_Rome, Feb. 5._—To supplement and partly to verify the news in my last
letter, I will now tell you some facts that came to light yesterday and
the day before.
The Opposition Addresses were presented to the Pope on January 26,
subscribed by forty-six Germans and Hungarians, thirty French, and twenty
Italian Bishops, together with some of the North American Bishops, the
Portuguese, and certain others. Cardinal Barnabo had employed all
available means of intimidation to prevent the Orientals from signing, and
hence the number of signatures was somewhat below what had been expected.
Of the Germans, Martin, Senestrey, Stahl and Leonrod had signed the
Infallibilist Address, which, as was only afterwards discovered, has not
been presented, because—it was countermanded. It is not, as I first
informed you, composed by the Episcopal Committee, but by the Jesuits, and
emanates from the bureau of the _Civiltà_; the abiding marvel is that 400
Bishops could be induced to sign such a document without even verifying a
single one of the pretended facts cited in it. That an Infallibilist
should subscribe in blind confidence, and without examination, a document
coming from the Pope himself, is natural; but that 400 pastors of the
Church, assembled for deciding and therefore for examining ecclesiastical
questions, should endorse on faith the composition of a nameless Jesuit,
is an occurrence the Order may pride itself on.
A Petition has been set on foot by the Jesuits, and hawked about with the
Pope’s approval, proposing that the bodily Assumption of the Mother of the
Lord should be made an article of faith, and all who henceforth doubt of
it, or point to the notorious origin of the notion from apocryphal
writings, be anathematized. This anathema would inevitably fall on every
one who is acquainted with Church history and patristic literature. This
passionate delight in anathemas, curses and refusals of absolution has
been powerfully aroused, as you may see from the canons which reproduce
the Syllabus and are added to the third _Schema_. The augurs of the Gesù
do not indeed smile, but simper, when they meet each other, for they know
that the rich harvest from these seeds will drop into the bosom of their
Order. Here again it is shown plainly that the interests of the Bishops
and of the Jesuits are sharply opposed.
That Bull, with its many curses and cases reserved to the Pope, which
fills the Jesuits with hope and joy (though not they but the Dominicans of
the Inquisition are its authors), is for the Bishops a source of
discouragement and despair, so that the Bishop of Trent is said to have
lately observed that he would rather resign his See than publish it. It is
now asserted that the Pope has again suspended it, partly on account of
remonstrances of the French Government, partly to put the Bishops in
better humour for the Infallibilist definition.
The Petition for the new Marian dogma had 300 signatures on January 31. In
managing such affairs the Jesuits are unrivalled, for the Order is like a
great actor, such as Garrick, _e.g._, whose every limb from top to toe
moves, speaks, and conspires to express the same idea. Then they have an
Infallibilist Petition from the East, the only one known to have been got
up; that is to say, they made the Maronite boys and youths of their
educational establishment sign the Petition they had drawn up.
As I now hear, the majority, on January 25, resolved to let their Address
and Petition drop, if the minority will accept Spalding’s proposed
addition to the third _Schema_. They are indeed very magnanimous, for that
addition, as was observed just now, goes much further and stands to the
Address somewhat as Dido’s ox-hide cut up into thongs to the hide before
it was cut: it will embrace whole countries and cities. Spalding desires
too to have the Index placed completely under the shield of Papal
Infallibility, and therefore the opinion that the Pope can have made any
mistake about the sense of a book is to be condemned. Next day, the
Petition of the minority, who knew nothing of the decision of the other
party, was presented to the Pope and rejected by him. The Infallibilists
appear to have spread the report that their Address had been actually
given in simply for the purpose of catching their opponents in a trap.
On Sunday, January 23, the Commission named by the Pope for examining
motions proposed held its first sitting, under the presidency of Cardinal
Patrizzi and not of the Pope himself, as was thought—seven weeks after the
Council met and when a number of motions had long been awaiting its
scrutiny. This delay had evidently been designed. It has now been resolved
to arrange and examine proposals, not according to subjects but nations,
so that the proposals of the French, Germans, etc., will be separately
discussed and decided upon.
Cardinal Rauscher has written, or got written, a treatise on the
Infallibility question in German, which is now being translated into
Latin, and which does not merely oppose the dogma as inopportune, but
attacks the whole principle and, as I am assured, on fundamental grounds.
But it cannot be printed here, where the Roman censorship is constantly
growing stricter. It will be printed in Vienna, and copies will then have
to be sent here under cover to the Austrian Embassy. To the
representations of the German and French Bishops against the
oppressiveness and injustice to the minority of the order of business, the
Pope has not seen fit to make any reply. _Væ victis!_ Woe to them who do
not belong to the faithful and devoted majority! This is what resounds
here, morning, noon and night. Meanwhile the Papal Committee of the
Council has devised a new means for paralysing the minority, and cutting
short discussions which might easily become inconvenient. It is directed
that all objections or proposals for modifications of the _Schemata_ are
first to be handed over in writing to the Presidents and referred by them
to the Commission _de Fide_, which rejects or admits them at its pleasure.
If the authors of the proposals appeal against the decision of the
Commission, the whole Council decides, of course by simple majority of
votes. If this arrangement were really to be introduced, the
minority—_i.e._, the German and French Bishops—would be deprived of all
possibility of exerting any influence on the composition of the decrees or
warding off any decree they considered injurious; they would always be
outvoted, and the Council would more and more take the form of a mere
machine for outvoting them. The Bishops would soon learn to spare
themselves the useless trouble of proposing changes, and a much closer
approach would be effected to the great object of making new articles of
faith and decrees by a mere majority of votes. The only question is what
the French and Germans intend to put up with from the Italians and
Spaniards, for it is clear that here again the question of nationalities
turns up in the background, and the Brennus sword of the Southern and
Latin majority is always ready to be thrown into the scale.