_Rome, April 13, 1870._—The _Schema de Fide_ has occupied the Fathers in
almost daily sessions, and the Solemn Session for the public voting and
promulgation of the decrees finally completed, which was first fixed for
Easter Monday, has been postponed to Low Sunday. The number of amendments
proposed gives the Bishops a great deal of labour, if the handling of
these matters in the Council Hall is to be called a labour. What takes
place is this: the Bishop who wishes to propose an alteration in the text
of the Jesuit draft ascends the tribune and delivers an address, which as
a rule the majority of his auditors cannot follow. Then he hands the
President his motion, which however is not read, so that the Council gain
their first knowledge of it through the Deputation, who have the
amendments sent in to them—which of course are often very
contradictory—printed and distributed in the order of precedence. Thus,
_e.g._,—there were no less than 122 amendments proposed on the third
chapter of the _Schema_, occupying 44 folio pages. They began to be
distributed on April 3, and most of the Bishops only got their copies on
the 4th, when there was a sitting of the Council, and on the 5th the
voting was to take place, so that most of them had no time even for a
cursory reading: still less was it possible to give explanations or
attempt to come to any oral understanding or comparison of the various
views. Meanwhile the discipline of the majority continues to be admirable;
they always know exactly how they are to vote, and obey the signal given
as one man. Nor has there been any repetition of the wild paroxysm of
passion on March 22, which turned the Hall into a bear-garden of demoniacs
while Strossmayer was speaking. Many who were most conspicuous that day in
their screams and gesticulations, seem to have felt ashamed since, and
have no doubt also received a hint that such excesses of zeal may injure
the good cause. But however well organized and docile the majority show
themselves, the defects of the order of business, combined with the bad
qualities of the Hall, become very perceptible, and the result of the many
votings is a confusion into which the Deputation tries afterwards to
impart some sort of order.
Strossmayer has made a representation to the Legates; at the sitting of
March 22 he was called “a damnable heretic,” without having given any
intelligible occasion for it, and he expects and demands a public
reparation for this injury in whatever way they deem most suitable. What
is still more important, his conscience has constrained him to put the
question from the tribune, whether articles of faith are really to be
decided by mere majorities according to the 13th article of the new order
of business. When he expressed his conviction that moral unanimity was
essential in such cases, he was interrupted by a frightful tumult and
could not say any more.
The Legates have given no answer either to the three representations of
the Bishops about the second order of business with its principle of
majorities, or to Strossmayer’s complaint. But on April 1 an admonition of
President de Angelis was again read, directing the Fathers to be as brief
as possible in their speeches, that they might not produce disgust
(_nausea_) in the assembly by their prolixity or digressions, in which
case they had only themselves to thank for the marks of displeasure
elicited. This was commonly understood as an indirect answer to
Strossmayer; he had produced “nausea” in the prelates, and had therefore
no cause for complaint. That was rather too much for the minority, and
their international Committee of about 30 Bishops resolved on presenting a
common protest to the Presidents against the frequent interruptions and
the wording of the admonition. Meanwhile Haynald was not interrupted, when
he declared his agreement with Strossmayer. And it is worth notice that
the Presidents have not as yet availed themselves of the right assigned
them by the Pope to cut short the discussion, and get the speeches of the
Opposition put an end to by the vote of the majority. There was nothing
certainly in the subjects last under discussion to tempt them to do so.
The Bishop of Rottenburg had proposed that the decree should contain no
anathemas on persons but only on doctrines; the Germans and about six
French Bishops agreed with him, but the rest would hear nothing of it. But
it was significant that the most extreme section of infallibilists urged
that in mentioning the Church in the _Schema de Fide_, the predicate
“Romana” should alone be affixed to Church, with a perfectly correct
instinct that the complete Romanizing of the Church which they desiderate
must lead to the annihilation of its Catholicity, and that the particular
predicate necessarily excludes the universal. But they did not carry their
point.
It is the universally prevalent feeling that all these detailed
discussions and motions are mere preliminary skirmishes in which both
parties practise themselves for the great contest and the decisive blow to
be struck when the _Schema de Ecclesiâ_ comes on. The chief aim is to
ascertain how far the minority can be induced to go, how much they will
put up with, and what can be wrung from them by surprise or by quiet
working on them individually. Public scenes, solemn protests before the
whole world, are what the Legates want at any price to avoid. When the
infallibilist dogma was to have been carried by sudden acclamation on St.
Joseph’s Day, four American Bishops handed in a paper declaring that, if
this were done, they would immediately leave the Council and announce the
reasons of their departure as soon as they got back to their dioceses.
That took effect.
It is perhaps one of the most noteworthy and eventful changes in the
policy of the Papal Court, that it now strains every nerve deliberately to
exclude the laity from all share in Church affairs, and endeavours to hold
them aloof in every case where formerly the Church not only allowed but
desired and demanded their regular participation. Thirty years ago it was
quite different, but since the darling scheme of the Jesuits for complete
ecclesiastical absolutism and centralization in Rome, both intensive and
extensive, has been adopted, the maxims first avowed by Pius in his
instructions to Pluym, his delegate at Constantinople, have been acted
upon. The Pope there affirms that the participation of the laity in Church
matters has been the greatest injury to the Church. In Germany and north
of the Alps generally, all who thought they knew anything of the spirit
and history of the Church had believed just the contrary, and considered
those to have been the most prosperous ages of the Church when there was a
cordial understanding and unsuspicious co-operation between clergy and
laity; and they pointed to the example of earlier Popes, who attributed a
priesthood to Christian princes, and exhorted them to take the most active
part in ecclesiastical affairs. But historical reminiscences are of no
account here; we must be content to float on the stream of the present,
without looking backwards or forwards, with the great multitude. “Fear
nothing; I have the Madonna on my side,” said the master the other day to
a prelate who had warned him of the danger incurred by the present system.
That word explains the enigma of our present situation.
The quarrels with the Orientals, which I shall perhaps relate more fully
by and bye, have again thrown a clear light on the existing condition of
things and the maxims adhered to. In a dispute about the privileges of a
Convent here, an Armenian Archbishop with his secretary and interpreter
were condemned by the Inquisition to imprisonment in one of the Jesuit
houses—nominally “to make the exercises.” The unfortunates for whom this
fatherly correction was decreed, were to “exercise themselves” till they
were reduced to submission. They first betook themselves to the protection
of the French embassy, but in accordance with instructions from Paris they
were repulsed. Then they were taken under the charge of Rustem Bey, the
Turkish ambassador at Florence, who has lately been residing here and
transacting business with Antonelli. But the Cardinal soon intimated to
him that Catholic priests, of whatever nation, were in Rome simply
subjects of the Pope and under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. So the
helpless Armenians had to succumb, and were favoured with domestic
imprisonment, while a monk of another Order was made Abbot of the convent.
The affair has naturally excited double astonishment. German, French, and
English priests, who are here in great numbers, have had the unpleasant
surprise of discovering that, according to the theory accepted here, they
belong not only spiritually but bodily to the Pope, who is the absolute
lord of their persons, and that the Inquisition can seize and incarcerate
any of them at its pleasure. And the occurrence has recalled some very
unlovely reminiscences. Men acquainted with Roman history have shown that
Paul V. got Aonio Paleario and Carnesecchi to surrender themselves and had
them burnt by the Inquisition; that Paul V. enticed to Rome by a
safe-conduct the priest Fulgentio, who took the side of the State in the
Pope’s quarrel with Venice, and had him burnt there as “a lapsed
heretic;”(76) that the English Benedictine Barnes, who was seized on
Belgian soil and dragged to Rome, was first imprisoned in the Inquisition
till he became insane, and then had to die in a lunatic asylum. It is true
that the Inquisition no longer inflicts torture and death, but nobody who
has once come into its power would escape without having an abjuration
extorted from him. The best security for a Western priest consists in the
dread of the _Curia_ of involving itself in trouble with his Government;
were it not so, a foreign clergyman would be compelled to confine his
conversation with clerics here to the weather, for there is always the
most stringent obligation of denouncing any one the least suspected of
heresy to the Inquisition, and a German clergyman, who got into any
theological talk could hardly avoid that suspicion, so many would be the
points of difference and opposition.
There have been movements among the Hungarian Bishops, the connection of
which is not quite clear. But the following facts are authentic. Simor,
Archbishop of Gran and Primate, who for two months adhered with the rest
of his countrymen to the minority, has gone over in the most demonstrative
way to the majority, who pride themselves not a little on their conquest.
It had been previously agreed between the Emperor and the Pope that he
should be made a Cardinal, and he had been informed of this; but for a
Cardinal-designate before his actual creation to vote against the formally
and energetically expressed will of the Pope would be monstrous. Such a
thing is quite inconceivable in Rome. Moreover, before he became Primate,
Simor spoke in favour of infallibilism.(77) Another Hungarian Bishop is
gone over with him. Other Hungarian Bishops whom the minority, whether
rightly or not, reckoned deserters, have gone home, and have there, it is
said, represented the state of things in the very darkest colours, saying
that there is no real freedom in the Council and the minority is breaking
up. The Government at Pesth have consequently sent a confidential agent
here to invite the Hungarian Bishops to escape the storm and return home.
But they replied that the Government had better provide for the return of
those already gone home, so as to add more strength to the minority on
whom all the hopes of Catholics are now centred.