_Rome, Dec. 23, 1869._—The Council is suspended for a while, for want of
an available place of meeting, or is occupied only in studying the
_Schemata_ that have been distributed at home, and deliberating in
different sections. The German Bishops have resolved to address a memorial
to the Pope, protesting against being put into a strait-waistcoat by the
regulations for the order of business, and claiming the right of proposing
motions freely. They think it intolerable that every proposal, wish, or
motion should have first to be examined, revised, and mutilated or changed
at their pleasure by two Commissions, before it can even come on for
discussion. And how are these two Commissions composed? Of course, the
eight German Bishops who have already separated themselves from their
countrymen, and prefer to associate with Spaniards and South Americans,
hold aloof from this proceeding too. If I am correctly informed, a similar
memorial has been handed in from the French Bishops; it was, at least,
being circulated for signature during the last few days.
You will have received, or found in the French and English papers, the
Bull of Excommunications I mentioned in my last. As I said before, it is a
re-issue of the Bull _In Cænâ Domini_. Certain excommunications nobody
paid any attention to are dropped out, as, _e.g._, of sovereigns and
governments who levy taxes without permission of the Pope. But new
censures of wide application have come into their place. In reading the
Bull, one feels as if one had got into the thick of a tempest, so fierce
and frequent are the lightning-flashes of the Vatican ban, darting and
burning in all directions. If they were to be treated seriously, there
would not be many houses in the cities of Europe that would not be struck.
The Bishops are hit hard; one unpleasant surprise follows on another.
While they are considering how to secure a minimum of freedom in the
Council, they are suddenly overwhelmed with a hailstorm of
excommunications, many of which are directly aimed at themselves, but all
of which are to be administered and executed by them and their clergy.
They are summoned to Rome, and hardly have they got there when this Bull
of anathemas, drawn up without their knowledge or participation, and which
thrusts the souls intrusted to them by thousands out of the Church, is
sent to them; and the whole burden of it, with all its endless
consequences and complications, is laid on their shoulders. They seem
intended to drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs. The only persons
pleased with the Bull, as far as I can see, are the Jesuits, who are in
the very best spirits here in Rome, and see both present and future in the
most rosy hues. The view of the pious Bishops is simple and unanimous: the
more excommunications, so many more reserved cases and perplexed and
tormented consciences. But the confessionals of the Jesuits will be doubly
thronged, who are furnished with all sorts of plenary powers of
absolution, and are thus made indispensable, and placed in a very superior
position to the secular clergy. Moreover, the Bishops are deprived of the
power of absolving from these censures. So each of these multiplied
excommunications is worth its weight in gold to the Order, and helps to
build Colleges and Professed Houses.
The Bull containing directions in the event of the Pope’s death occurring
during the Council was not issued by Pius IX. from any real anxiety to
provide for such an occurrence,—for he enjoys the best health, and in all
probability will falsify the old proverb, “Non numerabis annos Petri.”(23)
No one really supposed the Council would claim the right of electing in
Conclave, as occurred once under totally different circumstances, after
the deposition of a Pope (John XXIII.) at Constance. The real point of the
document lies in the declaration that the Council is to be at once
dissolved on the Pope’s death, as a corpse from which the soul has
departed. And this is a decisive intimation of the relations not only of
the dead but of the living Pope to the Council. The Bull might be summed
up in the words, “Without me you are nothing, and against me and my will
you can do nothing.”
The opposition of German and French Bishops to the new dogma was more or
less anticipated here; what was not expected was that the Orientals,
numbering about sixty, and the North American Bishops, would pronounce
against it. The former declare openly that no surer means could be found
to throw back their Churches into schism, and place them under the holy
Synod in St. Petersburg or the Patriarch in Stamboul. The Americans ask
how they are to live under the free Constitutions of their Republic, and
maintain their position of equality with their (Protestant)
fellow-citizens, after committing themselves to the principles attested by
Papal Infallibility, such as religious persecution and the coercive power
of the Church, the claim of Catholicism to exclusive mastery in the State,
the Pope’s right to dispense from oaths, the subjection of the civil power
to his supreme dominion, etc. The inevitable result would be that
Catholics would be looked upon and treated as pariahs in the United
States, that all religious parties would be banded together against them
as common enemies, and would endeavour, as far as possible, to exclude
them from public offices. One of the American Bishops lately said, “Nobody
should be elected Pope who has not lived three years in the United States,
and thus learnt to comprehend what is possible at this day in a freely
governed Commonwealth.”
But even in the apparently compact and admirably organized mass of the 500
Infallibilists, softly whispered doubts are beginning to be heard here and
there. Before the eyes of some of these devoted Prelates hovers a pale and
warning ghost, called exclusion of the clergy and of Catholic instruction
from the public schools. It would indeed be impossible to put more
effective weapons into the hands of the powerful and increasing party who
are aiming at this, than by giving its due prominence henceforth in all
Catechisms to the supreme article of faith of Papal Infallibility, with
some of its consequences expressed, and others left to be orally supplied
by the teacher, so that boys and girls would be trained in full knowledge
of the glaring contradiction between religion and the order of the State,
the Church and the Constitution of their country.(24) A Belgian layman
here assured me yesterday that the result of the new dogma in his country
would be a powerful movement against the position of the clergy in the
primary schools; the gymnasia and middle schools they have lost already.
One of the Belgian Bishops even is said to begin to be troubled with these
apprehensions. And now a cry of distress is rising from England. The
National Education League has published its programme for a system of
compulsory education of the people, excluding all denominational teaching,
and only allowing the Bible for religious reading. The English Bishops now
in Rome, who are fanatical for the new dogma, may ask themselves if on
their return home they could make a more acceptable present to the
Committee of this already very powerful League than by issuing a corrected
Catechism, enriched with the new article of faith. A penny edition of it
would bring in hundreds of thousands of members to the League, and
admirably further the design it now openly proclaims of “absorbing in a
friendly way” the schools already existing.