Front matter (continued 5)

The tales were those of youths from the noblest houses and from the lowliest cots. The young Duke de Blacas "dedicated his sword to the tomb of St. Peter, as his forefathers dedicated theirs to the tomb of Christ." In his death youths are to see the martyr palm for which it is noble to pant, and mothers are to see a privilege which they might well seek in prayer. Peter Jong, a poor Dutch lad, only son of his mother, a widow, who gave him up rejoicing as if God had granted her great grace, fell, it is said, after having slain fourteen Italians. He receives this tribute: "For St. Peter he inflicted many just deaths; for St. Peter he worthily met his own." It is told how the King of Holland keeps Jong's photograph in his portfolio, and shows it to other intending crusaders as an encouragement. Another Dutch youth writes: "Mamma, blessed is he who sheds the last drop of his blood. The martyrs of all the centuries descend to meet him and to conduct him to heaven." This, though Protestants may not know it, is spiritual warfare! for "to defend the Church of Christ is a spiritual object." One proof constantly alleged that bayonet and ball used for St. Peter are to re-establish truth and righteousness is, "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

The young Duke de Blacas, not having been in action, seemed in dying to think that he should not escape purgatory. Care, however, is taken, in a studiously written biography of a Goldoni who also died before battle, to show that in point of martyrdom, as to the old crusaders, no difference was made by St. Bernard and St. Catherine of Siena between those who died in battle and those who died in the service. Also, that no difference had been made between these two classes of the crusaders of St. Peter by Pius IX. He had comforted a father who regretted that his son had not fallen in battle, by telling him that he had "the supreme" consolation, because the son had died in the service of the Holy See. And he had, in his solemn Allocution, compared both classes alike to the martyred Maccabees. The father of Goldoni, pictured as a devout and humane physician, is represented as often putting up the prayer for his only son, "Oh that God would inspire him to take up the cross!" Young Goldoni was a diligent reader of the Unitá Cattolica and the Civiltá, from which "sources of religious and of pure intellectual culture he drew a generous and daring spirit." Though he died unhappily before battle, his biographer sees him seated among the celestial martyrs, between the Duke de Blacas and the Count Zileri de Verme, with whom do rejoice and glory others who died at a distance from the fight. When Goldoni received his "call" to the crusade, he started in haste. "It seemed as if the Spirit of God carried him." The Archbishop of Modena specially blessed "our young crusader." He then received the Sacrament, and so "heart to heart with Jesus Christ consecrated his life to Holy Church." Moreover, in parting, "the young cavalier of Jesus Christ put upon his bosom, as if a breastplate, an image of Mary." The night before leaving home he, "in the manner of the old crusaders," knelt at his father's knee and asked his blessing. While the father "shed upon him the holy water and the prayer," Antonio burst into weeping.

Arrived in Rome, Goldoni sought a Jesuit to "govern his soul." The Jesuit made allusion to the dangers of his new life. "I have made up my mind to be a martyr for the Holy See," replied Goldoni. "The Holy Father has declared the temporal power necessary to the spiritual. Therefore, fighting and dying for the temporal power, I should indirectly be a martyr for our holy religion." The Jesuit was overcome at hearing these generous sentiments from a youth so superior. Two days after, the Jesuit and Goldoni met "in the tribunal of penitence."

Goldoni soon caught a fever, and in the hospital often confessed. On the Feast of St. John Berchmans[113] he declared that he had obtained from the saint the grace to be with him in Paradise on the day of the Assumption of the Virgin. He reiterated that he should on the day of the Assumption go to heaven to see the Madonna and St. John Berchmans. His good father, called from Modena, arrived in time to bless and pray for his departing Antonio. At the last moment he left him, for it would seem that those around thought that the presence of the earthly father would come between him and the heavenly Father. So he lay, with his lustrous eyes fixed on heaven, as if, says the chaplain, "he was awaiting the appearance of his John Berchmans, who was to present him at the throne of the great Virgin." At seven o'clock on the morning of the Assumption he passed away.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IV

Princes, Ministers, and their Confessors—Montalembert's part in the Revival—His Posthumous Work on Spain—Indignation against the New Assumptions—Debate of Clergy in Paris on the Lawfulness of Absolving a Liberal Prince or Minister—Wrath at Rome—True Doctrines taught to Darboy and his Clergy.

In proportion as this Popery of physical force came into view, did the mental stress of Catholics who had put their faith in finer forces increase.

Chateaubriand, who played a brilliant part in the Catholic reaction which followed the great French Revolution, especially in that phase of the movement which aimed at linking together, in the imagination, Rome and ideas and hopes now dear to mankind, left a work, at his death, which he called Memoirs from Beyond the Grave—Memoires d'outre Tombe. Montalembert, who played a still more brilliant part in the Catholic reaction which followed the Revolution of 1830, also left behind him a work, to appear after his death. In that work we can trace the pains of a representative mind, showing what must have been those of multitudes at the time of which we now write.

Montalembert saw, in "the absolutist politics, the retrospective fanaticism, the embittered hostility to all modern ideas and institutions, flaunted everywhere by the religious press,"[114] not only a blot on the cause, which had been his life-passion—a passion of feminine flame but of masculine vigour—but also a personal wound. It made his past look like a well-played hypocrisy. He had enthusiastically and victoriously argued for Catholicism under plea of liberty. "I neither can nor will," he cries, "keep silence, as to the monstrous articles published this very year (1868) by the Civiltá Cattolica against liberty in general, and precisely against those Liberal Catholics who, like me, have had the naïveté in the Parliamentary tribune to assert the rights of the Jesuits, and cause them to triumph in the name of liberty."[115]

On the second anniversary of that mysterious Thursday in February 1848, when King Louis Philippe, of the Tuileries, suddenly changed into Mr. Smith in a street cab on the way to exile, Montalembert and Thiers pleaded in the National Assembly for "freedom of instruction" on behalf of the Jesuits. "It was only," says our orator, "in the name of liberty, of modern constitutions, of modern liberty, of the liberty of conscience, of the Press, and of the tribune, that we made the claim." He adds that the victory was won only by Thiers brandishing the text of the Republican constitution in the face of the furious Mountain, a constitution proclaiming equal freedom of worship and association to all. The italics are his own—

"We were all wrong, it is clear. In sound theology M. Renan alone was right—he and the like of him who maintained that Catholicism, and above all, the Jesuits, were absolutely incompatible with liberty. Only—we ought to have been told it then. It was then, and not now, that they ought to have taught us that liberty was a plague, instead of taking advantage of it, and that by our help, in order, twenty years later, to come insulting and repudiating both it and us, at one and the same time.

I have long passed the age of disappointments and passionate emotions, but I declare on reading these bare-faced palinodes I have reddened to the white of my eyes, and shivered to the ends of my nails. I am no longer child enough to complain of the inconsistencies of men in general, or of Jesuits in particular, but I loudly say that this tone of the puppy and the pedant (ce ton de faquin et de pédagogue), employed towards old defenders, all of whom are not dead, and in respect of old struggles, which may be renewed to-morrow, does not become either monks or reputable men. It may be perfectly orthodox. In matters of theology I am no judge, but I think I am a judge in a matter of honour and decency; and I declare it is perfectly indecent."

We give but one more extract from this unconscious palinode of the high-souled Montalembert, who could not even then see that the Liberal Catholicism of his ideal was a generous phantasy, irreconcilable with the Popery of Rome, as much so as was his beloved parliamentary system in politics with the Second Empire. No more could he see that Pope and Jesuit were true to themselves in urging their old and fixed principles, and had been equally true to themselves in using instruments like him so long as they struck or stayed their hand at "the beck of the priest," and in disowning them so soon as they set up to keep a conscience for themselves, "as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up." He and his friend Lacordaire carried to Rome the large ideas of a great people, and bathed the quaint figures of the Curia, and the quaint objects of the city, in the tropical light of their own genius, just as Lamartine had done with the withered remnants of the East. After such pictures as Montalembert had drawn in his books, and his speeches, of his ideal Catholic Church, it must have been mortifying to have, in age and sickness, to write as follows—

"Certainly, a strange way has been invented of serving religion, of making the modern world accept, comprehend, and love it. One might say that they treat the Church like one of those wild beasts that are carried about in menageries. Look at her, they seem to say, and understand what she means, and what is her real nature! To-day, she is in a cage, tamed and broken in, by force of circumstances. She can do no harm for the present; but understand that she has paws and tusks, and if ever she is let loose you will be made to know it" (p. 641).

As he wrote this sad passage, in all probability there would rise before his imagination one of the most memorable scenes in the life of any orator. When glorifying the return of the Pope to Rome, restored by French force, and deprecating any attempt at a conflict with the Church, he said that from any such conflict only dishonour could result, as to a strong man would result dishonour from a combat with a woman. And then, turning upon his audience, he said, "The Church is more than a woman; the Church is a mother," with a gush and a power which produced such a scene as perhaps has hardly ever been witnessed in any parliamentary assembly. And both ideals were quite sincere. The Church of Montalembert's imagination was a mother; the Church of the Civiltá Cattolica is a dam, holding to her young while they continue in sheer dependence, treating them as strangers when they can take care of themselves. His Church is the dream of an exceptional few, the Church of the Civiltá is the strong reality.

The articles which called forth this protestation of Montalembert, were among the most curious even of the Civiltá. They dealt with France—Paris and Darboy. On February 5, 1868, the Archbishop of Paris held a conference of his clergy in the Church of Saint Rocque, and there argued the following case of conscience. By some exceptional feat of the worst of all evil genii, Publicity, the discussion, and its result, were reported in the Patrie; and this indiscretion caused the world for once to gain a real peep into the consultations in the judges' chambers, behind the internal tribunal.

"A man engaged in politics," says the case of conscience, "declares to his confessor that he has no intention of renouncing the doctrines which prevail among modern nations, the principal points of which are, liberty of worship, liberty of the Press, and the action of the State in mixed affairs. The confessor asks if he is to grant absolution to a penitent in this state of mind, or to deny it."—Civiltá, VII. ii. 151.

The reasoning ascribed to the supposed penitent is the following—

You, as my confessor, have not the right to lay on me as you would on a private man, the duty of devoting a certain day, and of adopting certain means for the conversion of this or that person. Doubtless, I ought, by word and example, to lay myself out for the conversion and edification of my neighbour; but it rests with me as a free agent to select the means and to discern the opportunity. In like manner, you cannot order me as politician, legislator, or prince, to take, this very day, this or that measure, against blasphemy for example, or Sunday labour, or the licence of the Press. Lay it upon me to attend to the propagation of righteousness and truth; but leave it to me to judge of the opportunity, and to choose the means. And, I pray you, consider the grounds of my opinions. In the first place, whenever we speak or act, we have on one side the truth and right, which certainly ought to be respected; but on the other side we have fitness and opportunity, of which also we must take account, if we would speak to good purpose. Now, in this respect, I know better than any other what I can do, and what I cannot, in my family, or in a political assembly, or in the nation. In the next place, perhaps you do not see the absurdity which would follow the opposite opinion. It would follow that you had the right to decide and regulate all my actions, because into every one of them morality may enter; and every one of them may be connected with religion. You would be able to dictate my will, to tell me what vote I ought to give, to determine whether I am to declare peace or war. Mere trifles, you say. But what, in that case, would temporal power be, but a passive instrument of the spiritual power, and a mere machine? These are the reasons why I stand to my old notions on this point, and have no thought of changing them for others.

In this case, as thus put, and in the ensuing discussion, we see the confessor of a king or minister preparing to meet his "penitent." In the language of Montalembert, we see the feeling of a politician in facing the "tribunal," under an Ultramontane confessor; and in the papers of the Civiltá we see the glaring eye of Rome searching out every movement of the one and the other.

The case being thus stated, both as to its substance and as to the reasoning of the supposed penitent, the discussion began. Abbé Michaud, of the Madeleine, maintained that the confessor ought to grant absolution. Abbé G——, a Dominican, maintained that he ought not to do so. Archbishop Darboy now and then interfered, to moderate the opposition of the latter. The Abbé Falcimagne interrupted the Archbishop, declaring that he would deny the absolution, for the supposed penitent was unworthy of it. Finally, the Abbé Hamon, Curé of Saint Sulpice, read out four conclusions, which were fully accepted by the Archbishop, and which allowed the confessor to grant the absolution. The Opinion Nationale and other journals said that this conclusion showed to how little the condemnations of the Syllabus amounted.

Both the conclusion and the grounds on which it was rested gave huge offence at Rome. The Civiltá was not content with less than five long articles, making ninety octavo pages. It is in these that the things are set forth which fired the embers of Montalembert's true love of liberty, and damped his dying hope of ever seeing his ideal Catholicism and actual Popery seated on the same throne. We need not quote the passages which are echoed in his indignant repudiation; but we give a few others, which show that, strongly as we have seen him put the case, he was not guilty of any injustice. The Abbé Michaud said that the liberty condemned was not moderate liberty, but unbounded liberty.[116] The Civiltá took it for granted that he could not have been sincere.

"Similar to liberty of worship, is that worst of liberties, never sufficiently execrated or abhorred—liberty of the Press, which some dare to invoke and promote with so much clamour." It continues—"In respect of religion and the Press, it is idle to distinguish between two sorts of liberty, one wise and the other unbridled, as the Abbé did. In such matters, all liberty is a delirium and a pestilence. There is no healthy man's delirium; all delirium is that of a sick man. There is no praiseworthy and harmless plague; every plague is deadly.... Hence, it is never a decent thing to introduce such liberty into a civil community. It is only permissible to tolerate it in certain cases, in the same way that a pest is tolerated" (p. 160).

The Abbé Michaud had said that, in mixed questions, the State interfered by the same right as the Church! Such an utterance savoured of our bad times. It was infected with the idea of the independence of the civil power in regard to the ecclesiastical. This idea was born with Protestantism; but it has been received by some Catholics, sincere, it is true, though not discerning.

It is true that the temporal prince is invested with supreme power and authority, in his order; but from this it follows only that he is not subject to any other earthly power. It does not follow that his authority, sovereign in its order, cannot be subject and is not subject to another authority of a more perfect order; that is, the spiritual.... It is necessary that whoever holds power, even sovereign, for temporal rule shall be regulated by the Roman Pontiff (pp. 161-63).

So far for the independence of the State. Now as to its right of intervention in mixed questions, and above all, as to the defining of limits between the two powers—

The State ought first to learn, from the Church, what are mixed questions, that it may not take spiritual matters for mixed ones, confounding both the one and the other with those which are called temporal ones. Each separate kind of corn must be tied up into a separate sheaf. The State ought to arrange with the Church every time it puts a hand to what is temporal in these mixed matters, in order that it may not violate what is spiritual.

The Civiltá quotes M. Renan, where he shows how the Syllabus has proved his assertion of 1848. "The Syllabus is a luminous demonstration of the proposition I maintained, that Catholicism and liberty are two things incompatible." The Civiltá adds that, in order to know this fact, M. Renan did not need to be a profound theologian, but only needed to read the works of any author sincerely Catholic. It points out that the Liberal Catholics fancy that the Popes, in condemning liberty of worship and of the Press, only spoke of part of the subject, that is, of some sorts of liberty; and that it was, therefore, some liberty, not all, that they called madness, poison, and pestilence. But the Popes, asserts the Civiltá, on the contrary, thought that all liberty of worship and of the Press bore those characters (p. 314).

The Abbé Falcimagne insisted (p. 316) that the supposed penitent should be at once treated as a sick man, and as being not of sound reason—

He comes to submit himself to my tribunal, and at the same time rejects my authority. To see how far I can yield to his spiritual infirmity I must see how far the authority of the confessor over the penitent extends. On this point, I shall cite the words of Domenico Soto, who, after hearing the confession of Charles V, said, "So far, you have confessed the sins of Charles; now confess those of the Emperor." Soto at least thought that the actions of his penitent, although they belonged to the political order, nevertheless came within the cognizance of his tribunal. Our patient is of a diametrically opposite opinion. He will not recognize in me the right of judging him in what touches doctrine and morals indirectly. But I hold that, as confessor, I have a right to judge my penitent, be he a legislator, or even a prelate of the Church, in things pertaining to dogmas and morals, and to prohibit what is contrary to either, whether directly or indirectly. So I can command him to cease from holding presumptuous tenets.

The Archbishop then asked the Abbé Falcimagne, requesting him to give a direct answer, if he had a right to order his penitent to leave a hundred thousand francs in his will to be distributed among the poor. To this the Abbé Falcimagne made no reply. He said the point now was to know whether the penitent, who would not renounce his modern ideas as to liberty, was or was not guilty of presumption, temerarius. "Guilty of presumption," replied the Archbishop, "is that confessor who lays his hands on temporal things, assessing what he has no right to assess." "But," retorted Falcimagne, "I have the right to judge my penitent as to his disposition; and if he comes to me, and says that he wishes to maintain his principles, and declares that I have not a right to judge him, I tell him that his pretensions are illegitimate; that his reason is disordered by modern principles; and that, if he will not renounce those principles, I cannot absolve him."

The Civiltá thinks that, at this point, they came to the heart of the matter. On one side they began to allege that the confessor could not require his penitent to renounce his opinions unless they were heretical, or were opinions condemned by the Church. A very false doctrine! exclaims the oracle; for, in addition to heretical opinions, a true Catholic must renounce many others—those, for instance, which are proximate to heresy; those which are presumptuous, scandalous, and all indeed that are offensive to pious ears. The teaching power of our Church is not merely infallible, and not only does it define with infallibility when defining articles of faith, but also when defining any truth, scientific or practical, political or historical, which is connected, in any manner whatever, with dogma and morals; and whoever would be a sincere Catholic must conform not only in respectful silence, but with interior assent of the intellect (p. 318).

The Civiltá proceeds to quote the opinions of the "good journals" of Italy, laying stress on the point that the opinions held by the supposed penitent could not be probable opinions—being in fact those which were already condemned in the Syllabus. It proceeds with great vigour to maintain that the Syllabus was the decree, not only of the Pope, but also of the five hundred bishops who had adhered to it last year (1867). Of these, the Civiltá correctly says that Darboy himself was one. It next contributes an important item of information, which completes the evidence of the perfect and formal ecclesiastical authority of all the condemnations of the Syllabus, on either theory of the constitution of the Church, the Papal or the Episcopal. After the address of the five hundred bishops present in Rome, all the absent ones, asserts the Civiltá, sent in their adhesion by letter, which they hastened to forward to this Roman chair, where, with the living Pontiff, resides the "spirit of truth" (p. 324). Hence it draws the inference, which is a just conclusion, if we may say so, in the face of a hundred English writers who, following an old tradition, when reviewing what Dr. Newman put upon paper on this subject, called it logical.

"This penitent (says the great organ of the Vatican), openly opposes the teaching power of the Church, whether that teaching power is considered as being exercised by the Bishop of Rome alone, or as being exercised by him in conjunction with all the bishops of Christendom. That teaching power has pronounced in the one mode and in the other, and has proscribed those opinions. In both ways has it condemned opinions, not imaginary or belonging to bygone times, but opinions which to-day, and under our eye, are pertinaciously maintained and reduced to practice" (p. 324).

Returning with intense earnestness to this point, it says (p. 543)—

The universal Bishop has spoken alone, and further, he has spoken conjointly with the bishops of the particular Churches. To contradict after this, is in effect to separate oneself from the whole of the pastors, and from him who is supreme among them all.

This is not enough. Some pages later, hesitation, on this question so vital to practical government, is again censured, in replying to the plea that the supposed penitent might be worthy of absolution on the ground of invincible ignorance—

We shall never tell him that ignorance consists in this, namely, that after he has read the Encyclical and the Syllabus, and re-read them, he could not understand that the modern opinions, which he retained, have been truly condemned, or that they have been condemned rightfully. This is not ignorance. It is an error and a pertinacity proper to a man not far removed from heresy. In this case, we once more repeat, confession is not the thing wanted. The first elements of the faith, and of the Catholic profession, have to be set straight in this man's head (p. 547).

It would almost seem as if Montalembert was personally pointed at in the two later articles. It is not a little curious to learn here that his bosom friend, Lacordaire, long the charm of the French pulpit, was called to Rome in 1850 to answer for his doctrine. The points on which he had to set himself right with Rome were anything but, in our sense, religious ones: (1) The coercive power of the Church; (2) The origin of sovereignty; and (3) The temporal power of the Pope. He did set himself right. Father Jandel, the General of the Dominicans, exulting over his answer on the question touching the coercive power, says, "It avenges his memory from the suspicion of complicity with certain opinions which some Catholics would fain shelter under the authority of his name."[117] Avenges his memory! It proves that whatever Lacordaire believed, he submitted to write as his own the doctrine of Rome, that the Church has power to "employ external force," and to inflict bodily pains. And so France sees the memory of her Bossuet held up to reproach, and the memory of her Lacordaire yoked by the Dominican General to his beloved Inquisition. She sees her Montalembert driven from public life, assailed, yea, reviled, while living, preparatory to being insulted when dead.

Any one acquainted with the high spirit and immense emotional force of Montalembert, can imagine his reddening and shivering at finding the following among the citations from Renan to prove that the sceptic understood the doctrine of "Catholicism" better than its professed friends in France—

The remedy applied by the Church of Rome to the liberty of worship and liberty of thought is the Inquisition. The Councils have established and approved the Inquisition, the Fathers and bishops have counselled and practised it. The Inquisition is the logical outgrowth of the whole orthodox system, and the quintessence of the spirit of the Church.[118]

Strongly as our sympathies are with Montalembert and Darboy, we feel that, so long as the Jesuits have to prove that persecution is the doctrine and has been the practice of the Church, they have it all their own way against the Liberal Catholics, till they creep up to the early ages.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER V

What is to be the Work of the Council—Fears caused by Grandiose Projects—Reform of the Church in Head and Members—Statesmen evince Concern.

Curiosity as to what the particular work of the Council was to be grew all the more rapidly, because no authoritative indication of it was given. Were the Jesuit tenets of Papal authority and Papal infallibility to be raised into dogmas? Was the Pope to make another offering to the Virgin by proclaiming as an article of faith, that her body had been carried to heaven? By the repetition of such questions, tens of millions partially awoke to the consciousness that they belonged to a religion which knew not what might be its standard of faith next year, much less did it know to what particular tenets it might be committed.

Then, as to the position of the bishops, were they to be only councillors, or also judges? If the latter, they would first hear the doctors, as did their predecessors at Trent; would next deliberate, and finally would formulate decrees, which decrees without alteration, would be confirmed by the Pontiff. But if the bishops were no longer judges of the faith, but simply councillors of the one judge, their place would be to argue points, as the doctors had done at Trent, while the decree should be that of the Pope, and they would merely assent.

Again, as to the composition of the Council, were the bishops in partibus to be members? Was Darboy, whose diocese counted two millions of souls, to be balanced by some Court creature with a title from Sardis or Ecbatana? or was Schwarzenberg, with Bohemia at his back, to be balanced by an instrument of the Curia, who, independently of his patrons, had not a month's bread to call his own? Were those who represented ancient and numerous churches, and who were as far free agents as men under Rome can be, to be voted against, man for man, by vicars apostolic, without churches, or with only new and ignorant ones—men depending on the Propaganda even for their travelling expenses and board?

Finally, as to the mode of procedure, were the bishops, as they did at Trent, to agree upon their own rules of procedure, to evolve by mutual consultation the questions demanding solution, and to discuss them till all were ready to vote? Or could there be truth in the suspicion that everything was being cut and dried beforehand, and that the Court would impose ready-made rules of procedure, and allow no one but itself to introduce any subject for discussion?

As to the burning question of moral unanimity, would projected formulae be passed from hand to hand, as was done at Trent, examined in meetings of groups, retouched, and, if need be, remoulded till a form was arrived at in which all but two or three acquiesced? Or was it possible that formulae for new articles in a creed prepared behind the backs of the bishops would be imposed on millions and for ever, by a majority made up with the help of the bishops in partibus?

All this time, the nine determined men forming the secret Directing Congregation, were coolly looking at the same questions, and, step by step, as we shall see, when events bring out the secret plans, were settling those questions in the sense most dreaded, and going to lengths not, we believe, suggested in any of the anticipatory expressions of fear.

Earnest theologians who had not been converted by the infallibilist propaganda of recent years, were thrown into consternation. Some bishops, able administrators, saw no essential difference between Papal infallibility as a doctrine taught in many of the schools, and believed by great numbers if rejected by others perhaps greater, and the same opinion as an article of faith. In such a view, the men of thought saw the superficial glance of "practical men," as they call themselves, who never discover anything but by feeling it, and who live by acting out to-day what others thought out in time gone by.

Little difference! thought the men of foresight. We are going to be compelled to alter our catechisms and creed in the face of the Protestants; going to be compelled to teach the opposite of what we have always taught; going to part with immemorial safeguards against altering the conditions of salvation, or further narrowing the terms of membership in the Church—to part with the necessity before every such change of the open and formal process of a General Council! The proposed dogma is unlike any now in the creed, in the all-important point of being self-multiplying. If it is adopted, we shall be liable to have eternal obligations laid upon our souls, without a week's warning.

Beside fears like these, others perhaps more general were those of quiet Catholics wishing to live in peace and serve their respective nations loyally, who being conscious that even now they were liable to suspicion of a divided allegiance, feared that if the Jesuit tenets became the creed, their political relations would be less comfortable, and their prospects of office not so good. "At the Vatican," says Ce qui se Passe au Concile, speaking of the mystery and the uneasiness of this moment; "At the Vatican they spoke in low tones of grandiose projects that were to transform the world, and by exalting Pius IX were to confound the enemies of the Church." It was those grandiose projects which made good citizens fear for their own future political standing.

Even feelings of this sort, as represented by Holtgreven, ought to touch us, being those of silent millions awaiting in the dark the sentence of their lords in Council. He says—

When we left the gymnasium, soon after the year 1860, there was no pupil who could say that, even by hint, he had been taught there that the Pope was infallible by himself, and without the consent of the Church. The answer 128 in Martin's Handbook of Religion is still too fresh in the memory of all; an answer which affirms that the grace of infallibility belongs only to the collective body of bishops, as successors of the Apostles.... Persons in office and out of it, clergy, laity, and exalted Church dignitaries, agreed that the pretensions of the Pope to power over kings and nations, in matters of allegiance and such like, were not part of their religion, but arose out of the state of the civil laws in the middle ages.... Thus does the Catholic teacher teach in his lectures on Church history, thus does the student learn; and this view, which captivates the youth, putting his German heart at rest, and rejoicing it, still gives him repose and removes every scruple when, as a man, he lifts up the hand to swear allegiance to the laws of the fatherland.[119]

Those of the French clergy whose education had been carried beyond the usual round of Latin, logic, and manners, began to manifest misgivings as to the effect of the impending change on men of enlarged culture. It was in March, 1869, that the Unitá published the Pope's famous letter to the Archbishop of Paris, described in a former chapter. The Paris correspondent of that journal, commenting upon it, calls the dignitary who, in the eye of the world, would be his metropolitan and ordinary, "a pretty fellow"—bel soggetto—whom no one would any longer look upon as a candidate for the rank of Cardinal. In the same letter he says that war against Prussia must break out, whether the occasion be the Belgian railways, or complaints that Prussia violates the treaty of Prague.

Fears as to coming changes, in their effect on men of culture, were felt still more deeply in Germany, where the general education of the clergy was higher than elsewhere. Both the German clergy and the nobler of the French were unprepared for what they began, in secret, to call Pius-cult, as it appeared in the language employed by the favoured organs. One word in the prayer for the Pope, recommended by the Unitá, on March 12, grated not on Protestant ears only. The Ave Maria was for a week to be followed by these petitions: "Eternal Father, defend Pius IX! Eternal Word, assist Pius IX! Holy Spirit, glorify Pius IX!"

Perhaps none of the publications now flowing from the Press excited greater attention than one which was announced as being from the pen of one of the best known of the Austrian clergy. It was entitled The Reform of the Romish Church in Head and Members. Not only does this author oppose the attempt to restore laws enforcing unity of creed, but he actually does so on principle, as well as on the ground of expediency. The longing of Rome for the subjection of the States of the world, and for power again to employ the arm of the State in her service, is, he contends, a delusion which will lead only to her overthrow. Moreover, he lays down the startling principle that the Church has nothing to ask but liberty to act in her own sphere like any private society. This last position is utterly irreconcilable with all the ordinary theories. He holds that anything granted to the Church by the State beyond what is given to any other private society is an evil, and also that every case, in the past, wherein Church and State have joined hands in order to help one another to gain their respective ends, has turned out ill for both of them. In modern times his ideal of the normal relation of Church and State is that existing in America, which he imagines works favourably for Romanism.

The author of Reform in Head and Members looks on the system of lower seminaries for boys and higher ones for young men, in which the future clergy pass their youth separated from all society, leading an unreal life, pursuing narrow studies and without knowledge of men, or the possibility of acquiring any breadth of mind, as producing only a race of priests unfit to lead an educated age. He declares that in France, Italy, and Spain the system of close seminaries has destroyed theological science among Catholics. He manifests the ordinary contempt of German scholars for the showy and wordy pupils of the Roman seminaries, and contends that Catholic theology does not bear any comparison, as to talent and learning, with Protestant theology in any country except Germany, where the priests have to study at the universities. He further believes that the lamentable moral condition of the Romish clergy is not a little to be ascribed to the seclusion and unreality in which their youth is passed (p. 161).

The young priests in whose hands the guidance of the people is to be placed, squander the fair and precious years of youth in enclosures shut off from the world, and out of them do they go forth into life without experience of men or of the world. Then does the world, with all its charms, allurements, delights, and seductions, rush in upon those narrow, inexperienced young clergymen; and alas! only too many of them sink in a sea which to them is new, strange, and untried.

He demands a thorough reform of this system, insisting that the contempt shown by all respectable Italians for the priesthood is not to be accounted for except on the ground of this wretched system and of its wretched moral and religious results.

Another demand boldly made by this Austrian priest is for the abolition of the vows of celibacy, so far as they are either perpetual or obligatory. He would admit of vows that were both voluntary and temporary. The corrupting effects of celibacy evidently leave him no hope that it is capable of being rendered consistent with tolerable morality. He treats this institution as purely local and Romish, regarding its imposition upon the Catholic Church as a great public evil, impossible to be justified. At page 117 he says, "Upon the law of the Romish Church fall back all those moral abominations, beyond measure and beyond number, which have arisen out of it, and which will stain the Church as long as that law remains in force." When the writer approaches the subject of bureaucratic centralization, the Catholic rises against the Romanism which has fastened itself on the Churches of other nations. This system of centralization as carried out by the Curia is much too narrow legitimately to claim the name of national. Our author wants to see an end of the system. He wonders what may be the annual revenue paid into Rome from all quarters of the globe for indults, dispensations, indulgencies, remissions of sins, and the fees gained by all the inventions for what he calls selling poor parchment and bad writing very dear. He does not, like many writers when they touch this subject, break out into a passion against the huckstering of their religion, but manifests a cold contempt, feeling that the system is low and hollow.

The modern contrivance for making a bishop a tenant on a short lease is calmly exposed. Formerly, as the author points out, a bishop used to rule his own diocese; now he is no more than a delegate. He is allowed to distribute such dispensations for the smaller sins against Church law as do not pay any money tax, but his power to do this, as also his power to perform several other of the acts essential to his office, is no longer conveyed to him with the office itself. On the contrary, for that power he is dependent upon a lease, never given for more than five years, called the Quinquennial Faculties. If at the expiration of one of these terms the Faculties are not renewed, he becomes a mere lay figure in his chair, and would be at once exposed to his clergy and people as under disgrace. By this means is he kept a perpetual pensioner on the favour of the Curia, and in addition to the periodical expiration of the ordinary lease, he is a tenant at will, liable any day to have his Faculties withdrawn by the Holy Father.

The centralizing of the government of the Church in the See of Rome, to effect which it was necessary to destroy the rights of metropolitans and to curtail the jurisdiction of bishops, is a state of things so unjustifiable and ruinous, that the well-being of the Church urgently demands its removal. This absorption of all the powers and rights of Church government is not to be justified either by pleading the necessity of preserving the unity of the Church, or by pleading the supreme hierarchical power, which belongs to the See of Rome. The very necessity of manifesting unity presupposes a number of persons entrusted with independent functions of government; and if the incumbent of the highest power of the Church strips the subordinate functionaries of all authority, he makes himself the sole seat of power in the Church.

This writer would restore worship in the mother tongue.

Statesmen began to feel concern, at least such as did not belong to the class finely laughed at by M. Veuillot, who do not think it necessary to inform themselves on "the small affairs of the Catholic Church," although speaking, legislating, and perhaps writing on matters of which those affairs form a considerable element.

Naturally such fears were sooner and more seriously felt by Roman Catholic statesmen than by Protestant ones. Though Von Lutz, Minister of Worship in Bavaria, spoke after the event, he tersely expressed the apprehensions felt at this time—

"The Church lays down the principle that the Pope is Prince of princes, and Lord Paramount (Oberherr) of all States. Do you think it possible that States will put up with that? That the State will quietly stand by while the bishop orders the parish priest to preach against the law of the land, and while he deposes him if he will not comply? Or must the State itself drive the parish priest out of his home for refusing to misuse the pulpit, against the State?"[120]

Bishop Fessler, of St. Pölten,[121] in a lengthy manifesto, gave a clear intimation that the infallibility of the Pope would probably be defined by the Council. This set many Catholics in Germany on preparing to combat the intention announced, and set still more on saying that as Fessler had been the first to face the German public with this intimation, his fortune was made at Rome.

Bishop Dupanloup, of Orleans, put forth his best literary power in what was called, by the Constitutionnel, an attempt to bring about a reconciliation between the Council and the principles of 1789.[122] He urged that they greatly erred who looked upon the approaching Council as a menace against modern society, or as a declaration of war with progress. On the contrary, freedom, fraternity and progress, so far as they were true and good, had nothing to fear from this "senate of humanity."

Bishop Von Ketteler, of Mainz, declared that the forthcoming Council was the greatest event of our age[123]—

At least (added this doughty pupil of the Jesuits), in the work of reconstruction; for as to destruction, certainly, there have been greater events. As God provided for the Church and the world in the century of the so-called Reformation, by means of the Council of Trent, so has He in our century, which, still sadder to say, is the century of Revolution, the century of demolition and universal destruction, inspired the High Pontiff with the supreme remedy, the convocation of the Vatican Council. The work of destruction is manifestly hasting to its end. It is time to commence the work of reconstruction, on the ancient foundation laid by Christ once for all. This is precisely the work to which the Council is called.

These words we quote from the Civiltá, to which the whole document seemed highly laudable.[124] But its translation is strong. Ketteler did not use the term "reconstruction" for his German audience, but "construction." He did not say that God had inspired the Pontiff, but that the Spirit of God again assembled the General Council, the highest Court of Judgment for the Truth on earth. This last form of words had the merit of which our English tongue has within the last few years presented some examples of all but incredible skill—the merit of suggesting to a Protestant an idea that would not awaken his political fears, and yet of representing to the Jesuits of the Civiltá the true doctrine. The Pope himself began to take part in the controversy now gradually rising. The Abbé Belet had translated into French the work of the Jesuit Father Weninger, published in New York. The Pope wrote a brief to thank him, taking occasion at the same time harshly to censure the great Bossuet, as a bishop who, in order to flatter the civil power, contradicted his own proper opinions, and contradicted the original doctrine of the Church.[125]

Pleasant to the military palate of Pius IX were the words of brave Colonel Allet, in a soldierly order of the day, issued in December, to his zouaves. After recounting in terse, strong terms, their services against the Garibaldians, he says—

Soldiers! all is not over. Great dangers still threaten the Church. Remember that in your regiment you stand, not merely as soldiers marching side by side; you also represent a principle before the world, the principle of the voluntary and disinterested defence of the Holy See. You are the nucleus around which will unite in the hour of danger the prayers, the succours, and the hopes of the Catholic world. Be, then, true soldiers of God. You have not merely duties, you have even a mission, and you will not fulfil it without union, discipline, moral conduct, and military instruction. A third battalion is formed. Your swelling ranks assure to you a larger part in future struggles. We shall march together to the cry of "Long Live Pius IX!"

Funereal solemnities on behalf of the fallen are proudly recorded as having been celebrated in France, England, Germany, etc.

To these military consolations were added such as a crown and a nation once great could now bestow. Queen Isabella strongly recommended from the throne, and her Cortes almost unanimously voted, that the forces of the nation, acting in alliance with the Emperor of the French, should be ready to defend the Holy See.[126] What was more important, the King of Prussia, in reply to Ledochowsky, spoke clearly in support of the temporal power. It was also told with satisfaction how, at banquets, both at Malines and Namur, the health of the Pope was drunk before that of the King of Belgium, and how pleasantly the Nuncio gave the health of the local and subordinate sovereign after that of his master, as the Lord Paramount, had received its meed.[127]

It is not easy for us, whose faith has always rested on the fixed standard of God's Word, to enter into all the feelings of suspense which are to be read between the lines of a lecture by Professor Menzel, then of Braunsberg, now of Bonn, printed for private circulation among his former pupils.[128] He is teaching them the doctrine of Church infallibility, but not, as he had hitherto done, in the twofold confidence of persuasion and personal security. Persuasion abides, reinforced by fresh study and animated by assault. But security is gone. The consciousness that he may never more be allowed to teach this doctrine weighs upon all he utters. Before another session, should his own faith not change, that of his chair probably will. The Church which he had served, as permitting the membership of those who denied the infallibility of the Pope, had been catholic enough for him. But now, after pausing since the Reformation, she had actively resumed the process of narrowing the terms of membership by dogmatizing new shibboleths. One had been already added in his own day. Another now hung overhead, still more momentous, because it not only altered the doctrine of the Church, but altered the standard of doctrine, and was moreover self-propagating—a seed bearing fruit after its kind.

"This complete subversion of the old Catholic principle, everywhere, always, and by all," cries the poor Professor, "has found its most doughty champions in the Jesuits of the Civiltá Cattolica, with their branch at Maria Laach, and in the Archbishops of Malines and Westminster, Deschamps and Manning."[129] In the struggling argument of the Teacher of this year, we cannot help hearing, by anticipation, the sighs of the excommunicated of next year; excommunicated for holding fast what he had always taught, with the sanction of the Church, and from one of her chairs! And as the iron enters into his soul, he evidently feels it hard that an English hand should be one of the foremost in driving it home.

Professors looked from the chair on their classes not knowing what they might have to teach a twelvemonth hence. Preachers looked from the pulpit on their congregations weighted with the same uncertainty. Editors wrote that the Catholic faith was thus and thus, feeling that, perhaps, soon they must write the reverse, or else drop the pen. Heads of families were perplexed as to what they should say to their children, if compelled to believe what they and their fathers had always resented as a false accusation against their religion. Jurists wondered if they must either break with their clergy or begin a campaign for reinstating canon law over civil. Kings whose forefathers had compelled nations, by the sword, to wear the yoke of Rome, chafed to think that their religion was to be "changed over their heads." But all this time the silent arbiters of the Catholic's destiny were patiently framing the decrees. Men moved and combined to prevent new fetters from being forged for their souls next year; but link was being already noiselessly added to link, by old, cool, and resolute masters. The Emperor set to defend the Gallican liberties for the millions of France, and the Emperor set to uphold the Josephine safeguards for the millions of Austria, had no access to the subterranean forge Antra Ætnaca where chains and thunderbolts were on the anvil, away from the ears of men. Turnus had not less power over the island cave where the arms by which he was to fall were being tempered. But, on the other hand, the Vulcan of the Syllabus had more than one Venus at the Court of each potentate, wooing in his interests, and pleading for his will. The truth, however, was to dawn upon their subjects from behind gorgeous clouds of their beloved pomps and ceremonies.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VI

Agitation in Bavaria and Germany—The Golden Rose—Fall of Isabella—The King of Bavaria obtains the Opinion of the Faculties—Döllinger—Schwarzenberg's Remonstrance.

The proximity of Bavaria to Italy on the one hand, and to Protestant Germany and Switzerland on the other, had assisted in giving to the schools of Munich a juster appreciation of the effect to be expected in the world at large, from new additions to the dogmatic burden which Catholics must carry. For a considerable time a conflict had been silently growing up between the theology of the German schools and that in recent years imported direct from Rome by the new type of priests there trained. The catechisms—even those prepared by the early Jesuits—had been gradually altered, till first the denial of Papal infallibility disappeared, and secondly the statement of Church infallibility was so obscured as to prepare the way for further change.

Jesuit establishments had been springing up in defiance of the law. The Ultramontane Press had raged against the unity of Germany under the leadership of Prussia, writing so as to lead foreigners to believe that France had only to invade Germany and she would find the Catholics on her side. A littérateur named Fischer being arrested at Landeck in June, 1868, a letter was found from Count Platen, saying, "A league of the small states with France, for the common end of breaking the power of Prussia, is the duty of all."[130]

The feelings of the educated classes generally resented such attempts with indignation. We have seen how Sepp spoke of the canonization of Arbues. The painter Kaulbach executed a picture of an auto da fe celebrated under the eye of this new celestial patron. A priest preached against the sale of the engravings; and Kaulbach wrote a letter, which was printed in the Cologne Gazette, hailing such reproach as an honour, and appending a sketch of the Roman twins drinking in the milk of the she-wolf. Of his Romulus and Remus, one wore the crown of imperial France, and the other the tiara.[131]

German writers assert that Napoleon III induced Queen Isabella of Spain, in the spring of 1868, to pledge herself to send into Italy forty thousand men to protect the Pope, in case he should be obliged to withdraw his troops by entering on a war with Prussia. Other authorities say that it was to be in case of a war with Italy. At all events, the most select favour the Pontiff had to confer on the worthiest lady of his Church, the golden rose, was sent to her most Catholic Majesty. This distinction placed Isabella on a level with the Queen of Naples and the Empress Eugènie, the only two lambs in all his fold hitherto held worthy by Pius IX of this pontifical seal of stainless whiteness. But to the daughter of Queen Christina the golden rose proved to be the last rose of her summer. In September 1868 this elect lady, after outliving more insurrections than any sovereign in Christendom, was compelled to flee. An expression fell from the Catholique of Brussels on the news that the crown of Isabella was threatened, which throws light on the Ultramontane dialect: "Spain will be lost to Catholicism, lost to the cause of order in Europe, and the last Christian government will have disappeared from the Old World."[132] This drew from Montalembert the remark: "To wish modern society, or any Christian born in that society and destined to live in it, to esteem the condition of Spain under Isabella II more highly than that of England under Victoria, and to wish this in the name of the Catholic Church, in the name of the party of order in Europe, is to impute to that party and to that Church the saddest of responsibilities, and the most menacing."[133]

But all Catholic political personages were not as good Papists as Queen Isabella.

Montalembert, full of thoughts suggested by the questions rising in the Church, saw in her fall but an incident of the decay of Spain, which, again, was but the most striking example of the condition of most Roman Catholic countries. He wrote what, as we have seen, appeared only after his death. Confessing that the reign of Isabella had lasted "too long," he traced the ruin of the country to "despotism, spiritual and temporal, absolute monarchy, and the Inquisition." After showing that both municipal and parliamentary liberties had been well developed in Spain in the days when she struggled, rose, and took the lead, he dates the beginning of her fall from the combination of Church and State, under Charles V, to work unitedly in quenching civil and religious liberty. Though no advocate of the separation of Church and State, he says, "A thousand times better the fullest separation with all its excesses, than the absorption of the State by the Church, or of the Church by the State." No better expression could have been chosen than the former of these phrases to designate the effect of the Jesuit polity of Church and State just about to be adopted by Rome.

He takes the social and political effects of the Inquisition to have been disastrous—"That monstrous institution ceased to act only when it had no more to do, when it had substituted emptiness, death, and nothingness for the life, the force, and the glory of the first nation of the middle ages, the one which we may justly call the pearl of the Catholic world." Aiming a two-edged thrust at Bonapartist legislatures, and at the character of the coming Council, he says that the "ill-omened" Charles V was the inventor "of consultative despotism," or representative absolutism, of which the Napoleons are wrongly accused of being the originators. For one who had spent his life in battling for the Papacy, but always with the hope of reconciling it to liberty, it was bitter, when death was in view, to write: "There is not in the history of the world a second example of a great country so ruined, so broken down, so fallen, without foreign conquest or civil war having materially contributed to the result, but by the sole effect of institutions of which it was the prey."[134]

Had the Prime Minister of Bavaria at the juncture in question been a Protestant, he would have been slower in seeing the political bearings of what was taking place. One of the three brothers of Prince Hohenlohe was a cardinal, and otherwise his means of information had been good. Besides, though Bavaria had often served the Papal cause to the hurt of Germany, it had never, like Prussia, given up its placet and other guards of the royal supremacy. The Prime Minister submitted questions for the formal opinion of the two Faculties of Theology and Law, in the University of Munich, as to the effect which the definition of Papal infallibility as a dogma would have upon the relations of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

The Faculty of Theology, in its reply, after referring to the work of Schrader, and quoting some of his propositions, says—

Should these or similar conclusions be adopted (i.e. the conclusion of the Syllabus against freedom of religion, of the Press, etc.), it would lead to great confusion. The counter principles are so established, both in the theory and practice of all European constitutions, that anything contrary to religious equality and freedom of opinion can scarcely again obtain a footing. Were it laid upon Catholics, as a duty of conscience, to repudiate those principles, undeniably collision between their civil and ecclesiastical obligations would result, and in certain circumstances consequences would ensue, burdensome and hurtful both to the individual members of a national Church and to the collective body.[135]

The statesmen had asked the divines what was meant by speaking ex cathedrâ. The Faculty replied that among those who asserted the doctrine of Papal infallibility, there were some twenty theories on the subject, none of them authoritative or generally received, and all arbitrary; "because here it is impossible to frame a theory from Scripture and tradition."[136]

The Faculty of Law said—

Should the propositions of the Syllabus and the Papal infallibility be made dogmas, the relations between State and Church hitherto subsisting would be altered in their very principles, and nearly all the legislation fixing the legal position of the Catholic Church in Bavaria would be called in question.[137]

The chief of the Theological Faculty was Dr. Döllinger, whose aged but erect head was to every scholar in the University a crown of glory. The professors were proud of him, and of their attainments made under his eye. In common with the scholars of other Catholic seats of learning in Germany, they habitually manifested contempt for the Doctores Romani, the imported pupils of the Jesuits from the Collegium Germanicum or other seminaries in Rome—a feeling which they extended to the great bulk of the men of the Curia.

Döllinger had been a firm Tridentine Romanist, devoutly bearing the burden of the new dogmas which the Council of Trent bound up and laid upon men's shoulders. But being profoundly versed in antiquity, he was not disposed for more accretions of the same sort, and he had long been detested by the Jesuits, as standing in the old paths and resisting their innovations. Superstitions newly carried over the Alps did not thrive under his eye. As a historian he had not feared to narrate and censure the enormities of Popes.

While these agitations were arising in the provinces, the secret preparations in Rome were being pushed forward. The fact became known that the six Commissions were at work. The names of those serving upon them no sooner transpired than a cry arose that only favourites of the Jesuits were appointed. So few names from Germany appeared that offence was given, even in a national point of view. This feeling increased when it appeared that celebrities of whom the Catholic faculties were proud had been passed over, and that inferior men, known only for devotion to the Curia, had been selected. These feelings were partly theological, partly personal, and yet more strongly patriotic. The Germans knew that a double peril for the Fatherland lurked in the anti-unionist policy of Rome—peril of disruption from within, and of invasion from France.

Dissatisfaction must have run tolerably high when Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg wrote to Cardinal Antonelli, formally remonstrating as to the selection made. The fact, he submitted, that all those selected belonged to one well-defined theological school, was in itself open to objection. As to the reputation of the favourites, he said, "I have had fears lest their qualifications should not prove equal to their weighty responsibilities." He names Munich, Bonn, and Tübingen, as Universities where fit men were to be found as well as at Würzburg, and goes so far as to mention names, among them that of Döllinger.

This letter was politely answered by Antonelli, after a couple of months. He said that Döllinger would have been invited only that his Holiness had learned that he would not accept the duty.[138]

One of the theologians at whom the innuendo of Cardinal Schwarzenberg was aimed was Hergenröther. Yet Archbishop Manning wrote to Macmillan's Magazine, and, after speaking of the men of Munich as if they were of little more account in the esteem of students than in that of ecclesiastical courtiers, told us that if we wanted to learn anything of the true relation of Catholics to national law, we must not go to them, but must study Hergenröther.[139]

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VII

Intention of proposing the Dogma of Infallibility intimated—Bavarian Note to the Cabinets, February to April, 1869—Arnim and Bismarck.

It was in February, 1869, that the fears and hopes which had long been more or less distinctly directed to a given point, were both quickened by fresh light. The Civiltá Cattolica, in the letter of its French correspondent, published suggestions that the Council should sit for but a short time, that it should proclaim the doctrines of the Syllabus, and that the infallibility of the Pope should be adopted by acclamation. It was at once alleged that the finger of Pius himself gave this sign. The suggestions thus made explain what the Cardinals consulted in the first instance meant when they hoped that the Council would not last so long as some might think. They had in 1854 induced the bishops to acclaim a new dogma, and in 1867 to accept the Syllabus without demur, and surely they could get any portions of that document which it was necessary, for greater clearness, to formulate into decrees, passed in the same delightful way; and this would be still more desirable for the dogma of infallibility. Archbishop Manning treated the idea of an intended acclamation as a pleasantry; but he charged the ventilation of it on a wrong time and on a wrong publication. "Janus first announced the discovery of the plot."[140] It may have been Janus who first clearly indicated a certain English prelate as the man chosen by the party of acclamation to give the signal. But he was long behind the first to announce the plot. The laity generally were offended and alarmed, at least those north of the Alps, and many bishops who were ready to vote for the Curia did not feel flattered at having the whole world informed that they were not wanted in Rome as judges of the faith, but as adornments of a grand pageant. The translation or assumption of the body of the Virgin was also suggested in the same article, as a doctrine which it was desirable to make into a dogma.

As time wore on, the excitement became more intense. In France, the action of the government, as in most things under the Second Empire, was ambiguous. It seemed to dread the impending innovations, and every now and then what appeared to the world as a menace was half uttered. Yet it was plain that the Curia was not disturbed. Nothing can be more tranquil than the letters in the Civiltá from its French correspondent. There is an apparent sense of solid support, such as no gusts of the popular winds will seriously shake. M. de Banneville, the acceptable representative of France in Rome, continued in his post. When the question of the presence of princes in the Council was to be faced, Cardinal Antonelli had the comfort of treating it with this trusty friend. It was comparatively easy to convey to him the intimation which, in a few words, represented, as M. Veuillot had showed, a radical revolution in Church and State. There were no more Catholic States. The term "Catholic arms" continued to be applied, by official writers, to those of France and the other countries which had reconquered the lost States of the Pope. But arms are perhaps, like gold and silver to the Brahmans, substances which never contract pollution. The monarchs were outside the door. Even France, whose flag at Civitá Vecchia was the only protection of the temporal power, was told that she was no longer a Catholic State—she, the eldest daughter of the Church; she whom the Pope, in parting with General Failly, had for love of her chassepots—the "prodigious chassepots," as they were called—blessed as the "most Christian nation!" The Curia knew that the hold of the Pope on the priests and schools was stronger than that of the Bonapartes on army and nation; and they were rearing up their champions, while the Empire was wearing out its own.

The same number of the Civiltá which records the death of Antonelli states the case in the following terms. The Pontiff could not invite powers "of which one, like Italy, was in open hostility to the Church; of which another had, like Austria, of her own motion, torn up the Concordat; and another had, like France, a turncoat and a perfidious traitor to the Holy See upon the throne."

The Ultramontane priests enjoyed this disfranchisement of kings; but they were not yet all prepared to find that the Order of Priests was also to be disfranchised. Not a man of them was to be allowed to plead in presence of the Council. The Cardinals, in their close and still Commissions, were preparing to put, not only laymen, but priests and bishops too, more on the footing of a marching army than ever before.

On April 9, 1869, Prince Hohenlohe addressed a circular to the European Cabinets in the name of Bavaria. It was not to be believed, he said, that the Council would confine itself to purely theological questions, of which, in fact, none were pressing for solution. The only dogmatic point that Rome wished the Council to decide was that of Papal infallibility, for which the Jesuits in Germany and elsewhere were agitating. "This question," added the Prince, "reaches far beyond the domain of religion, and is in its nature highly political; for the power of the Pope in temporal things over all princes and nations, even such as are in separation from Rome, would be defined, and elevated into an article of faith."

The smooth reply of the German Jesuit organ was that something of the kind had been said before in the Augsburg Gazette. But the circle of Church authority would remain the same, whether the organ of that authority should be the Pope singly, or the Pope in conjunction with the bishops; just as the powers of a national government would be the same in extent, whether in the hands of a monarch or of a republican executive.

This is characteristic. The discussion was not about any proposal to enlarge or contract the theoretic circle of Church power, but about a proposal to declare that the Pope alone, without the bishops, was the depositary of that power. If the theory of Rome was correct, no extension of the circle of power was possible, but the depositary of power was now to be changed.

If, among ourselves, it was proposed to give the power of life and death to the Crown, without judge or jury, we might be told that the power of life and death was the same whether exercised by royal warrant or through the traditionary courts. The circle of power would not be extended.

The Bavarian note did not elicit a practical response from other Cabinets. The reply of Austria was, perhaps, influenced by the fact that Count Beust, then Prime Minister, was a Protestant. His despatch bears marks either of non-appreciation of the import of terms and acts, proceeding from the Vatican, such as would be natural in one not trained to watch them, or of a desire to evade the gravity of the question. He thought it best to wait and to be on his guard.[141] On behalf of Prussia, Bismarck also took up an attitude of observation, but with more insight into the reasons for the suggestion of Prince Hohenlohe. The Italian Government had expressed itself in favour of common action, but practically let things take their course. England naturally declined to interfere. As to France, she thought herself protected by the Concordat against all eventualities—another proof that her statesmen handled affairs without mastering ideas. Perhaps not one of them had read what Rome had lately been teaching as the true doctrine of Concordats.

The Unitá Cattolica (June 23), however, put this tranquil attitude of France in a different light—

Hohenlohe is sold to Prussia, and torments the Catholics of Bavaria to push them to throw themselves into the arms of Prussia, where Catholicism enjoys the utmost liberty, thanks to the fox-like policy of Bismarck. This is known in Paris, and hence Napoleon is said to have looked darkly on the perfidious proposals of the Bavarian Minister.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VIII

Indulgences—Excitement—The Two Brothers Dufournel—Senestrey's Speech—Hopes of the Ruin of Germany—What the Council will do—Absurdity of Constitutional Kings—The True Saviour of Society—Lay Address from Coblenz—Montalembert adheres to it—Religious Liberty does not answer—Importance of keeping Catholic Children apart from the Nation—War on Liberal Catholics—Flags of all Nations doing Homage to that of the Pope.

On April 11, 1869, was issued another of those Bulls proclaiming indulgences on which the world has almost ceased to look as one of the forces of history. Nevertheless each of them is a monument to an authority obeyed by disciplined millions, as holding executive power both in this world and the other. Once more were long Latin sentences filled out to tell the faithful that he who had power to bind and to loose proclaimed to them, on the occasion of the Council, full remission of their sins, and indulgence, on condition of their visiting certain basilicas, and saying certain prayers.[142] "This pardon," says the Archbishop of Florence, "was to extend not only till the opening of the Council, but through the whole of its continuance."[143] Millions were thus put under the necessity of imbibing the conviction, that sin against our neighbour and our God admits of being cancelled in such a way, or else of seeming to believe what they did not believe, or of bowing and not asking themselves whether they believed it or not.

About this time was inaugurated, with great display of dignitaries, military and spiritual, a monument to two brothers Dufournel, who lie in S. Lorenzo. The monument bears all the emblems of martyrdom which the art of the catacombs can supply. Instead of the usual request to pray for the repose of the soul, into which Romanism fell from Christianity, stands the word of the early Christians, "They rest"—here applied because martyrdom had merited what grace was no longer believed to give. Emmanuel Dufournel, on meeting the Garibaldians, shouted to his men, "Here, lads, is the spot to die; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, forward!" When expiring, he said, "I am pleased to see my blood flow from fourteen wounds for the glory of Holy Church." The people of Valentano, where he died, said to his men, "Let us kiss the bier; we do not come to pray for his soul, but to commend ourselves to him" (VII. vi. 547). "Such"—adds the reverend writer—"such is the Christian instinct which distinguishes between combatants in any other cause, however just, and the heroes of the Christian religion." To develop instincts of this sort, it is impossible to conceive writing more skilfully adapted. And these are the men who, at every breath, call the Italians Mussulmans!

The other brother, Diodato Dufournel—young, handsome, polished, rich—soon after the death of Alfred, met Father Gerlache at daylight entering St. Peter's: "I go to say a mass for our dead on the Apostle's tomb." "I go too," replied the Captain, and they entered the crypt. The priest asked the zouave what had caused his strange absorption in prayer. "Father, I was praying to the Virgin for the favour of dying for Holy Church." Ten days afterwards he fell mortally wounded during the Garibaldian disturbance in Rome. When the white-headed father arrived, it was too late to see either son alive, but he was instantly received by the Pope. The sovereign tried to fasten on his breast the order of the Piano, but was blinded by his tears. Maria, the sister of Diodato and Emmanuel, came between the two weeping old men, and, guiding the hand of the Pope, fastened the decoration on the breast of her father. The writer concludes by representing the ladies of the house hereafter as pointing out to their little ones the glove, the sword, the fatal ball, and other relics, the victor palm and the exulting angels, and saying, "Their souls are in paradise, lovely and resplendent, and are interceding for us. Children, kneel down and pray to God that none of our family may degenerate from the example of Diodato and Emmanuel Dufournel!"

Bishop Senestrey, of Regensburg, known as a pupil of the Jesuits and an ardent Ultramontane, made a speech at Schwandorf, which has not yet been forgotten in Bavaria, and was soon heard of in other parts of Germany. He said—

We Ultramontanes cannot yield. The antagonism can have no issue but in war and revolution. A peaceable settlement is not possible. Who makes your temporal laws? We observe them only because a force stands behind which compels us. True laws come from God only. Princes themselves reign by the grace of God, and when they have no longer a mind to do so, I shall be the first to overturn the throne.[144]

To the Germans, who were just rising to a consciousness of their unity, the threats of breaking them up again were cruel, especially when coming from within. "The foreigner," said Sepp, "has always counted on the internal splits in the German oak, to drive in his wedge, and rend us to pieces."

The scorn with which talk of recognizing Italy was treated at this proud moment, may be judged from the words of the Unitá for January 27, in an article headed, Dying with Italy or Living with the Pope. The Marquis de Moustier, it remarks, having promised to study a modus vivendi, proposed by Menabrea, was seized by mortal illness. In a similar way Morny, Wallewsky, Petri, and Billault were struck with death, by urgent study of means for making revolution live side by side with the Pope.

Parliamentary government, hateful everywhere, was viewed as monstrous in Italy. The Civiltá cannot "accurately study" the proceedings in Florence, because of "the ineffable weariness, the disgust, the disdain with which the mind is seized, on reading those speeches, often vulgar, and running over with sophism and effrontery."[145] It proceeds to say that the famous boons of 1789, liberty of worship, liberty of meeting, liberty of the Press, and liberty of instruction, led in practice "to the triumph of irreligion, to the tyranny of the State, to unbridled licence in handling through the Press the most sacred and inviolable rights, and to the barbarizing of the young by more infamous ignorance." Yet, at the same time, it records with satisfaction efforts of its own friends to obtain liberty of instruction, after their ideal; that is, the State giving up to the priest the control of what is taught to its subjects with its own money.

The Civiltá gloried in the disappearance of the Liberal Catholic priests, utterly extinguished, as it held, by the Syllabus and by the prospect of the Council. There might still linger some slight remnant of Liberal Catholics among the laity. But Catholics in Italy were now to be noted for their hope, their joy, and their perfect withdrawal from political life. They were no more to be found seeking situations from the government, but were all ardently drawing close to Pius IX. Since he uttered the "prophetic word," Let us wait upon events, above all since the Council was summoned, they had betaken themselves to pious works and to waiting on the hand of the Almighty.[146]

In the same publications which struggled against unity of nations, the loss of another unity was bitterly deplored. "Catholic unity" in Spain, hitherto existing by law, alas! exclaims the Stimmen, exists in fact no longer. By religious unity is meant the state of things which forbids men to worship God except under direction of the Pope. Massimo D'Azeglio exclaimed as to Italy, Religious unity is the only unity we have left. We should say, No wonder!

The attempt to place the unity of Christians not in faith in Christ and manifestation of His spirit, but in subjection to one human being, has had just the same results as had the attempt to place the unity of mankind in obedience to one sovereign, treating all who did not yield as enemies. Human unity is larger and nobler than one throne will ever shadow, and so is Christian unity. The lust of uniformity that erected the Inquisition, fettered the Press, sentenced free opinion and free speech to death, reformed the Decalogue, and laid bonds upon the Bible, has never given a nation rest, and has only been an endless source of division and scepticism. Azeglio, in the same breath in which he speaks of this "unity," calls Italy "the ancient land of doubt," where even at the time of the Reformation people thought little of Rome and nothing of Geneva. And the Stimmen says that those Spaniards who had broken down "religious unity" were "not Protestants but sceptics."[147] So that in both Italy and Spain the result of that uniformity which is no unity, was scepticism in religion and decay in politics.

To the race the bond of unity lies in a common Father, and to the Church in a common Lord. In the one case and in the other the maintenance of unity consists not in putting down variations, but in treating them with brotherly regard.

Very great political significance was lent by all the Papal Press to festivities in honour of the Pope's fiftieth year of priesthood. The demonstrations of devotion to him at this moment were fervent and grand, and the supplies of money laid at his feet were immense. Great care was taken by the Civiltá to ridicule the idea of the Opinione that these manifestations had nothing to do with politics. On the contrary, cried the leaders of the "good Press," humanity, bewildered and almost in despair, was hastening to the feet of the only deliverer. All society needed a saviour, as every rational creature knew. "The Pontiff is now almost alone in the world, the representative of truth, justice, and good sense." And hence, the poor world, swimming in error, fraud and absurdity—"the world sees in Pius IX a true master, a true judge, a true sovereign, and it cleaves to him as the bulwark of society." The Syllabus suffices to prove that the Pope alone declares the truth: "the Syllabus which burst like a thunderbolt out of a serene sky, both illuminated and blasted." The nations seem to be saying, To whom should we go, but to the Supreme Pastor of the Christian flock?—thou hast the words of eternal life. Pius IX, by rejecting the counsels of the prudent, "now has become morally the strongest support of order in the world, so that those who have fallen, and those who wish not to follow them, lean upon him." And not only so, but the

new queen of the world, Public Opinion, is now altogether in favour of the Roman Pontiff, and protects and saves him, almost of herself alone, against every violence and every intrigue, so that it now may almost be said that all those in the world who are not with Pius IX from love are with him by force (VII. vi. pp. 310-11).

The writer then goes on to argue that the people can never understand how one and the same person can have two consciences, one as a constitutional king and the other as a man. This, however, is a necessary condition of a constitutional king, but it is not the case in the Pontifical States, where nobody would ever suppose such a condition of things possible.

The Pope has only one conscience, and neither majority nor universality of votes and suffrages would ever lead him to sanction that which is contrary to morality, to justice, to equity, and to the well understood interests of his subjects and of the flock. The Pope can say with truth, "Although all, not I"; and on this account the eyes and the hearts of all in the world who hate fictions and impostures, and who love truth and rectitude, are turned to the Pope thus reigning and governing (p. 312).

We make no attempt to inquire how many consciences a Pope may have. The Civiltá contends that he cannot have more than one. We have heard Romans contend that one is above the number. Liverani (p. 140), alluding with much personal respect to Father Mignardi, the Jesuit confessor of Cardinal Antonelli, who, though not Pope, had much to do with the perfect model of government above commended, evidently thinks that a director of Antonelli's conscience held a sinecure. He asserts that no one knew that his Eminence had a conscience till April 2, 1860, when he declared the fact in a despatch to Count Cavour! And this is the language of a prelate!

The more distant prelates were already bidding their flocks farewell. The Bishop of Montreal, in doing so, cited the example of the valorous Canadian youths, who had enrolled themselves among the zouaves to defend the Pope at the cost of their blood, exhorting his clergy with similar courage to contend against the errors pointed out by the Pope.[148] From Jerusalem five priests wrote to announce that they would commence a concert of prayer, on the slopes of Calvary: 1. For the happy result of the Council; 2. For the union of the Oriental schismatics; 3. For the conversion of erring priests. At the same time that it announces this fact, the Civiltá, quoting from the Tablet, says that in Russia, "under the appearance of external unity, there is great division of religious sects"; and that there is some desire for union with Rome.[149]

In June 1869 the Catholics of Coblentz presented an address to the Bishop of Trêves, protesting against the innovations proposed by the Civiltá Cattolica, and suggesting reforms in a spirit contrary to that of the Syllabus. Great interest was excited by the warm adhesion of Count Montalembert to the address. His services, both to the spiritual and temporal power, had been conspicuous. He was now in the grip of a mortal disease. France will always respect his piety and his genius, but she will increasingly have cause to deplore the direction of his influence, as the slow but sure results of priestly power in education develop themselves.

"Twice within the last few weeks," he writes, "have I touched the brink of the grave." So he feels that he may speak of this world as one whose personal interest in it is as nought.

Speaking of the address, he says: "I cannot express how much I have been moved and charmed by that glorious manifesto, flowing from the reason and conscience of Catholics.... At last I seemed to hear a manly and a Christian tone, amid the declamations and adulations wherewith we are deafened." He would have signed "every line" of it, but he felt somewhat humbled that it did not proceed from French Catholics, with whose antecedents it would have harmonized, as well as with those convictions which made them, in the early part of this century, the champions of religious liberty on the Continent.[150]

It was hard for the Jesuits to own that Montalembert stood in their path, to be pitilessly struck down. For the present they tried to reason. Like him, many, especially in Belgium, had imbibed the conviction that civil and religious liberty were good in themselves, and might be made to work favourably for the Church, which they thought incurred great danger by setting herself in opposition to both, and by using her spiritual engines for the overthrow of constitutional government. Such men argued that the perfect liberty existing in England, the United States, and Belgium had many advantages for the Church.

To reasoning of this sort the Stimmen aus Maria Laach replied by first of all uttering encomiums on religious liberty, and also on those excellent Catholics who favoured it, thinking it might prove best for the Church. But though this view of the case had its noble aspects, there was another side to it. Experience proved that under such a system the losses of the Church were deplorable. Not to speak of Europe, the case of the United States would suffice. As much as thirty years ago, Bishop England, of Charleston, had said that whereas the Catholics ought to have six millions of the population, they really had less than two. And this terrible loss was aggravated at the present day, for considering the enormous immigration of Catholics and the addition of Mexican territory in the meantime, they ought now to number fifteen millions; but in fact they did not dare to claim more than six. A good authority had showed that the Church lost more souls in the State of Wisconsin in a single year, than she gained in the whole Union. The loss among the children of the Irish was greater than among those of the Germans. This the writer attributes to "the pestiferous air" of non-denominational schools, and complains that the system prevailing in America deprives children of a well-ordered and continuous Catholic education, such as would protect them, among other dangers, from the necessity of learning English.[151]

This anxiety to keep up the German tongue in America illustrates the cry raised in the German Press against that tongue being put out of the schools, both in Posen and in the Tyrol. "Liberty of instruction" had been so used that whole districts, once speaking German, had been educated into the use of Polish in the one case, and of Italian in the other. In both these countries the same reason which in America made it desirable for Rome to keep up German, turned the other way. In America, the German tongue would enclose a people, in the heart of the country, walled off and apart from the nation. In the other cases, that tongue would be a channel connecting the people with the ebb and flow of the national mind. Even a comparatively small population, kept well in hand, inaccessible to the common thought, and ready to obey every touch of the leaders, may be made a formidable political power. Had Wales been in the hand of Rome![152]

Among the causes of chagrin to Montalembert would be a recent article in the Civiltá, directed against the Liberal Catholics by name, and plainly meant to thwart any influence with which they might have hoped to approach the Council. A pamphlet being taken as a text, the positions of the Liberal Catholics are stated, as—1. That modern nations deserve more liberty than ancient ones; 2. That liberty of worship should be conceded, as now inevitable; 3. That "the distinction between Church and State" is not now to be got rid of, and has its advantages; 4. That Catholics ought to avail themselves of all liberties. On the first point it is replied that modern society has made only material progress, but gone back in faith and morals, and therefore deserves not more liberty than ancient society, but less. On the second point, resenting an allusion of the Liberal Catholic to the fact that Pius IX had himself granted a constitution at the opening of his reign, the Civiltá alleges, first, that it was conceded in circumstances of imperious necessity; and, secondly, that it was free from the essential faults which would deservedly brand it as Liberal—"it lacked the criminal principles of liberty of worship, of the Press, and of meeting." Moreover, it issued in the exile of the Prince, "which seems to be the inevitable result of modern constitutions." So the Pontiff was obliged to revoke it, and to condemn it to oblivion.

The Liberal Catholic writer had quoted passages, even from Jesuits, to prove that it was lawful for princes, in given circumstances, to tolerate liberty of worship. Certainly, replies the Civiltá, it is lawful to tolerate it, if imperious circumstances render it necessary in order to avoid a greater evil. But that is one thing, and admitting liberty of worship as a principle is another. "What meaning have the words of the present Pontiff when he declares that liberty of conscience and of worship is madness, and the pest of the nations?" What did he mean when he condemned President Comonfort for admitting religious liberty into Mexico? Did Gregory XVI and Pius IX talk to the middle ages? Did they tell the present generation what was suitable or not suitable for the middle ages? Catholics may not be able to change the state of things where liberty of worship already exists, but it is in their power to prevent its entrance where it does not, and to demonstrate its criminality, and its moral and social balefulness. As to Catholics availing themselves of all liberties, that idea is no patent of Liberal Catholics. Of course Catholics avail themselves of all liberties of which they can make use. But to take part in the elections of a kingdom like that of Italy, formed by iniquity, and binding up in itself a perpetual sacrilege, is impossible. The words of the Bull which hurled an excommunication against king and people, are paraded, and the unfortunate Liberal Catholic is reminded that those words apply to adherents of the spoliation.[153]

A London correspondent of the Civiltá told how the journals had at first affected to ignore the Council, but now began to speak of it. The Anglo-Catholic party were discussing projects of union, and he gives an account of a meeting for that purpose, not naming time or place, but making the Rev. Edward Urquhart prominent. It is said, he adds, that one bishop will go to the Council; and the Ritualists think that many of their party will do so. There is much cause for hope. Some persons of high station have publicly said that they would submit to the Council, and many say so privately. They do not feel safe in Anglicanism.

The prelate who replaced the Bishop of Montreal in his absence, delivered an address, from which the Civiltá repeats these words, that Pius IX had a mission, and his mission was to recall, to confirm, and to defend in the world, the law of the "Most High," the essential principle of authority, and thus to "save at once both the Church and Society."[154] But as a while ago we heard of toasts in which the Pope, as universal king, was put before the national king, so now on British ground is held up to admiration the trophy of banners in the Church of St. Sulpice as the fairest tribute of "New France," as Canada is called. The flags of all the societies in Montreal, and also those of all nations, were gathered together "in homage to the standard of Pius IX, to express the obedience of the Catholic nations to the supreme authority."[155]