Letters From Rome on the Council

Forty-Fourth Letter

Rome, May 13, 1870.– The time for the most eventful decisions is come: to-morrow the debate on infallibility commences. The opponents of the dogma have taken every means to put off this decision, and now that they are foiled, enter upon the question with the greatest repugnance and a sense of being defeated by anticipation in the perilous contest. The diplomatists too, who had presented notes from their Governments to the Vatican or had been instructed to support the notes presented, made urgent representations that the existing order of business should not be departed from, so as to get the discussion of infallibility deferred. And then some Bishops made an attempt to move the Pope's conscience. They told him that by this undertaking he was sowing divisions among the faithful, shaking faith, preparing for the closing days of his life a terrible disillusionizing and bitter reproaches, and kindling a fire which after blazing up in various parts of the Catholic world would turn into a frightful conflagration. He was urgently entreated to listen to some of the Bishops, who were in a position to inform him of the real state of things in different countries.

There has unquestionably for some time past been a certain vacillation among the Pope's counsellors, but never for a moment did they think of giving up the whole enterprise, and confessing themselves defeated. And as it was clear that, if the Schemata preceding the infallibility question were discussed in their regular order, the hot season would set in with its miasmas, and the inevitable prorogation of the Council would most seriously imperil the dogma, the resolve to proceed at once with the matter, regardless of consequences, prevailed in the Curia. The Opposition tried to hinder this intention by a solemn act. A deputation, consisting of several Bishops of different nations – a German, a Hungarian, and a Bohemian Bishop for Germany – was to be sent to the Pope, with Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati for its spokesman, to make the most earnest and direct representations to him. From fear of this demonstration, and in order at once to cut off all hopes placed upon it, the Curia had the Synopsis Animadversionum distributed in great haste, i. e. a selection from the Opinions of the Bishops, partly in favour of the dogma, partly against it. The opinions are about equally divided, but some represent more than one author. Thus e. g. 4 Hungarians and 16 Dominicans, in one case 24 Bishops, gave in the same Opinion. They are all printed without the names, but some of the writers are easily recognised, as e. g. Rauscher, Schwarzenberg, Fürstenberg, Krementz, Dupanloup, Clifford, Kenrick, etc. It is to be observed that some of these opinions are printed word for word, while others – of the Opposition Bishops – are cunningly tampered with, to the great disgust of their authors. But in most cases the reader cannot tell whether he has the opinion of a man of high position or of a nobody before him.

In consequence of this rapid manœuvre of distributing the Synopsis, the Opposition did not think it well to send their deputation, which accordingly fell through. The dogmatic constitution on infallibility was known here on the 1st of May, but was not published for eight days afterwards. The Curia was evidently not yet quite clear about its tactics; perhaps the season might not appear sufficiently advanced, and they might feel more secure of carrying their point when the heat had driven the foreign Bishops away and the Council was left to the Italian and Spanish rump.

The minority however did not cease to labour for the postponement of the infallibilist discussion. The certainty that the Curia would be in earnest about it gave them somewhat more energy than they had shown in the debate on the Little Catechism. The voting on it on May 4 had been quite unexpected. For it had been resolved that the amendments modifying the text should first be voted on, and the whole text be decided afterwards, when printed and brought forward in the definitive form it had received through the voting on the amendments. But instead of that, amendments and text were voted upon on the same day, so that many Bishops – including Darboy and Kenrick – were absent, and the whole number of non-placets and conditional votes together did not reach 100. This voting on May 4 was however provisional; the definitive voting takes place to-day, Friday, May 13. The Curia of course does not wish to have so considerable an Opposition left, and has therefore somewhat altered the text, but not in their sense. All the German Bishops of the minority, amounting to about 40, will vote Non placet, as I hear, and the French also, with a single exception, making some 30 more. Several others will join them, so that the previous 56 Non-placets will be augmented by most of the 44 prelates who voted juxta modum. The opposition to the Little Catechism may thus reach 100 votes, and will certainly exceed 80.

One might be tempted to ask why the Opposition, when it is so numerous, has no confidence of victory and is always shrinking from decisive measures. It is idle to suppose that the cancerous ulcer of infallibilism can ever be once for all cut out of the body of the Church, except by a scientific demonstration of its falsehood, or its adherents subdued without a decisive contest. This uneasy attitude of the minority arises from the want of sympathy and confidence among its various elements. The inopportunists are afraid of their allies not only hindering the definition but undermining belief in the doctrine and upsetting the whole Jesuitical system and school of lies, and thus exposing the contrast between the primacy as Christ founded it and as it has since been perverted. And the others judge from what they themselves say that their resistance will not be firm and persevering, and that they already think of yielding sooner or later. And even for those who hold the doctrine to be thoroughly false and unecclesiastical, it is much more convenient not to proclaim their conviction so roundly and maintain the opposition at all hazards, after the Pope has solemnly and formally committed himself and done all in his power to get the dogma defined and all condemned who reject it. For all who openly declared the doctrine to be an error would be declaring the Pope to be an innovator; and he must appear to every decided opponent of infallibilism no common innovator either, like any “doctor privatus,” but the most fearful and dangerous enemy of revealed truth and the pure doctrine of the Church, since he abuses his supreme authority to impose a false doctrine on consciences by terrorism, anathema and excommunication. But it is too much to demand of the Bishops to express such judgments, or give occasion for such conclusions and alternatives. While they wish to hold aloof from so tremendous a conflict, it is their interest to avoid a collision which must involve such considerations. The more many of them are ensnared in the delusion of the present papal system, the more vivid is their desire not to be forced into so public and decisive an announcement.

It is exactly those Bishops who are not the strongest dogmatically who display the most zeal in hindering the discussion on infallibility, and they have done a good deal to rehabilitate a force capable of resistance even after the abject surrender of April 24. This fact shows how little the astute and practised Roman Court has succeeded in gaining over the Fathers separately. The Hungarian primate notoriously signed the postulatum against infallibility with reluctance, and he has since openly adhered to the majority as spokesman of the Deputation de Fide, after he had previously retired from the assembly of German Opposition Bishops. He has a good right to reckon confidently on a Cardinal's Hat; and yet it is known that he, like almost all the Hungarians, will come forward to oppose the definition, and will probably speak against it to-morrow. Ginoulhiac, Bishop of Grenoble, who is perhaps the most learned Bishop in France, after Maret, though his learning is of a somewhat narrow and old-fashioned kind, is by nature and education one of those who are anxious to find some middle way, by which they may at once bow to authority and escape the consequences of an inexorable logic. The Curia has long believed his theologian's heart could be won by well-selected citations, but other means have been also employed. After he had been named to the Archbishopric of Lyons, the Pope refused him the desired audience and also the preconisation, so that the diocese will have to remain many months without a chief pastor. But he continued firm, and took part in the compilation of a document, which might well become the most important in its results of all the declarations of the Opposition. The Bishop of Mayence was predisposed by all his sympathies and antipathies to support the cause of Rome in this Council, and he has often, as well at Fulda as here, repudiated the notion that the Pope's claim to infallibility is an encroachment on the divine prerogatives. For a time he was a drag on his colleagues, but the policy of the Court and its treatment of the Opposition has more and more alienated him from the curialists; so that from seeming at first in Roman eyes to be divided by an immeasurable gulf from men like Dupanloup, he has become a powerful influence in the minority. The pamphlet on infallibility, written at his suggestion, and addressed from Solothurn to the Bishops, showed his changed attitude. This publication is well known to have been for a time kept back, and it was only after a contest of some weeks with the authorities that he succeeded in getting it issued. As the contemporaneous writings of Rauscher, Schwarzenberg and Hefele met with no particular opposition, this hostile treatment of Ketteler was ascribed to the belief that the greater sharpness of the German protest against the order of business, as compared with the French, was due to him. Where the French text speaks of the Bishops as representing the Churches, the Germans added the remark that this was the more important to insist upon in the case of the Vatican Council, where so many Bishops were admitted to vote, whose claim to vote by divine right was doubtful.99 This historical consideration has since been urged with great effect by Kenrick, whose decisive weight in fixing the value of the Vatican Council will only be known later. It was universally believed that Ketteler had co-operated in getting this passage inserted in the German Protest, and so one is not surprised that he should have taken a leading part in the last move of the Opposition. To-day a declaration, signed by 77 Fathers, has been presented to the Presidents, protesting energetically against the inversion of the established order in the interests of infallibility. It contains the severe remark that they well know no answer can be expected, but they are unwilling to let any doubts be cast on the freedom of the Council, and to have the Bishops made a public laughing-stock.

They cannot take much by this move. The arguments against inverting the purely arbitrary order of business, previously introduced, are weak in comparison with the objections to the definition on principle, and to insist on them is simply beating the air. The majority only see proofs of their weakness and grounds for increased confidence in the obstinate holding aloof of the Opposition from the main question, and in the fact that men who are not real assailants of the dogma play a prominent part in its proceedings. Wherever there has been any talk of hesitation, it has been only in the Vatican and the Commission de Fide, never among the mass of the party. Pius may for a moment have shared the scruples suggested to him by two of the Legates, and the Deputation may have believed that the dogma could be established without any violent precipitation, and regretted the indecent zeal of the French, but the ardent infallibilists – French, English, Belgian, Swiss, etc. – have never slackened in their confidence or their assiduity. They still affirm, as they ever have done, that infallibility has no real opponents or hardly any, and that the leading members of the Opposition privately hold the view or at least have never openly rejected it; there are but few even among the Animadversiones which deny the admissibility of the definition. So they think that there is a bait for every one of these troublers of peace, and that they can all either be won over by concessions or frightened into submission. The example of the Prince Bishop of Breslau, who is known to have suspended a priest for attacking the doctrines of the Syllabus, is very interesting in this point of view. If the Pope were to issue a Bull condemning the opponents of his infallibility, and to deal in the same way or – as he easily might – more solemnly and harshly with other doctrines than the Encyclical of 1864, Prince Bishop Förster would at least punish all malcontents as severely as he punished the contemner of the Syllabus.100 Yet in spite of all this, he is a member of the Opposition, and the majority believe it would probably soon melt away, if the Pope could resolve on adopting this policy. Moreover their leaders speak as though the Opposition had already incurred censures. They expect to make short work with the German Bishops who signed the Fulda Pastoral. In that document it is said, “The Holy Father is accused of acting under the influence of a party, and desiring to use the Council simply as a means of unduly exalting the power of the Apostolic See, changing the ancient and genuine constitution of the Church, and setting up a spiritual domination incompatible with Christian liberty. Men do not scruple to apply party names to the head of the Church and to the Episcopate, which hitherto we have been accustomed to hear only from the lips of professed enemies of the Church. And they plainly avow their suspicion that the Bishops will not be allowed full freedom of deliberation, and will themselves be deficient in the knowledge and straightforwardness requisite for the discharge of their duties in Council. And they accordingly call in question the validity of the Council and its decrees.”

Here in Rome the Bishops have to listen to these and similar observations usque ad nauseam, which their adversaries use only to remind them of this Pastoral. While denying before the world that the definition of infallibility was the object of the Council, or was intended at all by the holy Father, they at the same time wrote to Rome to deprecate it, being perfectly well acquainted with the designs of the Curia, and corresponded with friendly prelates on the means of averting it. And thus the other party may now say to them, “You acknowledge yourselves that the unity and strength of the Church is to be preferred to strict veracity, and that in so sacred a cause some measure of deception is allowable. Don't choose then to be better than your neighbours. You have already abandoned the ground of objective truth, and you may as well come over to us altogether.” But the chief means of breaking the Opposition consists in the Pope's making the Bishops feel the full weight of his authority and compromising himself yet more deeply.

The Curia has succeeded in setting aside the attempted intervention of the Governments, and the battle will have to be fought out, as is fitting, by the Bishops themselves. In the mind of the majority it is already over; the Deputation has issued a reply to the objections of the minority, which deserves the most careful attention of the theological world. It contains a flat denial of the force of historical evidence, and closes with a repudiation of the necessity of moral unanimity.101 This points out the road which the loyal Bishops of the Opposition must follow.

Postscript.– I have just heard that the definitive voting on the Little Catechism, which was announced for to-day's sitting, has not taken place. The Curia had discovered that the German and French Opposition Bishops would vote en masse against it. No regard had been paid to the representations and objections of those who voted juxta modum on May 4, and accordingly this stronger resistance was foreseen, and the Curia shrank from appealing to a new vote. Matters remain as the voting of May 4 left them, and it is hoped that before the next Solemn Session the minority will be split up by a more important controversy.

Forty-Fifth Letter

Rome, May 14, 1870.– The sitting of May 4 requires a more particular mention which shall be added here. The reporter on the scheme of the Catechism was Zwerger, Bishop of Seckau, who is a special favourite of the Curia, – forming as he does with the Tyrolese Rudigier and Fessler the little party of Austrian infallibilists, – a youthful and elegant prelate, whose Latin is seasoned with such terms as portraitus, præcautionibus, etc. He gave the consoling assurance that the new Catechism should be compiled by a Commission of Bishops named by the Pope, so that it might be “omnibus numeris absolutus.” He added that unfortunately he could not introduce this masterpiece into his own diocese, but he would in principle vote for it.

The question of the Catechism is of course closely connected with that of infallibilism. For first the Catechism will quickly and strongly inoculate the rising generation with the dogma, and secondly, as being a papal text-book, it will familiarize all the young from an early age with the notion, that in religion everything emanates from the Pope, depends on him and refers to him. Thus every one will be taught that not only all rights, as Boniface viii. said, but all religious and moral truths, are drawn forth by the Pope from the recesses of his own breast.

The notion is excellent, and does infinite honour to the Jesuits who invented it. It is like the egg of Columbus. One cannot think at first how it did not occur centuries ago to the astute members of the Curia. But to begin with, it would have been impossible earlier to fit this catechetical strait-waistcoat on such a Church as was the French; and then again a sufficient motive was wanting, for it is four centuries since any Pope thought of introducing new dogmas into the Church. The whole history of the Church offers but three examples of it. The first was the attempt of Gregory vii. and Innocent iii. to alter the doctrine hitherto prevalent on the relations of Church and State, and to substitute the new doctrine of the Pope's divine right to exercise temporal sovereignty over princes and peoples. This did not succeed. The second instance was the attempt made from the thirteenth century downwards by the Curia, and especially by the Jesuits, – for which a long series of forgeries and fictions paved the way, – to replace the primacy of the ancient Church by something totally different, viz., an absolute monarchy, so as to destroy the power and authority of the Episcopate, reduce the Bishops to mere delegates or commissioners of the Pope, and erect him into the irresponsible master of the whole Church and all its members, the sole source of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction. This scheme too was wrecked on the opposition, first of the great Councils, and afterwards of the French Church. The third attempt, to make all Popes infallible and thus establish the sole and universal monarchy of the Pope, is now going on. And as the teaching of the Church has to be altered and enriched with new dogmas, the Jesuits who inspire the Pope have quite rightly perceived that a Catechism clothed with supreme authority, such as never previously existed, must be introduced throughout the whole Catholic world. This undertaking promises special advantages to the Jesuit Order, and so it has been brought before the Council, and forced rapidly and unexpectedly to the vote. So little had it been anticipated, that over 100 of the Bishops in Rome were absent. Another attempt was made in this Schema to get papal infallibility accepted by a side-wind, by inserting a statement that the whole teaching office of the Church resided in the primacy, to the exclusion of the Bishops. It was felt at once that this would give the Pope a position and authority incompatible with any other, even that of the Church herself, and that the Bishops would entirely lose their judicial office in matters of doctrine. Partly on account of this passage, and partly on general grounds, 57 Bishops voted Non placet, among whom were Cardinals Schwarzenberg and Rauscher, Archbishops Scherr and Deinlein, and Bishops Dinkel and Hefele. It created a great sensation that Cardinal Mathieu, Archbishop of Besançon, also voted against it. He has only lately returned from his Easter visit to France, and is said now to belong decidedly to the minority. Among the 24 Bishops who voted juxta modum, were the Archbishops of Cologne and Salzburg, and the Bishop of Mayence. An interval of two days was given them to put into shape the condition on which they wanted to make their vote dependent. But we have already seen that, when the time was come, the Legates preferred not calling for any definitive vote.

Are we to infer from the collapse of so weighty and pregnant a question as this of the Catechism that henceforth everything will be settled much quicker? I cannot say. But as early as January 22 the Pope declared, in a Brief addressed to M. de Ségur, that the delay in the proceedings of the Council was due to the powers of Hell, for as it was to inflict on them their inevitable death-blow, they wished to protract it as long as they could. Pius is persuaded that, as soon as the Council produces its fruits, all faults and vices will at once disappear from human society, and all who are in error be led into the truth. That is expressly stated in the Brief; and these are no mere phrases, such as the Curia frequently indulges in, but are uttered in sober earnest. Pius really holds his infallibility to be the divinely ordained panacea for effecting a thorough cure of mankind, who are now sick unto death. He is convinced that the fount of unerring inspiration, which will henceforth flow incessantly from the holy Father at Rome, will fructify all Christian lands like a supernatural Nile stream, and overflow all human science for its purification or its destruction. The Jesuits make the decrees, who are not indeed themselves infallible, but whose compositions, directly the Pope has signed his name to them, become inspired and free from every breath of error.

The psychological enigma presented by Pius can only be solved by looking steadily at the two root-ideas, which interpenetrate and supplement one another in his mind. There is first his belief in the objective infallibility of his 256 predecessors, and next his belief that he, Mastai, has through continual invocation and worship of the Madonna attained to an inspiration and divine illumination of which she is the medium. This last privilege is in his eyes, as all about him know and occasionally say, a purely personal one, which his predecessors did not all experience. But it strengthens his faith in infallibilism, and – which is the main point – he is certain by virtue of this infused illumination that he is God's chosen instrument for introducing the dogma. And this higher certainty naturally leads him to regard the opposing Bishops as unhappy men snared in the meshes of a fatal error, who rebel in their sinful blindness against the counsel of God, and will be dragged at the chariot-wheels of the triumphal car of the infallible Papacy in its resistless progress, like boys hanging on behind, in spite of their efforts to pull it back. And therefore sharp rebukes —verbera verborum– must not be spared these episcopal opponents. Pius knows that the German and American members of the party are infected by the atmosphere of Protestantism, and the French by that of infidelity, so that they are suffering at least under a violent heterodox influenza, and require drastic remedies. But no one had imagined that all regard for decency would be so completely laid aside, and that the Pope would so far forget his high position as to actually descend into the arena, deal blows with his own hand, and assail all disputants with bitter and insulting words, as he has in fact done. He might have waited quietly till his unconditional majority of 500 had voted the dogma, and then have fulminated to his heart's content the plenitude of anathemas and curses at the still unbelieving “filii perditionis” and “iniquitatis alumni,” in the forms that are stored up ready for use in the Roman Chancery. But he is too impatient to wait for the decision, and exhausts all the weapons in his quiver by anticipation. When the Bishops of the minority presented their first remonstrance against the new dogma, he had it announced in his journals that it was only from the lofty impartiality which became him that he had not received their memorial, as neither had he received those of the other party. But now this mask is dropped, and no means are omitted for overreaching or intimidating the minority. It is confidently expected that fear and discouragement will soon do their work in splitting up the Opposition. Many of its members recoil in alarm from the position they will be placed in by persevering to the last. It needs more than ordinary episcopal courage, it needs a deep conscientiousness and faith firm as a rock in the ultimate victory of the true doctrine of the ancient Church, to confront in open fight the triple host of the Curia, the Jesuits and the ultramontanes.