Chapter I
Joy of Don Margotti--New Feelers for an Acclamation--Suggested Model of the Scene--Its Political Import--A Pause--Case of the Jesuit Kleutgen--Schwarzenberg out of Favour--Politics of Poland--Döllinger on the New Rules--Last Protest of Montalembert--His Death--Consequent Proceedings in Rome.
"The Vicar of Jesus Christ for ever" was the title of the article in which Don Margotti announced the fact that the Pope had sent in the proposal of infallibility. Ollivier, said Don Margotti, once stated that he loved strong powers with confidence in themselves, and as the Pope always wished to be loved by ministers of Napoleon III, he had showed them that he was strong.[338] "It is a great spectacle, but it will be a still greater one when infallibility is proclaimed, and the Syllabus is proclaimed, in spite of the opposition of governments, of revolutions, and of all hell."
But the speedy closing of the question, now formally opened, was indispensable. The suggestion of an acclamation on the day of Mary in December had proved vain; but the day of Joseph was now approaching. The term allowed for sending in written observations on the Draft would expire on March 17, and the Unitá, in its number of the 11th, put up the following prayer: "O Blessed St. Joseph, grant us the grace that on the 18th of March may be discussed, and on the 19th, the day of thy Festival, may be proclaimed, the most pleasant and most wise doctrine of the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ." The correspondent of the Unitá from Rome said, "We hope for the definition on the 19th, St. Joseph's Day"; and its correspondent at Paris stated that no doubt existed that the dogma would be proclaimed on that day. Two days before the one so anticipated, the Unitá published suggestive accounts of the scenes in 1854, when the Immaculate Conception was acclaimed. It quoted Canon Audisio, a well-known writer, and one sometimes called a Liberal Catholic. Just after the noontide bell, when the two hundred bishops had knelt to repeat the Angelus, as soon as they resumed their seats, a cry speedily broke out from among them, Petre, doce nos: confirma fratres tuos: (Peter, teach us! strengthen thy brethren!) The teaching desired was a definition of the Immaculate Conception. The whole assembly wept. "It was a weeping so cordial and sublime that you cannot imagine it, and pen cannot describe it."
After this hint, as to what the scene--always a chief point--on the 19th should be, the principles of polity involved in the scene are indicated; for in Rome all acting is for the purpose of ruling. Some prelates, said the Araldo di Lucca, as quoted by the Unitá, had thought that the Bull announcing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception should make mention of the assembly of the bishops; but a prelate from France, rising in the spirit of Athanasius, said, "No; the episcopate should not decide, but only the chief Pontiff; he alone must speak." He went on to argue that, by showing obedience to the Pontiff, they would secure the obedience of the people, and strengthen the principle of authority. The Unitá significantly adds, "It appears to us, and it will appear to all, that not only the dogma of the Immaculate was defined on that memorable sitting of the 24th of November, 1854, but also that of Papal infallibility."
While the party of movement was full of hope, the minority were in dismay. Their chosen ground of inopportuneness had been cut from under their feet. The Pope and five hundred bishops had decided that the question was opportune. They now felt that if the dogma should be suddenly defined, they must either submit or be outside of the Church. The new Rules permitted the discussion to be closed at the will of the majority. It was notorious that any discussion whatever, on a point so immediately affecting the authority of the Pope, not only in the Church, but also in the world, was hateful to every right-minded Curialist, and, in fact, that as taking place hard by the tomb of St. Peter, such a discussion was regarded as a thing all but intolerable. The suggestions in the Unitá from Rome, Paris, and Turin had not been put out without high sanction. Was it possible that, on St. Joseph's Day, all would be ended by an irresistible acclamation?
Some think that so deep a feeling was now produced in the minority, and that so clear did they make it that they would not acquiesce in an acclamation, that they impressed the Vatican for a time. Friedrich repeats, on the authority of one who was intimate with the Pope, a saying of the latter, "The Jesuits have set me on this road, and now I shall go on in it, and they must bear the responsibility." The personal position of members of the minority became more and more trying, owing to the increasingly active part taken by the Pontiff in the discussion. A second brief to the Jesuit Ramière[339] followed the one which ridiculed Maret, commending another publication of the same author, in which, alluding to the possibility that some now opposing the infallibility of the Pope would secede from the Church, Ramière said, "These form the secret enemy who impedes our march, and, in driving him from our ranks, the sacred army will obtain the most precious guarantee of its future success."[340] Friedrich adds, what agrees with much that is said, or hinted, by other Liberal Catholics, strange as it sounds in our ears, "Any one who knows the Jesuits can explain the closing words of the pamphlet, 'Then, truly will the Council have realized the most ardent desire of the Saviour, and established the conditions on which this divine Master makes the submission of the entire world to the yoke of the faith depend.'"
"That is," explains Friedrich, "the yoke of the Society of Jesus; for even under the name Jesus, 'we are only to understand the Society of Jesu.' At the Festival of St. Ignatius Loyola, priests must repeat the words, with great emphasis, 'At the name of Jesu every knee shall bow.' The former Confessor of the Pope, now replaced by a Jesuit, always felt scandalized by this, on the eve of the Festival, and earnestly wished to have those words removed from the Mass for Loyola's Day."
Archbishop Cardoni, being asked what had become of the Draft Decrees on Faith, said that the committee first examined them, after which Deschamps, Pie, and Martin, as a sub-committee, partly prepared a revised form, and finally the recasting of them was completed by Kleutgen, the Jesuit. What, it was asked, the Kleutgen who was condemned by the Inquisition? Yes, replied the Archbishop faintly. This Kleutgen had been a German political refugee, but joined the Jesuits, and became confessor to a nunnery. One of the nuns, a German princess, was dying. Her relations, through interest with the Pope, succeeded in procuring her release. It proved to be a case of poisoning. The Inquisitors took proceedings, and Kleutgen was somehow incriminated. The convent was closed, the nuns were dispersed into other establishments, and the confessor was sentenced to prison for six years. The imprisonment was changed into reclusion in one of the Jesuit houses, in a delightful neighbourhood near Rome. Kleutgen found means to regain favour, and was now remoulding the faith for the benefit of reconstituted society.[341]
Cardoni told how he, an Archbishop, had been received the preceding day by the Pope before Schwarzenberg, a Cardinal and a prince, and it was added that Schwarzenberg had been obliged to wait a fortnight for his audience, whereas a Cardinal was entitled to have one after two days. Cardinal De Angelis alleged that the Pope had seen Schwarzenberg behind the Vatican smoking a cigar, with a "small hat" on his head. To this the Germans replied that it was well known that Schwarzenberg did not smoke.[342] We cannot state what would be the penalty for a Cardinal convicted of wearing a small hat, but they are a class of "creatures" whose eternal salvation may, by the will of their lord, be declared to depend on matters the connexion of which with the Christian religion it takes a Pontiff to find out. Sixtus V decreed the penalty of excommunication against any Cardinal who should open a letter bearing the plain address "Cardinal," without the title "Most Illustrious and Most Reverend." They were to burn such letters. (Frond, ii., p. xiii.)
Archbishop Ledochowski, whose name has frequently been heard of since the Council, had been made Primate of Poland by the Pope. This office, in olden time, carried with it the regency of the country, in the interregnum between the death of one king and the election of another. As primate, the Archbishop put on the colours of a Cardinal. Count L---- told Friedrich that Ledochowski had said that he was right glad that he had so early joined the Infallibilists, for Rome was certain to carry through what she had taken in hand, and therefore the bishops of the Opposition would gradually come over to the right side, and would cut a poor figure at the last. Count L---- expressed himself as indignant at this morality. But, said Friedrich, scarcely had the Count ended, when I read in the Univers that Ledochowski was mentioned for promotion as a Cardinal. We may here, as illustrating the bearing of titles and colours on very serious affairs, interject a statement of what happened later.[343] Ledochowski, after the Council, at once took up a new position. When the German bishops next met at Fulda, he would not join them. As Primate of Poland, he said, he belonged to the tomb of St. Adelbert rather than to that of St. Boniface. He would no longer admit Germans to his seminary for priests. In places where preaching had existed alternately in German and Polish, he suppressed the German. His organ, the Tyotnick, related how, during the Council, the Pope had given him the title of Primate of Poland, but denied that he used the political powers attached to the title. Nevertheless, the Catholic Calendar for 1872, published in Thorn, placed the name of Ledochowski in the list of reigning princes, as Primate of Poland and representative of the King of Poland. So that, if the powers attached to the title were not used, the reasons were not far to seek.[344]
While early converts were joyful, Ketteler continued to be mysterious. In a meeting of German prelates he declared that, though all his life he had worked for infallibility, he could not do so now. This Draft Decree was a crime. But what was to be done? Send in another protest? All cried out at once, No! no! they have treated us like domestics, and not even given us an answer.[345]
On February 27 Don Margotti had said that even a Protestant or a Mohammedan, a Schismatic or a Jew, would see from the new Rules that no assembly could be freer. Döllinger, on the other hand, had published a letter on the new Rules. He took the ground indicated in the protest of the one hundred bishops. In matters of faith, as he contended, the Rules shifted the source of authority from tradition to majority. This he showed to be a direct departure from the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
The days which some had fixed upon for the triumph of an acclamation were passed in excitement of a different kind. A letter appeared in the Gazette de France and the Times, from Montalembert, addressed to some gentleman who had challenged his present opposition as inconsistent with his former championship of the Church. The dying man then delivered his last public utterance. He protested that, in his early days, the pretensions now put forth were unheard of. In language already cited he described the incredible change of the clergy after 1850, and their present shortsighted prostration before the idol they had set up. He showed that in his speech of 1847 there was not a word of the doctrine of Papal infallibility. He might have indicated also the still more celebrated speech on the restoration of Pius IX. He quoted that remarkable letter of Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, in which he depicted the difference between the old Ultramontanism and the new. Montalembert then declared that his whole regret was that illness prevented him from descending into the arena to join Dupanloup and Gratry, to contend on his own ground, that of history and of social consequences. "Then should I merit--and it is my sole remaining ambition--a share in the litanies of insult daily launched against my illustrious friends by a portion, too numerous, of the clergy--that poor clergy which is preparing for itself so sad a destiny, and which formerly I loved, defended, and honoured, as no one in modern France had done." The Unitá cried, "Better for Montalembert had he died a year ago; better indeed had he never been born."[346] While these words were ringing in the ears of all, came a telegram announcing that Montalembert was no more. That evening the Pope had one of those audiences in which he delights; a kind of public meeting, with three hundred persons present. Of course every one expected that the little member which in the days of Pius IX has done much to make the Pope an entertainment for Italians, would not be able to keep off the exciting topic. "A Catholic has just died," said his Holiness, "who rendered services to the Church. He wrote a letter which I have read. I know not what he said at the moment of death; but I know one thing--that man had a great enemy, pride. He was a Liberal Catholic--that is to say, a half-Catholic.... Yes, Liberal Catholics are half-Catholics."[347]
About the time when the Pope was thus speaking of him whose eloquence had been worth regiments to him, Father Combalot was crying from the pulpit of Notre Dame Della Valle--
"Satan has entered into Judas! There are men who were Christians, and who on the brink of the grave become enemies of the Pope, and speak of torrents of adulation, and accuse us of erecting him into an idol. To speak so is Satanic work. There are three academicians who do it" [Montalembert, Gratry, and Dupanloup].[348]
Archbishop De Mérode, brother-in-law of Montalembert, and almoner to the Pope, arranged that a High Mass should be celebrated in the Aracoeli on the height of the Capitoline, that is, the church of the Roman municipality, in which Montalembert was entitled to the honour of such a solemnity because of the dignity of Roman citizen which had been conferred upon him for his distinguished services to the Church. On the 16th a notice was circulated, announcing the intended Mass, in publishing which the Univers stated that it was known that there would be no oration--a record which spoiled subsequent fables. Late that evening, in the great church of the French, a preacher dwelt upon the memory of Montalembert, inviting the audience to the solemn service at the Capitoline the next morning. At the same time the rooms of Archbishop Darboy were crowded. French prelates related what remarks they had written on the proposal for infallibility. Each one beheld in his own a great and heroic act. Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims, had employed a quotation from Bessarion against the curial system, and expected to be called Jansenist, Gallican, Febronian, and such like. Friedrich, we suspect, was making prelates understand that if once they allowed themselves to recommence deliberation under the new Rules, all hope of successful opposition would be idle, and hinting his belief that under such Rules the Council had no proper oecumenicity. Suddenly news came from Mérode. Something was wrong. It proved that the High Mass for Montalembert had been forbidden by the Pontiff. What! the departed spirit of the foremost Frenchman in the chivalry of the Church to be insulted on the Capitoline by the Pope in person! Among all those Frenchmen, many were old enough to remember the most brilliant of Montalembert's sallies, and all were old enough to have witnessed the public disgust when a Court chamberlain turned him out at the election of 1857, half of the clergy voting against him, and the other half staying at home. But this beat all. A Cardinal present could not restrain the confession, "Now I am well ashamed of being a Roman Cardinal."[349]
The announcement was too late to reach all, and when the hour for the service came, some twenty bishops and many French notables assembled. Father Beckx, the General of the Jesuits, had come from the neighbouring Gesù, thinking, doubtless, of the splendid services to the Order which had been rendered by the confiding genius of the man for whose soul he was now to pray. Even Louis Veuillot came, trying to forget the irritations of recent years, perhaps hoping in part to make reparation for ingratitude and insolence, and unable now to see the opponent, seeing only as in old days the "son of the Crusaders," facing, provoking, and dominating a hostile Parliament, with his head back and his blue eye flashing, till at some turning-point in his theme the fountains of a great deep broke up, the deep of his mighty emotions, and then gushed out a flood which carried all before it. When they reached the steps of the Aracoeli, an official, who was one of the subordinates of Mérode, cried out in a French phrase which he had learned on purpose, that they must go away, that the Mass was forbidden. It is evident that they were all overcome with mortification, not to use stronger language. Even M. Veuillot pushed by and said, "It can do no harm to repeat some paternosters for him."[350]
Quirinus says that probably it was De Banneville who represented to the Pope the serious effects that would be produced in France by this proceeding. So, on the evening of the 17th, instead of arranging for the acclamation of infallibility, the Pope was making the small amends of sending a private message to have a Mass celebrated, on the following morning, on behalf of a certain deceased Charles, in the Church of Santa Maria Traspontina. No public notice whatever was given of this service. The bishops were all shut up in a General Congregation. The Pope went privately, without any suite, sat hidden in a latticed "tribune," and then had it announced to the world that he had personally attended a Mass on behalf of Montalembert. When the exceedingly painful feeling he had caused began to appear, an attempt was made to turn the occasion to account by throwing the blame on Dupanloup. It was declared that it had been announced that he would deliver an oration, and indeed that the proposed function had been got up by him as a party demonstration. This gave Dupanloup the opportunity of writing[351]:--
This is an outrage at once upon the Holy Father, Monsignor De Mérode, the bishops, and myself. This entire tale, Sir, is false from the first word to the last. I did not appoint the service. I was not to officiate. I have had nothing whatever to do in distributing cards of invitation. Whatever may have been my profound and inviolable affection for M. De Montalembert, it belonged to the members of his family present in Rome, Monsignor De Mérode and the Count De Mérode, and not to me, to arrange the details of this religious ceremony. It is within my knowledge that in doing so they conformed to all the laws and formalities usual in Rome in similar cases.
The last statement was made to upset one of the excuses, that proper leave had not been asked for the service. So those false stories, at least, were stayed.
As the news spread in succession from place to place, the imaginations of Liberal Catholics all over Europe would restlessly wander up and down the Capitoline, seeing on that historical slope the signal given for their eternal disgrace in the Holy City. It was given too by an arrow shot from the Pontiff's own bow, and aimed at the shade of Montalembert. We do not profess to know what injury the imagination of such men might picture as having been done to the spirit that was gone, but those Christians who believe in a God who, not even in this world, much less in the great hereafter, trusts any child of man, though the least of all the little ones, to a Vicar--those who believe in a sacrifice which no man can repeat, prohibit, or buy, when they heard what had occurred, saw the spirit pass into the true temple, and outfly all the arrows of death. Oh, how benign is that light of immortality which shows us the spirits of the departed resting in the hands of their Father, altogether above dependence on the malice or the compassion, on the liberality or the avarice, on the devotion or the unbelief of living men; and which, with the same blessed beam, shows us the living protected from all possible malice, raised into independence of all possible goodwill of the dead, by a near and solicitous paternal Watcher. All the traffic of the markets of Purgatory, a traffic as low and demoralizing as any traffic can be, scarcely exposes the system which has sprung up around that invention so much as one broil like that which the traffickers raised around the soul of Montalembert--no, not around his soul, that was beyond their reach, only around his memory.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 338: Unitá Cattolica, March 10.]
[Footnote 339: Friedberg, p. 491.]
[Footnote 340: Tagebuch, p. 221.]
[Footnote 341: Tagebuch, p. 230.]
[Footnote 342: Ibid., p. 231.]
[Footnote 343: Menzel, Jesuitenumtriebe, p. 297.]
[Footnote 344: The following passage in the speech made to the Pope by Ledochowski on his elevation to the purple, is taken from the Emancipatore Cattolico, April 22, 1876:--"And as the persecution was most bitter in that part of Poland which is now under Prussian occupation ... the honour of this sacred purple falls like a celestial dew upon my oppressed and agonised country, and seems silently to say to her, that if forgotten and abandoned of the world, she is still loved and blessed by God, of whom your Holiness is the Vicar." The very next paragraph in the same paper is headed, The Heresy of Love of Country.]
[Footnote 345: Tagebuch, p. 236.]
[Footnote 346: March 11.]
[Footnote 347: This is the version quoted from the Moniteur Universel in Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, p. 154. M. Veuillot acknowledged that the "hard word" was in the speech, and the above version has not been denied.]
[Footnote 348: Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, p. 155, quoting Gazette de France, March 20. In the Univers of April 4, quoted on the same page, Combalot acknowledged the words, and said that he was preaching at the time "by the grace and the mission of the infallible Pontiff."]
[Footnote 349: Tagebuch, p. 259.]
[Footnote 350: This trait of kindly feeling is given by Friedrich.]
[Footnote 351: The fullest account of the whole transaction is that in Ce Qui se Passe au Concile. But Friedrich, Quirinus, Veuillot, and Fromman have all been consulted, and show that the main particulars admit of no doubt. Dupanloup's letter is both in _Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_, and in German, in Friedberg, p. 110.]
Chapter II
Threat of American Prelates--Acclamation again fails--New Protest--Decrees on Dogma--Ingenious connexion of Creation with the Curia--Serious Allegations of Unfair and Irregular Proceedings of the Officials--Fears at the Opening of the New Session--The Three Devotions of Rome--More Hatred of Constitutions--Noisy Sitting; Strossmayer put down--The Pope's Comments--He compares the Opposition to Pilate and to the Freemasons--He is reconciled to Mérode--The Idea of Charlemagne--Secret Change of a Formula before the Vote.
"That took effect," wrote Quirinus, for once, in noting a step of members of the minority. The step so spoken of was a simple one. Four American prelates sent in a declaration that if any attempt was made to carry infallibility by acclamation, as had been suggested, they would leave the Council, go home, and publish their reasons for so doing.
Whether this proceeding alone, or this together with other indications, influenced the majority, certain it is that when the General Congregations were resumed, on March 18, there was no acclamation. St. Joseph did not avail more for his day than the Immaculate had done for hers. All that we hear of any attempt to provoke an acclamation is the statement of Vitelleschi that one prelate tried to get infallibility carried "by chance," but received countenance only from very few. The minority gave in their protest against the new Rules to the Presiding Cardinals. We need not say that neither then nor at any later time did they receive an answer. The business now placed before the Fathers was the Draft of Decrees on Dogma as revised. The eighteen chapters had, under the hands of the committee, the sub-committee, and Kleutgen, shrunk to four. Even as they now stood, the chapters had to undergo considerable alteration before taking the shape in which they appear upon the Acta. As they stand there, they are not at first sight capable of interesting the theologian for their theology, or the politician for their bearing on politics. At the time, they led many to wonder why grave men should have spent years in formulating rudimentary principles, and that not very successfully. The alleged reason was that everything being wrong in the ideas of the age, the Church must commence by asserting the existence of a God, and the fact that He had created the world. An attempt was made to throw some dignity about this proceeding by quoting a prophecy of some saint, to the effect that an age would come when a General Council would have to do this. On the other hand, as Vitelleschi shows, Roman wit said that really, after sitting four months and a half, the Vatican Council would vote almost unanimously that God created the world. Friedrich, however, saw that the Curial system was insinuated in these Decrees, but it took a theologian to discern it, and one who was not a mere theologian. Yet when it was pointed out there could be no doubt of the fact. The simple headings, "God, the Creator of the World," "Revelation," "Faith," and "Faith and Reason," would to Protestant eyes seem very unlikely to cover any such purpose. Nevertheless, they are made to serve the purpose of laying a foundation for the dominion of the Church, over all science and knowledge, for the dominion of the Pope, ay, even that of the Roman Congregations, over the Church, and for the lifting of men out of civil control into the higher sphere of Christian liberty, or, as the world would call it, for placing them under the dominion of ecclesiastical law. The process by which this is done is simple, and had been clearly indicated in the officious expositions of those judgments of the Syllabus which condemned "naturalism." First, God, as a personal Being, exists, has created the world, and rules it. Secondly, He gives a revelation by which man is raised above natural knowledge and perfection to a higher knowledge and perfection. Thirdly, this revelation is a deposit committed to the Church, which holds in charge the Word of God, written and traditional; and all things are to be believed which she propounds as divinely revealed, whether they are propounded by solemn judgment, or by the ordinary teaching authority. Hence, naturally, all science must be held subject to this faith, and therefore subject to this Church; and all things condemned in the Decrees of the Holy See are to be held as anathema, even though not specified in the present Decrees.
The four chapters containing these principles would not fix the attention of any student if he took them up in a village of the Campagna or of Connaught as the work of the priest of the parish. He would be tempted to doubt whether the worthy man who faced Atheism and Pantheism with these weapons had ever really met with them face to face in either their ancient or modern forms. He might even be tempted to think that the intellectual life of the author had been passed within walls, and that so far as concerns the books and the minds which really sway contemporary thought in either of the directions indicated, he had scarcely ever felt their grip. But when we look at this document as the work of a great society, on the preparation of which had been employed the leisure of years by a few, and then the united counsels of a large yet elect number, it certainly does not exalt our idea of human gifts. But it is not well to let the critical contempt which German scholars especially have displayed for the Drafts while under discussion, and for the Decrees when ultimately framed, blind us to the practical success of this late but adroit creed. For the purpose of laying a colourable theological basis under a municipal arrangement for governing mind and knowledge, belief and morals, laws and institutions all over the world, by a college of Augurs called Christian priests, it was not a mere superfluity of the professors, as many seemed to think. Sambin, Guérin, and other writers, not to mention prelates in abundance, struck a note, which is now taken up in colleges, seminaries, and schools. These compact chapters, being once exalted to the level of the Word of God, formed a short and easy method for connecting the Creator and the creation of the world with the last edict of the Vatican.
One of the startling statements in the secret memorandum, La Liberté du Concile, touches this Decree. A conclusion to it was proposed which to many appeared to include infallibility. This was strongly opposed. The committee withdrew it, saying that it would be reserved to the end of the final chapter on Faith. This step was applauded. The next day, or the next but one, however, the reporter announced that the vote upon it would be taken then and there. Eighty-three, in voting, demanded modifications; which, according to the Rules, compelled a consideration by the committee of the amendments they proposed. The committee finally resolved, with one dissentient, to substitute a new wording which would satisfy all. But when the moment came to vote, before the reporter mounted the pulpit, a communication was put into his hands. This attracted the attention of the Fathers. He mounted the pulpit, but did not report what the committee had adopted! He did report what it had set aside! The vote was instantly called for--no one could speak, the Rules did not allow it. The majority did its duty; and the wording, surreptitiously reported, was made "of Faith."[352]
Strong and circumstantial confirmation of this incredible statement is given in Kenrick's unspoken speech.[353] Incidentally he says, "The reporter, while we wondered what was the matter, suddenly recommended this conclusion, which had been first submitted and then withdrawn." This he says only on his way to tell Archbishop Manning that if the sense put by him upon this famous conclusion was the true one, the reporter was either himself deceived or had, knowingly, deceived the bishops. Deceiver or deceived, his declaration had won many votes. To get the clause passed, the reporter said it taught no doctrine, and was only a conclusion to round off the chapters. But when once passed, Manning cited it as concluding the question of infallibility, and making it improper for the bishops to discuss that question any longer.[354] Kenrick confesses that at the time he feared a trap. The writer of La Liberté du Concile declares that if the liberty of the Council was doubtful, this incident proved the liberty of the committees to be more doubtful still.
The sitting was opened with evident anxiety on both sides. The minority feared the threatened attempt at acclamation; the majority feared that the minority would formally refuse to enter on deliberation under the new Rules. When, however, instead of action, the paper protest was given in, and the reporter for the committee, Simor, Primate of Hungary, had mounted the pulpit, and things had resumed their course, the majority were evidently relieved. They knew that the minority had now committed themselves to the new Rules; and that, however they might recalcitrate hereafter, they would no more be able to shake off the meshes of the net than they had been in the past to shake off those of the old Rules. Five speakers had inscribed their names. They were supporters of the committee. It proved that the acoustics of the Hall had really been improved by a boarded partition which had been substituted for the curtain. When three had spoken the bell of the President rang, and the speaker then in possession was stopped. The Pope was descending to view the sacred relics, and the Fathers had to break up to form a procession in his train. Not one of them had been called to swell that train in the morning when he went, not to see and to be seen, but to the mass for "a certain Charles." At the close of this anxious sitting Bishop Pie congratulated Cardinal Bilio, "It has gone off well." So it had; the minority were now fairly enclosed in the net.
M. Veuillot cries, "There are three great devotions in Rome: the Holy Sacrament, the Holy Virgin, and the Pope. Rome is the city of the Real Presence, and the city of the Mother of God, and the city of the Vicar of Jesus Christ."[355] That saying sheds a clear light on the effect of materializing and localizing the idea of the divine presence by such notions as that of transubstantiation. The show of constitutional reforms just then being made in Paris by Napoleon III, contrasting as it did with what was being done in Rome, naturally disgusted M. Veuillot. He said that the title of Emperor now seemed grotesque. It was sad to witness the crown turned into a curiosity of the museum, or an accessory of the theatre. This was his idea of a constitutional crown. He consoled himself, however, by the thought that the tiara remained to us. Happily it was more solid than the crown. Pius IX., he said, would bequeath it to his successor more brilliant and more indestructible. Scandal of the world! kingdoms everywhere and no kings! Here is a king, but no kingdom! Let Liberals come to the Vatican and attempt to take liberties with the constitution. Let even universal suffrage attempt it; let it try to make any change here in which the guardian of the constitution does not concur.[356]
The noisy sitting of March 22 has had its echoes all over the world. The contradictions given by inspired writers to the uninspired ones appear to be even less definite than usual. We may content ourselves with giving that of Cardinal Manning as the sum of them all:--
Having from my earliest remembrance been a witness of public assemblies of all kinds, and especially of those among ourselves, which for gravity and dignity are supposed to exceed all others, I am able and bound to say that I have never seen such calmness, self-respect, mutual forbearance, courtesy, and self-control, as in the eighty-nine sessions of the Vatican Council. In a period of nine months the Cardinal President was compelled to recall the speakers to order perhaps twelve or fourteen times. In any other assembly they would have been inexorably recalled to the question sevenfold oftener and sooner. Nothing could exceed the consideration and respect with which this duty was discharged. Occasionally murmurs of dissent were audible; now and then a comment may have been made aloud. In a very few instances, and those happily of an exceptional kind, expressions of strong disapproval and of exhausted patience at length escaped. But the descriptions of violence, outcries, menace, denunciation, and even of personal collisions, with which certain newspapers deceived the world, I can affirm to be calumnious falsehoods, fabricated to bring the Council into odium and contempt.[357]
La Liberté du Concile confirms that portion of this statement which says that the speakers were often allowed to deliver irrelevant matter, when, in other assemblies, they would have been called back to the question. It says that no bishop of the majority could be named who was ever interrupted, although some of them strayed from the question so far that, in the first stages of the proceedings, they rushed into the question of infallibility.[358]
The first speaker in the celebrated sitting of March 22, was Schwarzenberg. He was not favourable to the Curia, their proceedings, or their plans. He had not felt an impression in the Congregations as if a Council was being held. At last the terrible bell was heard. It was faint, but it was certainly sounding. What! a Cardinal rung down?--and Schwarzenberg, with his princely rank, his historical name, his age, and his majestic presence! Even among the Cardinals, it is said, there was a slight murmur--a greater one among the bishops. But Schwarzenberg himself heard bravos for the President.[359] But the stately old man held his own.[360] After two other prelates had succeeded to the precarious honour in which the Prince Cardinal had been challenged, Strossmayer mounted the pulpit.
He attacked the statement contained in the Draft Decrees, that Protestantism was the source of the several forms of unbelief specified in that Draft. Strossmayer showed that the worst revolutions and the worst outbursts of infidelity had not been in Protestant countries, and that Catholics had not produced better refutations of atheism, pantheism, and materialism than had Protestants, while all were indebted to such men as Leibnitz and Guizot. The Senior President, Cardinal De Angelis, cried, "This is not a place to praise the Protestants"; and having got so far in Latin, he declined into some other tongue.[361] No, says Quirinus, it was not the place, being within some few hundred paces of the Inquisition. The excitement had now become great. Strossmayer proceeded, amid partial clapping of hands and general murmurs of disapproval, to demand how they meant to apply the principles embodied in the new Rules, of making a dogma by a majority. When he cried "That alone can be imposed on the faithful which has in its favour a moral unanimity of bishops," up rose Cardinal Capalti, rang the bell, and, in a voice anything but courteous, as Vitelleschi says, ordered the speaker to stop. Strossmayer replied that he was tired of being called to order, and of being thwarted at every point; that such proceedings were incompatible with freedom of debate, and that he protested.[362] Then burst out an uproar that alarmed all who were outside in the church. Strossmayer stood, lifted up his hands, and thrice cried solemnly, "I protest! I protest! I protest!" Some one shouted, "You protest against us, and we protest against you." As the Archbishops of Rheims afterwards related, one of the majority stood up and shouted to Strossmayer, "We all condemn thee!" Bishop Place, of Marseilles, cried, "I do not condemn thee." Some one called Strossmayer a cursed heretic. Some shook their fists, some crowded round the pulpit, some cried "Pius IX. for ever!" some cried, "The Cardinal Legates for ever!" and others, as Vitelleschi adds, made noises equally serious and serene. La Liberté du Concile speaks of the unheard of violence, of the cries which rang through the basilica outside, and of the menaces of a large number who rushed to the tribunal and surrounded it.[363] Friedrich speaks of clenched fists, and of fears lest the prelates should tear one another's hair.
The people in the church interpreted the commotion each man according to his own mind. Some--and that wild interpretation is laid to the door of the English--thought the Garibaldians had attacked the Fathers; some, that the long looked for dogma had at last sprung, full armed, out of the head of the assembly, and that all the uproar was caused by alarm at the portent. These raised cries of "Long live the Infallible Pope!" The crowd pressed round the door of the Hall, and there was danger of a tumult in the church. The servants of the bishops tried to enter the Council Chamber, fearing that their masters were being harmed in the disturbance. But the gendarme, whom Vitelleschi calls the most effective instrument of every sort of infallibility, cleared off the throng, resisted only by the servants, who clung to the door in the hope of rescuing their masters.
An American bishop said, with some patriotic pride, "Now I know of an assembly rougher than our own Congress."[364] Archbishop Landriot, of Rheims, said he was quite in despair.[365] Even Ketteler said, "It is too bad, the way they handle us here. I do not know how we shall go back to our dioceses and exist there."[366] Namszanowski, the Prussian military bishop, said to Friedrich that he had told an Italian prelate, "Things are more respectably done with us in a meeting of shoemakers, than here in the Council." Going on to express his impression that the only hope for the Church was in the fall of the temporal power, and the assumption of control over patronage and Church affairs by a temporal government, which would get rid of the excessive number of clergy, he continued, "The most humiliating thing for us German bishops is, that here we are forced to learn that it is the Freemason and Liberal papers that are correct, and that our Catholic ones, if we must call them Catholic, lie, LIE."
The Pontiff soon made his voice heard as to the scene of this loud resounding Tuesday. On the following Friday he had the missionary bishops, numbering a hundred, assembled in the Sala Regia. There the pictures of St. Bartholomew, of Barbarossa, and of the League against the Turks, had time to suggest hopes of future triumph before the Pontiff made his appearance. No sooner had he done so, than all fell on their knees. He had gathered them for a practical purpose. The Dorcases of the Church had been making, not coats and aprons for the widows, but raiment rich and rare for the prelates, and costly attire for altars and images. It was to distribute these goodly garments that his Holiness had now convoked them, but, of course, the great thing was the speech. Pointing clearly to the Opposition, he said, "We are surrounded by great difficulties, for some, like Pilate when terrified by the Jews, are afraid to do right. They fear the revolution. Though knowing the truth, they sacrifice all to Cæsar, even the rights of the Holy See, and their attachment to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Wretches! what a fault they commit! The warfare of bishops," he went on to say, "is to defend the truth with the Vicar of Christ. My children, do not forsake me. Attach yourselves to me. Be with me. Unite yourselves to the Vicar of Jesus Christ."
We follow the version of M. Veuillot (vol. i. p. 372). Vitelleschi reports one of the Pope's expressions as "Be united to me, and not with the revolution" (p. 129), and asks, Who could have imagined that the good bishops who had been all their lives fighting the revolution should now be accused of revolution? He adds, "Rulers who endeavour to degrade Strossmayer to the level of a Rochefort, not unfrequently reverse the intended result, and raise a Rochefort to the height of a Strossmayer" (p. 130).
"And you, my dear Orientals," said the Pope, "I have ornaments also for you, but not enough of them. I give you what I have." Then he tried to calm their fears, excited by recent collisions. He concluded by the supreme disclosure, "We have in the Council the organs of the Liberal party, whose word of command is to gain time by opposing everything, and to wear out the patience of the majority." The allusion of the Pope was understood. Bitter, indeed, was it for the bishops of the minority to find themselves thus stigmatized before all men by the sovereign. But the effect was practical. The day following, ten Orientals announced their adhesion to the denunciation of Gratry by the Archbishop of Strasburg. Presently, forty-three missionary bishops published their concurrence in the profound discovery of Bonjean, of Ceylon, that the dogma of infallibility would conduce to the conversion of Buddhists, Brahmans, Protestants, and other difficult religionists of the East.[367]
As the Pope went to St. Cross of Jerusalem for the Agnus Dei, M. Veuillot heard cries of "The Infallible Pope for ever!" and said that this was a reply to the objections raised about the heresy of Pope Honorius. Hefele had unpleasantly brought this heresy into notice in a Latin pamphlet, which he had been obliged to print at Naples. Of inopportune things, few had been more inopportune of late than the appearance in Paris of a new edition of the Liber Diurnus, by Rozière. This ancient monument, with its simple formula? and infallible evidence, enabled every one to lay his finger on the fact that for centuries Popes had on oath abjured the heresy of Pope Honorius. But M. Veuillot heard an answer to all this in the cries of "The Infallible Pope for ever!"
But of all that the Pope passed on his route to Holy Cross, that which most excited the imagination of M. Veuillot was the Holy Stair and the triclinium, where Charlemagne received the sword kneeling. Charlemagne, he says, ruled only long enough to indicate the place and form which he wished to give to his throne; but now, after a thousand years, his conception is one of the victorious apparitions.
When the world merits to re-enter on the path of unity, God will raise up a man, or a people, which will be Charlemagne. This Charlemagne, man or nation, will be seen here, at the Lateran, kneeling before the Pope, returned from dungeons or from exile; and the Pope will take the sceptre of the world off the altar, and put it into his hands.[368]
M. Veuillot knows better than he here seems to know. Charlemagne's conception was that of Constantine over again--a State Church; and over a State Church Charlemagne reigned. The conception of Hildebrand, now to be acted out, was that of a Church State, for which any Charlemagne might conquer, but over which no second head should reign. Unity, as M. Veuillot well knew, was now to comprehend not only one fold, but also one shepherd. No more dualism! no more two-headed monsters! We had come to the dispensation of the spiritual David, Shepherd and King in one. It is, however, clear that the vision revealed to M. Veuillot, as in 1867, still disclosed a struggle to come before the victory; for his Pope, on taking his place as disposing of the sceptre of the world, comes back from dungeons or from exile. Moreover, Veuillot still smothers the poor kings in ambiguity. The new and final Charlemagne is to be a man or a nation.
The sittings which followed the stormy one were remarkably still; and it is said that Haynald and Whelan from Wheeling were allowed to say very strong things without interruption. It might be supposed that a short chapter on God the Creator of the World, could hardly give rise to a discussion on the Curial system; but when Rome set out to speak about the Creator, she first of all made mention of herself. The opening words of the chapter were, "The Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church." To this form exception was taken. One proposed that the word "Roman" should be omitted, which was, of course, offensive to the Curia, the municipal spirit always forcing into view the shibboleth, quite unconscious that it marred the show of universality. Indeed, it is asserted by many that the extreme Curialists wanted the words "Roman Church" alone, without Catholic. Others proposed that the word "Catholic" should stand before "Roman," or at least that a comma should be inserted between the two. It is a singular fact that a vote of the Council was actually taken on this question of the comma. On this great question of the comma the committee for once did not tell the majority how to vote. La Liberté du Concile thinks that the majority voted for the comma. The numbers, however, were not reported in that sitting; and when the next one was opened, and all waited to hear on which side was the majority, lo! the reporter gets up, and, contrary to all rule, usage, and decency, quietly sets aside the vote as if it had never taken place; does not, indeed, mention it! He simply says that the committee has rejected the comma! Now the majority, knowing how it ought to vote, did its duty faithfully. So even about a tittle, in the literal sense, the writer of La Liberté du Concile was highly incensed, contending that the rights of deliberation were ridden over roughshod. Finally, the phrase came out as "The Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church." Friedrich thinks that this phraseology compromises the claim to represent the Universal Church, and must be taken as only professing to represent the Roman Patriarchate.
Meantime the minority held anxious deliberations. They doubted whether they should not require a positive promise that no Decree touching faith should be carried by a majority, and whether if this was denied they should not refuse to take part in voting. They finally resolved that they would reserve their opposition, as completely as possible, for the all-important question of infallibility. They hoped by this means to secure the double end of showing a conciliatory disposition in everything in which they could give way with a good conscience, and of preventing a precedent from being established for carrying articles of faith by majorities. The last piece of strategy seemed specious. It, however, obviously laboured under the infirmity that they were all the time giving strength to the Rules which established the principle of majorities.
The preamble to the revised Draft of Decrees on Dogma contained not only the passage about Protestantism which Strossmayer had criticized, but also a clause suggested by the Bishop of Moulins, which virtually contained the doctrine of infallibility. This was strongly resisted by the minority, but all attempts to get it withdrawn had proved vain. In the sitting of the 26th, the order and method of voting, which was now for the first time to be put in practice, was fully read out. But before the vote was taken, a paper was sent in to the Presiding Cardinals, said to proceed from Bishop Clifford of Clifton. The Presidents left the Hall, and on their return to the surprise of all, the preamble, instead of being put to the vote, was withdrawn. When it reappeared, the objectionable passage about infallibility was removed, and the phrase as to Protestantism was moderated; and so the impending collision was averted. But the way of doing this showed that majority and minority were equally far from possessing the guarantees of legislative freedom. What would a powerful majority in our Parliament say if, after the clauses in a Bill had been settled in Committee, the Ministers should retire and decide on altering them, and without a word present them in a new form to the House for the final vote when no one could speak?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 352: Doc., i. 176.]
[Footnote 353: Ibid. i. 225.]
[Footnote 354: Kenrick's words are: Dixit verbis clarioribus, per illud nullam omnino doctrinam edoceri; sed eam quatuor capitibus ex quibus istud decretum compositum est imponi tanquam cis coronidem convenientem; eamque disciplinarem magis quam doctrinalem charactererem habere. Aut deceptus est ipse, si vera dixit Westmonasteriensis; aut nos sciens in errorem induxit, quod de viro tam ingenuo minime supponere licet. Utcumque fuerit ejus declarationi fidentes, plures suffragia sua isti decreto haud deneganda censuerunt ob istam clausulam; aliis, inter quos egomet, dolos parari metuentibus et aliorum voluntati hac in re ægre cedentibus.]
[Footnote 355: Vol. i. 389.]
[Footnote 356: Vol. i. p. 398 ff.]
[Footnote 357: Pet. Priv., iii. 27, 28.]
[Footnote 358: Doc., i. p. 172.]
[Footnote 359: Tagebuch, 277.]
[Footnote 360: Lib. du Con., Doc. i., p. 172.]
[Footnote 361: Tagebuch, 278.]
[Footnote 362: Vitelleschi, 128.]
[Footnote 363: Doc., i. p. 172.]
[Footnote 364: Quirinus, 388.]
[Footnote 365: Tagebuch, 278.]
[Footnote 366: Ibid. 278.]
[Footnote 367: Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, 163.]
[Footnote 368: Vol. i. p. 443.]
Chapter III
Important Secret Petition of Rauscher and others--Clear Statement of Political Bearings of the Question--A Formal Demand that the Question whether Power over Kings and Nations was given to Peter shall be argued--Complaints of Manning--Dr. Newman's Letter--The Civiltá exorcises Newman--Veuillot's Gibes at him--Conflicts with the Orientals--Armenians in Rome attacked by the Police--Priests arrested--Broil in the Streets--Convent placed under Interdict--Third Session--Forms--Decrees unanimously adopted--Their Extensive Practical Effects.
The dangers opening in the future defined themselves more and more clearly to the eyes of the bishops as the import of the constitutional changes now in progress was more fully apprehended. Reflection, conversation, and reading had done much since they came to Rome to clear their views. Even if they read as little of Church history, or of the current Curial literature, as is intimated in the oft-repeated laments of Friedrich, and in the less frequent but equally strong hints of Quirinus and others, they must surely have read something of the Unitá if not of the Civiltá, or at least of the sprightly Univers. Any one of the three, in spite of that pious style of mystery which Vitelleschi speaks of, would soon have made a very dull bishop indeed conscious that the world was going to be transformed.
The sagacious Rauscher put the forecast of the time into the form of a petition, dated April 10, which states the case of the future position of Roman Catholic citizens more strongly than some statements of it in our country, which have been treated as the invention either of Mr. Gladstone, or at best of Lord Acton, or of some other Liberal Catholic.[369] The petition is headed as being from several prelates of France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, England, Ireland, and America. The editor of the Documenta says that Germany should have been added. Among the prelates from that country who signed it he specifies the Archbishops of Munich and Bamberg, the Bishops of Augsburg, Trêves, Ermland, Breslau, Rottenburg, Maintz, Osnabrück, and the Prussian Military Bishop. According to this statement, the name of Ketteler was to this document. When the German bishops met again at Fulda, after the Council, they put forth the very interpretation of the Bull Unam Sanctam which is here solemnly treated as both false and absurd. Of course they were confronted with their own words. Friedrich says, in a note (p. 349), that Ketteler in the Reichstag, and in the well-known Germania No. 146, for 1872, asserted that no German bishop had signed the petition, and that, therefore, the word "Germany" was not found in the superscription:--
But all this is vain lying and cheating, such as we are well accustomed to in the Ultramontane press and its episcopal inspirers. In No. 242 of the Germania Ketteler himself owns that two German bishops, not Prussian, signed it. In reference to this, a theologian, deeply initiated in the secrets of the minority, writes to me under date June 20, 1871, that there are many Germans among the signatories.
Rauscher, and those who signed with him, alleged that the point about to be decided bore directly on the instruction to be given to the people, and on the relations of civil society to Catholic teaching. Disclaiming any thought of accusing the Popes of the middle ages of ambition, or of having disturbed civil society, and asserting their belief that what the Pontiffs then did was done by virtue of an existing state of international law, they go on to say that those Popes held that our Lord had committed two swords to the successors of Peter; one, spiritual, which they themselves wielded; the other material, which princes and soldiers ought to wield at their command. Then dealing with the attempt to represent this Bull as requiring only that all shall acknowledge the Pope as the head of the Church, they declare that gloss to be irreconcilable with love of the truth on the part of any one who is acquainted with the circumstances as between Boniface VIII and Philip le Bel; and that, moreover, it is a mode of treating the subject which puts weapons into the hands of the enemies of the Church to calumniate her. They add, "Popes, down to the seventeenth century, taught that power over temporal things was committed to them by God, and they condemn the opposite opinion." Mark, they do not say temporal authority, but power over temporal things. With them temporal authority is authority of temporal origin.
Now follows a historical statement of great importance. "We, with nearly all the bishops of the Catholic world, propound another doctrine to the Christian people as to the relation of the ecclesiastical power to the civil." They then make the stock comparison of the heavens and the earth, as indicating the relative dignity of the spiritual and temporal power, and say that each is supreme in its own sphere. The ambiguous phrase "supreme in its own sphere," means, in Ultramontane language, as we have seen, only that the temporal prince is not subject to any other temporal power. But these bishops evidently meant at the time to be clear of ambiguities. They added an explanation of immense significance--"Neither power in its office is dependent upon the other." This is a formal and total denial of what the Civiltá had long been preaching, of what Phillips and Tarquini and all the accredited modern writers taught. The utmost they ever admit is, that in its nature, and in its origin, temporal power is, or may be, independent of the spiritual. But in office all impersonated authorities must be dependent on the impersonated authority of the Vicar of God. The next stroke of the petitioners was still bolder. Admitting that princes, as members of the Church, are subordinate to her discipline, they affirm that she does not in any way hold a power of deposing them, or of releasing their subjects from their allegiance. Still more incisive was the stroke that followed, for it was aimed at the whole principle of Papal authority over the State. They declared that the power of judging things, which the Popes of the middle ages had exercised, came to them by a certain state of public law; and that, as the public institutions and even the private circumstances which then existed had changed, the power itself has with the foundation of it passed away. This was the language which might be used before the Bull Unam Sanctam had received the stamp of infallibility. It was language in which the claims founded on the text "Teach all nations," or "I have set thee this day over the nations, and over the kingdoms," are met with a downright denial. The fact that the Popes had at one time acted as supreme judges was accounted for by a state of political relations, not by a divine right, just, we may say, as the fact would have been accounted for that the kings of Persia were appealed to as arbiters by Greeks. Still further, the change which had taken place was not only admitted, but it was held to have annulled the former relation between the power of the Papacy and civil society. A careful consideration of the positions thus stated, and a comparison of them with matter in the Curial writings of the present pontificate with which we are already familiar, afford some measure of the distance separating the Ultramontanes north of the Alps, of the old type, like Rauscher among the clergy and Montalembert among the laity, from the new school formed by the development of the Jesuits into what had now become the Catholic party. We do not say that the old Ultramontanes did not give the Pope authority irreconcilable with Holy Scripture, and power dangerous to civil society. All we can say is that the authority and power which they did give to him was bounded by a frontier tolerably defined, and therefore capable of being defended.
The remark of the Pope, carried away from the Vatican by numbers of bishops and not a few laymen, and repeated in every form of gossip printed or spoken, to the effect that the bishops of the Opposition were only time-servers and Court ecclesiastics, is, in Rauscher's petition, repelled with dignity and force. Their opinions, as just stated, they declare are not new but ancient. They were those of all the Fathers, and of all the Pontiffs down to Gregory VII. They believed them to be the true doctrines of the Catholic Church; for God forbid that, under stress of the times, they should adulterate revealed truth. But they must point out the dangers which would arise to the Church from a Decree irreconcilable with the doctrines that they have hitherto taught. No one, they affirm, can help seeing that it is impossible to reform (they do not say reconstruct) society according to the rule laid down in the Bull Unam Sanctam. But any right which God has indeed given, and any obligation corresponding to such right, is incapable of being destroyed by the vicissitudes of human institutions and opinions. If then the Roman Pontiff had received the power of the two swords, as it is asserted in the Bull Ex Apostolatus Officio, he would, by divine right, hold plenary power over nations and kings; and it would not be allowable for the Church to conceal this from the faithful. But if this was the real form of Christianity as an institution, little would it avail for Catholics to assert that, as to the power of the Holy See over temporal things, that power would be restrained within the bounds of theory, and that it was of no importance in relation to actual affairs and events, seeing that Pius IX was far from thinking of deposing civil rulers.
This last statement was directly aimed at Antonelli's habitual mode of putting the case in conversation with diplomatists, and also as we have seen in his despatches. But our prelates contend that, in reply to such assertions,
"opponents would scornfully say, We do not fear the sentences of the Pontiffs; but after many and various dissimulations, it has become evident at last that"--(the italics are our own)--"every Catholic, whose actions are ruled by the faith he professes, is a born enemy of the State, since he finds himself bound in conscience to contribute, as far as in him lies, to the subjection of all nations and kings to the Roman Pontiff".
On these solemn grounds they formally demand that the question whether our Lord did or did not commit power over kings and nations to Peter and to his successors shall be directly proposed to the Council and examined in every aspect. In order that the Fathers may not be called without adequate preparation to decide a question the consequences of which must profoundly affect the relations of the Church and civil society, they demand further that this point shall be brought on for discussion before that infallibility. Their petition was not addressed to the Pontiff in person, but to the Presiding Cardinals.
No efforts made since, or which may be made hereafter, can erase this record of the views of the bishops at the time in question. Their conduct since the Council proves that for themselves, as individuals, conviction is lost in submission. For the dogma has conquered history. With the German bishops submission passed beyond silence, and proceeded as far as deliberately certifying to the public as ancient views and sincere ones the very views which they had secretly shown to be innovations and pretences, alien to ancient teaching and to their own belief. God's two priceless jewels, conscience and conviction, are here sent to the bottom of the stagnant pool of submission to a human king. It is by contemplating such a course of conduct in men with a position to hold in the eye of the sun, that we learn the force of such words as those of Vitelleschi, when he says that the frequent collision in Catholic countries between a man's civil conscience and his ecclesiastical one is the reason why so often there is no conscience at all. And men such as these German bishops are the moral guides of millions! and out of millions so guided States have to be built up, and men have to be fitted for the judgment of Him who requireth truth in the inward parts! And Vitelleschi evidently thinks that, in a moral point of view, the German bishops were the best!
Gossip in Rome spoke of Dr. Manning as burning with impatience at the delays which had been interposed in the way of the forthcoming dogma. Baron Arnim told Freidrich how it was said that the Archbishop prophesied that the governments would be annihilated for their resistance to it.[370] Quirinus speaks of the Archbishop as expecting a wonderful dispensation of the Holy Ghost to follow the promulgation of the dogma, and to smooth the way of the Church in her regeneration of the nations. Whatever may have been the amount of correctness in these details, the fact remains that at that moment a mind which had attracted notice to itself as urging Englishmen to Rome for unity, was bitterly complained of by Liberal Catholics as being the very genius of contraction and division, urging their Church either to beat them down or to cast them out--to make herself too narrow for them, and to tell them that they should be endured only on new conditions.
At the same time a cry came from our own shores. It was the voice of one who had made himself conspicuous by alluring Englishmen towards Rome for certainty, and on whose spirit the shadow of a new and dark uncertainty was now settling down--uncertainty as to the future source of doctrinal truth; uncertainty as to the doctrinal authority of existing documents; uncertainty, in fine, as to what had been, and as to what was to be, the oracle; uncertainty as to the future work of God. At the same moment when Dr. Manning was accused by Roman Catholics of violating the old terms of unity, Dr. Newman was turned into a warning to Protestants as a victim of uncertainty. When describing how he and his party fared when first, after shifting from the rock of Holy Scripture, they settled on another foundation, which they called Anglicanism or the Via Media, Dr. Newman had said:--
There they found a haven of rest; thence they looked out on the troubled surge of human opinion and upon the crazy vessels which were labouring without chart or compass upon it. Judge, then, of their dismay when, according to the Arabian tale, on their striking their anchor into the supposed soil, lighting their fires on it, and fixing in it the poles of their tents, suddenly the island began to move, to heave, to splash, to frisk to and fro, to dive, and at the last to swim away, spouting out inhospitable jets of water upon the credulous mariners who had made it their home.[371]
We can hardly doubt that some English parson who in his youth had for a moment felt attracted by the notion of unity and certainty, by the charm of vestments, processions, and banners, thanked God on the morning after he had read the following letter, when he looked at the family Bible, that he had not left the solid ground and set up a tent on what Dr. Newman and his Anglicans told people was solid ground, but which proved to be the sporting and frisking monster that he himself described. Ay, and perhaps some Cornish miner, as he went down into his darkness, happy in his Saviour--a Saviour who seemed to come nearer to him as day and man, as home and the fair sky, went farther away--so happy that he hummed--
In darkest shades, if Thou appear, My dawning is begun: Thou art my soul's bright morning star, And Thou my rising sun--
perhaps this miner put up a prayer for the poor gentleman in Birmingham who was in such uncertainty about what might be his creed by next Christmas, and yet knew no better than to beg of Augustine and Ambrose to prevail upon the Almighty not to let His Church tell out all the truth about the Vicar whom the gentleman fancied that He had set over her, but to cause her to practise reserve, or to speak in non-natural senses.
To avoid contamination by impure authorities we shall follow only the Civiltá in its narrative of the Newman incident.[372] The Standard stated that Dr. Newman, in a letter to his bishop, then absent in Rome, had called the promoters of infallibility an insolent and aggressive faction, and had prayed to God to avert from His Church the threatening danger. The Weekly Register declared itself authorized by a personal friend of Dr. Newman to give the most absolute denial to this deliberate fiction. Dr. Newman himself wrote to the Standard to deny that he had written to his bishop and called the promoters of infallibility an insolent and aggressive faction. Yet, after Dr. Newman's method, there were words and words about it. Soon appeared in the Standard a second letter from him, confessing that he had been informed from London that several copies of his letter existed in that city, containing the affirmation which he had denied. He now said that, before sending his contradiction, he had looked at the notes of the letter to his bishop, and had not found the words "insolent and aggressive faction." But he confessed that since learning that several people in London had those words in their possession, he had looked again and found them. He added that by the faction he did not mean that large number of bishops who had declared in favour of infallibility, nor yet the Jesuits. He meant a collection of persons of different countries, ranks, and conditions in the Church.
The Civiltá was careful to remark that Dr. Newman had not withdrawn his offensive words. Others no less remarked that he had never confessed to a single point in his own statement till compelled to do so. He had published a contradiction which to ordinary Englishmen would seem to carry an almost complete denial of the whole allegation. But the Standard on April 7 published the following letter, showing that not only the substance of the allegation was correct, but also its details:--
Rome ought to be a name to lighten the heart at all times, and a Council's proper office is, when some great heresy or other evil impends, to inspire hope and confidence in the faithful; but now we have the greatest meeting which ever has been, and that at Rome, infusing into us by the accredited organs of Rome and of its partisans (such as the Civiltá, [the Armonia], the Univers, and the Tablet) little else than fear and dismay. When we are all at rest, and have no doubts, and--at least practically, not to say doctrinally--hold the Holy Father to be infallible, suddenly there is thunder in the clearest sky, and we are told to prepare for something, we know not what, to try our faith, we know not how. No impending danger is to be averted, but a great difficulty is to be created. Is this the proper work of an OEumenical Council?
As to myself personally, please God, I do not expect any trial at all; but I cannot help suffering with the many souls who are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to defend decisions which may not be difficult to my own private judgment, but may be most difficult to maintain logically in the face of historical facts.
What have we done to be treated as the faithful never were treated before? When has a definition de fide been a luxury of devotion and not a stern, painful necessity? Why should an aggressive, insolent faction be allowed to "make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful"? Why cannot we be let alone when we have pursued peace and thought no evil?
I assure you, my lord, some of the truest minds are driven one way and another, and do not know where to rest their feet--one day determining "to give up all theology as a bad job," and recklessly to believe henceforth almost that the Pope is impeccable, at another tempted to "believe all the worst which a book like Janus says," others doubting about "the capacity possessed by bishops drawn from all corners of the earth to judge what is fitting for European society," and then, again, angry with the Holy See for listening to "the flattery of a clique of Jesuits, Redemptorists, and converts."
Then, again, think of the store of pontifical scandals in the history of eighteen centuries, which have partly been poured forth and partly are still to come. What Murphy inflicted upon us in one way M. Veuillot is indirectly bringing on us in another. And then again the blight which is falling upon the multitude of Anglican Ritualists, etc., who themselves perhaps--at least their leaders--may never become Catholics, but who are leavening the various English denominations and parties (far beyond their own range) with principles and sentiments tending towards their ultimate absorption into the Catholic Church.
With these thoughts ever before me, I am continually asking myself whether I ought not to make my feelings public; but all I do is to pray those early doctors of the Church, whose intercession would decide the matter (Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Basil), to avert this great calamity.
If it is God's will that the Pope's infallibility be defined, then is it God's will to throw back "the times and moments" of that triumph which He has destined for His kingdom, and I shall feel I have but to bow my head to His adorable, inscrutable providence.
You have not touched upon the subject yourself, but I think you will allow me to express to you feelings which, for the most part, I keep to myself....
This letter could not, because of Dr. Newman's reputation, be passed over in silence. The Civiltá well knew how to utilize that reputation, yet it indicates by its mode of dealing with him that it does not set Dr. Newman so high, either intellectually or morally, as his own countrymen do. It treated the whole affair as a temptation of one of a pious imagination but a sickly judgment. The temptation was one peculiar to Englishmen--it was low spirits. An Englishman labouring under that temptation would read the Civiltá, the Armonia, the Univers, etc., with sombre-coloured spectacles. It was a disease in the eyes. Those affected by it looked upon the definition of a verity as a scourge of God, an affliction not merited! Still, as Dr. Newman did not for himself fear it, he would be able to explain it to others. But the definition of a truth was to prove a blight for the poor Anglican Ritualists:--
Do you not perceive that it is only temptation that makes you see everything black?... If the holy doctors whom you invoke, Ambrose, Jerome, etc., do not decide the controversy in your way, it is not, as the Protestant Pall Mall Gazette fancies, because they will not or cannot interpose, but because they agree with St. Peter and with the petition of the majority.... Would you have us make processions in sackcloth and ashes to avert this scourge of the definition of a verity? And if it is defined, when the Fathers chant Te Deum will some of you intone the Miserere? On the contrary, you too will applaud it.... Dupanloup will not merely be resigned, he will be a champion of infallibility, and we shall all together say, Amen, hallelujah! and it also will be a hymn like the song in the Apocalypse.... Get rid of this ugly melancholy temptation. It makes you lose your logic and your English good sense. Even the Protestant journals teach you better, and as one devil cast out another, a Protestant article may serve to cast out a temptation.
The compassionate Jesuits of the Civiltá then proceed to cast the one devil out of Dr. Newman by the aid of two others, which are respectively the Pall Mall Gazette and the Manchester Examiner and Times--the former in an appearance of April 8, the latter in an appearance of April 9. Lest this exorcism should not suffice, it calls to its aid seven other spirits equally evil--the Times, the Saturday Review, the Telegraph, the Daily News, the Spectator, the Standard, and the Echo. All these, fallen angels though they were, had agreed in the opinion that a religious truth had better be told than hidden, and that a Church which had an infallible head ought to know it. Though on this one point right, these Protestant journals had, however, held up the letter of Dr. Newman as a proof of internal division underlying a vaunted unity. But in this they were illogical. With this boast the Civiltá fitly couples a declaration of Dr. Newman, in which the tortured spirit, whose piercing cry had reached the ear of the world through thick walls, and had been identified in spite of artful windings, puts on, in presence of Protestants, another voice, wishing them to become partakers of its satisfaction and repose! M. Veuillot was not the man tamely to find himself coupled with Mr. Murphy by one like Dr. Newman, whom, if repute in England set extravagantly high, certainly he did not. He told how the Univers had begged four thousand pounds for Dr. Newman and sent it to him, on the occasion when he was cast in damages for a libel on Achilli, an ex-censor of the press, at Viterbo, who had become a Protestant:--
"The respectable convict," says Veuillot, "received it and was pleased, but he gave no thanks and showed no courtesy. Father Newman ought to be more careful in what he says; everything that is comely demands it of him. But, at any rate, if his Liberal passion carries him away till he forgets what he owes to us and to himself, what answer must one give him, but that he had better go on as he set out, silently ungrateful?"[373]
Such were the inhospitable jets spouted out upon Dr. Newman by the floundering creature on the back of which the twice "credulous mariner" had pitched his tent. Englishmen may smile at finding Dr. Newman aspersed with the reproach of Liberalism. His puerile spite at the very name of it, as shown in his writings, thus found its Nemesis. M. Veuillot, by a link of connexion which is not obvious, confesses that he too, in youth and inexperience, indulged in dreams of peace. But his mature ideas were ruled by a manlier spirit. "I dream of a long war--long, hot, inexorable, and one that will change the face of the world."
For some time past the Orientals had been receiving and giving cause for solicitude. The incident already related of the Chaldean Patriarch was but a symptom of general uneasiness. The Pontiff had resolved on abrogating the old right of electing bishops, under which the communities nominated three persons, of whom the Patriarch instituted the one whom he preferred. We have seen how the Chaldean Patriarch was overcome. Jussef, the Melchite Patriarch, refused to surrender his rights, and it is said that, in an audience before other Orientals, the Pope went so far as to seize him by the shoulders.[374] The Syrian Patriarch, on receiving the Pope's command, had taken to his bed, and had not yet answered. The Maronite Patriarch had refused his consent, and had, notwithstanding repeated invitations, stayed in Antioch, instead of coming on to the Council.
The Armenians, however, excited more attention than all the others. Their Patriarch, Hassun, had, some time before, surrendered his rights, and while, in consequence, rising high in favour with the Curia, had incurred ill-will among his own people. Rome, taking advantage of his concessions, had made new and exorbitant claims, on which the yoke of the Papacy was thrown off. Imperative orders to submit were disregarded. A special commissioner was sent from Rome to allay the disturbance, but his success was very limited.
For some time rumours had been floating about the city that two Oriental bishops had been thrown into prison. These changed to rumours of an arrest, and an escape. At last the Univers[375] published an account, stating that the theologian attached to an Armenian bishop had used such language respecting the authorities, that Cardinal Barnabò, Prefect of the Propaganda, had ordered him to the Convent of the Passionists. But he refused to go in such terms that the Cardinal Vicar was obliged to employ force. The theologian was then taken from the residence of the bishop, and put into a vehicle. He was, however, so violent that the "agents" let him escape into the house again, and though they there attempted a second time to take him, they finally gave way before the opposition of the bishop.
At the same time the Univers mentions "a much graver fact." The Pontiff had ordered an apostolic visitation of the convent of the Armenians, which stands just behind the Colonnade of St. Peter's. The twelve who once walked among men with the humble name of apostles would have little thought that an apostolic visitation should come to mean an inspection by an officer of the King and Pontiff of Rome. The Bishop Ksagian (sic) refused to receive the visitor. The Pope ordered the bishop to the Convent of St. Sabina. The bishop, however, refused to go, and appealed to Bishop Place, of Marseilles, to procure French protection for him.
Ce Qui se Passe au Concile (p. 144) says that Bahtiarian, an Armenian Archbishop, had his Vicar-General with him, against whom some one informed, as having spoken with hostility of Hassun, the Romanized Patriarch whom we have just mentioned, and of Valerga, the so-called Patriarch of Jerusalem. Cardinal Barnabò ordered the Vicar-General to a Jesuit convent, but the Archbishop insisted that he would not allow him to go, except upon a written order from the Pope himself. We are not sure whether this represents the first scene in the account of the Univers.
Some days afterwards, proceeds Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, as Bahtiarian was going to say Mass, his Vicar-General followed him, carrying the missal, accompanied by another Armenian priest. In the street the Archbishop passed through a group of police, headed by an officer. They seized the two priests who were walking behind him, and dragged them to a vehicle. The Orientals valiantly defended themselves, and a struggle ensued. Hearing cries, the Archbishop turned back, and saw his Vicar-General down, and the missal on the ground being trampled upon. He rushed forward, pointing to the book, and crying, "It is the Gospel: it is the Gospel of Christ! Do you treat the Gospel like that?" The officer did not dare to do violence to the Archbishop, who managed to carry off his Vicar-General, and that day both of them took refuge in the Armenian Convent. It would seem that now followed the order for a visitation of the convent, which Archbishop Casangian (as this account correctly gives the name and title) resisted; and he, in turn, received an order to go to a convent for "retirement." It is even said that leave to quit Rome was refused by the police to all the Armenians, not excepting a bishop who was furnished with a medical certificate that it was necessary for his health.
The Civiltá and the Acta Sanctæ Sedis do not mention the arrests. The one says that Kasangian, as they spell his name, was Abbot-General by arbitrary election, the other that he was so by tolerance of the Pope. The visitation was first attempted by a Passionist Father, delegated by Pluym, a bishop in partibus, who had been by the Pope appointed Visitor-General of the Order. The attempt was resisted. The document which gives to Pluym his powers calmly says that "power divinely conferred resides in the Pope of loosing, by his sentence, the things bound by sentence of any judges whomsoever."[376] The disobedient Archbishop and the local Abbot were both ordered to another convent, for spiritual exercises, as long as the Pope should appoint. They both refused to go. Fresh letters gave the powers of visitor to no less a person than Valenziani, the bishop who in the Council read the Decrees. These letters declared Archbishop Kasangian deposed from the office of Abbot-General of the Order; declared the office of the Abbot of the monastery vacant, and all other offices within it whatsoever; declared that no authority existed in that house but what flowed from Valenziani, and declared that all pains and penalties he might impose should be ratified.
So armed, Valenziani presented himself with consummate address and admirable suavity. Even according to the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, he declared that his visitation had no object but to lead the Armenians to fulfil their duty. But the Orientals knew the double tongue. In his own words, they lent no obedient ear. Others say that they would not allow the Pope's brief to be read. Defied and defeated in the very "street of the Holy Office," Valenziani had the once terrible interdict fastened to the door of the rebellious convent. It was owing, says the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, to the clemency of the Holy See that the severest punishment, such as was due to the offence, was not inflicted.[377] Others told of different causes.
The protection of France being refused to the Armenians, the strange spectacle was seen, as Vitelleschi puts it, of brethren in Christ being forced to seek protection against His Vicar from a Turk (p. 130). Rustum Bey, the Ottoman ambassador, came from Florence, and, it is said, was not well received, by Antonelli, who gave him to understand that, in Rome, all priests were subjects of the Pope. But the ambassador would not waive the rights of the Porte, which, he alleged, was obliged to show favour to the Armenians, to prevent them from throwing themselves into the arms of Russia. The day of unity had not yet dawned. The poor world had still to suffer from more heads than one. Finally, after specious attempts of the authorities to get the Armenians into their power, and wonderful wariness and dexterity on the part of the Orientals, one morning the convent behind the colonnades of St. Peter's was found empty--not the first time that a convent had been left empty in Rome. The monks had somehow managed to take their flight from a spot only a few yards from the Inquisition and within rifle shot of scores of convents--in which "retirement" for "religious exercises" might have been, for them, a very serious matter. It is said that, before the flight, Rustum Bey told the monks, in case of need, to hoist the Turkish flag, and threatened that, if any harm was done to them, reprisals should be taken on Romish convents in Turkey. Indeed, M. Veuillot goes so far as to assert that they actually did hoist the Turkish flag, and also the French. He says that they executed the sentence of excommunication upon themselves (ii. 87). If they did hoist the Turkish flag, it would have been a curious sight to see the two emblems of religion and physical force which still survive in Europe--the crescent, and the keys and tiara--floating side by side, close by the prisons of the Inquisition and the circus where Nero gave to unity by physical force, his pontifical sanction. It was asserted that attempts were made to put the Armenian Archbishop of Tarsis also into "retirement."[378]
The exaggerated rumours afloat regarding espionage would be stimulated by anecdotes like the above. It seems to have been agreed, on all hands, that during the Council the force detailed for that important duty had been increased manifold. Friedrich mentions one Papal officer who said that out of every fifty persons fifteen were spies. He gave examples of people now living handsomely who were known to have nothing. One Marchese had set up his carriage. Why, Friedrich says, even the train-bearer of a Cardinal will give a dinner to the train-bearers of the other Cardinals in order to spy them out. He naturally enough remarks that a historian learns a good deal by finding himself amidst such a state of things. It enables him to understand many things in history. But, strangest of all, reflects the Professor, is it to find people looking on this worn-out system as the model for the whole earth. It is, however, just the fact that such a state of things was looked upon as the model for the whole earth, that gives a deep interest to every trait showing what that state of things really was.
Friedrich, remarking that the Count De Chambord, as a dispossessed prince who expected his throne back from the infallible Pope, very naturally was an Infallibilist, goes on to say that only dispossessed princes are papistically minded. They were nearly all waiting in Rome, and he had reason to know that they expected that the declaration of infallibility, and the things connected therewith, would lead to their restoration, as the Pope certainly expected that it would lead to the recovery of his own States.[379]
April 24 was the day fixed for the third public session. The first had been devoted to the opening ceremony, the second to the swearing of the Creed; but this was one for the promulgation of Decrees. Up to the last it was doubtful whether all the bishops of the minority would adopt the policy recommended by the leaders, not to cause any division into majority and minority till the struggle on infallibility itself came on. Some say that Kenrick and Strossmayer held out so far as to stay away. But Kenrick voted, although, as we have seen, he expressed regret at having yielded to others instead of following his own judgment. The robes for the day were red. The doors of the house were thrown open, and non-members who had a place in the galleries were not required to withdraw at the time when the Rules prescribed that they should do so. When the Decrees were handed from the throne, Valenziani read them out from the pulpit. Jacobini, the Sub-Secretary, then ascended it, and called out the name of Cardinal Mattei. "Absent!" cried a voice from near the throne. "Absent!" cried a voice from near the door, at the other end of the Hall. Jacobini then called out, "Constantine, Bishop of Porto"; and Patrizi, rising, said "Placet." "Placet," cried the voice from near the throne. "Placet," cried the voice from near the door, and the scrutineers and officers registered the vote. It was not long before a test name was called--that of Schwarzenberg, one of the few Cardinals older than the present pontificate. He had already advised the policy of concession for to-day, saying, "We must not blow our powder away." But this was not known to all the majority, and when the magnificent prince pronounced his Placet, there was a manifest expression of relief. When the Cardinals had all been called the names were no longer repeated--only the title of the See.
Cardinal Manning relates how diplomatists, who had hoped to see division, were struck as they looked from their galleries, and saw the leaders of the Opposition, one after another, stand up and pronounce their Placet. Friedrich says that the countenances of the Jesuits changed from gloom to delight, when Schwarzenberg, Hohenlohe, Darboy, and others, gave in their votes, and that they manifested a particular interest in that of Hefele. He also says that the gentlemen who were with him in the tribune figuring as theologians, but whom he calls train-bearers, were intensely anxious about the indispensable sunbeams, which, however, he adds, were for that day cut off from the Hall. Just as the Pope entered the assembly, the sunbeams did pass the threshold; and the gentlemen around him cried out, "The sun, the sun!" their eyes dancing for joy. After the Decrees had been passed, the Pope pronounced a short allocution, rejoicing in their unity, and saying, "Our Lord Jesus Christ gave peace to His apostles, and I also, who am His unworthy Vicar, in His name give peace to you." Friedrich says that some French bishops hailed this with clapping of hands, but that, instead of this being general, there were signs of dissatisfaction, and particularly from the galleries. The first statement is confirmed by the Acta Sanctæ Sedis.
Friedrich could hardly catch the formula in which the Pope announced his passing of the Decrees; but it struck him that it was not the same as that prescribed in the Rules; and on receiving the text as passed, he found that a change had been made without any intimation whatever having been given of it. To him the change was nothing, as the new form only said what he knew the previous one meant, although bishops had seriously differed with him for saying so. The Rules prescribe the formula, "We decree, enact, and sanction"; and this was now changed to the more compact and expressive Papistical formula, "We define, and, by apostolic authority confirm." The word "sanction" had a flavour of historic dualism.
The Curialists boasted, after this session, that they had gained three points, and the statement of them shows a clear conception of their own strategy and of the positions to be won:[380] first, the Pope had, for the first time in three hundred and fifty years, proclaimed Decrees in a Council in his own name only, merely mentioning the Council as approving; secondly, the new Rules had been accepted; thirdly, the final clause of the Decrees carried the conclusion that the former dogmatic Decrees of the Popes were accepted as of authority. This last point alone was of prodigious consequence, and vindicates Friedrich's discernment in tracing the Curial system at first sight in these apparently elementary and rather feeble chapters. Only one fortnight earlier, as we have seen, Cardinals and prelates declared that they and the majority of bishops in great nations had taught in direct contradiction to the Bull Unam Sanctam. But from to-day both that Bull and, among others, the Ex Apostolatus Officio of Paul IV, the father of the Roman Inquisition, were of Divine authority! Or, as Quirinus puts it, "Rules of faith for the whole Catholic world, and thus it will be taught universally in Europe and America, henceforth, that the Pope is absolute master in temporal affairs also; that he can order war or peace, and that every monarch or bishop who does not submit to him, or helps any one separated from him, ought to be deprived of his throne, if not of his life" (p. 471).
The Decrees contain eighteen anathemas! Vitelleschi says, that of those in the cathedral who paid any attention to the proceedings, none seemed ever to reflect that, as Catholics, they would lie down that night with new articles of faith and new declarations (anathemas) weighing on their intellect and conscience. "Authority" teaches men to admit new creeds with awful facility, and to utter anathemas almost as readily as a primitive Christian would have said, God bless you! The Curialists did not exaggerate the substantial victory which had been won, or the practical importance of the three points already specified. The legislative effect of those points upon what little of constitutional arrangements had still been left in the Romish communion was very great. They linked all the past dogmatic Decrees of the Popes to the authority of the Creator of the world. The unfailing interpreter of the view taken by the Court of the position of affairs, M. Veuillot, says (i. 472), "The last paragraph confirms all the Constitutions, and apostolical Decrees, which condemn the errors of the times. Thus have the condemnations pronounced in the Syllabus received the official stamp."[381]
Even the anathemas were pleasant to M. Veuillot's cultured taste. "You have read the eighteen anathemas against errors pronounced in the old form of the sovereignty of the Church." Some had said that there would be no more anathemas, some that they did not want any more. "But there they are, and there they are for eternity. In my view, the work of revolt accomplished during a hundred years falls smitten with old age" (ii. 45, 46).
Not long afterwards, chiding the Figaro, the Gaulois, and other journals, for asking what the Council was doing, he replied, "The Council is making a wide and deep furrow like the grave of a world. You will go down into that furrow, and you will not spring up" (ii. 58). As to the plébiscite then about to be taken in France, he said that he could not vote Yes, because that would be permanently handing oneself over to princes who would not take any engagement to the Church; and he would not say No, for he did not wish to precipitate disasters (ii. 66).
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 369: Documenta, ii. 388.]
[Footnote 370: Tagebuch, p. 283.]
[Footnote 371: The Tractarian Movement.]
[Footnote 372: VII. x. 348 ff.]
[Footnote 373: Vol. ii. pp. 31-34.]
[Footnote 374: Tagebuch, p. 344.]
[Footnote 375: Ibid. p. 304.]
[Footnote 376: Acta Sanctæ Sedis, v. 447.]
[Footnote 377: Acta Sanctæ Sedis, vol. v. 501-7.]
[Footnote 378: Compare Tagebuch (pp. 304, 324, 325, and 344) with Quirinus (p. 432) and Vitelleschi (p. 130).]
[Footnote 379: Tagebuch, p. 358.]
[Footnote 380: Quirinus, p. 477.]
[Footnote 381: The Civiltá, without naming the Syllabus, asserts that by this paragraph the Council itself has put a new seal on all the acts of the Pontiff condemning erroneous opinions. It says the mouths are shut of those sowers of tares who would pretend that opinions not branded as heresies were left free by the Council, because not separately named (VII. x. 524).]
Chapter IV
To the End of the General Debate on the Decrees De Ecclesia, June 3--Temporal Benefit to the Curia of Spiritual Centralization--Spalding's Proposals--Impatience of the Pope and Veuillot--Outcry against Ce Qui se Passe au Concile--All other Subjects to be Postponed, and Infallibility to be brought on out of its order--Renewed protest of Minority--Open Change of Dispute from one on Opportuneness to one on the Merits of the Dogma--Anecdotes of Bishops--Violations of Rules--Private Notes of Bishops on the Dogma--Doubts cast on the Authority of the Council--Formula of New Decree--How it will Work.
"Who would not gladly pay a handsome sum to be armed with an infallible decision which will at once crush all opposition and put down all adversaries?"[382] This was the practical question suggested by the speculations of Romans. Increased resort to the oracle would certainly follow the lifting of its Decrees above all dispute. What, indeed, they might well ask, would not a party in some hot dispute pay for a Decree that could never be disturbed? and in high affairs of State, when some Croesus had set his heart on a great enterprise, would he not make offerings to the oracle, which even a Herodotus might rejoice to immortalize? Moreover, as Quirinus adds, almost every Roman had a brother, an uncle, or a cousin, in the clerical circle around which the profits would be distributed. If bishops, with countries to call their own, feared the result of the attempt to set up clerical authority above civil, Roman prelates who had no country, but were only the political dependents of foreigners, openly declared that they looked upon the restoration of spiritual authority over temporal affairs as the one thing called for by the times. So long as this notion was confined to the Roman prelates proper, one could comprehend it. They had lived apart from men and affairs, except their own affairs, and were absolute strangers to the actual age and world. But that bishops from free countries or great ones should entertain such dreams, or while not themselves sharing in the illusions, should adopt the religious expedients by which it was hoped to give them effect, is marvellous. Perhaps it may be partly explained by that weakening of the individual conscience and will, through the principle of authority, to which Vitelleschi so instructively refers; by that complete personal dependence of bishops on the Curia for consideration, and even for means, which is noted on all hands; by the unbroken habit of yielding to Rome, or of being beaten in every attempt at resistance; by old age, and by the incurable isolation of the men themselves from humanity. They were men bound, as we view it, only by artificial ties, to a guild bent upon ruling the world, while they themselves received gold rings and goodly apparel for bearing their share in the enterprise. Or, as they viewed it, they were men separated from the world, identified only with the Church and the clergy, and utterly dependent upon the Vicar of God. What could they do? A quarrel with a government had hitherto always brought a bishop glory, but not so a quarrel with the Curia. In the former case, the Pope took care to make up to the bishop in professional advantage more than he could lose by political collision. In the latter case, no government could or would make up to him for disgrace or ruin. A martyr bishop was one of the most effective figures in every Church display. A great occasion would be comparatively dull without one. Governments could make no such use of bishops who might suffer for loyalty.
It is curious to find in the Archbishop of Baltimore one of the keenest partisans of infallibility. Formerly, Dr. Spalding had foretold that the dogma would only occasion difficulties, and had advised resistance. The causes of his new zeal were of course discussed in Rome, where changes of opinion are liable to be assigned to personal rather than to public motives. Spalding prepared a formula of infallibility to the effect that all Papal decisions must be received with internal assent. It is even said that he took this for a mild form compared with the direct declaration of the doctrine. Two of his American colleagues, on the other hand, the Archbishops of St. Lewis and of Cincinnati, bore a distinguished part among the prelates of the minority, as did also the Archbishop of Halifax.[383] Kenrick, of St. Lewis, left an impression of force equalled only by few prelates in the assembly.
The question of infallibility had been a good while in the hands of the committee before the latter gave any sign of being ready with the formula. Some thought that the committee was not unwilling to let time pass before forcing matters to an issue. The minority had now become anxious for delay, in the hope that the dreaded Chapter XI. would not be brought on before the heats of the Roman summer should disperse the Council. They had the whole of the Decrees on the Duty of Bishops, on the Life of the Clergy, on the Catechism, and ten chapters of the Decree on the General Constitution of the Church, to discuss before the critical eleventh chapter would come on. But these hopes of delay on the part of the minority were perfectly understood by the Curia. It was determined not to let the patience of the majority be worn out. The impatience of men like Mermillod may be imagined when even Bishop Martin is quoted by Friedrich as expressing a wish that the Garibaldians would come and scatter the Council. But most impatient of all was the Pontiff. Briefs and speeches equally tingled with the same excitement. M. Veuillot found it necessary to declare that the Pope was not impatient, but resolute. Still he let it out that something had been hoped for even at the last public session (ii. 45). The voice of the people crying, "The Infallible Pope for ever," had sounded in Veuillot's ears during the Easter festivities, and again on the anniversary of the return from exile. But when, oh when would the voice of God sound? Pius IX would know God's moment, and would take it. As to the cries which nourished the faith of M. Veuillot, the deaf ears of Quirinus and Friedrich heard only faint ones--two voices or three. These writers, at least one or other of them, suggested a calculation as to how many baiocchi, or halfpence, the cries cost.
The mission of Pius IX was but half fulfilled. He had secured the Immaculate Conception, but not yet the Infallibility; and this was to be, and it must be soon. What Quirinus says (p. 526) of the Pope's two fixed ideas is in harmony with the general belief; they were, first, a persuasion of the infallibility of all his predecessors; and, secondly, a persuasion of his own special inspiration by the Virgin.
Excitement was created in Rome by the appearance of Ce Qui se Passe au Concile. It was believed to be written by the Abbé Gaillard, and said by M. Veuillot to be at least by a theologian; but he did not hesitate to insinuate that it was written under the eye of bishops.[384] By all Liberal Catholics, entitled to be heard, it was and is looked upon as an undeniable summary of facts. The Council condemned it, the organs denounced it; but none the less, when you inquire even in Rome for good information, it is sure to be named, sometimes even by privileged men. M. Veuillot gives its official character thus: "Lies, calumnies, defamations, beyond count. Lies double, fourfold, tenfold. The general lie contains another, and that another, and that yet another, so there is no end." But many pages of righteous indignation expressed in this style leave you to ask, what single fact has been disproved by this gentleman who gives the lie so spiritedly? (ii. 98). Much the same may be said of the other of "the two modern Fathers," Margotti.
The day previous to the late public session, a deputation of bishops had been received with great distinction by his Holiness. They said that they spoke on behalf of four hundred prelates, and requested that he would be pleased to order the question of infallibility to be immediately brought before the Council, postponing other subjects which had precedence. The Council itself was not able to fix even the order in which questions were to be taken up. There soon was a sign that the change of plan thus recommended had actually been adopted. The proposed Decrees touching the duties of bishops and the life of the clergy were set aside; and the Decree on the shorter catechism was taken first in order. The former could well wait. The latter was really an important element of centralization. But, it may be asked, Was not the Council in possession of a subject after it had once been proposed and discussed? The reply must be, No, for such subjects could be withdrawn from its cognizance at any moment without its leave.
No sooner were the minority aware of the intention to take the discussion on infallibility out of its order, than they resolved on sending a solemn deputation direct to the Pope to make urgent representations. Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati, was to be the spokesman.[385] But this movement was forestalled by one from the other side. The Synopsis of Notes, written by the Fathers upon the Dogma, was suddenly distributed. This not only marked the resolution of the Curia to press forward, but it accomplished a step in the progress. Either from discouragement, or from a calculation of the futility of the step, the bishops allowed their intended deputation to fall through. They resorted once more to a paper protest, which was signed by sixty-six prelates.[386] The true spirit of an Oriental Court made them conscious that a petition and a surrender were the measures of which they were capable. In fact, as will presently appear, they had passed the stage even of petitioning, and had come to that of hopeless complaint.
As if to console themselves by strong words for doing nothing, they recalled the fact that as soon as the Civiltá hinted that the work of the Council was to be the proclamation of infallibility, all the enemies of the Church had exclaimed that the Holy Father, after having made a pretext of the general good, had really convoked the bishops for his own exaltation. This they had then treated as a calumny. But if the weighty matters already laid before the Council were to be put aside, and nothing was to result from their labours during six or seven months but the one Decree already adopted, with the second now proposed on infallibility, they would find on returning home that those calumnies against the Church would have acquired life and force such as they could not contemplate without deep sorrow.
The sixty-six bishops formally announce that they do not make any request. They simply state their convictions. Again, to prefer requests would, they feel, be no longer consistent with their episcopal dignity, with their position, or their rights, as members of the Council, since they have already learned sufficiently, and more than sufficiently, by experience that any prayers of theirs are so far from being granted that they are not even answered.
Nothing now remains to us but to disclaim for ourselves, as far as may be, all accountability before men, and before the dreadful judgment-seat of God, for the ill-omened events which, beyond all doubt, will soon arise, and indeed are already arising; and of this our disclaimer the present document will abide the perpetual witness.
If the Decree to be pronounced De Ecclesia, putting aside controverted points, aimed only at displaying to the eyes of all men the beauty and majesty of the Spouse of Christ to the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls, how easily might we set forth the whole of the doctrine of the Church; and, perhaps, we might all on the approaching festival of Pentecost, wherein the foundation of the Church is annually called to mind, celebrate it together. Then indeed would a right solemn Pentecost shine upon our Synod, whereof the splendour streaming over the entire world would fill all Christians with mighty gladness. But, alas! so far is such gladness from being granted to us, that it would appear that on the approaching Pentecost we must look forward rather to a day of mourning than to one of joy. The accountability for this would rest on those who--no necessity of the Christian commonwealth demanding it--would, by means of the Council, wave the victor's palm because certain opinions of the schools had triumphed, not over the enemies of the Church, but over brothers, and who would thus inflict the gravest injury upon the Church; injury which, both at the present time and in view of the circumstances of future times, would give cause for abiding fear and pain of heart.
May it please the almighty and merciful God to avert so great an evil from the Vatican Council, and to lead us all by His heavenly grace to a sense of true concord and unity!
Among those who sign are Prague, Munich, Colocza, Cologne, St. Gall, Maintz, Halifax, Clifton, St. Louis, Paris, St. Augustine in Florida, Cincinnati, Chatham, Plymouth, Kerry, Milan, and Sault St. Marie in Michigan.
For us it is hard to account for the fact that language so strong, from men representing interests so large, should be deemed not even worthy of the courtesy of an answer. Why did the bishops not go to the Pope directly?
"Sad as it is to confess it," says La Liberté du Concile, "the Pope does not easily grant audiences to bishops of the minority. Many have been expressly solicited, as to which up to this hour no reply has been received. We know several of the oldest and most respected bishops of France, who have been six months in Rome, and have not yet been admitted to the presence of the Pope. Of those who have been admitted, to none, with two or three exceptions, has the Pope given any opening for conversation on the concerns of the Church, or for exchanging a single word with the Holy Father on the position of affairs."[387]
Quirinus represents the Roman prelates as saying that the German bishops at Fulda had already showed that they felt how unity was to be preferred to veracity. Thus the Curia had implicit faith in the feebleness of conviction, compared with the force of the habit of submission. Only two things would they have feared--a schism on the part of the bishops, or a separation of the Church from the State on the part of the politicians. But they confidently reckoned on the submission of the one, and on the political calculations of the other.
The pretext that all the objections to infallibility related only to opportuneness, had been gradually dropped. In fact, neither side could keep it up, even before the public. It was possible to conceal most of the speeches, and to deny everything that was reported of them; and it was hoped that the secret petitions would never see the light, but tracts and pamphlets could not be so readily hidden. So the Jesuits at last boldly turned round and accused the opponents of attacking the doctrine itself. Observationes Quædem de Infallibilitatis Ecclesiæ Subjecto is the title of one publication, in treating of which the Civiltá said that opportuneness no longer related to the character of the times, but to the character of the doctrine. The doctrine itself was declared to be alien from Catholic tradition,--a new doctrine, and consequently a false one.[388] Ketteler had brought a pamphlet to Rome, in Latin, composed under his authority. It was long detained by the police, but, after vexatious delays, was released. One of the things which exposed him to the charge of being double-faced was the fact that he "hawked" this pamphlet about among the bishops, and yet said that it attacked only the opportuneness of the definition.[389] Hefele said, "You are a Rhine Frank, and the Rhine Franks are clever people. I am only a Swabian, and I cannot see it."
As Bishops Krementz and Namszanowski left Friedrich on April 25, they met Bishop Martin. He told them with delight how the King of Prussia, their own monarch, had written to his ambassador not to trouble himself further with the decisions of the Council. Martin extolled the king to the skies, and declared that he would now make a Prussian Propaganda. But Namszanowski replied, "If that is your idea, you are greatly mistaken. The king at first believed that in Rome one had to do with reasonable and sensible men; but now, seeing that he was misled, he says, "Do what you like, and we shall let you do it quietly. If you adopt conclusions which are injurious to us, we shall draw the sword." That is the language which the consciousness of power inspires."[390]
The Congregation of April 29 was occupied in discussing the Decree on the Catechism. Hefele read a speech of Rauscher. The Cardinal affirmed that, according to the Concordat, the Catechism in Austria could not be changed without the consent of the government. He demanded therefore that the new Catechism should not be declared obligatory. The majority burst out into loud laughter. Hefele looked firmly and indignantly at the disturbers. The noise ceased, and he proceeded. A second time the laughter occurred. At the conclusion, he went to the Presidents and complained. One of them observed that as a historian he must know that even at Trent there had been interruptions. Yes, he said, but he did not know that interruptions were essential to a Council; and he would call attention to the fact that such proceedings would cause the freedom of the Council to be called in question, and possibly its oecumenicity.[391]
On May 2, as afterwards appeared by a letter found among papers in the Tuileries, Darboy was writing to Napoleon III stating that the minority was compact, would do its utmost, and did not despair of victory. On May 4 the Council came to a vote on the Catechism, when as many as a hundred voted Non placet. Then occurred a recess of several days; but twenty-four French bishops put in that day a protest against arbitrary violations of those very Rules which had been imposed upon the Council by the Pope himself. In the late public session the Rule that non-members should be excluded during the legislative acts had been departed from without the Council being consulted. Further, this day, they add, when the votes on various amendments to the Decree on the Catechism had been taken, the Rule required that the vote on the whole should be deferred to another day. But, against the Rule, it was taken on the spot. Several Fathers, who had counted that the Rule would be kept, were absent. It is further alleged that no opportunity of pointing out these irregularities was given; because, say they, contrary to the rule of all deliberative bodies, it is not allowed in the Council to speak even to order, unless the name of the speaker has been inscribed the day before, which of course is impossible in unforeseen circumstances.[392]
During the recess the Fathers could study the contents of the notes on infallibility. The Synopsis of them, as we have already mentioned, had been put into their hands. Some of these notes are printed entire, some are abridged; but there does not appear to have been much complaint that this was unfairly done. The two sides were represented by about an equal number of memoranda. The Synopsis contained two hundred and forty-two pages, consisting of one hundred and thirty-nine memoranda. Sixty-five of these were adverse to the definition. Of these, again, only thirteen advanced merely the plea of inopportuneness, and fifty-two opposed the doctrine itself. Yet Cardinal Manning never heard of five bishops who denied the doctrine of Papal infallibility![393]
Adepts readily traced many of the anonymous memoranda to their authors, and, of course, the authors frequently acknowledged their handiwork. The first memorandum was by Rauscher, the last by Kenrick--two men who showed as much capacity as any of the minority. In these notes, the student will find a real source of light on the thoughts and principles which were then common to all men convened to reconstitute human society, as well as on those in which they disagreed.[394] They are almost the only portion of the proceedings which have real interest for the pure theologian. Attempts have been made since the Council, by many bishops, to represent the whole amount of difference of opinion as having been a trifle, touching only the question of opportuneness. The character of those statements is sealed by these notes. We shall not attempt to give a general outline of them; but the very first memorandum, that of Rauscher, is perfectly explicit. He immediately handles the doctrine, not the prudence or expedience of proclaiming it. It was fair to treat an objector like Dr. Newman as opposing on grounds not either theological or moral, but from subtle expediency. Such men were simply afraid of hurting the credit of their Church, though admitting that the claims she advanced were warranted. They counselled a reserve which would have been thought natural for Italians, but impossible for Englishmen, before the time when Dr. Newman's power of making the flow of our mother tongue smooth and winning began to be used, in order to rob it of its good name for straightforwardness. But Rauscher showed cause. He declared that it had never yet been proved that the alleged authority which the new claims professed to formulate, had any existence. He declared that the attempts made to prove it were partly artifices and partly fallacies. Two positions so distinct as this simple one of Rauscher and the double one of Newman could not be confounded, even by men much less apt at splitting hairs than Roman Catholic bishops.
"The subterfuges," indignantly writes Rauscher in his first paragraph, after alluding to the necessity, under which he lay in Germany, of showing reasons, and tacitly contrasting such a position with the facility of demanding submission in Rome,--"The subterfuges employed by not a few theologians in the matter of Honorius, would expose me to derision. To employ sophisms seems to me unworthy both of the dignity of a bishop and of the nature of the subject, which ought to be treated in the fear of God; but prudence itself would put me on my guard against artifices." What a testimony! delivered in the face of Rome at that moment, it showed the effect of free enquiry in compelling men to be truthful, as compared with the effect of what Rome calls "authority" in making them first supple and then deceitful. It is a testimony of permanent value in the three spheres of history, morals, and theology.
His next blow is at a logical trick, which, however, is one employed by Roman Catholic theologians at almost every step in their attempt to prove Romanist as distinguished from Christian doctrine--the trick of begging the question. It is inferred that the Decrees of the Pope, in matters of faith and morals, must be infallible, because the power of legislation in faith and morals for the whole Church having been conferred on Peter and his successors, it is clear that what was false could not be allowed to enter into such Decrees. Very good says Rauscher; but this is calling the thing to be proved to give evidence for the thing to be proved. The question turns on the very point whether any such power of universal legislation, in faith or morals, without appeal or revision, ever was conferred on Peter and his successors. Even here Rauscher assumes as proved what is altogether incapable of proof, that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of Peter. That Peter ever was in Rome is not proven; that he ever was Pontiff is absurd; that he ever was the Christian bishop of the city admits of scarcely a show of proof, except on those principles of evidence which have been naturalized in Romish theology by the necessity of supporting fables and forgeries.
Not only do men like Rauscher show that they dispute the doctrine itself, but the memoranda of many who commence by alleging inopportuneness, end by attacking the substance of the doctrine. For instance, No. 136 says, "Finally, I cannot find this infallibility in the acts of the General Councils. On the other hand, it is certain that three General Councils condemned Honorius for heresy." Yet this prelate seemed, in his first sentences, only to oppose the opportuneness of the definition. Kenrick takes the opposite course. He begins by saying that the doctrine is not so certain that it can be defined as an article of faith, and then takes up lower ground, that, even if it were certain, it would not be expedient that it should be defined by the present Council. We do not wonder at any man who could put upon paper the last principle, submitting to anything, or concealing anything, or professing anything, if it is expedient. What, it may be true that, on earth, God has set up a man as His representative who, whenever he puts on his full official character, utters the Word of God without error or possibility of erring, and yet it may not be expedient to tell this most pregnant of truths by any and every organ possible! How can any moral foundations exist in men whose whole substance is honeycombed by principles like these? When they submit, their submission has not the grace of any real sacrifice. When they affirm, their affirmation has not the authority of any real conviction.
This moral obscurity does not prevent Kenrick from clearly seeing theological points. He boldly says that the doctrine expressed in the proposed definition is wanting in authority both from Scripture and from ecclesiastical tradition. We shall not enter into his examination of the alleged scriptural proofs, but it is well worth the attention of theologians. He clearly puts the retrospective and prospective aspects of the new dogma, when contrasting it with an ordinary point of doctrine like that of the Immaculate Conception--
The new dogma not only impairs the rights of bishops, but imposes on the faithful the necessity of believing that the Roman Pontiffs never did err in faith, which indubitable monuments of history seem to disprove; and that they never will err in the future, which we hope, but are not able to believe with the certitude of divine faith.[395]
Kenrick says that, in defining the Immaculate Conception the Pope proposed the greater glory of the Mother of God, and previously to doing so consulted all the bishops, and acted on their advice. Now, however, he proposed his own infallibility, to be defined by a Council, which seems to have been convened for that purpose, although many bishops, and those representing the principal Churches of the Christian world, do not approve of it either in itself or in its concomitants.
Kenrick embraces under the head of expediency matter very different indeed from what one would have anticipated. He barely indicates the social and political dangers likely to arise out of the contemplated changes in dogma and polity. Having done this, he at once declares that the authority and oecumenicity of the Council are liable to be called in question, and will be called in question, on two separate grounds: first, the composition of the Council, and, secondly, its defect of liberty. As to its composition, he divides the members of it into five classes--
1. Diocesan bishops having Sees and governing them by ordinary episcopal authority.
2. Bishops of the Ring--episcopi annulares--who have the orders of bishops, but have neither Sees nor flocks, and who, with few exceptions, hold offices in the Court of Rome.
3. Other bishops in partibus, who, under the designation of Vicars Apostolic, preside over missions, and are all of them so immediately dependent upon the Holy See as to be removable at the discretion of the Pope.
4. Cardinals who are not bishops, and Cardinals who, having the orders of bishops, have no Sees.
5. Abbots and Generals of Orders.
Kenrick asserts that out of all the five classes the right of definition in matters of faith belongs, by a certain and universally acknowledged title, to diocesan bishops alone. The right of the Bishops of the Ring to define in matters of faith is a subject of dispute among theologians. The right of the Vicars Apostolic is disputable, but on different grounds. They have Sees, yet they are immediately dependent on the See of Rome, even to the extent of being removable at the will of the Bishop of Rome. As to Cardinals who are not bishops, with the Abbots and Generals, there is no doubt. They are confessed by all to have no right of definition in matters of faith, except as derived from custom.
Having thus described the composition of the Council, he adds the following solemn words--
In this Council the subject in hand affects the conflicting claims of the Pope and the bishops. If the Pope alone is infallible, the bishops do not exercise the office of judges, and, in a Council, they are only his councillors. Hence it ought to belong not to the Pope singly, but to a Council of diocesan bishops presided over by the Pope, to determine what right properly belongs to the other four classes; for otherwise the Pope would seem to dominate the Council.
How that argument to prove that the proper constitution of a Council was violated at the Vatican is to be met, it is not easy to see. The point next touched by Kenrick is one that has been less dwelt upon in public, but which would probably have some weight in a legal argument. In the Bull of Convocation it was enjoined upon bishops who should not be able to attend, to send their deputies furnished with proper credentials. Forty such deputies actually presented themselves; they were refused admittance, not by the Council, but by the Pope acting alone! Now, insists Kenrick, diocesan bishops would appear to have a strict right to send deputies to the Council when themselves unable to attend, which right was recognised by the ancient Councils. The exclusion, therefore, of those deputies from the Vatican Council by the sole authority of the Pontiff, would seem to raise a doubt of its oecumenicity. Had there been any question as to their title, it belonged to the Council itself to determine, but permission was not given to take the opinion of the Council on the point!
Kenrick further specifies, as a blot upon the authority and oecumenicity of the Council, the withdrawal from the bishops of the right of proposition by a mere Papal constitution. He adds the important fact that, owing to the privation of this right, many Fathers who wished to take the opinion of the Council on the admission of the deputies of absent prelates were unable to do so, although they left no means untried. Yet one at least who was born an Englishman can say that this Council was as free as our Parliament--a Council that had not even the right of verifying the titles of its own members! Kenrick concludes by expressing his persuasion that if the definition of Papal infallibility should go out in the name of this Council, it would rather increase dissension than promote peace, and would lead to a diminution of the rights of bishops and to the dishonour of the Pontiff himself.
The Liberal Catholics began, about this time, to notice the frequent expressions in Curialistic circles anticipating a war, in 1871, between France and Prussia.[396] The Univers now fixed a new date for the settlement of the great question--Ascension Day. All that could be said pro or con had been said, according to this journal, in the memoranda written by the prelates; and so in the Council there would be only an exposition of the Decree prepared by the committee, after which the Fathers would at once proceed to the vote. No doubt the avoidance of further discussion was a matter of great account with those who were looking to the future. The effect of the new constitution, at least its immediate effect, would greatly depend upon the éclat with which it should be promulged, and on the state of preparation to which the Catholic populations might be brought. If a tale of Friedrich, at the expense of Cardinal Capalti, be anything more than a joke, the question might have been settled by leaving it open. The Cardinal declared that he should be content with a definition of the infallibility of the Pope, whether it was infallibility with the bishops or without them.[397] The circulation of such a tale illustrates an impression prevailing, that even many of those in high places had not mastered the bearings of the question in dispute.
It was on May 10 that the proposed Decrees of Infallibility were distributed. "I shook all over my body," says Friedrich; "my senses seemed to forsake me as I read on." What was the amazement of the Professor to find not only all the mediæval pretensions taken up again, but the cool assertion made in notes, that all monuments of antiquity showed that the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff had been held as a truth divinely revealed. Another assertion which he noted, is that infallibility could never be disproved by history; but if any historical facts did appear to conflict with it, in so far as they did so they must be taken to be false. Again, the conclusions of any science, even those of ecclesiastical history, if opposed to the infallibility of the Pontiff, must be held to be errors. This is a very practical way of carrying out the principle announced by Cardinal Manning as to the dogma conquering history.
After reading this sort of matter, the indignant Professor cries, "Will our bishops dare to return home with such a verdict against all science, and against all sound reason? Does not this amount to saying--I believe it because it is absurd?" The Archbishop of Bamberg gave Friedrich some light on the way in which history was to be kept right. He said that the Pope was irritated at Hefele's pamphlet on the case of Honorius, and said, "There must be falsification of documents. The documents must be in the archives. Let them seek and they will find them; I am persuaded of it." It was publicly announced that the Pope had appointed two men to perform this duty. The Archbishop thought that the Curia would shrink from facing the judgment of the world. He placed his finger on his forehead, and said, "I cannot understand how a man in his senses can think of a personal infallible Pope." Archbishop Scherr having joined them, Deinlein added, "The world must rescue us. Had it not rescued us, we were already lost, and the Council over."[398] To this Friedrich adds that Bishops Krementz and Namszanowski are already thinking of the coming excommunication; and that Hefele had said gladly would he lay down the mitre and crozier, but what would become of his diocese?
Friedrich, wearied out in spirit, now spoke of going home. "You must stay," said Bishop Namszanowski, "for the historians must sit in judgment over this perfidious proceeding. It is impossible any longer to speak of a General Council. I only wonder that the German bishops have not already jumped out of their skin."[399]
One of Friedrich's notes is to the effect that the Nuncio in Munich having reported that Archbishop Scherr in opposing infallibility commanded no sympathy among his people, the Pope sent for the Archbishop, and asked him why he took the side of the minority when he was isolated in his own diocese. The Archbishop asked Friedrich to tell Döllinger that even at this peculiar audience he had stood by him. Still he wished Döllinger not to do anything more; it would only increase the difficulties.[400]
The proposed Decrees on the Church were wonderfully changed. The celebrated twenty-one Canons were now omitted. The whole Draft was compressed into four chapters, with three Canons. Vitelleschi, as we have seen, cannot understand how governments, especially the government of France, should attach so much importance to the Canons, and so little to the dogma of infallibility. The latter, as he well says, virtually includes them all, and as many more besides as may spring from the sole and irresponsible will of an individual. John Lemoinne had hastily said that Infallibility affected France no more than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; but Prévost Paradol had, with better insight, shown that, on the contrary, it gave the Pope everything in theory, and left him in the position, step by step, first to assume and next to acquire everything in practice. The Immaculate Conception seriously affected France; not the doctrine, but the proceeding which set up a single master over the faith of France. That proceeding paved the way for Infallibility, which in its turn was to confirm for ever and render ordinary a despotic procedure which otherwise might have been treated as exceptional.
The Univers of April 29, after asking whether objectors meant to remain Catholics after the definition, and saying that if they answered No they were judged already, went on to remark, If they answer Yes they are preparing themselves for a kind of faith and obedience that is hardly reasonable; preparing to believe that what was black has become white through a Council invested with power to make true that which was false. Poor Montalembert did not live to read that taunt and menace both in one. Mrs. Oliphant mentions someone who said that the Count had expressed his intention to submit at last, for he must do so. That is one thing, and expressing an intention to believe is another. But those who know how such statements as that quoted by Mrs. Oliphant are made, would not give much for it if it came only from a female or a priest.
Bishop Martin related how Friedrich, as he walked on the Pincian the evening before leaving Rome, said, pointing to St. Peter's, "If only the lightning fell from heaven and annihilated St. Peter's with all its glories!" "No," retorted Friedrich, "I never said anything so silly. What I once did say on the Pincian was, referring to the superstition of the Pope, 'Nothing can restrain the Pope from the definition, unless, indeed, at the critical moment, the well-known sunbeam fails, and some other natural phenomenon comes in its stead.'"[401]
To understand the line of thought by which calculating men connected the dogma with the prospect of universal dominion over the world, it is necessary to recall the primary elements of Church jurisdiction. As a kingdom appointed to govern the world, which is the ineradicable Papal conception, the Church rules through three tribunals--the internal, the external, and the supreme. Technically they are two, internal and external; the Pope being supreme in both. In the internal tribunal the Church cites; the cited are all the faithful. The person appearing is himself accuser and witness; the confessor is judge and jury. This tribunal, popularly called the Confessional, rules the conscience, the board, the bed, the purse, the family life, and the action of the individual in public life. In the external tribunal it is the ecclesiastical law which cites. Those cited are persons against whom any one either secretly or publicly complains. The witnesses may be either secret informer or open witness. The judge and jury are the ecclesiastical magistrate. This tribunal, popularly called the Ecclesiastical Court, rules all social questions whatever that have any moral interest or any colourable connexion with religion. Finally, in the supreme tribunal the Curia cites. The parties cited are all against whom any appeal or any information has been laid. The witnesses are those whom the Curia chooses to call, or its informers. The Pope is judge and jury. This tribunal, popularly called the Pope, acting through some Roman congregation or court, settles all points as between confessor and penitent, as between priest and bishop, as between magistrates and parties to a process, as between rulers and subjects, as between State and State, and above all, as between any State with its ruler and the supreme tribunal.
These three tribunals between them give a complete control of the tangled web called the world, excepting only that ill-defined if not invisible selvage of it which consists of affairs not included within the domain of morals. And that web, with its cunning shots and all but invisible devices, is that "large and variegated web," which, when unfolding its program, the Civiltá showed, would, after lustres had come and gone, appear as the fabric woven with the simple threads of its title, Catholic Civilization; or the Catholic Civil System.
Now, in the chaotic condition of recent times, President Moreno and Queen Isabella were the only two rulers that even seemed to be dutifully disposed to the Church in her tribunals; and poor Queen Isabella had already fallen.
In most countries, one who never entered the internal tribunal, might conduct a business, indeed he might even write a newspaper, or fill a professor's chair, ay, might make laws, or occupy a throne. Hence the crying need of a central authority so strong as to give to the external tribunal control over every bench, and to make the internal bear rule in every home, especially in every home wherein dwelt a ruler.
The proclamation of infallibility would be a complete restoration of the supreme tribunal, not indeed as to all the facts, but complete as to the ideas. This would bring about the restoration of facts in time. It is plain that the great majority of the bishops calculated hew the supreme judge, when once enthroned and acknowledged, would awe wayward kings and politicians; how, waiting for favourable political conjunctures, Nuncios would be able to move the bishops, and the bishops the clergy, and the clergy the people, till the patient power of the Church would bow all to her own laws. The hold already acquired upon schools, especially in France, was the most solid element in the entire calculation. The progress made within the last thirty years held out flattering hopes as to the future. The architects forgot that they had climbed up by a ladder which they had now kicked away. The voice to which concessions had been made was that of the Liberal Catholics pleading in the name of liberty, and they and their plea had now been unblushingly disowned.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 382: Quirinus, p. 482.]
[Footnote 383: Quirinus, p. 253.]
[Footnote 384: "What stupefaction to think that perhaps serious men have been engaged in getting these things written about themselves!" (vol. ii. 125).]
[Footnote 385: Quirinus, p. 508.]
[Footnote 386: Quirinus says by seventy-seven; but we give the numbers as we count them at the foot of the document in the Documenta ad Illustrandum, ii. p. 392.]
[Footnote 387: Doc. ad Ill., i. 178.]
[Footnote 388: Serie VII. x. p. 291.]
[Footnote 389: Printed in Documenta ad Ill., i. p. 1-129.]
[Footnote 390: Tagebuch, p. 365. Friedrich adds a note to his second edition:--"Bishop Namszanowski had this statement denied in the Germania of 1872, No. 132. This is really disgusting. I declare here, as I have done already in the Cologne Gazette, that the Bishop himself told me in his own house immediately after the meeting with Martin. I was so struck with the expression that I entered it under the heading, 'Certain Notes touching Rome and the Council.'"]
[Footnote 391: Ibid., p. 380; La Liberté du Concile, Doc. i. p. 173.]
[Footnote 392: Documenta, ii. p. 391.]
[Footnote 393: Pet. Priv., iii. p. 27.]
[Footnote 394: Documenta, ii. 212-89.]
[Footnote 395: Documenta, ii. 287.]
[Footnote 396: Tagebuch, p. 375.]
[Footnote 397: Ibid. p. 391.]
[Footnote 398: Tagebuch, p. 398. Friedrich in a note says that when he made this statement in Nuremberg the Vicar-General of Archbishop Deinlein published invectives against him, but could only say that such language does not come out of the mouth of the Archbishop--which Friedrich calls ridiculous absurdity.]
[Footnote 399: "Noch nicht aus der Haut gefahren sei."--Tagebuch.]
[Footnote 400: Ibid., p., 400.]
[Footnote 401: Tagebuch, p. 423.]
Chapter V
The Great Debate--Bishop Pie--The Virgin Mary on Infallibility--Cullen claims Ireland and MacHale--Kenrick's Reply, and his Account of the First Introduction of the Doctrine into Maynooth--MacHale speaks--Full Report of Darboy's Speech--The Pope gives Signs of Pleasure at Saldanha's Assault on the King of Portugal--New Date fixed for the Great Definition--Manning's Great Speech--Remarkable Reply of Kenrick--McEvilly ascribes Catholic Emancipation not to the Effect of Oaths, but to that of the Fear of Civil War--Kenrick's Retort--Clifford against Manning--Verot's Scene--Spalding's Attack on Kenrick--Kenrick's Refutation--Speeches of Valerga, Purcell, Conolly, and Maret--Sudden Close of the Debate.
On May 13, began the great debate, if anything that took place in the Vatican Council may be called by that name. This conflict was to be the death of real parliamentary debating in all countries. It ranged over the whole Draft of the proposed Decrees. The scope of them is well indicated by M. Veuillot, when he calls the Draft the Schema of the Pontiff. It treats only of primacy and infallibility. The first chapter treats of the institution of primacy in the person of Peter; the second treats of its descent through the Roman Pontiffs; the third, of its nature and scope; the fourth, of Papal infallibility.
Bishop Pie, of Poitiers, opened this famous field by a discourse much praised and much ridiculed. He argued for infallibility on the ground that Providence permitted St. Paul to be beheaded, and not St. Peter,[402] and on the further ground that Peter was crucified with the head downwards, to show that the body was to be supported by the head; but he who supports is infallible, and not he who is supported.[403] This truly Romish argument evoked, as Vitelleschi intimates, from the majority enthusiasm, and from the Opposition sarcastic smiles. We do not know whether any divine put before Bishop Pie the difficulty thrown in the way of his argument, by the fact that Providence must have permitted Peter to be beheaded after death, seeing that his head was with that of Paul in the Lateran, and only his trunk in St. Peter's.
On the next day, no less a person than the Cardinal Vicar ascended the tribune to plead for the glory of his chief. By a leap from centre to circumference, he was followed by the Archbishop of St. Francisco. The Archbishop of Messina relieved the gravity of the debate by relating how Peter had preached in Sicily; but when he told the people that he was infallible they doubted. They, however, sent an embassy to the Virgin Mary, to ask if she had heard of the infallibility of Peter. The Virgin replied that she certainly remembered being present when her Son conferred this prerogative upon him.[404] This speech has caused some correspondence in the Italian papers, especially touching the letter of the Virgin, which is still in existence, and has an annual feast all to itself. Somehow we are not ourselves clear as to the history of the embassy and of the letter. It is said that the letter was let down from heaven by the Virgin; but if that be so, where did the ambassadors go to with their message? But as the events took place before the age of reconstruction, we shall not digress further.
The discussion proceeded from day to day, a long and increasing list of names promising endless speeches. Three Cardinals spoke on May 18--Schwarzenberg, Rauscher, and Donnet, Vitelleschi reports Schwarzenberg as having said (p. 159), "It is said that you really believe in this dogma; but, if that be true, you cannot insist that I and my companions ought to acknowledge what seems to us absurd; and if you do insist, be sure that schisms will arise, and abjurations will follow within the Church of Rome." On May 19 the pulpit was ascended by Cardinal Cullen, carrying with him the confidence of power in Ireland, and of favour with the Curia. Coming of "a right noble Irish family," as the official history says,[405] and trained after the heart of the Curia, he had well justified their expectations in carrying out the centralizing system, to which he owed his mitre. He addressed himself particularly to the task of refuting Hefele's pamphlet on the heresy of Pope Honorius, contending that it could not be reconciled with what that prelate had written in his history of Councils.[406] But he also attacked Kenrick for his memorandum already spoken of. He charged the latter with impairing the argument for the primacy of the Pope, by asserting that the other apostles were also called foundations as well as Peter. Furthermore, Kenrick had asserted that the words "lambs" and "sheep" in the Vulgate (John xxi. 16, 17) both stood for one and the same Greek word, and hence he had contended that the stock Curialistic argument, that the bishops, "sheep," are placed under the Pope as well as the people, "lambs," had actually not even the show of a foundation in the passage. This was a sore point, for what would the Papal system have done before infallibility was proclaimed without this passage? It was as important as "Obey God rather than man," or as "Teach all nations." It is not true, asserted Cullen, that the two Latin words in those verses represent one and the same Greek word in the original. He quoted Oriental versions. It is not true, he repeated, with emphasis.
As to the word "faith," a word which Rome has, like so many others, killed, disembowelled, and embalmed, Kenrick had asserted that our Lord never employed it as meaning a body of doctrine, and that He employed it not more than once or twice as meaning the act by which we believe in God as revealing Himself; but that He generally employed it as meaning trust or confidence. This, Kenrick had asserted, was the sense of the word in the passage on which the attempt was made to build the infallibility of all dogmas found in the Decrees of the Roman Pontiff. The words are, "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not." That is, our Lord had prayed that the trust and confidence of Peter should not entirely fail; and Rome argued that He thereby promised that everything in the Decrees of the Roman Pontiffs, affecting doctrine or morals, should be for evermore free from error. Kenrick's exposition of what our Lord really did say made this argument appear not only futile but unfair. Cullen met him by declaring that his views savoured of the Calvinian heresy. The Cardinal proceeded to deny that bishops, as successors of the apostles, possessed that universal jurisdiction in the Church which the apostles themselves had received from Christ. He quoted a work of a deceased brother of Kenrick, formerly Archbishop of Baltimore, on the Primacy of the Apostolic See. Cullen, moreover, claimed Ireland and the Irish for infallibility in the teeth of oaths, catechisms, records, and living memories. In doing so, he was indiscreet enough to name, as on his side, MacHale, the lion of St. Jarlath, who had sat silent under the weight of his nearly fourscore years.
Kenrick, feeling that Cullen had said things which touched his honour,[407] prayed for leave to reply, either at once or at the end of the sitting. This was refused. Archbishops must wait till all the Cardinals who chose to speak had spoken, and Kenrick must wait till all archbishops senior to himself had been heard. He prepared a speech, but the debate was cut short before he had the opportunity of delivering it. Thereupon he resorted to the expedient of printing. To this document we are indebted for some of our most trustworthy information as to the real position taken up by different speakers.[408]
Kenrick said that Cullen had, in very severe language, charged him with impairing the argument for the primacy of the Pontiff, by alleging that the other apostles were called foundations as well as Peter. That, however, was not his language, but must be laid at the door of the "divine" Paul and John. Kenrick admitted primacy, but denied infallibility. He also denied that Christ had made the stability of the Church dependent on Peter as the foundation. He had provided for her stability otherwise, by saying. "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." Cullen had further said, and that repeatedly and with much energy of expression, It is false, because Kenrick asserted that one and the same Greek word was translated both "sheep" and "lambs" in the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of John xxi. But, in so doing, replied Kenrick, the Cardinal had betrayed a little infirmity.[409] The fact remained, that in those two verses the Vulgate did translate one and the same Greek word by two Latin ones. Moreover, in the reading adopted by Tischendorf, there was no word in any of the three utterances of our Lord which properly represented the word "sheep"; and the reading adopted by Tischendorf was confirmed by that which they might see inscribed on the arch of the Vatican Church, over the throne of the Pontiff.[410] In answer to the assertion of the Cardinal, that his exposition of the meaning of the word "faith" savoured of the Calvinian heresy, Kenrick said that perhaps his Eminence had not weighed the full significance of such language. He showed that out of twenty-nine places in the Gospels where the word occurred, in all but two it clearly meant confidence, or else the faith that works miracles; and that in only two could it be taken for the theological virtue of believing in God's revelation of Himself. He was still fully persuaded that its real meaning, in the words addressed by our Lord to Peter, was that of trust or confidence.
But Kenrick contended that Cullen had, by his own method of reasoning, taken away all the force usually ascribed by theologians to the words, "Thou art Peter." He had said that the privileges given to the other apostles by our Lord did not descend to their successors. If that was the case with the other apostles, surely it would be also the case with Peter. Kenrick, however, firmly contended that apostolic authority did not emanate from the Pontiff, but was given to the bishops by Christ Himself, and that the restriction of it to certain localities was merely by appointment of the Church.
After showing that the interpretation of the words "Upon this rock," which was supported by the greatest number of the Fathers, was that which regards the faith declared in the Confession of Peter as the foundation on which the Church was to be built, he pointed out that the word "foundation" has two clearly distinguished and well-defined meanings. First, the natural foundation, or that to which a wise builder clears his way before laying a stone--the living rock. Secondly, the architectural foundation, namely, the first course of stones laid on this rock. He contended that attention to this simple fact made the language of both classes of passages perfectly clear; those in which our Lord alone is called the Foundation, and those in which the apostles are so called. At the same time it cut away all the ground on which an argument in favour of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff is built, because he is the foundation of the Church.
As to the testimony of the Church with regard to the proposed dogma, Kenrick states it thus--
The dogma is not contained in the creeds; it is not given in the Catechisms as an article of faith; it is not found as such in any monument of public worship. Therefore the Church has not heretofore taught it as being of the faith; and had it been a doctrine of faith, she ought to have taught it, and to have handed it down.
Not only has the Church not taught it in any public standard, but she has permitted it to be impugned, and not in one place alone, but in almost all the world, Italy excepted, and that throughout a great length of time.... To speak of the nations which use the English tongue, in no one standard or catechetical book of theirs is this opinion enumerated among the verities that are of faith. In the United States, as in Ireland, all books of piety and doctrine were drawn from England till the opening of this century, and later. In the greater part of those books, the opposite opinion is contained. In none is this opinion found as being of faith (p. 212).
He shows that recently a few books had appeared as if to prepare the people for the new dogma. Alluding evidently to the work of the Jesuit Weninger, which the Pope had praised, he calls the author a zealous but unlearned man, and says his work was more calculated to excite ridicule than anger, and that when the author had applied to himself for some commendation, he had incautiously promised him the charity of silence.
As to the use made by Cullen of his brother's work, he said he had felt as if the dead had been commended in order to rebuke the living. As to the faith of the Irish, he remarked that a smile had been raised when Verot, of Augustine, in Florida, said that the Irish believed even their priests to be infallible. But it was true, for believing the Church to be infallible, and the priest to be in harmony with the Church, they believed him to be infallible, and with the difference of his more exalted rank, it was precisely in the same sense that they believed the Pope to be infallible. But as to their understanding the question now agitated, or being able to form an opinion concerning it, that was too ridiculous to need confutation (p. 216). He even doubted if a meeting in Cork, over which the bishop of the see was said to have presided, had understood the question; and indeed it was apparent, from what had passed in that Hall, that there were bishops there who were not clear as to what Papal infallibility meant.
Turning from the populace of Ireland to the prelates and doctors, he was ready to grant that now, influenced by some distinguished names, the preponderating opinion might be in favour of Papal infallibility; on that point, however, he knew nothing more than what he had been able to learn since coming to Rome. But in the beginning it was not so. His proof of this was the almost universal applause with which the writings of Dr. Doyle had been received, and those of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary. Further, he cited answers given to a committee of the British Parliament in 1825 by the Archbishops of Dublin and Tuam, Murray and O'Kelly, as well as by Bishop Doyle. These answers he printed with his speech, both in the original English and in a Latin translation. He further cited a manifesto of all the Irish bishops in the year 1815, addressed directly to the Holy See, which clearly shows that they did not hold the views embodied in the proposed Decrees. He prints this document also.
Next, passing from the Irish prelates to the priests, Kenrick confidently affirms that they in former times did not differ from the prelates. Long after the establishment of Maynooth College, the professors, he declares, came from France, and their treatises were in the hands of the pupils long subsequently to their own death. He calls the Archbishop of Cashel as a witness, while he relates how the change of teaching was first introduced in that college. They were there at the time as fellow-students. Forty years ago, says Kenrick, John O'Hanlon was Tutor in Theology, as he is now Moderator of the higher theological sciences in the college. The text-book De Ecclesia at that time was Delahogue. It contained nothing, says Kenrick, about Papal infallibility, except a proposition in these or similar words, "It is not of faith that the Pope is infallible" (p. 218).
In the year 1831, O'Hanlon gave his pupils, as a theme, the following proposition: "The Pope, speaking ex cathedrâ, is infallible." O'Hanlon did not indicate any opinion of his own, and did not urge the pupils in discussing the thesis to take either one side or the other, but left them to argue for the negative or affirmative at their discretion. Kenrick was one of those who took the affirmative; but he adds, Language so new, and hitherto unheard of, did not please all the professors. One of them, who subsequently became President of the college, strongly expressed his dissatisfaction to my fellow-student, now the Bishop of Clonfert, from whom I had the statement. Kenrick then makes a confident appeal to MacHale, to whom Cullen had made a presumptuous one--
There sits here a venerable man, who many years ere I entered that college expounded theology within its walls, who is by good right looked upon as the Nestor of the Irish bishops, for he has lived with almost three generations of men; one who with eminent theological learning combined a glory of classic lore, and also had intimate acquaintance with the prelates whom I have cited, and with other men of learning whose bright and venerable names are inscribed on the hearts of the Irish, and among their glories.... He, with rare moderation, had not given expression to his views on the matter now under discussion. So that his Eminence of Dublin did not hesitate to speak for him, and to claim him as being upon his own side. Those who feel with me, and who had known him, desiring to see him contending by our side, were grieved to behold him sitting apart like another Achilles. I was filled, therefore, with an unlooked-for joy when I heard him say that in judgments on matters of faith the head ought to be conjoined with the body; not, as his Grace of Westminster would have it, that the head of itself, communicating infallibility to itself, should draw the body along with it, but that head and body, conjointly bearing witness to the faith delivered to the saints, should declare it with one mind. As the Archbishop of Tuam descended from this pulpit, I congratulated him in these words: 'You have vindicated Ireland--Vindicasti Hiberniam.' If witnesses of the faith of the Irish are to be, as they ought to be, weighed and not counted, the Archbishop of Tuam, at least in the capacity of a witness, will easily surpass the other Irish bishops, not even excepting his Eminence of Dublin (p. 218).
The above important statement of Archbishop Kenrick shows that the new dogma, according to which the Bull Unam Sanctam becomes of divine authority in doctrine, was not kept out of Maynooth very long after the oaths and denials of preceding years had served their purpose. It was introduced as early as 1831.
The day following the speech of Cardinal Cullen--for our light on which we are indebted to Kenrick's important contribution--the Primate of Hungary appeared in the pulpit. His position as a member of the Committee on Faith, his doubtful bearing, and, above all, rumours of a hat, had made an impression that he had gone over to the side of the Infallibilists. On the contrary, he now spoke with decision and force against them. It was after the courage of the minority had been for a moment revived by this speech, that one ascended the desk, who to most present was only a feeble old man, but to Irish prelates, and to some of Irish origin, he represented one who, in the thundering days of the Liberator, was spoken of, at every wake and "patron," as a mighty son of hail and storm. It was he to whom Cullen had appealed, on the previous day, as a witness to the ancient faith of the Irish in Papal infallibility. But Kenrick has already shown us that John MacHale stood as a hoary monument of departed principles; and it was when he came down that Kenrick cried, "Thou hast vindicated Ireland." Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel, was the next called up; but after the speech of MacHale he declined to speak.[411]
The archbishops were still on the roll, so the same day the Archbishop of Paris had his turn. Here again we get an indisputable glimpse into the arcana. Like Kenrick's speech, that of Darboy is printed; but unlike Kenrick's, it was actually delivered.[412] We shall, therefore, give the principal portions of it, wishing that we were in a position to do so with a speech from the other side--
Most eminent, most reverend Fathers,--I approach the consideration of the First Dogmatic Constitution, De Ecclesia, submitted to your examination,--a task which would be ungrateful did not love of the truth and affection and reverence towards the brethren render it easy and not unwelcome. I will treat the proposed Decree with a mind, as I trust, free from all party spirit, wishing not to offend any one, and fervently hoping that you will ingenuously receive what I am about to say, as I shall ingenuously present it.
It seems to me that there are three things to be looked at: first, the origin of this proposed Decree; secondly, its scope and nature; thirdly, its practical consequences.
As to the origin of this proposed Decree, and its introduction at the present time into the Council, I shall state a few self-evident propositions without discussing them, or rather shall recall to mind a few facts, from which the reverend Fathers will be able to judge whether the whole matter has been conducted according to order, and whether the dignity of an assembly so venerable has been sufficiently consulted:--
1. It is certain that the pivot on which our proposed Decree altogether turns is the fourth chapter--that which treats of the infallibility of the Pontiff.
2. It is certain that this question of infallibility has been the principal object of the Vatican Council--so much so indeed that it has been indiscreetly said by many that, in a certain sense, it was the sole object of it.
3. It is certain that this principal question of infallibility was not intimated in the Bull of Convocation, nor in the documents relating to the convocation of the Council.
4. It is certain that this question has been urged forward from without, that is, by writers lay and clerical, in a way contrary to ecclesiastical and traditional methods, adopted against all rules of subordination and decorum; an agitation got up by means of demagogues, so to speak, in order that the consciences of the bishops sitting here might be placed under pressure, and that they might be subjected to fear that, if they resisted they should not be able to return to their dioceses and govern them without difficulty.
5. It is certain that thus the matter has been brought to such a pass that the Vatican Fathers, albeit piously and generously following their own conscience, have been said, nevertheless, to have conceded more than was meet to these violent manifestations, and to factitious opinions, when they petitioned for the introduction of the question of infallibility; and because of this tumult, which has been raised at the doors of the Council Hall, the liberty and the dignity of us all have evidently been somewhat lowered. This is unbecoming, and opens the way to grave inconvenience; indeed, it is not to be tolerated without injury and opprobrium to this venerable assembly, which ought to act from its own impulse, and ought to be not only free, but manifestly free.
6. It is certain that the question, as this day proposed, comes on out of the natural and logical order; and thus occasions some prejudice which will damage the cause itself.
7. It is certain that the premature introduction of the question, especially with the present inversion of proper order, is of little service to the Holy See--nay, is detrimental to its honour; for since, according to the Rules of Procedure, contained in Multiplices Inter, petitions are remitted to a Special Congregation, which reports upon them to the Pontiff, and since the Pontiff can freely accept or reject the conclusions of that Congregation, it follows that the promoters of the petition for introducing the question of infallibility, and for placing it first in order, publicly led the Holy Father into the position of enacting and deciding in his own case, and for his personal privilege; in doing which--certainly without intention on their part--they have ill consulted his high dignity, if they may not be said to have even detracted from it.
If these seven positions be true--and they seem to be most true--we cannot approach and determine this question of infallibility, raised under such circumstances, and introduced in such a manner, without preparing the way for the cavils of the impious, and for objections lowering to the moral authority of this Council. This is the more to be guarded against, because already writings and documents are in circulation which aim at shaking its strength and title; so that, far from calming the minds of the people, and securing the things which make for peace, it would seem, on the contrary, to be sowing the seeds of new disputations and discords among Christians.
If, therefore, I may give a practical conclusion to this portion of my speech, I would say: (1) They did well who held this question to be inopportune; (2) They will do well who shall judge it opportune to abstain from a definition.
Now, as to the second portion of my speech,--the scope and nature of this proposed Decree,--I shall indicate a few points, but not develop them.
1. The object of the proposed Decree is not to frame a doctrine on infallibility, for all know and with Catholic faith believe in the infallibility of the Church, which has held that tenet for nearly twenty centuries. Its object is to define, and to propound as an article of faith, that the chief Pontiff is infallible by himself alone, and that indeed this privilege of inerrancy extends as widely as the infallibility of the Church itself. It is to be noted that the proposed Decree does not treat of the former kind of infallibility, admitted by all, according to which the invincible and irrefragable force of Decrees or dogmatic decisions commanding the faith of all the faithful, as of all pastors, lies solely in the common consent of the bishops conjoined with the Pontiff. But this proposed Decree treats of the separate and absolute personal infallibility of the Pontiff, though it is not openly called so.
2. The proposed Decree does not treat of personal infallibility as a mere opinion, or as recommending a point of doctrine, but as declaring a dogma of the faith. Heretofore, indeed, there was some discussion as to the opportuneness and expediency of introducing this question in the present Council; but that discussion was closed from the time that the chief Pontiff decreed that the subject could no longer be passed over in silence. But now the other part of the question has come to be discussed, namely, whether or not the personal infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff can opportunely and expediently now be declared an article of the faith, and ought to be so declared? This is precisely the matter and object of the present discussion.
3. Further, in order that the object may be rightly carried through, and may have a successful issue, these three things are necessary: (1) A formula, or definition of the doctrine; (2) Proofs of it, both solid and excluding all doubt; (3) Its acceptance by all with moral unanimity.
The first necessity:--It is necessary to compose a formula or definition of the doctrine. That this is most difficult is apparent from the case of those who first drafted the proposed Decree, as well as of those who revised it. Terms are used which are vague, and fitted to give rise to endless discussion. What is meant by exercising the office of supreme teacher of all Christians? What are the complete external conditions which mark the exercise of this office? When will it be known that the Holy Pontiff has spoken in such a character? The promoters of the proposed Decree say that this will be obvious, as for instance the meaning of the term "oecumenical" is obvious; but they inflict a wound on themselves. For a Council is not held to be oecumenical by the faithful dispersed throughout the world, unless it is received as such by them perhaps with what amounts to moral unanimity. Hence if the nature, character, and force of Decrees emanating from the Pontiff are to be declared and known by the same method, the promoters of the Decree have accomplished nothing, since the ultimate reason for admitting infallibility will be the universal consent of the bishops. Do they or do they not regard the consent of the bishops as unnecessary in laying down definitions of the faith? If they do regard it as unnecessary, they do a thing that is new, unheard of, and intolerable. If they do not regard it as unnecessary, they say a thing that is old, and received by all, and draw up their battle array against a foe that is not in the field. In either case they neither can nor ought to be silent as to the necessity or inutility of the concurrence of the bishops. Silence on their part in such a matter, and in such circumstances, would drive the faithful to new doubts, and would prepare the way for new difficulties. They do not define the matters to which infallibility extends, otherwise than by saying that it extends to those to which the infallibility of the Church extends; but such an indication is altogether insufficient till the holy Council shall have defined the matters to which the infallibility of the Church does extend. Hence, again appears the logical vice from which this proposed Decree on the primacy suffers through being brought forward before the Decree on the Church in general. Moreover, when dealing with the Church, we know that her infallibility is always exercised within the limits of matters to which it extends, both because we are advised that it is so by the common consent of the bishops, and also because the Church is holy and cannot sin. But, on the contrary, when dealing with the Holy Pontiff, the promoters of the proposed Decree, whatever they may say, exclude on the one hand the consent of the bishops, and on the other hand they have not yet attempted to prove that every Pontiff is holy and impeccable. So far for what relates to the discovery of a formula.
The second necessity:--A formula of definition having been found, it is necessary to prove it by solid arguments, excluding all doubt. Let it then be proved:--(1) That this doctrine of personal infallibility is contained in Holy Scripture interpreted always in one sense, as well as in the tradition of all ages;--(2) That it has always been received by consent of the Fathers, the doctors, the bishops, and theologians; not only by some of them, but by so many as amounts to a moral whole;--(3) That it perfectly accords with all the Decrees and authoritative acts of OEcumenical Councils, or even with the Decrees passed in the fourth and fifth sessions of the Council of Constance. Even were the oecumenicity of those sessions to be denied--which I do not admit--they still show what was the common opinion of theologians and bishops;--(4) That this doctrine is not gravely impugned by historical facts, and that other acts of the Holy Pontiffs are not in conflict with it;--(5) And, finally, that this is one of those truths which can be defined by General Councils in union with the Pontiff, as being demonstrably one of those which had been received by all, everywhere, and always as revealed truth.
The proposed Decree does not supply such arguments, and the Fathers, as you well know, have not had time to weigh it; therefore we ought to refrain from defining it. In a matter of this kind, which involves the laying of an irrevocable burden on the conscience of the faithful, there is grave peril if you act prematurely, without absolute certainty. But there is no risk to be run in deciding it to be a matter that requires to be more fully discussed, and then afterwards determining it with all safety of conscience.
The third necessity:--It is necessary that this doctrine of personal and independent infallibility, clearly stated, as we have said, and solidly proved, should be received by the Fathers with moral unanimity; else it is to be feared that this declaration of doctrine will seem to many to be a pontifical Constitution indeed but not a Decree of a Council. To impose a truth upon all Christians, to be held as an article of faith, is a duty and a right so grave that a bishop must not exercise it without great circumspection.
Hence, as you well know, the Tridentine Fathers, whatever sophists may say to the contrary, did not arrive at their decisions in matters of dogma by majority, but with moral unanimity.
As to the practical consequences of the proposed Decree, I would particularly note two points; for this personal infallibility is not required and proposed as a matter of faith, except in order that unity in the Church may become closer and that the central authority may be stronger, and that thus a remedy may be more effectually applied to every evil. As to unity and central authority, they ought to exist and to be maintained, not as we may fancy them, or as our reason may persuade us, but just as our Lord Jesus Christ instituted them, and as our Fathers hitherto have held them. For it is not for us to constitute the Church arbitrarily, and to change the conditions of a divine work. The necessary unity, that namely of faith and communion under the paternal rule of a central authority, exists and always has existed among Catholics; and that unity of doctrine and communion, and that central authority of the Holy Pontiffs, which flourished without a dogmatic definition of infallibility, abides unimpaired.
Let it not be said that this unity would become stricter after the central authority had been rendered stronger, for the consequence does not follow. It is not enough to be one, but we must also have that kind and that degree of unity which are required by the nature and character of the case, and by the law and necessity of life. Nay, it may be that a thing shall wretchedly perish, precisely for the reason that it has been reduced to an overstrained unity; for in that condition its internal forces cannot exercise themselves and discharge their vital functions, being broken and crushed by the bond of an overstrained and exaggerated unity. So in respect of moral force, the unity of men, when acting freely and with vigour under law, is looser yet more comely than is the unity of bondsmen sluggishly existing under tyranny.
Therefore, let us not separate the bishops from the Holy Pontiff, nor the Pontiff from the bishops. Let us faithfully hold the ancient rule of faith and the things ordained of the Fathers, and that all the more because the proposed definition will give rise to many and serious inconveniences.
It can scarcely be doubted that this remedy will be powerless for healing the evils of the day; and indeed it is to be feared that to very many it will be injurious. The matter must be looked at not merely in a theological point of view, but also in its aspects towards civil society; for surely we do not sit here as so many head-sacristans, or superiors of little Congregations, but as men received into a share of his solicitude by the chief Pontiff, who holds the care of the entire Church. Let us, therefore, prudently survey the condition of the world.
Will personal and independent infallibility raise again from the grave the extinct Churches on the African shores? or will it awake out of sleep that East which once bloomed with so many talents and virtues? Will it be easier for our brethren, the Vicars Apostolic, to bring back Pagans, Mohammedans, and Schismatics, to the Catholic faith, if they teach them that the Pope is infallible by himself? Will the definition encourage and animate Protestants, and other heretics, to draw near to the Roman Church, laying aside all their prejudices and animosities? So far for distant regions.
But what of Europe? I say it with grief--the Church is banished from everything. She is banished from those Congresses in which peace and war between nations is determined, and in which, in former times, the authority of the Holy See prevailed; whereas now decisions affecting that See itself are taken, and it may not give its opinion. The Church is banished from the legislative bodies in several kingdoms of the Church; and if here and there some prelates or priests are found in them, it seems a wonder. She is banished from the schools where grave errors stalk with impunity; from the laws which profess to be secular in their nature, and hence are irreligious; from the family where civil marriage taints morals. Almost all those who are at the head of human affairs in Europe either shun us or keep us at a distance.
Again, in these straits of the Church, what remedy is offered to the world in travail? The promoters of the proposed Decree wish us to lay a new and, therefore, heavy and odious load on those who are already shaking from their indocile shoulders burdens imposed of old time and rendered venerable by usage of our Fathers. They almost crush all who are of weak faith, with a new and inopportune dogma, a dogma never heretofore defined, and to some extent damaged by wounds received in this discussion, and one to be pronounced by a Council, of which many assert and declare that its liberty is less evident than it should have been. It is hoped by this definition of a personal and separate infallibility to be able to heal everything, to strengthen faith in all, and to improve morals. But in vain is it hoped. The world is sick or dying, not for want of knowing the truth, or the teachers of it, but because it shuns the truth and will not submit to it. If, therefore, the world rejects the truth, when it is preached by the whole body of the Teaching Church--that is, by eight hundred bishops scattered all over the world and infallible in connexion with the Holy Pontiff--how much more will it reject that truth when it is preached by one Infallible Teacher, and that teacher recently declared to be such! But again: in order that authority may prevail and effectually operate, it is not enough that it be affirmed; it must also be accepted. It does not suffice, therefore, to declare the Pope infallible, personally and separately from the bishops, but he must be received as such by all, if he is not to exercise his office in vain. For instance, what avails an anathema when the authority of him who excommunicates is disregarded? And, most reverend Fathers, pray permit one instance more. The Syllabus went all through Europe, and what evil has it healed, even in those places where it was received as an infallible oracle? At that time two kingdoms remained wherein religion still flourished, ascendant not only in fact, but also by law; I mean Austria and Spain. Yet in those two kingdoms this Catholic order has fallen to the ground, although commended by infallible authority,--ay, perhaps, at least in Austria, exactly for the reason that it was commended by it.
Let us, therefore, look at matters as they stand. The separate and independent infallibility of the most Holy Pontiff, so far from removing the objections and prejudices which turn many away from the faith, is increasing and aggravating them. Very many even of those who are not hostile to the Catholic religion are now meditating what they call separation of the Church from civil society. Not a few of those who lead public affairs lean in this direction, and they will gladly seize the opportunity, given by the proposed definition, to carry this separation into effect. Besides, what will be done in France will soon be imitated more or less throughout Europe, certainly not without serious loss to the Church and the clergy. Whether they mean it or not, the promoters of the proposed Decree are, by their definition, instituting a new order of things full of risks, and that all the more if they do not more exactly determine the matters to which personal infallibility extends; and [if they do not determine] whether it will be possible to assert that the Pope, when defining in matters pertaining to morals, does by that act pronounce as to the civil and political conduct of kings and nations, and as to the laws and rights which are now reputed to belong to the public authority. No one skilled in politics can fail to see what seeds of contention our proposed Decree contains, and to what perils the temporal power of the Holy See itself is exposed. But to enter into this fully would be tedious, perhaps indiscreet; for certainly I could not adduce here all the arguments which come to my hand, without touching upon several things which prudence counsels me to avoid. I have relieved my conscience as far as possible. Accept my words for the worth which your judgment may award to them. I know, indeed, that disadvantages are attached to any course, and that we are not always to abstain from acting because disasters may follow; but I do not ask the venerable Fathers to fall suddenly into my views, but rather ask that they may maturely consider and balance the arguments in favour of the one view and the other. I also know that we are not to make puerile concessions to public opinion, but no more are we pertinaciously to thwart it. It is wiser and more adroit to adjust many things with it, and in any case to take it into account. And, finally, I know that the Church does not need the temporal arm, but neither does she repel the assent and aid of civil society; and, as I take it, she did not, in the days of Constantine, weakly sigh for a renewal of the days of Nero.
Quirinus says that a suppressed murmur running through the ranks of the majority as Darboy spoke, seemed to herald coming storms (p. 553).
On May 23, Ketteler is said to have made a real impression--indeed, Vitelleschi intimates that he made converts (p. 162)--by a strong representation of the effect of the proposed Decrees on what remained of episcopal jurisdiction. On the same day Ginoulhiac, who had been Bishop of Grenoble, but had just been made Archbishop of Lyons, did what was looked upon as a deed of high courage by opposing the definition.
At the same time an incident occurred which caused all Rome to talk of the Pope's personal energy in pushing his policy, and to whisper as to the mysterious connexion of political movements in different countries with the silent will of Rome. Though Portugal no longer occupied, in the eye of the world, the place she once held, her importance to the Papacy was still great. News arrived that the Duke of Saldanha had, by a military pronunciamento, assailed the King in his palace, and compelled him to accept a new Ministry, with himself for its head. He was of the clerical party, and immediately found a pretext for quarrelling with the minister representing Italy. The tidings of these events no sooner reached Rome than the Pope visited the national church of the Portuguese in the city. His organ, the Osservatore Romano, in announcing the fact, said that his Holiness had wished to inspect the restoration of the Church made by the Duke of Saldanha when ambassador in Rome. The impression made was that the Pope wished, before all the bishops and princes, to give the Duke the only mark of approbation in his power. Vitelleschi observes that a pronunciamento is the worst form of revolution, because it disturbs the highest expression of order and violates the faith which holds soldiers to their flag (p. 165). What, however, is revolution when directed against the supernatural order, is restoration and reconstruction when it favours the sacred cause.
The time for the definition was now rather peremptorily fixed by the authoritative organs. The day of Mary, the day of Joseph, the Epiphany, and the Ascension, and other very good days, had all in turn failed; but it was to be on St. Peter's Day, and was not that the fittest day of all?
The Archbishop of Westminster, in the name of the committee, spoke, on May 25, for nearly two hours. Indeed, morning by morning the committee availed itself of the right of reply granted to its members exclusively, by setting up one of them to refute the objections advanced in the previous sitting. Kenrick says that he knew not which to admire most--Manning's diction, his delivery, his power, of command and frankness, or his ardour in urging and almost commanding the new definition.[413]
"I thought," says Kenrick, "of what used to be said of Englishmen living in Ireland, that they were more Irish than the Irish themselves. The Archbishop is certainly more Catholic than all the Catholics I have known hitherto. He himself feels no doubt as to pontifical infallibility, personal, separate, and absolute; and he will not permit others to feel any. He asserts that the doctrine is of faith, and as such he hardly asks the Council to define it, but rather predicts that it will do so--perhaps after the manner of those prophets who strive to bring events to pass by foretelling them. So far as concerns myself--as one whom sixty years that have passed over me since I began to learn the rudiments of the faith, have perhaps left as well instructed on the point in question as one who joined the Church about twenty years ago--I dare to assert that the opinion, as it is found in the proposed Decree, is not a doctrine of faith, and that it cannot become such by any definition whatsoever, even that of a Council. We are custodians of the deposit of faith, not lords of it. We are teachers indeed of the faithful committed to our care, in so far as we are witnesses."
Manning resented, graviter illud tulit, the attempt which had been made to raise a case of conscience in the mind of the bishops by asserting that any bishop would incur the guilt of a mortal sin who gave a vote in favour of infallibility without having duly investigated the question for himself; because his act would contribute to impose a new yoke on the faithful. This Manning held to be injurious to the dignity and the honour of the bishops; as if, says Kenrick, he denied that bishops could sin, or denied that they would be guilty of mortal sin if through negligence or idleness they failed rightly to inform their judgments.
Manning contended that infallibility was a supernatural grace--charisma--and, therefore, that it properly attached to a person. He would not hear of conditions being connected with the exercise of infallibility. He asserted that he who had bestowed this supernatural grace would also give the means for its due exercise.[414] Moreover, he took the ground that the Council had already, in the conclusion of the Decree which had been passed, committed itself to the doctrine of infallibility, and that it could not now recede. Kenrick replied that the assertion of Manning was one of several things which he had heard with stupefaction. They had been assured, he stated, as we have already seen, in the clearest terms by the reporter of the committee, that the clause referred to contained no doctrine, and that it was only a fitting conclusion to the four chapters of the Decree. Then follows the statement that the reporter had either himself been deceived or had knowingly deceived the minority.
In the sitting of May 25, MacEvilly, Bishop of Galway, also referred to Kenrick's argument, drawn from the fact that the Catholics of England and Ireland had been admitted to equal civil rights on the faith of repeated declarations, and even of oaths, to the effect that the doctrine of Papal infallibility was not binding on Catholics, and that consequently such edicts of Pontiffs as the Bull Unam Sanctam had not doctrinal authority. To this MacEvilly replied that the Catholics in England had been admitted to equal civil rights, not because of their declarations, but because the English government feared a civil war. The reply of Kenrick to this straightforward utterance is worthy of being given word for word--
The doctrine of Papal infallibility was always odious to the English government, and had it been really a doctrine of the faith, Protestants would have understood Papal doctrine better than English and Irish Catholics; for they knew that Roman Pontiffs had claimed the highest power in temporal things for themselves, and had attempted to drive several English kings from the throne by absolving their subjects from the oath of allegiance.
Catholics, by public oath repeatedly made, denied that such power belonged to the Roman Pontiff in the realm of England, and had they not done so, they never would have been or ought to have been admitted to equal civil rights.[415] How the faith thus pledged to the British government is to be reconciled with the definition of Papal infallibility may be looked to by those of the Irish prelate who have taken that oath as I myself did I cannot solve the difficulty as yet. I am Davus, not Ædipus. Nevertheless those civil rights were conceded to Catholics by men who through a long life had strongly opposed that course. They did indeed apprehend civil war; but they did not dread it in this sense, that a war of that kind could not be otherwise hurtful to the power of the government than by causing a disturbance of the peace for a certain time.
They feared the occurrence of a war, not the result of it, as to which no sensible man could have been uncertain. Those great men preferred to yield rather than to conquer by the slaughter of a brilliant nation, and of a people worthy of a better fate, even in what seemed to them its errors. Oh that here the same spirit of moderation which they exhibited may be displayed by the majority of the bishops who are listening to these words, and that by a prevision of the calamities which may arise to us from this hapless controversy, they may, in circumstances calling for consummate moderation, ward off from us, who are fewer, but who represent a greater number of Catholics than those who are opposed to us, evils which it is not possible to anticipate without horror, and which it would be impossible to repair by a late repentance.
On the one hand, we cannot but regret that these words, fitly written, were not actually spoken in the deaf ears of the resolved majority. On the other hand, we remember that had they been spoken, they would have sunk into the Vatican archives, and would never have been heard of more till those graves give up their dead. They now belong to history, and furnish a living link in a chain of memorable professions and performances. The denationalizing influence of the Papacy had still left something of the citizen alive in the soul of Kenrick. During his stay in Rome, when witnessing the paltry tyrannies that flounced about under the dependent banner of the Pope, all of the citizen that was left in him must have turned with fresh respect to the two flags of the free under which he had spent his days--the flags of England and America. And yet there were those sitting there, each with all the rights of a free man in his hands, planning to reconstruct the society of England and America on the degraded and fettered model of the States of the Roman Bishop. There is a crime which no code has defined--the crime, not of breaking one specific law of one's country, but of contriving, with a foreign pretender, how to overturn everything vital in a venerable and generous legislation.
It was not merely by a pupil of Maynooth that the eager ex-Anglican was considered extreme in his views. Clifford, Bishop of Clifton, spoke on the same day, refuting the notions of Manning about the favourable effects to be produced by his beloved dogma in England, and appealing to him as a witness that an eminent statesman had represented the influence of the recent course of the Curia upon public opinion in England as being much to the disadvantage of their own cause, and greatly to the encouragement of extreme Protestants.[416]
In the next Congregation, on the 28th, it was Senestrey who took the post occupied on the last morning by Manning, that of official respondent against attacks. On that day, a scene was raised by Verot, of Florida. He declared that they were making innovations in the Church, and that such an innovation as the personal infallibility of the Pope was sacrilege. That horrid word applied in the sacred place to an object so dear to the Pope, touched indeed the apple of the eye. Sacrilege! The Cardinals de Angelis and Capalti, says Vitelleschi, quite lost their temper; and a scene ensued which for anger and excitement is said to have fallen but little short of Strossmayer's scene in March.[417] The odious, and to well-tuned Curialistic ears the inconceivable, task of hearing the infallibility of the Pope denied, and of seeing his pleasure daily thwarted under the roof of St. Peter's, was not to be endured any longer. The word passed that the power given by the new Rules to close the debate must be called into requisition.
A trusty American was set up in the next meeting, by the committee, to repair the mischief done by Verot--Spalding, of Baltimore. Here, again, we are indebted for light to Kenrick's unspoken speech. Referring to the moral question which had been raised by Kenrick, to which we have already seen allusions, Spalding said that it called for as much investigation to justify one in giving a negative as in giving an affirmative vote on the question of Papal infallibility, and that in withholding an affirmative vote one would confirm the celebrated Gallican articles.
On May 31, Valerga, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, made a vigorous attack on the minority, speaking cleverly, and hitting hard. Spirited, piquant, and insolent, is the description of Quirinus. Soon afterwards, another American was in the desk, Purcell, of Cincinnati. Quirinus says that he affirmed that the Americans abhorred every doctrine opposed to civil and spiritual freedom; and that the American sons of the Church loved her, because she was the freest society in the world. He also took the position that, as kings existed for the good of the people, so the Pope existed for the good of the Church. On the same day spoke Conolly, Archbishop of Halifax. He seems to be the only one in the Council who really related a theological experience, declaring that he had formerly believed in the personal infallibility of the Pope, and had come to Rome believing that the Augsburg Gazette had circulated a calumny in representing the dogmatizing of this opinion as the real object of the Council. He went on to say that, on finding what was expected of him, he determined to sift the arguments of the Roman theologians and the proofs by which they supported them. He now bore witness to the result upon his own views. All antiquity, he declared, explained the passages harped upon by those theologians, in a sense different from theirs. All antiquity bore witness against the notion that the Pope alone, and separate from the bishops, was infallible. He further took the ground that to found a dogma on the rejection of the traditional interpretation of Scripture was pure Protestantism. I will have nothing, he said, turned into dogma but the indubitable Word of God. Ten thousand theologians do not suffice for me, and on the present subject no theologian should be quoted who lived subsequent to the Isidorean forgeries. To define the dogma would be to bring the Vatican Council into contradiction with the three General Councils which had condemned Pope Honorius as a heretic, to narrow the gates of heaven, to repel the East, and to proclaim, not peace, but war. In reply to Manning, he protested that no one was justified in calling an opinion proximate heresy when it had not been condemned as such by the Church.[418]
On June 3, Gilooly, Bishop of Elphin, replying to some observation of Purcell as to the oaths and declarations, said[419] that Catholics had not denied that they held the infallibility of the Pope as a doctrine of the faith, but as a dogma of the faith; that is as a dogma defined by a General Council. To this, Kenrick's unspoken speech replies, "If that is what was meant, which I do not believe, we might be reproached, and that rightfully and deservedly, with not shrinking, in a very grave matter, from the concealment of our meaning by scholastic distinctions."[420] According to Quirinus (p. 661), Cardinal Bonnechose prevailed upon Cardinal de Angelis to ask the Pope, directly, if he would not consent to a prorogation of the Council on account of the heat, now intolerable to all but Romans, or men from the southward of Rome. The reply was stern and, according to many, savage. Whatever were the terms of it, the substance was indubitable--no adjournment was to be allowed till the Decree of Infallibility was passed. It is said that when Bishop Domenec, of Pittsburg, in America, began his discourse, he was greeted with laughter by the majority, and when he made the very plain and simple statement--one which he might have picked up from any intelligent or travelled Italian any day in the year--that American Catholics were not merely nominal ones, as the Italians were, Cardinal Capalti imperiously commanded silence.[421] Strossmayer had spoken at length on June 2, and with such moderation as to escape even a call to order, yet, it is said, with very great force. On the 3rd, Moriarty, of Kerry, took the side of Purcell, Kenrick, and MacHale, but we have no particulars of his speech.[422] That day Maret was in the desk speaking in the loud and labouring tone of a deaf man, arguing, not only against the convictions and feelings of the majority, but against their personal detestation of himself. He made a point that either the Council was to give infallibility to the Pontiff, in which case the Council must be a higher authority than he, or else the Pontiff was to give to himself an infallibility which he had not previously possessed, in which case he would change the constitution of the Church by his own power alone. Then Cardinal Bilio interrupted, and cried, "The Council does not give anything, nor can it give anything. It gives its suffrage, and the Holy Father decides what he pleases."[423] The representative of all that was left of the once courageous Gallican liberties asked if he might be allowed to proceed, and did so. The minority had a long list of speakers still inscribed. Kenrick was waiting for his turn, and so were Haynald, Dupanloup, and many others; but a fresh surprise was at this point sprung upon them. The Presidents produced a requisition for the close of the general debate, signed by above one hundred and fifty bishops.[424] De Angelis at once called on those who were for the closing of the debate to stand up. He then declared, "A large majority have stood up, and by the power conferred upon us by Our Most Holy Lord (the capitals are official), we close the debate on the general question." The Acta Sanctæ Sedis say that about fifty remained sitting. No wonder that, after hearing sixty-five speakers, the Fathers were weary. Yet, no wonder, on the other hand, that the minority should allege that, while it was perfectly reasonable to close a debate in this manner when the object was that of making temporal laws liable to be unmade, or re-made, a year later, it was neither reasonable nor fair, and above all, it was not agreeable to any precedent, to past professions, or to any ecclesiastical principle, to close a debate upon a dogma while yet there were prelates wanting to bear witness to the tradition of their respective Churches. According to all their theologians, dogma was not to be made by mere opinion, but by evidence of the fact that the opinion in question had been believed from the beginning. Protestants would naturally say that it was time to bury this pretence under any heap; but men whose life had been spent under the illusion of the pretence naturally felt otherwise. They had not seen that when the Church adopted the principle of tradition instead of that of Scripture, the Spouse, while professing only to supplement the word of her Lord, really entered on a course which must lead to setting it aside in favour of her own word, and that when she had adopted the principle of general consent, instead of that of clear apostolical tradition, she had set aside the principle of antiquity for that of a majority amounting to a moral whole, and that now she was only proceeding a step further in substituting the principle of a numerical majority for that of moral unanimity. But one step more remained, and that was not far off. The Spouse who had put aside the authority of her Lord to exalt her own, was to find, not only her authority, but even her consent, formally repudiated before all men by the master whom she had, in the house of her Lord, set up in His place. In that house the talk was evermore of her authority, her wisdom, her infallibility, her glory, her stores of merit and her streams of blessing, and but rarely was her Lord heard of, except as having conferred the regency on her. Now drew nigh the day when the self-asserting Spouse was, before all men whom her loud vauntings had aroused, to receive on her brow such a stigma from her self-chosen Master as has seldom in set terms been affixed to a society by its head. Meantime the blow which had just been dealt seemed fatal to all the hopes of the minority. So once more they dragged their robes down the marble way of St. Peter's with defeat behind them, but this time with annihilation close before, though not till after further strange experiences.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 402: Vitelleschi, p. 158.]
[Footnote 403: Quirinus, p. 532.]
[Footnote 404: Quirinus, p. 533.]
[Footnote 405: Frond, vol. ii.]
[Footnote 406: Documenta ad Illustrandum, ii. 209.]
[Footnote 407: "Meum honorem graviter læserunt."--Documenta ad Illustrandum, i. 189.]
[Footnote 408: Documenta ad Illustrandum, pp. 187-224.]
[Footnote 409: Aliquid humani passum esse.]
[Footnote 410: He showed that Tischendorf read προβἁτια in both cases, and that other editors had read πρὁβατα in both. Of course, in the fifteenth verse, the word "lambs"--ἁρνἱα--is the proper translation.]
[Footnote 411: Acta Sanctæ Sedis. As to MacHale, Kenrick omits what Frond states, that he was of a "very ancient" family.]
[Footnote 412: Documenta, ii. pp. 415-24.]
[Footnote 413: Documenta, i. 209.]
[Footnote 414: Documenta, i. 223.]
[Footnote 415: "Quod si non fecissent nunquam ad libertatis civilis consortium admissi fuissent aut debuissent" (p. 219).]
[Footnote 416: Quirinus, 584.]
[Footnote 417: Vitelleschi, p. 168.]
[Footnote 418: Quirinus, p. 597.]
[Footnote 419: Documenta, i. 215.]
[Footnote 420: Ibid., 215.]
[Footnote 421: Quirinus, p. 661.]
[Footnote 422: His name does not occur in the Acta Sanctæ Sedis for the third.]
[Footnote 423: Quirinus, p. 608.]
[Footnote 424: Acta Sanctæ Sedis. Friedberg, p. 47, says there were two hundred and fifty signatures, but this is evidently a mistake.]