countrymen whom they recommended as candidates. The Germans and
Hungarians, above forty in number, assembled for this purpose under the
presidency of Cardinal Schwarzenberg; and their meetings were continued,
and became more and more important, as those who did not sympathise with
the opposition dropped away. The French were divided into two groups,
and met partly at Cardinal Mathieu's, partly at Cardinal Bonnechose's. A
fusion was proposed, but was resisted, in the Roman interest, by
Bonnechose. He consulted Cardinal Antonelli, and reported that the Pope
disliked large meetings of bishops. Moreover, if all the French had met
in one place, the opposition would have had the majority, and would have
determined the choice of the candidates. They voted separately; and the
Bonnechose list was represented to foreign bishops as the united choice
of the French episcopate. The Mathieu group believed that this had been
done fraudulently, and resolved to make their complaint to the Pope; but
Cardinal Mathieu, seeing that a storm was rising, and that he would be
called on to be the spokesman of his friends, hurried away to spend
Christmas at Besancon. All the votes of his group were thrown away. Even
the bishop of Grenoble, who had obtained twenty-nine votes at one
meeting, and thirteen at the other, was excluded from the Commission. It
was constituted as the managers of the election desired, and the first
trial of strength appeared to have annihilated the opposition. The force
under entire control of the court could be estimated from the number of
votes cast blindly for candidates not put forward by their own
countrymen, and unknown to others, who had therefore no recommendation
but that of the official list. According to this test Rome could dispose
of 550 votes.
The moment of this triumph was chosen for the production of an act
already two months old, by which many ancient censures were revoked, and
many were renewed. The legislation of the Middle Ages and of the
sixteenth century appointed nearly two hundred cases by which
excommunication was incurred _ipso facto_, without inquiry or sentence.
They had generally fallen into oblivion, or were remembered as instances
of former extravagance; but they had not been abrogated, and, as they
were in part defensible, they were a trouble to timorous consciences.
There was reason to expect that this question, which had often occupied
the attention of the bishops, would be brought before the Council; and
the demand for a reform could not have been withstood. The difficulty
was anticipated by sweeping away as many censures as it was thought safe
to abandon, and deciding, independently of the bishops, what must be
retained. The Pope reserved to himself alone the faculty of absolving
from the sin of harbouring or defending the members of any sect, of
causing priests to be tried by secular courts, of violating asylum or
alienating the real property of the Church. The prohibition of anonymous
writing was restricted to works on theology, and the excommunication
hitherto incurred by reading books which are on the Index was confined
to readers of heretical books. This Constitution had no other immediate
effect than to indicate the prevailing spirit, and to increase the
difficulties of the partisans of Rome. The organ of the Archbishop of
Cologne justified the last provision by saying, that it does not forbid
the works of Jews, for Jews are not heretics; nor the heretical tracts
and newspapers, for they are not books; nor listening to heretical books
read aloud, for hearing is not reading.
At the same time, the serious work of the Council was begun. A long
dogmatic decree was distributed, in which the special theological,
biblical, and philosophical opinions of the school now dominant in Rome
were proposed for ratification. It was so weak a composition that it was
as severely criticised by the Romans as by the foreigners; and there
were Germans whose attention was first called to its defects by an
Italian cardinal. The disgust with which the text of the first decree
was received had not been foreseen. No real discussion had been
expected. The Council hall, admirable for occasions of ceremony, was
extremely ill adapted for speaking, and nothing would induce the Pope to
give it up. A public session was fixed for the 6th of January, and the
election of Commissions was to last till Christmas. It was evident that
nothing would be ready for the session, unless the decree was accepted
without debate, or infallibility adopted by acclamation.
Before the Council had been assembled a fortnight, a store of discontent
had accumulated which it would have been easy to avoid. Every act of the
Pope, the Bull _Multiplices_, the declaration of censures, the text of
the proposed decree, even the announcement that the Council should be
dissolved in case of his death, had seemed an injury or an insult to the
episcopate. These measures undid the favourable effect of the caution
with which the bishops had been received. They did what the dislike of
infallibility alone would not have done. They broke the spell of
veneration for Pius IX. which fascinated the Catholic Episcopate. The
jealousy with which he guarded his prerogative in the appointment of
officers, and of the great Commission, the pressure during the
elections, the prohibition of national meetings, the refusal to hold the
debates in a hall where they could be heard, irritated and alarmed many
bishops. They suspected that they had been summoned for the very purpose
they had indignantly denied, to make the papacy more absolute by
abdicating in favour of the official prelature of Rome. Confidence gave
way to a great despondency, and a state of feeling was aroused which
prepared the way for actual opposition when the time should come.
Before Christmas the Germans and the French were grouped nearly as they
remained to the end. After the flight of Cardinal Mathieu, and the
refusal of Cardinal Bonnechose to coalesce, the friends of the latter
gravitated towards the Roman centre, and the friends of the former held
their meetings at the house of the Archbishop of Paris. They became,
with the Austro-German meeting under Cardinal Schwarzenberg, the
strength and substance of the party that opposed the new dogma; but
there was little intercourse between the two, and their exclusive
nationality made them useless as a nucleus for the few scattered
American, English, and Italian bishops whose sympathies were with them.
To meet this object, and to centralise the deliberations, about a dozen
of the leading men constituted an international meeting, which included
the best talents, but also the most discordant views. They were too
little united to act with vigour, and too few to exercise control. Some
months later they increased their numbers. They were the brain but not
the will of the opposition. Cardinal Rauscher presided. Rome honoured
him as the author of the Austrian Concordat; but he feared that
infallibility would bring destruction on his work, and he was the most
constant, the most copious, and the most emphatic of its opponents.
When the debate opened, on the 28th of December, the idea of proclaiming
the dogma by acclamation had not been abandoned. The Archbishop of Paris
exacted a promise that it should not be attempted. But he was warned
that the promise held good for the first day only, and that there was no
engagement for the future. Then he made it known that one hundred
bishops were ready, if a surprise was attempted, to depart from Rome,
and to carry away the Council, as he said, in the soles of their shoes.
The plan of carrying the measure by a sudden resolution was given up,
and it was determined to introduce it with a demonstration of
overwhelming effect. The debate on the dogmatic decree was begun by
Cardinal Rauscher. The Archbishop of St. Louis spoke on the same day so
briefly as not to reveal the force and the fire within him. The
Archbishop of Halifax concluded a long speech by saying that the
proposal laid before the Council was only fit to be put decorously under
ground. Much praise was lavished on the bishops who had courage,
knowledge, and Latin enough to address the assembled Fathers; and the
Council rose instantly in dignity and in esteem when it was seen that
there was to be real discussion. On the 30th, Rome was excited by the
success of two speakers. One was the Bishop of Grenoble, the other was
Strossmayer, the bishop from the Turkish frontier, who had again
assailed the regulation, and had again been stopped by the presiding
Cardinal. The fame of his spirit and eloquence began to spread over the
city and over the world. The ideas that animated these men in their
attack on the proposed measure were most clearly shown a few days later
in the speech of a Swiss prelate. "What boots it," he exclaimed, "to
condemn errors that have been long condemned, and tempt no Catholic? The
false beliefs of mankind are beyond the reach of your decrees. The best
defence of Catholicism is religious science. Give to the pursuit of
sound learning every encouragement and the widest field; and prove by
deeds as well as words that the progress of nations in liberty and light
is the mission of the Church."[387]
The tempest of criticism was weakly met; and the opponents established
at once a superiority in debate. At the end of the first month nothing
had been done; and the Session imprudently fixed for the 6th of January
had to be filled up with tedious ceremonies. Everybody saw that there
had been a great miscalculation. The Council was slipping out of the
grasp of the Court, and the regulation was a manifest hindrance to the
despatch of business. New resources were required.
A new president was appointed. Cardinal Reisach had died at the end of
December without having been able to take his seat, and Cardinal De Luca
had presided in his stead. De Angelis was now put into the place made
vacant by the death of Reisach. He had suffered imprisonment at Turin,
and the glory of his confessorship was enhanced by his services in the
election of the Commissions. He was not suited otherwise to be the
moderator of a great assembly; and the effect of his elevation was to
dethrone the accomplished and astute De Luca, who had been found
deficient in thoroughness, and to throw the management of the Council
into the hands of the junior Presidents, Capalti and Bilio. Bilio was a
Barnabite monk, innocent of court intrigues, a friend of the most
enlightened scholars in Rome, and a favourite of the Pope. Cardinal
Capalti had been distinguished as a canonist. Like Cardinal Bilio, he
was not reckoned among men of the extreme party; and they were not
always in harmony with their colleagues, De Angelis and Bizarri. But
they did not waver when the policy they had to execute was not their
own.
The first decree was withdrawn, and referred to the Commission on
Doctrine. Another, on the duties of the episcopate, was substituted; and
that again was followed by others, of which the most important was on
the Catechism. While they were being discussed, a petition was prepared,
demanding that the infallibility of the Pope should be made the object
of a decree. The majority undertook to put a strain on the prudence or
the reluctance of the Vatican. Their zeal in the cause was warmer than
that of the official advisers. Among those who had the responsibility of
conducting the spiritual and temporal government of the Pope, the belief
was strong that his infallibility did not need defining, and that the
definition could not be obtained without needless obstruction to other
papal interests. Several Cardinals were inopportunists at first, and
afterwards promoted intermediate and conciliatory proposals. But the
business of the Council was not left to the ordinary advisers of the
Pope, and they were visibly compelled and driven by those who
represented the majority. At times this pressure was no doubt
convenient. But there were also times when there was no collusion, and
the majority really led the authorities. The initiative was not taken by
the great mass whose zeal was stimulated by personal allegiance to the
Pope. They added to the momentum, but the impulse came from men who were
as independent as the chiefs of the opposition. The great Petition,
supported by others pointing to the same end, was kept back for several
weeks, and was presented at the end of January.
At that time the opposition had attained its full strength, and
presented a counter-petition, praying that the question might not be
introduced. It was written by Cardinal Rauscher, and was signed, with
variations, by 137 bishops. To obtain that number the address avoided
the doctrine itself, and spoke only of the difficulty and danger in
defining it; so that this, their most imposing act, was a confession of
inherent weakness, and a signal to the majority that they might force on
the dogmatic discussion. The bishops stood on the negative. They showed
no sense of their mission to renovate Catholicism; and it seemed that
they would compound for the concession they wanted, by yielding in all
other matters, even those which would be a practical substitute for
infallibility. That this was not to be, that the forces needed for a
great revival were really present, was made manifest by the speech of
Strossmayer on the 24th of January, when he demanded the reformation of
the Court of Rome, decentralisation in the government of the Church, and
decennial Councils. That earnest spirit did not animate the bulk of the
party. They were content to leave things as they were, to gain nothing
if they lost nothing, to renounce all premature striving for reform if
they could succeed in avoiding a doctrine which they were as unwilling
to discuss as to define. The words of Ginoulhiac to Strossmayer, "You
terrify me with your pitiless logic," expressed the inmost feelings of
many who gloried in the grace and the splendour of his eloquence. No
words were too strong for them if they prevented the necessity of
action, and spared the bishops the distressing prospect of being brought
to bay, and having to resist openly the wishes and the claims of Rome.
Infallibility never ceased to overshadow every step of the Council,[388]
but it had already given birth to a deeper question. The Church had less
to fear from the violence of the majority than from the inertness of
their opponents. No proclamation of false doctrines could be so great a
disaster as the weakness of faith which would prove that the power of
recovery, the vital force of Catholicism, was extinct in the episcopate.
It was better to be overcome after openly attesting their belief than to
strangle both discussion and definition, and to disperse without having
uttered a single word that could reinstate the authorities of the Church
in the respect of men. The future depended less on the outward struggle
between two parties than on the process by which the stronger spirit
within the minority leavened the mass. The opposition was as averse to
the actual dogmatic discussion among themselves as in the Council. They
feared an inquiry which would divide them. At first the bishops who
understood and resolutely contemplated their real mission in the Council
were exceedingly few. Their influence was strengthened by the force of
events, by the incessant pressure of the majority, and by the action of
literary opinion.
Early in December the Archbishop of Mechlin brought out a reply to the
letter of the Bishop of Orleans, who immediately prepared a rejoinder,
but could not obtain permission to print it in Rome. It appeared two
months later at Naples. Whilst the minority were under the shock of this
prohibition, Gratry published at Paris the first of four letters to the
Archbishop of Mechlin, in which the case of Honorius was discussed with
so much perspicuity and effect that the profane public was interested,
and the pamphlets were read with avidity in Rome. They contained no new
research, but they went deep into the causes which divided Catholics.
Gratry showed that the Roman theory is still propped by fables which
were innocent once, but have become deliberate untruths since the excuse
of mediaeval ignorance was dispelled; and he declared that this school of
lies was the cause of the weakness of the Church, and called on
Catholics to look the scandal in the face, and cast out the religious
forgers. His letters did much to clear the ground and to correct the
confusion of ideas among the French. The bishop of St. Brieuc wrote that
the exposure was an excellent service to religion, for the evil had gone
so far that silence would be complicity.[389] Gratry was no sooner
approved by one bishop than he was condemned by a great number of
others. He had brought home to his countrymen the question whether they
could be accomplices of a dishonest system, or would fairly attempt to
root it out.
While Gratry's letters were disturbing the French, Doellinger published
some observations on the petition for infallibility, directing his
attack clearly against the doctrine itself. During the excitement that
ensued, he answered demonstrations of sympathy by saying that he had
only defended the faith which was professed, substantially, by the
majority of the episcopate in Germany. These words dropped like an acid
on the German bishops. They were writhing to escape the dire necessity
of a conflict with the Pope; and it was very painful to them to be
called as compurgators by a man who was esteemed the foremost opponent
of the Roman system, whose hand was suspected in everything that had
been done against it, and who had written many things on the sovereign
obligations of truth and faith which seemed an unmerciful satire on the
tactics to which they clung. The notion that the bishops were opposing
the dogma itself was founded on their address against the regulation;
but the petition against the definition of infallibility was so worded
as to avoid that inference, and had accordingly obtained nearly twice as
many German and Hungarian signatures as the other. The Bishop of Mentz
vehemently repudiated the supposition for himself, and invited his
colleagues to do the same. Some followed his example, others refused;
and it became apparent that the German opposition was divided, and
included men who accepted the doctrines of Rome. The precarious alliance
between incompatible elements was prevented from breaking up by the next
act of the Papal Government.
The defects in the mode of carrying on the business of the Council were
admitted on both sides. Two months had been lost; and the demand for a
radical change was publicly made in behalf of the minority by a letter
communicated to the _Moniteur_. On the 22nd of February a new
regulation was introduced, with the avowed purpose of quickening
progress. It gave the Presidents power to cut short any speech, and
provided that debate might be cut short at any moment when the majority
pleased. It also declared that the decrees should be carried by
majority--_id decernetur quod majori Patrum numero placuerit_. The
policy of leaving the decisive power in the hands of the Council itself
had this advantage, that its exercise would not raise the question of
liberty and coercion in the same way as the interference of authority.
By the Bull _Multiplices_, no bishop could introduce any matter not
approved by the Pope. By the new regulation he could not speak on any
question before the Council, if the majority chose to close the
discussion, or if the Presidents chose to abridge his speech. He could
print nothing in Rome, and what was printed elsewhere was liable to be
treated as contraband. His written observations on any measure were
submitted to the Commission, without any security that they would be
made known to the other bishops in their integrity. There was no longer
an obstacle to the immediate definition of papal infallibility. The
majority was omnipotent.
The minority could not accept this regulation without admitting that the
Pope is infallible. Their thesis was, that his decrees are not free from
the risk of error unless they express the universal belief of the
episcopate. The idea that particular virtue attaches to a certain number
of bishops, or that infallibility depends on a few votes more or less,
was defended by nobody. If the act of a majority of bishops in the
Council, possibly not representing a majority in the Church, is
infallible, it derives its infallibility from the Pope. Nobody held that
the Pope was bound to proclaim a dogma carried by a majority. The
minority contested the principle of the new Regulation, and declared
that a dogmatic decree required virtual unanimity. The chief protest was
drawn up by a French bishop. Some of the Hungarians added a paragraph
asserting that the authority and oecumenicity of the Council depended
on the settlement of this question; and they proposed to add that they
could not continue to act as though it were legitimate unless this point
was given up. The author of the address declined this passage, urging
that the time for actual menace was not yet come. From that day the
minority agreed in rejecting as invalid any doctrine which should not be
passed by unanimous consent. On this point the difference between the
thorough and the simulated opposition was effaced, for Ginoulhiac and
Ketteler were as positive as Kenrick or Hefele. But it was a point which
Rome could not surrender without giving up its whole position. To wait
for unanimity was to wait for ever, and to admit that a minority could
prevent or nullify the dogmatic action of the papacy was to renounce
infallibility. No alternative remained to the opposing bishops but to
break up the Council. The most eminent among them accepted this
conclusion, and stated it in a paper declaring that the absolute and
indisputable law of the Church had been violated by the Regulation
allowing articles of faith to be decreed on which the episcopate was not
morally unanimous; and that the Council, no longer possessing in the
eyes of the bishops and of the world the indispensable condition of
liberty and legality, would be inevitably rejected. To avert a public
scandal, and to save the honour of the Holy See, it was proposed that
some unopposed decrees should be proclaimed in solemn session, and the
Council immediately prorogued.