offender. The _Unitá Cattolica_ of January 25, in the letter of its
Munich correspondent, called Döllinger a bag of wind and a whited
sepulchre, and suggested that the Archbishop of Munich should prohibit
theological students from attending his classes. The _Unitá_ shows that
Dr. Döllinger in his works "has always hidden a rebellious spirit under
a learning which was often that of a charlatan."
In the General Congregation of the 21st, as the Cyprian Archbishop who
said Mass used the Oriental rite, the Fathers would have been unable
to follow, but the Master of the Ceremonies, lifting up his voice,
gave a signal for each important movement.[298] In the Congregation of
the Monday, Strossmayer spoke for an hour and a quarter (_Tagebuch_,
p. 133). He insisted that reform was called for, and reform from the
Pope downwards, and moreover that the whole of the canon law should
be reformed. On the following Tuesday, this last proposition was
supported by the Bishop of Saluzzo. On the same day, a speaker not
named regretted that the word "concubinage" should have been used,
as it gave occasion to the world to say that celibacy was a failure.
Friedrich, while vehemently sharing this regret, admits that no means
were suggested for doing away with concubinage or immorality. The
Curia, however, could not be blamed for the scandal caused by the
discussion on this matter of discipline. No one of the official organs
ever breathed a word on the subject. Monsignor Guérin, whose history,
says the preface to the second edition, reproduces the Council entire,
might never have heard of this subject, and the same is the case with
Sambin. The _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_, even in Latin, are equally reserved.
The title of the Draft Decree on the general subject of the life of the
clergy is mentioned in _Frond_. Henceforth we cease to be able to check
the statements of the unauthorized writers by those of the _Acta Sanctæ
Sedis_ as to the names of those who spoke on given days. That amount
of information was no more afforded. One day the record was that five
spoke, another seven, and so forth. Who the speakers were, what they
spoke upon, what they said about it, were matters swallowed up in the
pontifical secret.
On the same day, the challenge to the College of Cardinals to reform
itself was taken up by Cardinal Di Pietro, who admitted that such a
demand might have been reasonable at Trent, at which time the Cardinals
held many pluralities, but at the present day it was groundless. The
only reform now called for was a financial one, as the revenue of the
Cardinals was not adequate. He told the Fathers that if they only knew
all, the Cardinals were not to be envied. This even Friedrich admits,
saying that not once during the Council had the Pope summoned them to
hear their opinions.
On January 27, Simor, Primate of Hungary, spoke on the life of the
clergy, and recommended the "common life." Martin of Paderborn also
advised that the cooks[299] should be superseded, and that "common
life" should be resorted to. Martin had appealed to Cardinal Hohenlohe
to support him in a proposal that Protestant clergymen who wanted to
join the Church of Rome should have both marriage and the cup in the
Lord's Supper conceded to them. Verot, Bishop of Savannah, spoke on
the breviary. He urged revision, stating that he durst not, without
subjecting himself to condemnation, say what was in the breviary from
Augustine. Hereupon the bell of Cardinal De Angelis rang loudly, and
Verot was told that the Fathers could not be spoken of in that manner.
As we understand Verot, he had not found fault with the Fathers. The
sons would not allow one another to say what the fathers had said. The
American waited a moment, went on, and said the same thing of Gregory
the Great. Now came a second call to order, and he was told that if
he would not speak on another subject, he must leave the desk. So,
after a few words more, he did leave it (_Tagebuch_, p. 138). The
Prince Archbishop of Olmütz asked if the Primate of Hungary was ready
to lead the "common life" with the canons of his chapter, adding that
he should not object to lead it with his own chapter, but he feared
that the canons of Olmütz would object. The following day, Melchers of
Cologne supported the views of Verot as to the breviary. He censured
the proposal to introduce lay brothers into the parsonages instead of
the cooks. It would be better it the latter could be altogether got
rid of; but as that was scarcely to be expected, it would be well to
require that they should be fifty years of age, or at least forty. On
January 31, Bishop Dinkel of Augsburg is said to have spoken against
concubinage in the strict sense, but allowing it to the clergy in a
wider sense.[300]
Perhaps, as, about the middle of January, men in the _Englisher
Garten_, or Park, of Munich, lifted their hats to the Provost as he
took his afternoon walks, they might fancy that the spare figure
was weighted with rather more than a scholar's gravity. Neither the
passing carriages, nor the race _of Isar rolling rapidly_; neither the
fine effects of the westering sun behind the steeples of the city,
nor the pleasant view from the brow beyond the river, could fix the
old man's well-lighted eye. That eye was then watching the process
which was putting the faith and labour of seventy years to a cruel
test. The Church he had toiled to rehabilitate before the intellect
of the Fatherland, striving, by letters, to connect her more firmly
with the past, and to equip her more nobly for the future, had been
cast into the cauldron. The very basis of dogma was to be changed. A
new standard was to be set up. The adoption of that standard would
change the relation of the Church to the Bible and to the Fathers, to
General Councils and to the Episcopate, to the people and the king, to
letters and all lights, to liberties, constitutions, and every human
hope. Principles which had been charged upon them by Protestants, and
which they had resented, saying that the accusers confounded opinion
with dogma, were now lifting their heads in a General Council. He had
striven in silence to avert the evil without raising a conflict of
persons or names. But now the Infallibilists felt their conscience
oppressed by having to recognize him, and those like-minded with him,
as Catholics. They could not enjoy the fulness of their own belief as
long as the Church tolerated his creed. And the Infallibilists were the
Pope, the Curia, the Jesuits, and the majority of the bishops, at least
of the nominal ones. If there was yet a hope, it rested in the strong
help which God often gives to the effort of one self-risking man. The
moment was come either to run all hazards and trust to that blessing,
or to float down the stream like one of those winter leaves on the Isar.
It was on January 19, just when Gratry was issuing the first of his
letters, and when Darboy threw his marshal's baton into the midst
of the enemy, that in the quiet house in Von der Tann Street, the
formidable name of Döllinger was signed to a protest against the
Infallibilist Address. Through the _Augsburg Gazette_, this presently
rang all over Germany, and a little later echoed in every corner of
Europe. "One hundred and eighty millions of human beings are to be
compelled by threats of exclusion from the Church, of privation of
the sacraments, and of eternal damnation, to believe and profess
what hitherto the Church has never believed or taught." So began an
appeal destined to elicit proof that large numbers of educated Roman
Catholics, under all their external quiet, were agitated; and that at
the same time the masses, whatever little opinions they might have,
were as to action completely under the dominion of the priests.[301]
It was now that Dupanloup wrote a letter to Deschamps, Archbishop of
Malines. Two days after the opening session, Deschamps had published
a reply to the famous pastoral of Dupanloup. It was at once inserted
in the journals of Belgium, France, and Italy. Dupanloup, who had in
France professed to expect in Rome profound tranquillity, found himself
sharply attacked. He had warily reserved the merits of the question for
argument in the secret ear of the Council, treating before the public
only its accidents. But, cried Deschamps, you have pointed out the
difficulties of a definition: how could you have the courage to do so?
When the brilliant Bishop of Orleans was ready for the press, he found
that the press was in good keeping.
Father Spada [the censor] told me that an _imprimatur_ was
necessary, and at the same time said that such an _imprimatur_
would be refused to me. Perhaps, Monsignor, you probably will think
with me that, in these circumstances, all discussion between us is
impossible; and you will feel it natural that I should preserve
the silence befitting the position in which we are placed.[302]
The French thus saw their own prelates, under their own flag, deprived
of the right to defend opinions identified with their national history.
This fired Gratry, and added fresh bitters to the cup of the dying
Montalembert.
Quirinus says (p. 201)--
The word "freedom" has nowhere so ill a sound as at Rome. Only one
kind of freedom can be spoken of here--freedom of the Church; and,
in their favourite and accustomed manner of speech, by the Church
is intended the Pope; and by freedom, dominion over the State,
according to the Decretals.
Some weeks later, Dupanloup did print his reply in Paris.[303] You, he
said to Deschamps, ask how I could have the courage to point to the
historical difficulties of a definition of infallibility; but, my dear
Lord, I ask you, how you can have the courage to close your eyes to
them? Repelling the idea of acclamation, and insisting on a thorough
sifting of the matter, he says, and the emphases are his own--
The Church in an act so solemn, one which she never recalls, ONE
WHICH PLEDGES HER FOR EVER, ONE WHICH, UNDER PAIN OF ANATHEMA AND
OF DAMNATION ETERNAL, IS LAID UPON THE FAITH OF ALL SOULS FOR
ALL AGES, does not proceed inconsiderately, or without having
elucidated all obscurities and difficulties (p. 8).... As to the
truth of the doctrine, I reserve the discussion of that for the
Council itself, in case the question is brought on (p. 9).... You
belong not to that deplorable school of apologists who fancy that
they are defending religion when they make history lie (p. 15).
He shows how even Spalding and his associates in their proposal for
a method of establishing belief in infallibility different from an
express definition, said that such a definition would
extend its effects to all past centuries, would revive all the
disputes heretofore allayed, would afford to Protestant and to
rationalistic science a new battle-field, and would open up to
the enemies, of the Church a discussion upon the whole field of
history, and the whole of the collection of Papal Bulls (p. 14).
Quoting Melchior Canus, he says: Peter has not need of your lies,
or of your adulations.... To no one, my Lord, will it be agreeable
in Rome, and amid the difficult circumstances wherein we stand, to
engage in a discussion as to the common Father, in an investigation
of the most delicate facts of history, and in a dissection of texts
of Scripture before Europe and before the world which are observing
us (p. 16).... The Fathers at Nicæa did not proceed by way of a
summary discussion, much less by way of acclamation written or oral
(p. 17).
A few other expressions of Dupanloup may be recited--
Far from putting an end to the discussions in the press, it
will cause them to break out more terrible than ever.... If the
difficulties, theological and historical, of a definition are
such that simply exhibiting them as I did involves by inevitable
consequence a grave attack on infallibility itself, how could you
say that the difficulties are nothing?... You had the confident
idea that nearly all the Fathers were with you, and were going
enthusiastically to vote the definition off-hand (p. 18)....
Certainly in the Church there must be an infallible doctrinal
authority; but is it necessary that this authority should be the
Pope ALONE? Would it not suffice if it was the authority of the
Pope and the bishops united? (p. 20).... I asked why Pitt thought
it well before taking a step towards Catholic emancipation to
consult the most famous Catholic universities of Europe on the
question of the pontifical power. You have deemed it well to
answer not a word (p. 23).... In the ninth century we lost about
one-half of the Church; in the sixteenth at least a third of the
other half. At the present moment perhaps a half of what remains is
more or less broken in upon (_entamée_). We have to reconquer....
Would you all at once, as several bishops from America said to
me yesterday, change for the whole of the Catholic clergy who
live in the midst of Protestant populations the entire ground of
religious controversy? (p. 24).... In France, the Parliament, the
Senate, the Legislative Corps, the Councils of State, the public
officers, the bench, the bar, the young collegians, the army, the
navy, commerce, finance, the arts, the liberal professions, the
workmen of the cities, the electors in the country districts, the
great mass of those who with us and elsewhere determine the course
of affairs,--in a word, the nation, assuredly is not with you (p.
25).... Have you not heard the cry of the bishops of Germany,
Hungary, Bohemia, and of so many others? (p. 25).... Three
centuries ago a wave passed over Germany, a wave over England,
Holland, Switzerland; and at this hour the wave has not subsided,
but is still encroaching on the shore (p. 26).... Brazil is sick,
Mexico is sick, the old Spanish colonies proceed from revolution
to revolution, and it is my mournful conviction that what you, my
Lord, are preparing, will give to the Church in all those countries
a new and terrible shaking (p. 26).... Some say the great evil of
our day is that the principle of authority is laid low. Let us
exalt it in the Church, and we shall save society.... To think that
by proclaiming the infallibility of the Pope you will roll back the
revolution is, to my view, one of those illusions which sometimes,
in human societies, desperate parties make for themselves on the
eve of a supreme crisis (p. 27).
His statement of the condition of things before he first wrote would
appear to be meant to depict what existed in Rome as he was now
writing--
No, it was not unanimity as to the question debated among us which
reigned ere I spoke. It was on the one side violence, and on the
other side astonishment, silent and downcast. If any voice was
raised, speedily was it covered with clamours and insults (p. 31).
This reply called down from Veuillot many pages of taunts, gibes, and
sneers.
Means of humiliating the bishops of the Opposition were found by the
sovereign, which seem new in both kingly and parliamentary warfare.
Priests wrote against them, and the Pope sent to those priests
for publication letters of approval, containing sharp cuts at the
unfortunate prelates. To the Jesuit Ramière, the Pope said that he had
set Maret "in contradiction with himself, so that you have constrained
him to demolish the edifice with his own hands" (_Friedberg_, p. 490).
The Vicar-General of Nimes had written against Dupanloup, and forth
comes an epistle of Pius IX praising him for his elegant refutation of
the empty sophisms which had caused a disturbance of minds deplored by
all (_Friedberg_, p. 488).
Continental Catholic writers generally put Dr. Pusey as one of the
most important promoters of the Church of Rome. Yet they were aware
that he did not belong to it. In his second pamphlet Dupanloup spoke
with feeling of the value of the Ritualistic party, both in England
and America, as pointing to Rome. _Ce Qui se Passe au Concile_ says
(p. iii., troisième éd.),--"In England Dr. Pusey, the originator of
the Ritualistic movement, which has led so many persons, eminent for
intellect to the Catholic religion--Pusey, whose loyal sincerity no one
ever suspected," had written that nothing would be more fatal to the
prospect of reunion than a declaration of Papal infallibility. This
was not likely to make much impression upon the Curia. They knew that
what for England was called reunion, for Rome was called submission;
which Manning told them would be facilitated by definition; and Manning
served them so punctiliously that they were fain to believe him.
Moreover, what Desanctis in that remarkable book _Roma Papale_, had
many years previously described as the plan of the Curia for operations
in England, would be little affected by a doctrine or two more or
less. His account, in one word, was that they would mission England
through the senses, leaving doctrines and arguments in the background.
It was a question of spectacle, not of reason or Scripture. And love
of spectacle was adorned with the name of aesthetics, and sensible
Englishmen were to be led captive by the power of clothes. In this
point of view, one who promoted the use of the chosen means might
better serve the end from the very fact that he did not himself aim so
low.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 293: We should be curious to know if the writer would now
comment on these terms so doubtfully. Further study would probably
have given greater decision. The meaning of the obedience of princes
and nations was as distinct as possible from that of the obedience
of private persons, whether Catholics or heretics. The Church is all
through the movement proceeding, as _mother of civil humanity_, to
secure the obedience of rulers and States.]
[Footnote 294: _Quirinus_, p. 195.]
[Footnote 295: Vol. i. p. 235.]
[Footnote 296: Serie VII. vol. ix. p. 685.]
[Footnote 297: Letter to the _Débats_, printed in _Le Concile du
Vatican, et le Mouvement Anti-infallibiliste_, vol. ii. p. 63.]
[Footnote 298: _Acta Sanctæ Sedis_, v. p. 341.]
[Footnote 299: We use Friedrich's word. Housekeeper is the one
generally employed in languages other than the German.]
[Footnote 300: _Fromman_, p. 96. As a Protestant author, Fromman is
hardly ever quoted by us; but he is so careful, and in this case so
specific as to date and person, that we do not feel at liberty to
suppress his statement.]
[Footnote 301: _Friedberg_, p. 495. Also reprinted separately in
_Stimmen aus der Katholischen Kirche_.]
[Footnote 302: _Friedberg_, p. 87.]
[Footnote 303: _Réponse de Mgr. L'Evêque d'Orléans à Mgr. Deschamps._
Duniol, 1870.]
CHAPTER VIII
Church and State--Draft of Decrees with Canons--Gains
Publicity--Principles involved--Views of Liberal Catholics--The Papal
View of the Means of Resistance possessed by Governments.
"Informers against the Church," was, in a word, the name now hurled
against the _Augsburg Gazette_ and the _Times_. "Conspirators against
human society" was the retort of the general press of Europe upon the
Curia. The secret labour of five years was ruthlessly exposed by two
unconsecrated offenders. How the "breach of the pontifical secret" had
occurred, of which Cardinal Antonelli complained in despatch after
despatch, may perhaps be known some other day. What we now know is that
publicity took possession of the results, though secrecy had presided
over all the processes. Even the bond of mortal sin had proved too weak
for what Curran might have called the irresistible genius of universal
illumination. The decrees, canons, and anathemas proposed on the
subject of Church and State were now before the world.
On January 21, the Schema, or Draft of Decrees on the Church, was
distributed to the bishops. Hefele told how a diplomatist laughingly
boasted that he had received one at the same time.[304] This Draft was
to that on faith what the application is to the sermon. It laid down
principles in fifteen chapters, and reduced them to operative shape in
twenty-one canons. Vitelleschi says (p. 85)--
Now, on summing up these Canons, what do they amount to? Sole
religion, the Catholic; sole head, the Pope, "who has full and
supreme power"; his laws superior to those of the State, on which
he exercises his judgment "concerning the lawful and the unlawful,"
and disposes of permissions and punishments. Dante has imagined an
Emperor and a Pope, who between them shall direct the world; but
if the idea of these Canons were fully carried out with regard to
civil society, there would remain the Pope only.
This object, the Pope only, which rests in the logical view of
Vitelleschi, as the result of his examination of the Canons, is the
same object which long previously stood before the illuminated vision
of M. Veuillot, whose means of reaching conclusions were not so
circuitous. The Pope only is the object which Archbishop Cecconi even
now sets out as the paramount figure of the future, albeit with no
extatic confidence. And the Pope only is precisely that crowning beauty
in the image of the world-empire which Cardinal Manning reproached
Mr. Bryce with missing in his conception of the Catholic universe.
Mr. Bryce, like Dante, was a dualist. Dualism, however, was to be
done away with, except in the wholesome form of light and darkness,
the two opposed forces. All the labour and the silence of the recent
years had been employed in preparing an inauguration which vulgar eye
was not to disturb till the King should burst forth in his plenitude
of supreme authority with unerring judgment, so arrayed that all the
tribes of Israel would hail the mystic David the one King-shepherd and
Shepherd-king of a world at last unified.
The description of the effect of these canons given by Quirinus (p.
203) was not so elegant as that of Vitelleschi. He wrote for Germans
menaced with a change; while the Romans to whom the Marchese spoke,
had for ages been themselves delivered from dualism, and could see
in the new measures only an effort to extend to all the human race
that perfect Catholic unity, religious and political, of which their
States had been the sole blameless example. They well knew who was the
_spiritual David_, the one shepherd of the one fold,--shepherd with
sling as well as pipe, shepherd with sword as well as crook,--on whose
future reign over one kingdom the eye of the Jesuit, gazing through the
glass of Ezekiel, dwelt with rapture, expounding: "I will make them one
nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall
be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither
shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.... And
David my servant shall be king over them, and they all shall have one
shepherd."[305]
Quirinus, writing as one to whom this unity had been perhaps gorgeous
in the distance, but who saw it now in a new aspect, cried: "These
transparent Decrees and anathemas may be thus summed up: the Christian
world consists simply of masters and slaves. The masters are the
Italians, the Pope, and his Court; and the slaves are all bishops
(including the Italians themselves), all priests, and all the laity."
Whether Quirinus had studied Tarquini's _à priori_ system of the
Perfect Society, we do not know; but any one referring to our analysis
of it will see how closely it corresponds with the following, in which
Quirinus sums up the doctrine of these Draft Decrees--
Three main ideas run through the Schema, and are formulated
into dogmatic Decrees guarded with anathemas. _Firstly_, to the
Pope belongs absolute dominion over the whole Church, whether
dispersed or assembled in Council. _Secondly_, the Pope's temporal
sovereignty over a portion of the Peninsula must be maintained as
pertaining to dogma. _Thirdly_, Church and State are immutably
connected; but in the sense that the Church's laws always hold
good before and against the civil law, and therefore every Papal
ordinance that is opposed to the constitution and law of the land,
binds the faithful, under pain of mortal sin, to disobey the
constitution and law of their country (p. 204).
One incidental notice of the Draft by Quirinus is, "regulating all
relations between Church and State, and restoring the Papal supremacy
over the bodies and souls of men" (p. 209).
The _Rheinischer Merkur_ (p. 22) quotes the Ultramontane _Hausblätter_
as asserting that the twenty-one Canons had all been long recognised as
part of the Catholic faith. No, says the _Merkur_, some of them were
repudiated as calumnious by the Catholic bishops of England and Ireland
in 1826. On the same page it says:
We do not want a centralized power of a theocratic complexion,
claiming the right of interfering at will, and disturbing
our political and social relations, and of reducing princes
to vassals--a centralized power claiming that its Decrees
shall bind the conscience as divine.... We do not want this
apparatus of coercion for the Church--_contumaces salubribus
poenis coercendi_--for compelling the contumacious by wholesome
penalties;--we know what that means!... We do not want
under-satraps armed with whips; we do not want despotism, which, as
well as heresy, is one of the gates of hell. Ready to render to God
what is God's, we also wish to render to Cæsar what is Cæsar's, and
we count it a precious birthright to be reckoned as good subjects
by our lawful sovereigns; but just on this account do we regard
Drafts of Decrees, the execution of which would cause us to appear
as enemies of public safety and of dynastic order, in the light
of attacks on our civil existence, and as calculated to bring us
into the same position as that in which our fellow Catholics in the
Russian Empire groan.
What would these Liberal Catholics have said had Reisach's Drafts
not been "shipwrecked"? The twenty-one Canons place the affairs of
this world so much at the discretion of the Pontiff, that proposals
which alarmed the same men who brought these forward, must have been
startling. In principle, they could hardly have claimed more than is
claimed here; but possibly they contained formulæ for the application
of principle, which might have attracted the attention even of those
politicians who think it wise and practical to ignore principles. In
nothing is Rome stronger than in her consciousness that when once
she has succeeded in getting a principle recognized, she can afford
to temporize as to its application, and for a while to temporize as
to its application, and for a while to compromise as to details. As
the preparations of Reisach had been kept back, and the Canons which
carried the principles were presented, so we shall find that the Canons
were eventually sacrificed, as too much entering into detail, in order
to carry what embraced all.
The Decrees in question were clearly intended as a vehicle to carry
over the doctrines of the Syllabus respecting Church and State from the
domain of ideas into that of facts. The _Chapters_ would furnish text
for professors and preachers. The _Canons_ would bind the conscience of
every Catholic, on pain of anathema. Nothing further could be wanting
than executive contrivances, such as probably the Drafts of Reisach
were intended to provide.
The following is an abridged view of the _substance and effect_ of the
twenty-one Canons (_Documenta_, ii. p. 101):--
1. If any man say that the religion of Christ is not made manifest
in a society, let him be anathema.
2. If any man say that the Church has no certain and immutable
form, let him be anathema.
3. If any man say that she is not external and visible, let him be
anathema.
4. If any man say that she is not one body, let him be anathema.
5. If any man say that she is not a society necessary to the
obtaining of eternal salvation, let him be anathema.
6. If any man say that her intolerance in the condemnation of all
sects is not divinely commanded, or that such sects ought to be
tolerated, let him be anathema.
7. If any man say that she may err in doctrine, depart from her
original institution, or cease to exist, let him be anathema.
8. If any man say that she is not a final dispensation, let him be
anathema.
9. If any man say that her infallibility extends only to things
contained in revelation, let him be anathema.
10. If any man say that she is not a Perfect Society, but an
association (_collegium_) which may be subjected to secular rule,
let him be anathema.
11. If any man say that bishops have not by divine appointment a
proper power of ruling, which they are freely to exercise, let him
be anathema.
12. If any man say that the power of the Church lies only in
counsel or persuasion, but not in legal commands, in coercion and
compulsion by external jurisdiction, and in wholesome pains, let
him be anathema.
13. If any man say that the true Church, out of which none can be
saved, is any other than the Roman, let him be anathema.
14. If any man say that Peter was not prince of the apostles and
head of the whole Church, or that he received only a primacy of
honour and not of jurisdiction, let him be anathema.
15. If any man say that he had not successors, or that the Roman
Pontiff was not his successor in the primacy, let him be anathema.
16. If any man say that the Roman Pontiff has only a right of
supervision or direction over the Universal Church, and not a full
and supreme power of jurisdiction, or that his power over the
Churches, taken separately, is not immediate and ordinary, let him
be anathema.
17. If any man say that the power of the Church is not compatible
with that of supreme civil power, let him be anathema.
18. If any man say that the power necessary to rule civil society
is not from God, let him be anathema.
19. If any man say that all rights among men and all authority are
derived from the State, let him be anathema.
20. If any man say that the supreme rule of conscience lies in the
law of the State, or in public opinion, and that the judicial power
of the Church does not extend to pronouncing them legitimate or
illegitimate, or that by civil law that can become legitimate which
by divine law is illegitimate, let him be anathema.
21. If any man say that the laws of the Church have not binding
force unless confirmed by the civil power, and that it is competent
to the civil power to judge or decree in causes where religion is
implicated, let him be anathema.
The logical succession of ideas was manifest. The first five Canons
established the principle that the Christian Church is a society
which has Form, Visibility, Unity, and is necessary to salvation. The
next series pronounced this Church to be Intolerant (6), Infallible
(7), Final as a dispensation (8), Infallible in matters not contained
in revelation (9), a Perfect Society not subject to the civil power
(10), ruling by bishops (11) and possessing legislative, judicial, and
compulsory power (12), because none can be saved out of her (13). The
fourteenth Canon, and the two following ones, establish the unlimited
dominion of the Pope over all bishops; while the eleventh establishes
the ruling power of bishops, but leaves the sphere of it undefined, not
even saying that it is over the Church. And this undefined ruling power
of bishops is placed between the independence of the Church in relation
to the civil power on the one hand, and her own compulsory power and
the absolute authority of the Pope over the bishops on the other.
The seventeenth Canon affirms that the power of the Church is
compatible with civil authority,--which without a doubt it is, so
long as the civil authority abides within the limits traced for it by
the Church. That authority may also, in the sense of Rome, be, in its
order, supreme,--that is, not subject to any other civil authority,
but always subject to the Pope, who is an authority of a higher order
than the civil. The eighteenth Canon bases all civil authority on
divine right. This is capable of more than one interpretation. First,
it may mean that all existing authority is to be viewed as from God,
whether it originated in conquest, prescription, or vote; or, secondly,
it may mean that no civil authority is legitimate which has not divine
sanction; and as among the baptized that sanction cannot be received
except through the Pope, the consequence of such an interpretation
would be obvious. The nineteenth Canon deliberately confounds natural
and legal rights, as if the laws that create and protect legal rights
were not themselves the outgrowth of natural rights. In the same way it
confounds natural authority and legal authority. The twentieth seems
to put civil law and mere public opinion on the same level, and places
both one and the other under the judgment of the Church, and that as
to their legitimacy or illegitimacy. _Judgment_, of course, does not
mean criticism, instruction, remonstrance, or warning. It means what
the word would mean anywhere, in such solemn legislative language,
namely, judicial sentence. _Legitimacy_ or _illegitimacy_, again, does
not mean wisdom or folly, goodness or badness, but means what it says.
Divine law includes Church law, and what it forbids no civil law can
warrant. Therefore the power claimed in this fundamental proposition
is that with which we are already acquainted in the literature of the
movement for reconstruction, that, namely, of declaring what laws of
a particular State are or are not legitimate; every such State being
considered as a province of the universal theocratic monarchy.
Perhaps no principle embodied in these Canons lies so deep under the
whole movement against free government in religious and civil society
as the principle that confounds civil rights with natural ones, and,
by denying that the State is the source of all rights, covers the
denial of the fact that it is the source of legal rights. As to legal
rights, we, sitting free and thankful amid our books, our friends, and
our blessings, no more know of any source of such rights except that
benign ordinance of our Father in heaven, the civil law, than did the
teacher of Plato, when by law deprived of his natural rights, he sat in
his cell while the deadly cup was being prepared.[306] No, the State is
not the author of rights, but it is the guardian of them. Practically
all our natural rights are but a common for any beast to trample and
to browse upon till the State surrounds them with the sacred fence of
law; then do they turn into garden sward, and well-watched flowers and
fruits exceeding fair. But these principles, which strip the State of
all moral mission, which empty law of all moral character, which rob
society itself, and all the institutions of society, of any aim moral
and eternal, of any but a temporary, material end, and which transfer
all that is noble to the priesthood alone, cover one of the darkest
attempts that art could direct against all the foundations of public
life. The moral mission of the State is written on every page of the
Bible, and the political mission of Christian priests not on a single
one.
The State in renouncing for itself the right to dictate to men their
faith and worship, does not empty itself of a moral character, but,
on the contrary, takes the highest possible moral ground. In that
renunciation it does not disavow the faith and fear of God, but, on
the contrary, avows its persuasion that the rights which affect the
conscience of His creatures are so sacred as not to be sufficiently
guarded except in His hand alone. Of shallow pretexts for oppression,
none was ever shallower than the assumption that because society as
such says that it dares not to come between God and the soul, therefore
does it say that as society it has nothing to do with God.
The Court was evidently not disposed to leave politicians under
any delusion. The _Civiltá_ wrote on the politicasters and the
Council,[307] as if to make statesmen feel that they had either to
submit or else to bear the brunt of the revolutionary forces, from
below and from above. A principal object of the Council, says the
article, had avowedly been "the restoration of peace in the orders,
even the political ones, of Christendom." Confessing that statesmen,
or _politicasters_, as it called them, evinced anxiety, the _Civiltá_
named measures to which they might be tempted to resort. These were
threefold--first, making new preventive laws; secondly, restoring
obsolete ones; thirdly, separating the Church and the State. By
preventive laws must be understood any legal bar set up to impede the
Pope in any exercise of his legislative, judicial, or coercive power in
a given realm. Preventive laws, old or new, it pronounces to be weapons
which would infallibly "burst or break in the hands of governments, if
they attempted to use them."
The method by which this result would be brought about is indicated in
a way which shows how _divine_ law can loose what civil law binds.
There are two cases in which a subordinate is not obliged to obey
a superior; the first, when a contrary precept exists of greater
authority; the second, when the superior gives commands in things
in respect of which the subordinate is not placed under him....
An inferior authority is not to be disobeyed when a superior one
prohibits. Now, the authority of the Church, assembled in Council,
is superior to the authority of the State.... It is superior in
the sense in which the reasoning faculty in man is superior to the
sentient and vegetative faculties.... Since the ecclesiastical
authority is superior to the civil in such wise that, in matters
affecting both, the acts of the civil must be subject to those
of the ecclesiastical, it is manifest that if a collision arose
between the definitions of the OEcumenical Council and the laws of
the State, the latter would cease, by that fact alone, to have any
binding force whatever.
The same conclusion may be deduced from the words in which the
divine Founder of the Church gave authority to His disciples to
teach His doctrine to all nations. _All power is given to Me in
heaven and in earth. Go and teach all nations._ From the fact
that, in virtue of His divine generation, the Father had conferred
on Him all power, celestial and terrestrial, Christ argued thus,
Therefore, go ye and teach all nations my doctrine; and thus He
clearly demonstrated that His Church was invested by Him with _such
a right of teaching that it would never be lawful for any power
to offer to her opposition_. Therefore, should the State require
obedience to laws contrary to the definitions of the Council, it
would do so without a true legal right. And if, notwithstanding, it
employed force to procure obedience, it would fall into tyranny,
odious to the conscience and ruinous to itself.... By no means
does the authority of governments extend to commanding what the
OEcumenical Council may prohibit, or to prohibiting what it may
command; and if governments should arrogate to themselves the right
of doing so, in vain would they presume upon being able to oblige
Catholics subject to submit; and should they have recourse to
force, they would plunge themselves into tyranny which would not
long serve the interests of those who displayed it.
The principles are very simple and firmly fixed. While submission to
_legitimate_ authority is a duty, resistance to "tyranny" is a right.
Any authority used in contravention of the decrees of the Church
ceases to be legitimate, runs into tyranny, and is to be disobeyed.
Hence the duty of obedience to civil rulers is taught in the term
"_due_ obedience," and only the Pope can judge when obedience ceases
to be due; but it is judged already that due it never can be, in any
possible case, wherein the civil law contravenes the directions of
the ecclesiastical authority. How States which profess to accept the
corporation which insists on these principles as a true and worthy
teacher, or which look on it as anything but an erring and dangerous
caste, are to escape dissolution, it is not easy to see.
It is not hard to call the hopes of victory in the impending struggle
monkish dreams, nor easy to dispel the show of probability in the
following argument. Hundreds of examples in the past, where persistent
ecclesiastical agitation triumphed over political instability,
would rise up to the memory of well read Jesuits, as making their
calculations seem like those of positive philosophers, and the hopes of
journalists and members of Parliament like those of enthusiasts, in the
sense of men who look for ends without using means.
"What would such laws come to in case they were enacted? They
would come to be laws of no validity and no effect in what touches
belief: of no validity because essentially null as to binding
force; of no effect because unable to prevent Catholics from a
full adhesion of mind and heart to the dogmatic definitions of the
Church. And as to external acts and matters of discipline, such
laws would become a dead letter, or a criminal oppression. A dead
letter if the governments did not feel that they had nerve to put
forth the strong hand and enforce the execution of them, in which
case the laws would become a _ridiculous comedy_. Or a criminal
oppression if, feeling themselves possessed of force, they should
employ it to execute laws tyrannical, as being opposed to public
liberty, public religion, and public faith."
As to separating the Church from the State, the _Civiltá_ proudly
quotes the _Monde_ of Paris:--
The Catholics have number and force on their side ... before
apostatising the French government would think twice ... the
government surely would not give the signal for its own fall, and
for a long revolution.
The separation of Church and State is here spoken of evidently in the
ordinary sense; but the charge of having already separated the State
from the Church was one frequently brought against the government
of France, when the language employed was that of the initiated. In
that language the Draft of Decrees now under consideration described
separation of the State from the Church as the denial of the right or
duty of the State to coerce by the appointed penalties, except so far
as may be demanded in the interests of public peace, those who violate
the Catholic religion.[308]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 304: _Unitá Cattolica_, March 4, quoting _Volksblatt_.]
[Footnote 305: See exposition of Ezek. xxxvii. 21-24, _Civiltá_, VII.
vi. 293.]
[Footnote 306: Compare the _Crito_ and the _Phædo_.]
[Footnote 307: Serie VII. ix. 257 ff.]
[Footnote 308: Cap. xii. _Doc. ad. Ill._ ii., p. 96]
CHAPTER IX
The Courts of Vienna and Paris manifest anxiety--Disturbances in
Paris--Daru's Letters--Beust moves--His Despatches--His Passage of
Arms with Antonelli--Daru's Despatch and Antonelli's Reply--Daru's
Rejoinder--Beust lays down the Course which Austria will
follow--Arnim's Despatch--The _Unitá_ on the Situation--Veuillot on the
Situation--Satisfaction of the Ultramontanes.
The fire of small arms from the press only irritated the Curia; but
presently the sound of heavy guns began to be heard, and ended in a
boom, first from the Burg and next from the Tuileries. The two Emperors
who, with the Pope, held a share in the sovereignty of Austria and
France respectively, began to be aware of the fact that they might find
themselves left by their senior partner exactly in the legal position
which we have seen Phillips describe as that of the State in relation
to the Church--the position in law of a married woman as compared with
her husband. It will be remembered that, according to the doctrine
of the _Civiltá_, every Catholic State must have two kings. It will
further be remembered that all the Pope's subjects are bound to observe
his law before that of the nation. If, therefore, the universal ruler
could promulge what laws he pleased, and all these laws were to take
the foreway of any competing laws of the State, it was plain that of
the two kings in each State, the local one was at the mercy of the
universal one.
On January 18, the very day on which Gratry dated his famous letter,
and on which, probably, Döllinger penned his protest dated one day
later, Count Daru wrote a letter, of which the press got hold: "They
cannot be so blind," said the Foreign Minister of France, "as to
suppose that it would be possible for us to keep our troops there a
day after infallibility was proclaimed." He hoped that the Holy Father
would yield to the counsel of the most illustrious of the French
bishops. A fortnight later (Feb. 5), in a second letter, he expressed
fears that the majority would take advantage of its powers, and said
that he had caused Cardinal Antonelli to be apprised of the truth
through M. de Banneville; but he adds: "It is clear that everything may
be thrown into uncertainty by the conduct of the Italian, Spanish, and
missionary bishops, who seem to live in a world apart." He again speaks
of the impossibility of keeping up a French garrison, and declares
that the Propaganda seems to take no account of the Concordat, and
that perhaps violence may be done to the pact which unites France with
Rome. The revolutionary party, he affirms, is not only conspiring, but
actually moving, and Rome must be blind to put weapons in their hands
by breaking the force of the Conservatives, and compelling rebellion by
the Syllabus.
This language betrays the weakness of statesmen who rely on Rome, as
if it was a Conservative agency, but it would cause little anxiety
to the Curia. They had forty thousand drilled men in France holding
important places under the State. At this very time the movements of
the revolutionary party in Paris were dwelt upon by Don Margotti in the
tone of an enthusiastic bone-setter, who, hearing of accidents, felt
sure that he must be called in. On February 11 the _Unitá Cattolica_
said that--
"Bonaparte had cause to fear barricades in Paris. He and his
minister had been setting up barricades against the Council, and
so the revolutionists were setting up barricades against him.
The Church always conquered the barricades of Gallicanism, but
Bonaparte may not conquer those of Paris. Some morning we may find
that he has fled. The Emperor would have set his house in order in
a better manner, if, instead of launching into the parliamentary
system, he had declared from the day the Council was announced that
he would submit himself and France in everything and for everything
to its decision...."
The very next day it is added--
"The troubles in Paris are a vengeance of divine justice on
Napoleon for his misconduct in Italy. Had he not prevented the Pope
from sending his cousin, Count Pepoli of Bologna, to the galleys,
he would not have had to imprison Rochefort."
If the same men who thus detested Napoleon threatened the Italians
with French arms, it was simply from the belief that the Papacy had a
stronger hold upon France than the empire. After saying (February 8)
that modern society is to the Church what the world was to Christ, and
that the first Syllabus against the world was compiled by Christ, Don
Margotti says on the next day to the Italians--
You will not go to Rome, because France will always oppose you;
and she does so because, if she did not, the world would. If
the free-thinkers do not believe in miracles, let them see one
in this--that Rome will never be taken from the Pope. Even a
government with Rochefort at its head would defend the temporal
dominion of the Pope-king.
There is a solemn passage in Vitelleschi where he speaks of the
frequency with which governments find that they have to face some
revolutionary movement at one and at the same time as that in which the
claims of the Church are being pressed upon them. He does not pronounce
that the two facts are in individual cases connected, but he does say
that the frequent recurrence of the two simultaneously is "an organic
phenomenon worthy of the deepest attention" (p. 235). Rechtbaur in
Vienna said, "They threaten revolution if the State does not renounce
its rights"; and a couple of days after it had quoted this remark, the
_Unitá Cattolica_ said--
Diocletian left a long tail behind him. His tail consists of those
politicians who protest against the Syllabus as a declaration of
war against modern society. Beust in Vienna, Hohenlohe in Munich,
Ollivier in Paris, were not tranquil like the priest in Rome.
Sooner or later they would all be engulfed in the stormy sea of
revolution--all but the Church and the Pope. The Syllabus would
abide for ever, and with it the Canons of the Vatican Council....
The Pope has proved by facts that he knows how to govern better
than any other sovereign. We defy any emperor whatever to govern a
country fourteen years as Pope Pius IX has governed Rome.
The letters of Count Daru, quoted above, caused inquiry in Rome.
Quirinus asserted that the only existing copy of them was in the hands
of the English government. It was known that Lord Acton was a near
relation of the English Minister for Foreign Affairs. Putting this
and that together, the Curia was inclined to say that Quirinus must
be Lord Acton; and it is confidently affirmed that Monsignor Randi,
whose spiritual duties were those of Director of Police, was taken
into consultation with the Pope as to whether it would or would not be
expedient to banish the suspected English nobleman.[309] The _Unitá_
tried to make capital against Dupanloup out of these letters. It could
not believe that the Bishop of Orleans would write to Daru and tell him
what passed in the Council (March 8).
The anxiety felt at Courts in Catholic nations had now penetrated the
mind of Count Beust. On February 10 he penned a remarkable despatch,
in which he recited his pacific intentions and his innocent hopes, as
indicated in his treatment of the Council hitherto, and especially
in his rejection of the overtures of Bavaria. He was now, however,
obliged to confess that, in Rome, there was a manifest determination
not to acknowledge, nay, more, not to tolerate, that liberty which
Austria claimed for the State in civil legislation. He now confesses
to "alarm," and affirms that the Decrees of the Church "would dig an
impassable gulf between the laws of the Church and those which govern
the greater part of modern societies." He plainly declares that Austria
would reserve to herself the right of interdicting the publication of
any Act infringing the majesty of the law, and that every person who
should disregard such prohibition must bear the legal consequences.
This despatch was followed by one to Berlin,[310] pointing out how
delicate had been the position of Austria in the present transaction.
The empire was passing through an internal transformation. Hence
arose a special necessity of maintaining the supremacy of law, and a
corresponding expediency of avoiding internal conflict. In addition
to reasons of State for not identifying his policy with that of the
minority of the bishops of the Council, Count Beust alleged that
those prelates found that any interference on the part of governments
turned to an embarrassment for themselves, because they were accused
of being the instruments of the political rulers, and he felt that it
was not the bishops but the Cabinets that must defend the rights of
States. A third despatch was directed to Munich.[311] In this, Count
Beust intimated that Prince Hohenlohe might naturally think that it
would have been better had the Count in time seen the force of his
recommendations. Parrying this objection, he strongly urged united
action, and stated that Austria was now ready to co-operate in a matter
that evidently affected the common interests of all governments. The
effect of all this was a formal visit of Count Trauttmansdorff, the
Austrian ambassador, to Cardinal Antonelli. According to the report
of the Count, the Cardinal had really nothing to say beyond the most
commonplace evasions. The Decrees were still subject to discussion,
and, on the other hand, interdicting the publication of Decrees in a
certain country did not deprive them of their validity. Besides, he
could not see how prohibiting the publication of the laws of the Church
could be consistent with the policy which consisted in giving liberty
to the publication of anything. Moreover, all the world knew that,
while Rome affirmed principles, she would be very reasonable and gentle
in the application of them, and none need to take the least alarm.
Count Trauttmansdorff expresses his satisfaction with the attitude of
the German bishops, but thinks that Austria has lost her influence by
her recent changes of policy, and especially by her attacks upon the
Concordat. He expects, on the contrary, great effect from the exercise
of French influence.
The reply of Count Beust to this despatch was prompt and clear. True,
he said, Decrees of the Church retain their validity though rejected
by the government; but this was the very circumstance that showed the
gravity of the position. It would become a serious matter, both for the
Church and for Catholic governments, if laws which were valid for the
one, were repudiated by the other. Again, as to the Cardinal's remark
that refusing the Church liberty to promulge her laws was scarcely
consistent with professions of giving liberty to publish anything,
Count Beust thought that this remark could hardly be serious. "Respect
for the law is the basis of all liberty," said the Count, "and liberty
which passes that boundary, becomes licence." But this arrow would fall
blunted from a conscience covered by the buckler of the Vatican. Any
Vaticanist would simply say, Respect for a higher law is not disregard
of law; and whenever Rome has spoken, her word is the higher law,
respect for which is the real basis of order.
The reply of Antonelli to the despatch of Beust is a singular document.
He is so generally credited with ability as a diplomatist that one
would fear to say, even if one thought, that it is anything but an
able paper, whether viewed in an intellectual or a diplomatic aspect.
He states that the remonstrances of Beust were expressed in "not
very delicate terms," and in weaker and much less courteous forms
puts forward the arguments which we shall presently find employed
in his reply to Daru. So far from accepting the reproach of want of
delicacy, Beust instantly and formally repelled it, and said that
the Pope's Nuncio, when appealed to, could hardly find an expression
in his despatch on which to attempt to sustain the allegation of the
Cardinal. He demanded a copy of the despatch, and, as soon as he had
obtained it, instructed the ambassador at Rome to thank Antonelli for
granting it, and to tell him that he had immediately laid it before the
Emperor.[312] Whether the Emperor thought the despatch respectful to a
power such as his we cannot say.
The day after that on which Count Trauttmansdorff reported his
interview with Cardinal Antonelli, Count Daru, in Paris, despatched
an important document to the Vatican. According to an analysis of it,
contained in the reply of Antonelli,[313] the Count summed up the
effect of the Canons in two propositions. First, the infallibility
of the Church extends, not only to the deposit of faith, but also
to all that is necessary to its preservation. Secondly, the Church
is a divine and perfect society, and exercises its powers in two
tribunals, the interior and the exterior. She is absolute in the
domain of legislation, judicial procedure, and coercive force; and
moreover exercises her power with full liberty, and in independence
of any civil power whatever. The Count points out that the claims of
the Church are now extended to authority over history, philosophy,
and science, and involve an absolute subordination to the authority
of the Church of the very principles of a national constitution, the
rights and duties of governments, with the political rights and duties
of citizens, both electoral and municipal. They are extended even to
everything included in judicature and in legislation, in respect both
of persons and things; to the rules of public administration, to the
rights and duties of corporations, and in general to all the rights of
the State, not excepting the right of conquest, and that of peace and
war. Is it to be imagined, asks Count Daru, that princes will bow their
sovereignty before the supremacy of the Court of Rome? Considering the
protection granted by France to the Holy See for twenty years past,
she has special duties before the world, and he, therefore, claims
that projects of laws which are to be laid before the Council shall be
communicated to the French government, and that time shall be allowed
to forward the observations that may be deemed desirable before they
are pressed for decision.
The reply of Antonelli to Daru has been generally looked upon as one of
the ablest specimens of his skill. Unless at the moment the greatest
daring was the greatest skill, we must think the impression of skill
is made chiefly on the minds of those who have not carefully studied
the Vatican dialect. It would seem that Count Daru, or his advisers,
were perfectly aware of the meaning of the document; and to any one
who was so, a more absolute statement of Papal suzerainty can scarcely
be conceived. The technical term "direct" plays an important part in
the various assertions. The Cardinal does not deny the extension of
the Papal authority to any one of the matters pointed out by Daru. He
never denies that that authority is absolute, but always takes care to
couple with the world "absolute" the word "direct"--it is not "direct
and absolute"; and the real meaning of much of the despatch would be
brought out by the simple question, which any ecclesiastical adviser
of the French Foreign Office _who was true to the government_ would
ask, Is it indirect and absolute? Moreover, the blank statement that
the kingly power depends upon the priestly, is, in the form in which
Antonelli puts it, an extension even of the ordinary Jesuit doctrine,
which couples the dependence of the kingly power upon the priestly
with several qualifications, practically not amounting to much, but
theoretically necessary to be kept in view, because they enable men to
seem to deny what they mean to maintain. Commencing by a complimentary
paragraph as to the protection of France and the gratitude of the
Pope, Antonelli goes on to express great surprise that the Canons
should cause so much uneasiness. They only expressed the maxims and
fundamental principles of the Church, published in all forms, taught
in the schools, maintained for ages, and often approved of even by
civil governments. The Church, continues Antonelli, never claims to
exercise a "direct and absolute" power over the political rights of the
State. Having received the mission to lead men, whether as individuals
or as constituted into societies, to a supernatural end, the Church
had received the corresponding authority to judge the morality of all
acts interior or exterior, in respect of their conformity to laws
natural and _divine_. "As no action, whether commanded by a supreme
power or freely performed by a person, can be divested of a quality of
morality or justice, it follows that the judgment of the Church, though
directly turning upon the morality of actions, indirectly extends
_to all matters with which morality is connected_." But this is not
the same as direct interference in political affairs, which, by the
order established by God, and by the teaching indeed of the Church,
belong to the temporal power without any dependence on any authority.
The subordination of the civil power to the religious one is in the
sense[314] of the superiority of the priesthood. Hence the authority
of sovereignty depends on that of priesthood, as human things depend
on divine, and temporal on spiritual. And if temporal felicity, which
is the end of civil power, is subordinate to eternal felicity, which
is the spiritual end of the priesthood, it follows that to attain
the end towards which God would have them respectively tend, the one
power is subordinate to the other; and thus, as between them, there
exists in one of the two a subordination of functions as there exists a
subordination of ends.
Therefore, proceeds the despatch, if infallibility does extend to all
that is necessary to conserve the faith, no prejudice will, on that
account, arise to science, history, or politics. Of course (we may
interject) the reasoning is, that any subordination arising from a
divinely-appointed order cannot be the cause of prejudice, but only
of advantage. Infallibility, he proceeds, has been exercised in times
past, and princes have had no occasion to disquiet themselves. If the
Church has been constituted by her divine founder a true and perfect
Society distinct from the civil power and independent of it, with a
plenary threefold authority, legislative, judicial, and coercive, no
confusion will arise in the movements of human society, or in the
exercise of the rights of the two powers. The Church does not exercise,
in virtue of her authority, "a direct and absolute" interference in
the principles and constitutions, in the forms of civil power, in the
political rights of citizens, in the duties of the State, and in the
other matters enumerated in the despatch of the minister.
Almost the only thing not clear in the remarkable State paper in which
Daru replied to this despatch,[315] is the way in which he understood
the last remarks we have quoted from the Cardinal. He speaks of them
as being important, but in what sense? As showing a wish to allay the
impressions made by the Draft of Decrees, which is all the Cardinal
really professes? or as containing any statement properly calculated to
allay those apprehensions? Count Daru had evidently not read hastily,
and had not been without clear-headed interpreters. He could not, for a
moment, think that Antonelli had said that the Church had no authority
to interfere in political matters, when he really had said no more
than that she did not _exercise_ a "direct and absolute" interference,
by virtue of her authority. No more could Count Daru suppose that
saying that she did not do so was a promise that she would not do so,
although, even had such a promise been made, couched in the terms
employed by Antonelli, the word "direct" would have deprived it of any
practical value. Every other portion of Count Daru's Memorandum must
have made the Pope, to whom it was submitted, feel that the Minister of
France understood the intentions of the Vatican.
The more one examines the doctrine of this document, the more
impossible does it become to overlook the fact that, in the
main, it amounts to the complete subordination of civil power
to the religious society.... Unless we refuse to words their
true and natural meaning, we cannot escape the conviction that
the Draft Decree on the Church has, for its object and end, the
re-establishment, in the entire world, of doctrines which would
place civil society under the empire of the clergy.... Under
the formidable sanction of the anathema, the infallibility and
authority of the Church are to be extended, not only to truths
handed down by revelation, but to all things that may appear
necessary for preserving the deposit of tradition. In other words,
her infallibility and authority have no other limits than those
which the Church may herself assign to them; and all principles of
civil order, politics, and science, fall, directly or indirectly,
within their range. It is on this almost boundless field that
the Church is to exert the right of pronouncing decisions and
promulgating laws, binding the conscience of the faithful,
independently of any confirmation on the part of the political
authority, and even in direct opposition to laws emanating from it.
It is on this domain, the bounds of which, it appears, the Church
alone may fix, that the Canons ascribe to her a complete power,
which is at once legislative, judicial, and coercive, and is to be
put forth in the external tribunal as well as in the internal,--a
power the exercise of which the Church may assure by material
penalties, and Christian princes and governments would be bound
to lend their assistance by chastising all who should attempt to
withdraw themselves from under her authority.
No wonder that Count Daru draws the inference that "governments would
retain no power, and civil society would retain no liberty, but the
power and the liberty which it might please the Church to leave to
them." The dearest rights of States, their political constitution,
their legislation on property, on the family, and on instruction,
"might any day be called in question by the ecclesiastical authority."
Moreover, it is now proposed that to all this shall be added Papal
infallibility. "_That is to say, after having concentrated all
political and religious powers in the hand of the Church, they will
concentrate all the power of the Church in the hand of her head._"
As to the artifice, that only principles were to be carried, but that
the application of them would not be enforced, Daru says, No such
statement suffices to reassure us. What, he asks, Are people in the
forty thousand parishes of France to be taught that they are free to
do that which they are not free to believe? He will not even treat
this representation as grave. He gives the Church credit for intending
a serious work, and, therefore, when once she has inscribed a maxim
among the immutable truths, she will try to bring it into practice. The
Pontiff has not assembled the bishops of the whole world to promulgate
sterile laws.
Antonelli had alleged that the principles in dispute were not new.
That, replied Count Daru, he knew too well, but kings and nations had
never accepted those principles, and the attempt to establish them had
always, even in the middle ages, caused bloody conflict. He concluded
by declaring that if the propositions were adopted, they would have the
inevitable consequence of bringing about grievous troubles.
The French government declared its intention of demanding that a
special ambassador should be admitted to the Council. This Don
Margotti hailed, first as a victory of the Council, and then as one of
the most splendid victories of Pius IX. The ground of this professed
exultation was that abstinence from the Council meant the separation
of Church and State. "The Lord be praised, who is preparing greater
triumphs for His spouse!" France trembles for her revolution and her
Gallicanism.[316] So can voice and face be changed in a moment.
Beust, in further despatches, declined any proposal for sending
ambassadors to the Council, on the ground that governments would,
by such an act, make themselves, in some sort, parties to its
proceedings. He had laid down and firmly adhered to the principle of
abiding within the line of purely political action. That principle, he
declared, fully covered the two steps of interdicting all publications
exciting to contempt of the law, and punishing all persons guilty of
any contempt of it.[317] But he instructed Count Trauttmansdorff to
support the French with all cordiality, in the demand that matters
touching political interests, which were submitted to the Council,
should be communicated to France before being enacted. But, on the
part of the State, he could not take up theological arguments or plead
the interests of the Catholic Church. He would take his stand on the
interests of the State only, and tell the Court of Rome that, if it
provoked a conflict, Austria would not give way to its decisions. For
similar reasons, he must abstain from identifying the government with
the bishops of the minority. Approving and sympathizing with their
position, he nevertheless felt that they might come to change their
ground, and accept what the government could not accept.
The French government applied, also, to the North German Confederation
to support its representatives. Bismarck was deliberate but firm. On
April 23,[318] Arnim sent in a despatch, cordially supporting the
claims put forward by Daru. He said, that the Decrees, so far from
being any vague menace for the future, were rather calculated to
revive, and surround with a new dogmatic sanction, certain pontifical
Decrees sufficiently known, and constantly combated by civil society
in every age, and of every nation. An earnest wish to shun a collision
pervaded the despatch.
The impression made upon the Curia by these appeals may perhaps
be better gathered from Don Margotti and M. Veuillot than from
Antonelli's despatches. On March 3 the _Unitá Cattolica_ says, France
and Austria have really remonstrated against the proposed definition
of infallibility. They are afraid of the doctrine of Christ. If they
would only adopt the Council and its doctrine, it would restore even
their finances. "Do make an experiment. You have tried a thousand
constitutions in France and Austria: why should you disdain to try
the true Catholic constitution?" Let those two countries faithfully
proclaim the doctrine, accept and spread it among the people, "and in
less than a year you will confess that it is a great salvation for
the French and Austrian empires." This is followed by a letter from a
professor of theology on the opportuneness of defining the dogma of the
personal infallibility of the Pope. He contends first that it would--
give a blow to Liberalism, which is the doctrine of human
infallibility; for representative assemblies claim a true
infallibility, because the decrees of such assemblies _are not
reformable by the Church_; but if a single man alone is declared
infallible, they all, whether individually or collectively, become
fallible, and must receive from him their rules in jurisprudence
and legislation, and every institution or ordinance declared by
the Pontiff not to be good is, without appeal, rejected as false
and corrupt. Liberalism, wherever it prevails, converts rulers
into tyrants and subjects into slaves! The spectacle of seven
hundred bishops giving up all to the Pope will restore the idea of
legitimate authority.
Anticipating the _final_ struggle against the Church, he says, "It is
of the utmost importance that the Church bind up her people in the
firmest unity; for the battle will be sore, and she will escape only by
divine intervention." On March 4, the _Unitá_ says that the Council is
assailed by traitors. The devil always has a foot in good things, but
he has two in the Council. Satan entered into the deputies of Italy,
then into the body of Prince Hohenlohe, then he passed on to Döllinger,
to Père Hyacinth, and to Père Gratry. The devil had entered into the
cabinets of Beust and Daru, and into the palace at Munich, where
Döllinger had been admitted to the same honours as formerly had been
granted to Lola Montez.
M. Veuillot[319] imagines a conversation between a Catholic and a
Liberal Catholic, of which the following is a condensation. It shows
the kind of information which was granted, and the kind of argument
which was welcome, to the forty thousand educated men on whom largely
depends the fate of all French governments _which attempt to govern
through them_:--
The governments are displeased.---- Why?---- Because!---- What
of that?---- You offend common sense. The cause is the dogma of
infallibility.---- But the Holy Spirit?---- It was not the Holy
Spirit that signed the petition for infallibility.---- Did He sign
the other?---- The other is inspired by the highest wisdom.---- So
be it. Both call upon the Holy Spirit and He will come.---- He will
not come.----Why?---- The Rules of the Council are bad, the Hall is
defective, discussion is impossible, the Council is not free.----
What? the Fathers can read, study, pray, speak, and the Council is
not free!---- No, discussion is physically impossible, and it is
from the shock of discussion that light breaks out just as from
the concussion of flints.---- The Council has no need of that kind
of light which fires powder.---- The governments are up against
infallibility.---- Let them come down.---- They'll make you come
down yourself.---- Allow me, if you speak to me, upon my word of
honour, I am not the Council; and if you speak to the Council, it
will answer, as it always has done to good advisers of your sort.
I fear God, dear Abner.
After this comes what with M. Veuillot's readers passes for argument,
In the present state of law in regard to religious liberty, governments
have nothing to do with infallibility but to study the new situation
which it will create, and to conform their conduct to it, as liberty
requires of them. Either they will voluntarily respect liberty, or they
will encounter its defenders and sustain the combat. The governments
ought to know that Catholics mean not to give up anything of their
right, and of the fulness of their life. As to the Church, continues
M. Veuillot, she manages her affairs as it suits her. She looks
beyond governments, beyond generations. She sows for the future, she
constructs for centuries. Although she desires not to put governments
to inconvenience, _it must be allowed that her compassion and her
complaisance towards these foreigners must have their limits_. She
bears the heavy burden of freedom of worship, and she takes the light
advantages of it.
Further on we find the same sinister reference to disturbances as in
Don Margotti (p. 246):--
A letter is talked of from one of our ministers, who, it would
appear, says that the difficulty of the government is not in Paris
but in Rome. While this letter of the statesman is being read in
Rome, barricades are springing up under his feet in Paris, and
barricades are difficulties.... The head of the Church is always a
great statesman, and ends by solving the difficulty. When statesmen
will go to school to the Pope they will do marvels; but the world
must not look for that just yet.
It is well known, says M. Veuillot, returning to the sore point of
the hints thrown out by Daru about withdrawing the troops, that if
Daru withdraws the French sentinel from the door of the Council, many
sentinels would be withdrawn from other doors in France (vol. i. p.
328). No wonder that Italians speak of the _Univers_ and the _Rappel_
as kindred, if hostile. Rochefort and Veuillot are the two poles of the
same violent hatred of ordered liberties and moderated power.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 309: _Fromman_, p. 91.]
[Footnote 310: _Friedberg_, p. 547.]
[Footnote 311: _Friedberg_, p. 549.]
[Footnote 312: _Friedberg_, p. 563.]
[Footnote 313: _Friedberg_, p. 533.]
[Footnote 314: The expression is peculiar. It is, _E nel senso della
precellenza del Sacerdozio sull' Impero_ a motive della superiorità del
fine dell' uno sopra quello dell' altro; quindi l'autorità dell' Impero
da quella del Sacerdozio dipende, come le cose umane dalle divine, le
temporali dalle spirituali.]
[Footnote 315: _Friedberg_, 538 ff.]
[Footnote 316: _Unitá_, March 8 and 9.]
[Footnote 317: _Friedberg_, p. 557.]
[Footnote 318: _Ibid._, p. 567.]
[Footnote 319: Vol. i. p. 239.]
CHAPTER X
Personal Attack on Dupanloup--Attempts at a Compromise--Impossibility
of now retreating--Daru Resigns--Ollivier's Policy--Feeling that
the Proceedings must be Shortened--The Episode of the Patriarch
of Babylon--Proposal for a New Catechism--Michaud on Changes in
Catechism--The Rules revised--An Archbishop stopped--Protest of One
Hundred Bishops--Movement of Sympathy with Döllinger--The Pope's
Chat--Pope and M. de Falloux--Internal Struggle with Friedrich.
The Villa Grazioli was one of the houses angrily pointed at by the
zealots of infallibility. There resided Dupanloup, too much courted
for the pride of those who thought that any man in Rome who opposed
the Curia ought to be ostracised. We do not remember any public hint
given to the police to watch the villa, such as the _Unitá Cattolica_
broadly gave as to the Palazzo Valentini, the residence of Cardinal
Hohenlohe (February 26). But the amiabilities of the "good press" were
not denied to the Villa Grazioli. Bishop Wicart, of Laval, wrote to his
local organ, insisting that every word of his letter should be printed,
and saying that the talk about Monseigneur Dupanloup in the diocese of
Laval must be put an end to. "I declare, before God, and in readiness
to appear at His judgment-seat, that I had rather die--fall dead on
the spot--than follow the Bishop of Orleans in the course he is now
taking."[320]
It was not to this attack exclusively that Dupanloup referred in a
letter to the chapter of his cathedral:--
The spectacle will have been exhibited of a bishop who had, during
a life already long, given strong proofs of devotion to the Church
and to the Papacy, becoming all at once the butt for insult and for
those indignities against which you protest, because on a capital
question he said what he believed, and still believes, to be for
the true interests of religion and of the Papacy.[321]
Ebullitions like this were but a sample of the increasing irritation
on both sides. The majority naturally wanted to have done with the
strife, the result of which was already certain. Vitelleschi says that
the Curia desired that the Council should be merely a great ceremony
for the solemn fulfilment of a pre-arranged program (p. 76). They
bitterly accused the minority of egging on the governments to oppose
the Council, to menace the Church, to insult the Holy Father, or even
to dictate to the Holy Ghost. Every objection to the new dogma was
denounced as rebellion against the Pontiff, hostility to the Council,
disloyalty to Peter, and so forth. Documents such as those of Beust
and Daru were a complete reversal of all that was right. At the moment
when Rome was "officially taking the affairs of the world in hand,"
it was insufferable for people representing provinces such as Austria
or France, to attempt to control the Mistress of the world. Strictly
speaking, Beust and Daru did not represent those two provinces any
more than Menabrea represented Italy. They represented only the carnal
and inordinate jealousy of the supernatural order entertained by the
natural order in those provinces. They must be made to learn the
meaning of the commission, "Teach all nations."
The members of the minority, trained by Rome to rush to statesmen and
importune them for everything that could serve the Church, now that
they believed her to be drifting to a terrible peril, did as they had
been accustomed to do. Personally they were stung by hard words, not
only from the Pope, but from all officials down to small diocesan
editors, emulous of Don Margotti and M. Veuillot. Even priests in their
own dioceses were set against them. As a party, the minority were
irritated by restraint, suspicion, manoeuvres, affronts, offers, and
even by _espionage_. Their one solace was, they felt, a vain one. They
could indeed speak, but they could not really debate. Their one refuge
was vainer still. They could draw up petitions, but they might as well
address them to Julius Cæsar for any answer that was ever vouchsafed.
The air was full of complaints of long speeches. Some proposed that
no more should be read, some that no more should be delivered in any
form; but that they should be written, printed, and distributed among
the Fathers. Some combined the two propositions, suggesting that only
_they_ should deliver speeches who could do so _extempore_, and that
the others should print theirs for those who liked to read them. The
_Unitá Cattolica_ hailed the proposal to have no more speeches; it
would shorten the Council.
Others, again, tried to form a third party, on the basis of some
compromise which would satisfy the Court by giving it in substance all
the concentration of power it wanted, and yet would save the minority
from the difficulty of accepting Papal infallibility in express terms.
Bishop Vitelleschi was named in connexion with this attempt. They who
made it did not fully realize either the political or the theological
bearing of the points at issue. The whole conduct of future operations
must depend on the ability of the central authority to act at any
moment and in any place, without the remotest fear of hesitation
or delay on the part of the instruments; above all, without any
possibility of that old bugbear, an appeal to a General Council, being
raised up again.
The pretensions which Pius IX had set up under the veil of secrecy now
began, through publicity, to drag Rome on to her doom. She would not
have dared, at first, to face governments with her present claims. She
had silently spread them in her schools, had excited her fancy with the
echoes of them coming back mysteriously from provincial synods and from
episcopal thrones, had shaped them into formulæ, one part of which her
fears had cast away, and another part of which publicity had put to
shame. Some now asked her to stop when the coach was at full swing down
hill! The attempt to do so would be attended with extreme danger. She
would lose, not only the new authority at which she had been grasping,
but also a considerable part of the old authority, out of which that
was to have been developed.
The Canons which had been the occasion of the protest from governments
could indeed well be spared, if the supreme authority and infallible
judgement of the sovereign were proclaimed but without that the Canons
would be paper laws in the hand of a discredited administration
The Syllabus, cried M. Veuillot, had lighted a torch, five years
beforehand, by which to study the objects of the Council (vol. i.
p. 55). The Curia had studied the objects during the five years by
that light. For it retreat on the main point was now an absolute
impossibility. Had France really withdrawn her troops, the Curia could
have broken up the Council under the justification of physical fear,
and so would have escaped the dilemma by an intervention of Providence.
But it was not to be. And we may as well here slightly anticipate our
narrative, in order to complete the incident of the French note. Daru
was one of the ministers who resigned on finding out that the Emperor's
professions of setting up a responsible ministry were such as to remind
one of the _mot_ attributed to Dupin, at the very height Napoleon's
power: "It is really too bad: one cannot now believe even the opposite
of what he says."
It was reported in Rome that, within twenty-four hours, two telegrams
had arrived from Paris. The first read: "Decidedly Daru will not have
infallibility. He announces that there will be a rupture." The second
read: "Daru retires. Ollivier replaces him. The Council free." If
it is true, cried M. Veuillot, it is glorious for M. Ollivier (vol.
i. p. 462). The despatch of Ollivier, on taking over the office of
Foreign Affairs from Daru, would have been thought straightforward
if proceeding from any Court but such a one as that of the Tuileries
then was. After stating that the Emperor had not sent an ambassador to
the Council, and had scrupulously abstained from interfering with its
proceedings, but that recently, when warned by the rumours in Europe of
dangers menacing the cause of religion, he had for a moment stepped out
of his reserve and offered counsel, Ollivier proceeds:--
The Holy Father has not seen it right to listen to our counsels,
nor to accept our observations. We do not insist, and we resume our
attitude of reserve and expectation.
You will not seek or accept, henceforth, any conversation, either
with the Pope or with Cardinal Antonelli, on the affairs of the
Council.
You will confine yourself to gaining information, and keeping
yourself acquainted with facts, with the sentiments which have
prepared them, and with the impressions which have followed
them.[322]
So terminated an incident that caused, for a time, a considerable
flutter, and seems to have offered to the Curia the only fair escape
from the dilemma into which it had got. It was now felt that the
legislation necessary to put the new constitution into working order,
must be pressed into as small a space of time as possible. The
restoration of ideas had not advanced satisfactorily since the meeting
of the Council and the restoration of facts had made no progress at
all. The voluminous Drafts had already brought Court theology into
contempt.
Friedrich had spent an evening and morning in writing to Lord Acton
on the Papal system as developed in the Draft Decree on the Church,
and in expressing his fears that the bishops would not see through
it, when a piece of news reached him, which though at ordinary times
it would scarcely have been talked of in Rome, just then caused some
excitement (p. 143). It was, as he relates, to the effect that Audu,
Patriarch of Babylon, after having spoken in opposition to the Curia,
had, as we have seen (page 107 of _this_ edition), been sent for at
night by the Pope, who allowed no witness of the interview but Valerga,
the so-called Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, however, as Vitelleschi
says, was, previous to his elevation, simply a Roman ecclesiastic.
Valerga acted as interpreter. The Pope raged, commanded the weak
old man to resign his patriarchate, forced a pen into his hand, and
ceased not storming till it was done. Then, to give practical effect
to the resignation, two bishops, not chosen by Audu, were appointed,
and he must consecrate them.[323] Such was the tale. Friedrich took
it as a sample of infallibility in practice even before the Council
had sanctioned it in theory. In itself, the story would seem very
improbable in London, but not at all so in Constantinople or Rome. In
the latter city the reputation of Pius IX is high for fits of rage,
in which his best friends are treated like lackeys. Liverani, who over
and over again calls him an angel, tells nevertheless several stories
of conduct to those about him which, if they could be told of an
English squire, would not get him the name of angel from his stewards
and bailiffs. Even the all but adoring editor of the _Speeches_ gives
a specimen which evidently hammered a deep dint into his Neapolitan
sensibilities. If the tales are true, the rage passes away, giving
place to habitual jocoseness.
Vitelleschi says that an alternative was set before the Chaldean
Patriarch--either he must submit to the Pope's authority as to certain
appointments, or resign. Being reduced to this extremity by his
imperious brother, the poor old man did resign, and the event "created
a great sensation." To the Roman nobleman the scene presented no
improbability. He does not even hint that it is a rare specimen of the
tranquil waters which lie behind St. Peter's Rock. The noise made by
the rumours forced even so great a person as M. Veuillot to take notice
of them. His usual style of contradiction is very striking, and perhaps
instructive. He will spend, it may be, pages in making somebody, who
has said something, look extremely ridiculous; but, at the end, you
wonder what he has contradicted. On the present occasion, however, M.
Veuillot did stoop to particulars. First, he says that the Patriarch
had himself chosen two bishops, but after the Pope had approved of
them, he refused to consecrate them. This is in direct contradiction of
a statement, on the other side, that the Propaganda had chosen the two
bishops in question and that the Patriarch refused to consecrate them.
The latter version gives a clear cause of dispute, whereas that of M.
Veuillot leaves the resistance of the Patriarch, as he himself says,
inexplicable. But as to what took place, his account is this:--
The Pope called the Patriarch into his cabinet, and told him to
consecrate the two suffragans in twenty-four hours, or to sign
his resignation. The Patriarch asked for a delay of three days,
then of two days. The Pope was inflexible; he required that the
Patriarch should forthwith sign the engagement to obey. The
Patriarch took a pen, and began to write; but he stopped, saying
that the pen would not go. The Pope presented him with a penknife.
The Patriarch of Jerusalem, who acted as interpreter, mended
the pen. The Chaldean Patriarch resisted no further. He wrote
the engagement to consecrate the two bishops, or to abdicate in
twenty-four hours, and pushed his precision so far as to affix the
date--half-past seven in the evening. The next morning he performed
the consecration.
M. Veuillot vehemently denies that the Pope was in a rage, or that he
broke pens with his fist, or that he played the part of a tyrant. He
seems to take it for granted that good Catholics ought to be edified
with his own account of this rehearsal of a scene in the forthcoming
drama of "ordinary and immediate jurisdiction" in all dioceses of the
world.
We have hinted that Vitelleschi expresses no feeling of improbability
as to the tale of the Chaldean Patriarch. On the contrary, he
immediately follows it up by alluding to rumours of proceedings
contemplated by the Propaganda against certain bishops under its
jurisdiction, who had manifested a want of docility in seconding
its projects (p. 82). These rumours, he says, revived uncomfortable
recollections of the Inquisition, adding that events of this nature
are of common occurrence, and might happen a thousand times without
attracting much notice. But the moment was exceptional.
The interest of the General Congregations, from the time when the
movement for the definition of infallibility declared itself, centred
in that impending question, and but faintly, and intermittently, swayed
towards any other. The particular matter now on hand was a proposal
to do away with the diocesan Catechisms throughout the world, and to
adopt a uniform one for all. Outside the Church of Rome this would
probably have seemed a natural point of uniformity, but, inside of it,
the determination of the municipal _coterie_ to drive roughshod over
all that was homely or ancient, all that was national or local, roused
the spirit of opposition. It was clearly felt that taking away from the
bishops the right of approving their own Catechisms was a further blow
at their authority. For many years past the Jesuits had been altering
Catechisms, and so gradually naturalizing the doctrine of infallibility
on soil hostile to it, especially through schools conducted by
nuns.[324] They had made the Catechism a great financial success. A new
one for the whole world would be an estate for the Curia.
The book of the Abbé Michaud, _De la Falsification du Catéchism_, is
a curious study. He expresses the sum of his researches by saying
that Catholicism has been replaced by Popery. The old Paris Catechism
did not use the expression "the _Roman_ Church." It always said,
"the Catholic Church"; and in some Catechisms, in France, the word
"Roman" first came in as late as 1839, and that only in a profession
of faith at the end: "I acknowledge the Holy Catholic Apostolic and
Roman Church." Noting the progressive change in definitions of the
Church, Michaud gives examples, showing that the earliest do not even
mention the Pope, and that the latest speak of nothing but the Pope (p.
23). The early Catechisms call Christ the Foundation of the Church;
succeeding ones give this title to the Confession of St. Peter; next
to the Apostles, then to Peter, and, finally, to the Pope; and some
recent ones even say that the Church is founded on the Papacy (p.
34). The designation the "Head of the Church," is gradually withdrawn
from Christ, to be bestowed upon the Pope. One Catechism, as early
as 1756, said that the visible Head of the Church, being subordinate
to the Invisible one, made only one Head with Him. On the question
of the seat of authority in the Church, a precisely similar process
has taken place; and infallibility has followed in the same track.
Formerly, says the Abbé it was believed that the Pope had no authority
or infallibility but through the Church. Now, it is declared that the
Church has no authority or infallibility but through the Pope. We may
remark that the terms of the Vatican Decrees do not go so far as the
last assertion. The framers meant to do so, but their logic failed
them, and they have left a dualism full of future perplexity. The Abbé
shows that the Catechisms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
and many down to the year 1843, always speak of the infallibility
of the Church. Later, the term, "the infallibility of the Teaching
Church," is introduced. That means, of the Pope and the bishops.
Michaud does not quote any with this terminology earlier than 1786. But
that could not suffice for the Romanists. The Abbé says that, at the
present time they teach, not only that the Pope is infallible, but that
he is the source of infallibility. "As the Church was replaced by the
Teaching Church, the Teaching Church has been replaced by the Pope." A
religious and political system shifting in this fashion does not well
bear even that kind of check which is afforded by the existence of
different Catechisms in neighbouring dioceses. It was not quite so easy
to teach at Rouen that the Pope singly is infallible, when at Paris the
Catechism said that the Church was infallible, and at Cologne it said
plainly that the Pope was not infallible. And the fact of this tendency
to change doctrine downward, and further downward, was a reason for a
feeling against one Catechism stronger than could be understood in any
community with a fixed rule of faith.
The changes made in the application to the Church of the word
"believe," are equally curious. The old form of words as to believing
in one Catholic Church was first changed into believing in the Teaching
Church. Then "respect and obedience to the Pope" began to be inserted,
from the end of the seventeenth century onward. In 1819 an Arras
Catechism claimed "sovereign respect"; but so far there is no mention
of belief in decisions of the Pope. It was in 1834 that the Catechisms
of Avignon and Amiens prepared for the transition from "respect" to
"belief," by teaching the necessity of inviolable attachment to all
that the Pope teaches. The consummation so prepared for was not far
off The St. Brieuc Catechism of 1835, and that of the Abbé Guillois of
1851, taught that it is necessary and Catholic to believe in the Pope
as well as in the Church.
The transition from "belief" to "the faith" is very easy. Originally,
the _dépôt_ of the faith, which the Church had to guard, and to which
no man could add, and from which no man could take away, was called
The Doctrine of Christ. Then it began to be called The Doctrine of
the Apostles; later, The Doctrine of the Successors of the Apostles;
and, after that, The Doctrine of the Prince of the Successors of the
Apostles; and, finally, of course, The Doctrine of the Pope (p. 76).
The new and uniform shorter Catechism (_De Parvo Catechismo_) was to
be modelled on that of Bellarmine, others being consulted. No hint was
given as to how it was to be prepared, and the bishops raised many
doubts. Should it not be submitted to the Council? Or, if that was not
done, surely it would not be made obligatory, but only recommended.
Others would have twelve bishops elected by the Council itself to
prepare it. Some wished that, when prepared, three years should be
given for the bishops to examine and test it; and then that only after
having been approved by them should it be made binding. None of these
guards against centralization found any favour.
The complaints about the Rules, and the desire of the majority for
something to expedite business, were to produce some effect at last.
When between two and three months had passed without a single one of
the much-prepared Drafts being homologated, as the Scotch would say, by
the Council, it was time to do something. The plan of shaping Rules for
the Council without the bishops was resorted to once more. New Rules
were given out as an edict, just as the original ones had been, and
were headed _A Decree_, as if the Council itself had framed them. To
allow the conclave to make rules for itself, or to amend those imposed
upon it, would have been a dangerous approximation to ancient conciliar
forms. It had become even clearer than had been foreseen, that a free
Council would be a less docile instrument than the sort of Secret
Consistory which had been so cleverly devised.
The statement of Vitelleschi, that the Rules provided for the printing
of the speeches and their distribution among the Fathers, is not
correct; and his further statement, that they gave the Presidents
the right of cutting short any speaker, is inexact. All they give is
the ordinary right of calling a speaker back to the question, _ad
propositam quæstionem ipsum revocare_.[325] But it is a different
question, whether the Presidents did not take this as containing the
power of cutting a speaker short. Immediately after its promulgation,
Haynald made a quotation to prove that a Pope had, at the time when the
Breviary was being revised, expressed an opinion contrary to that now
held by the majority, and the President immediately requested him, says
Vitelleschi, to come down from the pulpit. That certainly is much more
than calling him back to the question. Friedrich relates this scene
as one in which signs of impatience, given both by voice and feet,
were general among the majority, even Cardinals making demonstrations.
So Cardinal Capalti seized the bell and called the speaker to the
question. The Archbishop insisted that it was the duty of the majority
to hear him; but Capalti told him that they evidently would not hear
him, and he must stop.[326]
_La Liberté du Concile_ adds an important particular.[327] Haynald had
been attacked by a Belgian bishop for an opinion expressed by him in a
speech. He immediately asked leave to reply; and, in order to observe
the Rules to the letter, he went to the _bureau_ of the Presidents, and
requested leave to speak on a personal point--the false interpretation
put upon his speech. Leave was refused, but the Presidents told him
that he could take the opportunity of explaining when he should speak
in another debate. He waited for weeks. On the day now in question,
before commencing to speak, he told the President that, after his
speech, he meant to reply to the attack which had long before been
made upon him. He was authorized to do so. But no sooner had he begun
to present his personal defence, than the majority interrupted him
with violent clamour. Instead of enforcing respect for the dignity of
the Council and the liberty of speech, one of the Presidents cried to
the speaker, "You see that they will not hear you." And when Haynald
represented that he had been authorized to defend himself, "Hold your
peace and come down" (_Taceas et descendas_), cried Cardinal Capalti,
who thus took the place of Cardinal De Angelis, the Senior President.
It was on February 22 that the new Rules were delivered, and on March
1 more than one hundred prelates, of all nations, sent in a solemn
protest to the Presiding Cardinals. This was all they could do, short
of leaving the Council. They begin by pointing out that the new Rules
professed to preserve the liberty due to bishops of the Catholic
Church; but that, in most respects, it seemed as if their liberty was
diminished by them, and even exposed to abolition.[328] The Rules said
that, when new Drafts of Decrees were distributed, the Fathers were to
send in their remarks and suggestions in writing, and the Presidents
would allow a suitable time for so doing. The petitioners represent
that this might do for ordinary matters, but when grave questions of
dogma were to be discussed, the time allowed should be very ample, and
the wishes of those who wanted an extension of it should be met.
The Rules said that, after the committee had considered such remarks
and suggestions as might have been sent in, they should present the
Draft to the Council amended, and with it a summary report containing
a _mention_ of the remarks and suggestions which had been made. The
hundred bishops say that a mention is not enough. That would leave the
committee free to omit what it pleased. The remarks and suggestions
ought to be given at full, else the committee would become the entire
Council, and, in most things, the only judge.[329] Moreover, the
reasons assigned by authors of remarks and suggestions should also
be given. They request, further, that authors of suggestions should
have the right of explaining them, and, if need be, of defending them
before the committee. The idea of a right of reply, which the original
Rules had completely ignored, had been, after a fashion, introduced
into the new ones. That is, the members of the committee were to have
the right of reply, either at once or on a later day, to any one
speaker, or to a number of them. The hundred bishops do not challenge
this immense power granted to the committee, but they demand that the
speaker so replied to shall have his right of rejoinder.
The hundred strongly reclaim against a provision for closing a
discussion by a rising and sitting vote. This, they say, is a mode of
voting unknown in Councils, and is liable to haste, to error, and to
the contagion of momentary feeling. It might be quite allowable in
parliamentary proceedings, where a thing done this year may be undone
the next. But it is not admissible in a case where the matters in hand
are so awful and irrevocable as Decrees, which once adopted are never
to be amended or discussed again. They demand that no question should
be closed so long as any one who had not spoken claimed his right to
do so as a witness and a judge of the faith. They demand also that
speakers should be heard alternately, one for and one against any
proposal under consideration; and, moreover, in matters affecting the
faith, that no discussion should be closed so long as fifty Fathers
objected. They strongly urge that, in a General Council, neither
precedent nor propriety requires that many Decrees rashly adopted shall
be preferred to a few thoroughly sifted.
They then come to the solemn point, as to how many votes suffice to
make a dogma? The new Rules did not require a majority of two-thirds,
as many political constitutions provide in a case of importance.
They left the decision open to a simple majority. This the hundred
bishops treat as a total and astounding novelty. In General Councils,
moral unanimity in matters of dogma had been the rule. It was a rule
accepted, and avowedly acted upon, at Trent, by Pius IV. No other rule
would be consistent with the principle of Vincent of Lerins, "What has
been believed always, everywhere, and by all." Catholic dogmas being
formed by consent of the Churches, it followed that they could not be
defined in a Council except by the consent, morally unanimous, of the
bishops who represent those Churches. They assert that this condition
is the pivot on which the whole Council turns. This condition, they
proceed to say, seems to be the more urgent in the Vatican Council,
because so many Fathers were admitted to vote, as to whom it was not
clear whether they held their title to do so by ecclesiastical or by
divine right.
Thus indicating the fact that, first, a majority had been made up
largely of men who represented nothing, and that now that majority was
to be used to change, not only the dogmas of the Church, but the very
source and criterion of dogma, they proceed to a sorrowful declaration,
that unless the point as to the numbers voting was conceded, their
consciences would be burdened with an intolerable weight. They should
have fears that the oecumenical character of the Council would be
called in question; that a handle would be given to enemies for attacks
on the Holy See and on the Council; and that thus the authority of
the Council would be undermined among the Christian people, as though
it had been lacking in truth and liberty; and in these troublous
times that would be a calamity so great that a worse could not be
imagined.[330]
"Thus," cries _La Liberté du Concile_, "you have a hundred bishops
who say, Oppression is couched in these Rules. We have liberty
indeed, but liberty restrained, garrotted; which can be choked
whenever they like. _Imo etiam tolli posse videatur._ They say
more. They say that these Rules contain a grave menace, a flagrant
violation of Catholic tradition, an intolerable oppression of their
conscience, pregnant with the greatest perils for the future,
capable of striking the Council to the heart and of inducing
incalculable misfortunes. That is said by one hundred bishops."
The foundation formed by such a rule of faith as the consent of the
Churches seemed solid as long as streams were shut off, but now that
the waters were rising the bishops began to feel symptoms of a shaking.
They did not, however, yet know that one rush from a sluice, to be
suddenly opened by the Pope himself, was, ere they rose, to bear that
sand clean away, and to drop them down on to a rotten rock of Roman
infallibility. Even the consent of the Church was to be dispensed with.
In the meantime, learned bodies in Germany had hastened to support
Döllinger. Public addresses came to him from the universities of Bonn,
Prague, and Breslau, and from colleges in other places, bearing the
best names of German Catholics in letters and science. The towns,
emulating the colleges, joined in the movement; Cologne, Kempten,
Freiburg-in-Brisgau, and other places sending in addresses. Munich
voted to the venerable scholar an honorary citizenship, which he
modestly declined. It was evident that the German people would have
followed in large numbers in the movement thus begun, but the bishops
who, in Rome seemed to be earnest in opposing the Curia, suppressed
all attempts to discourage it on the part of their clergy or people.
They had woven a tangled web at Fulda, and were getting deeper and
deeper into its meshes. On the other side, the Pope, the Curia, and
the Infallibilist bishops did everything possible to bring pressure to
bear upon the bishops of the Opposition, both from the clergy and from
the people. As with Hildebrand, so now, all authority which did not
move at the beck of "Peter," was overturned or overmatched by raising
subordinates at the call of the higher power. Döllinger had said, in
reply to an address, that he had done no more than maintain views in
which, as to the substance, he was at one with the majority of the
German prelates. This was in Rome skilfully turned into a reason for
demands upon those prelates. Signor Aloysi, evidently by commission of
the Pope, proposed to the Archbishop of Munich to disavow Döllinger,
and to procure a collective disavowal from the German bishops. This the
Archbishop declined to do.
It is hardly fair to conclude that the German bishops made a show of
opposition merely to be able to say to the people, We resisted till
the word was spoken, as you did; but now that it is spoken, we submit,
and so must you. In addition to calculations of this kind there was
probably a consciousness that a mortal struggle was rising between
Rome and all the religion, freedom and light in the outside world,
and that it would go hard with Rome. The only possible counterpoise
to their fear of the Pope would have been a movement on the part of
governments to separate the Church from the State. But the politicians
were as little prepared for that as the bishops were for schism. So,
both the one and the other, however involuntarily, concurred in helping
Rome on towards the catastrophe. Ketteler proposed that the German
bishops should disavow Döllinger, but could not carry his point.[331]
He disavowed him on his own account. Senestrey forbade theological
students of his diocese to attend the classes of Döllinger; but Scherr,
Archbishop of Munich, refused to do even this. The press, however,
made amends for the slackness of the Ordinary. M. Veuillot told how
Döllinger's father had said that the devil of a boy had two heads
and no heart, and how, in his Cathedral stall, he did not know how
to handle his breviary, and sometimes read, instead of it, proofs of
his books. Quirinus might, indeed, say, "It is no longer possible to
conceal by any periphrasis the fact that the spirit the Opposition
has to combat is no other than the spirit of lying" (p. 260). But the
writers of the Curia charged upon all Opposition writers, not only
hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, but especially lying, with the
loving and making of lies.
The Pope, whose jokes and outbursts alternately supplied gossip, is
reported by Friedrich as saying that Döllinger was a heretic, or very
near it, and that Günther was much more respectable, as he had been
quiet for a long time (dead). Some one observing to him that Döllinger
was a harmless old man, he replied, Pretty kind of old man that
receives addresses from every quarter. He made no secret that he took
the Opposition bishops generally for "softheads," but thought they
must have some one behind them. He knew who nodded approval while
Strossmayer spoke, and who pressed his hand when he came down. He said
that Cardinal Schwarzenberg played the part of the sub-deacon in the
manger; that is, the part of the ass in the scene of the Nativity.
Schwarzenberg, he said, had been the only person who declared that the
definition of the Immaculate Conception would draw bad consequences
after it. But "the definition took place on a morning when the sun
shone so wonderfully that I recognized in it the confirmation of my
design." Much more chat of the same quality is given.
Friedrich has one short paragraph to the effect that it was confidently
asserted that Veuillot had a seat behind the scenes in the Council
Hall. A man deeply initiated in the secrets of the Council did not deny
it (p. 165). If this was the case, it would be curious to compare it
with M. Veuillot's account of his being on the Pincio, instead of in
the Cathedral, on the opening day. That meditation in the rain seemed
rather eccentric.
The Pope had arranged for an exhibition of Catholic art, and opened it
in person with a speech. The passage which made the greatest impression
was that in which he alluded to a recent saying of M. de Falloux,
a zealous French Catholic politician, and the actual author of the
Education Bill which embodied Montalembert's policy, to the effect
that the Church had never had her '89, and she needed one. The Pope
declared, "I say that is blasphemy." There were many versions of the
utterance, but M. Veuillot, evidently by authority, stuck to this one.
M. de Falloux, after a considerable time, wrote to Bishop Freppel,
saying that he had not used the phrase alleged. Bishop Freppel told
the Pope that M. de Falloux wrote that he had not used it. The Pope
replied that if M. de Falloux had not used it, he had not condemned M.
de Falloux. There the tale is left by Veuillot (i. p. 360).[332]
A case like this indicates the struggles between old opinion and the
new light of unforeseen circumstances, through which many must, at
this time, have been passing. In the case of Hyacinth and Gratry, the
struggle had come to the surface; in that of Döllinger, it put on the
solemnity of age; in that of Montalembert, the awe of death. From the
oratory at Birmingham to the chambers of the Quirinal, from under the
roof of the Vatican to lone stations in some mission wild, were men
moaning with a conscience-ache. The coming on of an eclipse could
hardly be more awful to a meditative Magus than the advancing shadow of
heresy on the Church herself to one who had believed her infallible.
The dread images of doubt and uncertainty not only haunted, but
threatened many a brave spirit. If the infallibility of the Church was
to be reduced to the level of that of the Popes, in the doctrines and
morals they had solemnly taught; to the level, for instance, of Pius IX
and his Syllabus--alas, alas for the great ideas of the past! And was
it so clear that it had been innocent to lay those under anathema who,
looking away from man to Christ, from Councils to the Bible, had meekly
said, The only infallible guide over life's broad sea is not the church
steeples, but the stars.