_Rome, Jan. 8, 1870._—One month is now gone by without any result, or, as
many here say, simply wasted. The first real Session, on January 6, went
off without any single decree being published. It has produced a very
painful impression generally, that, for the obvious purpose of something
to do, the unmeaning ceremony has been adopted of swearing to the
profession of faith which every Prelate had already sworn to at his
ordination and at other times. The question was inevitably forced on men’s
minds whether this profusion of superfluous swearings, in an assembly of
men on whose orthodoxy no shadow of suspicion had been cast, was at all
fitting or reconcilable with the Scriptural prohibition of needless oaths.
But the Session had been announced, and the Opposition Bishops, contrary
to expectation, had found a great deal to censure in the _Schema_ in
general and in detail, so that in four General Congregations nothing had
been effected. The simplest plan would have been to defer the Session, and
anywhere else that course would have been followed. But in Rome? That
would have been a _de facto_ confession of having made a mistake, and it
is here a first principle that the _Curia_ is always right. So they had
747 oaths taken, and thus the Solemn Session was held.
It is exceedingly convenient to have to deal with a majority of 600
Prelates, who are simply your creatures, obedient to every hint, and
admirably disciplined. Three hundred of them are still further bound to
Pius IX. by a special tie, for they are indebted to him, as the _Civiltà_
of January 1 reminded them, for both food and lodging, “sono da lui
alloggiati e sostentati e assistiti in tutto il bisognevole alla vita.”
Nor does that journal fail to point to the extreme poverty of many of the
Bishops or Vicars-Apostolic, drawn hither from Asia, Africa, and
Australia; even among the European Bishops it calls many “poverissimi.”
Who has paid their travelling expenses, it says not. The _Civiltà_ may be
easy; none of them will swell the ranks of the Opposition, or attack the
_Schema_, or refuse their votes and acclamations to the infallibility of
their benefactor. And then the _Civiltà_ has another powerful factor to
rely upon; it says, and confirms what it says by the words used by the
Pope at the Centenary, June 27, 1867, that from the tomb of St. Peter
issues a secret force, which inspires the Bishops with a bold and
enterprising spirit and great-hearted decisions. If I rightly understand
the _Civiltà_, it means that for many Bishops it is a risk, and requires a
lofty courage, to vote for Papal Infallibility here in Rome, while the
clergy and laity of their own dioceses, excepting a few old women of
either sex, never hitherto knew, or wished to know, anything of this
Infallibility, and the prevalent belief has always been that the business
of Bishops at a Council was only to bear witness to the faith and
tradition of their Churches, not to construct new dogmas strange to the
minds of their flocks. “Nous avons changé tout cela,” thinks the Roman
journal, and therefore is the Council held in St. Peter’s, and not in the
Lateran, that the “secret force” may take full effect. Certainly there is
no lack of secret forces here, They are in full activity; there is an
address being hawked about, praying the Pope to take up the Infallibility
question at once, and put the Council in a position to vote upon it. This
time the movement originated with two German Bishops, Martin of Paderborn
and Senestrey of Regensburg. Slender causes and great effects! When the
pond is full, a couple of moles can produce a flood by working their way
through the dam. Both of these men have become perceptibly impatient at
the obstinate and rebellious disposition of their German and Austrian
colleagues, and are seeking to hasten the day, when, with the new dogma in
their hands, they may triumph as willing believers over the forced belief
of their brethren, only converted at the last moment. The address seems to
have flashed suddenly upon the world, for—so said Mermillod and the rest
of the initiated—its very existence was hardly known of; and it had 500
signatures. It was not shown to Bishops of notoriously anti-Infallibilist
sentiments, but no labour is spared with the doubtful, and others who have
not yet declared themselves, so that it is quite possible 600 signatures
may be scraped together. Papal Infallibility is here limited to cases
where the Pope addresses his dogmatic decision to the whole Catholic
Church.(28) That was Bellarmine’s view, and it would certainly offer many
advantages; for all difficulties and objections drawn from the first
twelve centuries of Church history would be cut off at a stroke, as it is
notorious that no Pope during that entire period addressed any decree on
matters of faith to the whole Church. The idea never occurred even to a
Gregory VII. or Alexander III. or Innocent III. The two last only issued
decrees at the head and in the name of General Councils. Boniface VIII.,
in 1302, was the first who in the title addressed his Bull _Unam Sanctam_
to the whole Christian world. This Bull therefore, which makes the Pope
king of kings and sole lord in political as in religious matters, would
indeed be covered with the shield of Infallibility, and we should have a
firm and immoveable foundation for the policy and civil law both of the
present and the future. At the same time the various hypotheses and
attempted denials rendered necessary by the case of Pope Honorious would
be got rid of at one blow. Only this little difficulty would remain: how
it came to pass that the Popes, who only needed to prefix the word “Orbi,”
or “Ecclesiæ Catholicæ,” to their decrees, in order to make them
infallible and unassailable, so persistently despised this simple means,
and thereby tolerated or produced so much uncertainty in the world? All
their decrees before 1302, and most of them since, are addressed to
particular individuals or corporations, and therefore fallible.
The question now is, whether the minority of some 200 Prelates have spirit
and harmony enough for a counter-address. On this thread the fate of the
Catholic Church seems to hang. Pius IX. says, “As to Infallibility, I
believed it as plain Abbé Mastai, and now, as Pope Mastai, I _feel_
it.”(29) He could therefore give us the best information, if he “feels”
his infallibility, as to whether he only feels it when he signs a decree
addressed to the whole Church, or also whenever his dogmatic anathemas, of
which we possess such an abundance, are addressed to a single Bishop or
national Church only. Meanwhile, if that large section of the
Infallibilists who are fanatical get the upper hand, no distinctions will
be admitted; the matter will be settled straight off by acclamation, and
the Pope will be simply told, “Thou alone art always inspired by the Holy
Ghost, whether speaking to all, to many, or to one, and every word of
thine is for us the command of God.” Others naturally opine that the
matter cannot be so easily arranged, but that the question must be taken
up in good earnest and sifted to the bottom, that it may be demonstrated
to the whole world that Infallibility admits of historical illustration.
In a conversation which took place to-day between two leading men of the
opposite parties, a Belgian and a Frenchman, the former said, “Je veux que
l’on discute à fond tous les textes et tous les faits.” The Frenchman
answered, “Je souffre de penser que le Saint Siége va être discuté et
disséqué de la sorte!” That is, in truth, a serious anxiety. To begin
with, no discussion among the Fathers can be dreamt of so long as the
Council Hall in St. Peter’s is kept to, for the speeches made there
already for the most part were not understood at all, or only by very few.
What is heard is waves of sound, not words and sentences. But even if at
last a room better suited for human voices and ears is found, the question
of Infallibility would never be submitted to a regular and really free
discussion. How would the Romance majority of Spaniards and Italians, who
are the slaves of the _Curia_ but the masters of the Council, and whose
whole intellectual outfit is based on the scholasticism of the
seminaries—how would they receive it, if an audacious German or Frenchman
were to throw the light of history and criticism on the rambling
Infallibilist evidences of, _e.g._, a Perrone? What scenes should we
witness! The offenders would be reduced to silence, not only by the
throats but the feet of the majority.(30) Either the discussion will be
broken off, when it is begun, or it will never be allowed to begin. And
therefore so many favour the plan of acclamation; and it is related how
Archbishop Darboy assured the Cardinal de Luca that such an attempt would
be followed by the immediate departure and protest of a number of
Bishops.(31)