_Rome, June 22, 1870._—On the 13th the votes were taken on the changes
proposed in the preamble, and taken by rising and sitting down.(147)
Instead of “Vis et salus Ecclesiæ ab eo (Papâ) dependet” was proposed “Vis
et soliditas in eo (Papâ) consistit.” The majority seem to have thought
that stronger. The debate began with the speech of the Irish Archbishop of
Cashel, a member of the Commission. It is precisely in our days, he said,
that it is so necessary for the Pope to have absolute and irresponsible
authority, for therein lies the one safeguard, first, against the
encroachments of Liberalism; secondly, against the Radical and anti-Church
policy of the Governments; thirdly, against the poisonous and unbridled
influence of journalism; and fourthly, the absolute Pope can alone meet
the ecclesiastical and national enterprises of Russia or subdue the
political sects and ward off the Revolution which is impending everywhere.
In short, human society requires a deliverer, and this deliverer must be
omnipotent and infallible. So it is said in the Commission, and the Irish
prelate, who was specially alarmed by Fenianism, spoke in its name. As
soon as the Pope with the assent of the Council—or indeed without it—has
ruled his own omnipotence and infallibility, the deliverance of mankind is
accomplished.
The French Benedictine, Cardinal Pitra, undertook to lift the assembly out
of this cloudy region back to the firm ground of facts, viz., the facts
disclosed by himself. He expatiated on the collection of canons in the
Greek Church, saying that those relating to the Roman See had been
falsified, and the Russian Church was above all implicated in this system
of forgery, which had brought things to such a pass that there was no
authentic collection of canons in the Oriental Church. This was probably
intended to serve as a diversion, for the enormous fabrications in favour
of papal omnipotence, which were carried on for centuries and are
incorporated in the codes of canon law, had been frequently before
referred to in a very suspicious manner in the Council. Even the Bishop of
Saluzzo, who is almost a thorough-going Roman absolutist, had called the
collection of canons (Gratian’s, etc.) an Augean stable. Pitra went on to
indulge in an uncommonly fervid philippic against the Machiavellian and
persecuting Russia. But he forgot to say one thing, viz., that in no
country would the impending decrees be received with such satisfaction as
in Russia, nowhere would they give greater pleasure than in that great
Northern State which considers itself the happy heir of Rome in the East.
So much must be known even in Rome, that on the day the dogma is
promulgated all the bells in Mohilew, Wilna, Minsk, etc., will resound to
ring the knell of Rome. Pitra was followed by Ramirez y Vasquez, Bishop of
Badajoz. He maintained in the style and tone of Don Gerundio de Canpazes,
the doctrine that the Pope is Christ in the Church, the continuation of
the Incarnation of the Son of God, whence to him belongs the same extent
of power as to Christ Himself when visibly on earth. Maret had announced
his intention of speaking, with the view of combating the four anathemas
of Dechamps, which were so manifestly directed against his book. But
Dechamps, on learning this, told the Bishop of Sura that, if he would keep
silence, he would withdraw his anathemas, and excused himself by alleging
his zeal for the new dogma, assuring Maret that he had a good heart and
meant no harm. So Maret renounced his design of speaking.
On the 14th, Haynald, in spite of his bodily suffering, delivered a long
polemical speech against the majority, and maintained his reputation of
being the best Latin speaker after Strossmayer. Jussuf, the Melchite
Patriarch of Antioch, came next with an apology for the Oriental Churches
and their liberties. He pointed out in earnest words the danger of their
defection, if the present design of taking away their ancient rights was
carried out. He produced letters from his home telling him that he had
better not return at all than bring back from Rome decrees curtailing
their ecclesiastical liberties. And if the Pope chose to send back another
Patriarch instead of him, they might be very sure he would not be
received. Bishop Krementz of Ermeland observed that Holy Scripture made,
not Peter, or as is here understood the Pope, the foundation of the
Church, but Christ, and then as secondary foundation the Apostles and
Prophets. Only after these and in dependence on them could this
designation be applied to the See of Rome.
It had indeed been already observed among the minority how monstrous it
was to make the Pope “the principle of unity in the Church,” as the
_Schema_ puts it, and that the ancient Fathers speak indeed of an
“exordium unitatis” established in the person of Peter, but had never
called him, and still less the Bishop of Rome, the principle of
ecclesiastical unity, which would be logically inconceivable. In the
voting, which was again taken by rising and sitting down, the little band
of dissentients disappeared before the consentient mass, and the
expression “principium unitatis,” opposed as it is both to logic and
tradition, was accepted. Before the voting Bishop Gallo of Avellino had
uttered in the name of the Commission some Neapolitan mysticism about Adam
and Eve and the mysteries already revealed in Adam and Eve of the Church
resting on the Pope.
Cardinal Mathieu was the first speaker on the fourth chapter on
infallibility. His long and powerful speech was mainly directed against
Valerga, who had outraged the French by his attack on the “Gallican
errors.” It was a well-delivered panegyric on the French nation, which had
shed the blood of her sons to restore Rome to the Pope, and without whose
troops at Civita Vecchia the Council could not remain in Rome. The only
doubt is whether this Valerga is worth as much notice as the French have
accorded to him. After Mathieu Cardinal Rauscher spoke. His speech was
very inaudible owing to the nature of the Council Hall, but was clear and
well grounded, and showed how the acceptance of a personal infallibility,
by virtue of which every utterance of a Pope must be believed by all
Christians under pain of eternal damnation, is equally at issue with facts
and with the former tradition of the Church, and must have a fatal effect
in the future. He referred to Vigilius, Honorius, the reordinations of
Sergius and Stephen, and the contradiction between Nicolas III. and John
XXII., and commended the formula of Antoninus requiring the consent of the
Church as a condition. He could never assent to the _Schema_ without
mortal sin. “We knew all that from your pamphlet,” said Dechamps while he
was speaking. “But you have never refuted it,” replied Rauscher.
Cardinal Pitra was to have followed, but he was unwell, and the sitting
was broken off. The Presidents had issued an instruction that no one
should speak out of his turn, and if prevented on the regular day should
lose his right altogether. The rule in this case affected the zealous
infallibilist Pitra, and accordingly the Bishops were dismissed before the
usual hour.
The two next days, the 17th and 18th, were festivals, and there was no
sitting held. As there are already 75 speakers enrolled for the fourth
chapter, the promulgation obviously cannot take place on June 29, and the
Council will last on into July. There is indeed a simple means of
gratifying the desire of the Pope and curtailing the pains of the Bishops,
who are now absolutely tortured by the heat: the majority can any day cut
short the special debate, as they have already cut short the general
discussion. It may of course be objected that this procedure, of depriving
the Bishops of their right of speaking and violently imposing silence upon
them, overthrows the nature of a Church Council, where every Bishop is
meant to bear witness not only to his own belief, but to the tradition of
his country and the faith of his diocese. If the Bishops are deprived of
this right—and that too where so momentous a question is at issue and
there is such diversity of opinion—the freedom essential to a Council is
wanting.
The Pope becomes more lavish of his admonitions and instructions every
day. In the last Papal _Capella_ Patrizzi assured him the faithful were
impatiently awaiting the proclamation of infallibility, whereon Pius, in
presence of several Bishops of the minority, replied that there were three
classes of opponents of the dogma, _first_, the gross ignoramuses, who did
not know what it meant; _secondly_, the slaves of princes, he said “of
Cæsar,” referring both to Vienna and Paris; _thirdly_, the cowards, who
feared the judgment of this evil world. But he prayed for their
enlightenment and conversion.(148) This was of course applied here
universally to the Bishops of the Opposition. Moreover the Pope had just
before had a letter written to certain canons of Besançon, saying that all
the objections raised now had been triumphantly refuted a hundred times
over, and that as to appealing to the results of historical criticism and
the examination of texts, viz., to the huge mass of deliberate
falsifications and forgeries, these were “des anciens sophismes ou
mensonges contraires aux prérogatives du St. Siége.” The remark touches
Rauscher, Schwarzenberg, Dupanloup, Hefele, Maret, Kenrick, Ketteler (in
the pamphlet he circulated), and some thirty more. There is much dispute
here as to the paternity of those views which Pius emits both orally and
in writing. Has he got them from the _Civiltà_, or are the Jesuit writers
of that journal only the pupils of the Pope, who has received this
information “by infused science” from the Virgin Mary? On that point
opinions differ. The majority, who are quite aware that every one would
think it a joke to call Giovanni Maria Mastai a learned theologian, hold
to the latter view, and to the well-known picture painted by the Pope’s
own order, where the “actus infusionis” is represented to the eye. Their
favourite watchword is that every one who does not accept the decree is,
or in a few days will be, a heretic and enemy of the Church; his _non
placet_ consummates his separation from her, and hence Manning has already
proposed that each of these Bishops should have his excommunication handed
him with his railway-ticket when he leaves Rome. Livy says, “Hæc natura
multitudinis est, aut servit humiliter aut superbe dominatur;” the
“multitude” in the Hall combines both characteristics.
On June 18 the Pope observed a German priest among those admitted to an
audience, and asked who he was, when he replied that he was secretary to a
Bishop, who is well known for his learning and his fallibilist views. Pius
turned away with an exclamation of disgust. Of another very eminent
dignitary of similar views he is wont to say in the bitterest terms, that
his opinions are prompted solely by personal enmity to himself.
The majority are said to be very impatient, so that many anticipate the
violent closing of the debate on Saturday, the 25th. And the greater
number of the intending speakers on the fourth chapter, now increased to a
hundred, belong to the Court party, who might say that they are only
willingly renouncing the pleasure of hearing their own ideas put forward.
But then the speeches of Darboy, Place (of Marseilles), Maret, Clifford,
Schwarzenberg, Simor, Dupanloup, and Haynald would also be suppressed.
Hefele was the first to put down his name, as he was not allowed at the
time to answer the fierce attack of Cullen. On his inquiring after some
days when his turn would come, he was told that he was the fifty-first in
order, as all who came before him in age and rank must speak before he
could be permitted to open his mouth. A little later he was told he came
seventy-first, so that his hope of being able to vindicate himself in the
Council is almost at an end. Meanwhile he has had a brief reply to the
attack of a Frenchman, de la Margerie, printed at Naples.
The minority have resolved to send a deputation to the Pope to petition
for the adjournment of the Council, since it is horrible to detain so many
aged men, many of whom are sick, by violence in this unhealthy city. They
will of course meet with a positive refusal, for the Jesuits and the holy
Virgin, who is always appealed to, are for carrying out the compulsory
system to the last. But you may judge how the heat and the moral and
physical miasmas are working on the Bishops from the fact that there are
now only five or six on a bench where thirty Bishops used to sit, though
most of the others are in Rome or the neighbourhood. Indeed they are kept
prisoners here, and Antonelli said recently to a diplomatist, “Si quelque
Evêque veut faire une partie de campagne (like Förster) la police n’a rien
à y voir, mais s’il voulait quitter le Concile, alors ce serait
différent,” so that every foreign Bishop lives here under the inspection
of the police, who are to take care that he does not escape. This
statement seemed to the diplomat to whom it was made so seriously to
affect the sovereign rights of his Government, that he at once reported
it.
The Roman logic, as may be seen from the _Civiltà_, is simply this: the
Council is what it is through the Pope alone; without him it can do
nothing and is an empty shadow. Freedom of the Council therefore means
freedom of the Pope: if he is free, it is free. You may infer what
reception will be accorded in the Vatican to the petition just resolved
upon for a secret voting on the Papal _Schema_. There could be no more
eloquent testimony to the real state of things and the estimate formed of
the freedom of the Council, for it is dictated by the knowledge that a
secret ballot would give a very considerable number of negative votes, at
least 200, if the private expressions of opinion of the Bishops may be
relied upon, while no one here ventures to hope for more than 110 or 115
_non placets_ in a public voting. There are certainly some hundred, even
of the Papal boarders, who would say _Non placet_, if their votes were
sheltered by secrecy. Neither the Catholic nor the non-Catholic public has
any idea of the extent to which a Bishop in the present day is dependent
on Rome, and how difficult or impossible the administration of his office
would be made for him by the disfavour of Rome. The worst off of all are
the Bishops under Propaganda, who have simply no rights. For them to speak
of freedom, after the Pope has announced his wish, would be ludicrous, and
to this category belong not only all the Oriental and Missionary Bishops,
but the American and English also. And even for the Bishops of the older
Sees, who are under the _Congregatio Episcoporum et Regularium_, and are
protected by the common law or by Concordats, the practice of the _Curia_
is a field full of man-traps, a belt studded with nails, which only needs
to be drawn in by curialistic hands to make the nails pierce the body of
the obnoxious Bishop. As things now are here, and after Pius has gone
further than any Pope for centuries in glaring partisanship and open
threats of enmity against all dissentients, secret voting must appear the
only possible means of securing even a shadow of freedom for the decrees
of the Council. If the voting is public, the word freedom, as used of the
Council, could only be regarded as a mockery. And it is very well known
here that the Pope’s _entourage_ do everything in their power to maintain
him in his belief that the Opposition will melt away at last like snow
before the sun, and hardly four negative votes will remain.
Last year the theologians summoned for the preliminary work were sent home
at the beginning of June, and scarcely one or two even of the directing
Commission of Cardinals stayed longer in Rome. Now the 15th or 20th of
July is spoken of as the day for the promulgation, and if it should be a
little earlier there will still be many of the prelates who will return
from Rome ill and with their constitutions permanently shattered. The
ancients found the word “amor” reversed in the name of the eternal city
(_Roma_), and the Bishops are daily reminded of it. Meanwhile the
brilliant recompense of Cardoni’s services has rekindled the hopes of the
majority; there are fifteen or sixteen vacant Hats, which will be given to
those who have deserved best of the new dogma. The merits of the Italians
are not conspicuous; they have most of them done moles’ work, chiefly as
spies, for that business is conducted here to an extent almost unheard of
in Europe. Valerga is of course an exception, who has excelled all the
Italians as a speaker. After him, Mgr. Nardi has so greatly distinguished
himself by his active zeal that a red Hat would seem a fitting ornament of
his head, but then there are very suspicious circumstances, only too
notorious in Rome. The men who have done and will do the most important
services, who are indeed the modern Atlases to carry the main weight of
the new dogma on their lusty shoulders, are of course the Jesuits. Pius is
penetrated with the feeling that their services are above all praise and
recompense. A Jesuit cannot be rewarded with titles and colours and
dresses, but he can receive a Cardinal’s Hat. The names of Toletus,
Bellarmine, Pallavicini, de Lugo, recall grand memories. Not long before
its dissolution in 1736, three of the Order were in the Sacred College
together—Tolomei, Eienfuegos and Salerno. That might happen again, and the
College would gain in capacity and working power. As Kleutgen cannot be
thought of, on account of his trial before the Inquisition, and Perrone is
too old, the next candidates would be Curci, Schrader and Franzelin.
Father Piccirillo, from his intimate relations to the highest personage,
would possess the first reversionary claim, and his services have been
rewarded in a manner greatly desired and long aimed at by his Order, for
he has received the permission, unprecedented in the history of Rome, to
go alone into the secret archives and there work. Such an event would at
other times have been regarded at Rome as a downfall of the heavens or a
sign of the last judgment, and even now it has produced perplexity and
amazement in genuine Roman circles. For every one who passes the threshold
of the chamber of archives incurs _ipso facto_ excommunication. So the
Order is firmly seated in this unapproachable sanctuary. There is no fear
of indiscreet publications. Piccirillo, far from publishing anything, will
excel in mere negative activity.
Among foreign candidates for the Cardinalate Manning stands out as a star
of the first rank in the Roman firmament. He may claim some paternity of
the great idea of at last treating the apotheosis of the Papacy seriously,
and he long ago suggested to Darboy how nice it would be for the two chief
capitals of Europe, London and Paris, each to have its Cardinal, which
could be best brought about by furthering the infallibilist definition.
But Darboy would hear nothing of it. Next to Manning comes Dechamps of
Mechlin; but as the Pope has named him primate, which is indeed a mere
title, he is thought here to have had his reward. Spalding, who has
deserved so well of Rome, would of course create a great sensation in the
United States by the red hat, which has never yet been seen there. Among
the French, Dreux-Brézé of Moulins and Pie of Poitiers come first in
order. There is great difficulty about Simor, the ill-advised and
ungrateful son who had the Cardinalate, so to speak, in his pocket, and is
now causing such distress to the lofty giver. How fortunate, say the Court
party, that d’Andrea is no longer alive. Rauscher, Schwarzenburg, Guidi,
d’Andrea, Simor—that would be too much. But now for the Germans! There it
is difficult to select; all the faithful ones must be rewarded, who have
literally sweated and are sweating daily in the interest of the good
cause—Fessler, Martin, Senestrey, and then Stahl, Leonrod, Rudigier and
the Tyrolese Gasser and Riccabona. The Tyrol has had no Cardinal since
Nicolas of Cusa (Bishop of Brixen) and Madrucci (Bishop of Trent), and
there most especially would the return of a countryman with a red hat be
kept as a national festival.
Margotti has had a denial inserted in the _Univers_ of the fact that a
Sicilian Bishop related the story of St. Peter and the Virgin Mary in the
Council Hall. On this I have merely to remark that it was told me the same
evening by three Bishops, none of whom heard it from one of the others,
and the speaker was Natoli, Archbishop of Messina. We know what Margotti’s
assertions and denials are worth.