Letters From Rome on the Council

During the General Congregation of the 19th, four Bishops, Latour d'Auvergne, Dreux-Brézé, La Bouillerie, and Mermillod, went to the Pope and requested him to have the decree on infallibility brought forward directly after the Solemn Session of the 24th. They thought rightly enough the favourable moment had come and all was now ready. Pius received the Bishops, who came as deputies of the 400, with great distinction, and replied that he would discuss the matter with the Presidents.

As it is impossible to see how the Bishops or the Governments could get rid of the regolamento when once it is fairly established, the Opposition Bishops know that they will have to approach the great question in the position they take for themselves to-morrow in the first solemn voting, and with such power, unanimity, and influence as they thereby establish their claim to. It is still open to them up to to-night to use the present moment for a complete victory. They only need declare that their protests and warnings were not idle words but seriously meant, that the incongruities which endanger the freedom of the Council and suggest doubts of its legitimacy must be got rid of before any decrees are published under threat of everlasting damnation, and that until they are listened to on this point they refuse to take part in any solemn voting.

But, as far as I know of the Opposition, the majority of them have no ear or heart for such counsel; their grand object is to avoid any decisive conflict, and so to-morrow they will simply yield, – to consider quietly afterwards their future plan of campaign! Some have thought they might save their honour and conscience by a written explanation of their vote. In the public international meeting of the Opposition these plans were rejected, but two rough drafts of the kind were proposed the day before yesterday, one by the Germans, one by the French. Both are too strong and dignified to find many supporters, and too weak to justify the Opposition in the eyes of the Christian world.

It is the sacred duty of the Bishops in Council to bear witness to the ancient doctrine of the Church, and to reform it when it has been obscured by abuses in practice and in the rule of the hierarchy. The more abuses there are, so much the more difficult, and so much the more indispensable also is this reform. What the Catholic world expects of the Council is not a fresh sanction, still less an increase, of these abuses, but the deliverance and purification of the Church from them. But to accept the paragraph which recommends obedience to the constitutions and decrees of Roman Congregations is to make the fulfilment of this serious duty, on which the fate of the Church hinges, impossible. For that paragraph will confirm and clothe with new authority decrees which are a disgrace to the Church and an injury to civilisation, wherein the confused morality of dark centuries is taught and Christian morality denied; and that too without any examination or discussion, any limitation or exception. The Bishops will thereby degrade themselves to servants of the Roman prelatura, and sink into accomplices of the Inquisition. We are told indeed that the paragraph will not touch dogma, but for ethics and practice it is almost more important than infallibility itself. It gives full play beforehand for arbitrary caprice and paves the way for the infallibilist dogma.

If we look into the future, the questions come before us of unanimity in matters of faith, and of the confirmation and acceptance of the Council throughout the Church. As to the latter, the Bishops will make it far harder for the Governments to stand by them if to-morrow they virtually repudiate their own protests. The question of unanimity remains as weighty as before, and the gross errors of the Civiltà in its attack on Strossmayer's vindication of the principle of moral unanimity in decisions on faith has greatly lightened the task of two learned Bishops, who undertook to put in a clear light the true doctrine of the Church on the subject.

If the voting of to-morrow goes altogether in the sense of the Curia, the inference will be that all the positions of the minority can be turned, and that as they are resolved to avoid any collision, they may be brought by skilful manipulation not to trouble the moral unanimity any further. Many of them console themselves with the thought that they are only sacrificing everything to peace and harmony, and are not responsible for the undertaking they have been deluded into.

The propositions of the Schema de Ecclesiâ give abundant room for manœuvring. There are many opportunities for apparent concessions and for dividing and perplexing the Opposition, and finally driving them into a corner, so that in mutual distrust of one another they may abandon all hope of making any successful resistance, and satisfy themselves that as nearly everything has been given up already it is not worth while to risk a catastrophe by taking any further step.

Fortieth Letter

Rome, April 24, 1870.– The final votes of Placet or Non placet on the four chapters of the Schema de Fide are to be taken in to-day's public Session. And thus after four months and a half a theological decree, or rather a batch of decrees and doctrinal decisions, will be brought to a successful issue, and the first ripe fruit plucked from the hitherto barren tree of the Council, so that there will be something in black and white to carry home. As these four chapters have been subjected to the pruning and toning down of the Opposition, they bear little resemblance to the original draft of the Jesuits, and the minority may lay claim to a victory which four months ago could scarcely have been hoped for. What has been gained for the future by these theological commonplaces and self-evident propositions is of course another question. The general view of the Bishops appears to be that there is no real gain for the Church in these propositions, which can only excite the wonder of believing Christians that it should be thought necessary to prohibit at this time of day such fundamental errors. The value of their labours they take to lie, not in what they have said, but in what they have with so much trouble expunged from the Schema.

Several Bishops attach great weight to the consent of the Deputation to substitute for “Romana Ecclesia” the words “Ecclesia Catholica et Apostolica Romana.” Others think it a matter of indifference. Hefele's pamphlet on Honorius has created such a sensation that the Pope has commissioned the Jesuit Liberatore and Delegati, Professor at the Sapienza, to white-wash Honorius, and make away with everything in his history incompatible with the new dogma. Pius is persuaded, and his infallible “feeling” tells him, that everything must have happened quite differently from what is represented; how, he knows not, but he thinks that the Jesuit and the Roman professor have only to make the proper investigations and they will soon discover the requisite materials for refuting the German Bishop.

On Wednesday, April 20, Rome was illuminated to celebrate the Pope's return from Gaëta. The Roman officials greatly dislike these illuminations on financial grounds, for they have to contribute to the cost out of their own pockets. A triumphal arch was erected for the Pope at the end of the narrow street leading to St. Peter's piazza, and the following inscription in letters of fire was conspicuous far and wide: —

Popoli chinatevi innanzi al Vaticano,Ecco il Pontefice ch'io vi conservai nei giorni di pericolo,Esso è la pietra angolare della mia chiesa,Il refugio degli oppressi,Il sostegno del povero,Lo scudo della civiltà e della fede.

That is the witness Pius bears to himself. To theologians it may be a new idea that he personally is the corner-stone of the Church, but that is only one of the many predicates and prerogatives which may be deduced from infallibility. Two isolated voices cried “Evviva il Papa infallibile.” It was clear the multitude was to be stimulated to swell the cry, but, as before, all remained quiet. The attempt has been sometimes made before, whether by amateurs or under official inspiration I know not, and then Veuillot asserts in the Univers that he has heard this shout of vast multitudes breaking forth spontaneously from the exuberance of their hearts. It is like the music of the spheres which only Pythagoras heard.

Ketteler's pamphlet was finally published on April 18, and the Bishop has begun to distribute it. It is really directed against the dogma itself, which for a long time people could not believe, and not merely against the opportuneness of defining it. How much better would it have been for the interests of the Church, if the necessity had been recognised long ago for looking this Medusa's head straight in the face, and defying its petrifying gaze, and if our Bishops had plainly and decisively announced their resolution last December to have no dealings with it. Now at least Cardinal Rauscher does not spare warnings; he perceives the gravity of the danger and has had a new fly-leaf distributed, showing that the promulgation of papal infallibility will elevate the two Bulls Unam Sanctam (of Boniface viii.) and Cum ex Apostolatûs officio (of Paul iv.) into rules of faith for the whole Catholic world, and thus it will be taught universally in Europe and America, henceforth, that the Pope is absolute master in temporal affairs also, that he can order war or peace, and that every monarch or bishop who does not submit to him or helps any one separated from him ought to be deprived of his throne if not of his life, besides the other wonderful doctrines in the second of these Bulls, which must reduce every theologian to despair.91 All that is nothing to the majority, for whom the law of logical contradiction has no existence. It is their watchword that the dogma conquers logic as well as history. One of their German members gladly re-echoes the idea that the proper aim and office of the Council is to stop the mouth of arrogant professors; if that is accomplished everything is gained, according to this pastor of a flock feeding on red earth. On the other hand I heard very different words fall to-day from the mouth of another German Bishop, who said he was constantly asking himself how long the German Bishops would look on and put up with everything.

The great and all-absorbing question now is what will next be brought before the Council after April 24. In the natural order the second part of the Schema de Fide would come on, which is comparatively innocuous though abundantly capable of improvement. But is it not time to fabricate the talisman of absolute power, the infallibilist dogma? Then would the Council be in the fullest sense and for ever provided for and finished, and the master would praise his servants. Many will answer the question in the affirmative. The two modern Fathers, Veuillot and Margotti, strain every nerve daily for that end, and many of the most zealous French Bishops – as those of Moulins, Bourges, and Carcassonne, and the indefatigable Mermillod – have represented to the willing Pius, as I mentioned yesterday, that now is the nick of time, and that he may gratify the longing of his faithful adherents by placing infallibility in the order of the day. These Frenchmen consider that their Government, now occupied with the plébiscite, will not trouble itself with the acts and decisions of the Council, and moreover needs the help of the clergy. Amid the bustle of the plébiscite, they think the new dogma, and even the reproduction of the Syllabus in the twenty-one canons, will excite little stir or indignation, for the French can only embrace one idea at a time, and the Parisians only discuss one subject in their salons.

Banneville has at last actually presented the memorandum of his Government to the Pope, as President of the Council, and with the intimation that it should be communicated to the Fathers. That of course will not be done, for both Pius and Antonelli are irritated at the paper. Pius is annoyed at the innermost kernel of the dogma being so openly exposed to view, when Count Daru says, “You want to hand over all rights and powers to the Church, and then by the infallibilist dogma to concentrate this plenitude of temporal and spiritual power in the one person of the Pope.” That is of course what the Curia does want, but it should be uttered in pious and somewhat obscure phraseology, as the Civiltà usually speaks, and not be called by its right name in this bold and naked fashion. Antonelli again is much displeased, because his favourite distinction between the principles in which the Church must be inexorable, and the practice in which Rome will graciously concede the very opposite, is met here by the inquiry whether the faithful are actually to be taught henceforth that they must believe what they need not carry out in practice, and accept as divinely revealed rules which they may without hesitation transgress? He had reckoned on a better understanding, on the part of the French Government, of the favourite Roman theory of infinite and inexhaustible papal indults and dispensations, and is glad that he need make no reply to the note which throws so glaring a light on the morality of the Curia and its notions of duty and truth. He contents himself with telling the diplomatists that there would be some difficulty in the Pope's communicating the note to the Council. Clearly, for they must at the same time be directed to attempt a refutation, and that would lead to very awkward consequences. The French Government might indeed have sent their memorandum to each Bishop separately, but then they would have had the prospect of the non-French Bishops of the majority returning it unopened.

Count Trautmansdorff has also presented the memorandum of the Austrian Government to the Cardinal Secretary of State. It runs as follows: —

“Nous voulons seulement élever aussi notre voix pour dégager notre responsabilité et signaler les conséquences presqu'inévitables d'actes qui devraient être regardés comme une atteinte portée aux lois qui nous régissent. Comme le Gouvernement français, c'est à un devoir de conscience que nous pensons obéier, en avertissant la cour de Rome des périls de la voie dans laquelle des influences prepondérates semblent vouloir pousser le Concile. Ce qui nous émeut, ce n'est pas le danger dont nos institutions sont menacées, mais bien celui que courent la paix des esprits et le maintien de la bonne harmonie dans les relations de l'état avec l'Église. Le sentiment qui nous fait agir doit paraître d'autant moins suspect au St. Siége qu'il correspond à l'attitude d'une fraction importante des Pères du Concile, dont le dévouement aux intérêts du Catholicisme ne saurait être l'objet d'un doute. Placés sur un tout autre terrain que cette fraction, puisque nous n'obéissons qu'à des considérations politiques, nous nous rencontrons toutefois aujourd'hui dans le désir commun d'écarter certaines éventualités. Cette coïncidence de nos efforts nous permet de croire qu'en prenant la parole au nom des seuls intérêts de l'État nous ne méconnaissons pas ceux de l'Église. Si la démarche du Gouvernement français, que nous désirons seconder de tout notre pouvoir, vient en ce moment donner un appui à la minorité du Concile et l'aider à faire prévaloir des idées de modération ou de prudence, nous ne pourrons que nous féliciter d'un tel résultat, bien que, je le répète, notre action soit parfaitement indépendante et doive rester en tout cas indépendante de celle des membres du Concile.”

Finally the observations of the French Government are urgently commended to the attention of the Curia.

Forty-First Letter

Rome, April 27, 1870.– We find ourselves in a remarkably critical position here. The great event so long expected of the first promulgation of dogmas is over, and the desired unanimity has been successfully attained for these four chapters of the Schema de Fide, notwithstanding the supplemental paragraph. Two Bishops who could not overcome their dislike to that paragraph preferred to stay away or leave Rome for the day. All the curialists are in high feather, and are congratulating each other on their victory, boasting that they have gained three most important points without any public opposition. First, the Pope, for the first time for 350 years,92 and in contradiction to the practice of the first 1000 years of Church history, has defined and published the decrees in his own name as supreme legislator, just like those masters of the world, Innocent iii., Innocent iv. and Leo x., merely with the addition that the Council also sanctions them. Secondly, the new order of business has now been virtually accepted by all, and the protest abandoned. Thirdly, the conclusion, which is meant to invest with conciliar authority the former dogmatic decrees of the Popes, has been accepted.

The excitement visible on the countenances of the majority, when Schwarzenberg, Darboy, Rauscher and Hefele were called up to vote, showed what had been expected. The mass of the majority say the same thing will happen when the Schema on the Church has to be voted on; the minority answer that it will not, and that they only want to avoid wasting their powder before the time; “la minorité se recueille,” like Russia after the last war, and on the division day will be found fully equipped for the fight. We shall soon see, for that day is not far distant. But now what next? The infallibilist party are afraid of this dogma being lost after all, like a ship wrecked in port. They reckon that the time is approaching when the Council must inevitably be prorogued, and therefore urge the Pope to break through the regular order of the Schemata, and bring forward at once either the whole Schema de Ecclesiâ or the article on papal infallibility which has been interpolated into it. The four French Bishops assured him that they spoke in the name of the 400. Pius would not of course feel any very constraining influence in their wishes per se, for he knows well enough that the 400 are composed mainly of his foster-sons and of the Bishops of the States of the Church and the Neapolitans, who all speak or hold their peace and sit or stand as they are bidden. But it would be an unspeakably bitter sacrifice for him to refuse to his trusty adherents what he so earnestly desires himself, and to let these 400 or at least many of them say, “Your own organ, the Civiltà, the Jesuits, Veuillot, Margotti – have forced this question upon us; we have agitated for it and staked our name and theological credit on it, and now it is all to be labour lost!”

But now the writings of the German Bishops have appeared and the notes of the Governments have been delivered. To the French note is added a more urgent one from Austria, as well as a Prussian, a Portuguese and now also a Bavarian note, and all breathe the same spirit. All give warning that they shall regard the threatened decrees on the power and infallibility of the Pope as a declaration of war against the order and authority of the State. Even the English Government leaves no room for doubt about its mind, and if the Pope – as I know – fears above all things any manifestation of feeling there, he might learn from Manning that the strongest antipathy is felt among all classes, high and low, to the proposed dogmas, and that English statesmen see in them nothing less than a suicidal infatuation. Manning has thoroughly authentic proofs of that in his hands, but of course he won't produce them.

Pius is in a chronic state of extreme irritation. He sees with pleasure his two favourite journals – the Univers and Unita– abuse the Opposition Bishops in the most contemptuous language, and he indulges himself in outbreaks of bitterness against those who question his infallibility, which pass from mouth to mouth here but which one dares not write down. Even Cardinal Bilio is alarmed at such ebullitions, and affirms that he is constantly urging moderation and forbearance on the Pope, and has already warded off a great deal of mischief.

What strikes us foreigners is the evident indifference to the Council and its acts manifested by the inhabitants of the eternal city of every class. It is seldom spoken of in society, and what absorbs the attention of the world north of the Alps seems hardly to have the least interest for the Romans, what is there heard of with astonishment they hardly think worth a passing mention. And if ever the Council is spoken of, it is in hurried, mysterious, abrupt sentences, for every one says the espionage system has never been in such force here as since the opening of the Council, and a large staff lives by the trade. I know persons here whose doors are constantly watched by spies, who do not even conceal themselves, and if the Roman theologians had such rich materials for their investigations as is possessed by the Roman police, they would not have their equals in the world.

The Romans as a rule are fully aware of the financial value of the infallibilist doctrine, and know right well that a large increase of revenue as well as power from all countries is looked for as its product. That in their eyes is already an accomplished fact. They know for certain that the dogma will be at once proclaimed, and there is hardly a Roman here who has not an uncle or brother or nephew in orders and may not hope to share the anticipated profits in his own person or in the person of his relatives. The curialists here say, “We have lost so much by the diminution of the States of the Church, and so many payments, benefices and lucrative posts have passed out of our hands, that we absolutely require to be indemnified in some other way, and this the new dogma is intended to do and must do for us.” If ever the Pope is acknowledged throughout Christendom as an infallible authority, it is inevitable that ecclesiastical centralization should take much larger dimensions than before. Not only doctrine, but everything concerning Church life will be drawn to Rome and there finally settled. Theologians may undertake to distinguish between matters to which the Pope's infallible authority extends or does not extend, but in practice everything signed with his name will be held to be an utterance of divine truth, and nothing which is not attested with that signature will be held valid. There is a proverb here —

Quei consigli son prezzatiChe son chiesti e ben pagati.

And who would not gladly pay a handsome sum to be armed with an infallible decision, which will at once crush all opposition and put down all adversaries? The golden age of papal chanceries and clerks lies not in the past, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when, as a court prelate of the day tells us, the papal officials were daily employed in counting up gold pieces; it will first dawn on the day this truly golden doctrine of infallibility is promulgated. Were Cicero to re-appear in Rome now, he might repeat what he said in the Oration Pro Sextio, “Jucunda res plebi Romanæ, victus enim suppeditabatur large sine labore;” only he could no longer add, “Repugnabant boni, quod ab industriâ plebem ad desidiam avocari putabant.” For such “boni” no longer exist at Rome; rather is the account of Tacitus completely verified, “Securi omnes aliena subsidia expectant, sibi ignavi, aliis graves.”93 Another thing is the large and incurable deficit in the Roman finances, which must increase every year. There is an annual expenditure of thirty million francs to cover, and the Peter's pence, which came to fourteen millions in 1861, have sunk to about eleven millions, notwithstanding the collections ordered to be made everywhere twice a year. No further help can be obtained from loans. M. de Corcelles, who has exposed this uncomfortable state of things with the best intentions, has no other remedy to propose but a great increase of Peter's pence. It is hoped in Rome that the different nations will contribute larger sums than before to the Pope, now he is become infallible and thus more closely united to Deity. But they reckon much more on the enormous centralization and all-embracing monopoly of all possible dispensations, indulgences, consultations, canonizations, and decisions on moral, liturgical, political, dogmatic and disciplinary questions. They remember the treasures amassed in the temple of Delphi in ancient days, and expect the new oracle to be erected on the Tiber to attract, like a vast magnet, not iron but gold and silver.