cause of Rome. It was proposed in the interest of moderation; and the
Bishop of Orleans was one of those who took the lead in promoting it.
The Cardinals were consulted, and pronounced against it The Pope
overruled their resistance. Whatever embarrassments might be in store,
and however difficult the enterprise, it was clear that it would evoke a
force capable of accomplishing infinite good for religion. It was an
instrument of unknown power that inspired little confidence, but
awakened vague hopes of relief for the ills of society and the divisions
of Christendom. The guardians of immovable traditions, and the leaders
of progress in religious knowledge, were not to share in the work. The
schism of the East was widened by the angry quarrel between Russia and
the Pope; and the letter to the Protestants, whose orders are not
recognised at Rome, could not be more than a ceremonious challenge.
There was no promise of sympathy in these invitations or in the answers
they provoked; but the belief spread to many schools of thought, and was
held by Dr. Pusey and by Dean Stanley, by Professor Hase and by M.
Guizot, that the auspicious issue of the Council was an object of vital
care to all denominations of Christian men.
The Council of Trent impressed on the Church the stamp of an intolerant
age, and perpetuated by its decrees the spirit of an austere
immorality. The ideas embodied in the Roman Inquisition became
characteristic of a system which obeyed expediency by submitting to
indefinite modification, but underwent no change of principle. Three
centuries have so changed the world that the maxims with which the
Church resisted the Reformation have become her weakness and her
reproach, and that which arrested her decline now arrests her progress.
To break effectually with that tradition and eradicate its influence,
nothing less is required than an authority equal to that by which it was
imposed. The Vatican Council was the first sufficient occasion which
Catholicism had enjoyed to reform, remodel, and adapt the work of Trent.
This idea was present among the motives which caused it to be summoned.
It was apparent that two systems which cannot be reconciled were about
to contend at the Council; but the extent and force of the reforming
spirit were unknown.
Seventeen questions submitted by the Holy See to the bishops in 1867
concerned matters of discipline, the regulation of marriage and
education, the policy of encouraging new monastic orders, and the means
of making the parochial clergy more dependent on the bishops. They gave
no indication of the deeper motives of the time. In the midst of many
trivial proposals, the leading objects of reform grew more defined as
the time approached, and men became conscious of distinct purposes based
on a consistent notion of the Church. They received systematic
expression from a Bohemian priest, whose work, _The Reform of the Church
in its Head and Members_, is founded on practical experience, not only
on literary theory, and is the most important manifesto of these ideas.
The author exhorts the Council to restrict centralisation, to reduce the
office of the Holy See to the ancient limits of its primacy, to restore
to the Episcopate the prerogatives which have been confiscated by Rome,
to abolish the temporal government, which is the prop of hierarchical
despotism, to revise the matrimonial discipline, to suppress many
religious orders and the solemn vows for all, to modify the absolute
rule of celibacy for the clergy, to admit the use of the vernacular in
the Liturgy, to allow a larger share to the laity in the management of
ecclesiastical affairs, to encourage the education of the clergy at
universities, and to renounce the claims of mediaeval theocracy, which
are fruitful of suspicion between Church and State.
Many Catholics in many countries concurred in great part of this
programme; but it was not the symbol of a connected party. Few agreed
with the author in all parts of his ideal church, or did not think that
he had omitted essential points. Among the inveterate abuses which the
Council of Trent failed to extirpate was the very one which gave the
first impulse to Lutheranism. The belief is still retained in the
superficial Catholicism of Southern Europe that the Pope can release the
dead from Purgatory; and money is obtained at Rome on the assurance that
every mass said at a particular altar opens heaven to the soul for which
it is offered up. On the other hand, the Index of prohibited books is an
institution of Tridentine origin, which has become so unwieldy and
opprobrious that even men of strong Roman sympathies, like the bishops
of Wuerzburg and St. Poelten, recommended its reform. In France it was
thought that the Government would surrender the organic articles, if the
rights of the bishops and the clergy were made secure under the canon
law, if national and diocesan synods were introduced, and if a
proportionate share was given to Catholic countries in the Sacred
College and the Roman congregations. The aspiration in which all the
advocates of reform seemed to unite was that those customs should be
changed which are connected with arbitrary power in the Church. And all
the interests threatened by this movement combined in the endeavour to
maintain intact the papal prerogative. To proclaim the Pope infallible
was their compendious security against hostile States and Churches,
against human liberty and authority, against disintegrating tolerance
and rationalising science, against error and sin. It became the common
refuge of those who shunned what was called the liberal influence in
Catholicism.
Pius IX. constantly asserted that the desire of obtaining the
recognition of papal infallibility was not originally his motive in
convoking the Council. He did not require that a privilege which was
practically undisputed should be further defined. The bishops,
especially those of the minority, were never tired of saying that the
Catholic world honoured and obeyed the Pope as it had never done before.
Virtually he had exerted all the authority which the dogma could confer
on him. In his first important utterance, the Encyclical of November
1846, he announced that he was infallible; and the claim raised no
commotion. Later on he applied a more decisive test, and gained a more
complete success, when the bishops summoned to Rome, not as a Council
but as an audience, received from him an additional article of their
faith. But apart from the dogma of infallibility he had a strong desire
to establish certain cherished opinions of his own on a basis firm
enough to outlast his time. They were collected in the Syllabus, which
contained the essence of what he had written during many years, and was
an abridgment of the lessons which his life had taught him. He was
anxious that they should not be lost. They were part of a coherent
system. The Syllabus was not rejected; but its edge was blunted and its
point broken by the zeal which was spent in explaining it away; and the
Pope feared that it would be contested if he repudiated the soothing
interpretations. In private he said that he wished to have no
interpreter but himself. While the Jesuit preachers proclaimed that the
Syllabus bore the full sanction of infallibility, higher functionaries
of the Court pointed out that it was an informal document, without
definite official value. Probably the Pope would have been content that
these his favourite ideas should be rescued from evasion by being
incorporated in the canons of the Council. Papal infallibility was
implied rather than included among them. Whilst the authority of his
acts was not resisted, he was not eager to disparage his right by
exposing the need of a more exact definition. The opinions which Pius
IX. was anxiously promoting were not the mere fruit of his private
meditations; they belonged to the doctrines of a great party, which was
busily pursuing its own objects, and had not been always the party of
the Pope. In the days of his trouble he had employed an advocate; and
the advocate had absorbed the client. During his exile a Jesuit had
asked his approbation for a Review, to be conducted by the best talents
of the Order, and to be devoted to the papal cause; and he had warmly
embraced the idea, less, it should seem, as a prince than as a divine.
There were his sovereign rights to maintain; but there was also a
doctrinaire interest, there were reminiscences of study as well as
practical objects that recommended the project. In these personal views
the Pope was not quite consistent. He had made himself the idol of
Italian patriots, and of the liberal French Catholics; he had set
Theiner to vindicate the suppresser of the Jesuits; and Rosmini, the
most enlightened priest in Italy, had been his trusted friend. After his
restoration he submitted to other influences; and the writers of the
_Civilta Cattolica_, which followed him to Rome and became his
acknowledged organ, acquired power over his mind. These men were not
identified with their Order. Their General, Roothan, had disliked the
plan of the Review, foreseeing that the Society would be held
responsible for writings which it did not approve, and would forfeit the
flexibility in adapting itself to the moods of different countries,
which is one of the secrets of its prosperity. The Pope arranged the
matter by taking the writers under his own protection, and giving to
them a sort of exemption and partial immunity under the rule of their
Order. They are set apart from other Jesuits; they are assisted and
supplied from the literary resources of the Order, and are animated more
than any of its other writers by its genuine and characteristic spirit;
but they act on their own judgment under the guidance of the Pope, and
are a bodyguard, told off from the army, for the personal protection of
the Sovereign. It is their easy function to fuse into one system the
interests and ideas of the Pope and those of their Society. The result
has been, not to weaken by compromise and accommodation, but to
intensify both. The prudence and sagacity which are sustained in the
government of the Jesuits by their complicated checks on power, and
their consideration for the interests of the Order under many various
conditions, do not always restrain men who are partially emancipated
from its rigorous discipline and subject to a more capricious rule. They
were chosen in their capacity as Jesuits, for the sake of the peculiar
spirit which their system develops. The Pope appointed them on account
of that devotion to himself which is a quality of the Order, and
relieved them from some of the restraints which it imposes. He wished
for something more papal than other Jesuits; and he himself became more
subject to the Jesuits than other pontiffs. He made them a channel of
his influence, and became an instrument of their own.
The Jesuits had continued to gain ground in Rome ever since the Pope's
return. They had suffered more than others in the revolution that
dethroned him; and they had their reward in the restoration. They had
long been held in check by the Dominicans; but the theology of the
Dominicans had been discountenanced and their spirit broken in 1854,
when a doctrine which they had contested for centuries was proclaimed a
dogma of faith. In the strife for the Pope's temporal dominion the
Jesuits were most zealous; and they were busy in the preparation and in
the defence of the Syllabus. They were connected with every measure for
which the Pope most cared; and their divines became the oracles of the
Roman congregations. The papal infallibility had been always their
favourite doctrine. Its adoption by the Council promised to give to
their theology official warrant, and to their Order the supremacy in the
Church. They were now in power; and they snatched their opportunity when
the Council was convoked.
Efforts to establish this doctrine had been going on for years. The
dogmatic decree of 1854 involved it so distinctly that its formal
recognition seemed to be only a question of time and zeal. People even
said that it was the real object of that decree to create a precedent
which should make it impossible afterwards to deny papal infallibility.
The Catechisms were altered, or new ones were substituted, in which it
was taught. After 1852 the doctrine began to show itself in the Acts of
provincial synods, and it was afterwards supposed that the bishops of
those provinces were committed to it. One of these synods was held at
Cologne; and three surviving members were in the Council at Rome, of
whom two were in the minority, and the third had continued in his
writings to oppose the doctrine of infallibility, after it had found its
way into the Cologne decree. The suspicion that the Acts had been
tampered with is suggested by what passed at the synod of Baltimore in
1866. The Archbishop of St. Louis signed the Acts of that synod under
protest, and after obtaining a pledge that his protest would be inserted
by the apostolic delegate. The pledge was not kept. "I complain," writes
the archbishop, "that the promise which had been given was broken. The
Acts ought to have been published in their integrity, or not at
all."[371] This process was carried on so boldly that men understood
what was to come. Protestants foretold that the Catholics would not rest
until the Pope was formally declared infallible; and a prelate returning
from the meeting of bishops at Rome in 1862 was startled at being asked
by a clear-sighted friend whether infallibility had not been brought
forward.
It was produced not then, but at the next great meeting, in 1867. The
Council had been announced; and the bishops wished to present an address
to the Pope. Haynald, Archbishop of Colocza, held the pen, assisted by
Franchi, one of the clever Roman prelates and by some bishops, among
whom were the Archbishop of Westminster and the Bishop of Orleans. An
attempt was made to get the papal infallibility acknowledged in the
address. Several bishops declared that they could not show themselves in
their dioceses if they came back without having done anything for that
doctrine. They were resisted in a way which made them complain that its
very name irritated the French. Haynald refused their demand, but agreed
to insert the well-known words of the Council of Florence; and the
bishops did not go away empty-handed.
A few days before this attempt was made, the _Civilta Cattolica_ had
begun to agitate, by proposing that Catholics should bind themselves to
die, if need be, for the truth of the doctrine; and the article was
printed on a separate sheet, bearing the papal _imprimatur_, and
distributed widely. The check administered by Haynald and his colleagues
brought about a lull in the movement; but the French bishops had taken
alarm, and Maret, the most learned of them, set about the preparation of
his book.
During the winter of 1868-69 several commissions were created in Rome to
make ready the materials for the Council. The dogmatic commission
included the Jesuits Perrone, Schrader, and Franzelin. The question of
infallibility was proposed to it by Cardoni, Archbishop of Edessa, in a
dissertation which, having been revised, was afterwards published, and
accepted by the leading Roman divines as an adequate exposition of their
case. The dogma was approved unanimously, with the exception of one
vote, Alzog of Freiberg being the only dissentient. When the other
German divines who were in Rome learned the scheme that was on foot in
the Dogmatic Commission, they resolved to protest, but were prevented by
some of their colleagues. They gave the alarm in Germany. The intention
to proclaim infallibility at the Council was no longer a secret. The
first bishop who made the wish public was Fessler of St. Poelten. His
language was guarded, and he only prepared his readers for a probable
contingency; but he was soon followed by the Bishop of Nimes, who
thought the discussion of the dogma superfluous, and foreshadowed a vote
by acclamation. The _Civilta_ on the 6th of February gave utterance to
the hope that the Council would not hesitate to proclaim the dogma and
confirm the Syllabus in less than a month. Five days later the Pope
wrote to some Venetians who had taken a vow to uphold his infallibility,
encouraging their noble resolution to defend his supreme authority and
all his rights. Until the month of May Cardinal Antonelli's confidential
language to diplomatists was that the dogma was to be proclaimed, and
that it would encounter no difficulty.
Cardinal Reisach was to have been the President of the Council. As
Archbishop of Munich he had allowed himself and his diocese to be
governed by the ablest of all the ultramontane divines. During his long
residence in Rome he rose to high estimation, because he was reputed to
possess the secret, and to have discovered the vanity, of German
science. He had amused himself with Christian antiquities; and his
friendship for the great explorer De' Rossi brought him for a time under
suspicion of liberality. But later he became unrelenting in his ardour
for the objects of the _Civilta_, and regained the confidence of the
Pope. The German bishops complained that he betrayed their interests,
and that their church had suffered mischief from his paramount
influence. But in Rome his easy temper and affable manners made him
friends; and the Court knew that there was no cardinal on whom it was so
safe to rely.
Fessler, the first bishop who gave the signal of the intended
definition, was appointed Secretary. He was esteemed a learned man in
Austria, and he was wisely chosen to dispel the suspicion that the
conduct of the Council was to be jealously retained in Roman hands, and
to prove that there are qualities by which the confidence of the Court
could be won by men of a less favoured nation. Besides the President and
Secretary, the most conspicuous of the Pope's theological advisers was
a German. At the time when Passaglia's reputation was great in Rome,
his companion Clement Schrader shared the fame of his solid erudition.
When Passaglia fell into disgrace, his friend smote him with reproaches
and intimated the belief that he would follow the footsteps of Luther
and debauch a nun. Schrader is the most candid and consistent asserter
of the papal claims. He does not shrink from the consequences of the
persecuting theory; and he has given the most authentic and unvarnished
exposition of the Syllabus. He was the first who spoke out openly what
others were variously attempting to compromise or to conceal. While the
Paris Jesuits got into trouble for extenuating the Roman doctrine, and
had to be kept up to the mark by an abbe who reminded them that the
Pope, as a physical person, and without co-operation of the Episcopate,
is infallible, Schrader proclaimed that his will is supreme even against
the joint and several opinions of the bishops.[372]
When the proceedings of the dogmatic commission, the acts of the Pope,
and the language of French and Austrian bishops, and of the press
serving the interests of Rome, announced that the proclamation of
infallibility had ceased to be merely the aspiration of a party and was
the object of a design deliberately set on foot by those to whom the
preparation and management of the Council pertained, men became aware
that an extraordinary crisis was impending, and that they needed to make
themselves familiar with an unforeseen problem. The sense of its gravity
made slow progress. The persuasion was strong among divines that the
episcopate would not surrender to a party which was odious to many of
them; and politicians were reluctant to believe that schemes were
ripening such as Fessler described, schemes intended to alter the
relations between Church and State. When the entire plan was made public
by the _alleging Zeitung_ in March 1869, many refused to be convinced.
It happened that a statesman was in office who had occasion to know that
the information was accurate. The Prime Minister of Bavaria, Prince
Hohenlohe, was the brother of a cardinal; the University of Munich was
represented on the Roman commissions by an illustrious scholar; and the
news of the thing that was preparing came through trustworthy channels.
On the 9th of April Prince Hohenlohe sent out a diplomatic circular on
the subject of the Council. He pointed out that it was not called into
existence by any purely theological emergency, and that the one dogma
which was to be brought before it involved all those claims which cause
collisions between Church and State, and threaten the liberty and the
security of governments. Of the five Roman Commissions, one was
appointed for the express purpose of dealing with the mixed topics
common to religion and to politics. Besides infallibility and politics,
the Council was to be occupied with the Syllabus, which is in part
directed against maxims of State. The avowed purpose of the Council
being so largely political, the governments could not remain indifferent
to its action; lest they should be driven afterwards to adopt measures
which would be hostile, it would be better at once to seek an
understanding by friendly means and to obtain assurance that all
irritating deliberations should be avoided, and no business touching the
State transacted except in presence of its representatives. He proposed
that the governments should hold a conference to arrange a plan for the
protection of their common interest.
Important measures proposed by small States are subject to suspicion of
being prompted by a greater Power. Prince Hohenlohe, as a friend of the
Prussian alliance, was supposed to be acting in this matter in concert
with Berlin. This good understanding was suspected at Vienna; for the
Austrian Chancellor was more conspicuous as an enemy of Prussia than
Hohenlohe as a friend. Count Beust traced the influence of Count
Bismarck in the Bavarian circular. He replied, on behalf of the Catholic
empire of Austria, that there were no grounds to impute political
objects to the Council, and that repression and not prevention was the
only policy compatible with free institutions. After the refusal of
Austria, the idea of a conference was dismissed by the other Powers; and
the first of the storm clouds that darkened the horizon of infallibility
passed without breaking.
Although united action was abandoned, the idea of sending ambassadors to
the Council still offered the most inoffensive and amicable means of
preventing the danger of subsequent conflict. Its policy or impolicy was
a question to be decided by France. Several bishops, and Cardinal
Bonnechose among the rest, urged the Government to resume its ancient
privilege, and send a representative. But two powerful parties, united
in nothing else, agreed in demanding absolute neutrality. The democracy
wished that no impediment should be put in the way of an enterprise
which promised to sever the connection of the State with the Church. M.
Ollivier set forth this opinion in July 1868, in a speech which was to
serve him in his candidature for office; and in the autumn of 1869 it
was certain that he would soon be in power. The ministers could not
insist on being admitted to the Council, where they were not invited,
without making a violent demonstration in a direction they knew would
not be followed. The ultramontanes were even more eager than their
enemies to exclude an influence that might embarrass their policy. The
Archbishop of Paris, by giving the same advice, settled the question. He
probably reckoned on his own power of mediating between France and Rome.
The French Court long imagined that the dogma would be set aside, and
that the mass of the French bishops opposed it. At last they perceived
that they were mistaken, and the Emperor said to Cardinal Bonnechose,
"You are going to give your signature to decrees already made." He
ascertained the names of the bishops who would resist; and it was known
that he was anxious for their success. But he was resolved that it
should be gained by them, and not by the pressure of his diplomacy at
the cost of displeasing the Pope. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and
his chief secretary were counted by the Court of Rome among its friends;
and the ordinary ambassador started for his post with instructions to
conciliate, and to run no risk of a quarrel. He arrived at Rome
believing that there would be a speculative conflict between the
extremes of Roman and German theology, which would admit of being
reconciled by the safer and more sober wisdom of the French bishops,
backed by an impartial embassy. His credulity was an encumbrance to the
cause which it was his mission and his wish to serve.