strange form. It was proposed that the German Catholics should be
represented by King John of Saxony. As a Catholic and a scholar, who had
shown, in his Commentary on Dante, that he had read St. Thomas, and as a
prince personally esteemed by the Pope, it was conceived that his
presence would be a salutary restraint. It was an impracticable idea;
but letters which reached Rome during the winter raised an impression
that the King regretted that he could not be there. The opinion of
Germany would still have some weight if the North and South, which
included more than thirteen millions of Catholics, worked together. It
was the policy of Hohenlohe to use this united force, and the
ultramontanes learned to regard him as a very formidable antagonist.
When their first great triumph, in the election of the Commission on
Doctrine, was accomplished, the commentary of a Roman prelate was, "Che
colpo per il Principe Hohenlohe!" The Bavarian envoy in Rome did not
share the views of his chief, and he was recalled in November. His
successor had capacity to carry out the known policy of the prince; but
early in the winter the ultramontanes drove Hohenlohe from office, and
their victory, though it was exercised with moderation, and was not
followed by a total change of policy, neutralised the influence of
Bavaria in the Council.
The fall of Hohenlohe and the abstention of France hampered the Federal
Government of Northern Germany. For its Catholic subjects, and
ultimately in view of the rivalry with France, to retain the friendship
of the papacy is a fixed maxim at Berlin. Count Bismarck laid down the
rule that Prussia should display no definite purpose in a cause which
was not her own, but should studiously keep abreast of the North German
bishops. Those bishops neither invoked, nor by their conduct invited,
the co-operation of the State; and its influence would have been
banished from the Council but for the minister who represented it in
Rome. The vicissitudes of a General Council are so far removed from the
normal experience of statesmen that they could not well be studied or
acted upon from a distance. A government that strictly controlled and
dictated the conduct of its envoy was sure to go wrong, and to frustrate
action by theory. A government that trusted the advice of its minister
present on the spot enjoyed a great advantage. Baron Arnim was
favourably situated. A Catholic belonging to any but the ultramontane
school would have been less willingly listened to in Rome than a
Protestant who was a conservative in politics, and whose regard for the
interests of religion was so undamaged by the sectarian taint that he
was known to be sincere in the wish that Catholics should have cause to
rejoice in the prosperity of their Church. The apathy of Austria and the
vacillation of France contributed to his influence, for he enjoyed the
confidence of bishops from both countries; and he was able to guide his
own government in its course towards the Council.
The English Government was content to learn more and to speak less than
the other Powers at Rome. The usual distrust of the Roman Court towards
a Liberal ministry in England was increased at the moment by the measure
which the Catholics had desired and applauded. It seemed improbable to
men more solicitous for acquired rights than for general political
principle, that Protestant statesmen who disestablished their own Church
could feel a very sincere interest in the welfare of another. Ministers
so Utopian as to give up solid goods for an imaginary righteousness
seemed, as practical advisers, open to grave suspicion. Mr. Gladstone
was feared as the apostle of those doctrines to which Rome owes many
losses. Public opinion in England was not prepared to look on papal
infallibility as a matter of national concern, more than other dogmas
which make enemies to Catholicism. Even if the Government could have
admitted the Prussian maxim of keeping in line with the bishops, it
would have accomplished nothing. The English bishops were divided; but
the Irish bishops, who are the natural foes of the Fenian plot, were by
an immense majority on the ultramontane side. There was almost an
ostentation of care on the part of the Government to avoid the
appearance of wishing to influence the bishops or the Court of Rome.
When at length England publicly concurred in the remonstrances of
France, events had happened which showed that the Council was raising up
dangers for both Catholic and liberal interests. It was a result so easy
to foresee, that the Government had made it clear from the beginning
that its extreme reserve was not due to indifference.
The lesser Catholic Powers were almost unrepresented in Rome. The
government of the Regent of Spain possessed no moral authority over
bishops appointed by the Queen; and the revolution had proved so hostile
to the clergy that they were forced to depend on the Pope. Diplomatic
relations being interrupted, there was nothing to restrain them from
seeking favour by unqualified obedience.
Portugal had appointed the Count de Lavradio ambassador to the Council;
but when he found that he was alone he retained only the character of
envoy to the Holy See. He had weight with the small group of Portuguese
bishops; but he died before he could be of use, and they drifted into
submission.
Belgium was governed by M. Frere Orban, one of the most anxious and
laborious enemies of the hierarchy, who had no inducement to interfere
with an event which justified his enmity, and was, moreover, the
unanimous wish of the Belgian Episcopate. When Protestant and Catholic
Powers joined in exhorting Rome to moderation, Belgium was left out.
Russia was the only Power that treated the Church with actual hostility
during the Council, and calculated the advantage to be derived from
decrees which would intensify the schism.
Italy was more deeply interested in the events at Rome than any other
nation. The hostility of the clergy was felt both in the political and
financial difficulties of the kingdom; and the prospect of conciliation
would suffer equally from decrees confirming the Roman claims, or from
an invidious interposition of the State. Public opinion watched the
preparations for the Council with frivolous disdain; but the course to
be taken was carefully considered by the Menabrea Cabinet. The laws
still subsisted which enabled the State to interfere in religious
affairs; and the government was legally entitled to prohibit the
attendance of the bishops at the Council, or to recall them from it. The
confiscated church property was retained by the State, and the claims of
the episcopate were not yet settled. More than one hundred votes on
which Rome counted belonged to Italian subjects. The means of applying
administrative pressure were therefore great, though diplomatic action
was impossible. The Piedmontese wished that the resources of their
ecclesiastical jurisprudence should be set in motion. But Minghetti, who
had lately joined the Ministry, warmly advocated the opinion that the
supreme principle of the liberty of the Church ought to override the
remains of the older legislation, in a State consistently free; and,
with the disposition of the Italians to confound Catholicism with the
hierarchy, the policy of abstention was a triumph of liberality. The
idea of Prince Hohenlohe, that religion ought to be maintained in its
integrity and not only in its independence, that society is interested
in protecting the Church even against herself, and that the enemies of
her liberty are ecclesiastical as well as political, could find no
favour in Italy. During the session of 1869, Menabrea gave no pledge to
Parliament as to the Council; and the bishops who inquired whether they
would be allowed to attend it were left unanswered until October.
Menabrea then explained in a circular that the right of the bishops to
go to the Council proceeded from the liberty of conscience, and was not
conceded under the old privileges of the crown, or as a favour that
could imply responsibility for what was to be done. If the Church was
molested in her freedom, excuse would be given for resisting the
incorporation of Rome. If the Council came to decisions injurious to the
safety of States, it would be attributed to the unnatural conditions
created by the French occupation, and might be left to the enlightened
judgment of Catholics.
It was proposed that the fund realised by the sale of the real property
of the religious corporations should be administered for religious
purposes by local boards of trustees representing the Catholic
population, and that the State should abdicate in their favour its
ecclesiastical patronage, and proceed to discharge the unsettled claims
of the clergy. So great a change in the plans by which Sella and
Rattazzi had impoverished the Church in 1866 and 1867 would, if frankly
carried into execution, have encouraged an independent spirit among the
Italian bishops; and the reports of the prefects represented about
thirty of them as being favourable to conciliation. But the Ministry
fell in November, and was succeeded by an administration whose leading
members, Lanza and Sella, were enemies of religion. The Court of Rome
was relieved from a serious peril.
The only European country whose influence was felt in the attitude of
its bishops was one whose government sent out no diplomatists. While the
Austrian Chancellor regarded the issue of the Council with a profane and
supercilious eye, and so much indifference prevailed at Vienna that it
was said that the ambassador at Rome did not read the decrees, and that
Count Beust did not read his despatches, the Catholic statesmen in
Hungary were intent on effecting a revolution in the Church. The system
which was about to culminate in the proclamation of infallibility, and
which tended to absorb all power from the circumference into the centre,
and to substitute authority for autonomy, had begun at the lower
extremities of the hierarchical scale. The laity, which once had its
share in the administration of Church property and in the deliberations
of the clergy, had been gradually compelled to give up its rights to the
priesthood, the priests to the bishops, and the bishops to the Pope.
Hungary undertook to redress the process, and to correct centralised
absolutism by self-government. In a memorandum drawn up in April 1848,
the bishops imputed the decay of religion to the exclusion of the people
from the management of all Church affairs, and proposed that whatever is
not purely spiritual should be conducted by mixed boards, including lay
representatives elected by the congregations. The war of the revolution
and the reaction checked this design; and the Concordat threw things
more than ever into clerical hands. The triumph of the liberal party
after the peace of Prague revived the movements; and Eoetvoes called on
the bishops to devise means of giving to the laity a share and an
interest in religious concerns. The bishops agreed unanimously to the
proposal of Deak, that the laity should have the majority in the boards
of administration; and the new constitution of the Hungarian Church was
adopted by the Catholic Congress on the 17th of October 1869, and
approved by the King on the 25th. The ruling idea of this great measure
was to make the laity supreme in all that is not liturgy and dogma, in
patronage, property, and education; to break down clerical exclusiveness
and government control; to deliver the people from the usurpations of
the hierarchy, and the Church from the usurpations of the State. It was
an attempt to reform the Church by constitutional principles, and to
crush ultramontanism by crushing Gallicanism. The Government, which had
originated the scheme, was ready to surrender its privileges to the
newly-constituted authorities; and the bishops acted in harmony with the
ministers and with public opinion. Whilst this good understanding
lasted, and while the bishops were engaged in applying the impartial
principles of self-government at home, there was a strong security that
they would not accept decrees that would undo their work. Infallibility
would not only condemn their system, but destroy their position. As the
winter advanced the influence of these things became apparent. The
ascendency which the Hungarian bishops acquired from the beginning was
due to other causes.
The political auspices under which the Council opened were very
favourable to the papal cause. The promoters of infallibility were able
to coin resources of the enmity which was shown to the Church. The
danger which came to them from within was averted. The policy of
Hohenlohe, which was afterwards revived by Daru, had been, for a time,
completely abandoned by Europe. The battle between the papal and the
episcopal principle could come off undisturbed, in closed lists.
Political opposition there was none; but the Council had to be governed
under the glare of inevitable publicity, with a free press in Europe,
and hostile views prevalent in Catholic theology. The causes which made
religious science utterly powerless in the strife, and kept it from
grappling with the forces arrayed against it, are of deeper import than
the issue of the contest itself.
While the voice of the bishops grew louder in praise of the Roman
designs, the Bavarian Government consulted the universities, and
elicited from the majority of the Munich faculty an opinion that the
dogma of infallibility would be attended with serious danger to society.
The author of the Bohemian pamphlet affirmed that it had not the
conditions which would enable it ever to become the object of a valid
definition. Janus compared the primacy, as it was known to the Fathers
of the Church, with the ultramontane ideal, and traced the process of
transformation through a long series of forgeries. Maret published his
book some weeks after Janus and the Reform. It had been revised by
several French bishops and divines, and was to serve as a vindication of
the Sorbonne and the Gallicans, and as the manifesto of men who were to
be present at the Council. It had not the merit of novelty or the fault
of innovation, but renewed with as little offence as possible the
language of the old French school.[373] While Janus treated
infallibility as the critical symptom of an ancient disease, Maret
restricted his argument to what was directly involved in the defence of
the Gallican position. Janus held that the doctrine was so firmly rooted
and so widely supported in the existing constitution of the Church, that
much must be modified before a genuine OEcumenical Council could be
celebrated. Maret clung to the belief that the real voice of the Church
would make itself heard at the Vatican. In direct contradiction with
Janus, he kept before him the one practical object, to gain assent by
making his views acceptable even to the unlearned.
At the last moment a tract appeared which has been universally
attributed to Doellinger, which examined the evidences relied on by the
infallibilists, and stated briefly the case against them. It pointed to
the inference that their theory is not merely founded on an illogical
and uncritical habit, but on unremitting dishonesty in the use of texts.
This was coming near the secret of the whole controversy, and the point
that made the interference of the Powers appear the only availing
resource. For the sentiment on which infallibility is founded could not
be reached by argument, the weapon of human reason, but resided in
conclusions transcending evidence, and was the inaccessible postulate
rather than a demonstrable consequence of a system of religious faith.
The two doctrines opposed, but never met each other. It was as much an
instinct of the ultramontane theory to elude the tests of science as to
resist the control of States. Its opponents, baffled and perplexed by
the serene vitality of a view which was impervious to proof, saw want of
principle where there was really a consistent principle, and blamed the
ultramontane divines for that which was of the essence of ultramontane
divinity. How it came that no appeal to revelation or tradition, to
reason or conscience, appeared to have any bearing whatever on the
issue, is a mystery which Janus and Maret and Doellinger's reflections
left unexplained.
The resources of mediaeval learning were too slender to preserve an
authentic record of the growth and settlement of Catholic doctrine. Many
writings of the Fathers were interpolated; others were unknown, and
spurious matter was accepted in their place. Books bearing venerable
names--Clement, Dionysius, Isidore--were forged for the purpose of
supplying authorities for opinions that lacked the sanction of
antiquity. When detection came, and it was found that fraud had been
employed in sustaining doctrines bound up with the peculiar interests of
Rome and of the religious Orders, there was an inducement to depreciate
the evidences of antiquity, and to silence a voice that bore obnoxious
testimony. The notion of tradition underwent a change; it was required
to produce what it had not preserved. The Fathers had spoken of the
unwritten teaching of the apostles, which was to be sought in the
churches they had founded, of esoteric doctrines, and views which must
be of apostolic origin because they are universal, of the inspiration of
general Councils, and a revelation continued beyond the New Testament.
But the Council of Trent resisted the conclusions which this language
seemed to countenance, and they were left to be pursued by private
speculation. One divine deprecated the vain pretence of arguing from
Scripture, by which Luther could not be confuted, and the Catholics were
losing ground;[374] and at Trent a speaker averred that Christian
doctrine had been so completely determined by the Schoolmen that there
was no further need to recur to Scripture. This idea is not extinct, and
Perrone uses it to explain the inferiority of Catholics as Biblical
critics.[375] If the Bible is inspired, says Peresius, still more must
its interpretation be inspired. It must be interpreted variously, says
the Cardinal of Cusa, according to necessity; a change in the opinion of
the Church implies a change in the will of God.[376] One of the greatest
Tridentine divines declares that a doctrine must be true if the Church
believes it, without any warrant from Scripture. According to Petavius,
the general belief of Catholics at a given time is the work of God, and
of higher authority than all antiquity and all the Fathers. Scripture
may be silent, and tradition contradictory, but the Church is
independent of both. Any doctrine which Catholic divines commonly
assert, without proof, to be revealed, must be taken as revealed. The
testimony of Rome, as the only remaining apostolic Church, is equivalent
to an unbroken chain of tradition.[377] In this way, after Scripture had
been subjugated, tradition itself was deposed; and the constant belief
of the past yielded to the general conviction of the present. And, as
antiquity had given way to universality, universality made way for
authority. The Word of God and the authority of the Church came to be
declared the two sources of religious knowledge. Divines of this school,
after preferring the Church to the Bible, preferred the modern Church to
the ancient, and ended by sacrificing both to the Pope. "We have not the
authority of Scripture," wrote Prierias in his defence of Indulgences,
"but we have the higher authority of the Roman pontiffs."[378] A bishop
who had been present at Trent confesses that in matters of faith he
would believe a single Pope rather than a thousand Fathers, saints, and
doctors.[379] The divine training develops an orthodox instinct in the
Church, which shows itself in the lives of devout but ignorant men more
than in the researches of the learned, and teaches authority not to need
the help of science, and not to heed its opposition. All the arguments
by which theology supports a doctrine may prove to be false, without
diminishing the certainty of its truth. The Church has not obtained, and
is not bound to sustain it, by proof. She is supreme over fact as over
doctrine, as Fenelon argues, because she is the supreme expounder of
tradition, which is a chain of facts.[380] Accordingly, the organ of one
ultramontane bishop lately declared that infallibility could be defined
without arguments; and the Bishop of Nimes thought that the decision
need not be preceded by long and careful discussion. The Dogmatic
Commission of the Council proclaims that the existence of tradition has
nothing to do with evidence, and that objections taken from history are
not valid when contradicted by ecclesiastical decrees.[381] Authority
must conquer history.
This inclination to get rid of evidence was specially associated with
the doctrine of papal infallibility, because it is necessary that the
Popes themselves should not testify against their own claim. They may be
declared superior to all other authorities, but not to that of their own
see. Their history is not irrelevant to the question of their rights. It
could not be disregarded; and the provocation to alter or to deny its
testimony was so urgent that men of piety and learning became a prey to
the temptation of deceit. When it was discovered in the manuscript of
the _Liber Diurnus_ that the Popes had for centuries condemned Honorius
in their profession of faith, Cardinal Bona, the most eminent man in
Rome, advised that the book should be suppressed if the difficulty could
not be got over; and it was suppressed accordingly.[382] Men guilty of
this kind of fraud would justify it by saying that their religion
transcends the wisdom of philosophers, and cannot submit to the
criticism of historians. If any fact manifestly contradicts a dogma,
that is a warning to science to revise the evidence. There must be some
defect in the materials or in the method. Pending its discovery, the
true believer is constrained humbly but confidently to deny the fact.
The protest of conscience against this fraudulent piety grew loud and
strong as the art of criticism became more certain. The use made of it
by Catholics in the literature of the present age, and their acceptance
of the conditions of scientific controversy, seemed to ecclesiastical
authorities a sacrifice of principle. A jealousy arose that ripened into
antipathy. Almost every writer who really served Catholicism fell sooner
or later under the disgrace or the suspicion of Rome. But its censures
had lost efficacy; and it was found that the progress of literature
could only be brought under control by an increase of authority. This
could be obtained if a general council declared the decisions of the
Roman congregations absolute, and the Pope infallible.