_Rome, May 20, 1870._—The first week of the great debate is drawing to a
close. The Archbishops of Vienna, Prague, Gran, Paris, Antioch and Tuam
have spoken against the infallibilist definition. So much is gained; the
Catholic world knows that it is represented in Council, while the Court
party is robbed of some illusions about the strength of the resistance to
be looked for. The only fruit of its better knowledge as yet observable is
seen in an increased obstinacy and a greater insolence of tone. The
Commission has already declared by anticipation, in its reply to the
remarks of the Bishops against the dogma, that the denial of infallibility
is condemned under pain of censure, and scientific arguments are no longer
available. The giving out of this watchword does excellent service to the
majority, who are very shy of theological arguments and treat their
opponents as heretics. That far-famed courtesy, which has hitherto been an
ornament if not exactly a real excellence of Rome, has greatly diminished,
and the hypocrisy so long spun out has disappeared; it has become
necessary to recognise the broad gulf which divides parties. And this has
produced a tendency on the side of the Court and the majority to push
their claims to the extremest point, to play for high stakes, and hold out
no prospect of concessions beforehand. The minority is in their eyes not a
power to be negotiated with but a gang of insolent mutineers to be put
down. The mass of the majority have carried their leaders with them, and
only passion now prevails in that camp. But the harshness and roughness
the _Curia_ has thought it necessary to display has done more to
strengthen the Opposition than the changes and concessions already
pre-arranged will do to dissolve it. They have been suffered in this way
to gain a position which they might never have won if the _Curia_ had
exercised more foresight. Whether all the elements of the Opposition will
be found reliable, pure in their aims and loyal in their hearts, the
future will show. At present I only record the audacious policy of the
majority based on cunning calculations, as it has been evinced in the
early days of the discussion. But the majority naturally includes men of
different minds; there are some who would like to be well rid of the
affair, and others who would gladly discover a formula not looking like a
positive innovation which might satisfy opponents, while the great mass of
them want the blow to be struck so that, after crushing the Opposition
within the Council, they may annihilate it without the Council also. These
last have the upper hand in the majority, and will probably retain it till
the general debate is over and the doctrine itself and its definition come
to be discussed. They are led by cool, calculating heads, but consist for
the most part of the uneducated and unlearned mass of the episcopate who
have no independence, the people who during Strossmayer’s speech presented
the spectacle of a rabble of conspirators rather than an ordered assembly.
To keep them in the requisite state of exaltation the speeches must be
adapted to their intellectual level. And as they are more easily excited
than controlled they do not of course exhibit the majority in a favourable
light, and one may be prepared at any moment for the Council being
disgraced by an outbreak of their frenzy. Nothing more of the kind however
has happened yet.
At the head of the extreme party stands the close ally of the Jesuits, the
Archbishop of Westminster. He was the first to say out with the utmost
distinctness that infallibility belongs to the Pope alone and
independently of the Episcopate. The ultramontane speakers, Pie, Patrizzi
and Deschamps, have vied with one another in their endeavours to get this
extreme view of Manning’s accepted, which they themselves did not all
share before. The emancipation of the Pope from the entire Episcopate is
the very turning-point of the whole controversy, the object for which the
Council was put on the stage; infallibility tied to the consent of the
united or dispersed Episcopate nearly all the Bishops would accept, for
very few indeed clearly understand that even Councils depend on another
consent than that of the Episcopate. But such a definition of
infallibility would cost Rome the very thing she has laboured so much and
sinned so much to gain. It is a great advantage for the Opposition that in
this matter there are no formulas of compromise possible but such as are
manifestly perfidious and insincere.
On the 17th Deschamps, Archbishop of Mechlin, made perhaps the most
important, certainly the most remarkable, speech delivered in favour of
the _Constitutio_. He is considered the ablest speaker of his party, which
notoriously has no superabundance of good speakers, and is said to be a
superficial man who takes things easily. He not only committed himself to
the extremest section of the party, but denounced his opponents as bad
Christians not walking in the fear of God. The change of tone was much
remarked in him, as in the Bishop of Poitiers. Manning exhibits the same
change, who now maintains that all who do not submit to the majority might
well be excommunicated directly after the promulgation of the decree. Two
German Bishops, Greith and Hefele, spoke on the same day; and indeed in
this debate many weighty voices will be raised from every land where the
contest about the Church is being fought, to point to the practical
dangers involved in the circumstances of the case—a kind of argument Pius
is wont to put aside with a “Noli timere.” Greith of St. Gallen spoke for
Switzerland; as a learned theologian he declared himself against the
definition on scientific grounds, and as a Swiss Bishop on account of the
present circumstances of his country; for he is persuaded that his Swiss
brother bishops, with their zeal for the infallibilist decree, are simply
forging weapons against the Church for the Radicals. Bishop Hefele of
Rottenburg touched in the course of his speech on the affair of Honorius,
which must later on come into the discussion. Next day Hefele read
Cardinal Rauscher’s speech. But Cardinal Schwarzenberg’s address exceeded
all expectations and left a profound impression. Cardinal Donnet and the
Archbishop of Saragossa, who spoke in the name of the Deputation, did not
bring the defence any further or develop any new points of history,
and—which is more important—gave no further information about the plans
and hopes of the _Curia_ and the majority.
On Thursday the 19th Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin, spoke, who for
twenty years has been the protagonist of Romanism in the British isles.
With sound tact he chose the most learned Bishop of the minority, Hefele,
for attack, and assailed not his speech but his publications. Yet he did
not attempt to refute him, but only to prove that he had contradicted
himself, since the account of Honorius given in his History of Councils is
different from that in his latest work. It is true that in the History,
where no doctrinal inferences were to be drawn, the theological
significance of the condemnation of Honorius does not receive the same
exhaustive appreciation and exposition as in the little tractate on the
question whether he was justly condemned for heresy. But there is no
difference of principle between the two works; in both Hefele says plainly
that Honorius was justly pronounced a heretic, even if he was no heretic
at heart. But when the two passages are separated from each other, it can
be made to look as though he had maintained in the former that Honorius
was really orthodox whereas he now declares that he was a heretic. But the
process could with equal reason be reversed, and the heresy of Honorius
shown to be affirmed in the History and his orthodoxy in the pamphlet. But
what use would even an orthodox Pope be for upholding the purity of the
Church’s doctrinal deposit, if he used heretical formulas to express his
own really true opinion?
None the less however was Cullen’s attack received with great
satisfaction, for the ruling powers know well enough on what the Bishop of
Rottenburg’s opposition is based, and think to subdue German
science—_i.e._, the devil himself—in his person. On the same day the
Patriarch Jussuf uttered words that deserve to be laid to heart on the
consequences such a dogmatic blunder would entail in the East—a
significant indication that the Orientals are not prepared to bend
obediently under the yoke of a decree aimed at their ritual and their
rights as well as their tradition. The Archbishop of Corfu answered him
next day. There is very little that can be properly called debating, for
the order of proceedings is better suited for academical addresses than
for real discussion; the practice of making prelates speak in their order
of precedence makes any honest interchange of blows impossible. But the
Greek coming forward to speak looked like a preconcerted answer to the
Armenian. The Archbishop of Corfu insisted that, so far from the dogma
rendering the reunion of the Greek Church more difficult, such a result
was inconceivable without it, nor could the dogma excite any suspicion,
because the Greeks found it in their tradition as well as their Fathers
and Councils, and envied the Latin Church her infallible Pope. In evidence
of this he cited the passages where the Pope’s primacy is recognised. The
great body of the Fathers listened to this with grave faces: it was only
following the style of their own theologians.
But three more important speakers had been heard before the Corfiote. The
first was Simor, primate of Hungary, who was chosen, as is well known,
into the Deputation on Faith and has shown himself a more zealous advocate
of its proposals and adherent of the _Curia_ than ever. The majority
believed that it possessed in him a master of Latin who could rival the
eloquent leader of the Opposition, and Simor justified his reputation as
an accomplished Latinist. But he spoke—assuredly to the no small disgust
and amazement of the majority—as an unequivocal opponent of the proposed
decree. And this implied that the whole Hungarian Episcopate would vote
against it. He was followed by a feeble old man whose speech fell flat
after that of the eloquent primate, and who could only be known to a few
of his hearers, though he holds an important place in the history of the
last generation. This was John MacHale, for the last thirty-five years
Archbishop of Tuam and formerly the most powerful prelate in Ireland, a
famous name in the days of O’Connell; but his political rôle has long been
played out, and he belongs to a bygone age and an obsolete school. For the
twenty years during which Cullen has been introducing Roman absolutism
into Ireland his influence has been on the decline, and while he was
expounding his antagonism to the definition to-day in a long and
complicated address, men said to themselves, “magni nominis umbra.” It was
the accumulated debt of twenty years he paid off to Cardinal Cullen. But
he can hardly be expected to have gained over any of his countrymen to the
Opposition besides the three or four of them who already belong to it.
MacHale was succeeded by the Archbishop of Paris, the most accomplished
and skilful, and therefore the most feared, of all the Opposition
prelates. Darboy was lately the most influential advocate of that system
of dallying and postponement which has so grievously injured the minority,
and was involved through his intimate alliance with the Tuileries in the
unhappy policy of his Government, so that he had become somewhat less
trusted and influential. So much greater was the impression produced by
his speech to-day, wherein he declared distinctly and repeatedly that a
dogmatic decree not accepted by the whole Episcopate could not have any
binding force. A suppressed murmur which ran through the ranks of the
majority as he spoke seems to herald coming storms.
So far the Opposition has made its voice clearly heard. That it has on its
side reason, Scripture and history signifies nothing for the moment; what
is important is that it makes its strength felt, that it has won over
waverers or doubters to its ranks, and that it has at last spoken plainly.
The position of parties and the question itself will take many new shapes,
when the separate chapters of the Constitution come on for discussion.