_Rome, Feb. 8, 1870._—It is a most exciting drama that is being exhibited
here, and notwithstanding much that is both little and painful in its
details, one of great and moving import; and those who have the
opportunity of inspecting its machinery more narrowly, can hardly at times
avoid feeling very strongly on the subject. The figure of Laocoon, with
the snakes coiled round him, is constantly recurring to my mind; for I
seem to be witnessing the strategical arts and skilful evolutions of a
general, who is trying to surround a little band of opponents with his
immensely superior forces, so as to compel them to lay down their arms and
surrender at discretion without striking a blow. The disproportion is
indeed enormous; first there is the Pope, whose mere name still is a host
in itself, and that Pope is Pius, who for twenty-four years has had such
homage and flatteries heaped upon him as no Pope ever had before, and who
is accustomed to shake the Roman Olympus by his nod. Then there are the
Cardinals and Prelates, the whole spiritual staff of Congregations—the
Papal family—all fully united and resolved, and the _contribuens plebs_ of
foreign Bishops, who are fairly caught in the net, and will not be
suffered to escape without the bonds and chains of the most stringent
decrees securing their obedience. On the other side stand from 150 to 200
Bishops, of divers tongues and nations and now for the first time united
by a common need and a common danger, like a snowball liable to melt at
the first breath of milder air, and fighting like those Spaniards of the
Cortes, who, with one foot chained to a stone, compelled the Mexicans to
spare their lives. One asks every morning in doubt and terror, how far the
solvents employed have attained their end? Many would gladly capitulate if
only they were met half-way by tolerable conditions, and such would secure
them a rather less cold reception on their return to their dioceses.
Meanwhile the eyes and the hopes of all educated Catholics, not only in
Germany but in Italy, France and North America, are fixed on the chosen
band of 300 Bishops.
But how are matters likely to proceed? The Opposition is tough and
tenacious. Every new _Schema_ bears so unmistakeably the impress of the
interests of either the Jesuits or the _Curia_, that the Bishops cannot
help growing constantly more cautious, suspicious and reserved. And to
make their designs still clearer, the Jesuits supply the practical
commentary in their official journal, the _Civiltà_, to the effect that no
measures of the Governments against the encroachments of the Church on the
civil jurisdiction, or her summons to transgress the laws of the country,
would bind the consciences of their subjects. The subjoined anathema
against every one who refuses to acknowledge that laws are annulled by the
ordinances of the Church (_i.e._, the Pope), is a sorry consolation for
the Bishops; for experience has shown too often that courts of justice and
statesmen don’t trouble themselves about the excommunications incurred in
the discharge of their official duties. The Bishops accordingly foresee
nothing but endless rubs and collisions with the civil power, as well as
with whole classes of the population at home; and when the Jesuits are
commended to them as pledged and triumphant allies in the contest to be
waged against Governments, constitutions and laws, they generally shake
their heads suspiciously and with no particular feeling of triumphant joy.
The Pope’s 300 episcopal foster-sons cost him 25,000 francs daily, and
that makes the pleasant little sum of 1,500,000 francs for two sterile
months, during which these doughty warriors have sat a good deal, but
accomplished nothing by their sitting; for the old Roman proverb, “Romanus
vincit sedendo,” has not been verified here. The Pope is gradually getting
frightened at this daily expenditure, and, after the fashion of great
lords, who readily lay the blame of the failure of their own plans on the
bad advice of their subjects, he said to-day, in an outbreak of disgust,
“per furia di farmi infallibile, mi faranno fallire.”
The proceedings of the Council must therefore be expedited and curtailed.
At the same time nothing must be remitted of the matters it is to deal
with and vote into canons and decrees. Therefore the order of business
must be changed. Cardinal Antonelli says now that “the speeches have been
too long and too many, and must be entirely put an end to; the Bishops
must be content with handing over their observations in writing to the
Commission of twenty-four or the Commission for Petitions.” He tries to
sweeten the bitter draught to their lips by remarking that this decision
is for their own advantage, for, after being so wearied out with the long
sittings and listening to speeches, they must be glad to be relieved of
the burden. The Bishops, however, experience no such joyful feeling, but
say that the last vestige of conciliar freedom is now abolished. They have
the more reason for saying so, since it is notorious that the
Infallibilist and purely Romanist party is exclusively represented on the
Commissions, so that it may be clearly foreseen that the remarks and
suggestions of the liberal-minded and reforming Bishops will simply be
thrown into the waste-paper basket, or, under the most favourable
circumstances, be buried in the archives of St. Angelo. At the moment I am
writing the new _Regolamento_ has not yet been published, owing to the
urgent requests and representations of certain Bishops. But to judge from
Antonelli’s statement, the authorities seem determined to drop the last
veil, and show quite openly to the world that the Council has been
arranged as a mere machine of Roman administration, and must therefore of
course be forced back into the path from which it had wandered. Many a
Bishop now looks back with painful regret to the Council of Trent, where,
notwithstanding the haughty insolence of the Italians, the ambassadors of
Spain and France acted as protectors to the foreign Prelates, and were a
great check on the arbitrary violence of the Legates. Now, Antonelli
assures every diplomatist who says a word on the unprecedented method of
procedure, and the hostile character of the proposed decrees towards the
State, that these things have only a theoretical and doctrinal
significance, and that in practice the _Curia_ will study a wise
moderation, and place itself on a friendly footing with the Governments.
He means, that when one fills one’s arsenal with new and effective
weapons, that is no proof that they will at once be discharged. I don’t
know whether this satisfies the diplomatists. Perhaps Count Trautmansdorff
is satisfied, for his Government has repeatedly announced its resolve to
wait quietly till the Council is over and the _Curia_ is put in possession
of all the decrees and dogmas it wants. Then, when the new doctrines are
already inserted in all the catechisms and taught in all seminaries and
enforced in every confessional, it will be time enough to consider what
line the civil power should take in the matter. M. de Banneville and the
Paris Government do not seem to be of this opinion. I don’t imagine they
are minded at Paris so entirely to sacrifice the Bishops to the arbitrary
will of the _Curia_ and its paid majority, and for the last few days the
French ambassador has been engaged in a lively telegraphic correspondence
with his own Government. We may very soon expect important disclosures.
As far as I can make out, the conviction still prevails among the Roman
clergy and their episcopal allies that the dogma of Infallibility in the
third _Schema_ will be accepted by the Council, at least in a somewhat
modified form, but one easily capable of being extended and quite
sufficient for present exigencies. They say, “We will first take the vote
on the question of opportuneness, and a mere majority may very well decide
that. It has decided already by the 400 or 410 signatures to the
(Infallibilist) Address, and the Bishops who have themselves answered No,
will be obliged to yield to this decision, and so to come to the vote on
the dogma itself, _i.e._, to declare whether they personally hold the Pope
to be dogmatically fallible or infallible.” The Romans expect that, when
matters have come to this point, not a few Bishops—especially Ketteler of
Mayence, and, it may be hoped, many more with him—will come over to their
side and profess their faith in Papal Infallibility. In whatever form they
clothe their belief, it comes to the same thing in the end. At last there
will only remain a little band of obstinate Prelates who will protest.
They may talk if they please, and then it will be proclaimed to the world,
by an overwhelming majority of perhaps 700 votes, that it has become
Infallibilist. Then might a new St. Jerome say, with greater force than
the former one said of Arianism, “Miratus est orbis se esse factum
infallibilistam.” A Roman clergyman, who expressed this expectation to me
with peculiar confidence, added that there had been a like occurrence at
the Council of Trent and it would now be repeated. I perfectly understood
him, and the matter deserves to be mentioned here as a striking parallel
to certain recurring possibilities. The Council, which was meant to reform
and thereby to save the Church, was brought to an early consideration of
the universal neglect of Bishops to reside in their dioceses and the need
for recognising this duty as one of Divine obligation. But it appeared at
once, in the first period of the Council, that the Court of Rome and its
faithful Italians in the assembly had the strongest interest in preventing
the assertion of this simple and logically necessary truth. For, as
regards the past, it would have implied severe censure of the practice
followed by the Popes since the beginning of the thirteenth century, which
would be shown to be a constant violation of the Divine law; while, in
regard to the present and future, it would have seriously limited the
plenary power of the Popes, for it was always held a principle in the
Church that no one could dispense from the law of God. But the non-Italian
Bishops, and nearly all the Italians themselves, were at first in favour
of declaring it to be “the Divine law,” so strong was the evidence. And it
was seen clearly enough that from the divinely imposed obligation must
again be inferred the equally divine rights and institution of the
episcopate. Meanwhile the Jesuit General made his two famous speeches to
show that all episcopal authority was a mere emanation from the Pope. For
ten months, from September 18, 1562 to July 14, 1563, all sessions of the
Council had to be suspended to prevent any decree being made on the
subject; and at last, on July 14, 1563, the twenty-eight Spanish Bishops
and “the Divine right of residence” succumbed to the majority of 192
votes, about three-fourths being Italians. _Absit omen!_
The _Civiltà_ of February 5, 1870, in its article, “I Politicastri ed il
Concilio,” has supplied a noteworthy commentary on the canons or decrees
of the third _Schema_, which affirm the Church to be an institution armed
with coercive powers of inflicting bodily punishments; for that is
obviously the meaning. The “Politicastri” are those statesmen who imagine
that the State has a sphere of its own, independent of the legislation of
the Church and the interposition of the Pope. That, according to the Roman
Jesuits, is a most abominable error. A law which contradicts a law of the
Church has not the slightest validity for men’s consciences. For the
authority of a Council—and _a fortiori_ of a Pope, from whom, on the
Jesuit theory, Councils derive all their force and validity—is above the
authority of the State.(50) Should the State therefore require obedience
to a law opposed to an ordinance of the Council, it would do so without
any real right (_senza vero titulo giuridico_), and, should it enforce
compliance, would be introducing a suicidal tyranny. It is further
explained that this by no means applies to those religious laws only which
rest on Divine ordinance, but also to those which are purely
ecclesiastical, and therefore on Catholic principles are variable.
Let us take the twelfth of the _Canones de Ecclesiâ_, which anathematizes
all who doubt the Church’s power to inflict corporal punishment; and
consider further that the Popes have most solemnly declared that by
baptism all heretics are become their subjects, are amenable to the laws
of the Church, and must, if needful, be compelled to obey them.(51)
Consider further that the Syllabus condemns the toleration or equality of
different religions, and no doubt can remain as to what system it is
intended to introduce.
The second Letter of the famous Oratorian and member of the French
Academy, Father Gratry, has just come here, and has produced a great
impression. It treats of the gross forgeries by which the way for the
introduction of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility has been gradually
prepared, first in the ninth and then in the thirteenth century; and
dwells especially on the fact that the theologians—above all Thomas
Aquinas, who rules in the schools, and his many disciples and
followers—were deceived by these fabrications, and that even the Popes
themselves were misled by them. Gratry’s exposition is clear and
convincing; but he goes beyond the middle ages. He shows how dishonestly
the Breviary was tampered with at Rome at the end of the sixteenth
century, and how, up to the present time the Jesuits, Perrone and
Wenninger,—the latter in a truly amazing fashion—have followed the
practice of citing fabulous or corrupted testimonies.
One grand result of the Council its authors have not foreseen or reckoned
upon, which, however, has already attained alarming dimensions; I mean the
scandal it has given. They seem to have really believed with a childish
_naïveté_ that the Council could be hermetically sealed up, like birds
under a glass bell, and its members shut up apart,—that 3000 persons could
be reduced to silence by a Papal edict about matters they feel there is
the strongest necessity for speaking of. Such a notion could only grow up
in the heads of Roman clerics, who are wont to look at the world beyond
their own narrow sphere only through crevices of the open door, or through
the key-hole. Only too much has become known. The Jesuits, the _Civiltà_,
the _Univers_, the _Monde, et id genus omne_, have done their best to
reveal the sharp contrast of opposite parties, and the world of to-day,
sceptically disposed as it is and little inclined to cover the shame and
nakedness by turning away its face, is present at a double spectacle: it
witnesses the system of force and intrigue by which a Council is managed,
and it watches with keen observation the process of manipulating a new
dogma. Men say now, what Cardinal Bessarion said before, according to an
anecdote current here, that the way Saints were canonized in his own time
made him very suspicious about the older Saints and Canonizations. In the
same way the Protestant and Catholic laity, who are here in such numbers
at present, say, “We know and see now how matters are managed in the
Church when a new dogma is to be made; what artifices, and deceptions, and
methods of intimidation are employed to gain votes. Must it not have been
the same at former Councils?” I have heard even Bishops here say that such
thoughts pressed upon them, and were severe temptations against faith. And
if these things are done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?
Is it different with you in Germany?