_Rome, Feb. 4._—There is a good deal of interesting matter to report of
the Sessions of the last few weeks. And, first, as to the Council Hall:
notwithstanding the great curtain, it remains a wretched apology for a
Council-chamber, and I must repeat emphatically that such a discussion as,
_e.g._, was possible in St. Paul’s Church, at Frankfort, in 1848, would be
hardly practicable here. Bishops whose voices are feeble and not
penetrating enough, must give up the idea of speaking, and even strong men
among them feel thoroughly exhausted after they have spoken. A French
Bishop, whose speech had produced a great effect, said afterwards of the
hall, “Elle est sourde, muette, et aveugle.” But the Pope persists, on
account of the neighbourhood of the so-called “Confession of St. Peter,”
from which he thinks a force issues to bind the Bishops closer to him, and
fill them with contempt of the world. This influence, however, has been
very little manifested as yet—rather the reverse. There have been many
Opposition speeches, and the bell of the presiding Legate not unfrequently
interrupts them with its shrill dissonance; in the latter Sessions a new
method has been practised of reducing unpleasant speakers to silence—by
scraping with the feet. It is a striking fact that talent, eloquence, and
force of thought are observed to be almost entirely on the side of the
Opposition; very few men of mark or able speakers can be mentioned on the
Infallibilist side. Manning and Mermillod would be good and versatile
speakers, only they are not sufficiently masters of Latin. Deschamps alone
on that side has won great applause as an eloquent speaker, though with
sufficient poverty of thought.
Among the Cardinals, de Angelis, de Luca, Bilio, and Capalti are
considered the four Papal pillars of the Council. Bilio, a Barnabite, and
still a young man, passes in Rome for an eminent theologian, and while the
other Cardinals and Monsignori would hold it a sin to understand German,
he knows two German words, which he constantly repeats, but always with a
shudder, “deutsche Wissenschaft.” He thinks German science something like
the witches’ caldron in Macbeth—full of horrible ingredients.
The first dogmatic _Schema_ has gone back to the Commission on Faith after
a long, many-sided, and severe criticism, and is to be revised and again
laid before the Council as little altered as possible. The revision is
intrusted to three of the most zealous Infallibilists, Martin, Deschamps,
and Pie, with the indispensable Jesuits, Schrader and Franzelin. The
Bishops are then simply to accept it without discussion. It is not to be
discussed, first, because there can be no discussion in the Hall;
secondly, because this wretched patchwork does not bear discussion;
thirdly, because there would be no coming to an end this way; fourthly,
and chiefly, because an excellent precedent will be created, which may be
made a rule for the forthcoming _Schemata_, and will open the prospect of
carrying through matters far more important and more valuable for the
_Curia_.
If once the first _Schema_ were voted without discussion, by the help of
the devoted majority of 400, though against the opposition of many
Bishops, the same method might be pursued with subsequent _Schemata_, and
thus the most important of all, on the Church and the Pope, could be
carried, which contains the most exorbitant assertions of Papal
omnipotence, and implies Papal Infallibility, which is introduced by a
side-wind. By this means the maxim observed at former Councils, and even
at Trent, that decisions can only be settled by a unanimous vote, would be
happily got rid of, and the resistance of the Opposition broken or
rendered useless. Such a victory of the curialistic party would exceed all
other successes in importance and practical value. The Council is
accordingly come to a momentous crisis. Father Theiner, the Prefect of the
Papal Archives, has had a part of the first volume of his _Acts of the
Council of Trent_ printed. We find there a _modus procedendi_, which
secures to the Fathers of the Council much more freedom and action than
the present regulations, of which Italian Prelates say themselves that
they leave no freedom, and only allow a sham Council. Theiner has been
altogether forbidden, by the management of the Jesuits, to publish his
work, and has received the most strict commands not to show the part
already printed to any Bishop.
The introduction of the second _Schema_, on Discipline, gave occasion to
many earnest and important speeches. The Germans at first had to blush for
one of their number, Martin of Paderborn, who made a speech overflowing
with the most unqualified devotion to the will of the supreme master, the
authorship of which was attributed to his Jesuit domestic chaplain, Father
Roh. But the speech of Archbishop Melchers of Cologne made all the more
favourable impression. He spoke, with quiet dignity and freedom, of the
perversity and shamefulness of the meddling Roman domination, the system
of dispensations, and the unmeasured centralization. Great was the
astonishment of the assembly; Cardinal Capalti went on urging, with
impatient look and sign, on de Luca, the President for the day, to stop
the German Archbishop. At last, when he had nearly finished, de Luca
interrupted him, and said he must hand in his proposals to the Commission.
Melchers did not let himself be put down; he replied that he had done that
long ago, and had received no answer, and observed that he spoke in the
name of more than a million German Catholics. And then he quietly went on
with his speech. The words of Archbishop Haynald cut deeper still; he is
the best speaker in the Council after Strossmayer, and is also subtle and
circumspect, so that the Legate, who was visibly anxious to interrupt him,
could not discover the right moment for putting his bell in motion.
As little did they dare to interrupt Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, when he
ascended the tribune and began as follows:—“We are told we are not to make
long speeches, but I have a great deal to say. We are told again not to
repeat what has been said by others, but at the same time we are kept shut
up in this Hall, where for the most part we cannot understand one another;
we are not allowed to examine the stenographic reports of our speeches,
and the only answer made to our representations is always the same—‘The
Pope wills it.’ I don’t know therefore what has been said by the speakers
who have preceded me.” He then went on to speak of the rights of the
Bishops, their degradation by the Roman centralizing system, “the caves,
wherein the Roman doctors have buried themselves from the light of day,”
etc. He spoke in admirable style, and was listened to with rapt attention,
though at every word his auditors expected an interruption from the
Legate; but it never came. Darboy himself said afterwards that he had done
like Condé, and flung his marshal’s staff into the ranks of the enemy.
On January 22, Dupanloup made a speech in the same sense, which has
already been reported to you, and took occasion to mention those courtiers
who have learnt never to tell the truth to the Pope. Courtiers of this
sort from various nations sat and stood in crowds around him. He might
have added what was said to the Pope—vainly, of course—300 years ago, in a
work composed by his order, and is just as true now as then: that the
dream of omnipotence and infallibility, so studiously produced and
cherished in his soul by flatterers, is the main cause, next to the
avarice of the _Curia_, of the decline and corruptions of the Church.
Meanwhile it is truly wonderful that so much could be said at all; it was
felt to be a moral discomfiture or capitulation of the _Curia_ in its
state of siege. Cardinal Schwarzenberg, and after him the Primate of
Hungary, had certainly struck the note which still rang on, but the
Legates had not dared to silence them with the bell, and so missed the
opportunity of _principiis obsta_. Schwarzenberg had already created a
great sensation by recommending the periodical recurrence of Councils,
afterwards taken up by Strossmayer, and then falling back on the decree of
Constance (for decennial Councils), which is an abomination at Rome. No
doubt they would have no objection in Rome to Councils every ten or twenty
years, suitably modernized, manipulated, and obedient to every wink, like
the present majority; but the fatal Opposition embitters this enjoyment,
and when once the great work is accomplished, and Infallibility
proclaimed, it will be found at Rome that all this machinery is not worth
its pay, “que le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle;” for it costs too much
money to entertain 300 _Placet_-saying Bishops, to make it worth while
often to reproduce the drama, or rather the pantomine.
Other Prelates, whom the _Curia_ reckons among the _Dî minores gentium_,
have no indulgence shown them. When an American Bishop spoke of the
corruptions and gross falsehoods in the Roman Breviary, and of the
fabulous interpolations in the works of some Fathers, _e.g._, St.
Augustine, inserted there, Capalti rang his bell violently—the Fathers
were not to be so spoken of. But the American did not let himself be
disturbed, and proceeded at once to quote the Breviary lections from St.
Gregory. He was again called to order, and told he must change the subject
or leave the tribune.
In this second _Schema_, compiled by Jacobini, the second Secretary of the
Council, the gross ignorance of the author is glaringly exposed. With the
usual self-sufficiency of Rome, and with the aim of making the Bishops
still more dependent on the _Curia_ than before, the special conditions of
whole countries had been ignored. Thus every Bishop, who wished to leave
his diocese, was first to get the Pope’s permission from Rome, and the
Archbishops were to delate all who acted otherwise at Rome. Simor observed
sharply on that, “This then is the position Rome assigns to Metropolitans,
after robbing them of all their ancient rights: to be the accusers of
their conprovincial Bishops.” Another declared roundly that, if his
physician sent him to a watering-place, he should not think of asking
leave from Rome. Jacobini would not even recognise the right of Bishops to
attend the political assemblies of their countries, of which they are
members by the Constitution, because, as the _Schema_ words it, “assembleæ
generales” no longer exist in the sense allowed by Urban VIII. The Pope
was further to have the right henceforth of giving away the benefices in
the Bishop’s gift during the vacancy of the See, which would bring in a
large increase of taxes for the _Curia_, and draw a number of candidates
to Rome again, as in the palmy days before the Reformation. In Germany we
should get back the class of so-called _Curtisanen_,(42) who notoriously
did so much to promote the Protestant division. The Bishops inflicted many
a blow on the abuse of expensive dispensations to be elaborated at Rome
from artificially derived impediments of marriage (as of cousins,
godfathers, and the like) before the Legate’s bell could stop them. Then a
Hungarian Bishop related, how it often happens that a poor woman comes
weeping to the Bishop, to beg him to save her marriage and her very
existence by a dispensation. But the Bishop must let the poor woman be
ruined, for not he but the Pope only can dispense, and “mulier non habet
pecunias—pecunias.” The Court Prelates said afterwards that this Hungarian
had made himself very disagreeable with his “mulier non habet pecunias.”
The following occurrence was comic:—You know in what repute the supple and
complaisant Fessler, Bishop of St. Pölten, is held here, the first herald
for retailing the new dogma to the world. Not long ago, Charbonnel, the
Capuchin Bishop of Sozopolis, placed himself near him, and began to speak
of clerical place-hunting, the eagerness for distinctions and promotions
among Bishops, and the crooked ways they often take to obtain them, and
pointed so unmistakeably by look and gesticulation at his neighbour, the
Secretary, that on going out Fessler said it was high time to put an end
to the Council, which was every day getting more disagreeable. The
question was then started by German and Hungarian Bishops whether it would
not be better, as Martin thought, to substitute lay-brothers for
clergymen’s housekeepers, or whether the restoration of “the common
life”—the Chrodogang institute—of course in a very modified form, should
be attempted. They overlooked the fact that such matters cannot be
regulated by a Council, but must be arranged according to the disposition
and circumstances of the clergy in the various dioceses. Haynald, Meignan,
Bishop of Châlons, and the Chaldean Patriarch, insisted that mere school
questions should not be decided by the Council without any necessity, and
that some freedom of movement must be left to Science. But the word
freedom has nowhere so ill a sound as at Rome. Only one kind of freedom
can be spoken of here—the freedom of the Church; and, in their favourite
and accustomed manner of speech, by the Church is intended the Pope, and
by freedom domination over the State, according to the Decretals. And to
talk of freedom of Science! The Council, if it entertained such views,
would be forgetting altogether that it was only called together for two
purposes—to increase the plenary power of the Pope, and to aggrandize the
Jesuits. But the Order has, like the Paris labourer of 1848, “le droit du
travail;” it is not content to exist only, but must work—of course in its
own way,—and for this it requires two things: first, new dogmas; and
secondly, plenty of condemnations and anathemas. The business of the
Council is to provide both.
The Cardinals, with the exception of Rauscher, Schwarzenberg, and Mathieu,
have taken no part in the speaking, nor have the Generals of Orders and
Abbots. Only when the need for a reform of the Cardinals themselves was
spoken of, Cardinal di Pietro rose, who is regarded as the most
liberal-minded of the Italians in the Sacred College, to show that such a
reform could only be a financial one, _i.e._, that the Cardinals required
larger incomes. What the Bishops meant was something very different, viz.,
a better and fuller representation of different nations in the _Curia_,
and a limitation of the Italian monopoly. But scattered observations of
that kind could elicit no sort of real apprehension in the minds of the
Italians, who are firmly seated in the saddle; so secure do they feel in
their possession of a dominion many centuries old, and so very odd do the
claims of other nations appear to them. In this point the present Romans
or Latins are of the same mind as the old Romans of the sinking Republic,
who sacrificed 600,000 men in the Confederate war rather than allow equal
political rights to their Italian allies.
The great blow, which brings matters near a decision, has now been just
struck, and all that the Jesuit and anti-German party longed for, and the
French and Germans feared, is now before our eyes, the third _Schema_, “on
the Church and the Pope,” has been distributed, and leaves hardly anything
to be desired in point of clearness and plain speaking. These transparent
decrees and anathemas may be thus summed up: “The Christian world consists
simply of masters and slaves; the masters are the Italians, the Pope and
his Court, and the slaves are all Bishops (including the Italians
themselves), all priests, and all the laity.”
This third _Schema_, which was distributed to the Bishops on January 21,
is a lengthy document of 213 pages, entitled _De Ecclesiâ_, and it is the
one the _Curia_ is chiefly bent on getting received. It is said to be the
work of a red-hot Infallibilist, Gay, Vicar-General of the Infallibilist
Bishop Pie of Poitiers, and is so drawn up that by a slight addition the
Infallibility of the Pope, which it already leads up to and implies, can
be inserted in express form very easily, and as the necessary logical
supplement; and thus the internal harmony of this important document, with
its appended anathemas, would be completely secured. Three main ideas run
through the _Schema_, and are formulated into dogmatic decrees guarded
with anathemas: _First_, to the Pope belongs absolute dominion over the
whole Church, whether dispersed or assembled in Council; _secondly_, the
Pope’s temporal sovereignty over a portion of the Peninsula must be
maintained as pertaining to dogma; _thirdly_, Church and State are
immutably connected, but in the sense that the Church’s laws always hold
good before and against the civil law; and therefore every Papal ordinance
that is opposed to the Constitution and law of the land binds the
faithful, under mortal sin, to disobedience to the Constitution and law of
their country.