_Rome, Feb. 6._—The report of the dissolution or prorogation of the
Council gains in strength. Manning has found it important enough to have
it contradicted in his journal, the _Tablet_. He writes, or makes somebody
write, “The Holy Father is full of strength and confidence, and has no
intention of proroguing the Council, as his enemies say.” As far as the
Pope is concerned, I hold the statement to be true. Pius is still
absolutely confident of success and firmly convinced of two
things—_first_, of his divine, legitimate and irresistible fulness of
power, which requires that a conspicuous example, memorable for all future
ages, shall be made of the Bishops who oppose him; _secondly_, of the
special protecting grace and guidance accorded to the Council by the Holy
Virgin, on whose benevolence he notoriously maintains that he has very
special claims. He has issued an Indulgence for the whole Church, which
gives us some insight into his connection of ideas and religious views. In
the Bull of December 1869, he says that the Dominican General, Jandel, has
represented to him that the new method of prayer, consisting of 150
repetitions of the “Hail, Mary,” was first introduced at the time the
grand crusade against the Albigenses was organized. But our own age is
infected with so many monstrous errors that this new method of prayer
should be employed now also, in order that under the mighty protection of
the Mother of God the Council may destroy these monsters. Whoever,
therefore, after confession and communion, recites the Rosary daily for a
week, for the Pope’s intention and for the happy termination of the
Council, may gain a plenary indulgence of all his sins, applicable also to
the dead. The Pope adds that even when a child, and far more as Pope, he
has always placed his whole confidence in the Mother of God, and that he
firmly believes it to be given to her alone by God to destroy all heresies
throughout the world. How this special power of the Holy Virgin consists
with the fact that many heresies have now lasted quietly for fourteen
centuries, it would be interesting to know. The rest the reader may find
himself in the German Pastorals.
Pius has even had his naïve but robust belief in his own heavenly
illumination and vocation to proclaim new doctrines sensibly embodied in a
picture. In a chamber beyond the Raphael Gallery there is a picture
painted by his order; he stands in glorified attitude on a throne
proclaiming his favourite dogma of the Immaculate Conception, while the
Divine Trinity and the Holy Virgin look down from heaven well pleased upon
him, and from the Cross, borne in the arms of an angel, flashes a bright
ray on his countenance. Thus Pius stands in a special mystical relation to
Mary; she guides and inspires the Council through him, and he in turn will
proclaim, with its assent, the decrees she has inspired and which will
destroy the monstrous errors of the present day, or will at least give
them a fatal blow. Unfortunately, not one single decree has yet been
brought out after exactly two months, and all the heresies continue just
as strong as before the Council met. And yet the pregnant and successful
Councils of the ancient Church did not require a longer time for their
decisions; the Council of Nice was finished in two months, the Council of
Chalcedon in six weeks. Certainly it was not then supposed that Mary had
first to give the Pope, and then he to give the Council, the weapons for
destroying heresies: they were content to rely on the Paraclete promised
by Christ.
Meanwhile the present assembly has nothing in common with those ancient
Synods, except in being composed of persons called Bishops. But our
Bishops are unlike those of the ancient Church, for they have to yield up
to the _Curia_ three-fourths of the rights possessed by their
predecessors, and it would be simply ridiculous to liken the state of
tutelage and restraint they are now placed under by the _Curia_ to the
free and independent attitude of the fifth-century Councils. The more
free-spoken among them have just addressed, on 2d February, another
Petition to the Pope, requesting that the so-called Council Hall in St.
Peter’s may be exchanged for a more suitable chamber; for now that serious
discussions on the dogmas and decrees are to begin—and the third _Schema_
will be met with strong and persevering opposition in many of its
articles—the present arrangement becomes still more intolerable than
before. Any regular discussion is simply impossible in the present Council
Hall; there is no doubt of that. “That is just right,” say the Papal
officials; “we neither desire nor need discussion, but simply that the
propositions should be voted.” “But this is an unheard-of thing, against
all conciliar usage and all natural right,” reply the Bishops. Archbishop
Darboy said, “We are called on to anathematize doctrines and persons; to
pass sentences of spiritual death. But would any jury in the world
pronounce capital sentence without first having heard the defence?” And
thus the Council has entered on a very critical period, and a spirit of
irritation is becoming visible, increased by the constantly deepening
conviction that the Bishops are to be used for purposes alien to their
minds and suicidal. One word describes the entire plot—outvoting by
majorities. The united German, French and North American Bishops are
opposed to a well disciplined army of about 500, who will vote as one man
at the beck of the Pope. This army consists of 300 Papal boarders, the 62
Bishops of the Roman States who are doubly subject to him, 68 Neapolitans,
80 of the Spanish race, some 110 titular Bishops without dioceses, the
Italian Cardinals, 30 Generals of Orders, etc.(45) In a word, the Latin
South is arrayed against the French and German North. And therefore the
design of the _Curia_, to carry decrees or dogmas on every question of
Church and State, etc., by a mere calculation of _plus_ and _minus_, is
doubly monstrous and utterly unchurchlike. For, _first_, it must
inevitably produce a deep national irritation, if it is said hereafter in
Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, France and the United States, “The Italians and
Spaniards have triumphed over our views and interests at Rome, simply
because their dioceses are much smaller than ours and they have 50 Bishops
for 100,000 souls, while we have only one.” _Secondly_, it involves a
complete break with the past of the Church and the practice of Councils.
Some Bishops have examined the official records of the Council of Trent by
the Roman historian Pallavicini, and have found there that Pius IV.
directed his Legates—and that too with special reference to a decree on
the fulness of Papal jurisdiction—to make no decrees the Bishops were not
_unanimously agreed upon_.(46)
But now just the contrary is to take place. The decisive contest on that
point—if it comes to an open contest—will not be fought on the third
_Schema_, _On __ the Church and the Pope_, but at once on the first
_Schema_, the handiwork of the Jesuits, when it is returned to the
Council, professedly modified but in substance unchanged, from the
Commission of two Jesuits and three Infallibilists. As we hear, no
attention has been paid to the counter representations of the Bishops,
some of whom have objected to it altogether as superfluous and
mischievous, some as erroneous and exaggerated. It will now without
further discussion, which is simply impossible in the Council Hall, be
accepted by the mere majority of votes of the compact troop of
Infallibilists, who are at the Pope’s command as _valets à tout faire_,
and proclaimed as a dogma by Pius, _approbante Concilio_, as the form
runs. Thereby, according to approved Roman doctrine, has the Holy Ghost
spoken by the mouth of His divine representative, “causa finita est;” and
it only remains for the 150 or 200 opposing Bishops to make all haste to
perform a great mental evolution, to change their laws of thought, to
reverence as revealed truth what they have hitherto rejected as error, and
to force the clergy and laity under them by excommunication and suspension
to perform the same gymnastic feat of leaping at one jump from unbelief
into firm and immoveable faith.
The modern and purely mechanical scholasticism has brought matters to such
a pass that many seriously look upon the Council as a machine, which only
needs turning to get new dogmas carried and authorized by the Holy Ghost.
Formerly, theologians used to say that the voice of a General Council is
nothing but the voice of the whole Church concentrated in one place; that
every Bishop bears witness to the traditional belief of his Church and of
his predecessors; and that the harmony of these testimonies proves what is
the universal belief, and thus attests the truth and purity of the
profession of faith sanctioned by the Council. But now all this is
entirely changed. The Bishops have come, without any previous knowledge as
to what they were to vote about; long-winded and ready-made documents are
laid before them on questions most of them have never examined in their
lives, of which their flocks at home know nothing and have never heard;
they are expected to pass decrees the necessity and opportuneness of which
appear to them highly problematical, and to pronounce a string of
anathemas, because the Pope and Jesuits will it. They are cooped up in a
treadmill called a Council, and must willingly or unwillingly grind what
is thrown into it. It cannot indeed be exactly said that this procedure is
new and unprecedented, for the same thing occurred, on a much smaller
scale, at the Fifth Lateran Council under Julius II. and Leo. X.; but then
only the Italian Bishops were made use of, who had long been broken in to
the _rôle_ of flunkeys. Now, on the contrary, the Bishops of all nations
have been brought into prison at Rome, and are to say Yea and Amen to the
decrees the _Curia_ and the Jesuits have drawn up and mean to make
obligatory.
But the minority have taken courage, and stand on the defensive; and so
the machine is at a standstill. The opponents of Infallibilism have not
decreased; on the contrary, it is now thought that about 200 will vote
against it. Many, who at first were only “inopportunists,” have now
through more careful investigation of the question become decided
opponents of the doctrine itself.
Antonelli does not spare assurances, that the Governments may be quite at
ease as to the decrees to be issued by the Council; he says they only
affect theology, that nothing will be changed in practical life by them,
and that the _Curia_ has no intention of employing them for the purpose of
interfering with political affairs. But these reassuring declarations are
only made orally; great care is taken to avoid putting them into a
written, and therefore binding, form. Meanwhile the French Government
perfectly comprehends the situation and the objects aimed at, and has
already announced that it will fully support its Bishops and protect them
against the threatened domination by majorities. Archbishop Lavigerie has
gained nothing in Paris, and the decision of France has been communicated
to the Cardinal Secretary of State, to the effect that the Government will
not allow the 33 French Bishops and their allies of the German and English
tongue to be crushed and forced into adopting dogmas they have rejected.
The _Civiltà_ has just been singing the praises of Count Daru, who is a
living proof that there are still real statesmen; it will very soon adopt
just the opposite tone.
Among the points which make the Bishops the more astonished, the longer
they stay here and the more narrowly they inspect the condition of things,
is the decline of study in Rome, and the want, not merely of learned men
but even, and most especially, of well-grounded theologians. Rome was
never a favourable soil for serious study and true learning; a resource
was found in attracting foreigners here, which could easily be done by
means of the great Religious Orders whose Generals reside here. But now
these Orders, with the exception of the Jesuits, are in the same state of
decay. Where are men of distinguished learning to be found among the
Dominicans, Carmelites, Cistercians and Franciscans of our own day? To the
Pope himself and those immediately about him this is a matter of
indifference; Pius feels instinctively that, if there were real
theologians at Rome, they would all offer at least a passive resistance to
his _penchant_ for creating new dogmas. Only the Jesuits and their pupils
favour that sort of thing; and as long as there were real theologians in
Rome, history knows of no Pope who was possessed with this abnormal
passion for fabricating dogmas.
Now, indeed, among the 41 Italian Cardinals, only two are named as
theologians, the Thomist Guidi and the Barnabite Lulio. Of the
achievements of the latter nothing is known, and he has left the Jesuits
to their own devices in the elaboration of the _Schemata_; but in the
Council he is the chief representative of Roman theology. More
distinguished than Lulio is the Piedmontese Prelate and Professor,
Audisio, author of a History of the Popes, which of course cannot be
measured by a German standard. Vincenzi, a good Orientalist and author of
a learned—but in the main erroneous—apology for Origen, being a quiet,
modest man who goes his own way, is thought nothing of here, and has
neither title, dignities, nor benefices, although in knowledge he
outweighs twenty Monsignori. De Rossi, the most acute and learned among
the genuine Romans, who has educated himself by the study of German works,
is a layman and therefore cannot be anything. The Dominican Modena,
Secretary of the Congregation of the Index and as such director of the
whole institution, who died a few weeks ago, passed here for a learned
theologian, but no monuments of his knowledge and research are extant
outside the Index. When a foreigner observed to him shortly before his
death that, in order to condemn German or English books, one should
understand something of the language, he showed great surprise at so
unheard-of a demand, and replied that for Italians, who notoriously far
excel all nations in genius and acuteness, if a foreigner translated a
couple of passages from a book into Latin or Italian, that supplied quite
enough materials for pronouncing a censure on the book. The Dominican
Gatti has now succeeded Modena as Secretary of the Index, and therefore as
supreme judge _ex officio_ of the literature of the world. On his
scientific capacity and literary achievements history is silent. And so
the few learned works produced here have to be provided by foreigners
domiciled at Rome.
Theiner publishes documents from the Archives, so far, that is, as they
serve “the good cause;” much he is notoriously forbidden to publish. The
French Benedictine, Pitra, now a Cardinal, edits the original documents of
Greek canon law; the French Chaillot writes the single important Church
journal or record, _Analecta Juris Pontificii_, where, notwithstanding its
rigid Ultramontane line, useful collections or ancient treatises not
previously printed may here and there be found. Dogmatics and theological
philosophy—_i.e._, philosophy adapted to dogmatic needs and ends—are
provided here by the three German Jesuits, Schrader, Franzelin and
Kleutgen. For here Germans are only thought available when they have first
been transformed into Jesuits and thereby, as far as possible,
un-Germanized. That Order, on which the features of the Spanish national
character of the sixteenth century are still indelibly impressed, cannot
tolerate a genuine German in his natural shape; it would be compelled to
eject him as Etna vomited out the brazen slipper of Empedocles. It is well
known that the most industrious and learned of the Roman Prelates,
Liverani, was obliged to leave Rome; he lives, I believe, at Florence.(47)
If we examine the names of the Professors at the Roman University of the
Sapienza, we find among the teachers of theology, with the solitary
exception of the Canon-Regular, Tizzani, who is now blind, only
monks—Dominicans, Carmelites and Augustinians—and these mere names wholly
unknown beyond the walls of Rome. No less lamentable is the view presented
by the philosophical, mathematical and philological departments. The best
that can be said of this University, the intellectual metropolis of
180,000,000, is about this, “que c’est une fille honnête qui ne fait pas
parler d’elle.”
On the whole, the air here is much too raw, the soil inhospitable, the
Index too near, and the censorship too merciless, for scientific works and
serious investigations. The Italians say of a mindless work, “É scritto in
tempo di Scirocco.” And here there is an intellectual scirocco established
in permanence. And thus the brave German Benedictines, who assembled here
some years ago under an Italian Abbot, Pescetelli, in St. Paul’s without
the Walls, have become victims of the unhealthy atmosphere—that is,
besides the mental scirocco indigenous here, the sharp north wind blowing
from the Gesù. They had energetic men among them, such as Nickes and
others, were anxious to work in German fashion, and made a good beginning
in a volume of _Voices from Rome_, published in 1860; a German Cardinal
was their protector. But no sooner had they been denounced to the Pope by
the Jesuits—German and of ill-repute for orthodoxy are synonymous terms
here than they had to decamp. The Abbot, weary of these chicaneries,
resigned his office and returned to Montecassino. But the Benedictines
generally are looked on most unfavourably by the authorities here. As it
was said in a capital sentence at Paris, in 1794, that the condemned man
was “suspected of being suspected of deficient sense of citizenship,” so
must it be said of the Benedictines here that they “are suspected of being
suspected of a deficient sense of Papalism.” They are not devoted enough
towards the _Curia_; these little religious communities cannot be so
entirely kept in hand, the Jesuits from of old are hostile to them, and it
is found in Rome that they have not hitherto rendered sufficient service
to the great cause of strengthening Roman domination. They are therefore
to be revolutionized, and, like the Jesuits and the Mendicant Orders, to
receive a monarchical constitution. Their autocratic General will then
reside in Rome, and the Pope will do with them what he did with the
Dominicans, when he made Jandel, the Jesuit pupil, their General. Then the
Benedictines will be for the Jesuits what the Gibeonites were for the
Israelites, their “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”(48)
Such a project for revolutionizing the Benedictines, who would then of
course cease to be sons of St. Benedict, is reputed to be among the
measures prepared for the Council. If the present condition of Rome be
compared with earlier ages, as late as Benedict XIV.’s reign, or even
twenty or thirty years later, there is truly an enormous difference, and
this deep decay and intellectual collapse cannot be explained by external
causes merely; inward and more hidden motives must be taken into account,
which I think I well understand, but will not here speak of. That does not
trouble our Roman clergy of to-day; they institute no comparisons, and
don’t even know the names of the men who dwelt in the same spot a century
ago. And the thought of their own poverty of intellect and culture, if it
ever occurs to the Roman clerisy, does not at all hinder their always
admiring themselves, like Dante’s Rachel,
“Mai non si smaga
Dal suo miraglio, e siedo tutto giorno
Ell’ é de’ suoi begli occhi veder vaga.”(49)