Letters From Rome on the Council

And now for the first time the excellence of the Council Hall is proved, and the wise foresight of the Curia in choosing it and adhering to it with the firmness of old Romans in spite of all entreaties and representations to the contrary. It is precisely adapted to the present tactics of the majority. The Bishops will occupy a number of sittings with speeches, generally read, seldom spoken, which four-fifths of their auditors, as before, neither understand nor wish to understand. For the majority know everything already, they are armed with a triple breastplate, and have their short and powerful watchword, which renders them invincible. Those who frequent infallibilist circles here may hear St. Augustine's saying quoted ten times a day, “Roma locuta est, causa finita est,” or St. Ambrose's “Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia,” or that St. Irenæus said every one must necessarily agree with the Roman Church. These are mere fables; Augustine and Irenæus said nothing of the kind, but something quite different; and while Ambrose did indeed use the words, it was without the remotest reference to the Pope and his infallibility. But the words are quoted in a hundred books and pamphlets, and are used like theological revolvers which never miss fire. And then Mermillod will repeat in the Council what he lately said in a sermon here about the threefold manifestation of God in the crib of Bethlehem, in the Sacrament of the Altar, and – in the Vatican. Pie of Poitiers will utter some of those bold Oriental metaphors, which all France laughs at but which are gravely received in the Council Hall. Manning will commend infallibility as the one plank of safety for mankind who are sinking in the shipwreck of scepticism, while he sings a pæan over the triumph of the dogma over history. There will be room even for some flashes of genius from the German infallibilists, the Tyrolese and the three Bavarians, if they can resolve on opening their lips hitherto so firmly closed. And then the African heat and sultry atmosphere, drying up the brain, which have already begun to press on Rome like a leaden pall, will come in to expedite the close. The majority will avail themselves of the right the Pope has conferred on them to break off abruptly the discussion, in which nothing has been discussed, and the Pope will appear in a Solemn Session, in the full pomp of the earthly representative of Christ, to proclaim with infallible certainty his own infallibility and that of all his predecessors and successors, “approbante Concilio.” And thus will he enter on his new empire of the world; for he will then for the first time be the acknowledged master and sole teacher of mankind; before, he was only a pretender. The Bishops will bow their heads reverently under a profound sense of their own fallibility before the one divinely enlightened man, and the world will go to sleep to wake next morning enriched and blessed with the new and fundamental article of faith. The day of the promulgation will be a great day of creation. “God said, Let there be light, and there was light, and the evening and the morning were the first day” of the new Church, after the old Church for 1869 years had been unable to ascertain and formulize its chief article of faith. For the Popes were always infallible; “the light appeared in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” From the Pentecost of the blessed year 1870, as Manning has prophesied, dates the age of the Holy Ghost, and the Church is for the first time really complete. As the Pentecost of the year 33 was the birthday of the ancient Church, so will the Pentecost of 1870 be the birthday of the new and infinitely more enlightened Church. Nearly all commentators now assume that the seven days of creation in Genesis are not seven ordinary days, but signify a great period of the world's history. It cannot then be taken ill if the Church, instead of distinctly putting forward her principal dogma on the first Pentecost, which would certainly have been the most natural course, should have waited nineteen centuries in the vain attempt to ascertain and formulate it, and have only now hatched the egg in the year 1870.

Forty-Sixth Letter

Rome, May 15, 1870.– Yesterday the discussion of the Schema on the Primacy began, i. e., speeches were delivered for and against infallibility, for any regular discussion is of course impossible in the Council Hall. The Hall is really more patient than the proverbially patient paper, as long as the majority do not get excited. Things can be said there which would not be allowed to be written, still less printed. The names of 69 Bishops are inscribed to speak. Bishop Pie of Poitiers had already the day before, as reporter of the Deputation, exceeded the expectations generally formed of him. He had discovered a wholly new argument, to which he gave utterance with evident self-complacency. The Pope, he said, must be infallible, because Peter was crucified head downwards. As the head bears the whole weight of the body, so the Pope, as head, bears the whole Church; but he is infallible who bears, not he who is borne. —Q.E.D. The Italians and Spaniards applauded enthusiastically. On the 14th Cardinal Patrizzi spoke. The Pope, he observed, certainly claims personal infallibility, but he does not therefore wish nor is he obliged to separate himself from the Episcopate. Certainly not, thought the minority, since we must all assent to that claim of the infallible, so that he cannot separate himself from us Bishops or shake us off if he wished it. Bishop Rivet of Dijon carried off the honours of the day among the Opposition. Bishop Ranolder of Vesprim referred briefly but forcibly to the dangers into which the new dogma would plunge the Hungarian Church. Dreux Brézé, who followed worthily in the footsteps of Pie, was this time eclipsed by a Sicilian prelate, who said that the Sicilians had a reason peculiar to themselves for believing the infallibility of all the Popes. It is well known that Peter preached in that island, where he found a number of Christians; but when he told them that he was infallible, they thought this article of faith, which they had never been taught, a strange one. In order to get at the truth about it, they sent an embassy to the Virgin Mary, to ask if she had heard of Peter's infallibility, to which she replied that she certainly remembered being present, when her Son conferred this special prerogative on him. This testimony fully satisfied the Sicilians, who have ever since preserved in their hearts faith in infallibility. This speech was really delivered in the Council Hall on May 14. The Opposition Bishops see a proof of the insolent contempt of the majority in their putting up such men as Pie and this Sicilian to speak against them.

Sicily is truly the land where faith removes mountains, and Pius would find himself among his most genuine spiritual children if he went to Messina. There the letter is still preserved, which the Virgin Mary addressed to the inhabitants and let fall from heaven, and the feast of the Sacra Lettera is annually observed with the full approval of the Roman Congregation of Rites, when the excited populace shout in the streets “Viva la Sacra Lettera.” The Jesuit Inchover has written a book to prove its authenticity to demonstration.

A great many copies of the remarkable pamphlet Ce qui se passe au Concile have been secretly disseminated – the Government naturally wants to suppress it – and it is eagerly read. I have learnt from a Frenchman that Pius himself has read some pages, on which he observed, “C'est mal, c'est très-mal, excessivement mal.” It is clear that the author has himself collected his notices in Rome. If its revelations show how every usage of former Councils has been reversed and all true freedom carefully destroyed, a further evidence of this is supplied by the statement of the official Giornale di Roma about the departure of the Americans, where the Bishops are plainly reminded that they are liable to arrest, and that any of them who quit Rome without leave incur heavy censures. A German Archbishop, who had an audience of the Pope to-day, took the opportunity of speaking to him about the universal aversion and resistance of the Germans to the infallibilist dogma. It made not the slightest impression. Pius answered: “I know these Germans of old, who choose to know best about everything; every one wants to be Bishop and Pope.” Yet it is notorious that he does not understand a word of German, and has never been in Germany or read a German book, even in a translation. But he reads Veuillot and Margotti, and hears the Jesuits at least three times a week. Meanwhile the Protest drawn up by Ketteler against the arbitrary change of the order of business was presented on the 12th of March with 72 signatures. It contains, as I said before, the words: “We know well that we shall receive no answer to this any more than to our former memorials.”

All German Catholics count here for half Protestants. A German must here give special evidence of his orthodoxy, I do not say before he is trusted, but before he is reckoned a Catholic at all by the side of Spaniards and Italians. Above all is German theology in ill repute, and the mere word “history” in the mouth of a German acts like a red handkerchief on certain animals. The good times are gone by when Germany was considered the classical land of obedience in comparison with France, so copious was the influx of Peter's pence, the Jesuits, on whom the chief hopes are centred, have effected very little here except in Westphalia and the Tyrol.

It is hard for the Bishops, even after a five months' experience, to comprehend the rôle assigned them, and to understand that they have only been summoned to receive commands, to obey, and to do service. It is a saying current among the Monsignori that the Bishops are nothing but servants of the Pope. “Just consider the monstrosity,” said one of the youngest but most actively employed of the Cardinals to a French priest, when the famous letter of censure addressed by the Pope to the Archbishop of Paris appeared in the newspapers, “this Archbishop dares to speak of rights which belong to him! What would you say if one of your lackeys were to talk of his rights, when you gave him your orders?”

Forty-Seventh Letter

Rome, May 16, 1870.– The Bishops of the minority want to bind themselves by subscribing an agreement to vote for no formula which contains the personal infallibility of the Pope. A calculation emanating from them has been shown me, according to which the strength of the Opposition is undiminished, or rather increased. It enumerates 43 Germans and Hungarians, 40 North Americans, 29 French, 4 Portuguese, and 10 Italians. The number of Bishops from the United States who are considered to be trustworthy is especially worthy of notice. They have been greatly influenced by the recent publications of the Bishops, and particularly by the excellent work of Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis. When they first came to Rome they were nearly all inclined to the new dogma, but here their eyes have been gradually opened. The insolent and despotic treatment of the Bishops, the spectacle of adulation exhibited by persons who call themselves successors of the Apostles, and the lamentable sophistry employed in torturing historical facts – as e. g. the case of Honorius – all this has gradually filled these Republicans with disgust and aversion, and driven them to the opposite side. But clearly what has chiefly influenced them has been the conviction produced by the controversy that, if they take home with them the new dogma of the Pope's political supremacy over all States, they will be exposed to the contempt and hatred of all educated America. And as many of them are Irishmen by birth, they have been reminded that, as Alexander vi. gave the American peoples to Spain, so Adrian iv. gave Ireland to the King of England and thereby brought misery on the emerald isle.

The Bishops of the Opposition know how to appreciate the strength and numerical preponderance of their rivals; they know too that, besides a cool calculation and passive subjection to the commands of their “lord,” a certain enthusiasm and confidence also prevail among their ranks. There are first the numerous missionary Bishops and Vicars-Apostolic, who must certainly vote as they are told, for they are entirely in the power of the Propaganda, and Cardinal Barnabo is an inexorably strict master: the Orientals have experienced that. And moreover the Bishops engaged in converting the heathen say, “How conveniently the new dogma will simplify and facilitate our work with Negroes, Kaffirs, New-Zealanders, etc.! We have hitherto had to refer them to the Church, of whose nature and authority we could only impress a dim conception on their minds with much time and trouble. Henceforth we shall tell them that God inspires one man in Rome with all truth, from whom all others receive it. That is short, simple, and what a child can understand.”

But the main strength of the papal army consists in the 120 Bishops from the kingdom of Italy with the the exception of 10, the 143 from the States of the Church, and the 120 titular Bishops without subjects or dioceses, most of them created by the present Pope, who represent nobody but themselves, or rather him who has raised them from the dust and set mitres on their heads. That makes altogether 373 Italians. This chosen band will remain here patiently through the heat so unendurable to the Northern Bishops, and the question has been already mooted in the Vatican, as I hear from the mouth of one who is in its confidence, whether it would not be best to protract the affair and defer the final voting till these recalcitrant Northerners have obtained the permission which will be readily accorded them to flee from the heat and fevers, after which the Italian and Spanish prelates would vote the darling dogma with conspicuous unanimity. The idea deserves to be preferred to another, which is also under consideration. The Pope might issue a Bull defining that the moral unanimity, which has been so much talked of, is not necessary for Councils in voting articles of faith, and that a simple majority is sufficient. For it is thought that most of the minority Bishops, especially the inopportunists, would not dare to resist the new papal definition, and would thus be compelled at last to succumb to the infallibilist decree. We shall soon see. You may gather what the leaders of the minority think of the situation from a remark of Cardinal Mathieu's, “On veut jeter l'Église dans l'abîme, nous y jeterons plutôt nos cadavres.”

The two Bavarian Bishops, Stahl and Leonrod, have thought fit after two months to make a public demonstration of their assent to Bishop Räss's condemnation of Gratry. The explanation accepted here is that, after the Bavarian note had been presented, the authorities wished the Bavarian Bishops to make an adverse move on the conciliar chess-board; and as these two prelates would not openly contradict their King, the expedient of a very late adhesion to the effusions of the Bishop of Strasburg was chosen.

It is commonly assumed that all the Cardinals are infallibilists as a matter of course, and the more so as this is at bottom the only doctrine which may be said to have been exclusively invented and built up by men who either were already or were soon about to become Cardinals. Still this is not quite the case. Apart from the non-resident Cardinals, Rauscher, Schwarzenberg and Mathieu, there are some among the residents who would gladly be dispensed from voting for the new foundation article of faith on which the whole edifice is henceforth to rest. But one of them said to-day, “We shall ruin our position, lose all influence, and become the mark of endless attacks. And as every one here has some weak and vulnerable point in his past life, he dare not expose himself to these fatal assaults on his character and honour from which there would be no escape.” At the same time the Cardinal admitted that the whole College has so lost its influence and become so insignificant, that for six months the Pope has not once assembled them. Antonelli and a few favourites, with the Jesuits of the Civiltà, are the people who now construct the history of the world and the Church.

Forty-Eighth Letter

Rome, May 20, 1870.– The first week of the great debate is drawing to a close. The Archbishops of Vienna, Prague, Gran, Paris, Antioch and Tuam have spoken against the infallibilist definition. So much is gained; the Catholic world knows that it is represented in Council, while the Court party is robbed of some illusions about the strength of the resistance to be looked for. The only fruit of its better knowledge as yet observable is seen in an increased obstinacy and a greater insolence of tone. The Commission has already declared by anticipation, in its reply to the remarks of the Bishops against the dogma, that the denial of infallibility is condemned under pain of censure, and scientific arguments are no longer available. The giving out of this watchword does excellent service to the majority, who are very shy of theological arguments and treat their opponents as heretics. That far-famed courtesy, which has hitherto been an ornament if not exactly a real excellence of Rome, has greatly diminished, and the hypocrisy so long spun out has disappeared; it has become necessary to recognise the broad gulf which divides parties. And this has produced a tendency on the side of the Court and the majority to push their claims to the extremest point, to play for high stakes, and hold out no prospect of concessions beforehand. The minority is in their eyes not a power to be negotiated with but a gang of insolent mutineers to be put down. The mass of the majority have carried their leaders with them, and only passion now prevails in that camp. But the harshness and roughness the Curia has thought it necessary to display has done more to strengthen the Opposition than the changes and concessions already pre-arranged will do to dissolve it. They have been suffered in this way to gain a position which they might never have won if the Curia had exercised more foresight. Whether all the elements of the Opposition will be found reliable, pure in their aims and loyal in their hearts, the future will show. At present I only record the audacious policy of the majority based on cunning calculations, as it has been evinced in the early days of the discussion. But the majority naturally includes men of different minds; there are some who would like to be well rid of the affair, and others who would gladly discover a formula not looking like a positive innovation which might satisfy opponents, while the great mass of them want the blow to be struck so that, after crushing the Opposition within the Council, they may annihilate it without the Council also. These last have the upper hand in the majority, and will probably retain it till the general debate is over and the doctrine itself and its definition come to be discussed. They are led by cool, calculating heads, but consist for the most part of the uneducated and unlearned mass of the episcopate who have no independence, the people who during Strossmayer's speech presented the spectacle of a rabble of conspirators rather than an ordered assembly. To keep them in the requisite state of exaltation the speeches must be adapted to their intellectual level. And as they are more easily excited than controlled they do not of course exhibit the majority in a favourable light, and one may be prepared at any moment for the Council being disgraced by an outbreak of their frenzy. Nothing more of the kind however has happened yet.

At the head of the extreme party stands the close ally of the Jesuits, the Archbishop of Westminster. He was the first to say out with the utmost distinctness that infallibility belongs to the Pope alone and independently of the Episcopate. The ultramontane speakers, Pie, Patrizzi and Deschamps, have vied with one another in their endeavours to get this extreme view of Manning's accepted, which they themselves did not all share before. The emancipation of the Pope from the entire Episcopate is the very turning-point of the whole controversy, the object for which the Council was put on the stage; infallibility tied to the consent of the united or dispersed Episcopate nearly all the Bishops would accept, for very few indeed clearly understand that even Councils depend on another consent than that of the Episcopate. But such a definition of infallibility would cost Rome the very thing she has laboured so much and sinned so much to gain. It is a great advantage for the Opposition that in this matter there are no formulas of compromise possible but such as are manifestly perfidious and insincere.

On the 17th Deschamps, Archbishop of Mechlin, made perhaps the most important, certainly the most remarkable, speech delivered in favour of the Constitutio. He is considered the ablest speaker of his party, which notoriously has no superabundance of good speakers, and is said to be a superficial man who takes things easily. He not only committed himself to the extremest section of the party, but denounced his opponents as bad Christians not walking in the fear of God. The change of tone was much remarked in him, as in the Bishop of Poitiers. Manning exhibits the same change, who now maintains that all who do not submit to the majority might well be excommunicated directly after the promulgation of the decree. Two German Bishops, Greith and Hefele, spoke on the same day; and indeed in this debate many weighty voices will be raised from every land where the contest about the Church is being fought, to point to the practical dangers involved in the circumstances of the case – a kind of argument Pius is wont to put aside with a “Noli timere.” Greith of St. Gallen spoke for Switzerland; as a learned theologian he declared himself against the definition on scientific grounds, and as a Swiss Bishop on account of the present circumstances of his country; for he is persuaded that his Swiss brother bishops, with their zeal for the infallibilist decree, are simply forging weapons against the Church for the Radicals. Bishop Hefele of Rottenburg touched in the course of his speech on the affair of Honorius, which must later on come into the discussion. Next day Hefele read Cardinal Rauscher's speech. But Cardinal Schwarzenberg's address exceeded all expectations and left a profound impression. Cardinal Donnet and the Archbishop of Saragossa, who spoke in the name of the Deputation, did not bring the defence any further or develop any new points of history, and – which is more important – gave no further information about the plans and hopes of the Curia and the majority.

On Thursday the 19th Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin, spoke, who for twenty years has been the protagonist of Romanism in the British isles. With sound tact he chose the most learned Bishop of the minority, Hefele, for attack, and assailed not his speech but his publications. Yet he did not attempt to refute him, but only to prove that he had contradicted himself, since the account of Honorius given in his History of Councils is different from that in his latest work. It is true that in the History, where no doctrinal inferences were to be drawn, the theological significance of the condemnation of Honorius does not receive the same exhaustive appreciation and exposition as in the little tractate on the question whether he was justly condemned for heresy. But there is no difference of principle between the two works; in both Hefele says plainly that Honorius was justly pronounced a heretic, even if he was no heretic at heart. But when the two passages are separated from each other, it can be made to look as though he had maintained in the former that Honorius was really orthodox whereas he now declares that he was a heretic. But the process could with equal reason be reversed, and the heresy of Honorius shown to be affirmed in the History and his orthodoxy in the pamphlet. But what use would even an orthodox Pope be for upholding the purity of the Church's doctrinal deposit, if he used heretical formulas to express his own really true opinion?

None the less however was Cullen's attack received with great satisfaction, for the ruling powers know well enough on what the Bishop of Rottenburg's opposition is based, and think to subdue German science —i. e., the devil himself – in his person. On the same day the Patriarch Jussuf uttered words that deserve to be laid to heart on the consequences such a dogmatic blunder would entail in the East – a significant indication that the Orientals are not prepared to bend obediently under the yoke of a decree aimed at their ritual and their rights as well as their tradition. The Archbishop of Corfu answered him next day. There is very little that can be properly called debating, for the order of proceedings is better suited for academical addresses than for real discussion; the practice of making prelates speak in their order of precedence makes any honest interchange of blows impossible. But the Greek coming forward to speak looked like a preconcerted answer to the Armenian. The Archbishop of Corfu insisted that, so far from the dogma rendering the reunion of the Greek Church more difficult, such a result was inconceivable without it, nor could the dogma excite any suspicion, because the Greeks found it in their tradition as well as their Fathers and Councils, and envied the Latin Church her infallible Pope. In evidence of this he cited the passages where the Pope's primacy is recognised. The great body of the Fathers listened to this with grave faces: it was only following the style of their own theologians.