Friedrich that he had allowed himself to be deceived. This Roman tale is followed by a Bavarian one. A person well acquainted with official circles told Friedrich that Senestrey actually offered his services to the government, saying that if appointed bishop, in case the other prelates ever entertained anything disagreeable to the government, he would give information and do everything to counterwork them. In January, 1872, Friedrich heard Senestrey named in a company where one was present who had been a companion of King Maximilian II on his journey to Rome, and who broke out saying--
Yes, that man talked so much in Rome to King Maximilian II and his suite against the Jesuits and against the misgovernment of Rome, that the King said, That is the right man! He must be the bishop!
No sooner was he in the bishopric than it proved that the king had lost his subject, the government its supporter, Theiner his friend, and that the whole of Senestrey belonged to the Jesuits.
The company of the second day, January 24, consisted of Infallibilists. Before dinner Friedrich was introduced to Senestrey, who looking at him, said roughly, "So you are Professor Friedrich," and turned his back. At table Ketteler broke out in loud denunciation of the letters of Quirinus. This Friedrich knew was meant for him, for although the bishop has since then laid the sin at the door of Lord Acton, he seems at that time to have suspected Friedrich. He blamed a statement that a certain piece of distinctive attire, not worn by any other bishop in the West, had been granted to Bishop Lavigerie of Algiers to adorn his shoulders, as a means of winning his vote; as if, said Ketteler, the whole episcopate was to be bought by a bit of dress! We do not remember that Quirinus said that they were all to be bought by it. Our impression is that he only said something to the effect that it was incredible how far that sort of thing did go with them. Considering their training and habits, with us the thing incredible would be that things of that sort should not go far with them. And their constant study is to make things of that sort go far with all mankind. But the sally of Ketteler was responded to by the Military Bishop of Prussia, Namszanowski, who might be supposed to be even more than others susceptible of colour and decoration. He, evidently not being well read in Quirinus, missed the point of Ketteler's protest, and said, "Quite right, brother of Mainz. The same offer was made to me just at the outset, but I repelled such an imputation with contempt." This luckless reply probably made Friedrich think of his own visit from the much-vested Count Prelate W----. The eye of Ketteler flashed. Friedrich, who sat next to Namszanowski, hinted that he had missed the point of Bishop Ketteler, who ranted on--tobte weiter. When he had finished his tirade he looked Friedrich in the eye, as if to see whether he was not well abashed. "But I had no occasion to fear Ketteler, and looked him in the eye quite as sharply." Just after coffee the voice of Ketteler made the room ring,--"The chief advantage of the Council so far is, that the bishops learn to know one another, and to compare experience. For in his own diocese, of course, a bishop never hears the truth from his clergy, in consequence of his immeasurably higher jurisdiction." Friedrich, being the only priest present, said to Namszanowski, "Ketteler must lead a pretty regiment, when his clergy dare not tell him the truth. Any one who wants to hear the truth, and can bear to hear it, will hear it." He added that were it not for the impropriety of provoking a scene in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe, he would indignantly repel this insult to the whole of the lower clergy. None of the bishops intimated any dissent from the view of Ketteler, while Senestrey, and Leonrod of Eichstädt, simpered approbation. But here Friedrich inserts a note saying, Time has shown that Ketteler knew the lower clergy better than I did.
Just at this time came another token that the content or indifference with which the Roman Catholic world watched the impending change in its Church and creed was broken in exceptional cases. An accomplished French oratorian, a member of the Academy, Father Gratry, published a letter on January 18, which in almost any other country than France, coming from such a man on such a subject, at such a moment, would have caused, not a passing talk, but a profound impression. All the abuse was no longer for Döllinger and Montalembert. Father Gratry had a share allotted to him, sufficient to prove his importance. "Does God need your lies?" was a question he repeated with solemnity, as he dwelt on the false decretals and on the falsifications even of the breviary. His French clearness and point sent these reproaches home so as to be extremely cutting. It seemed as if accusing "the Church" of lying and forgery was a sin not to be forgiven. Few things were more discouraging for those who hoped that moral ground still remained for a reformation within the Church of Rome, than the perfect ease with which the benefits of the lying and the forgery were accepted, and the fury with which the crime of mentioning those incidents was denounced. "False decretals as much as you like," said Veuillot, "but the sense of the false decretals is the faith of the Church";[295] so, if God had not needed the lies the Church had assimilated them. Father Gratry, said the Civiltá, never tires of calling the school which teaches pontifical infallibility, a school of error. Does he know where that school has fixed its abode, and holds its chair? If he does not know, we shall tell him. "Its home is Rome, its chair is that of the Roman Pontiff, is that of St. Peter."[296] Father Hyacinth said, at a later time, "God never has need of lies, but lies often have need of God, and they are never so powerful as when they present themselves in His name."[297]
Still, the weight of wrath continued to fall upon the original offender. The Unitá Cattolica of January 25, in the letter of its Munich correspondent, called Döllinger a bag of wind and a whited sepulchre, and suggested that the Archbishop of Munich should prohibit theological students from attending his classes. The Unitá shows that Dr. Döllinger in his works "has always hidden a rebellious spirit under a learning which was often that of a charlatan."
In the General Congregation of the 21st, as the Cyprian Archbishop who said Mass used the Oriental rite, the Fathers would have been unable to follow, but the Master of the Ceremonies, lifting up his voice, gave a signal for each important movement.[298] In the Congregation of the Monday, Strossmayer spoke for an hour and a quarter (Tagebuch, p. 133). He insisted that reform was called for, and reform from the Pope downwards, and moreover that the whole of the canon law should be reformed. On the following Tuesday, this last proposition was supported by the Bishop of Saluzzo. On the same day, a speaker not named regretted that the word "concubinage" should have been used, as it gave occasion to the world to say that celibacy was a failure. Friedrich, while vehemently sharing this regret, admits that no means were suggested for doing away with concubinage or immorality. The Curia, however, could not be blamed for the scandal caused by the discussion on this matter of discipline. No one of the official organs ever breathed a word on the subject. Monsignor Guérin, whose history, says the preface to the second edition, reproduces the Council entire, might never have heard of this subject, and the same is the case with Sambin. The Acta Sanctæ Sedis, even in Latin, are equally reserved. The title of the Draft Decree on the general subject of the life of the clergy is mentioned in Frond. Henceforth we cease to be able to check the statements of the unauthorized writers by those of the Acta Sanctæ Sedis as to the names of those who spoke on given days. That amount of information was no more afforded. One day the record was that five spoke, another seven, and so forth. Who the speakers were, what they spoke upon, what they said about it, were matters swallowed up in the pontifical secret.
On the same day, the challenge to the College of Cardinals to reform itself was taken up by Cardinal Di Pietro, who admitted that such a demand might have been reasonable at Trent, at which time the Cardinals held many pluralities, but at the present day it was groundless. The only reform now called for was a financial one, as the revenue of the Cardinals was not adequate. He told the Fathers that if they only knew all, the Cardinals were not to be envied. This even Friedrich admits, saying that not once during the Council had the Pope summoned them to hear their opinions.
On January 27, Simor, Primate of Hungary, spoke on the life of the clergy, and recommended the "common life." Martin of Paderborn also advised that the cooks[299] should be superseded, and that "common life" should be resorted to. Martin had appealed to Cardinal Hohenlohe to support him in a proposal that Protestant clergymen who wanted to join the Church of Rome should have both marriage and the cup in the Lord's Supper conceded to them. Verot, Bishop of Savannah, spoke on the breviary. He urged revision, stating that he durst not, without subjecting himself to condemnation, say what was in the breviary from Augustine. Hereupon the bell of Cardinal De Angelis rang loudly, and Verot was told that the Fathers could not be spoken of in that manner. As we understand Verot, he had not found fault with the Fathers. The sons would not allow one another to say what the fathers had said. The American waited a moment, went on, and said the same thing of Gregory the Great. Now came a second call to order, and he was told that if he would not speak on another subject, he must leave the desk. So, after a few words more, he did leave it (Tagebuch, p. 138). The Prince Archbishop of Olmütz asked if the Primate of Hungary was ready to lead the "common life" with the canons of his chapter, adding that he should not object to lead it with his own chapter, but he feared that the canons of Olmütz would object. The following day, Melchers of Cologne supported the views of Verot as to the breviary. He censured the proposal to introduce lay brothers into the parsonages instead of the cooks. It would be better it the latter could be altogether got rid of; but as that was scarcely to be expected, it would be well to require that they should be fifty years of age, or at least forty. On January 31, Bishop Dinkel of Augsburg is said to have spoken against concubinage in the strict sense, but allowing it to the clergy in a wider sense.[300]
Perhaps, as, about the middle of January, men in the Englisher Garten, or Park, of Munich, lifted their hats to the Provost as he took his afternoon walks, they might fancy that the spare figure was weighted with rather more than a scholar's gravity. Neither the passing carriages, nor the race of Isar rolling rapidly; neither the fine effects of the westering sun behind the steeples of the city, nor the pleasant view from the brow beyond the river, could fix the old man's well-lighted eye. That eye was then watching the process which was putting the faith and labour of seventy years to a cruel test. The Church he had toiled to rehabilitate before the intellect of the Fatherland, striving, by letters, to connect her more firmly with the past, and to equip her more nobly for the future, had been cast into the cauldron. The very basis of dogma was to be changed. A new standard was to be set up. The adoption of that standard would change the relation of the Church to the Bible and to the Fathers, to General Councils and to the Episcopate, to the people and the king, to letters and all lights, to liberties, constitutions, and every human hope. Principles which had been charged upon them by Protestants, and which they had resented, saying that the accusers confounded opinion with dogma, were now lifting their heads in a General Council. He had striven in silence to avert the evil without raising a conflict of persons or names. But now the Infallibilists felt their conscience oppressed by having to recognize him, and those like-minded with him, as Catholics. They could not enjoy the fulness of their own belief as long as the Church tolerated his creed. And the Infallibilists were the Pope, the Curia, the Jesuits, and the majority of the bishops, at least of the nominal ones. If there was yet a hope, it rested in the strong help which God often gives to the effort of one self-risking man. The moment was come either to run all hazards and trust to that blessing, or to float down the stream like one of those winter leaves on the Isar.
It was on January 19, just when Gratry was issuing the first of his letters, and when Darboy threw his marshal's baton into the midst of the enemy, that in the quiet house in Von der Tann Street, the formidable name of Döllinger was signed to a protest against the Infallibilist Address. Through the Augsburg Gazette, this presently rang all over Germany, and a little later echoed in every corner of Europe. "One hundred and eighty millions of human beings are to be compelled by threats of exclusion from the Church, of privation of the sacraments, and of eternal damnation, to believe and profess what hitherto the Church has never believed or taught." So began an appeal destined to elicit proof that large numbers of educated Roman Catholics, under all their external quiet, were agitated; and that at the same time the masses, whatever little opinions they might have, were as to action completely under the dominion of the priests.[301]
It was now that Dupanloup wrote a letter to Deschamps, Archbishop of Malines. Two days after the opening session, Deschamps had published a reply to the famous pastoral of Dupanloup. It was at once inserted in the journals of Belgium, France, and Italy. Dupanloup, who had in France professed to expect in Rome profound tranquillity, found himself sharply attacked. He had warily reserved the merits of the question for argument in the secret ear of the Council, treating before the public only its accidents. But, cried Deschamps, you have pointed out the difficulties of a definition: how could you have the courage to do so?
When the brilliant Bishop of Orleans was ready for the press, he found that the press was in good keeping.
Father Spada [the censor] told me that an imprimatur was necessary, and at the same time said that such an imprimatur would be refused to me. Perhaps, Monsignor, you probably will think with me that, in these circumstances, all discussion between us is impossible; and you will feel it natural that I should preserve the silence befitting the position in which we are placed.[302]
The French thus saw their own prelates, under their own flag, deprived of the right to defend opinions identified with their national history. This fired Gratry, and added fresh bitters to the cup of the dying Montalembert.
Quirinus says (p. 201)--
The word "freedom" has nowhere so ill a sound as at Rome. Only one kind of freedom can be spoken of here--freedom of the Church; and, in their favourite and accustomed manner of speech, by the Church is intended the Pope; and by freedom, dominion over the State, according to the Decretals.
Some weeks later, Dupanloup did print his reply in Paris.[303] You, he said to Deschamps, ask how I could have the courage to point to the historical difficulties of a definition of infallibility; but, my dear Lord, I ask you, how you can have the courage to close your eyes to them? Repelling the idea of acclamation, and insisting on a thorough sifting of the matter, he says, and the emphases are his own--
The Church in an act so solemn, one which she never recalls, ONE WHICH PLEDGES HER FOR EVER, ONE WHICH, UNDER PAIN OF ANATHEMA AND OF DAMNATION ETERNAL, IS LAID UPON THE FAITH OF ALL SOULS FOR ALL AGES, does not proceed inconsiderately, or without having elucidated all obscurities and difficulties (p. 8).... As to the truth of the doctrine, I reserve the discussion of that for the Council itself, in case the question is brought on (p. 9).... You belong not to that deplorable school of apologists who fancy that they are defending religion when they make history lie (p. 15).
He shows how even Spalding and his associates in their proposal for a method of establishing belief in infallibility different from an express definition, said that such a definition would
extend its effects to all past centuries, would revive all the disputes heretofore allayed, would afford to Protestant and to rationalistic science a new battle-field, and would open up to the enemies, of the Church a discussion upon the whole field of history, and the whole of the collection of Papal Bulls (p. 14). Quoting Melchior Canus, he says: Peter has not need of your lies, or of your adulations.... To no one, my Lord, will it be agreeable in Rome, and amid the difficult circumstances wherein we stand, to engage in a discussion as to the common Father, in an investigation of the most delicate facts of history, and in a dissection of texts of Scripture before Europe and before the world which are observing us (p. 16).... The Fathers at Nicæa did not proceed by way of a summary discussion, much less by way of acclamation written or oral (p. 17).
A few other expressions of Dupanloup may be recited--
Far from putting an end to the discussions in the press, it will cause them to break out more terrible than ever.... If the difficulties, theological and historical, of a definition are such that simply exhibiting them as I did involves by inevitable consequence a grave attack on infallibility itself, how could you say that the difficulties are nothing?... You had the confident idea that nearly all the Fathers were with you, and were going enthusiastically to vote the definition off-hand (p. 18).... Certainly in the Church there must be an infallible doctrinal authority; but is it necessary that this authority should be the Pope ALONE? Would it not suffice if it was the authority of the Pope and the bishops united? (p. 20).... I asked why Pitt thought it well before taking a step towards Catholic emancipation to consult the most famous Catholic universities of Europe on the question of the pontifical power. You have deemed it well to answer not a word (p. 23).... In the ninth century we lost about one-half of the Church; in the sixteenth at least a third of the other half. At the present moment perhaps a half of what remains is more or less broken in upon (entamée). We have to reconquer.... Would you all at once, as several bishops from America said to me yesterday, change for the whole of the Catholic clergy who live in the midst of Protestant populations the entire ground of religious controversy? (p. 24).... In France, the Parliament, the Senate, the Legislative Corps, the Councils of State, the public officers, the bench, the bar, the young collegians, the army, the navy, commerce, finance, the arts, the liberal professions, the workmen of the cities, the electors in the country districts, the great mass of those who with us and elsewhere determine the course of affairs,--in a word, the nation, assuredly is not with you (p. 25).... Have you not heard the cry of the bishops of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and of so many others? (p. 25).... Three centuries ago a wave passed over Germany, a wave over England, Holland, Switzerland; and at this hour the wave has not subsided, but is still encroaching on the shore (p. 26).... Brazil is sick, Mexico is sick, the old Spanish colonies proceed from revolution to revolution, and it is my mournful conviction that what you, my Lord, are preparing, will give to the Church in all those countries a new and terrible shaking (p. 26).... Some say the great evil of our day is that the principle of authority is laid low. Let us exalt it in the Church, and we shall save society.... To think that by proclaiming the infallibility of the Pope you will roll back the revolution is, to my view, one of those illusions which sometimes, in human societies, desperate parties make for themselves on the eve of a supreme crisis (p. 27).
His statement of the condition of things before he first wrote would appear to be meant to depict what existed in Rome as he was now writing--
No, it was not unanimity as to the question debated among us which reigned ere I spoke. It was on the one side violence, and on the other side astonishment, silent and downcast. If any voice was raised, speedily was it covered with clamours and insults (p. 31).
This reply called down from Veuillot many pages of taunts, gibes, and sneers.
Means of humiliating the bishops of the Opposition were found by the sovereign, which seem new in both kingly and parliamentary warfare. Priests wrote against them, and the Pope sent to those priests for publication letters of approval, containing sharp cuts at the unfortunate prelates. To the Jesuit Ramière, the Pope said that he had set Maret "in contradiction with himself, so that you have constrained him to demolish the edifice with his own hands" (Friedberg, p. 490). The Vicar-General of Nimes had written against Dupanloup, and forth comes an epistle of Pius IX praising him for his elegant refutation of the empty sophisms which had caused a disturbance of minds deplored by all (Friedberg, p. 488).
Continental Catholic writers generally put Dr. Pusey as one of the most important promoters of the Church of Rome. Yet they were aware that he did not belong to it. In his second pamphlet Dupanloup spoke with feeling of the value of the Ritualistic party, both in England and America, as pointing to Rome. Ce Qui se Passe au Concile says (p. iii., troisième éd.),--"In England Dr. Pusey, the originator of the Ritualistic movement, which has led so many persons, eminent for intellect to the Catholic religion--Pusey, whose loyal sincerity no one ever suspected," had written that nothing would be more fatal to the prospect of reunion than a declaration of Papal infallibility. This was not likely to make much impression upon the Curia. They knew that what for England was called reunion, for Rome was called submission; which Manning told them would be facilitated by definition; and Manning served them so punctiliously that they were fain to believe him. Moreover, what Desanctis in that remarkable book Roma Papale, had many years previously described as the plan of the Curia for operations in England, would be little affected by a doctrine or two more or less. His account, in one word, was that they would mission England through the senses, leaving doctrines and arguments in the background. It was a question of spectacle, not of reason or Scripture. And love of spectacle was adorned with the name of aesthetics, and sensible Englishmen were to be led captive by the power of clothes. In this point of view, one who promoted the use of the chosen means might better serve the end from the very fact that he did not himself aim so low.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 293: We should be curious to know if the writer would now comment on these terms so doubtfully. Further study would probably have given greater decision. The meaning of the obedience of princes and nations was as distinct as possible from that of the obedience of private persons, whether Catholics or heretics. The Church is all through the movement proceeding, as mother of civil humanity, to secure the obedience of rulers and States.]
[Footnote 294: Quirinus, p. 195.]
[Footnote 295: Vol. i. p. 235.]
[Footnote 296: Serie VII. vol. ix. p. 685.]
[Footnote 297: Letter to the Débats, printed in _Le Concile du Vatican, et le Mouvement Anti-infallibiliste_, vol. ii. p. 63.]
[Footnote 298: Acta Sanctæ Sedis, v. p. 341.]
[Footnote 299: We use Friedrich's word. Housekeeper is the one generally employed in languages other than the German.]
[Footnote 300: Fromman, p. 96. As a Protestant author, Fromman is hardly ever quoted by us; but he is so careful, and in this case so specific as to date and person, that we do not feel at liberty to suppress his statement.]
[Footnote 301: Friedberg, p. 495. Also reprinted separately in Stimmen aus der Katholischen Kirche.]
[Footnote 302: Friedberg, p. 87.]
[Footnote 303: Réponse de Mgr. L'Evêque d'Orléans à Mgr. Deschamps. Duniol, 1870.]
Chapter VIII
Church and State--Draft of Decrees with Canons--Gains Publicity--Principles involved--Views of Liberal Catholics--The Papal View of the Means of Resistance possessed by Governments.
"Informers against the Church," was, in a word, the name now hurled against the Augsburg Gazette and the Times. "Conspirators against human society" was the retort of the general press of Europe upon the Curia. The secret labour of five years was ruthlessly exposed by two unconsecrated offenders. How the "breach of the pontifical secret" had occurred, of which Cardinal Antonelli complained in despatch after despatch, may perhaps be known some other day. What we now know is that publicity took possession of the results, though secrecy had presided over all the processes. Even the bond of mortal sin had proved too weak for what Curran might have called the irresistible genius of universal illumination. The decrees, canons, and anathemas proposed on the subject of Church and State were now before the world.
On January 21, the Schema, or Draft of Decrees on the Church, was distributed to the bishops. Hefele told how a diplomatist laughingly boasted that he had received one at the same time.[304] This Draft was to that on faith what the application is to the sermon. It laid down principles in fifteen chapters, and reduced them to operative shape in twenty-one canons. Vitelleschi says (p. 85)--
Now, on summing up these Canons, what do they amount to? Sole religion, the Catholic; sole head, the Pope, "who has full and supreme power"; his laws superior to those of the State, on which he exercises his judgment "concerning the lawful and the unlawful," and disposes of permissions and punishments. Dante has imagined an Emperor and a Pope, who between them shall direct the world; but if the idea of these Canons were fully carried out with regard to civil society, there would remain the Pope only.
This object, the Pope only, which rests in the logical view of Vitelleschi, as the result of his examination of the Canons, is the same object which long previously stood before the illuminated vision of M. Veuillot, whose means of reaching conclusions were not so circuitous. The Pope only is the object which Archbishop Cecconi even now sets out as the paramount figure of the future, albeit with no extatic confidence. And the Pope only is precisely that crowning beauty in the image of the world-empire which Cardinal Manning reproached Mr. Bryce with missing in his conception of the Catholic universe. Mr. Bryce, like Dante, was a dualist. Dualism, however, was to be done away with, except in the wholesome form of light and darkness, the two opposed forces. All the labour and the silence of the recent years had been employed in preparing an inauguration which vulgar eye was not to disturb till the King should burst forth in his plenitude of supreme authority with unerring judgment, so arrayed that all the tribes of Israel would hail the mystic David the one King-shepherd and Shepherd-king of a world at last unified.
The description of the effect of these canons given by Quirinus (p. 203) was not so elegant as that of Vitelleschi. He wrote for Germans menaced with a change; while the Romans to whom the Marchese spoke, had for ages been themselves delivered from dualism, and could see in the new measures only an effort to extend to all the human race that perfect Catholic unity, religious and political, of which their States had been the sole blameless example. They well knew who was the spiritual David, the one shepherd of the one fold,--shepherd with sling as well as pipe, shepherd with sword as well as crook,--on whose future reign over one kingdom the eye of the Jesuit, gazing through the glass of Ezekiel, dwelt with rapture, expounding: "I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.... And David my servant shall be king over them, and they all shall have one shepherd."[305]
Quirinus, writing as one to whom this unity had been perhaps gorgeous in the distance, but who saw it now in a new aspect, cried: "These transparent Decrees and anathemas may be thus summed up: the Christian world consists simply of masters and slaves. The masters are the Italians, the Pope, and his Court; and the slaves are all bishops (including the Italians themselves), all priests, and all the laity." Whether Quirinus had studied Tarquini's à priori system of the Perfect Society, we do not know; but any one referring to our analysis of it will see how closely it corresponds with the following, in which Quirinus sums up the doctrine of these Draft Decrees--
Three main ideas run through the Schema, and are formulated into dogmatic Decrees guarded with anathemas. Firstly, to the Pope belongs absolute dominion over the whole Church, whether dispersed or assembled in Council. Secondly, the Pope's temporal sovereignty over a portion of the Peninsula must be maintained as pertaining to dogma. Thirdly, Church and State are immutably connected; but in the sense that the Church's laws always hold good before and against the civil law, and therefore every Papal ordinance that is opposed to the constitution and law of the land, binds the faithful, under pain of mortal sin, to disobey the constitution and law of their country (p. 204).
One incidental notice of the Draft by Quirinus is, "regulating all relations between Church and State, and restoring the Papal supremacy over the bodies and souls of men" (p. 209).
The Rheinischer Merkur (p. 22) quotes the Ultramontane Hausblätter as asserting that the twenty-one Canons had all been long recognised as part of the Catholic faith. No, says the Merkur, some of them were repudiated as calumnious by the Catholic bishops of England and Ireland in 1826. On the same page it says:
We do not want a centralized power of a theocratic complexion, claiming the right of interfering at will, and disturbing our political and social relations, and of reducing princes to vassals--a centralized power claiming that its Decrees shall bind the conscience as divine.... We do not want this apparatus of coercion for the Church--contumaces salubribus poenis coercendi--for compelling the contumacious by wholesome penalties;--we know what that means!... We do not want under-satraps armed with whips; we do not want despotism, which, as well as heresy, is one of the gates of hell. Ready to render to God what is God's, we also wish to render to Cæsar what is Cæsar's, and we count it a precious birthright to be reckoned as good subjects by our lawful sovereigns; but just on this account do we regard Drafts of Decrees, the execution of which would cause us to appear as enemies of public safety and of dynastic order, in the light of attacks on our civil existence, and as calculated to bring us into the same position as that in which our fellow Catholics in the Russian Empire groan.
What would these Liberal Catholics have said had Reisach's Drafts not been "shipwrecked"? The twenty-one Canons place the affairs of this world so much at the discretion of the Pontiff, that proposals which alarmed the same men who brought these forward, must have been startling. In principle, they could hardly have claimed more than is claimed here; but possibly they contained formulæ for the application of principle, which might have attracted the attention even of those politicians who think it wise and practical to ignore principles. In nothing is Rome stronger than in her consciousness that when once she has succeeded in getting a principle recognized, she can afford to temporize as to its application, and for a while to temporize as to its application, and for a while to compromise as to details. As the preparations of Reisach had been kept back, and the Canons which carried the principles were presented, so we shall find that the Canons were eventually sacrificed, as too much entering into detail, in order to carry what embraced all.
The Decrees in question were clearly intended as a vehicle to carry over the doctrines of the Syllabus respecting Church and State from the domain of ideas into that of facts. The Chapters would furnish text for professors and preachers. The Canons would bind the conscience of every Catholic, on pain of anathema. Nothing further could be wanting than executive contrivances, such as probably the Drafts of Reisach were intended to provide.
The following is an abridged view of the substance and effect of the twenty-one Canons (Documenta, ii. p. 101):--
1. If any man say that the religion of Christ is not made manifest in a society, let him be anathema.
2. If any man say that the Church has no certain and immutable form, let him be anathema.
3. If any man say that she is not external and visible, let him be anathema.
4. If any man say that she is not one body, let him be anathema.
5. If any man say that she is not a society necessary to the obtaining of eternal salvation, let him be anathema.
6. If any man say that her intolerance in the condemnation of all sects is not divinely commanded, or that such sects ought to be tolerated, let him be anathema.
7. If any man say that she may err in doctrine, depart from her original institution, or cease to exist, let him be anathema.
8. If any man say that she is not a final dispensation, let him be anathema.
9. If any man say that her infallibility extends only to things contained in revelation, let him be anathema.
10. If any man say that she is not a Perfect Society, but an association (collegium) which may be subjected to secular rule, let him be anathema.
11. If any man say that bishops have not by divine appointment a proper power of ruling, which they are freely to exercise, let him be anathema.
12. If any man say that the power of the Church lies only in counsel or persuasion, but not in legal commands, in coercion and compulsion by external jurisdiction, and in wholesome pains, let him be anathema.
13. If any man say that the true Church, out of which none can be saved, is any other than the Roman, let him be anathema.
14. If any man say that Peter was not prince of the apostles and head of the whole Church, or that he received only a primacy of honour and not of jurisdiction, let him be anathema.
15. If any man say that he had not successors, or that the Roman Pontiff was not his successor in the primacy, let him be anathema.
16. If any man say that the Roman Pontiff has only a right of supervision or direction over the Universal Church, and not a full and supreme power of jurisdiction, or that his power over the Churches, taken separately, is not immediate and ordinary, let him be anathema.
17. If any man say that the power of the Church is not compatible with that of supreme civil power, let him be anathema.
18. If any man say that the power necessary to rule civil society is not from God, let him be anathema.
19. If any man say that all rights among men and all authority are derived from the State, let him be anathema.
20. If any man say that the supreme rule of conscience lies in the law of the State, or in public opinion, and that the judicial power of the Church does not extend to pronouncing them legitimate or illegitimate, or that by civil law that can become legitimate which by divine law is illegitimate, let him be anathema.
21. If any man say that the laws of the Church have not binding force unless confirmed by the civil power, and that it is competent to the civil power to judge or decree in causes where religion is implicated, let him be anathema.
The logical succession of ideas was manifest. The first five Canons established the principle that the Christian Church is a society which has Form, Visibility, Unity, and is necessary to salvation. The next series pronounced this Church to be Intolerant (6), Infallible (7), Final as a dispensation (8), Infallible in matters not contained in revelation (9), a Perfect Society not subject to the civil power (10), ruling by bishops (11) and possessing legislative, judicial, and compulsory power (12), because none can be saved out of her (13). The fourteenth Canon, and the two following ones, establish the unlimited dominion of the Pope over all bishops; while the eleventh establishes the ruling power of bishops, but leaves the sphere of it undefined, not even saying that it is over the Church. And this undefined ruling power of bishops is placed between the independence of the Church in relation to the civil power on the one hand, and her own compulsory power and the absolute authority of the Pope over the bishops on the other.
The seventeenth Canon affirms that the power of the Church is compatible with civil authority,--which without a doubt it is, so long as the civil authority abides within the limits traced for it by the Church. That authority may also, in the sense of Rome, be, in its order, supreme,--that is, not subject to any other civil authority, but always subject to the Pope, who is an authority of a higher order than the civil. The eighteenth Canon bases all civil authority on divine right. This is capable of more than one interpretation. First, it may mean that all existing authority is to be viewed as from God, whether it originated in conquest, prescription, or vote; or, secondly, it may mean that no civil authority is legitimate which has not divine sanction; and as among the baptized that sanction cannot be received except through the Pope, the consequence of such an interpretation would be obvious. The nineteenth Canon deliberately confounds natural and legal rights, as if the laws that create and protect legal rights were not themselves the outgrowth of natural rights. In the same way it confounds natural authority and legal authority. The twentieth seems to put civil law and mere public opinion on the same level, and places both one and the other under the judgment of the Church, and that as to their legitimacy or illegitimacy. Judgment, of course, does not mean criticism, instruction, remonstrance, or warning. It means what the word would mean anywhere, in such solemn legislative language, namely, judicial sentence. Legitimacy or illegitimacy, again, does not mean wisdom or folly, goodness or badness, but means what it says. Divine law includes Church law, and what it forbids no civil law can warrant. Therefore the power claimed in this fundamental proposition is that with which we are already acquainted in the literature of the movement for reconstruction, that, namely, of declaring what laws of a particular State are or are not legitimate; every such State being considered as a province of the universal theocratic monarchy.
Perhaps no principle embodied in these Canons lies so deep under the whole movement against free government in religious and civil society as the principle that confounds civil rights with natural ones, and, by denying that the State is the source of all rights, covers the denial of the fact that it is the source of legal rights. As to legal rights, we, sitting free and thankful amid our books, our friends, and our blessings, no more know of any source of such rights except that benign ordinance of our Father in heaven, the civil law, than did the teacher of Plato, when by law deprived of his natural rights, he sat in his cell while the deadly cup was being prepared.[306] No, the State is not the author of rights, but it is the guardian of them. Practically all our natural rights are but a common for any beast to trample and to browse upon till the State surrounds them with the sacred fence of law; then do they turn into garden sward, and well-watched flowers and fruits exceeding fair. But these principles, which strip the State of all moral mission, which empty law of all moral character, which rob society itself, and all the institutions of society, of any aim moral and eternal, of any but a temporary, material end, and which transfer all that is noble to the priesthood alone, cover one of the darkest attempts that art could direct against all the foundations of public life. The moral mission of the State is written on every page of the Bible, and the political mission of Christian priests not on a single one.
The State in renouncing for itself the right to dictate to men their faith and worship, does not empty itself of a moral character, but, on the contrary, takes the highest possible moral ground. In that renunciation it does not disavow the faith and fear of God, but, on the contrary, avows its persuasion that the rights which affect the conscience of His creatures are so sacred as not to be sufficiently guarded except in His hand alone. Of shallow pretexts for oppression, none was ever shallower than the assumption that because society as such says that it dares not to come between God and the soul, therefore does it say that as society it has nothing to do with God.
The Court was evidently not disposed to leave politicians under any delusion. The Civiltá wrote on the politicasters and the Council,[307] as if to make statesmen feel that they had either to submit or else to bear the brunt of the revolutionary forces, from below and from above. A principal object of the Council, says the article, had avowedly been "the restoration of peace in the orders, even the political ones, of Christendom." Confessing that statesmen, or politicasters, as it called them, evinced anxiety, the Civiltá named measures to which they might be tempted to resort. These were threefold--first, making new preventive laws; secondly, restoring obsolete ones; thirdly, separating the Church and the State. By preventive laws must be understood any legal bar set up to impede the Pope in any exercise of his legislative, judicial, or coercive power in a given realm. Preventive laws, old or new, it pronounces to be weapons which would infallibly "burst or break in the hands of governments, if they attempted to use them."
The method by which this result would be brought about is indicated in a way which shows how divine law can loose what civil law binds.
There are two cases in which a subordinate is not obliged to obey a superior; the first, when a contrary precept exists of greater authority; the second, when the superior gives commands in things in respect of which the subordinate is not placed under him.... An inferior authority is not to be disobeyed when a superior one prohibits. Now, the authority of the Church, assembled in Council, is superior to the authority of the State.... It is superior in the sense in which the reasoning faculty in man is superior to the sentient and vegetative faculties.... Since the ecclesiastical authority is superior to the civil in such wise that, in matters affecting both, the acts of the civil must be subject to those of the ecclesiastical, it is manifest that if a collision arose between the definitions of the OEcumenical Council and the laws of the State, the latter would cease, by that fact alone, to have any binding force whatever.
The same conclusion may be deduced from the words in which the divine Founder of the Church gave authority to His disciples to teach His doctrine to all nations. All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth. Go and teach all nations. From the fact that, in virtue of His divine generation, the Father had conferred on Him all power, celestial and terrestrial, Christ argued thus, Therefore, go ye and teach all nations my doctrine; and thus He clearly demonstrated that His Church was invested by Him with such a right of teaching that it would never be lawful for any power to offer to her opposition. Therefore, should the State require obedience to laws contrary to the definitions of the Council, it would do so without a true legal right. And if, notwithstanding, it employed force to procure obedience, it would fall into tyranny, odious to the conscience and ruinous to itself.... By no means does the authority of governments extend to commanding what the OEcumenical Council may prohibit, or to prohibiting what it may command; and if governments should arrogate to themselves the right of doing so, in vain would they presume upon being able to oblige Catholics subject to submit; and should they have recourse to force, they would plunge themselves into tyranny which would not long serve the interests of those who displayed it.
The principles are very simple and firmly fixed. While submission to legitimate authority is a duty, resistance to "tyranny" is a right. Any authority used in contravention of the decrees of the Church ceases to be legitimate, runs into tyranny, and is to be disobeyed. Hence the duty of obedience to civil rulers is taught in the term "due obedience," and only the Pope can judge when obedience ceases to be due; but it is judged already that due it never can be, in any possible case, wherein the civil law contravenes the directions of the ecclesiastical authority. How States which profess to accept the corporation which insists on these principles as a true and worthy teacher, or which look on it as anything but an erring and dangerous caste, are to escape dissolution, it is not easy to see.
It is not hard to call the hopes of victory in the impending struggle monkish dreams, nor easy to dispel the show of probability in the following argument. Hundreds of examples in the past, where persistent ecclesiastical agitation triumphed over political instability, would rise up to the memory of well read Jesuits, as making their calculations seem like those of positive philosophers, and the hopes of journalists and members of Parliament like those of enthusiasts, in the sense of men who look for ends without using means.
"What would such laws come to in case they were enacted? They would come to be laws of no validity and no effect in what touches belief: of no validity because essentially null as to binding force; of no effect because unable to prevent Catholics from a full adhesion of mind and heart to the dogmatic definitions of the Church. And as to external acts and matters of discipline, such laws would become a dead letter, or a criminal oppression. A dead letter if the governments did not feel that they had nerve to put forth the strong hand and enforce the execution of them, in which case the laws would become a ridiculous comedy. Or a criminal oppression if, feeling themselves possessed of force, they should employ it to execute laws tyrannical, as being opposed to public liberty, public religion, and public faith."
As to separating the Church from the State, the Civiltá proudly quotes the Monde of Paris:--
The Catholics have number and force on their side ... before apostatising the French government would think twice ... the government surely would not give the signal for its own fall, and for a long revolution.
The separation of Church and State is here spoken of evidently in the ordinary sense; but the charge of having already separated the State from the Church was one frequently brought against the government of France, when the language employed was that of the initiated. In that language the Draft of Decrees now under consideration described separation of the State from the Church as the denial of the right or duty of the State to coerce by the appointed penalties, except so far as may be demanded in the interests of public peace, those who violate the Catholic religion.[308]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 304: Unitá Cattolica, March 4, quoting Volksblatt.]
[Footnote 305: See exposition of Ezek. xxxvii. 21-24, Civiltá, VII. vi. 293.]
[Footnote 306: Compare the Crito and the Phædo.]
[Footnote 307: Serie VII. ix. 257 ff.]
[Footnote 308: Cap. xii. Doc. ad. Ill. ii., p. 96]
Chapter IX
The Courts of Vienna and Paris manifest anxiety--Disturbances in Paris--Daru's Letters--Beust moves--His Despatches--His Passage of Arms with Antonelli--Daru's Despatch and Antonelli's Reply--Daru's Rejoinder--Beust lays down the Course which Austria will follow--Arnim's Despatch--The Unitá on the Situation--Veuillot on the Situation--Satisfaction of the Ultramontanes.
The fire of small arms from the press only irritated the Curia; but presently the sound of heavy guns began to be heard, and ended in a boom, first from the Burg and next from the Tuileries. The two Emperors who, with the Pope, held a share in the sovereignty of Austria and France respectively, began to be aware of the fact that they might find themselves left by their senior partner exactly in the legal position which we have seen Phillips describe as that of the State in relation to the Church--the position in law of a married woman as compared with her husband. It will be remembered that, according to the doctrine of the Civiltá, every Catholic State must have two kings. It will further be remembered that all the Pope's subjects are bound to observe his law before that of the nation. If, therefore, the universal ruler could promulge what laws he pleased, and all these laws were to take the foreway of any competing laws of the State, it was plain that of the two kings in each State, the local one was at the mercy of the universal one.
On January 18, the very day on which Gratry dated his famous letter, and on which, probably, Döllinger penned his protest dated one day later, Count Daru wrote a letter, of which the press got hold: "They cannot be so blind," said the Foreign Minister of France, "as to suppose that it would be possible for us to keep our troops there a day after infallibility was proclaimed." He hoped that the Holy Father would yield to the counsel of the most illustrious of the French bishops. A fortnight later (Feb. 5), in a second letter, he expressed fears that the majority would take advantage of its powers, and said that he had caused Cardinal Antonelli to be apprised of the truth through M. de Banneville; but he adds: "It is clear that everything may be thrown into uncertainty by the conduct of the Italian, Spanish, and missionary bishops, who seem to live in a world apart." He again speaks of the impossibility of keeping up a French garrison, and declares that the Propaganda seems to take no account of the Concordat, and that perhaps violence may be done to the pact which unites France with Rome. The revolutionary party, he affirms, is not only conspiring, but actually moving, and Rome must be blind to put weapons in their hands by breaking the force of the Conservatives, and compelling rebellion by the Syllabus.
This language betrays the weakness of statesmen who rely on Rome, as if it was a Conservative agency, but it would cause little anxiety to the Curia. They had forty thousand drilled men in France holding important places under the State. At this very time the movements of the revolutionary party in Paris were dwelt upon by Don Margotti in the tone of an enthusiastic bone-setter, who, hearing of accidents, felt sure that he must be called in. On February 11 the Unitá Cattolica said that--
"Bonaparte had cause to fear barricades in Paris. He and his minister had been setting up barricades against the Council, and so the revolutionists were setting up barricades against him. The Church always conquered the barricades of Gallicanism, but Bonaparte may not conquer those of Paris. Some morning we may find that he has fled. The Emperor would have set his house in order in a better manner, if, instead of launching into the parliamentary system, he had declared from the day the Council was announced that he would submit himself and France in everything and for everything to its decision...."
The very next day it is added--
"The troubles in Paris are a vengeance of divine justice on Napoleon for his misconduct in Italy. Had he not prevented the Pope from sending his cousin, Count Pepoli of Bologna, to the galleys, he would not have had to imprison Rochefort."
If the same men who thus detested Napoleon threatened the Italians with French arms, it was simply from the belief that the Papacy had a stronger hold upon France than the empire. After saying (February 8) that modern society is to the Church what the world was to Christ, and that the first Syllabus against the world was compiled by Christ, Don Margotti says on the next day to the Italians--
You will not go to Rome, because France will always oppose you; and she does so because, if she did not, the world would. If the free-thinkers do not believe in miracles, let them see one in this--that Rome will never be taken from the Pope. Even a government with Rochefort at its head would defend the temporal dominion of the Pope-king.
There is a solemn passage in Vitelleschi where he speaks of the frequency with which governments find that they have to face some revolutionary movement at one and at the same time as that in which the claims of the Church are being pressed upon them. He does not pronounce that the two facts are in individual cases connected, but he does say that the frequent recurrence of the two simultaneously is "an organic phenomenon worthy of the deepest attention" (p. 235). Rechtbaur in Vienna said, "They threaten revolution if the State does not renounce its rights"; and a couple of days after it had quoted this remark, the Unitá Cattolica said--
Diocletian left a long tail behind him. His tail consists of those politicians who protest against the Syllabus as a declaration of war against modern society. Beust in Vienna, Hohenlohe in Munich, Ollivier in Paris, were not tranquil like the priest in Rome. Sooner or later they would all be engulfed in the stormy sea of revolution--all but the Church and the Pope. The Syllabus would abide for ever, and with it the Canons of the Vatican Council.... The Pope has proved by facts that he knows how to govern better than any other sovereign. We defy any emperor whatever to govern a country fourteen years as Pope Pius IX has governed Rome.
The letters of Count Daru, quoted above, caused inquiry in Rome. Quirinus asserted that the only existing copy of them was in the hands of the English government. It was known that Lord Acton was a near relation of the English Minister for Foreign Affairs. Putting this and that together, the Curia was inclined to say that Quirinus must be Lord Acton; and it is confidently affirmed that Monsignor Randi, whose spiritual duties were those of Director of Police, was taken into consultation with the Pope as to whether it would or would not be expedient to banish the suspected English nobleman.[309] The Unitá tried to make capital against Dupanloup out of these letters. It could not believe that the Bishop of Orleans would write to Daru and tell him what passed in the Council (March 8).
The anxiety felt at Courts in Catholic nations had now penetrated the mind of Count Beust. On February 10 he penned a remarkable despatch, in which he recited his pacific intentions and his innocent hopes, as indicated in his treatment of the Council hitherto, and especially in his rejection of the overtures of Bavaria. He was now, however, obliged to confess that, in Rome, there was a manifest determination not to acknowledge, nay, more, not to tolerate, that liberty which Austria claimed for the State in civil legislation. He now confesses to "alarm," and affirms that the Decrees of the Church "would dig an impassable gulf between the laws of the Church and those which govern the greater part of modern societies." He plainly declares that Austria would reserve to herself the right of interdicting the publication of any Act infringing the majesty of the law, and that every person who should disregard such prohibition must bear the legal consequences. This despatch was followed by one to Berlin,[310] pointing out how delicate had been the position of Austria in the present transaction. The empire was passing through an internal transformation. Hence arose a special necessity of maintaining the supremacy of law, and a corresponding expediency of avoiding internal conflict. In addition to reasons of State for not identifying his policy with that of the minority of the bishops of the Council, Count Beust alleged that those prelates found that any interference on the part of governments turned to an embarrassment for themselves, because they were accused of being the instruments of the political rulers, and he felt that it was not the bishops but the Cabinets that must defend the rights of States. A third despatch was directed to Munich.[311] In this, Count Beust intimated that Prince Hohenlohe might naturally think that it would have been better had the Count in time seen the force of his recommendations. Parrying this objection, he strongly urged united action, and stated that Austria was now ready to co-operate in a matter that evidently affected the common interests of all governments. The effect of all this was a formal visit of Count Trauttmansdorff, the Austrian ambassador, to Cardinal Antonelli. According to the report of the Count, the Cardinal had really nothing to say beyond the most commonplace evasions. The Decrees were still subject to discussion, and, on the other hand, interdicting the publication of Decrees in a certain country did not deprive them of their validity. Besides, he could not see how prohibiting the publication of the laws of the Church could be consistent with the policy which consisted in giving liberty to the publication of anything. Moreover, all the world knew that, while Rome affirmed principles, she would be very reasonable and gentle in the application of them, and none need to take the least alarm. Count Trauttmansdorff expresses his satisfaction with the attitude of the German bishops, but thinks that Austria has lost her influence by her recent changes of policy, and especially by her attacks upon the Concordat. He expects, on the contrary, great effect from the exercise of French influence.
The reply of Count Beust to this despatch was prompt and clear. True, he said, Decrees of the Church retain their validity though rejected by the government; but this was the very circumstance that showed the gravity of the position. It would become a serious matter, both for the Church and for Catholic governments, if laws which were valid for the one, were repudiated by the other. Again, as to the Cardinal's remark that refusing the Church liberty to promulge her laws was scarcely consistent with professions of giving liberty to publish anything, Count Beust thought that this remark could hardly be serious. "Respect for the law is the basis of all liberty," said the Count, "and liberty which passes that boundary, becomes licence." But this arrow would fall blunted from a conscience covered by the buckler of the Vatican. Any Vaticanist would simply say, Respect for a higher law is not disregard of law; and whenever Rome has spoken, her word is the higher law, respect for which is the real basis of order.
The reply of Antonelli to the despatch of Beust is a singular document. He is so generally credited with ability as a diplomatist that one would fear to say, even if one thought, that it is anything but an able paper, whether viewed in an intellectual or a diplomatic aspect. He states that the remonstrances of Beust were expressed in "not very delicate terms," and in weaker and much less courteous forms puts forward the arguments which we shall presently find employed in his reply to Daru. So far from accepting the reproach of want of delicacy, Beust instantly and formally repelled it, and said that the Pope's Nuncio, when appealed to, could hardly find an expression in his despatch on which to attempt to sustain the allegation of the Cardinal. He demanded a copy of the despatch, and, as soon as he had obtained it, instructed the ambassador at Rome to thank Antonelli for granting it, and to tell him that he had immediately laid it before the Emperor.[312] Whether the Emperor thought the despatch respectful to a power such as his we cannot say.
The day after that on which Count Trauttmansdorff reported his interview with Cardinal Antonelli, Count Daru, in Paris, despatched an important document to the Vatican. According to an analysis of it, contained in the reply of Antonelli,[313] the Count summed up the effect of the Canons in two propositions. First, the infallibility of the Church extends, not only to the deposit of faith, but also to all that is necessary to its preservation. Secondly, the Church is a divine and perfect society, and exercises its powers in two tribunals, the interior and the exterior. She is absolute in the domain of legislation, judicial procedure, and coercive force; and moreover exercises her power with full liberty, and in independence of any civil power whatever. The Count points out that the claims of the Church are now extended to authority over history, philosophy, and science, and involve an absolute subordination to the authority of the Church of the very principles of a national constitution, the rights and duties of governments, with the political rights and duties of citizens, both electoral and municipal. They are extended even to everything included in judicature and in legislation, in respect both of persons and things; to the rules of public administration, to the rights and duties of corporations, and in general to all the rights of the State, not excepting the right of conquest, and that of peace and war. Is it to be imagined, asks Count Daru, that princes will bow their sovereignty before the supremacy of the Court of Rome? Considering the protection granted by France to the Holy See for twenty years past, she has special duties before the world, and he, therefore, claims that projects of laws which are to be laid before the Council shall be communicated to the French government, and that time shall be allowed to forward the observations that may be deemed desirable before they are pressed for decision.
The reply of Antonelli to Daru has been generally looked upon as one of the ablest specimens of his skill. Unless at the moment the greatest daring was the greatest skill, we must think the impression of skill is made chiefly on the minds of those who have not carefully studied the Vatican dialect. It would seem that Count Daru, or his advisers, were perfectly aware of the meaning of the document; and to any one who was so, a more absolute statement of Papal suzerainty can scarcely be conceived. The technical term "direct" plays an important part in the various assertions. The Cardinal does not deny the extension of the Papal authority to any one of the matters pointed out by Daru. He never denies that that authority is absolute, but always takes care to couple with the world "absolute" the word "direct"--it is not "direct and absolute"; and the real meaning of much of the despatch would be brought out by the simple question, which any ecclesiastical adviser of the French Foreign Office who was true to the government would ask, Is it indirect and absolute? Moreover, the blank statement that the kingly power depends upon the priestly, is, in the form in which Antonelli puts it, an extension even of the ordinary Jesuit doctrine, which couples the dependence of the kingly power upon the priestly with several qualifications, practically not amounting to much, but theoretically necessary to be kept in view, because they enable men to seem to deny what they mean to maintain. Commencing by a complimentary paragraph as to the protection of France and the gratitude of the Pope, Antonelli goes on to express great surprise that the Canons should cause so much uneasiness. They only expressed the maxims and fundamental principles of the Church, published in all forms, taught in the schools, maintained for ages, and often approved of even by civil governments. The Church, continues Antonelli, never claims to exercise a "direct and absolute" power over the political rights of the State. Having received the mission to lead men, whether as individuals or as constituted into societies, to a supernatural end, the Church had received the corresponding authority to judge the morality of all acts interior or exterior, in respect of their conformity to laws natural and divine. "As no action, whether commanded by a supreme power or freely performed by a person, can be divested of a quality of morality or justice, it follows that the judgment of the Church, though directly turning upon the morality of actions, indirectly extends to all matters with which morality is connected." But this is not the same as direct interference in political affairs, which, by the order established by God, and by the teaching indeed of the Church, belong to the temporal power without any dependence on any authority. The subordination of the civil power to the religious one is in the sense[314] of the superiority of the priesthood. Hence the authority of sovereignty depends on that of priesthood, as human things depend on divine, and temporal on spiritual. And if temporal felicity, which is the end of civil power, is subordinate to eternal felicity, which is the spiritual end of the priesthood, it follows that to attain the end towards which God would have them respectively tend, the one power is subordinate to the other; and thus, as between them, there exists in one of the two a subordination of functions as there exists a subordination of ends.
Therefore, proceeds the despatch, if infallibility does extend to all that is necessary to conserve the faith, no prejudice will, on that account, arise to science, history, or politics. Of course (we may interject) the reasoning is, that any subordination arising from a divinely-appointed order cannot be the cause of prejudice, but only of advantage. Infallibility, he proceeds, has been exercised in times past, and princes have had no occasion to disquiet themselves. If the Church has been constituted by her divine founder a true and perfect Society distinct from the civil power and independent of it, with a plenary threefold authority, legislative, judicial, and coercive, no confusion will arise in the movements of human society, or in the exercise of the rights of the two powers. The Church does not exercise, in virtue of her authority, "a direct and absolute" interference in the principles and constitutions, in the forms of civil power, in the political rights of citizens, in the duties of the State, and in the other matters enumerated in the despatch of the minister.
Almost the only thing not clear in the remarkable State paper in which Daru replied to this despatch,[315] is the way in which he understood the last remarks we have quoted from the Cardinal. He speaks of them as being important, but in what sense? As showing a wish to allay the impressions made by the Draft of Decrees, which is all the Cardinal really professes? or as containing any statement properly calculated to allay those apprehensions? Count Daru had evidently not read hastily, and had not been without clear-headed interpreters. He could not, for a moment, think that Antonelli had said that the Church had no authority to interfere in political matters, when he really had said no more than that she did not exercise a "direct and absolute" interference, by virtue of her authority. No more could Count Daru suppose that saying that she did not do so was a promise that she would not do so, although, even had such a promise been made, couched in the terms employed by Antonelli, the word "direct" would have deprived it of any practical value. Every other portion of Count Daru's Memorandum must have made the Pope, to whom it was submitted, feel that the Minister of France understood the intentions of the Vatican.
The more one examines the doctrine of this document, the more impossible does it become to overlook the fact that, in the main, it amounts to the complete subordination of civil power to the religious society.... Unless we refuse to words their true and natural meaning, we cannot escape the conviction that the Draft Decree on the Church has, for its object and end, the re-establishment, in the entire world, of doctrines which would place civil society under the empire of the clergy.... Under the formidable sanction of the anathema, the infallibility and authority of the Church are to be extended, not only to truths handed down by revelation, but to all things that may appear necessary for preserving the deposit of tradition. In other words, her infallibility and authority have no other limits than those which the Church may herself assign to them; and all principles of civil order, politics, and science, fall, directly or indirectly, within their range. It is on this almost boundless field that the Church is to exert the right of pronouncing decisions and promulgating laws, binding the conscience of the faithful, independently of any confirmation on the part of the political authority, and even in direct opposition to laws emanating from it. It is on this domain, the bounds of which, it appears, the Church alone may fix, that the Canons ascribe to her a complete power, which is at once legislative, judicial, and coercive, and is to be put forth in the external tribunal as well as in the internal,--a power the exercise of which the Church may assure by material penalties, and Christian princes and governments would be bound to lend their assistance by chastising all who should attempt to withdraw themselves from under her authority.
No wonder that Count Daru draws the inference that "governments would retain no power, and civil society would retain no liberty, but the power and the liberty which it might please the Church to leave to them." The dearest rights of States, their political constitution, their legislation on property, on the family, and on instruction, "might any day be called in question by the ecclesiastical authority." Moreover, it is now proposed that to all this shall be added Papal infallibility. "That is to say, after having concentrated all political and religious powers in the hand of the Church, they will concentrate all the power of the Church in the hand of her head."
As to the artifice, that only principles were to be carried, but that the application of them would not be enforced, Daru says, No such statement suffices to reassure us. What, he asks, Are people in the forty thousand parishes of France to be taught that they are free to do that which they are not free to believe? He will not even treat this representation as grave. He gives the Church credit for intending a serious work, and, therefore, when once she has inscribed a maxim among the immutable truths, she will try to bring it into practice. The Pontiff has not assembled the bishops of the whole world to promulgate sterile laws.
Antonelli had alleged that the principles in dispute were not new. That, replied Count Daru, he knew too well, but kings and nations had never accepted those principles, and the attempt to establish them had always, even in the middle ages, caused bloody conflict. He concluded by declaring that if the propositions were adopted, they would have the inevitable consequence of bringing about grievous troubles.
The French government declared its intention of demanding that a special ambassador should be admitted to the Council. This Don Margotti hailed, first as a victory of the Council, and then as one of the most splendid victories of Pius IX. The ground of this professed exultation was that abstinence from the Council meant the separation of Church and State. "The Lord be praised, who is preparing greater triumphs for His spouse!" France trembles for her revolution and her Gallicanism.[316] So can voice and face be changed in a moment.
Beust, in further despatches, declined any proposal for sending ambassadors to the Council, on the ground that governments would, by such an act, make themselves, in some sort, parties to its proceedings. He had laid down and firmly adhered to the principle of abiding within the line of purely political action. That principle, he declared, fully covered the two steps of interdicting all publications exciting to contempt of the law, and punishing all persons guilty of any contempt of it.[317] But he instructed Count Trauttmansdorff to support the French with all cordiality, in the demand that matters touching political interests, which were submitted to the Council, should be communicated to France before being enacted. But, on the part of the State, he could not take up theological arguments or plead the interests of the Catholic Church. He would take his stand on the interests of the State only, and tell the Court of Rome that, if it provoked a conflict, Austria would not give way to its decisions. For similar reasons, he must abstain from identifying the government with the bishops of the minority. Approving and sympathizing with their position, he nevertheless felt that they might come to change their ground, and accept what the government could not accept.
The French government applied, also, to the North German Confederation to support its representatives. Bismarck was deliberate but firm. On April 23,[318] Arnim sent in a despatch, cordially supporting the claims put forward by Daru. He said, that the Decrees, so far from being any vague menace for the future, were rather calculated to revive, and surround with a new dogmatic sanction, certain pontifical Decrees sufficiently known, and constantly combated by civil society in every age, and of every nation. An earnest wish to shun a collision pervaded the despatch.
The impression made upon the Curia by these appeals may perhaps be better gathered from Don Margotti and M. Veuillot than from Antonelli's despatches. On March 3 the Unitá Cattolica says, France and Austria have really remonstrated against the proposed definition of infallibility. They are afraid of the doctrine of Christ. If they would only adopt the Council and its doctrine, it would restore even their finances. "Do make an experiment. You have tried a thousand constitutions in France and Austria: why should you disdain to try the true Catholic constitution?" Let those two countries faithfully proclaim the doctrine, accept and spread it among the people, "and in less than a year you will confess that it is a great salvation for the French and Austrian empires." This is followed by a letter from a professor of theology on the opportuneness of defining the dogma of the personal infallibility of the Pope. He contends first that it would--
give a blow to Liberalism, which is the doctrine of human infallibility; for representative assemblies claim a true infallibility, because the decrees of such assemblies are not reformable by the Church; but if a single man alone is declared infallible, they all, whether individually or collectively, become fallible, and must receive from him their rules in jurisprudence and legislation, and every institution or ordinance declared by the Pontiff not to be good is, without appeal, rejected as false and corrupt. Liberalism, wherever it prevails, converts rulers into tyrants and subjects into slaves! The spectacle of seven hundred bishops giving up all to the Pope will restore the idea of legitimate authority.
Anticipating the final struggle against the Church, he says, "It is of the utmost importance that the Church bind up her people in the firmest unity; for the battle will be sore, and she will escape only by divine intervention." On March 4, the Unitá says that the Council is assailed by traitors. The devil always has a foot in good things, but he has two in the Council. Satan entered into the deputies of Italy, then into the body of Prince Hohenlohe, then he passed on to Döllinger, to Père Hyacinth, and to Père Gratry. The devil had entered into the cabinets of Beust and Daru, and into the palace at Munich, where Döllinger had been admitted to the same honours as formerly had been granted to Lola Montez.
M. Veuillot[319] imagines a conversation between a Catholic and a Liberal Catholic, of which the following is a condensation. It shows the kind of information which was granted, and the kind of argument which was welcome, to the forty thousand educated men on whom largely depends the fate of all French governments which attempt to govern through them:--
The governments are displeased.---- Why?---- Because!---- What of that?---- You offend common sense. The cause is the dogma of infallibility.---- But the Holy Spirit?---- It was not the Holy Spirit that signed the petition for infallibility.---- Did He sign the other?---- The other is inspired by the highest wisdom.---- So be it. Both call upon the Holy Spirit and He will come.---- He will not come.----Why?---- The Rules of the Council are bad, the Hall is defective, discussion is impossible, the Council is not free.---- What? the Fathers can read, study, pray, speak, and the Council is not free!---- No, discussion is physically impossible, and it is from the shock of discussion that light breaks out just as from the concussion of flints.---- The Council has no need of that kind of light which fires powder.---- The governments are up against infallibility.---- Let them come down.---- They'll make you come down yourself.---- Allow me, if you speak to me, upon my word of honour, I am not the Council; and if you speak to the Council, it will answer, as it always has done to good advisers of your sort.
I fear God, dear Abner.
After this comes what with M. Veuillot's readers passes for argument, In the present state of law in regard to religious liberty, governments have nothing to do with infallibility but to study the new situation which it will create, and to conform their conduct to it, as liberty requires of them. Either they will voluntarily respect liberty, or they will encounter its defenders and sustain the combat. The governments ought to know that Catholics mean not to give up anything of their right, and of the fulness of their life. As to the Church, continues M. Veuillot, she manages her affairs as it suits her. She looks beyond governments, beyond generations. She sows for the future, she constructs for centuries. Although she desires not to put governments to inconvenience, it must be allowed that her compassion and her complaisance towards these foreigners must have their limits. She bears the heavy burden of freedom of worship, and she takes the light advantages of it.
Further on we find the same sinister reference to disturbances as in Don Margotti (p. 246):--
A letter is talked of from one of our ministers, who, it would appear, says that the difficulty of the government is not in Paris but in Rome. While this letter of the statesman is being read in Rome, barricades are springing up under his feet in Paris, and barricades are difficulties.... The head of the Church is always a great statesman, and ends by solving the difficulty. When statesmen will go to school to the Pope they will do marvels; but the world must not look for that just yet.
It is well known, says M. Veuillot, returning to the sore point of the hints thrown out by Daru about withdrawing the troops, that if Daru withdraws the French sentinel from the door of the Council, many sentinels would be withdrawn from other doors in France (vol. i. p. 328). No wonder that Italians speak of the Univers and the Rappel as kindred, if hostile. Rochefort and Veuillot are the two poles of the same violent hatred of ordered liberties and moderated power.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 309: Fromman, p. 91.]
[Footnote 310: Friedberg, p. 547.]
[Footnote 311: Friedberg, p. 549.]
[Footnote 312: Friedberg, p. 563.]
[Footnote 313: Friedberg, p. 533.]
[Footnote 314: The expression is peculiar. It is, E nel senso della precellenza del Sacerdozio sull' Impero a motive della superiorità del fine dell' uno sopra quello dell' altro; quindi l'autorità dell' Impero da quella del Sacerdozio dipende, come le cose umane dalle divine, le temporali dalle spirituali.]
[Footnote 315: Friedberg, 538 ff.]
[Footnote 316: Unitá, March 8 and 9.]
[Footnote 317: Friedberg, p. 557.]
[Footnote 318: Ibid., p. 567.]
[Footnote 319: Vol. i. p. 239.]
Chapter X
Personal Attack on Dupanloup--Attempts at a Compromise--Impossibility of now retreating--Daru Resigns--Ollivier's Policy--Feeling that the Proceedings must be Shortened--The Episode of the Patriarch of Babylon--Proposal for a New Catechism--Michaud on Changes in Catechism--The Rules revised--An Archbishop stopped--Protest of One Hundred Bishops--Movement of Sympathy with Döllinger--The Pope's Chat--Pope and M. de Falloux--Internal Struggle with Friedrich.
The Villa Grazioli was one of the houses angrily pointed at by the zealots of infallibility. There resided Dupanloup, too much courted for the pride of those who thought that any man in Rome who opposed the Curia ought to be ostracised. We do not remember any public hint given to the police to watch the villa, such as the Unitá Cattolica broadly gave as to the Palazzo Valentini, the residence of Cardinal Hohenlohe (February 26). But the amiabilities of the "good press" were not denied to the Villa Grazioli. Bishop Wicart, of Laval, wrote to his local organ, insisting that every word of his letter should be printed, and saying that the talk about Monseigneur Dupanloup in the diocese of Laval must be put an end to. "I declare, before God, and in readiness to appear at His judgment-seat, that I had rather die--fall dead on the spot--than follow the Bishop of Orleans in the course he is now taking."[320]
It was not to this attack exclusively that Dupanloup referred in a letter to the chapter of his cathedral:--
The spectacle will have been exhibited of a bishop who had, during a life already long, given strong proofs of devotion to the Church and to the Papacy, becoming all at once the butt for insult and for those indignities against which you protest, because on a capital question he said what he believed, and still believes, to be for the true interests of religion and of the Papacy.[321]
Ebullitions like this were but a sample of the increasing irritation on both sides. The majority naturally wanted to have done with the strife, the result of which was already certain. Vitelleschi says that the Curia desired that the Council should be merely a great ceremony for the solemn fulfilment of a pre-arranged program (p. 76). They bitterly accused the minority of egging on the governments to oppose the Council, to menace the Church, to insult the Holy Father, or even to dictate to the Holy Ghost. Every objection to the new dogma was denounced as rebellion against the Pontiff, hostility to the Council, disloyalty to Peter, and so forth. Documents such as those of Beust and Daru were a complete reversal of all that was right. At the moment when Rome was "officially taking the affairs of the world in hand," it was insufferable for people representing provinces such as Austria or France, to attempt to control the Mistress of the world. Strictly speaking, Beust and Daru did not represent those two provinces any more than Menabrea represented Italy. They represented only the carnal and inordinate jealousy of the supernatural order entertained by the natural order in those provinces. They must be made to learn the meaning of the commission, "Teach all nations."
The members of the minority, trained by Rome to rush to statesmen and importune them for everything that could serve the Church, now that they believed her to be drifting to a terrible peril, did as they had been accustomed to do. Personally they were stung by hard words, not only from the Pope, but from all officials down to small diocesan editors, emulous of Don Margotti and M. Veuillot. Even priests in their own dioceses were set against them. As a party, the minority were irritated by restraint, suspicion, manoeuvres, affronts, offers, and even by espionage. Their one solace was, they felt, a vain one. They could indeed speak, but they could not really debate. Their one refuge was vainer still. They could draw up petitions, but they might as well address them to Julius Cæsar for any answer that was ever vouchsafed. The air was full of complaints of long speeches. Some proposed that no more should be read, some that no more should be delivered in any form; but that they should be written, printed, and distributed among the Fathers. Some combined the two propositions, suggesting that only they should deliver speeches who could do so extempore, and that the others should print theirs for those who liked to read them. The Unitá Cattolica hailed the proposal to have no more speeches; it would shorten the Council.
Others, again, tried to form a third party, on the basis of some compromise which would satisfy the Court by giving it in substance all the concentration of power it wanted, and yet would save the minority from the difficulty of accepting Papal infallibility in express terms. Bishop Vitelleschi was named in connexion with this attempt. They who made it did not fully realize either the political or the theological bearing of the points at issue. The whole conduct of future operations must depend on the ability of the central authority to act at any moment and in any place, without the remotest fear of hesitation or delay on the part of the instruments; above all, without any possibility of that old bugbear, an appeal to a General Council, being raised up again.
The pretensions which Pius IX had set up under the veil of secrecy now began, through publicity, to drag Rome on to her doom. She would not have dared, at first, to face governments with her present claims. She had silently spread them in her schools, had excited her fancy with the echoes of them coming back mysteriously from provincial synods and from episcopal thrones, had shaped them into formulæ, one part of which her fears had cast away, and another part of which publicity had put to shame. Some now asked her to stop when the coach was at full swing down hill! The attempt to do so would be attended with extreme danger. She would lose, not only the new authority at which she had been grasping, but also a considerable part of the old authority, out of which that was to have been developed.
The Canons which had been the occasion of the protest from governments could indeed well be spared, if the supreme authority and infallible judgement of the sovereign were proclaimed but without that the Canons would be paper laws in the hand of a discredited administration The Syllabus, cried M. Veuillot, had lighted a torch, five years beforehand, by which to study the objects of the Council (vol. i. p. 55). The Curia had studied the objects during the five years by that light. For it retreat on the main point was now an absolute impossibility. Had France really withdrawn her troops, the Curia could have broken up the Council under the justification of physical fear, and so would have escaped the dilemma by an intervention of Providence. But it was not to be. And we may as well here slightly anticipate our narrative, in order to complete the incident of the French note. Daru was one of the ministers who resigned on finding out that the Emperor's professions of setting up a responsible ministry were such as to remind one of the mot attributed to Dupin, at the very height Napoleon's power: "It is really too bad: one cannot now believe even the opposite of what he says."
It was reported in Rome that, within twenty-four hours, two telegrams had arrived from Paris. The first read: "Decidedly Daru will not have infallibility. He announces that there will be a rupture." The second read: "Daru retires. Ollivier replaces him. The Council free." If it is true, cried M. Veuillot, it is glorious for M. Ollivier (vol. i. p. 462). The despatch of Ollivier, on taking over the office of Foreign Affairs from Daru, would have been thought straightforward if proceeding from any Court but such a one as that of the Tuileries then was. After stating that the Emperor had not sent an ambassador to the Council, and had scrupulously abstained from interfering with its proceedings, but that recently, when warned by the rumours in Europe of dangers menacing the cause of religion, he had for a moment stepped out of his reserve and offered counsel, Ollivier proceeds:--
The Holy Father has not seen it right to listen to our counsels, nor to accept our observations. We do not insist, and we resume our attitude of reserve and expectation.
You will not seek or accept, henceforth, any conversation, either with the Pope or with Cardinal Antonelli, on the affairs of the Council.
You will confine yourself to gaining information, and keeping yourself acquainted with facts, with the sentiments which have prepared them, and with the impressions which have followed them.[322]
So terminated an incident that caused, for a time, a considerable flutter, and seems to have offered to the Curia the only fair escape from the dilemma into which it had got. It was now felt that the legislation necessary to put the new constitution into working order, must be pressed into as small a space of time as possible. The restoration of ideas had not advanced satisfactorily since the meeting of the Council and the restoration of facts had made no progress at all. The voluminous Drafts had already brought Court theology into contempt.
Friedrich had spent an evening and morning in writing to Lord Acton on the Papal system as developed in the Draft Decree on the Church, and in expressing his fears that the bishops would not see through it, when a piece of news reached him, which though at ordinary times it would scarcely have been talked of in Rome, just then caused some excitement (p. 143). It was, as he relates, to the effect that Audu, Patriarch of Babylon, after having spoken in opposition to the Curia, had, as we have seen (page 107 of this edition), been sent for at night by the Pope, who allowed no witness of the interview but Valerga, the so-called Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, however, as Vitelleschi says, was, previous to his elevation, simply a Roman ecclesiastic. Valerga acted as interpreter. The Pope raged, commanded the weak old man to resign his patriarchate, forced a pen into his hand, and ceased not storming till it was done. Then, to give practical effect to the resignation, two bishops, not chosen by Audu, were appointed, and he must consecrate them.[323] Such was the tale. Friedrich took it as a sample of infallibility in practice even before the Council had sanctioned it in theory. In itself, the story would seem very improbable in London, but not at all so in Constantinople or Rome. In the latter city the reputation of Pius IX is high for fits of rage, in which his best friends are treated like lackeys. Liverani, who over and over again calls him an angel, tells nevertheless several stories of conduct to those about him which, if they could be told of an English squire, would not get him the name of angel from his stewards and bailiffs. Even the all but adoring editor of the Speeches gives a specimen which evidently hammered a deep dint into his Neapolitan sensibilities. If the tales are true, the rage passes away, giving place to habitual jocoseness.
Vitelleschi says that an alternative was set before the Chaldean Patriarch--either he must submit to the Pope's authority as to certain appointments, or resign. Being reduced to this extremity by his imperious brother, the poor old man did resign, and the event "created a great sensation." To the Roman nobleman the scene presented no improbability. He does not even hint that it is a rare specimen of the tranquil waters which lie behind St. Peter's Rock. The noise made by the rumours forced even so great a person as M. Veuillot to take notice of them. His usual style of contradiction is very striking, and perhaps instructive. He will spend, it may be, pages in making somebody, who has said something, look extremely ridiculous; but, at the end, you wonder what he has contradicted. On the present occasion, however, M. Veuillot did stoop to particulars. First, he says that the Patriarch had himself chosen two bishops, but after the Pope had approved of them, he refused to consecrate them. This is in direct contradiction of a statement, on the other side, that the Propaganda had chosen the two bishops in question and that the Patriarch refused to consecrate them. The latter version gives a clear cause of dispute, whereas that of M. Veuillot leaves the resistance of the Patriarch, as he himself says, inexplicable. But as to what took place, his account is this:--
The Pope called the Patriarch into his cabinet, and told him to consecrate the two suffragans in twenty-four hours, or to sign his resignation. The Patriarch asked for a delay of three days, then of two days. The Pope was inflexible; he required that the Patriarch should forthwith sign the engagement to obey. The Patriarch took a pen, and began to write; but he stopped, saying that the pen would not go. The Pope presented him with a penknife. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, who acted as interpreter, mended the pen. The Chaldean Patriarch resisted no further. He wrote the engagement to consecrate the two bishops, or to abdicate in twenty-four hours, and pushed his precision so far as to affix the date--half-past seven in the evening. The next morning he performed the consecration.
M. Veuillot vehemently denies that the Pope was in a rage, or that he broke pens with his fist, or that he played the part of a tyrant. He seems to take it for granted that good Catholics ought to be edified with his own account of this rehearsal of a scene in the forthcoming drama of "ordinary and immediate jurisdiction" in all dioceses of the world.
We have hinted that Vitelleschi expresses no feeling of improbability as to the tale of the Chaldean Patriarch. On the contrary, he immediately follows it up by alluding to rumours of proceedings contemplated by the Propaganda against certain bishops under its jurisdiction, who had manifested a want of docility in seconding its projects (p. 82). These rumours, he says, revived uncomfortable recollections of the Inquisition, adding that events of this nature are of common occurrence, and might happen a thousand times without attracting much notice. But the moment was exceptional.
The interest of the General Congregations, from the time when the movement for the definition of infallibility declared itself, centred in that impending question, and but faintly, and intermittently, swayed towards any other. The particular matter now on hand was a proposal to do away with the diocesan Catechisms throughout the world, and to adopt a uniform one for all. Outside the Church of Rome this would probably have seemed a natural point of uniformity, but, inside of it, the determination of the municipal coterie to drive roughshod over all that was homely or ancient, all that was national or local, roused the spirit of opposition. It was clearly felt that taking away from the bishops the right of approving their own Catechisms was a further blow at their authority. For many years past the Jesuits had been altering Catechisms, and so gradually naturalizing the doctrine of infallibility on soil hostile to it, especially through schools conducted by nuns.[324] They had made the Catechism a great financial success. A new one for the whole world would be an estate for the Curia.
The book of the Abbé Michaud, De la Falsification du Catéchism, is a curious study. He expresses the sum of his researches by saying that Catholicism has been replaced by Popery. The old Paris Catechism did not use the expression "the Roman Church." It always said, "the Catholic Church"; and in some Catechisms, in France, the word "Roman" first came in as late as 1839, and that only in a profession of faith at the end: "I acknowledge the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church." Noting the progressive change in definitions of the Church, Michaud gives examples, showing that the earliest do not even mention the Pope, and that the latest speak of nothing but the Pope (p. 23). The early Catechisms call Christ the Foundation of the Church; succeeding ones give this title to the Confession of St. Peter; next to the Apostles, then to Peter, and, finally, to the Pope; and some recent ones even say that the Church is founded on the Papacy (p. 34). The designation the "Head of the Church," is gradually withdrawn from Christ, to be bestowed upon the Pope. One Catechism, as early as 1756, said that the visible Head of the Church, being subordinate to the Invisible one, made only one Head with Him. On the question of the seat of authority in the Church, a precisely similar process has taken place; and infallibility has followed in the same track. Formerly, says the Abbé it was believed that the Pope had no authority or infallibility but through the Church. Now, it is declared that the Church has no authority or infallibility but through the Pope. We may remark that the terms of the Vatican Decrees do not go so far as the last assertion. The framers meant to do so, but their logic failed them, and they have left a dualism full of future perplexity. The Abbé shows that the Catechisms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and many down to the year 1843, always speak of the infallibility of the Church. Later, the term, "the infallibility of the Teaching Church," is introduced. That means, of the Pope and the bishops. Michaud does not quote any with this terminology earlier than 1786. But that could not suffice for the Romanists. The Abbé says that, at the present time they teach, not only that the Pope is infallible, but that he is the source of infallibility. "As the Church was replaced by the Teaching Church, the Teaching Church has been replaced by the Pope." A religious and political system shifting in this fashion does not well bear even that kind of check which is afforded by the existence of different Catechisms in neighbouring dioceses. It was not quite so easy to teach at Rouen that the Pope singly is infallible, when at Paris the Catechism said that the Church was infallible, and at Cologne it said plainly that the Pope was not infallible. And the fact of this tendency to change doctrine downward, and further downward, was a reason for a feeling against one Catechism stronger than could be understood in any community with a fixed rule of faith.
The changes made in the application to the Church of the word "believe," are equally curious. The old form of words as to believing in one Catholic Church was first changed into believing in the Teaching Church. Then "respect and obedience to the Pope" began to be inserted, from the end of the seventeenth century onward. In 1819 an Arras Catechism claimed "sovereign respect"; but so far there is no mention of belief in decisions of the Pope. It was in 1834 that the Catechisms of Avignon and Amiens prepared for the transition from "respect" to "belief," by teaching the necessity of inviolable attachment to all that the Pope teaches. The consummation so prepared for was not far off The St. Brieuc Catechism of 1835, and that of the Abbé Guillois of 1851, taught that it is necessary and Catholic to believe in the Pope as well as in the Church.
The transition from "belief" to "the faith" is very easy. Originally, the dépôt of the faith, which the Church had to guard, and to which no man could add, and from which no man could take away, was called The Doctrine of Christ. Then it began to be called The Doctrine of the Apostles; later, The Doctrine of the Successors of the Apostles; and, after that, The Doctrine of the Prince of the Successors of the Apostles; and, finally, of course, The Doctrine of the Pope (p. 76). The new and uniform shorter Catechism (De Parvo Catechismo) was to be modelled on that of Bellarmine, others being consulted. No hint was given as to how it was to be prepared, and the bishops raised many doubts. Should it not be submitted to the Council? Or, if that was not done, surely it would not be made obligatory, but only recommended. Others would have twelve bishops elected by the Council itself to prepare it. Some wished that, when prepared, three years should be given for the bishops to examine and test it; and then that only after having been approved by them should it be made binding. None of these guards against centralization found any favour.
The complaints about the Rules, and the desire of the majority for something to expedite business, were to produce some effect at last. When between two and three months had passed without a single one of the much-prepared Drafts being homologated, as the Scotch would say, by the Council, it was time to do something. The plan of shaping Rules for the Council without the bishops was resorted to once more. New Rules were given out as an edict, just as the original ones had been, and were headed A Decree, as if the Council itself had framed them. To allow the conclave to make rules for itself, or to amend those imposed upon it, would have been a dangerous approximation to ancient conciliar forms. It had become even clearer than had been foreseen, that a free Council would be a less docile instrument than the sort of Secret Consistory which had been so cleverly devised.
The statement of Vitelleschi, that the Rules provided for the printing of the speeches and their distribution among the Fathers, is not correct; and his further statement, that they gave the Presidents the right of cutting short any speaker, is inexact. All they give is the ordinary right of calling a speaker back to the question, ad propositam quæstionem ipsum revocare.[325] But it is a different question, whether the Presidents did not take this as containing the power of cutting a speaker short. Immediately after its promulgation, Haynald made a quotation to prove that a Pope had, at the time when the Breviary was being revised, expressed an opinion contrary to that now held by the majority, and the President immediately requested him, says Vitelleschi, to come down from the pulpit. That certainly is much more than calling him back to the question. Friedrich relates this scene as one in which signs of impatience, given both by voice and feet, were general among the majority, even Cardinals making demonstrations. So Cardinal Capalti seized the bell and called the speaker to the question. The Archbishop insisted that it was the duty of the majority to hear him; but Capalti told him that they evidently would not hear him, and he must stop.[326]
La Liberté du Concile adds an important particular.[327] Haynald had been attacked by a Belgian bishop for an opinion expressed by him in a speech. He immediately asked leave to reply; and, in order to observe the Rules to the letter, he went to the bureau of the Presidents, and requested leave to speak on a personal point--the false interpretation put upon his speech. Leave was refused, but the Presidents told him that he could take the opportunity of explaining when he should speak in another debate. He waited for weeks. On the day now in question, before commencing to speak, he told the President that, after his speech, he meant to reply to the attack which had long before been made upon him. He was authorized to do so. But no sooner had he begun to present his personal defence, than the majority interrupted him with violent clamour. Instead of enforcing respect for the dignity of the Council and the liberty of speech, one of the Presidents cried to the speaker, "You see that they will not hear you." And when Haynald represented that he had been authorized to defend himself, "Hold your peace and come down" (Taceas et descendas), cried Cardinal Capalti, who thus took the place of Cardinal De Angelis, the Senior President.
It was on February 22 that the new Rules were delivered, and on March 1 more than one hundred prelates, of all nations, sent in a solemn protest to the Presiding Cardinals. This was all they could do, short of leaving the Council. They begin by pointing out that the new Rules professed to preserve the liberty due to bishops of the Catholic Church; but that, in most respects, it seemed as if their liberty was diminished by them, and even exposed to abolition.[328] The Rules said that, when new Drafts of Decrees were distributed, the Fathers were to send in their remarks and suggestions in writing, and the Presidents would allow a suitable time for so doing. The petitioners represent that this might do for ordinary matters, but when grave questions of dogma were to be discussed, the time allowed should be very ample, and the wishes of those who wanted an extension of it should be met.
The Rules said that, after the committee had considered such remarks and suggestions as might have been sent in, they should present the Draft to the Council amended, and with it a summary report containing a mention of the remarks and suggestions which had been made. The hundred bishops say that a mention is not enough. That would leave the committee free to omit what it pleased. The remarks and suggestions ought to be given at full, else the committee would become the entire Council, and, in most things, the only judge.[329] Moreover, the reasons assigned by authors of remarks and suggestions should also be given. They request, further, that authors of suggestions should have the right of explaining them, and, if need be, of defending them before the committee. The idea of a right of reply, which the original Rules had completely ignored, had been, after a fashion, introduced into the new ones. That is, the members of the committee were to have the right of reply, either at once or on a later day, to any one speaker, or to a number of them. The hundred bishops do not challenge this immense power granted to the committee, but they demand that the speaker so replied to shall have his right of rejoinder.
The hundred strongly reclaim against a provision for closing a discussion by a rising and sitting vote. This, they say, is a mode of voting unknown in Councils, and is liable to haste, to error, and to the contagion of momentary feeling. It might be quite allowable in parliamentary proceedings, where a thing done this year may be undone the next. But it is not admissible in a case where the matters in hand are so awful and irrevocable as Decrees, which once adopted are never to be amended or discussed again. They demand that no question should be closed so long as any one who had not spoken claimed his right to do so as a witness and a judge of the faith. They demand also that speakers should be heard alternately, one for and one against any proposal under consideration; and, moreover, in matters affecting the faith, that no discussion should be closed so long as fifty Fathers objected. They strongly urge that, in a General Council, neither precedent nor propriety requires that many Decrees rashly adopted shall be preferred to a few thoroughly sifted.
They then come to the solemn point, as to how many votes suffice to make a dogma? The new Rules did not require a majority of two-thirds, as many political constitutions provide in a case of importance. They left the decision open to a simple majority. This the hundred bishops treat as a total and astounding novelty. In General Councils, moral unanimity in matters of dogma had been the rule. It was a rule accepted, and avowedly acted upon, at Trent, by Pius IV. No other rule would be consistent with the principle of Vincent of Lerins, "What has been believed always, everywhere, and by all." Catholic dogmas being formed by consent of the Churches, it followed that they could not be defined in a Council except by the consent, morally unanimous, of the bishops who represent those Churches. They assert that this condition is the pivot on which the whole Council turns. This condition, they proceed to say, seems to be the more urgent in the Vatican Council, because so many Fathers were admitted to vote, as to whom it was not clear whether they held their title to do so by ecclesiastical or by divine right.
Thus indicating the fact that, first, a majority had been made up largely of men who represented nothing, and that now that majority was to be used to change, not only the dogmas of the Church, but the very source and criterion of dogma, they proceed to a sorrowful declaration, that unless the point as to the numbers voting was conceded, their consciences would be burdened with an intolerable weight. They should have fears that the oecumenical character of the Council would be called in question; that a handle would be given to enemies for attacks on the Holy See and on the Council; and that thus the authority of the Council would be undermined among the Christian people, as though it had been lacking in truth and liberty; and in these troublous times that would be a calamity so great that a worse could not be imagined.[330]
"Thus," cries La Liberté du Concile, "you have a hundred bishops who say, Oppression is couched in these Rules. We have liberty indeed, but liberty restrained, garrotted; which can be choked whenever they like. Imo etiam tolli posse videatur. They say more. They say that these Rules contain a grave menace, a flagrant violation of Catholic tradition, an intolerable oppression of their conscience, pregnant with the greatest perils for the future, capable of striking the Council to the heart and of inducing incalculable misfortunes. That is said by one hundred bishops."
The foundation formed by such a rule of faith as the consent of the Churches seemed solid as long as streams were shut off, but now that the waters were rising the bishops began to feel symptoms of a shaking. They did not, however, yet know that one rush from a sluice, to be suddenly opened by the Pope himself, was, ere they rose, to bear that sand clean away, and to drop them down on to a rotten rock of Roman infallibility. Even the consent of the Church was to be dispensed with.
In the meantime, learned bodies in Germany had hastened to support Döllinger. Public addresses came to him from the universities of Bonn, Prague, and Breslau, and from colleges in other places, bearing the best names of German Catholics in letters and science. The towns, emulating the colleges, joined in the movement; Cologne, Kempten, Freiburg-in-Brisgau, and other places sending in addresses. Munich voted to the venerable scholar an honorary citizenship, which he modestly declined. It was evident that the German people would have followed in large numbers in the movement thus begun, but the bishops who, in Rome seemed to be earnest in opposing the Curia, suppressed all attempts to discourage it on the part of their clergy or people. They had woven a tangled web at Fulda, and were getting deeper and deeper into its meshes. On the other side, the Pope, the Curia, and the Infallibilist bishops did everything possible to bring pressure to bear upon the bishops of the Opposition, both from the clergy and from the people. As with Hildebrand, so now, all authority which did not move at the beck of "Peter," was overturned or overmatched by raising subordinates at the call of the higher power. Döllinger had said, in reply to an address, that he had done no more than maintain views in which, as to the substance, he was at one with the majority of the German prelates. This was in Rome skilfully turned into a reason for demands upon those prelates. Signor Aloysi, evidently by commission of the Pope, proposed to the Archbishop of Munich to disavow Döllinger, and to procure a collective disavowal from the German bishops. This the Archbishop declined to do.
It is hardly fair to conclude that the German bishops made a show of opposition merely to be able to say to the people, We resisted till the word was spoken, as you did; but now that it is spoken, we submit, and so must you. In addition to calculations of this kind there was probably a consciousness that a mortal struggle was rising between Rome and all the religion, freedom and light in the outside world, and that it would go hard with Rome. The only possible counterpoise to their fear of the Pope would have been a movement on the part of governments to separate the Church from the State. But the politicians were as little prepared for that as the bishops were for schism. So, both the one and the other, however involuntarily, concurred in helping Rome on towards the catastrophe. Ketteler proposed that the German bishops should disavow Döllinger, but could not carry his point.[331] He disavowed him on his own account. Senestrey forbade theological students of his diocese to attend the classes of Döllinger; but Scherr, Archbishop of Munich, refused to do even this. The press, however, made amends for the slackness of the Ordinary. M. Veuillot told how Döllinger's father had said that the devil of a boy had two heads and no heart, and how, in his Cathedral stall, he did not know how to handle his breviary, and sometimes read, instead of it, proofs of his books. Quirinus might, indeed, say, "It is no longer possible to conceal by any periphrasis the fact that the spirit the Opposition has to combat is no other than the spirit of lying" (p. 260). But the writers of the Curia charged upon all Opposition writers, not only hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, but especially lying, with the loving and making of lies.
The Pope, whose jokes and outbursts alternately supplied gossip, is reported by Friedrich as saying that Döllinger was a heretic, or very near it, and that Günther was much more respectable, as he had been quiet for a long time (dead). Some one observing to him that Döllinger was a harmless old man, he replied, Pretty kind of old man that receives addresses from every quarter. He made no secret that he took the Opposition bishops generally for "softheads," but thought they must have some one behind them. He knew who nodded approval while Strossmayer spoke, and who pressed his hand when he came down. He said that Cardinal Schwarzenberg played the part of the sub-deacon in the manger; that is, the part of the ass in the scene of the Nativity. Schwarzenberg, he said, had been the only person who declared that the definition of the Immaculate Conception would draw bad consequences after it. But "the definition took place on a morning when the sun shone so wonderfully that I recognized in it the confirmation of my design." Much more chat of the same quality is given.
Friedrich has one short paragraph to the effect that it was confidently asserted that Veuillot had a seat behind the scenes in the Council Hall. A man deeply initiated in the secrets of the Council did not deny it (p. 165). If this was the case, it would be curious to compare it with M. Veuillot's account of his being on the Pincio, instead of in the Cathedral, on the opening day. That meditation in the rain seemed rather eccentric.
The Pope had arranged for an exhibition of Catholic art, and opened it in person with a speech. The passage which made the greatest impression was that in which he alluded to a recent saying of M. de Falloux, a zealous French Catholic politician, and the actual author of the Education Bill which embodied Montalembert's policy, to the effect that the Church had never had her '89, and she needed one. The Pope declared, "I say that is blasphemy." There were many versions of the utterance, but M. Veuillot, evidently by authority, stuck to this one. M. de Falloux, after a considerable time, wrote to Bishop Freppel, saying that he had not used the phrase alleged. Bishop Freppel told the Pope that M. de Falloux wrote that he had not used it. The Pope replied that if M. de Falloux had not used it, he had not condemned M. de Falloux. There the tale is left by Veuillot (i. p. 360).[332]
A case like this indicates the struggles between old opinion and the new light of unforeseen circumstances, through which many must, at this time, have been passing. In the case of Hyacinth and Gratry, the struggle had come to the surface; in that of Döllinger, it put on the solemnity of age; in that of Montalembert, the awe of death. From the oratory at Birmingham to the chambers of the Quirinal, from under the roof of the Vatican to lone stations in some mission wild, were men moaning with a conscience-ache. The coming on of an eclipse could hardly be more awful to a meditative Magus than the advancing shadow of heresy on the Church herself to one who had believed her infallible. The dread images of doubt and uncertainty not only haunted, but threatened many a brave spirit. If the infallibility of the Church was to be reduced to the level of that of the Popes, in the doctrines and morals they had solemnly taught; to the level, for instance, of Pius IX and his Syllabus--alas, alas for the great ideas of the past! And was it so clear that it had been innocent to lay those under anathema who, looking away from man to Christ, from Councils to the Bible, had meekly said, The only infallible guide over life's broad sea is not the church steeples, but the stars.
The veil is partly lifted off from one such struggle. Friedrich's stay in Rome had been harassing. Suspected of being the correspondent of the Augsburg Gazette, he had been denounced in the papers, treated rudely by bishops, jeered at by the Pope, reported as being banished, and dogged by police spies even in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe. All this would intensify his perception of the moral corruption of the city, of which many a priest before him had spoken, from Luther to Liverani, or Lammenais. It would also give a keener edge to the theological debates which were going on in his own mind. After an interval of five days in his diary, he writes, under date of February 25 (p. 195)--
At last I must once more take up the pen. If the last few days have been important for the history of the Council, still more important have they been for my own life-history. A mental struggle within me has reached its close, one which was hard to undergo, and which shook my entire mental and physical being. Now all stands clear before my eyes. I know the end toward which I am to steer. The Lord has once more led me a stage further in my life-path. It was truly a melancholy thought for me when, finding for a moment a point of rest in the midst of this struggle, I looked back upon my peculiar course. From that decision to become a Jesuit, onwards to this journey to Rome, an unseen hand has so perceptibly led me, almost always without design of mine, that even here, in the midst of the new storms, I have been able to take fresh courage. I stand here in Rome only through the unseen guidance of the Lord; for it was not I that ever took a step to come here; indeed, all was done without me. But I see clearly that even that dispensation was to purify my views and intentions, and to lead me on towards the sole prescribed end of my life.
At one time, how much was Rome for me! How did I, in a sense, worship all that came from it! Now I see that here reign not only the most horrid ignorance, but, still more, pride, lies, and sin. Henceforth my life has its task marked out for two ends. Henceforth it is devoted to the struggle against the Curia (not primacy), and to that against the Jesuits. If I fall in it, I shall believe that the Lord has so willed, and that there can be, and that there is, a martyrdom for Christ, and for His Church, among the faithful. If I have had to learn here that the Curialists and the Jesuits are enemies not less furious than the heathen, I shall openly show the world that they do not scruple to devise the death of their enemies. The Univers may erroneously write, "The scandal in Rome is great," because I am here and am betraying the secrets of Rome; but one may say with full right, "The scandal in Christendom is great."
The bishops of the minority still declared their determination to resist every attempt to concentrate infallibility in the Pope; but Darboy said to a diplomatist, What use is it to send in protests that never receive an answer?[333] The last protest, however, contained the grave matter in which a hundred bishops pledged themselves to language casting doubt upon the oecumenicity of the Council. Of no use for its immediate purpose, that document will always be of real use in judging of the value of much that has been said by its signers since the Council. Prominent Infallibilists intimated that the dogma would not be so defined as to declare the opposite opinion a heresy. Yes, says Friedrich, they would leave it as Trent left the Immaculate Conception--in such a position that some day, when the sun shines fair upon a Pope, it may be promulged as a dogma. Then he adds, what many may have heard stated in Rome, It is strongly asserted that the very reason why the Council Hall has been placed where it stands, is that there at a certain hour the sunbeams fall upon the Papal throne (p. 219).
Vitelleschi says that the visitors to the Exhibition of Church Art did not generally exceed the number of the gendarmes, and expresses an opinion that the real Christian arts are better represented in such international exhibitions as might be seen elsewhere. Anything less like Christianity than many of the objects which in Rome are called objects of Christian art, is hard to conceive, or anything more fitted to turn men into triflers, if once they give themselves up to such baubles as the great concern of life, either social or religious. In this exhibition, Friedrich was struck with a statue of the Pope defining the Immaculate Conception, and with pictures of the same event, "with the inevitable sunbeams." He was also arrested by a group of the Risen Christ, with Pius standing before Him in a flowing pluvial. He says that when one looks at the humble figure of our Lord, and then at the self-conscious Pius, one is inclined to surmise that the latter is thinking, "I am not only what Thou art, but much more. I command all; Thou didst serve all" (p. 220). Quirinus quotes, without translating it, a saying of an Italian noble, which might have suggested the very thought: "Other Popes believed that they were Vicars of Christ; but this Pope believes that our Lord is his Vicar in heaven" (p. 326). These are the things which the worshippers of Pius IX call blasphemy, while most Italians smile if you doubt their legitimacy. Friedrich tells how the auditor of Cardinal Hohenlohe, an ecclesiastic, expressed the horror that had been caused in Rome by Friedrich's articles on Manning in the Literaturblatt. He added that Hohenlohe would have been a great Cardinal but for two blunders, that of visiting Cardinal Andrea when he returned to Rome, and that of bringing Professor Friedrich to the Council (p. 220).
The ministry of Prince Hohenlohe, in Bavaria, had fallen under the hostile influences of the Church party. On the other hand, the recent action of France and Austria had shown that possibly the Curia, if not prompt, might meet with more formidable checks than any that could arise from Bavaria. As to France, the Curia would seem, rightly or wrongly, to have felt that if Napoleon dared them to the worst, they could shake him out of his place, if not as easily, yet as surely as the bearers of the Pope's portative throne could upset a Pontiff. Daru's demands were officially made known by the reluctant, indeed the all but recalcitrant M. de Banneville, no earlier than March 1. At this very time Dupanloup was drawing up, and the French bishops were preparing to sign, the protest against the new Rules. The adhesion of the German and Hungarian bishops to this protest was to be foreseen. The Curia, therefore, took the decision to face both Bonapartes and bishops, and to throw down the gauntlet.
The meetings of General Congregations had been suspended to give the Fathers time for study. On the evening of March 7 a short notice was sent round to their houses, saying that an additional chapter, to be called the Eleventh, would be inserted in the Draft of Decrees on the Church. This new chapter was simply that declaration of Papal infallibility which had been asked for by the famous Address. So the die was cast. All uncertainty as to the designs of the Curia was at an end. Not only was the dogma to be defined, but all who should deny it were to be excluded from the unity of the Church. Quirinus says that the Pope gave his sanction to this critical act under great personal excitement. For four-and-twenty years had he sought the crown of infallibility, believing himself to be wrongfully deprived of it by the error and unbelief of mankind. In 1848, when Count Mamiani, after ceasing to be the Prime Minister of the new Pontiff, met his friends in Florence, he said, "It is utterly impossible to act as the constitutional minister of a Pope who is stark mad on the subject of his own personal infallibility."[334]
The bishops found that they had only ten days allowed them to send in their written comments upon the fundamental change now impending in the constitution of the Church, in their creed, and in their standard of faith. Vitelleschi remarks that the brevity of the time given will remain as a testimony to the pressure exercised, and will lower the impression of the wisdom of men who hurried the Church through such a transformation.[335] The Civiltá states that the time was afterwards extended by a week.[336] If it was proposed to give to Orders of the Queen in Council all the scope and effect of Acts of Parliament, our Lords and Commons would expect at least one week beyond ten days' notice before meeting the Court party in the lists, and more particularly if the right of moving that the Bill should be read that day six months had been for ever snatched away from them.
A visit of the ex-Grand Duke of Tuscany, or, as the Civiltá takes care to call him, the Grand Duke, is formally recorded, as if to show the proper relations between princes and the Pontiff. On his arrival, the Grand Duke was waited upon by the majordomo and chamberlain of the Pope; and next day by Antonelli, as Secretary of State. The day following, the Grand Duke "went to the apostolic palace to do homage to the Holy Father." This is the true language of vassalage. To make it plainer, the Pope, on the same day, "admitted the Archduke Charles of Tuscany to an audience."[337] It was, however, not encouraging for the projectors of "a new world" that the only princes who came with suitable reverence to the door which formed the entrance to it were princes who represented a world that had waxed old, had decayed, and indeed had vanished away.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 320: Friedberg, p. 112.]
[Footnote 321: Friedberg, p. 114.]
[Footnote 322: Friedberg, p. 138.]
[Footnote 323: Vitelleschi, p. 81.]
[Footnote 324: Quirinus, p. 267.]
[Footnote 325: Friedberg, p. 415; Acta, p. 18; Freiburg ed., p. 163.]
[Footnote 326: Friedrich, p. 198.]
[Footnote 327: Doc. ad Ill., i. 164.]
[Footnote 328: "In pluribus Patrum libertas inde minui, imo etiam tolli posse videatur."]
[Footnote 329: Alioquin jam deputatio esset totum concilium et in pluribus solus judex.]
[Footnote 330: Documenta, i. p. 263. Here veritas seems to mean reality "quasi veritate et libertate caruerit."]
[Footnote 331: Quirinus, p. 261.]
[Footnote 332: Strangely enough, in April 1876, the papers spoke of the excitement caused in France by the fact that Bishop Freppel had positively excommunicated the zealous M. de Falloux for some breach of the ecclesiastical law, in a matter connected with Church property.]
[Footnote 333: Tagebuch, p. 219.]
[Footnote 334: See a very life-like sketch of Pio Nono in the Manchester Examiner and Times of December 17, 1874, which, in Rome, is ascribed to the pen of Mr. Montgomery Stuart.]
[Footnote 335: Vitelleschi, p. 177.]
[Footnote 336: Srrie II. x. 112.]
[Footnote 337: Civiltá, VII. x. 118.]
BOOK IV
_FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF THE QUESTION OF INFALLIBILITY TO THE SUSPENSION OF THE COUNCIL_