Chapter XVIII · THE MINORITY AFTER THE VATICAN DECREE (continued 2)

“If the act of a majority of Bishops in the Council, possibly not representing a majority in the Church, is infallible, it derives its Infallibility from the Pope.”

“But it was a point which Rome could not surrender without giving up its whole position. To wait for unanimity was to wait for ever, and to admit that a minority could prevent or nullify the dogmatic action of the Papacy was to renounce Infallibility. No alternative remained to the opposing Bishops but to break up the Council.”

This was exactly where their courage failed them. They protested, but submitted. And here comes Acton’s judgment on their submission:—

“They might conceivably contrive to bind and limit dogmatic Infallibility with conditions so stringent as to evade many of the objections taken from the examples of history; but in requiring submission to Papal Decrees on matters not Articles of Faith, they were approving that of which they knew the character, they were confirming without let or question a power they saw in daily exercise, they were investing with new authority the existing Bulls, and giving unqualified sanction to the Inquisition and the Index, to the murder of heretics and the deposing of kings. They approved what they were called on to reform, and solemnly blessed with their lips what their hearts knew to be accursed.”

The effect of this moral feebleness on the Roman authorities was, says Acton, that

“the Court of Rome became thenceforth reckless in its scorn of the opposition, and proceeded in the belief that there was no protest they would not forget, no principle they would not betray, rather than defy the Pope in his wrath. It was at once determined to bring on the discussion of Infallibility.”

Lord Acton’s objections to the Infallibility school were clearly of a triple character. In relation to History: it betrayed a resolve to instate Authority independently of proof. It was the product of indifference to fact. “The serene vitality of a view impervious to proof,” could only shock and distress a profound veneration for the actual. To those who build on facts such disregard for evidence must appear as building without foundation. In relation to method: if the origin of the doctrine was insecure, no less unsatisfactory was the method by which it was decreed. Acton’s description makes the Decree the product of cowardly weakness on the one side, and unscrupulous coercion on the other. The spiritual value of the result obtained might be measured by the immorality of the means employed. It could not, it did not, enlist his loyalty or command his reverence. In relation to results: plainly Acton did not believe that the limitless exaltation of Authority was beneficial, or that it could lead to anything but results disastrous to the real interests of the Church. The severity of his judgment on the minority, for investing with new Authority the Papal Decree, was born of a deep conviction that already, on countless occasions, that Authority had proved excessive, injurious to the advance of truth, and the freedom of the individual. It is probably quite correct that Acton’s objections were more on the moral and political or social side than on the strictly theological. But his sharp distinction between the Catholic and the Roman elements within the Church is really a distinction in dogmatic principles. And nothing can exceed his loathing for principles commonly known as Ultramontane. Acton and Manning stand at the opposite poles in their anticipations of the results of the dogma of Infallibility.

But Lord Acton went far beyond all this. He wrote a letter⁠[427] to a German Bishop reproaching the minority with inconsistency in discontinuing their opposition after the Infallibility Decree was published. In this letter he gives the actual language of the leaders of the minority, and concludes—

“The Council is thus judged by the lips of its most able members. They describe it as a conspiracy against truth and rights. They declare that the new dogmas were neither taught by the Apostles nor believed of the Fathers.”

This letter was described by the Dublin Review⁠[428] as “an open and decisive revolt against the Church.”

Yet it does not appear that the writer was challenged to express his adhesion to the new Decree. But Lord Acton’s letters during this period are yet to be published. Abbot Gasquet⁠[429] omits all the critical years from 1869–1874. Lord Acton, however, did not ultimately escape unchallenged. He was not in Manning’s Diocese or we may feel fairly certain that the Archbishop of Westminster would have pounced upon him.

Meantime Mr Gladstone argued that the Vatican Decrees involved political consequences adverse to modern freedom.⁠[430] The Church’s power to employ coercion was asserted by the Syllabus, and acknowledged by Newman.⁠[431] Now that such consequences could be drawn from the Vatican Decrees Lord Acton did not dream of denying.⁠[432] Gladstone’s argument could not be met by denial. And, of course, the whole sympathies of Acton’s mind were with Gladstone so far as repudiation of the use of coercive force in religion is concerned. Nothing in the world roused Acton’s moral indignation more than Inquisition and Liguori’s ethics. He admitted with characteristic sincerity that “Gladstone had not darkened the dark side of the question.” All he could answer was that it does not follow that inferences which can be drawn will actually be made. He held that “the Council did not so directly deal with these matters as to exclude a Catholic explanation.” The Council had not so acted “that no authentic gloss or explanation could ever put those perilous consequences definitely out of the way.” This was certainly a curious defence of an Ecumenical Decree. It does not exclude a Catholic explanation. But this was all he could say. He could not even say what that true explanation was; for on that ground his own authorities might reject him. “I could not take my stand, for good or evil, as an interpreter of the Decrees, without risk of authoritative contradiction.” This attitude, says Acton, “was no attack on the Council, although it was an attack on Ultramontanism.”⁠[433]

But Lord Acton proceeded to defend the Council in the Times newspaper⁠[434] from Mr Gladstone’s inferences.

“I affirmed that the apprehension of civil danger from the Vatican Council overlooks the infinite subtlety and inconsistency with which men practically elude the yoke of official uniformity in matters of opinion.”

And, as an illustration of this infinite subtlety in eluding authority, he quoted the example of Archbishop Fénelon, who “while earning admiration for his humility under censure [by the Pope] had retained his former views unchanged.” Fénelon wrote:—⁠[435]

“I accept this Brief ... simply absolutely and without shadow of reserve. God forbid that I should ever be remembered except as a pastor who believed it his duty to be more docile than the humblest of his sheep, and who placed no limit to his submission.”

Three weeks later Fénelon wrote to a friend:—

“I acknowledge no uncertainty either as to the correctness of my opinions throughout or as to the orthodoxy of the doctrine which I have maintained.... Unless competent persons rouse themselves in Rome the faith is in great danger.”

It was no more than natural, after such public letters, that Lord Acton should be called in question by the authorities of his Communion. It was asserted in the Roman Church that he did not believe the Vatican Decrees. Manning wrote to enquire what construction he placed upon them in order that the minds of the multitude might be reassured. A curious and very instructive correspondence⁠[436] ensued. Lord Acton took advice as to the answer he should give.

“The great question is,” he wrote privately to a friend, “whether I ought to say that I submit to the acts of this as of other Councils, without difficulty or examination (meaning that I feel no need of harmonising and reconciling what the Church herself has not yet had time to reconcile and to harmonise), or ought not the word submit to be avoided, as easily misunderstood.”

After further reflection Lord Acton proposed to say:—

“I do not reject—which is all the Council requires under its extreme sanctions. As the Bishops who are my guides have accepted the decrees, so have I. They are a law to me as much as those at Trent, not from any private interpretation, but from the authority from which they come. The difficulties about reconciling them with tradition, which seem so strong to others, do not disturb me a layman, whose business it is not to explain theological questions, and who leaves that to his betters.⁠[437]

“Manning ... says he must leave the thing in the hands of the Pope, as everybody tells him I don’t believe the Vatican Council. He means, it seems to me, that he simply asks Rome to excommunicate me—a thing really almost without example and incredible in the case of a man who has not attacked the Council, who declares that he has not, and that the Council is his law, though private interpretations are not, whose Diocesan has, after enquiry, pronounced him exempt from all anathema.”⁠[438]

Against Lord Acton no further action was taken. The disastrous effect of the excommunication of Döllinger may have made Authority cautious in the exercise of this deadly weapon. Acton indeed submitted; but Manning’s misgivings seem more than justified. It is difficult to define the sense in which Acton became a believer in the new Decree. “He remained all his life,” says Bryce,⁠[439] “a faithful member of the Roman Communion, while adhering to the views which he advocated in 1870.”

It is quite true that Acton was not an Anglican; he was still less a Protestant. He never joined the old Catholic movement, and is said to have dissuaded his friends from taking that course. But it is certain that he was never an Ultramontane. The distinction he drew between Catholic and Roman elements in the Church helps to explain his own position. He was a Catholic as opposed to the modern Roman type.

If, as Pius IX. asserted, Catholic and Ultramontane are synonymous, then Acton’s position was precarious. But their identity is what he persistently and firmly denied. He considered Ultramontanism as an unhappy and mischievous influence perverting truths and ignoring history, speculative in its origin, and injurious in its results. He was well aware, his historic insight made it clearer to him than to many, that the school he resented was a long-standing disease; that its presence could be traced for centuries, if in a less pronounced and virulent form than to-day. But the long-standing nature of the disease did not shake his faith in the certainty of a remedy, and a removal sooner or later. He did not, it has been well said, identify the long-lived with the eternal.

Sooner or later then, Ultramontanism, according to Acton’s views, was destined to pass away. It was no more than a temporary, if protracted, disease from which the Church must at length recover. Meanwhile, therefore, he held to his post, accepting the present discomfiture in the hope of better days; waiting until this tyranny be overpast. He had no thought of departure. The Roman Communion was the Church of his birth and of his devotional affinities. He spoke of it reverentially as “the Church whose communion is dearer to me than life.”⁠[440] He would never have left it of his own accord. But, while wholly identified with the ancient Catholic conceptions, he absolutely repudiated the principles of the Ultramontane. By what process he retained his place while Döllinger was exiled seems not altogether clear. Acton felt acutely the possibility that, like Döllinger, he also might be cast out.

Whether wisdom or prudence or diplomacy refrained from him and let him alone, there at any rate he lived and died. But the legitimacy or consistency of his position was the theme of a fierce and bitter controversy in the Roman journals after he was dead.

So the great struggle in the Roman Communion between the episcopal and the papal conceptions of Authority, the collective and the individual, came to an end. Every Bishop of the minority submitted. This is a magnificent tribute to the power of Rome. It held its defeated Episcopate in unbroken unity. Only the old Catholic movement created an independent community. But when the motives are considered which induced the minority to yield, the strongest principle appears to be the maintenance of external unity. The abler minds resisted, after the Decree was known, so long as resistance was possible. Only when the presence of threatened excommunication drew them to an ultimate decision, the Bishops submitted, with what grace they could, to a Decree which they dared no longer resist. But the submission is, even then, cautious, reluctant, and reserved. In some instances it is yielded in a tone of curtness or asperity. In other instances, with comments and explanations, in private letters, wholly inconsistent with genuine faith. It is difficult to find in a single minority submission the joyous devotion which is surely due to a heaven-sent revelation of eternal truth. They do not accept the doctrine as a blessed enlightenment, but rather as a heavy burden to which they are unwillingly obliged to coerce their priests. They do not appear like men whose intensity of conviction enables them to say:—“It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.” They would infinitely sooner ask no questions, if Rome would only let them. They are driven to excommunicate others, much against their will, for continuing to hold what they themselves had taught them, and were, until recently, inwardly persuaded was true. It is a painful and unattractive sight. In the frankness of confidential utterances after the event they owned with manifest sincerity that they did not believe the Decision valid, nor the Doctrine part of the Historic Faith. But, being forced by Authority to choose between submission and excommunication, they mostly preferred submission. The choice is intelligible. They loved the Church. Taught to regard its limits as practically identical with those of the Kingdom of Heaven—yet certain that history contradicted what they were now required to believe, they were placed in the terrible dilemma of loyalty to reason against religious interest, or to religious interest against their reason. The issue was solemn whichever side they chose. But the prior question which the alternative raises is this: “What is the spiritual value of an Absolute Authority which inflicted such an awful dilemma upon its own devoted sons?”