CHAPTER XVIII

THE MINORITY AFTER THE VATICAN DECREE

The 18th of July 1870 is from any point of view one of the most

critical days in the history of the Papacy. It is the transition

from old Catholicism into new. It is the consummation of a theory of

spiritual authority; the centralising and condensing of all power

in one individual. It is not in the least the necessary or the

logical conclusion of the principle of authority: for the expression

of authority, either through the Collective Episcopate or through

reception by the Universal Church, is just as consistent and just as

logical; and has the additional advantage of corresponding with the

primitive facts of Christian history.

The 18th of July was also a momentous date in the annals of the Roman

temporal power. On the very next day began the Franco-Prussian War.

From that date onwards the tragedy of conflict precluded any meeting

of German and French Bishops in Council at Rome. The Council was

necessarily interrupted, its resumption indefinitely postponed. The

disaster to France meant the recalling of the French troops from

Rome. Then followed the capture of the city by United Italy, and the

establishment of the Italian Throne at the gates of the Vatican. The

temporal power of the Papacy vanished like a dream, and Pius IX.

considered himself a prisoner within the Vatican precincts. The canon

of the Castle of St Angelo announced the entry of King Humbert, and

various convents and palaces were seized and confiscated for secular

departments and imperial uses.

A curious Italian comment on the opposition in the French Episcopate

may be found in the diary of Cardinal Pitra, a learned member of the

Benedictine Order, resident during the Council in Rome. Cardinal Pitra

was librarian of the Vatican, and placed himself in that capacity

at the disposal of the Bishops. If he kept aloof from the intrigues

of every kind which, says his biographer, were then so numerous, he

kept a careful diary of the events in which he displays himself as a

decided Ultramontane. He even adopted the paradox that the passing

of the new decree would diminish rather than increase the abyss

between the Eastern Churches and Rome. But Pitra’s comments after the

French retreat illustrates contemporary feeling. He thought that the

Franco-German War, which immediately broke out, was providentially

designed to prevent concerted action between the Bishops of these two

countries. When the Italians entered Rome one of their first acts was

to destroy the villa where Dupanloup during the Council had resided.

This was, according to Pitra, because Providence desired to efface the

reminders of opposition. Pitra traced the course of the war, and noted

how the soldiers advanced through Metz, Rheims, Paris, and Orleans--all

Gallican cities; whereas they did not reach Besançon, Dijon, and

Marseilles--all Ultramontane Episcopates. “We are here,” murmurs the

Cardinal, “witnesses to the preliminaries of the Judgment Day.”

Cecconi, Archbishop of Florence, who collected many documents

concerned with the struggle, relates that Pius IX. used to distinguish

three periods of the Council: the preparations; the assemblies; the

conclusion. Of these, the first period was Satanic, the second Human,

the third Divine.[384]

[384] Baunard, _Histoire du Cardinal Pie_, p. 353.

But before a minority Bishop could assent to the new Decree, there were

questions to be faced and answered; questions which he must answer

in his own behalf, and which also he was certain to find assailing

him, whether from his Clergy or Laity, who like himself had hitherto

deprecated the doctrine or disbelieved it. There was the question,

perhaps, first of all, Is this Council ecumenical? Is it a true

exponent of the Universal Church? There are Councils of many kinds,

with varying degrees of authority, legitimately responded to with

varying degrees of respect. Is this Council of the highest kind--that

which possesses a real and absolute finality? This question was widely

debated within the Roman body. It was said by high authorities in the

Roman Communion that the Vatican Council did not fulfil the conditions

of freedom essential to the creation of a dogma of the faith. Many

writers of the period assert this; some in the most impassioned terms.

Hefele emphatically declared it. Some affirmed that moral unanimity was

essential to representation of the Universal Church. Such unanimity, it

was notorious, the vote for Infallibility did not possess. Accordingly

there was no rush of the defeated Bishops into immediate acquiescence.

On the contrary, there was suspense, uncertainty, delay. Individual

isolated Bishops took no decided steps. They waited to see what others

would do, what time would produce, what thought and reflection might

suggest.

Fessler, indeed, late Secretary of the Vatican Assembly, assured them

that their course was clear. He drew a sketch of the conduct which he

considered would be ideal for a perplexed Bishop under these trying

circumstances.

“If even up to ... the last General Congregation before the Solemn

Session a Bishop is not satisfied as to all his difficulties, or if

he thinks it better that the decision should not yet be pronounced

on such and such a doctrine, he may, in the interval between the

last General Congregation and the Solemn Session, acquire a full

conviction on the subject by discoursing with other theologians, by

study of the subject and by prayer, and may thus overcome his last

difficulties, and see that it is well that the definition should be

made.”

This portion of Fessler’s advice was not much use since it appeared

subsequently to the final Session. Whether the advice to “acquire a

full conviction” in the interval between the last General Congregation

and the Solemn Session would have been very valuable, may be judged

from the fact that the interval for “discourse with other theologians,”

“study and prayer,” was two days. The subsequent struggles will show

what the minority Bishops thought of acquiring a full conviction in two

days.

Should, however, the best use of the interval prove unavailing,

Fessler’s advice was as follows:--

“Nay, even if he cannot attain this full conviction and insight into

the matter by any exertion of his own, he will wait for the decision

of the Council with a calm trust in God, without himself taking part

in it, because up to this point he lacks the necessary certainty of

conviction. When, however, the Council by its decision puts an end to

the matter, then at length his Catholic conscience tells him plainly

what he must now think, and what he must now do; for it is then

that the Catholic Bishop, whom hitherto unsolved difficulties have

kept from participation in the Public Session, and from the solemn

voting, says: ‘_Now_ it is undoubtedly certain that this doctrine

is revealed by God, and is therefore a portion of the Catholic

faith, and therefore I accept it on faith, and must now proclaim it

to my clergy and people as a doctrine of the Catholic Church. The

difficulties which hitherto made it hard for me to give my consent,

and to the perfect solution of which I have not even yet attained,

_must_ be capable of a solution; and so I shall honestly busy myself

with all the powers of my soul to find their solution for myself, and

for those whose instruction God has confided to my care.’”

Fessler omits all recognition of the possibility that men if placed

in a dilemma between Authority and History may choose the latter. The

effect of the Decree on many Bishops was not in the least to compel

the confession, ‘_Now_ it is undoubtedly certain that this doctrine is

revealed’: rather it was to awaken the criticism, now it is profoundly

uncertain whether this Council is ecumenical.

Such is Fessler’s advice to Bishops who doubted the truth of the

doctrine. To those who only considered its definition inopportune his

counsel was:--

“Those Bishops who in the last General Congregation voted with the

_non placets_, only because they really thought it was not a good

thing, not necessary, not for the benefit of souls in countries

well known to them, and who for this reason abstained from taking

part in this decision, may after the solemn decision, if they think

it advisable, represent to the faithful of their dioceses the

position which they previously adopted towards the doctrine, in

order that their conduct may not be misunderstood. But they must

now themselves unhesitatingly accept the doctrine which has been

decided, and make it known to their people in its true and proper

bearings, without reserve, and in such a manner that the injurious

effects which they themselves apprehended may be as much as possible

obviated and removed; for it is not permitted to the Bishop, as the

divinely-appointed teacher of the clergy and people, to be silent

about or to withhold a doctrine of the Faith revealed by God, because

he apprehends or thinks that some may take offence at it. Nay, rather

it is his business so prudently to bring it about in the declaration

of that doctrine, that its true sense and import may hereafter be

clearly represented, all erroneous misrepresentations of it be

excluded, the reasons for the decision of the doctrine brought out

plainly, and all objections to it zealously met and answered.”[385]

[385] Fessler, _True and False Infallibility_, p. 21.

No one gave greater weight to the obvious difficulties which the

methods employed at Rome had created for the Decree, no one formulated

them with more simplicity and frankness than Dr Newman. His letters

showed how he laboured to suggest plausible grounds for assent to the

new Decree, while leaving the ecumenical character of the Council for

future solution. And, remembering that these letters were addressed

to the believers and not to the outer world, nothing can show more

strikingly than the arguments which Dr Newman employs, the profound

perplexity into which many Romanists were thrown.

In a letter[386] written six days after the Decree was passed he says:--

[386] See Letter to Duke of Norfolk, pp. 96, 97, 98, 99.

“I saw the new Definition yesterday, and am pleased at its

moderation--that is, if the doctrine is to be defined at all.

The terms are vague and comprehensive; and personally I have no

difficulty in admitting it. The question is, Does it come to me with

the authority of an Ecumenical Council?

“Now the _primâ facie_ argument is in favour of its having that

authority. The Council was legitimately called; it was more largely

attended than any Council before it....

“Were it not then for certain circumstances under which the Council

made the definition, I should receive that definition at once.

“Even as it is, if I were called upon to profess it, I should be

unable, considering it came from the Holy Father and the competent

local authorities, at once to refuse to do so. On the other hand, it

cannot be denied that there are reasons for a Catholic, till better

informed, to suspend his judgment on its validity.

“We all know that ever since the opening of the Council there has

been a strenuous opposition to the definition of the doctrine; and

that, at the time when it was actually passed, more than eighty

Fathers absented themselves from the Council, and would have nothing

to do with its act. But if the fact be so, that the Fathers were not

unanimous, is the definition valid? This depends upon the question

whether unanimity at least moral is or is not necessary for its

validity? As at present advised I think it is....

“Certainly Pius IV. lays great stress on the unanimity of the

Fathers in the Council of Trent.... Far different has been the case

now--though the Council is not yet finished. But if I must now at

once decide what to think of it, I should consider that all turned on

what the dissentient Bishops now do.

“If they separate and go home without acting as a body, if they act

only individually or as individuals, and each in his own way, then I

should not recognise in their opposition to the majority that force,

firmness, and unity of view, which creates a real case of want of

moral unanimity in the Council....”

But it is impossible not to feel that dogmas which men are recommended

to accept on such extenuating pleas, dogmas whose irregularity is

acknowledged so long as their validity is saved, dogmas which depend

for their acceptance on the melting away of the episcopal minority,

were evidently straining the faith of Catholics almost to breaking

point, or they would never have been defended in such a manner. Here

is nothing of the devout thankfulness for fuller enlightenment, or the

triumph of truth; nothing of the glad recognition of a decision guided

by the Holy Ghost. Newman could never have treated the Nicene Council

as he did the Vatican. Behind these endeavours, to prevent secession or

schism, lies Newman’s recorded conviction in his letter to Ullathorne.

Newman’s theory that the ecumenical character of the Council might be

ascertained from its ultimate acceptance, that acquiescence on the part

of the defeated minority would atone for any irregularities in the

passing of the Decree, by no means carried conviction to many of the

perplexed. The nature of the doctrine decreed seemed to exclude this

kind of defence. For if the utterances of the Pope are infallible of

themselves, and not from the consent of the Episcopate, it is difficult

to base that Infallibility upon episcopal consent. Instead of waiting

to see what the Episcopate might do it would appear more appropriate

to consider what the Pope had done. And in another letter written

within the same anxious month this is precisely the view which Newman

takes.[387]

[387] See Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 98.

“I have been thinking over the subject which just now gives you and

me, with thousands of others, who care for religion, so much concern.

“First, till better advised, nothing shall make me say that a

mere majority in a Council, as opposed to a moral unanimity, in

itself creates an obligation to receive its dogmatic Decrees. This

is a point of history and precedent, and, of course, on further

examination I may find myself wrong in the view which I take of

history and precedent; but I do not, cannot see, that a majority in

the present Council can of itself _rule_ its own sufficiency without

such external testimony.

“But there are other means by which I can be brought under the

obligation of receiving a doctrine as a dogma.”

And he proceeds to enumerate uninterrupted tradition, Scripture

inference, etc. And then he propounds the theory that “the fact of

a legitimate Superior having defined it, may be an obligation in

conscience to receive it with an internal assent.... In this case

I do not receive it on the word of the Council, but on the Pope’s

self-assertion.”

This he supports by an appeal to the historic authority which the Pope

has actually exercised, and to

“the consideration that our merciful Lord would not care so little

for His elect people, the multitude of the faithful, as to allow

their visible Head and such a large number of Bishops to lead them

into error; and an error so serious, if an error.”

No one can fail to be impressed with Newman’s painful consciousness

of the Council’s indefensible irregularities; with his refusal to

acknowledge a powerful majority as equivalent to moral unanimity;

with his desire to see if the dogma cannot be accepted on other

grounds than the Council’s authority, and in particular on the Pope’s

self-assertion. All this would, of course, be absolutely unconvincing

to any adherent of the ancient conception that the supreme authority

is not to be found in the Pope’s self-assertion, but in the Collective

Episcopate. But it manifests profound misgivings about the Vatican

Council and its methods. The thought that the merciful Lord would

not permit His people to be led into error on so serious a subject

depends for its value on the solemn question, whether the gifts of

God are in any way conditional. If the transmission of grace depends

upon conformity to conditions so also does the transmission of truth.

If human co-operation is necessary to the achievement of human

enlightenment, then the neglect of compliance with these conditions,

the refusal of that co-operation, will be attended with serious losses

which the merciful Lord must not be expected to prevent. The graver the

misgivings created by the coercive methods of the Vatican majority, the

more urgent becomes the enquiry, whether their refusal to comply with

the true conditions of conciliar freedom would not be punished by the

nemesis of a misleading Decree. Newman’s misgivings on the Council’s

integrity cancel his appeal to the thought of the mercifulness of

our Lord. This, at any rate, is what many within the Roman Communion

undoubtedly felt. They did not believe in the rightfulness of expecting

Providence to nullify the perverseness and self-will of an overwhelming

majority.

Subtle, attractive, bearing in every line of it the distinctive

impress of his wonderful personality, Newman’s defence is remarkable

rather as a _tour de force_ than for argumentative solidity. Newman’s

personal assent to the dogma was indisputably complete. He said,

indeed, all that it was possible to say. But even his brilliant genius

could scarcely efface the effect of his own letter written to Bishop

Ullathorne before the dogma was passed.

“Moreover,” he wrote, “a letter of mine became public property. That

letter ... was one of the most confidential I ever wrote in my life.

I wrote it to my own Bishop under a deep sense of the responsibility

I should incur were I not to speak out to him my whole mind. I put

the matter from me when I had said my say, and kept no proper copy

of the letter. To my dismay I saw it in the public prints: to this

day I do not know, nor suspect, how it got there. I cannot withdraw

it, for I never put it forward, so it will remain on the columns of

newspapers whether I will or not; but I withdraw it as far as I can

by declaring that it was never meant for the public eye.”

Certainly it needed no assurance from the writer to convince us that

this letter was not designed for publicity. It is equally impossible

not to feel that in that letter we have the writer’s mind in its full

expression. The very fact that it was never meant for the public eye

means that it was written without that caution and restraint imposed

by watchful critics and extremist partisans always ready to pounce

upon Newman and denounce him as a minimiser at Rome. Thus we have his

frankest declaration here. And that declaration was much too frank to

be convenient. It naturally hampered him now that the doctrine was

decreed. A certain inconsistency was required of him, and is reflected

in his letters. Before the Council decreed he wrote[388] of the

disputed doctrine, “I have ever thought it likely to be true; never

thought it certain.” After the decision he wrote:[389] “For myself,

ever since I was a Catholic, I have held the Pope’s Infallibility as a

matter of theological opinion; at least I see nothing in the definition

which necessarily contradicts Scripture, Tradition, or History.”

Before the decision he wrote: “If it is God’s will that the Pope’s

Infallibility be defined, then it is God’s will to throw back the times

and moments of the triumph which He has destined for His kingdom.”

After the decision he wrote: “For myself I did not call it inopportune,

for times and seasons are known to God alone ... nor in accepting as a

dogma what I had ever held as a truth, could I be doing violence to any

theological view or conclusion of my own.”[390] No one will scrutinise

too closely, or make exacting demands of rigorous self-identity, in

letters written in the strain of so vast a change as that which the new

Decree had wrought. Yet the various statements are part of the evidence

to the effect produced, by the doctrine, upon the gifted mind then

straining all its efforts to reassure the unsettled and retain them in

the fold.

[388] Thureau Dangin, Letter to Ward, iii. p. 119.

[389] Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 99.

[390] Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 17.

The second great question to be answered was, Does the Infallibility

Dogma accord with History? Upon this subject Roman writers were greatly

divided. Some asserted boldly that Papal Infallibility had always been

held in the Church. Manning stated this in its extremest form. The

doctrine had always been of divine faith. Newman was quite unable to

accept this view, and supported Gladstone in rejecting it.

“Newman,” says Ambrose De Lisle, in a letter to Gladstone,

“considers your reply to Archbishop Manning’s contention that Papal

Infallibility was always held as a dogma of divine faith complete,

and that you are triumphant in your denial of it--but, he adds,

that is nothing to me. I conclude,” says De Lisle,[391] “because he

deduces it, and holds that the Church has deduced it in these latter

days out of the three texts he quotes in his letter to the Duke of

Norfolk.”

[391] _Life of De Lisle_, ii. p. 48.

According to this view then of Newman, Papal Infallibility was not to

be sought in history. It would not be found in the age, for instance,

of the Fathers--an age which Newman knew profoundly. It has slowly

dawned upon the self-consciousness of the Church, and come to be

realised that it possessed this organ of infallible utterance. Thus the

necessity for squaring the Vatican Decree with History was entirely

dispensed with. The principle of development was utilised to facilitate

its acceptance and explain the apparent anomalies.

The Pope said Newman is “heir by default” to the ecumenical hierarchy

of the fourth century. What was then ascribed to all the Bishops is now

ascribed exclusively to him. Precisely so. But by what right? Newman

does not say. The possibility of development in excess, a perverse

development, is not discussed.

Thus the new Decree was, according to Newman, if De Lisle rightly

interprets him, a deduction from three texts, of which the chief

undoubtedly was, “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.” No

perpetual unvarying tradition could be claimed for it. But the Church

makes inferences from Scripture, and comes to realise, what once it did

not realise, that the Roman Pontiff is infallible.

Newman’s theory of the relation of Papal Infallibility to History

greatly perplexed some whom it was designed to help.

“I confess that would not satisfy me,” wrote De Lisle....[392] “I am

far from going to all lengths with the Archbishop (Manning) yet ... I

hold ... that Papal Infallibility restricted as it is by the Vatican

Definition, was always a part of Divine Revelation.... I maintain

that it was always believed by the orthodox....”

[392] _Life of De Lisle_, ii. p. 48.

Newman once wrote: “Whether the minute facts of history will bear me

out in this view I leave to others to determine.” This distressed a

student of history such as Lord Acton. “Döllinger,” said Acton, “would

have feared to adopt a view for its own sake, without knowing how it

would be borne out by the minute facts of history.”[393]

[393] _History of Freedom_, p. 408.

There were able and learned members of the Roman Communion to whom

it was impossible to take refuge in Newman’s theory, that this was a

case of legitimate development. The Catholic consciousness of early

ages presented a theory out of which Papal Infallibility could never

legitimately grow. For the primitive conception was the negative,

they held, of such a view. The primitive theory, as the Councils of

the Church made plain, placed the final authority in the Collective

Episcopate. The transference of this authority from the entire body

to one individual was to them no true development at all, but a

dislocation in the Church’s original constitution. It really meant

requiring one organ to discharge the functions of another; depriving

the original organ of what had hitherto constituted its essential

function. And this alteration or reversal of functions was beyond the

legitimate power of any authority to make. It was indeed admitted to

be a claim of vital character. Pius IX. declared the doctrine to be

the very essence and basis of Catholicity. Strange, men thought, that

this essence and basis had remained unrealised for many centuries

in the Church’s consciousness. And when it was said, in reply, that

practically the Pope had exercised this Infallibility, and that its

exercise had met with a practical recognition and acceptance, Roman

writers answered at once, “No; this is not true.” Undoubtedly the papal

discussions have been accepted and believed. But hitherto there has

always been space for belief that their validity depended not on their

own inherent weight, but on the consent of the Church.

Professor Schulte, for instance, declared that though a Catholic born

and bred, he had never believed in Papal Infallibility; nor could he

find any authority for the July Decree either in Scripture, or in the

Fathers, or in any other source of historical information.

Fessler endeavoured to crush this resistance by labelling it private

judgment. He says of Schulte that he “refuses to accept the definition

_de fide_ of an Ecumenical Council; he cares nothing for the authority

of the living teaching Church; only for what he thinks he finds in

Scripture, in the Fathers, and in other genuine ancient sources. This

is the way to forsake the Catholic Church altogether. Every one is to

follow his own guidance, his own private judgment.”[394]

[394] Fessler, p. 24.

Expressed in such a form it seems a _reductio ad absurdum_. Surely the

individual may be mistaken? And in the multitude of counsellors there

is wisdom. Professor This on one side, the Episcopate on the other:

can we doubt which to follow? Why then should not the professor make a

sacrifice of his intellect? Because if you destroy a man’s confidence

in his historic judgment in one instance, you ruin its validity in all

others. Now, since it is by such a judgment that Christianity itself

is accepted, to bid a man disparage his own judgment of history, is to

undermine the very basis of his religion.

Men found themselves, therefore, placed by the Decree in a very

terrible dilemma. An ecumenical decision must be true. But history

appears to refute it. To accept the decision is to contradict the fact

of history. To accept history is to reject authority. That was the

difficulty. But no man can without grievous loss abandon what appears

to him the truth. Others endeavour to reconcile Catholics to the new

Decree by extenuating the greatness of the change. Bishop Ullathorne

informed his people that “the Pope always wielded this Infallibility,

and all men knew this to be the fact. What practical change, then, has

the definition made?”[395] Yet the same writer could urge[396] that the

character of the age, and the opposition within the Church, “rendered

it all the more important that the Pope should be armed with that full

strength.” It was then a great practical change. And this is what many

Romans felt. There was something naïve in the simplicity with which

Ullathorne wrote:[397] “The Infallibility leaves all things as before,

excepting that now it is a term of communion.” Leaves all things as

before! except that formerly men could disbelieve it and openly deny

it, while now it is a term of communion, and to disbelieve is to be

cast out. Ullathorne clearly found it beyond his power to give any

satisfaction to the intelligence of his people. It amounted to a demand

of blind assent to the hitherto discredited.

[395] _Döllingerites_, p. 14.

[396] _Expostulation_, p. 50.

[397] _Döllingerites_, p. 15.

It remains to trace the attitude of the minority toward the new Decree.

As a whole they give the impression of having been crushed, almost

stunned. The dreamlike rapidity of the movements during these last six

months; the sudden forcible erection of a hitherto controvertible and

controverted opinion into an essential element of the Eternal Faith;

the consequent intellectual and moral reversions demanded of them,

left them in a state of complete disorganisation and confusion. Their

collective inability in Rome to resist in the final Public Session;

their opinion that such resistance would be incompatible with the

respect due to the papal office, form conclusive evidence beforehand

of their inability to continue a permanent resistance when isolated

in their different dioceses. The individual Bishop was a lesser power

than the Bishops assembled. He was separated in his diocese from the

support of like minded prelates. And, if released from the immediate

pressure of papal influence, he was incapacitated for anything like

concerted action. As Bishop, he lived and spoke alone. Communication

was difficult owing to war. International Meetings were impossible.

Meanwhile the solitary Bishop was beset by all the local influences

which the Nuncios, and Jesuits and other religious orders, knew so

thoroughly well how to wield. Rome, it has been said, disbelieved in

the capacity of the opposition to stand firm; and Rome had calculated

with profound insight and accuracy.

Several fugitive Bishops took the precaution before they left Rome of

sending a letter of submission[398] to the coming Decree.

[398] _Acta_, p. 993.

The Archbishop of Cologne explained to the Pope that having given a

qualified vote on 13th July he cannot conscientiously vote Yes on 18th

July. Accordingly, with great distress, and out of reverence for the

Pope, he will avail himself of the permission to depart: adding that he

submits himself to what the Council is about to decree.

The Archbishop of Maintz wrote a similar apology. To oppose, in the

Public Session, was repugnant to his feelings: nothing, therefore,

remained but to depart; except to add that he submitted himself to the

Council’s Decree, just as if he had remained to vote approval.

Before submission to the new dogma, the question was discussed, What

constitutes promulgation of a Decree? Such discussion was quite in

keeping with precedent. The Decrees of Trent had been discussed before

they were admitted into the Church of France. Was any collective

acceptance necessary, before the dogma could become obligatory upon

the consciences of the faithful? True that Infallibility had been

passed at Rome; but the Vatican Council was not closed--it was only

adjourned. Did the decisions of a Council become obligations until the

Council itself had finished its work? Questions of this character were

argued at considerable length in the hope of some loophole or relief.

They were, however, promptly crushed by a letter from the watchful

Antonelli[399] to the Brussel’s Nuncio to the effect that the Decree

was _ipso facto_ binding on the Catholic world, and needed no further

publication. This cut away the hope to which some Bishops clung, that

they would not be required to take open action in cases where they knew

acceptance of the doctrine to be morally impossible.

[399] 11th August. Ollivier, ii. p. 375; Schulte, p. 108.

I. AMONG THE FRENCH ROMANISTS

1. The Archbishop of Paris voted,[400] consistently with his entire

attitude, against the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, on the critical

day, 13th July. In the interview on Saturday 16th, he prefaced his

expostulations with a promise to submit; but he also resolved to absent

himself from the Public Session, and wrote to the Pope to say that he

should not be present. On Sunday the 17th he saw the Pope again, and

said farewell. No allusion was made to the events of the morrow, or to

the Council’s voting. Pius confined himself to benevolent generalities,

on the devotion of the Archbishop and clergy of Paris to the interests

of the Church and of the Holy See.[401] The Pope and the Archbishop

corresponded subsequently; but they never met again. Darboy left Rome

when the Session was held, and returned home to his diocese. There

he found everything in confusion, for the war against Prussia was

declared. But he assembled his clergy at once, and commended them for

refusing to be swayed by rumours which were necessarily unreliable,

since those who spoke about the Council were not its members, while

those who were its members had not the right to speak.[402] If there

had been diversities of opinion in the Council on certain questions,

these diversities were concerned less with the intrinsic value of the

questions than with the losses or gains which their discussion might

involve. With these, and similar generalities, he dismissed them.

Further discussion and conference was prevented by the Franco-Prussian

War, but it is clear that Darboy took no steps whatever to coerce his

priests into explicit confession of the new decree or to enquire into

their individual convictions.

[400] Acton, p. 997.

[401] Guillermin, p. 254.

[402] Foulon, p. 469; Guillermin, p. 257.

But it was evident that Rome was more than discontented with the

Archbishop’s indifference. It was desired that he should renew his

assurances of personal belief, and exhibit some interest in the

conversion of the reluctant. In February 1871 Bishop Maret wrote to the

Archbishop of Paris[403] to say that he had sent in his own submission

in the previous November.

[403] Guillermin, p. 259.

“I am glad to hear it,” replied the Archbishop. “As for myself,

separated from the world for five months by the siege of Paris, I

have been unable to ascertain what was happening, or to correspond

with my colleagues or with Rome. I have therefore done nothing;

although I have given no one the right to doubt my opinions. Indeed

the Pope knows them. He has my letter of 18th July. It was not so

much the basis of the Decree as the question of its opportuneness

which made us hesitate. All the world knows this; and, for my

own part, I said it in full Council. It seems, therefore, to me

superfluous to affirm to-day that I accept the Decree. It would be

even misleading; for it would give grounds to the suggestion that I

withheld my adherence to the present time--which is false. Still,

if the Holy Father wishes, for the sake of people in general, that

such a declaration should be made, it is a formality to which I will

unhesitatingly yield.”[404]

[404] Guillermin, p. 259.

The Archbishop found it prudent to take this course. In March 1871,

he sent to the Pope a statement of sincere assent to the Decree.[405]

He said that the War had prevented correspondence hitherto, and that

his declaration might seem superfluous. But, as he hears that the Pope

desires it, he hastens to gratify the wish. It was chiefly the question

of opportuneness--he does not say entirely--which had prompted his

opposition.

[405] _Acta_, p. 997.

Pius IX. replied--but none too effusively. The Archbishop had been

for years mistrusted and disliked in Rome, for the independence of

his actions, his determination to govern his diocese himself, and his

rejection of ultramontane convictions. It was scarcely to be expected

that cordiality could exist in the very moment of his defeat. And his

submission even now, was to say the least, somewhat curt. It stated

the fact: no less, but no more. It is not the letter a man could write

who believed himself to be the privileged recipient of a precious

revelation of God’s truth. It was the bare submission to a dictate

which could not be avoided except by expulsion. The Pope replied that

he was consoled by the Archbishop’s sincere assent to the dogmatic

definition of the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. He trusts

that the Archbishop will hasten to propound to his people what he

professes himself to believe. With this, the Pope sends his apostolic

benediction. Newman once accused Pusey of discharging an olive branch

from a catapult; Pius IX. seems here to illustrate the art of conveying

a rebuke through the instrumentality of a blessing. It is one of the

ironies of this story that the letter was never received.[406] These

were the days of the Commune. The brave Archbishop, after exhibiting

the most striking fortitude, was shot in prison. He never had the

opportunity to read, or act upon, the Pope’s advice. To his place, but

not to his principles, succeeded Archbishop Guibert, who had so greatly

assisted the aims of Pius IX. by recommending, in the Select Committee

of Proposals, that the new doctrine should be introduced with the

Council’s deliberations. So the old order changed.

[406] Foulon, p. 505.

2. Dupanloup,[407] Bishop of Orleans, voted against the doctrine on

the 13th of July, and left for his diocese rather than be present at

the Public Session when the dogma was decreed. He wrote a letter of

submission on 18th February 1871. He says that he has been prevented

from writing by the Franco-Prussian War. Hearing that His Holiness

desires to know his attitude to the constitution of 18th July, he

wishes to say that he has no difficulty in the matter.

[407] Acton, p. 999.

“I only wrote and spoke,” he says, “against the opportuneness of the

definition. As to the doctrine I always held it not only in my heart,

but in public writings.... I have no difficulty in again declaring

my adhesion; only too happy if I can thereby offer Your Holiness any

comfort in the midst of his heavy trials.”

Since his return from Rome he has written to his diocese that the

conflicts of the Church are not like those of the world.

These assertions of Dupanloup as to his unvarying faith may possibly

explain why a distinguished fellow-countryman and head of the French

Government[408] could describe him in such terms as these: “everything

about him indicates the irresistible dominion of impressions. So

convinced is he of being in the right that he fails to be accurate to

his demonstrations. He is a most imperious advocate of liberty, and

always under the influence of preconceptions.”

[408] Ollivier, i. p. 443.

3. Gratry may be taken next: Gratry--whose famous four letters had

focussed in brilliant light the difficulties, the contradictions, the

adverse facts, the ignorant methods, the falsified documents. Men

wondered what steps the former priest of the Oratory would now take;

now that the thing that he feared had come to pass, and the incredible

was decreed. Gratry had endured much mental agony. “His own peace would

certainly have been better insured,” says his biographer,[409] “had he

not been interrupted in that later contemplative study of Christian

philosophy by which he hoped to do somewhat to make his fellowmen less

unhappy, less unfit. But he was urged as a matter of conscience to

enter the turmoil of polemical strife, a strife more cruel to one who

retained his childlike simplicity, his love of truth, and his boundless

charity, to the last hour of life.”

[409] Adolphe Perraud, _Le P. Gratry ses Derniers jours, son Testament

Spirituel_ (1872), p. 43.

Gratry was very ill of the malady which killed him; and it was not

until November 1871, that he wrote[410] (evidently questioned by

Guibert, the new Archbishop of Paris):

[410] _Acta_, p. 1405.

“Had I not been very ill and unable to write a letter I should have

long since sent you my congratulations. I desire at least to-day, my

lord, to say simply what it appears to me there was no necessity to

say, namely that, like all my brethren in the priesthood, I accept

the decrees of the Vatican Council. I cancel everything contrary

to the decrees which I may have written on this subject before the

decision.”[411]

[411] _Acta_, p. 1405.

The Archbishop sent a kindly reply to the effect that he had never

doubted Gratry’s docility.

“By such noble and generous examples we harmonise our conduct with

our convictions, and prove to the world that we are sincere in

maintaining that the light of faith is superior to that of our feeble

and vacillating reason.”

But how about the facts of history? Gratry effaced his interpretation;

but he could not cancel the facts. How abandon his former convictions?

That is precisely what Gratry’s colleagues required him to explain. An

explanation, therefore, he attempted to give. To those who reproved him

for accepting without reservation the Council’s decrees, he explains

that, before the Decision, he argued in accordance with his conscience

and his right; since the Decision, he had not said a word.

“Since the Decision, and immediately after it, I had two interviews

with my Archbishop, Mgr. Darboy.[412] We were agreed both in words

and in faith. He granted me my position in the Church of Paris, and

my office of Professor of Theology at the Sorbonne. I was therefore

at unity with my Bishop. That was obvious. It continued for nearly

a year. Therefore, strictly speaking, no one has any right to

question me; not even Mgr. Darboy’s successor. To require of me a

public declaration would seem like revising the acts of his glorious

predecessor and martyr for the faith. It is for this last reason most

of all that those among my friends who urged me most to publish some

declaration surprised and saddened me. I have constantly answered

them that I have nothing to say, and nothing to write upon this

subject.”

[412] Guillermin, _Vie de Mgr. Darboy_, p. 261.

But, on reflecting that there was no necessity to cling tenaciously to

strict rights, if an assurance would remove his brethren’s anxiety,

Gratry wrote to his new Archbishop a letter of submission. That, he

says, was easy. What would not have been easy was to say:--

“I have been a member and a soldier of the Catholic Church for

half a century, but now comes an Ecumenical Council which I do

not acknowledge. I therefore separate from its Communion. To

contradict, at a single stroke, all my life, and deny all my deepest

convictions--do you blame me for not doing that?”

If they object that this was not an Ecumenical Council since it was

not free, Gratry replies that he is unable to deny its validity, and

therefore he must submit to its decisions. Then, Gratry asks himself,

what the great historic luminaries of the Church of France, Fénelon

and Bossuet, would have done under the circumstances. Had Montalembert

survived, he would certainly have submitted, as his own words prove:

resolved, come what may, and cost what it may, never to transgress the

inviolable limits of unity. But what of Gratry’s letters? Strongly

worded remonstrances had reached him on this. How could he cancel his

letters and their unanswerable demonstrations? how contradict himself?

how overthrow truths which he has firmly established, and re-establish

the falsehoods which he has overthrown? To this difficult enquiry

Gratry’s answer was:--

“I mean to overthrow none of the truths which I may have established

in these letters. I mean to restore no falsehood therein denounced.

But I admit that these letters may contain mistakes; and that it is

those mistakes which I mean to efface.”

A distinguished Bishop, strongly opposed to the contents of the

letters, had been advising him that he could maintain a considerable

portion of his letters. All that was necessary was to cancel what

contradicted the Decree.

Is it too much to say that this explanation is shorn of all the

reasoning force and historic cogency of the famous letters? If words

have any meaning, Gratry’s entire conception of Honorius, and the

attitude of the Councils towards him, left no room for the Vatican

Dogma. The explanation reveals nothing so plainly as profound

intellectual perplexity.

Gratry also wrote an explanatory letter to M. Legouvé, a colleague in

the French Academy.

“I opposed inspired Infallibility; the Council’s decree has rejected

inspired Infallibility. I opposed personal Infallibility; the

Decree affirms official Infallibility. Some writers of the School

which I consider exaggerated did not wish for Infallibility _ex

cathedra_, which seemed to them too narrow a restriction: the Decree

affirms Infallibility _ex cathedra_. I almost feared a scientific

Infallibility, a political and governmental Infallibility: but the

Decree only affirms doctrinal Infallibility, in matters of faith and

morals.

“All this does not mean that I made no mistakes in my opposition.

Doubtless I have made mistakes, both on this subject and on others;

but as soon as I recognise my error I cancel it, without feeling

thereby humiliated.”

This letter was not printed until 1907. And it appears that Gratry

wrote still further explanations which have not been published yet.

A recently printed letter of Charles Perraud contains the following

important postscript:--

“Father Gratry bids me say that he has just finished a little work

in which he explains his reasons and above all the limits of his

submission to the Council’s decree. He had already given a summary

of these explanations in a letter to M. Legouvé (who unhappily will

not agree to publish it, I cannot imagine why). I was not with

Father Gratry when he sent his letter to the Archbishop of Paris.

I regret exceedingly that he began with that, whereas he ought to

have begun by publishing the writing which I have recently been

reading. It contains definitions and distinctions of very great

significance, especially in a matter where every shade of meaning

has its distinctive worth. They are altogether mistaken who suppose

that Father Gratry has treated with contempt the historic evidence.

God give him time to say on this matter all that I know he desires to

say.”

But this document, without which the complete story of Gratry’s

submission cannot be told, has never been permitted to see the light.

For whatever reason, Adolphe Perraud, Gratry’s literary executor and

biographer, withheld it from history.

But Gratry did not long survive the passing of the new Decree. “And,”

says his biographer, “most assuredly the trials of this period

shortened his days.”[413]

[413] Perraud, p. 44.

II. AMONG ENGLISH SPEAKING ROMANISTS

Archbishop Kenrick of St Louis represented opposition in the American

Church. During the Council he had warmly supported Dupanloup against

American Ultramontanes.

“Many among us,” he wrote,[414] “believe that Ecclesiastical history,

the history of the Popes, the history of the Councils, and the

Tradition of the Church, are not in harmony with the new doctrine.

Therefore we think it most inopportune to define as a dogma of faith

an opinion which seems to us a novelty in the Church, destitute of

solid foundation in Scripture and Tradition, and contradicted by

indisputable evidence.”

[414] _Acta_, p. 1375, 2nd May 1870.

In his speech which the closure of June prevented from being delivered,

but which he printed[415] and circulated, he was more emphatic still.

[415] Friedrich’s _Documenta_, p. 210.

“I dare to affirm that the opinion as expressed in the Schema is not a

doctrine of the faith, and never can become such by any definition even

of a Council.”

On the 13th of July Archbishop Kenrick voted in the negative, signed

the protest of the 17th, and with the body of the opposition fled away.

Having thus registered his informal and useless protest he accepted the

new Decree. This surrender provoked a letter from Lord Acton asking the

Archbishop for the grounds of his submission. History has preserved the

pages of Kenrick’s reply.[416] He said that “sufficient time seems to

have elapsed to allow the Catholic world to decide whether or not the

decree of the Council was to be accepted.” The greater number of the

Bishops, some to the Archbishop’s surprise, had already yielded assent.

As for himself--

[416] Schulte, _Der Altkatholicismus_, p. 267.

“I could not defend the Council or its action; but I always professed

that the acceptance of either by the Church would supply its

deficiency. I accordingly made up my mind to submit to what appeared

inevitable, unless I were prepared to separate myself at least in

the judgment of most Catholics from the Church.”

His act of submission “was one of pure obedience, and was not grounded

on the removal of my motives of opposition to the decrees, as referred

to in my speech, and set forth in my pamphlets.” He hears from Rome

that the Pope requires him to retract his pamphlets. “This I shall not

do, no matter what the consequences may be.”

For intellectual justification in this submission Kenrick appealed to

Newman’s theory of Development. If it justified Newman in becoming a

Catholic, “I thought that it might justify me in remaining one.” To

this the Archbishop added the following memorable sentence:--

“Notwithstanding my submission, I shall never teach the doctrine of

Papal Infallibility so as to _argue_ from Scripture or Tradition in

its support, and shall leave to others to explain its compatibility

with the facts of Ecclesiastical history to which I referred in my

reply. As long as I may be permitted to remain in my present station

I shall confine myself to administrative functions, which I can do

the more easily without attracting attention, as for some few years

past I have seldom preached.”

His whole experience, he says, has taught him that there can be no

liberty in any future sessions of the Council; and this is warning

enough to Bishops that they must not handle roughly the delicate

matters on which they have to decide.

The records of intellectual servitude present few more painful

documents than this. Whether one regards the doctrine, the Archbishop,

or the facts of history, such an attitude bristles with intellectual

if not moral inconsistencies. He thinks acceptance by the Church will

redeem the doctrine from conciliar defects: but the essence of the

doctrine is Infallibility apart from the Church’s consent. As Bishop he

is a witness to the Faith: yet he observes in silence, and registers

one by one the submission of other Bishops. He accepts what he will not

proclaim, and cannot defend. Meanwhile, the facts of history continue,

as before, demonstrably irreconcilable with the New Decree. The sole

virtue by which everything else is supposed to be redeemed is the

virtue of submission. Theories such as this can only exist as a dark

background to enhance the moral and spiritual superiority of sincere

unbelief and genuine schism; or to warn for ever against the disastrous

consequences which follow such exercises of authority as that which

produced the Vatican Decree.

III. AN ITALIAN INSTANCE

_Cardinal Hohenlohe_

The “Memoirs” of Prince Hohenlohe include numerous confidential letters

from his brother, Cardinal Hohenlohe, who was resident in Rome during

the Council of the Vatican. The Cardinal had no sympathy whatever with

the attempt to elevate the theory into a dogma of the Faith.

His repugnance to the proceedings at the Vatican took also a practical

shape. “I go as little as possible to the Meetings of the Council,” he

wrote; adding a private wish that the Jesuits might stick fast in the

morass of their operations. Their activities, however, increased. On

the eve of the great Decision, Cardinal Hohenlohe wrote the following

remarkable words:--

“To-day is to take place the sitting in which the Pope will proclaim

the doctrine of Infallibility. The Bishops of the minority are

leaving; some of them went yesterday evening, among others the

Archbishop of Munich; others go away to-night. They will not be

present at the sitting, and have sent in a protest. I am not very

well, and I, too, am not going to the sitting. This morning I wrote

a few lines to Cardinal Schwarzenberg, which I here transcribe,

of course in the strictest confidence, because they make clear my

sentiments.... ‘If on the question of Infallibility I declare myself

entirely in agreement with Cardoni[417] I would yet have voted _non

placet_, since the question is not opportune, and was not treated

_conciliariter_, and I will have neither part nor lot in the guilt of

this unhappy measure, which has caused so many souls to stumble in

the faith. But further, the Council is no longer a Council. We may

admit that it was convened _legaliter_, but from the moment when the

_methodus_ was imposed upon us, the _conciliar_ composition of this

unhappy assembly was at an end.’

“So much for my letter to Cardinal Schwarzenberg. It is sad enough

that one has to speak so, but I am pierced in the innermost depths of

my soul with such intense pain, that I could hardly bear it if I had

not the consolation of the Holy Mass.”

[417] An advocate of the infallibilist theory.

Cardinal Hohenlohe says that he had been taught to believe that papal

decisions _ex cathedra_ were infallible. What is clear is that the

Council contributed nothing to a belief which he held as a theological

opinion, and not as a dogma of faith. A letter from the Pope’s private

secretary expressed regret at his absence from the Decision on 18th

July. Hohenlohe replied that he had always believed in Infallibility.

Quoting this reply, in a letter to his brother, the Cardinal added,

confidentially:--

“There is nothing here about the Council and dogmatic constitution,

nor did I even write that to the Pope, but only to Mgr. Cenni

(the private secretary), without in the least instructing him to

communicate it to his Holiness. So long as I am unconvinced of the

validity of the Council, so long can I do no more, since I shall

yet have to give an account before God, and I would not get into an

unpleasant situation there.”

Prince Hohenlohe was not less discouraged than the Cardinal. What

particularly grieved him was the lack of moral courage in the German

Bishops. To others and to himself it seemed a

“disgraceful apostasy of the German Bishops, seeing that after

they had pledged themselves, before their departure from Rome, to

decide nothing about the Dogma of Infallibility without previously

taking council together, they should nevertheless have submitted

individually.

“When one views the moral ruin, the complete lack of honour among the

Bishops, one shudders at the influence which the Jesuitical element

in the Church can exert on human nature.”

It is natural to enquire what overt action the advocates of these views

and its sympathisers in the Roman body would adopt. The excommunication

of Döllinger roused still further feeling; and an important meeting

of political opponents of things ultramontane was held in Berlin.

There was among them a strong desire for action of some kind, and for

emphatic opposition. But Prince Hohenlohe disapproved.

“I demonstrated,” he says, “that it was necessary above all things

for us to remain in the Catholic Church. So long as we had no

Bishops, no clergy, and no congregations, but only a number of

cultured laymen, we could not talk of an old Catholic Church. It was

a case of waiting till the Pope should die, and then there was hope

of a better spirit in the Catholic Church. If we left the Church--and

this might be the result of any serious step--the Catholic Church

would lose so many reasonable men to no purpose.” It was therefore

decided to remain quiet. “I do not think,” Prince Hohenlohe wrote,

“that the agitation will produce any great results. Interest in the

person and fate of Döllinger, for it is nothing more, does not make a

reformation. Interest in dogmatic subtleties no longer exists.”

The Prince recorded his personal convictions in the following

memorandum:--

“I am of opinion that the Concilium Vaticanum of 1869–1870 is in no

way ecumenical, and that the time will come when the Infallibility

of the Pope proclaimed therein will be pronounced heresy. But as the

Bishops collectively and almost all the clergy have accepted the

doctrine set forth, he who denies the doctrine must secede from the

Catholic Church.... I have, therefore, refrained from expressing

my opinion openly, especially as I believe that the Old Catholic

Community cannot remain where it now stands, but will be driven

further.... So far as I am concerned, I wish the Catholic Church to

reform herself. That can and will be done only with the co-operation

of her Bishops. This co-operation will not take place until the

moment has come for the assembling of a really Ecumenical Council.

Even if this is an empty hope, it in no case alters my present

opinion. In this case the Catholic Church is doomed to fall, and then

other forms of religion will be constituted, which we need not now

discuss. In the meantime I have this hope, and therefore am waiting.

Hence I remain a member of the Church, without going over to the

Ultramontanes.”

IV. IN GERMANY

1. Hefele, Bishop of Rottenburg, formerly Professor of Theology in

the University of Tübingen, and learned, perhaps above any man then

living, in the Councils of the Church, was held in high reputation for

his history of the Councils, which is still the best modern authority

on the subject. He was well known as the reverse of ultramontane.

Twelve years before the Vatican Council assembled he stated the facts

about Pope Honorius in such a manner as to show that history absolutely

forbade the ascription to a Pope of the attribute of Infallibility.

Being consecrated Bishop at the end of 1869 he had a place in the

Vatican Assembly, where he was most active in opposition. Just in the

critical hour of the Infallibility debate he published (in April, 1870)

at Naples, since Papal regulations prevented its publication in Rome,

a forcible pamphlet on the case of Pope Honorius, and his treatment by

the Sixth General Council. Hefele now declared that Honorius “set aside

the distinctively orthodox technical term for the two wills, human and

Divine, in Christ; sanctioned the distinctively technical term of the

Monothelite heresy; and commended this double error to the acceptance

of the faithful.” Further, he maintained that the sixth Ecumenical

Council had claimed the right to pass judgment on this authoritative

Papal decision, and to pass anathema upon the Pope as a teacher of

heresy. Finally, he maintained that from the fifth to the eleventh

century each Pope in his consecration oath had made a declaration which

involved two things: first, that a Council can condemn a Pope for

heresy, and secondly, that Honorius was rightly so condemned for having

supported an error by his decree on faith.

This emphatic rejection of Infallibility was circulated among the

members of the Council in Rome, with intention to prevent the doctrine

from being decreed.

Hefele also wrote from Rome to Döllinger, complaining that the

majority interfered with the minority’s freedom of speech; that the

Pope’s personal interventions and criticisms on the minority made their

independent action exceedingly difficult; that these experiences were

diminishing the courage, if not the numbers, of the opposition; that

it was difficult to know what movement to take when a halter was round

your neck; that hardly anybody dared openly to say what their ultimate

intentions were; that the majority meanwhile confidently assured them

that the Pope would settle everything, and that then the alternative

would be submission or excommunication.

On the 13th of July Hefele voted in the negative. On the 17th he signed

the protest and then returned to his diocese without waiting for the

Public Session. In a letter to Döllinger he attempted to justify this.

He said that from the number of negative votes on the 13th of July

he had hoped that many Bishops would remain for a final protest in

the Public Session of the 18th. But in the general exodus this hope

evaporated. He acknowledged that the written protest sent to the Pope

was weak, because destitute of formal validity. It could not possibly

avert the public definition of the Decree. As for himself he feels that

his duty is clear. He has been in consultation with his Chapter and

his Theological Faculty. He cannot accept the new dogma, as it stands,

without the necessary limitations. He knows that Rome may suspend him,

and excommunicate him. Meantime he has been urging upon another Bishop

that disbelief in the Council’s validity is not heretical. His own line

consists in quiescence, so long as Rome does not actively intervene.

What else to do he does not know in the least. At any rate to hold

as Divinely revealed what is not true is for him simply impossible

(September 1870). He can no more conceal from himself in Rottenburg,

than he could in Rome, that the new dogma is destitute of any true

rational, Scriptural, or traditional foundations. It is injurious to

the Church in incalculable ways. The Church has suffered no severer and

deadlier wound of modern times than that inflicted on the 18th of July.

Yet he can see no way of escape. He writes repeatedly to Döllinger;

complains that Dupanloup persists in asking questions, but will not

say what he intends to do. Meanwhile, Hefele is being worried and

baited on every side. Appeals pour in from France and America, urging

submission. He is certain that a schism would have no chance. The world

is too indifferent, and the opposition too dispersed. There is nothing

for it but submission, or exclusion. On the other hand, it is to him

indisputably clear that the final session of the Vatican Council had no

ecumenical character. Romanism and Jesuitism have altered the nature

of the Catholic Church. Hefele’s letters become still more piteous.

His troubles are increasing. His own diocese is turning against him.

He had not believed it possible that the dogma could so pervade his

diocese. Even his oldest friends are turning against him. Rome also

is improving the occasion. He is refused the usual faculties, so that

people in all parts of the diocese cannot get married, and the local

clergy are utilising this to set the people against him. What on earth

is he to do? He gives way to lamentations. The position of a deprived

and excommunicated Bishop is to him abhorrent--one he could hardly

tolerate. At an earlier stage it was open to him to resign, and gladly

would he lay down an office which has made him such an oppressed and

unhappy man. He must resign or yield.

Which of the two it will ultimately be it is not by this time

difficult to predict. Hefele can see no glimmer of hope in any distant

development. It is not to be expected that the Constitution Pastor

Eternus will be revoked by a future Pope, or the fourth session of the

Vatican Council pronounced invalid. The utmost that can be looked for

is a further explanation. By this time he is the only German Bishop

who has not published the Constitution. He cannot adequately express

his grief that Döllinger should see no escape from suspension or

excommunication. Is there no compromise with the Archbishop possible?

He utters wild and useless laments over the Synod of German Bishops

at Fulda. Oh, what might not have been done in Germany if only the

Bishops at Fulda had stood firm! Yet he took no steps against them.

Then he ends with deploring Döllinger’s own impending fate. To think

that Döllinger, so long the champion of the Catholic Church and its

interests, the first of the German theologians, should be suspended or

excommunicated; and that by an Archbishop who has not done a thousandth

part of the service that Döllinger had done! That is terrible! The

conclusion was now quite plain. Döllinger’s replies were useless, and

Hefele proceeded to publish the Vatican Decree.

It remained, and this was more difficult, to revise the case of

Honorius in the light of the new dogma. In the second edition of his

“History of the Councils,” Hefele observes:

“We always were of the opinion that Honorius was quite orthodox

in thought, but, especially in his first letter, he has unhappily

expressed himself in a Monothelite fashion.” This opinion he still

retained, “even if ... as a result of repeated new investigation of

this subject, and having regard to what others have more recently

written in defence of Pope Honorius, I now modify or abandon many

details of my earlier statements, or in particular, form a milder

judgment of the first letter of Honorius.”

Still, even now, his historic sense constrains him to speak of the “the

unhappy sentence, ‘accordingly we acknowledge one will of our Lord

Jesus Christ,’ which taken literally is quite Monothelite.” Still he is

constrained to say, “Honorius ought to have answered.” And as for the

Monothelites themselves, “the fact that the Pope gave utterance to this

their primary proposition must have given essential assistance to their

cause.”

2. Melchers, Archbishop of Cologne, professed himself in the Council

ready to accept the dogma as a personal belief; but he accumulated

many arguments to show the extreme unwisdom of enforcing it upon the

Church, especially in the existing state of sharply-divided opinion.

On the critical 13th of July he gave a conditional vote. His own

subsequent compliance was, therefore, comparatively easy. It was

entirely another matter to restore unity to his diocese.[418] Back

in his diocese he called the German Bishops together at Fulda. Only

nine arrived, but they agreed to take measures to impose the doctrine

upon the recalcitrant. It became the Archbishop’s function to reduce

to submission the Theological Faculty of Bonn, among others the

distinguished professors, Langen and Reusch.

[418] See pp. 241, 242.

3. The interview between the Archbishop of Cologne and Professor Reusch

has been recorded.

The Archbishop told the Professor that the highest authority had

spoken, and submission was his duty. The Professor replied that his

convictions would not allow it. The Archbishop retorted that he laid

too much stress on his convictions. Reusch replied that he dared not

go against them. The Archbishop restated the duty of submission to

authority; the Professor said that he could only leave his convictions

to the judgment of God.

But, persisted the Archbishop, the Council was free and ecumenical,

and the definition unquestionably valid. He acknowledged that he had

himself implored the Pope not to allow the discussion to begin; but the

majority thought otherwise. And, added the Archbishop, with a happy

inspiration, you know that the doctrine has been recently taught in

the Catechism of this diocese. Until now, replied Reusch, the opposite

doctrine has been taught in all the schools, in a book bearing the

episcopal _imprimatur_. The Archbishop could only reply that the book

would be altered now, and that its author had already conformed. But,

objected the Professor, if the opposite has been taught up to the 18th

of last July, it cannot be a heresy.

The Archbishop could only enquire whether the Professor would make any

concession of any kind. He said he would avoid contradiction, and study

further. The Archbishop pointed out that Rome would never be satisfied

with that. Do you wish, he asked, to die without the Sacraments?

The interview was adjourned, and then resumed, but fruitlessly.

The Archbishop recommended him to go into retreat. The Professor

doubted whether this could alter facts of history. His reward was

excommunication.

Reusch’s reflections on the interview with his Archbishop show

what resistance cost him. “How painful it was, he wrote, although

I continued calm and the Archbishop always friendly, you can well

imagine. But I formed a gloomier opinion of his narrow-mindedness

than ever before.” Melcher’s insistence on the duty of unlimited

intellectual submission left, so far as Reusch could see, no room for

reason. It provoked the criticism that the Archbishop would credit

four Persons to the Trinity if a papal constitution demanded it. But

for himself, Reusch wrote in terms almost of despair. That he might no

longer pursue his mission as a teacher was hard enough. That he might

no more discharge his priestly functions, nor obtain absolution and

communion was terrible. But yet he would be more unhappy still if these

had been obtained at the price of assenting to the dogma. And Reusch

uttered his grief in the words of Ecclesiastes:--

“Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the

living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which

hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under

the sun.”

There remained, however, a work for Reusch to do. He found within the

old Catholic communion a freedom to retain unaltered the faith which,

up to that year, he had taught within the communion of Rome.

4. The fate of Langen, Theological Professor of Bonn, was somewhat

similar to that of Reusch. When asked for his assent to the new

Decree, Langen contended that the University statutes secured him his

office conditionally on assent to the decisions of Trent; and that

no alteration of these conditions could be made without approval of

the Government. The Archbishop overruled this contention, and Langen

declined to submit. Like Reusch, he was excommunicated. Langen has left

behind him a history of the Roman See, and an extremely learned and

exhaustive history of interpretation of the Scripture-texts usually

adduced in behalf of the papal claims. Both these works display that

Langen could not accept the new definition without falsifying the facts

of history.

5. Another German rejection of the doctrine is that of Dr

Hasenclever.[419]

[419] 1872.

“With countless other companions in faith I find myself reduced by

the Papal Decree of 18th July 1870 to the alternative of either

denying against my conscience the ancient faith as I received it, and

on the basis of which I have remained for five and twenty years in

the Catholic Church, or of placing myself in hopeless antagonism to a

justly revered authority through refusal to submit.”

Undoubtedly the principle is true that when the Church has once

spoken all uncertainty is taken away; but no less undoubted is the

principle that where a contradiction exists, a manifest deviation from

tradition, it is impossible that it is the Church which has spoken. It

is impossible, he says, for him to bring into harmony the new teaching

on the Pope’s Infallibility with the Catholic Faith taught him by the

Tridentine and Roman Catechism.

The constitution of the Church, he argued, differs from that of a

State, for while the latter may assume at various periods a democratic,

an aristocratic, a monarchical form--the former must maintain its

self-identity. This principle of identity and continuity is, he

acknowledges, recognised in the Anglican Church which, while uncertain

of the validity of its claims, he admits, is thereby distinguished

from the Protestant types. But his sympathies are with the principle

that the constitution of the Church cannot change its form. He is as

opposed to a spiritual dictatorship as to Protestantism itself. Is it

possible that the conception of supreme authority in the Church which

has held good for eighteen hundred years, is no longer decisive? So men

enquired in amazement when the news of the schemes of the Roman Curia

began to circulate. That some reforms should be necessary was natural

enough; but that a radical change must be made in the constitution of

the supreme teaching body--this was incredible even to many of the

blindest followers of the Curia. The Church has never exhibited a trace

of uncertainty on the method of securing finality in a question of

faith. It has been through the Collective Episcopate united with its

chief. In the Collective Episcopate as representative of Christendom at

large, the Church has acknowledged the apostolic teaching office, the

witness to its faith, the judge of error. The mission of a Universal

Council is to give collective testimony to the faith of the Fathers.

This collective testimony might be voiced through the Holy See, but it

is impossible to discover in Revelation a basis for the theory that the

collective testimony is not valid until the Holy See endorses it. The

ancient principle is to rest in the testimony of all churches:--

“Ecumenical Councils,” says Alzog, speaking of the early centuries,

“the real representatives of the Catholic spirit, were in these ages

of burning controversy the decisive authority, the supreme tribunal

which ended all dogmatic disputes. And,” adds Hasenclever, “it was

exactly when this principle became challenged by another that the

risk of schism appeared.”

Moreover, a mathematical formula may illustrate the effect of the papal

claim on the Episcopate. If _a_+_b_=_a_ then _b_=_0_; or, at any rate,

is a practically negligible quantity.

Hasenclever complains that he can nowhere obtain a direct response

to the question, How is it that innumerable treatises and works of

all kinds approved by the Church have hitherto affirmed that Papal

Infallibility is no part of the Catholic Faith? What particularly

scandalised him was the sudden condemnation, by placing on the Index,

books which have been for a considerable period accepted authorities

within the Church. He failed to see that to bestow sanction publicly

upon a treatise, and afterwards to pronounce it heretical, was

consistent with the maintenance of an unchanged faith. Moreover, if

Papal Infallibility had been the traditional principle, the entire

history of the Church must have presented a very different appearance

from what it does. Where, he asks, is any faith in an infallible Pope

exhibited in the Church during the Arian struggles? Certainly the

Bishops of the Sixth Ecumenical Council conducted matters on somewhat

different lines from those suggested to us by infallibilists to-day.

They treated the Pope Honorius just as they would have treated any

other heretic. And his successors did the same. The infallibilist

falls into Scylla if he escapes Charybdis. When entreated to make

a sacrifice of his intellect to this demand of the Vatican Decree,

Hasenclever can only reply that such sacrifice paralyses the innermost

depths of personal existence. To him it is nothing less than a suicidal

suppression of that characteristic which raises us into resemblance

to God. Those who cannot bring themselves to this abandonment of

their human dignity will be constrained to say, in spite of all the

seductions of superficial and sophistic reasonings, that the doctrine

of the personal infallibility of the Pope stands in irreconcilable

contradiction with the actual faith of the Catholic Church; and,

accordingly, it is impossible that a real Ecumenical Council should

have decreed it.

6. But these were minor incidents. The religious attention of Germany

centred on Döllinger at Munich. On 17th July Archbishop Scherr of

Munich left Rome with the minority. On the 18th the new dogma was

proclaimed. On the 19th Archbishop Scherr was back in Munich again.

On the 21st the Theological Faculty, headed by Döllinger, met him.

Scherr’s criticisms of the Roman procedure, says Döllinger’s German

biographer, Friedrich, confirmed them in the views of the Council which

they had already taken. But, said Scherr, Rome has spoken. There was

nothing for it but submission. The Theological Faculty were totally

unprepared for the Archbishop’s surrender. Upon Döllinger it created

the most painful impression. He knew that the Archbishop’s convictions,

better judgments, sympathies, were all on the other side; and that,

like the other Bishops of the minority, he had abandoned the Council

because he could neither bring himself to acquiesce silently in the

proclamation of what he deprecated, nor summon courage to protest for

what he had hitherto believed. The feebleness of the Archbishop’s

excuses, the frank condemnation pronounced by him on the methods

by which the result had been secured, only set in stronger light

the incongruity of his submission. Naturally they served to confirm

Döllinger still more in his opinion of the absence of real freedom in

the Council Chamber at St Peter’s.

Dr Liddon, who was in Munich on 29th July, gave the following account

of Döllinger some ten days after the passing of the Decree:--

“A large amount of our conversation, of course, turned on the

Council and the Definition; and he speaks with the most entire

unreserve. He says that the great danger now is lest the Bishops of

the minority, being separated from each other, and exposed to the

powerful influences which can be brought to bear on them, should

gradually acquiesce. Nothing would be worse for the cause of the

Church in Germany than the spectacle of such submission to a purely

external and not really competent authority (he dwells much on the

scheme _de concilio_, as completely destroying the freedom, and so

the authority, of the Council), with a notorious absence of any

internal assent. The Archbishop of Munich is very anxious. He told Dr

Döllinger that the deputation which went to the Pope, begging him to

spare the Church, nearly carried its point.”

It is clear from this and other sources that the Archbishop of Munich,

if left to himself, had no desire to proceed to extremities with the

opponents of the Decree. But Döllinger fully realised, ever since

the first mention of Infallibility as a subject for decision, that

excommunication lay before him if the Decree was passed. Archbishop

Scherr found himself reluctantly driven to the painful task of

imposing on the theologians a reversal of belief similar to that

which he had himself undergone. Rome was determined that the Munich

stronghold of the minority should be brought into line with the new

Decree. The Archbishop was made the instrument for effecting this. He

wrote a letter to the Munich Faculty of Theology, in which he said

that harassing doubts widely prevailed as to the attitude which the

Theological Faculty meant to adopt toward the Vatican Council. It was

his duty as Archbishop to set these doubts at rest. As for himself,

he frankly owned that, during the deliberation at Rome, he gave

utterance to his own opinion with all the positiveness of a conviction

attained after mature consideration. “But,” he added, “I never intended

to retain this conviction of mine if the decision should turn out

differently.” Accordingly he invites the Theological Faculty to follow

suit. The faculty, as a body, complied. But neither Friedrich nor

Döllinger. The Archbishop waited two months. Then he wrote entreating

Döllinger to conform. To this Döllinger replied that assent to the

recent Decree would require him to refute his lifelong historical

teaching. He would have to declare that his doctrine hitherto was

false and perverted. In the face of his public declarations no one

would believe in the sincerity of his submission. All the world would

consider the transition a hypocritical instance of convictions denied

from fear and personal interest. In the terribly painful situation

into which recent events had brought him, Döllinger asked for further

delay. This was granted, but, of course, to no purpose. Just in this

hour of critical suspense, when the decisive step must be taken, came

the piteous appeal from Hefele. Was no compromise with the Archbishop

possible? That Döllinger, the first of German theologians, should be

suspended or even excommunicated; and that by an Archbishop who had not

done a thousandth part of the service Döllinger had rendered to the

Church! This was terrible. Hefele’s letter gave Döllinger what he calls

the first completely sleepless night in his life. But it could not

alter his convictions. Döllinger sent his answer in to the Archbishop.

He took his definite and final stand on the ancient principles. He

could do no other. Döllinger said, in his reply, that the Jesuits, in

advancing their scheme of papal absolutism, assured their adherents and

disciples, and convinced many, even Bishops, that the noblest Christian

heroism consists in the sacrifice of the intellect, and in surrendering

one’s mental judgment and self-acquired knowledge and power of

discernment to an infallible papal _magisterium_ as the only sure

source of religious knowledge. This, in his opinion, was to elevate

mental sloth to the dignity of a meritorious sacrifice, and to renounce

the rights and the claims of history.

The question of Papal Infallibility was an historical question, which

must be tested by historical investigation; by the patient scrutiny

of facts in the centuries past. If this doctrine were true, it would

assuredly be not merely one truth among many, but the actual foundation

of the rest. How could the basal principle have been obscured through

centuries?

“We are still,” wrote Döllinger to the Archbishop, “waiting the

explanation how it is that, until 1,830 years had passed, the

Church did not formulate into an article of faith a doctrine which

the Pope, in a letter addressed to your Grace, calls the very

foundation principle of Catholic faith and doctrine? How has it been

possible that for centuries the Popes have overlooked the denial of

this fundamental article of faith by whole countries and in whole

theological schools? And was there a unity of the Church when there

was a difference in the very fundamentals of belief? And--may I

further add--how is it then that your Grace yourself resisted so

long and so persistently the proclamation of this dogma? You answer,

because it was not opportune. But can it ever be ‘inopportune’ to

give believers the key to the whole building of faith, to proclaim

the fundamental article on which all others depend? Are we not now

all standing before a dizzy abyss which opened itself before our eyes

on the 18th July?” Döllinger concluded with a deliberate and emphatic

rejection of the new Decree: “As a Christian, as a theologian, as a

historian, as a citizen, I cannot accept this doctrine.”

Döllinger’s biographer assures us that this reply to the Archbishop

of Munich brought Döllinger hundreds of letters, telegrams, addresses

from Germany, Austria, and Italy, in congratulation for his firmness

and strength. The Archbishop was in great perplexity. He sent a

telegram to Rome asking what his next move should be. Antonelli replied

promptly and curtly that the whole affair was exclusively within the

Archbishop’s jurisdiction. This cut off all delay and all retreat.

Archbishop Scherr was thus driven forward from Rome, and reluctantly

forced to take the final step. A protest signed by forty-three Catholic

professors against episcopal tyranny was naturally without effect.

So also was an appeal with many thousands of signatures. Theological

students in Munich diocese were now forbidden to attend his lectures;

and he was informed that although the Archbishop could not prevent

his lecturing, yet he could only continue to do so in open opposition

to his Bishop. This was followed a fortnight later by his formal

excommunication, in which his biographer, Friedrich, was included.[420]

[420] 17th April 1871. See _Declarations_, p. 113.

The exasperation at Munich is shown in a strongly worded protest[421]

issued at Whitsuntide 1871, in which the signatories declare themselves

confirmed in refusing the Vatican Decree by the duty, which neither

Popes nor Bishops can dispute, of abiding in loyalty to the ancient

faith even though an angel should teach them otherwise. It has been

hitherto no doctrine of the Church, no part of Catholic faith, that

every Christian possesses in the Pope an absolute overlord and

master, to whom he is directly and immediately subjected, and whose

decisions in faith and morals he is bound under penalty of eternal

damnation to obey. It is notoriously no part of the teaching of the

Church hitherto that the gift of Infallibility is entrusted to one

individual. Peter speaks unmistakably to us in Scriptures through his

deeds and his words and his letters; but all these breathe a totally

different spirit from that of papal absolutism. The German minority

Bishops show their bewilderment in their Pastoral letters. For none

of them can induce themselves to follow Manning and the Jesuits in

interpreting the Decrees in their natural obvious meaning. Moreover,

the undersigned deplored that the Bishops are not ashamed to answer

the conscientious outcry of their own dioceses with invectives against

reason and learning. In previous centuries, when Bishops resorted to

excluding a man from the Church, they did so on the ground of the

novelty and untraditional character of his teaching. It was reserved

for the present generation to see, what eighteen centuries have never

beheld, a man condemned and excluded precisely because he clings to

a doctrine which his fathers in the Church have taught him; refuses

to change his faith as a cloak might be exchanged. That an unjust

excommunication can only injure its inflicters--not the individual upon

whom it is inflicted--is the universal teaching of the Fathers. Such

excommunications are as invalid and ineffective as they are unjust.

They cannot deprive the believer of the means of grace, nor a priest of

his right to dispense them.

[421] Von Schulte, _Der Altkatholicismus_, pp. 16–22.

Such was the strain in which the Munich protest was written. Among

the signatures which follow are those of Döllinger, Lord Acton, and

Reinkens, afterwards Bishop of the Old Catholic Communion. The German

Catholics, whom the Decree of Infallibility had excluded, gathered to

form the Old Catholic Community.

Döllinger confesses that he had no hope whatever that under the next

or one of the next Popes any important or essential change would

be made for the better, since the order of the Jesuits formed the

soul and sovereign of the whole Roman Church. Formerly there were

counterbalancing influences: powerful religious orders, full of

vitality, correcting the tendencies of the followers of Loyola. But

these had become either powerless shadows, or satellites of the Jesuit

dominating body.

“The tendency of events since 1870 was shown,” said Döllinger, “in

the solemn proclamation of Liguori as Doctor of the Church:--

“A man whose false morals, perverse worship of the Virgin, constant

use of the grossest fables and forgeries, make his writings a

storehouse of errors and falsehoods. In the whole range of Church

history I do not know a single example of such a terrible and

pernicious confusion.”

The public papers repeatedly announced Dr Döllinger’s reconciliation

with the Roman Communion. On one occasion he replied:--

“This is now the fourteenth time that my submission has been

announced by Ultramontane papers; and it will often occur again. Rest

assured that I shall not dishonour my old age with a lie before God

and man.”

Ten years after the Vatican Decision, Döllinger received a pathetic,

imploring appeal from a lady of high social position, entreating him

to rescue himself from the everlasting destruction which his exclusion

would entail, and to have mercy on his own unhappy soul.

Döllinger’s answer is memorable:--

“I am now in my eighty-first year, and was a public teacher of

theology for forty-seven years, during which long period no censure,

nor even a challenge that I should defend myself, or make a better

explanation, has ever reached me from ecclesiastical dignitaries,

either at home or abroad. I had _never_ taught the new Articles of

Faith advanced by Pius IX. and his Council.... Then came the fatal

year, 1870.... It was in vain that I begged them to let me remain

by the faith and confession to which I had hitherto been faithful

without blame and without contradiction. Yesterday still orthodox,

I was to-day a heretic worthy of excommunication; not because I had

changed my teaching, but because others had considered it advisable

to undertake the alteration, and to make opinions into Articles of

Faith.”

But why not make a sacrifice of his intellect:--

“Because,” says Döllinger, “if I did so in a question which is for

the historical eye perfectly clear and unambiguous, there would

then be no longer for me any such thing as historical truth and

certainty; I should then have to suppose that my whole life long I

had been in a world of dizzy illusion, and that in historical matters

I am altogether incapable of distinguishing truth from fable and

falsehood.”

But this would undermine his whole confidence in historic fact, and

thereby shatter the foundation of his religion. For it is on historic

facts that Christianity itself reposes. Prior to the historic problem

of the Papacy is the historic problem of the Apostolic times. “I must

first be convinced that the principal events narrated in the Gospels

and the Acts of the Apostles are essentially true and inviolable.” And

to destroy confidence in historic judgment in one case is to ruin its

validity in all others.

Archbishop Scherr was succeeded in the diocese of Munich in 1878 by Von

Steichele, a former pupil of Döllinger, and attached to him by feelings

of the deepest veneration. Von Steichele made overtures for Döllinger’s

reconciliation with the Papacy. He wrote in 1879 a delightful letter:--

“With the thankfulness of a pupil to a venerable teacher; with

the respect of a disciple for the honoured bearer of the richest

knowledge; with the love of an anxious Bishop for the brother who

unhappily is not yet at one with him in things of highest moment.”

Döllinger sent a frank but decided reply. Return was impossible. He

said that his excommunication had been unjust, his treatment unexampled

in the history of the Church. The mediæval theory of excommunication

rendered the individual liable to bodily harm. It would appear that

this theory was not obsolete; for the chief of the police had warned

him to be on his guard, as they had knowledge that an act of violence

was plotted against him. Friedrich says elsewhere that the house in

which he and Döllinger lived, was specially protected by the police

for a year after the excommunication. These dangers, said Döllinger,

were long since past. But he could not enter again into relationship

with the authors of these actions. He had long ago challenged his

former colleagues to know how they reconciled acceptance of the Vatican

expositions with their conscience and their knowledge of the facts:--

“The answer was always an evasive one, or an embarrassed shrug of the

shoulder. They said that this was a question of detail, which the

individual priest or layman did not need to enter into. Or they said

that the very essence and merit of believing consisted precisely in

giving oneself up blindly and implicitly to the powers that be, and

in leaving it to them to settle any contradictions that might exist.

I do not need to tell you what an impression deplorable subterfuges

of this kind have made upon me.”

This was Döllinger’s final attitude toward the Roman Communion up to

the last moment of consciousness on earth. He never by any act of will

deviated from testimony to the Church’s traditional Faith, in which

the theory of Papal Infallibility was not included. To the end of his

days he held that this theory could not possibly be reconciled with the

broad facts of Christian history.

V. LORD ACTON’S SUBMISSION

The new decree was profoundly uncongenial to the mind of Lord Acton.

He had already expressed his sense that recent developments of papal

authority were inconsistent with the earlier principles of Christendom,

and disastrous alike to freedom of investigation, and to the real

interests of the Church. Manning’s theories on papal sovereignty

were a trial to Lord Acton’s historical intellect. Manning simply

reproduced the mediæval exaggerations of temporal power which had done

incalculable mischief ever since Boniface VIII. endorsed them in his

struggle with France.

“You are certainly not too severe on Manning’s elaborate

absurdities,” wrote Lord Acton;[422] “I had no idea he had gone so

far.... It is impossible to exaggerate the danger of such doctrines

as his. I wish you would take the line of Catholic indignation a

little.”

[422] _Lord Acton and his Circle_, pp. 211, 212, 215.

While the Council sat, Lord Acton was in Rome, where popular

opinion ascribed the Articles in the _Augsburg Gazette_ to his

instrumentality. “People do not venture to proceed against Acton,”

wrote Gregorovius;[423] “but it is known that he writes, and that he

pays highly for the materials that are supplied him.”

[423] _Roman Journals_, p. 356.

Archbishop Manning had positive knowledge that Lord Acton was

in constant communication with Mr Gladstone, supplying him with

information hostile to the Council; “poisoning his mind,” as Archbishop

Manning phrases it, against Papal Infallibility and the Pope’s friends

and supporters. Lord Acton, as a friend and disciple of Dr Döllinger,

had great influence with the German Bishops, who, for the most part

belonged to the Opposition; and was also on confidential terms with

Mgr. Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, and with the Bishop of Orleans, and

had not a little to do with bringing into closer union the Bishops of

France and Germany. He was also active in furnishing the Opposition

with Dr Döllinger and Professor Friedrich’s historical criticisms of

the Papacy. Lord Acton, as Manning knew well,[424] did more than any

other man, except the Bishop of Orleans, in exciting public feeling,

especially in Germany and England, against the Vatican Council.

[424] Purcell’s _Manning_, ii. p. 434.

When, therefore, the Vatican Decree was passed and the process of

reducing objectors to uniformity began, it was scarcely probable that

Lord Acton would be left unchallenged. Nor did he continue silent. He

published a sketch of the history of the Vatican Council[425] which,

while confined strictly to facts, must have been supremely distasteful

to the victorious side. When he said that Pius was bound up with the

Jesuits; made them a channel for his influence and became himself an

instrument of their designs; when he gave illustrations of authority

overriding history, and the unscrupulous suppression of uncongenial

facts; when he quoted at length Montalembert’s emphatic letter on

the transformation of Catholic France into an anti-chamber of the

Vatican--he was recording what was calculated to advance the other

side. Yet, of course, the registration of adverse facts is a different

province from personal belief.

[425] Acton, _Vatican Council_. München (1871).

But Acton went so far as to describe the Infallibility doctrine as

independent of reason or history.

“The sentiment,” he wrote,[426] “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 the demonstrable consequence of a

system of religious faith.” The opponents were, according to Acton,

“baffled and perplexed by the serene vitality of a view which was

impervious to proof....

“No appeal to revelation or tradition, to reason or conscience,

appeared to have any bearing whatever on the issue.”

[426] _History of Freedom_, pp. 512, 513.

This persistent attempt to render authority independent of evidence

was, if especially prominent in the Infallibility disputes, a deeply

seated and long existing disease. It pervaded the theological school

then dominant in Rome, but it had, according to Acton, exerted its

baneful influence over the Roman Church for centuries. The Jesuit

theologian, Petavius, in the seventeenth century supported existing

authority at the expense of the past.

“According to Petavius, the general belief of Catholics at a given

time is the word 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.... 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.”

Thus in Acton’s view the dominant school in the Roman Church were

resolved that “authority must conquer history.” He went so far as to

say that:--

“Almost every writer who really served Catholicism fell sooner or

later under the disgrace or the suspicion of Rome.” Also that “the

division between the Roman and the Catholic elements in the Church

made it hopeless to mediate between them.”

Acton’s description of the Vatican Assembly itself could only leave one

conclusion as to its methods and impartiality, on the reader’s mind. He

records how the Bishops on arriving in Rome, were “received with the

assurance that nobody had dreamt of defining Infallibility, or that,

if the idea had been entertained at all, it had been abandoned.” He

records the Pope’s assurance that “he would sanction no proposition

that could sow dissension among the Bishops.” He asserts that the

freedom of the Bishops was taken away by the regulations of the Bull

_Multiplices inter_ imposed upon them without their consent, and with

refusal even to allow their protests to be uttered. He says that many

Bishops were “bewildered and dispirited,” by the character of these

Regulations. He says:--

“It was certain that any real attempt that might be made to prevent

the definition could be overwhelmed by the preponderance of those

Bishops whom the modern constitution of the Church places in

dependence on Rome.”

He reveals his sympathies in the strongest way by pouring out his moral

indignation on the minority Bishops for their weakness.

“They showed no sense of their mission to renovate Catholicism....

“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 contemplation of all this causes Acton to write:--

“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 recovering the vital force of

Catholicism was extinct in the Episcopate.”

And then Acton traces the gradual tightening of the cords as the feeble

and unhappy minority are more and more overcome. The new Regulations

determined that decrees should be carried by majority. They could not

be accepted by the minority without virtual admission that the Pope

must be infallible. For

“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.”

“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.”

This was exactly where their courage failed them. They protested, but

submitted. And here comes Acton’s judgment on their submission:--

“They might conceivably contrive to bind and limit dogmatic

Infallibility with conditions so stringent as to evade many of the

objections taken from the examples of history; but in requiring

submission to Papal Decrees on matters not Articles of Faith,

they were approving that of which they knew the character, they

were confirming without let or question a power they saw in daily

exercise, they were investing with new authority the existing Bulls,

and giving unqualified sanction to the Inquisition and the Index, to

the murder of heretics and the deposing of kings. They approved what

they were called on to reform, and solemnly blessed with their lips

what their hearts knew to be accursed.”

The effect of this moral feebleness on the Roman authorities was, says

Acton, that

“the Court of Rome became thenceforth reckless in its scorn of the

opposition, and proceeded in the belief that there was no protest

they would not forget, no principle they would not betray, rather

than defy the Pope in his wrath. It was at once determined to bring

on the discussion of Infallibility.”

Lord Acton’s objections to the Infallibility school were clearly of

a triple character. In relation to History: it betrayed a resolve

to instate Authority independently of proof. It was the product of

indifference to fact. “The serene vitality of a view impervious to

proof,” could only shock and distress a profound veneration for the

actual. To those who build on facts such disregard for evidence must

appear as building without foundation. In relation to method: if the

origin of the doctrine was insecure, no less unsatisfactory was the

method by which it was decreed. Acton’s description makes the Decree

the product of cowardly weakness on the one side, and unscrupulous

coercion on the other. The spiritual value of the result obtained might

be measured by the immorality of the means employed. It could not, it

did not, enlist his loyalty or command his reverence. In relation to

results: plainly Acton did not believe that the limitless exaltation

of Authority was beneficial, or that it could lead to anything but

results disastrous to the real interests of the Church. The severity

of his judgment on the minority, for investing with new Authority

the Papal Decree, was born of a deep conviction that already, on

countless occasions, that Authority had proved excessive, injurious

to the advance of truth, and the freedom of the individual. It is

probably quite correct that Acton’s objections were more on the moral

and political or social side than on the strictly theological. But his

sharp distinction between the Catholic and the Roman elements within

the Church is really a distinction in dogmatic principles. And nothing

can exceed his loathing for principles commonly known as Ultramontane.

Acton and Manning stand at the opposite poles in their anticipations of

the results of the dogma of Infallibility.

But Lord Acton went far beyond all this. He wrote a letter[427]

to a German Bishop reproaching the minority with inconsistency in

discontinuing their opposition after the Infallibility Decree was

published. In this letter he gives the actual language of the leaders

of the minority, and concludes--

[427] _Sendschreiben an einen Deutschen Bischof_ (September 1870).

“The Council is thus judged by the lips of its most able members.

They describe it as a conspiracy against truth and rights. They

declare that the new dogmas were neither taught by the Apostles nor

believed of the Fathers.”

This letter was described by the _Dublin Review_[428] as “an open and

decisive revolt against the Church.”

[428] N.S. vol. xvi. (1871), p. 212.

Yet it does not appear that the writer was challenged to express his

adhesion to the new Decree. But Lord Acton’s letters during this period

are yet to be published. Abbot Gasquet[429] omits all the critical

years from 1869–1874. Lord Acton, however, did not ultimately escape

unchallenged. He was not in Manning’s Diocese or we may feel fairly

certain that the Archbishop of Westminster would have pounced upon him.

[429] _Lord Acton and his Circle._

Meantime Mr Gladstone argued that the Vatican Decrees involved

political consequences adverse to modern freedom.[430] The Church’s

power to employ coercion was asserted by the Syllabus, and acknowledged

by Newman.[431] Now that such consequences could be drawn from the

Vatican Decrees Lord Acton did not dream of denying.[432] Gladstone’s

argument could not be met by denial. And, of course, the whole

sympathies of Acton’s mind were with Gladstone so far as repudiation

of the use of coercive force in religion is concerned. Nothing in

the world roused Acton’s moral indignation more than Inquisition and

Liguori’s ethics. He admitted with characteristic sincerity that

“Gladstone had not darkened the dark side of the question.” All

he could answer was that it does not follow that inferences which

_can_ be drawn _will_ actually be made. He held that “the Council

did not so directly deal with these matters as to exclude a Catholic

explanation.” The Council had not so acted “that no authentic gloss

or explanation could ever put those perilous consequences definitely

out of the way.” This was certainly a curious defence of an Ecumenical

Decree. It does not exclude a Catholic explanation. But this was all

he could say. He could not even say what that true explanation was;

for on that ground his own authorities might reject him. “I could not

take my stand, for good or evil, as an interpreter of the Decrees,

without risk of authoritative contradiction.” This attitude, says

Acton, “was no attack on the Council, although it was an attack on

Ultramontanism.”[433]

[430] _Vaticanism_, p. 77.

[431] _Ibid._ p. 77.

[432] Gasquet, _Lord Acton and his Circle_, p. 366.

[433] Gasquet, _Lord Acton and his Circle_, p. 366.

But Lord Acton proceeded to defend the Council in the _Times_

newspaper[434] from Mr Gladstone’s inferences.

[434] 24th November 1874.

“I affirmed that the apprehension of civil danger from the Vatican

Council overlooks the infinite subtlety and inconsistency with which

men practically elude the yoke of official uniformity in matters of

opinion.”

And, as an illustration of this infinite subtlety in eluding authority,

he quoted the example of Archbishop Fénelon, who “while earning

admiration for his humility under censure [by the Pope] had retained

his former views unchanged.” Fénelon wrote:--[435]

[435] _Pastoral_ (1699).

“I accept this Brief ... simply absolutely and without shadow of

reserve. God forbid that I should ever be remembered except as a

pastor who believed it his duty to be more docile than the humblest

of his sheep, and who placed no limit to his submission.”

Three weeks later Fénelon wrote to a friend:--

“I acknowledge no uncertainty either as to the correctness of my

opinions throughout or as to the orthodoxy of the doctrine which I

have maintained.... Unless competent persons rouse themselves in Rome

the faith is in great danger.”

It was no more than natural, after such public letters, that Lord Acton

should be called in question by the authorities of his Communion. It

was asserted in the Roman Church that he did not believe the Vatican

Decrees. Manning wrote to enquire what construction he placed upon

them in order that the minds of the multitude might be reassured. A

curious and very instructive correspondence[436] ensued. Lord Acton

took advice as to the answer he should give.

[436] _Lord Acton and his Circle_, pp. 359, 360, 364.

“The great question is,” he wrote privately to a friend, “whether

I ought to say that I _submit_ to the acts of this as of other

Councils, without difficulty or examination (meaning that I feel no

need of harmonising and reconciling what the Church herself has not

yet had time to reconcile and to harmonise), or ought not the word

_submit_ to be avoided, as easily misunderstood.”

After further reflection Lord Acton proposed to say:--

“I do not reject--which is all the Council requires under its

extreme sanctions. As the Bishops who are my guides have accepted

the decrees, so have I. They are a law to me as much as those at

Trent, not from any private interpretation, but from the authority

from which they come. The difficulties about reconciling them with

tradition, which seem so strong to others, do not disturb me a

layman, whose business it is not to explain theological questions,

and who leaves that to his betters.[437]

“Manning ... says he must leave the thing in the hands of the Pope,

as everybody tells him I don’t believe the Vatican Council. He means,

it seems to me, that he simply asks Rome to excommunicate me--a thing

really almost without example and incredible in the case of a man

who has not attacked the Council, who declares that he has not, and

that the Council is his law, though private interpretations are not,

whose Diocesan has, after enquiry, pronounced him exempt from all

anathema.”[438]

[437] _Ibid._ p. 364.

[438] _Ibid._ p. 368.

Against Lord Acton no further action was taken. The disastrous effect

of the excommunication of Döllinger may have made Authority cautious

in the exercise of this deadly weapon. Acton indeed submitted; but

Manning’s misgivings seem more than justified. It is difficult to

define the sense in which Acton became a believer in the new Decree.

“He remained all his life,” says Bryce,[439] “a faithful member of the

Roman Communion, while adhering to the views which he advocated in

1870.”

[439] _Biographical Studies_, pp. 385, 386.

It is quite true that Acton was not an Anglican; he was still less a

Protestant. He never joined the old Catholic movement, and is said to

have dissuaded his friends from taking that course. But it is certain

that he was never an Ultramontane. The distinction he drew between

Catholic and Roman elements in the Church helps to explain his own

position. He was a Catholic as opposed to the modern Roman type.

If, as Pius IX. asserted, Catholic and Ultramontane are synonymous,

then Acton’s position was precarious. But their identity is what he

persistently and firmly denied. He considered Ultramontanism as an

unhappy and mischievous influence perverting truths and ignoring

history, speculative in its origin, and injurious in its results. He

was well aware, his historic insight made it clearer to him than to

many, that the school he resented was a long-standing disease; that

its presence could be traced for centuries, if in a less pronounced

and virulent form than to-day. But the long-standing nature of the

disease did not shake his faith in the certainty of a remedy, and a

removal sooner or later. He did not, it has been well said, identify

the long-lived with the eternal.

Sooner or later then, Ultramontanism, according to Acton’s views, was

destined to pass away. It was no more than a temporary, if protracted,

disease from which the Church must at length recover. Meanwhile,

therefore, he held to his post, accepting the present discomfiture in

the hope of better days; waiting until this tyranny be overpast. He

had no thought of departure. The Roman Communion was the Church of his

birth and of his devotional affinities. He spoke of it reverentially as

“the Church whose communion is dearer to me than life.”[440] He would

never have left it of his own accord. But, while wholly identified

with the ancient Catholic conceptions, he absolutely repudiated the

principles of the Ultramontane. By what process he retained his place

while Döllinger was exiled seems not altogether clear. Acton felt

acutely the possibility that, like Döllinger, he also might be cast out.

[440] Letter to the _Times_.

Whether wisdom or prudence or diplomacy refrained from him and let

him alone, there at any rate he lived and died. But the legitimacy

or consistency of his position was the theme of a fierce and bitter

controversy in the Roman journals after he was dead.

So the great struggle in the Roman Communion between the episcopal and

the papal conceptions of Authority, the collective and the individual,

came to an end. Every Bishop of the minority submitted. This is

a magnificent tribute to the power of Rome. It held its defeated

Episcopate in unbroken unity. Only the old Catholic movement created

an independent community. But when the motives are considered which

induced the minority to yield, the strongest principle appears to be

the maintenance of external unity. The abler minds resisted, after

the Decree was known, so long as resistance was possible. Only when

the presence of threatened excommunication drew them to an ultimate

decision, the Bishops submitted, with what grace they could, to a

Decree which they dared no longer resist. But the submission is, even

then, cautious, reluctant, and reserved. In some instances it is

yielded in a tone of curtness or asperity. In other instances, with

comments and explanations, in private letters, wholly inconsistent

with genuine faith. It is difficult to find in a single minority

submission the joyous devotion which is surely due to a heaven-sent

revelation of eternal truth. They do not accept the doctrine as a

blessed enlightenment, but rather as a heavy burden to which they

are unwillingly obliged to coerce their priests. They do not appear

like men whose intensity of conviction enables them to say:--“It

seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.” They would infinitely

sooner ask no questions, if Rome would only let them. They are driven

to excommunicate others, much against their will, for continuing to

hold what they themselves had taught them, and were, until recently,

inwardly persuaded was true. It is a painful and unattractive sight.

In the frankness of confidential utterances after the event they

owned with manifest sincerity that they did not believe the Decision

valid, nor the Doctrine part of the Historic Faith. But, being forced

by Authority to choose between submission and excommunication, they

mostly preferred submission. The choice is intelligible. They loved

the Church. Taught to regard its limits as practically identical with

those of the Kingdom of Heaven--yet certain that history contradicted

what they were now required to believe, they were placed in the

terrible dilemma of loyalty to reason against religious interest, or

to religious interest against their reason. The issue was solemn

whichever side they chose. But the prior question which the alternative

raises is this: “What is the spiritual value of an Absolute Authority

which inflicted such an awful dilemma upon its own devoted sons?”