The Pastoral which the Bishops assembled at Fulda ordered to be read in
all the Churches under their jurisdiction is an important document. It
reflects the excited and abnormal state of feeling prevalent among
Catholics, since the Jesuits, and some Prelates allied with them, have
announced the design of using the Council for proclaiming new dogmas,
especially that of Papal Infallibility. “Even among loyal and zealous
members of the Church,” say the Bishops, “anxieties calculated to weaken
confidence are being excited.” The object and main substance of their
Pastoral is directed to allaying those anxieties, and assuring German
Catholics that their Bishops at least will not assent to the projected
dogmas. They have solemnly pledged their word, before the whole nation,
that they will avouch at the Council the three following
principles—_first_, “That the Council can establish no new dogmas, or any
others than are written by faith and conscience on all your (German
Catholics’) hearts;” _secondly_, “That a General Council never will or can
proclaim a new doctrine not contained in Holy Scripture or Apostolic
Tradition;” _thirdly_, That only “the old and original truth will be set
in clearer light.”
This indeed is very re-assuring. The Jesuits have proclaimed that the
bodily Assumption of the Holy Virgin and the Infallibility of the Pope are
to be made dogmas at the Council. The Bishops are aware that the two
Jesuit organs, the _Civiltà_, and _Rheinischen Stimmen_, from the
Monastery of Laach, as well as the Archbishop of Mechlin (Deschamps), and
Bishop Plantier of Nîmes, have put forward the erection of Papal
Infallibility into a dogma of the Universal Church. Moreover, the assembly
at Fulda knew well enough that the preliminary materials for this
definition were already prepared at Rome. Now nobody will seriously
maintain that these two opinions are written by faith and conscience on
the heart of every Catholic, or are doctrines contained in Scripture and
Tradition, and ancient and original truths. The Pastoral therefore
contains a promise, worded with all the distinctness that could be
desired, that, so far as it depends on the votes of the German Bishops,
the yoke of the new articles of faith shall not be laid on the German
nation.
The German Bishops cannot of course pledge themselves beforehand for the
whole Council, for they will have at most only about 25 votes at their
disposal—a small number in an assembly of 400 or 500 bishops. But if these
25 votes, which represent nearly eighteen million Catholics, and the whole
of a great nation, remain united and firm, they are a guarantee that the
new dogmas will not be decreed. For it is not majorities or minorities
that decide on dogmas, but the Church requires the actual or approximate
unanimity of the whole assembly. And it may be assumed as probable that
the Austrian Bishops will not separate themselves from their German
colleagues in these weighty questions, except, of course, the Bishop of
St. Pölten, who already openly declares himself for the principal new
dogma, and will therefore no doubt vote for it. It may, moreover, be
confidently asserted that a considerable portion of the French Bishops
will unite with the German Opposition against the new dogmas. And an
Opposition so numerous and so compact will make it impossible for the
Latin Prelates to carry through their pet doctrines, powerful as they may
appear, if their votes are counted and not weighed.
From another point of view, too, the Pastoral is noteworthy and
gratifying. It markedly discountenances that pessimism which for some
thirty years past has characterized Papal documents, and which gave
occasion to the observation that Pius IX. and his predecessor whine
whenever they talk Latin. Occurrences in Italy, Spain, and Germany, and
the history of the Austrian Concordat, with many other things, have led
most of the clerical organs to take a gloomy view of the state of the
world; and we frequently find them maintaining that a universal overthrow
of the whole order of society in the Christian world, a universal deluge,
is inevitable, but that the ship of the Church, the one asylum of safety,
will float, like the ark, upon the waves, and then will begin a new order
of things, and new period of history corresponding to the ultramontane
ideal. In sharp antithesis to these gloomy pictures and predictions, the
Bishops declare, _first_, that throughout the world the kingdom of God
increases with fresh vigour, and brings forth fruit; _secondly_, that all
attacks on the Church, and sufferings brought upon her, work for her good;
and _thirdly_, that religious and ecclesiastical life is strengthened.
Such a view as this is better calculated to arouse and sustain attachment
to the Church and confidence in her indestructible powers of life and
providential guidance than the opposite view, which exhibits to Catholics
everywhere nothing but the humiliation of their Church and the triumph of
her enemies.