_Rome, April 30, 1870._—Now that the matter has gone so far, those about
the Pope no longer make any secret of the fact that for many years—indeed
from the beginning of his pontificate—he has formed the design of making
papal infallibility an article of faith. A work has lately been
distributed here, _Riflessioni d’un Teologo sopra la Riposta di Mgr.
Dupanloup a Mgr. Arcivescovo di Malines_, Torino 1870. The writer says,
“Could the Bishop of Orleans be ignorant that Pius IX. has always intended
to define this dogma and condemn Gallicanism? All the acts of his
pontificate have been directed to this end. Nay, we affirm distinctly that
he believed himself to have received a special mission to define the two
dogmas of papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception.(96) And as he
is under the special guidance of the Holy Ghost, his will sufficiently
establishes the opportuneness of this definition.”
This was obviously written for the eyes of the Pontiff, whose whole life
is surrounded as with a rose-garland of miraculous deliverances,
illuminations and divine inspirations. And thus the veil is now dropped,
and the time come for speaking openly. Up to the end of last summer, and
even till December, the answer given from Rome to all inquiries and
anxieties of Bishops or Governments was, that there was no intention of
bringing infallibility before the Council and that the _Civiltà_ was
mistaken; the Court of Rome was not responsible for what an individual
Jesuit might write. Antonelli gave the most quieting assurances on all
sides. But meanwhile the Committee of Theologians employed in preparing
the materials for the Council had already voted this new dogma, under
direction of the highest authority, and Archbishop Cardoni had sent in his
report upon it, which was received by all against the single vote of
Alzog. The subjects to be brought before the Council were carefully
concealed from the Bishops, and an oath of silence imposed on the
theologians who were summoned, in order that they might come to Rome
unprepared and without the necessary books, and might simply indorse the
elaborations of the Jesuits as voting-machines in the prison-house of the
Council.
It is merely repeating what is notorious in Rome to say that Pius IX. is
beneath comparison with any one of his predecessors for the last 350 years
in theological knowledge and intellectual cultivation generally. One must
go back to Innocent VIII. and Julius II. to find Popes of similar
theological and scientific attainments. It is known here that, small as
are the intellectual requisites for ordination in the Roman States, it was
only out of special regard to his family that Giovanni Maria Mastai could
get ordained priest. His subsequent career offered no opportunity or means
for supplying this neglect, and thus he became Pope with the feeling of
his entire deficiency in the necessary acquirements. This unpleasant
consciousness naturally produced the idea that the defect would be
remedied without effort on his part by enlightenment from above, and
divine inspiration would supply the absence of human knowledge. This
illusion has been and will be so common, that we need not have troubled
ourselves about it, did it not threaten now to become a destructive
firebrand. The public letters which have passed of late between the
assembled Fathers on the absorbing question of the day deserve attention.
They show the deep gulf which divides the members of the Episcopate. There
is Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore, who first wanted to help the Pope to
get his infallibility acknowledged indirectly by his now famous
_postulatum_, where the real point was kept in the background, when he
proposed a decree that every papal decision was to be received with
unconditional inward assent. But now, in his letter to Dupanloup, he has
changed his mind, and wants infallibility to be openly and explicitly
defined. So again in the _postulatum_ he had declared moral unanimity to
be necessary for a dogma, but now on the contrary he considers a mere
majority of votes to be sufficient. Two other American Archbishops have
come forward in opposition to him, Kenrick of St. Louis and Purcell of
Cincinnati. They say that Spalding’s letter has fallen among them like a
bomb-shell; it has hitherto been their custom for such matters to be
discussed in an assembly of the American Bishops, but that has not been
done in the present case, and he has written his letter alone and without
any communication with his colleagues. Indeed he had previously advised
them to oppose the definition of infallibility, as sure to produce nothing
but difficulties, but now he has taken up just the opposite view, on what
grounds they know not. The two prelates add that American Catholics have
very special reasons for disliking the definition, for the notion of the
Pope having the right to depose monarchs, dispense oaths of allegiance,
and give away countries and nations at his will, is equally strange to
Protestants and Catholics in their country. They think that Archbishop
Spalding will find himself greatly embarrassed in America with his
infallibilist doctrine, as has already been the case for some years with
regard to the condemnation of religious freedom by the Syllabus. The two
Archbishops, as one sees, tread lightly and cautiously. They are in
Rome,—“incedunt per ignes suppositos cineri doloso.” Still they assert
with American freedom of speech, “We, and several more of us, believe that
the dogma contradicts the history and tradition of the Church.”
The citizens of the United States, whether Protestant or Catholic, will
certainly be astonished when the new dogma comes into full force among
them and its consequences are brought to light, suddenly recalling a long
series of papal decisions into active life;—when, for instance, the recent
Bull (_Apostolicæ Sedis_), with its many and various excommunications
reserved to the Pope alone becomes known, and again the decision of the
infallible Urban II. that it is no murder to kill an excommunicated man
out of zeal for the Church, a decision which to this day stands on record
in 200 copies of the canon law. And as a commentary on this the work of
the present Jesuit theologian of the Court of Rome, Schrader (_De Unitate
Romanâ_), will be put into their hands, from which they will learn that
the contents of all papal decrees are infallible, for they always contain
some “doctrina veritatis”—whether moral, juridical, or rational—and the
Pope is always infallible “in ordine veritatis et doctrinæ.” Yet that is
but one flower from the dogmatic garden, into which Archbishop Spalding
will introduce the citizens of the United States after infallibility is
happily proclaimed. They will then also hear, among other interesting
truths, that according to the irrefragable decision of Leo X. every priest
is absolutely free by divine and human law from all secular authority, and
no layman has any right over him.(97) And they must be reminded, in order
to make them more submissive, that in 1493 Pope Alexander VI. gave over
their country with all its inhabitants, “in virtue of the plenitude of his
apostolic power,” to the kings of Spain in the infallible Bull _Inter
cætera_,(98) and then drew the famous line from the North to the South
Pole, which included whole provinces of the present United States in his
great and generous gift. By virtue of papal infallibility they are
subjects of the Spanish Government, and who knows if right and fact may
not some day again coincide? “Res clamat ad dominum.”