Letters From Rome on the Council

On the 14th, Haynald, in spite of his bodily suffering, delivered a long polemical speech against the majority, and maintained his reputation of being the best Latin speaker after Strossmayer. Jussuf, the Melchite Patriarch of Antioch, came next with an apology for the Oriental Churches and their liberties. He pointed out in earnest words the danger of their defection, if the present design of taking away their ancient rights was carried out. He produced letters from his home telling him that he had better not return at all than bring back from Rome decrees curtailing their ecclesiastical liberties. And if the Pope chose to send back another Patriarch instead of him, they might be very sure he would not be received. Bishop Krementz of Ermeland observed that Holy Scripture made, not Peter, or as is here understood the Pope, the foundation of the Church, but Christ, and then as secondary foundation the Apostles and Prophets. Only after these and in dependence on them could this designation be applied to the See of Rome.

It had indeed been already observed among the minority how monstrous it was to make the Pope “the principle of unity in the Church,” as the Schema puts it, and that the ancient Fathers speak indeed of an “exordium unitatis” established in the person of Peter, but had never called him, and still less the Bishop of Rome, the principle of ecclesiastical unity, which would be logically inconceivable. In the voting, which was again taken by rising and sitting down, the little band of dissentients disappeared before the consentient mass, and the expression “principium unitatis,” opposed as it is both to logic and tradition, was accepted. Before the voting Bishop Gallo of Avellino had uttered in the name of the Commission some Neapolitan mysticism about Adam and Eve and the mysteries already revealed in Adam and Eve of the Church resting on the Pope.

Cardinal Mathieu was the first speaker on the fourth chapter on infallibility. His long and powerful speech was mainly directed against Valerga, who had outraged the French by his attack on the “Gallican errors.” It was a well-delivered panegyric on the French nation, which had shed the blood of her sons to restore Rome to the Pope, and without whose troops at Civita Vecchia the Council could not remain in Rome. The only doubt is whether this Valerga is worth as much notice as the French have accorded to him. After Mathieu Cardinal Rauscher spoke. His speech was very inaudible owing to the nature of the Council Hall, but was clear and well grounded, and showed how the acceptance of a personal infallibility, by virtue of which every utterance of a Pope must be believed by all Christians under pain of eternal damnation, is equally at issue with facts and with the former tradition of the Church, and must have a fatal effect in the future. He referred to Vigilius, Honorius, the reordinations of Sergius and Stephen, and the contradiction between Nicolas iii. and John xxii., and commended the formula of Antoninus requiring the consent of the Church as a condition. He could never assent to the Schema without mortal sin. “We knew all that from your pamphlet,” said Dechamps while he was speaking. “But you have never refuted it,” replied Rauscher.

Cardinal Pitra was to have followed, but he was unwell, and the sitting was broken off. The Presidents had issued an instruction that no one should speak out of his turn, and if prevented on the regular day should lose his right altogether. The rule in this case affected the zealous infallibilist Pitra, and accordingly the Bishops were dismissed before the usual hour.

The two next days, the 17th and 18th, were festivals, and there was no sitting held. As there are already 75 speakers enrolled for the fourth chapter, the promulgation obviously cannot take place on June 29, and the Council will last on into July. There is indeed a simple means of gratifying the desire of the Pope and curtailing the pains of the Bishops, who are now absolutely tortured by the heat: the majority can any day cut short the special debate, as they have already cut short the general discussion. It may of course be objected that this procedure, of depriving the Bishops of their right of speaking and violently imposing silence upon them, overthrows the nature of a Church Council, where every Bishop is meant to bear witness not only to his own belief, but to the tradition of his country and the faith of his diocese. If the Bishops are deprived of this right – and that too where so momentous a question is at issue and there is such diversity of opinion – the freedom essential to a Council is wanting.

The Pope becomes more lavish of his admonitions and instructions every day. In the last Papal Capella Patrizzi assured him the faithful were impatiently awaiting the proclamation of infallibility, whereon Pius, in presence of several Bishops of the minority, replied that there were three classes of opponents of the dogma, first, the gross ignoramuses, who did not know what it meant; secondly, the slaves of princes, he said “of Cæsar,” referring both to Vienna and Paris; thirdly, the cowards, who feared the judgment of this evil world. But he prayed for their enlightenment and conversion.148 This was of course applied here universally to the Bishops of the Opposition. Moreover the Pope had just before had a letter written to certain canons of Besançon, saying that all the objections raised now had been triumphantly refuted a hundred times over, and that as to appealing to the results of historical criticism and the examination of texts, viz., to the huge mass of deliberate falsifications and forgeries, these were “des anciens sophismes ou mensonges contraires aux prérogatives du St. Siége.” The remark touches Rauscher, Schwarzenberg, Dupanloup, Hefele, Maret, Kenrick, Ketteler (in the pamphlet he circulated), and some thirty more. There is much dispute here as to the paternity of those views which Pius emits both orally and in writing. Has he got them from the Civiltà, or are the Jesuit writers of that journal only the pupils of the Pope, who has received this information “by infused science” from the Virgin Mary? On that point opinions differ. The majority, who are quite aware that every one would think it a joke to call Giovanni Maria Mastai a learned theologian, hold to the latter view, and to the well-known picture painted by the Pope's own order, where the “actus infusionis” is represented to the eye. Their favourite watchword is that every one who does not accept the decree is, or in a few days will be, a heretic and enemy of the Church; his non placet consummates his separation from her, and hence Manning has already proposed that each of these Bishops should have his excommunication handed him with his railway-ticket when he leaves Rome. Livy says, “Hæc natura multitudinis est, aut servit humiliter aut superbe dominatur;” the “multitude” in the Hall combines both characteristics.

On June 18 the Pope observed a German priest among those admitted to an audience, and asked who he was, when he replied that he was secretary to a Bishop, who is well known for his learning and his fallibilist views. Pius turned away with an exclamation of disgust. Of another very eminent dignitary of similar views he is wont to say in the bitterest terms, that his opinions are prompted solely by personal enmity to himself.

The majority are said to be very impatient, so that many anticipate the violent closing of the debate on Saturday, the 25th. And the greater number of the intending speakers on the fourth chapter, now increased to a hundred, belong to the Court party, who might say that they are only willingly renouncing the pleasure of hearing their own ideas put forward. But then the speeches of Darboy, Place (of Marseilles), Maret, Clifford, Schwarzenberg, Simor, Dupanloup, and Haynald would also be suppressed. Hefele was the first to put down his name, as he was not allowed at the time to answer the fierce attack of Cullen. On his inquiring after some days when his turn would come, he was told that he was the fifty-first in order, as all who came before him in age and rank must speak before he could be permitted to open his mouth. A little later he was told he came seventy-first, so that his hope of being able to vindicate himself in the Council is almost at an end. Meanwhile he has had a brief reply to the attack of a Frenchman, de la Margerie, printed at Naples.

The minority have resolved to send a deputation to the Pope to petition for the adjournment of the Council, since it is horrible to detain so many aged men, many of whom are sick, by violence in this unhealthy city. They will of course meet with a positive refusal, for the Jesuits and the holy Virgin, who is always appealed to, are for carrying out the compulsory system to the last. But you may judge how the heat and the moral and physical miasmas are working on the Bishops from the fact that there are now only five or six on a bench where thirty Bishops used to sit, though most of the others are in Rome or the neighbourhood. Indeed they are kept prisoners here, and Antonelli said recently to a diplomatist, “Si quelque Evêque veut faire une partie de campagne (like Förster) la police n'a rien à y voir, mais s'il voulait quitter le Concile, alors ce serait différent,” so that every foreign Bishop lives here under the inspection of the police, who are to take care that he does not escape. This statement seemed to the diplomat to whom it was made so seriously to affect the sovereign rights of his Government, that he at once reported it.

The Roman logic, as may be seen from the Civiltà, is simply this: the Council is what it is through the Pope alone; without him it can do nothing and is an empty shadow. Freedom of the Council therefore means freedom of the Pope: if he is free, it is free. You may infer what reception will be accorded in the Vatican to the petition just resolved upon for a secret voting on the Papal Schema. There could be no more eloquent testimony to the real state of things and the estimate formed of the freedom of the Council, for it is dictated by the knowledge that a secret ballot would give a very considerable number of negative votes, at least 200, if the private expressions of opinion of the Bishops may be relied upon, while no one here ventures to hope for more than 110 or 115 non placets in a public voting. There are certainly some hundred, even of the Papal boarders, who would say Non placet, if their votes were sheltered by secrecy. Neither the Catholic nor the non-Catholic public has any idea of the extent to which a Bishop in the present day is dependent on Rome, and how difficult or impossible the administration of his office would be made for him by the disfavour of Rome. The worst off of all are the Bishops under Propaganda, who have simply no rights. For them to speak of freedom, after the Pope has announced his wish, would be ludicrous, and to this category belong not only all the Oriental and Missionary Bishops, but the American and English also. And even for the Bishops of the older Sees, who are under the Congregatio Episcoporum et Regularium, and are protected by the common law or by Concordats, the practice of the Curia is a field full of man-traps, a belt studded with nails, which only needs to be drawn in by curialistic hands to make the nails pierce the body of the obnoxious Bishop. As things now are here, and after Pius has gone further than any Pope for centuries in glaring partisanship and open threats of enmity against all dissentients, secret voting must appear the only possible means of securing even a shadow of freedom for the decrees of the Council. If the voting is public, the word freedom, as used of the Council, could only be regarded as a mockery. And it is very well known here that the Pope's entourage do everything in their power to maintain him in his belief that the Opposition will melt away at last like snow before the sun, and hardly four negative votes will remain.

Last year the theologians summoned for the preliminary work were sent home at the beginning of June, and scarcely one or two even of the directing Commission of Cardinals stayed longer in Rome. Now the 15th or 20th of July is spoken of as the day for the promulgation, and if it should be a little earlier there will still be many of the prelates who will return from Rome ill and with their constitutions permanently shattered. The ancients found the word “amor” reversed in the name of the eternal city (Roma), and the Bishops are daily reminded of it. Meanwhile the brilliant recompense of Cardoni's services has rekindled the hopes of the majority; there are fifteen or sixteen vacant Hats, which will be given to those who have deserved best of the new dogma. The merits of the Italians are not conspicuous; they have most of them done moles' work, chiefly as spies, for that business is conducted here to an extent almost unheard of in Europe. Valerga is of course an exception, who has excelled all the Italians as a speaker. After him, Mgr. Nardi has so greatly distinguished himself by his active zeal that a red Hat would seem a fitting ornament of his head, but then there are very suspicious circumstances, only too notorious in Rome. The men who have done and will do the most important services, who are indeed the modern Atlases to carry the main weight of the new dogma on their lusty shoulders, are of course the Jesuits. Pius is penetrated with the feeling that their services are above all praise and recompense. A Jesuit cannot be rewarded with titles and colours and dresses, but he can receive a Cardinal's Hat. The names of Toletus, Bellarmine, Pallavicini, de Lugo, recall grand memories. Not long before its dissolution in 1736, three of the Order were in the Sacred College together – Tolomei, Eienfuegos and Salerno. That might happen again, and the College would gain in capacity and working power. As Kleutgen cannot be thought of, on account of his trial before the Inquisition, and Perrone is too old, the next candidates would be Curci, Schrader and Franzelin. Father Piccirillo, from his intimate relations to the highest personage, would possess the first reversionary claim, and his services have been rewarded in a manner greatly desired and long aimed at by his Order, for he has received the permission, unprecedented in the history of Rome, to go alone into the secret archives and there work. Such an event would at other times have been regarded at Rome as a downfall of the heavens or a sign of the last judgment, and even now it has produced perplexity and amazement in genuine Roman circles. For every one who passes the threshold of the chamber of archives incurs ipso facto excommunication. So the Order is firmly seated in this unapproachable sanctuary. There is no fear of indiscreet publications. Piccirillo, far from publishing anything, will excel in mere negative activity.

Among foreign candidates for the Cardinalate Manning stands out as a star of the first rank in the Roman firmament. He may claim some paternity of the great idea of at last treating the apotheosis of the Papacy seriously, and he long ago suggested to Darboy how nice it would be for the two chief capitals of Europe, London and Paris, each to have its Cardinal, which could be best brought about by furthering the infallibilist definition. But Darboy would hear nothing of it. Next to Manning comes Dechamps of Mechlin; but as the Pope has named him primate, which is indeed a mere title, he is thought here to have had his reward. Spalding, who has deserved so well of Rome, would of course create a great sensation in the United States by the red hat, which has never yet been seen there. Among the French, Dreux-Brézé of Moulins and Pie of Poitiers come first in order. There is great difficulty about Simor, the ill-advised and ungrateful son who had the Cardinalate, so to speak, in his pocket, and is now causing such distress to the lofty giver. How fortunate, say the Court party, that d'Andrea is no longer alive. Rauscher, Schwarzenburg, Guidi, d'Andrea, Simor – that would be too much. But now for the Germans! There it is difficult to select; all the faithful ones must be rewarded, who have literally sweated and are sweating daily in the interest of the good cause – Fessler, Martin, Senestrey, and then Stahl, Leonrod, Rudigier and the Tyrolese Gasser and Riccabona. The Tyrol has had no Cardinal since Nicolas of Cusa (Bishop of Brixen) and Madrucci (Bishop of Trent), and there most especially would the return of a countryman with a red hat be kept as a national festival.

Margotti has had a denial inserted in the Univers of the fact that a Sicilian Bishop related the story of St. Peter and the Virgin Mary in the Council Hall. On this I have merely to remark that it was told me the same evening by three Bishops, none of whom heard it from one of the others, and the speaker was Natoli, Archbishop of Messina. We know what Margotti's assertions and denials are worth.

Sixtieth Letter

Rome, June 23, 1870.– On reading the last document emanating from the Council, composed by the most distinguished of the American Bishops, an inexpressible feeling of astonishment comes over me, as often before, at the new and unprecedented spectacle so boldly offered to the startled world, and I again recognise the necessity of accounting to myself for the condition of the Catholic Church which has made this possible, and remembering that the position of the Papacy in the modern Church for some time past has been hardly less novel and strange than this present infallibilist Council.

The two great events of modern history, the Reformation and the Revolution, have made the Papacy what it is, – the Reformation by forcibly driving the Catholic half of Christendom into centralization, the Revolution by removing the last remaining independent powers within the Church, viz., the Gallican Church with the Sorbonne and Parliament. So it came to pass that with the Restoration the Church was surrendered to the discretion of the Papacy, just as at the same time the Roman States, by the withdrawal of all provincial and corporate independence, became a uniform and absolute monarchy. The very spirit of the nineteenth century, without much help from Rome, contributed to the consolidation and strengthening of this new system. The re-awakening and growth of distinct Church feeling in powerful classes of the educated nations, the legitimist ideas of the ruling classes of Europe, and later on the combined Catholic and Liberal interest of the struggle against hostile bureaucracies and the antipathy of parliamentary majorities – principles of reaction and principles of freedom all alike in turn subserved the cause of the Church, i. e., the Papacy. For although Papacy and Church were still not wholly identified in fact, to say nothing of right, the times did not suggest the need for distinguishing between them.

There was opportunity given, one might suppose, for a great display of activity. A fresh creative spirit passed here and there through the new world of the nineteenth century, and not least through the Catholic portion of it, which produced in individuals many fair flowers of art and science, and also of practical piety. It was enough to catch the inspiration, in the sense of the age and of the eternal needs of mankind, and as the wilderness blossoms under the hand of a gardener, there grew out of the ruins of the Revolution a new era of rich Christian life. But the destiny of Catholicism was to be the reverse. There was indeed then, and is now, urgent need of an immense deal to be done in the Church; to carry on the daily ecclesiastical administration by no means satisfied the requirements of the age, but the Church herself needed and needs reform – reform everywhere from the outer rind to the marrow. But reform, whether in Church or State, generally results from the struggle of rival forces. And the only power surviving in the Church possessed neither the capacity nor the inclination for acts of world-wide import; it seemed to have no sense but for the maintenance and extension of its own dominion. Such Catholic works as the nineteenth century has produced did not emanate from Rome, and were little if at all helped on by her. On the contrary, Rome put a restraint on everything which did not serve directly as an instrument of her power. Every germ of relative independence seemed to be viewed with distrust. Here and there the intellectual labour of a lifetime of Catholic study was simply extinguished. The youth of talent turned from a path which led only to unfruitful conflicts. The once promising seed-plot of original Catholic production became dry, and even the noblest creation of the century, the female orders for nursing the sick, are said by those best informed to show symptoms of decay. There was stillness. From Rome one only heard a monologue. The Bishops' Pastorals were its echo, or were so long-winded and verbose that the simple and noble language of the pronunciamento issued by the newly elected Bishop of Rottenburg was quite a phenomenon. Men boasted of the Catholic unity, which had never been so palpable and so undisturbed as in these latter days, but it was a unity of sleep over the grave of intellectual and all higher ecclesiastical life.

Who will bring us deliverance? asked every one who looked at things independently of the mere force of habit with a clear eye. The answer was that there was no longer any independent power anywhere but in the centre, and therefore deliverance could only come from thence; the lever could only be applied in Rome, and nobody but a future Pope was in a position to do this.

How peculiarly are things disposed! In Rome they had all they could desire. There has never been a time when Catholic Christendom lay so submissively at the Pope's feet. In fact he possessed practically the prerogative of infallibility, for no one contradicted whatever he might say. The Bishops were disused to learning; there was hardly among them a theologian of note, and therefore they had no spirit for theological convictions of their own. It seemed to be the office of their lives to re-echo the Roman oracles. The daring project of defining the Immaculate Conception met with hardly any serious opposition, though many Bishops could not conceal from themselves that the faith of antiquity and the belief of their own dioceses knew nothing of the new dogma. And then in the Encyclical and Syllabus came a perfect flood of irrational and unchristian propositions. What did the Bishops of Christendom, the judges of faith, do? Some put a more rational interpretation on it, the others took it all for granted as it stood; everywhere the new articles of faith and morality were received as though all were in the most regular order. That was in fact a situation without any precedent, and there was nothing left to wish for but its continuance for ever. The talisman to secure this continuance was discovered in the tenet of papal infallibility, and to make this into a dogma and foundation-principle of the Church has been the grand object to which the thoughts and measures of the last ten years have been directed.

Even this last point might perhaps have been attained by adhering to the practice which has prevailed hitherto of quietly collecting the votes of the Ecclesia dispersa, and passing over the isolated opponents still left to the order of the day. Why was the perilous plan of a General Council adopted instead of this? Perhaps with the view of extruding and getting rid of for the future all the doubt still attaching to the assent of the Church dispersed; certainly in the full confidence, after all that had occurred previously, that there was absolutely no demand the Bishops would dare to refuse. The authorities felt in the position, ecclesiastically speaking, of being able to challenge the Holy Ghost Himself to say if He would refuse to set His seal to the deformation of the Church.

All the world knows how the Vatican Council has been managed. It was as if they wished to keep the Holy Ghost a prisoner, with eyes and ears bandaged. But things did not go as they wished. On the contrary this extreme step of the Curia roused a reaction, which seems likely to lead to a revolution that will take its place in history and introduce a complete change in the future. Certainly the deliverance is coming from the centre, but not as was thought and desired, not in peace but in storm, not as a gift of the highest human wisdom but as a nemesis. For it is an old law, equally prevalent throughout the Christian and Heathen world, that pride will always bring its punishment.