Front matter (continued 6)

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IX

Publication of Janus—Hotter Controversy—Bishop Maret's Book—Père Hyacinthe—the Saviour of Society again—Dress—True Doctrine of Concordats not Contracts but Papal Laws—Every Catholic State has Two Heads—Four National Governments Condemned in One Day—What a Free Church means—Fulda Manifesto—Meeting of Catholic Notables in Berlin—Political Agitation in Bavaria and Austria—Stumpf's Critique of the Jesuit Schemes.

Little more than three months remained before the opening of the Council, when the intellectual movement respecting it received a new impulse. A book under the title of The Pope and the Council, by Janus, issued from the German press; and conjecture at once ascribed the principle authorship to no less a person than Döllinger, although it was assumed that he had availed himself of aid. The profound impression made by this work may be accounted for, partly by the excitement in the midst of which it appeared, and partly by its own force. It combined a minute knowledge of the inner history of the Church, with comprehensive views of the questions, both doctrinal and constitutional, which were now raised.

After a few clear passages from modern utterances of authority. Janus strikes the keynote rather higher than he is prepared to sustain it—"So they find themselves under a delusion, who believed that in the Church, the spirit of the Bible, and of old Christianity, had got the upper hand of that spirit of the middle ages according to which she was a penal establishment, able to send men to prison, to the gallows, or to the stake."

Beginning with the Magna Charta which Innocent III condemned, while he excommunicated the Barons, Janus cites case after case in which the establishment of free institutions, and especially of freedom of worship, brought down the solemn condemnation of the Pope. The case of Austria in 1868 is the latest. With the quietness of scientific knowledge, he states what at the time would have required from an English writer arguments and proofs in detail, namely, the simple but most important fact that the oft-quoted word of the Apostle, "We must obey God rather than men," means, in the Jesuit sense, We must obey the Pope as the representative of God upon earth, and the infallible interpreter of the Divine will, rather than any civil superior, or any law of the State (p. 33).

The tone of Janus is calm and scholarly, without being cold; and the acuteness of his analysis is such as is found only where clear intellectual insight is united to trained habits of weighing language with reference to possible interpretations by such casuists as are formed by the Curia and the Jesuits.

He clearly proved that the Church was on the eve of one of the greatest constitutional changes ever effected in any commonwealth. If, in the past, the forged Decretals of the pseudo-Isidore had facilitated inroads upon the constitution of the Church, how much more would an authentic article of the creed, containing in itself the power of making any number of other articles, and assuming as its basis the unlimited authority of the Pope, pave the way to far-reaching civil and ecclesiastical encroachments! When Archbishop Manning said of Janus that by some it was "regarded as the shallowest and most pretentious book of the day" (Priv. Pet., iii. p. 114), he greatly moderated the tone of his Continental friends. Most bad things that could be said against a book, or its writers, were said in very bad language. The Archbishop himself could not let it pass without twice calling it "infamous," and that in a pastoral.

The excitement in Germany now reached a point at which the bishops began to be alarmed. The "good Press" undertook to extenuate the importance of the changes dreaded, and threw doubts on the probability of their being adopted. The perplexity became greater when, in France, appeared a book in two volumes from the pen of Monsignor Maret, said by some to be the most learned prelate in the country, and who, at all events, was Dean of the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne. He combated the proposed innovations with French tact and skill, raising a voice, if not for the old Gallican doctrines as a whole, at least for some remains both of them and of the liberties with which are identified the names of the most renowned Churchmen in France since the Reformation.[156] The book made a profound but passing impression. It was called Religious Peace and the General Council; but the Jesuit historian Sambin (p. 47) styles it a brand increasing the conflagration. The question raised was that between a constitutional but oligarchical government and a personal one for the Church. Maret holds that in her constitution a check upon the monarch was provided by the "aristocracy," that is, the bishops (vol. ii, p. 107). The democracy is formed by the priests and the laity. But we may point out that this is very loose language. Democracy means a people with power, not a populace excluded from all functions of government. The people in the Papal Church are absolutely stripped of all part in government. They are a mere populace. The clergy are disfranchised officials. That Church is a society with a populace, but without a democracy. Before the Vatican Council, it had a constitutional aristocracy. Since then, the bishops are nobles without any but delegated power. Maret clearly states the familiar fact, that in the earlier centuries both clergy and laity took part in the election of bishops. But when he comes to speak of the part taken by kings in their election, the facts glide out of sight, as noiselessly as writers of his school generally say that they are wont to do in the hands of a Jesuit. A reader might imagine that kings first got the idea of a right in the election of bishops by some grant of the Church; whereas even the Bishops of Rome were for a long time elected on imperial or royal order, coming from Greek or Goth, from Arian or orthodox prince, as the case might be.

Maret quotes Cardinal de la Luzerne as saying that a General Council, in which the order of priests was not represented, would be illegitimate though not invalid (vol. i. p. 125); and gives it as the general opinion of theologians that their presence was necessary. He also admits that the presence of laymen in the Councils is attested by a large number of documents.

Von Schulte reviewed this work in the Literaturblat of Bonn (v. pp. 2 and 54). Looking at it in a popular sense, Schulte thought it was a book to mark an epoch. It was likely to produce a great effect among the clergy, little among the laity. Time has not justified this anticipation. The fact is, all the younger clergy had been educated out of French ideas and sympathies, and such of the young laity too as had been brought up by priests. Men were but beginning to find how the Christian Brothers, and convent schools, and episcopal seminaries had changed France.

The Civiltá, in reply, objects even to Maret's formula, the Pope with the bishops superior to himself alone. Such an objection implies that in Council all the bishops add to the Pope nothing at all. So many mitres without any heads in them would add at least as much. We believe, indeed, that great thinkers have doubted whether a judge with his wig is not superior to the same judge without his wig. But the Pope with all the bishops is not superior to the Pope without any bishop! The Jesuit writer says that he thinks he expresses the mind of Maret with exactness when he puts it thus, The supreme power resides in the Pope together with the bishops; in the Pope as supreme, whose strict duty it is nevertheless, to obey; in the bishops as subordinate, who, nevertheless, have the right to command (Civiltá, VII. viii. p. 257 ff.).

The choicest auditories of Paris had often crowded noble Notre Dame, quaffing with delight the sparkling eloquence of the Carmelite preacher Hyacinthe. Now the ear of the country was thrilled for a moment, by a cry from that eloquent voice. "By an abrupt change," he wrote to the General of his order on September 20, 1869, "for which I blame not your own feelings, but a party in Rome, you now accuse what you did encourage, and blame what you did approve, commanding me to hold a language, or to preserve a silence, which would not represent my conscience."

Placed in this difficulty, he must forsake General, order, and convent. He continues: "My profound conviction is, that if France in particular, and the Latin races in general, are delivered over to social, moral, and religious anarchy, the principal cause is, not assuredly Catholicism itself, but the manner in which it has been understood and practised for a long time."[157]

St. Peter's Day, always a great day in Rome, was, of course, of surpassing importance in the year of the Council. The Civiltá celebrated it in an article very like one of the Pope's Speeches. This article yields an example of a dualism in the government of the universe which must glide in as the unconscious but inevitable complement of the doctrine into which Papal writers fall, in explaining away what to others seems the blight of Providence on whatever they rule according to their own principles. They begin by separating the God of Providence from the God of grace. They end by turning the bounties of Providence into the bribes of the evil one. It will be seen that in what follows national prosperity comes from the devil. The increase of our fields, the blessing in our basket and our store, are in reality a curse. This, though unseen to the poor Pope who teaches such things, presents a true and a very hurtful form of Manicheism. It is another proof that they who readily forge and hurl bad names are not safe from the errors which those names when correctly used denote.

In June the Curia had to set up a strong resistance to the movement originated in Austria for the abrogation of the Concordat. That instrument, which had formed the diplomatic triumph of Cardinal Rauscher and had crowned the professional reputation of Schulte, had legally restored to the Papal Church much of what it calls its liberties; but the clergy complained that they never practically got all that was promised upon paper; In the Frond biographies of the Cardinals, that of Rauscher describes the condition of the Church in Austria, under the Josephine laws, as deplorable! Instead of leaving her, like Protestant Prussia, to manage her own affairs, without having defined either what "manage" or "her own" meant, Austria, knowing how Rome interprets, had taken a different course. There was left, according to our authority, no canon law, but only such legislation as was imbued with Febronianism and Caesarism. Bulls, briefs, rescripts, and even the pastorals of bishops were subject to the royal placet. Marriage was withdrawn from under the control of the Church. The State pushed into everything, "and the Catholic Church had none of the liberties claimed by the tolerance of the age for all religions." Rauscher had succeeded in getting these grievances redressed, but now the national spirit was rising against his work. His Concordat bound Austria to concede to the Church "all rights and privileges to which by the divine order and by canon law she is entitled." Probably the Emperor but imperfectly comprehended what that implied. Rauscher comprehended it. He was as honest a man as any Papal priest is likely to be. He was the adviser of the Emperor, and his sworn personal friend. Any one may tell what such friends do for princes who will only master what Rauscher managed to bind his sovereign to. The minister, Von Hasner, put the plea for the abrogation of the Concordat on ground exceedingly offensive to the Pope and those around him. When the Concordat was contracted, said Hasner, Rome was an independent State. Now, it has ceased to be so, and is sustained only by foreign arms. The reply from the Vatican was: So long as the Pope is sustained by Christian arms, he can never be sustained by those of foreigners. The reply of the politician would have been that in 1855, when the Concordat was concluded, the Papal State was as much dependent upon foreign arms as in 1867, the only difference being that at the former time the arms holding a great portion of it were those of Austria.

On the anniversary of the Pope's accession, his speech, addressed to the Sacred College, contained the following passage: "The two societies of which the world consists," said his Holiness, are, first, the Tower of Pride, i.e. Babel; secondly, the society whose prototype is seen "in the upper room, on the day of Pentecost, where Peter, the Apostles, and thousands of the faithful of different nations, heard one and the same language and understood it." Those who wish to form a clear idea of what these two organs of two hostile societies are—the Babel tongue and the Pentecostal tongue—must just keep their eyes open as we go on. (Civiltá, VII. vii. p. 130.)

The Pope, on June 25, calling governments before "his tribunal," and sitting in judgment, pronounced censure on the governments of Italy, Austria, Spain, and Russia. Italy was discussing a law to subject students even for the priesthood to the conscription. Austria was miserably wronging and injuring the Church. Spain was doing likewise, or worse. And Russia was persecuting the Polish bishops and sending them into exile. The high spirits of the Court at this moment appear in the comments on these sentences. We give a few specimens from the Civiltá (VII. vii. p. 135, etc.)—

From no other lips could those words burst forth, save from those of him who is set by God as ruler of His Church, with divine power, above all human powers.... Only the Pope can thus menace, reprove, and instruct, because he only is set in a region above all human greatness between heaven and earth.... When science gloried in being Catholic, and authority in being derived from God, both were, when they spoke, echoes of the word of the Pope. But science and authority have become unchristianized. The Pope has remained what he was—the herald, the oracle of the Lord.

The article proceeded to show that the Pope had menaced in the same breath one republic, Spain; two constitutional monarchies, Italy and Austria; and one absolute monarchy, Russia. This could not be done unless the Pope was king. Then follows a specimen of history as it flourishes under Pius IX. The Roman Emperors used to imprison the Popes, in order to reign in Rome; and Constantine, not wishing to imprison the Pope, abandoned Rome. But a king not Pope, and a Pope not king, never were able to live here together, and never will be able to do so. (Civiltá, VII. vii. p. 131 ff.)

Great attention was awakened by the prominence given by the Civiltá (p. 210) to a publication of Bishop Plantier, of Nimes. It was "splendid and profound." Plantier spoke of the suggestion that the two doctrines of Papal infallibility and the assumption of the Virgin should be defined by acclamation. He alleged that such a mode of definition could be conveniently and infallibly adopted, and asked if the Council should adopt it, what would be the harm? He ridiculed the idea that the assistance of the Holy Spirit would be given to a decision by vote and not to one by acclamation. The appearance of this in the Civiltá, after all that had passed, quickened the fears of the anti-infallibilists and also of the anti-opportunists lest the Pope should be determined to carry through the definition by acclamation.

Early in September the bishops of Germany met at Fulda, and issued a collective pastoral. They solemnly deprecated the rumours spread abroad as to the intentions of the Council. The bishops went on to asseverate that the Council would never define any new doctrine which was not contained in holy writ or in tradition, but would define only principles which were written "on all your hearts by faith and conscience" (Friedberg, p. 276). The Catholics of Germany took this solemn language in its apparent meaning; and the persuasion that their bishops would stand fast, and that the Curia would not ride roughshod over such a body, tranquillized most men. Only ecclesiastics appear to have suspected that the assurance might amount to little more than carefully dovetailed words.

The German bishops, in giving the assurance that nothing but what the faithful believed would be defined, probably hoped that the fact of their having to give such an assurance would weigh at Rome, as a hindrance to the plans in contemplation. If so, they only furnished one more proof of the truth which we in England have been told by Dr. Newman, that no pledge from Catholics is of any value to which Rome is not a party.[158]

If the German bishops read as little as Dr. Friedrich says they do, they perhaps do not read the Unitá Cattolica. There is no doubt that it, at least, speaks language agreeable in the highest quarters. In its number for the preceding 1st of May, it commented on the same assurance as having been flung before the French people. "If the Council," says this real echo, "should only define what all believe, the Council would be useless, for in points which all believe all are agreed." To say, it proceeds, that an Œcumenical Council should express what all the faithful think, is to confound the Teaching Church with the Learning Church. "The pen falls from our hands, and we have not courage to contend against such nonsense."

After having put this assurance before their nation, certain of the bishops felt it necessary to address a private appeal to the Pope, drawn up by Dinkel, Bishop of Augsburg, representing the great danger to the Church in Germany which the proposed alterations would involve, and praying him to abandon "the far-reaching projects which were ascribed to him."[159] A similar appeal was sent to his Holiness by the prelates of Hungary, in which country a notable commencement had been made in restoring the laity to a part in the management of Church affairs.[160]

In June 1869 a remarkable meeting of Catholic notables was held in Berlin; with an account of which Sepp opens his book. The chair was filled by Peter Reichensperger, since noted for his Ultramontane zeal, and Herr Windhorst, now the Ultramontane leader in the Reichstag, was present, with even Dr. Jörg, of Bavaria, whose allusion, in the winter of 1874, to the attempt of Kullman on the life of Bismarck called forth a remarkable speech from that statesman. These gentlemen, thinking, or professing to think, that their bishops would defeat what the Curia had planned, adopted an address expressive of confidence in them, and of their hope that the threatened collision between the Church and their governments and nation might be averted.

Sepp himself went to Prague to present the document to Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg. The latter read it slowly, thought it over, and said, "It is far too weak. With Rome you must hold very different language from that." In further conversation Sepp said to the Cardinal, "You have in Prague the first canonist in Germany (Schulte), the man who drafted the Austrian Concordat, and surely he can be employed in similar work for the Council." The reply was: "You have in Munich the greatest Catholic theologian in Germany, and the gentlemen in Rome will not hear of his being invited" (Sepp, p. 4).

Large numbers of priests had been returned to the Bavarian Parliament, all burning with zeal against Prussia, and against union under it. In 1868 the clerical agitation had gone so far that, in November of that year, President Badhauser, when closing the Landsrath, addressed the members in unwonted language—

When the government of the country and its organs, the chamber which represents the people, and the new laws, are daily held up to suspicion, mockery, and contempt, when the peasantry are excited against the townspeople, and when men, throwing off all patriotic shame, feed themselves with hopes of foreign intervention, threatening our German warriors with the chassepots, then must every honourable man condemn such proceedings; for the venom daily instilled will, in time, poison the honest country people, as occurrences in Upper Bavaria already show.[161]

Secret associations for Ultramontane objects were formed even among children. Those of the clergy who would have warned the authorities were still kept still by secret terrorism. The meeting of the Council and the necessity of overthrowing Prince Hohenlohe were closely connected with this turmoil. And the Liberals plainly said, "The whole Catholic world is to be fanaticized, to enable the great Catholic powers, after crushing Prussia, as they hope to do, to carry out a grand reaction."[162]

The Vaterland went so far, when Napoleon III took his last plébiscite, as to tell its readers that a French intervention in Germany would soon follow, that it was eagerly looked for, and that all would join France to break the hated yoke of Prussia. Morally, Prussia was already at an end, but it was for France to put an end to her physically. "Who can tell if we shall have any North German Confederation, Zollverein, or Prussian monarchy in 1871?"[163] Similar hopes of great events often pointed to the year of the Council, or the year after. The Civiltá did not scruple to tell Napoleon III that he owed the new plébiscite to Mentana. So far from concealing the Pope's direct action in a question affecting the stability of a throne, his confidential writers exaggerated his influence.

In Austria a struggle had set in against the supernatural order. Laws on civil marriage, education, and registry of baptism were passed by the legislature, and tardily assented to by the Emperor. The Bishop of Linz issued a manifesto saying that he would not acknowledge the new illegitimate laws—of course under the plea of obeying God rather than man. Turning on the Emperor, he said that he had pledged his faith to the Concordat as a man and as a kaiser. Other prelates, in milder language, set Papal above Austrian law. Finally, as we have already seen, on June 22, 1868, the Pope himself laid the new laws under his condemnation.

A Catholic meeting against the school law was being held in the church at Schlanders, and while the curate was making a speech Count Manzano, the local authority, declared the meeting closed. Cries of "Down with him! kill him!" were raised. He was thrown to the ground, beaten on the breast, and barely escaped to the barracks of the gensdarmes.

When the Council was closely approaching, great excitement broke out in Austria against the religious orders. The spark which kindled the blaze was the discovery of a nun confined in the Carmelite convent of Cracow. She had been kept in one cell for twenty years, with incredible privations and in bestial filth. The rage of the public forced the government to go as far as some show of action. Orders were issued for the inspection of convents. Sentences of bishops condemning priests to confinement in ecclesiastical prisons were declared invalid unless the culprit voluntarily consented. The bishops were also required to give in lists of the voluntary prisoners.

These measures were resented as an "insult to the episcopate." The Bishop of Brünn won himself an honourable mention in the Civiltá by a circular in which he repelled the pretensions of the government, refused the list required, and told the superiors of monasteries to pay no heed to the orders. While this second government was set up, beside that of the country, the voice of Rome cheered it on in taking the upper hand. The same voice railed against the constitutional ministers, the parliament, and the laws.

The combative Bishop of Linz, in a great meeting, said that he did not cast any doubt on the religious feeling of the Emperor, but he was now nothing more than a constitutional sovereign. Instead, therefore, of merely saying that they had confidence in the Emperor, they must come to his aid. This was repeated in Rome, with the explanation that it had been said that the bishop in this appeal for aid to the Emperor was only uttering the sentiments of his Majesty as expressed to the bishop. Thus were bishops commended by the organ of the Papal Court for breaking the laws of their country, and credited with influencing the mind of the sovereign in a sense hostile to the constitution.[164]

The Ultramontane party had frequently, during the year (1868) been encouraged by correspondents in Paris to expect a war of France against Prussia. On March 10, the Unitá contained a letter expressing fears that Austria and Italy might agree to remain neutral, but quoting a passage from the Volksbote in favour of French invasion of Germany. On April 23 it was said that for a year past the Emperor had allowed no opportunity of rousing the war spirit to pass. A week later a crusading significance was given to the approaching anniversary of Joan of Arc. It was announced that more than twelve archbishops and bishops would attend—among them Cardinal Bonnechose—and that the Empress would grace the scene. On May 1 the fact that the appearance in Paris of Benedetti, the French ambassador at Berlin, was officially said to have no connection with political prospects, was noted for a smile. On the 13th the display at the festival of Joan of Arc at Orleans, with a great array of prelates, was described as "one of the noblest ever connected with war and religion, well adapted to excite a nation which aims at uniting the cross with the sword." On June 19 it was said that the mission of General Fleury to Florence was with reason taken as a sign of approaching war.

Yet, while the Emperor of the French was looked to as leader against the foe whom the Church had marked out for the first victim, every sign of discord in France, every outbreak or disorder was eagerly paraded as proof of the anarchy to which all countries must come under any régime but that of the Church. At the same time every crime, riot, or difficulty in Italy was magnified and dwelt upon with the same moral. "Let the Chamber invoke the authority of the Council, and proclaim its canons as the laws of the State," was the demand of the Unitá eight months before the Council met (March 21). Another saying was, There are three Italys—the Italy of Pius IX, which prays; the Italy of Mazzini, which conspires; the Italy of Menabrea, which trembles (March 27). Menabrea was then Premier. Again—

The Council is drawing near, and Babylon is trembling, hell is blaspheming, and before long the world will hear the infallible word of truth and righteousness. Hallelujah!... The revolution which for nine years has been bent on marching to Rome is disgraced, senseless, divided. The traitors are betrayed, the robbers plundered, and the rebels plotted against by rebellion. Hallelujah! (March 28).

The Unitá found that the threefold opposition of governments, rationalists, and heretics showed itself most strongly in May, the month of Mary, which only means that the Immaculate has set her heel on the three heads of the Hydra. Here the mention of governments as one head of the Hydra is no slip of the pen, that is, governments which dwelt in Babylon, as we have just read, or in the tower of Babel, as it is more frequently expressed. Three days later (May 23) the Unitá cries, "It is time for Catholics to be up in defence of the Council. It is the only plank of safety for shipwrecked society." The Memoriale Diplomatique says that "governments are less and less disposed to interfere in religious questions, unless their rights are infringed; but such reserve is war against the Council, which being infallible cannot infringe any right." The italics here are our own; and would that we could print the words on the mind of every rising man in England. That would save vast waste of words.

The courage of the Civiltá was stimulated by the French elections in the summer, and its hatred of United Italy boiled over. The ever faithful Univers had given the watchword to the electors. "The temporal power, and liberty of higher instruction!" In the cry "liberty of higher instruction," we have the popular side of the original call of the Civiltá for universities all over Europe, canonically instituted. One hundred and twenty deputies were pledged to the program, and the French electors ought to be proclaimed as having deserved well of Catholicism. "The illustrious Louis Veuillot," as the Civiltá styles him, had shown that what the Voltairians wanted was the separation of Church and State, from which would follow the decay of Christian worship to such a point that it might be feasible to annihilate it.

Noble, Catholic, chivalrous France is contrasted, by the Civiltá, with vile Italy. The latter, in a serious catalogue of crimes, is said to have "reduced the bishops to the extreme of poverty, has at its own caprice impeded the divine word, and showed more than sixty dioceses widowed of their pastors." The French voters had said, "We go to the urn as the delegates of the universal suffrage of Christendom." "The monstrous edifice of Italian unity must crumble," says this Romanist, who was no Roman. It is founded on the ruins of the temporal power of the Pontiff, which cannot perish. (VII. vi. 611 ff.)

The plea of the Liberal Catholics for freedom of conscience became more and more offensive to the Catholics. The Fathers of Laach, in censuring the address of the laymen of Coblentz, went so far as to say that the treatment of the Jews in Rome "showed no want of humanity or civil tolerance." These educated laymen well knew that the proper condition of heretics, according to the same principles, ought to be much worse than that of the Ghetto Jews. The latter, not being baptized, were theoretically not subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, but the others, as Bellarmine shows, though not of the Church, belonged to the Church. Stumpf, writing in the Bonn Literaturblatt, did not content himself with questioning the intolerant doctrine of the Jesuits; he directly attacked it. He took an important step further—one, indeed, which seems like a new life in the Roman Catholic intellect. He told the Jesuits plainly that their exclusive principle of one fold rendered religious freedom and unity impossible. Here he touched the distinction between the grand and the huge, which Romanists carefully keep out of sight, and which the sincerest advocates of liberty in their ranks had hitherto overlooked. They took for a grand conception of the unity of Christians, as consisting in submission to one human head. That conception is narrow and illusory. It fails of grandeur by monstrous disproportion. Stumpf goes on to declare that the absolute dominion of the Church over the State, although the favourite doctrine as he admits, in Rome, is in contradiction to the fundamental principle of Christianity. He would no longer be content, as a Liberal Catholic, to plead for freedom of conscience merely as a compromise. He says, We now represent a principle. The theocratic principle menaces society, and that principle will never be satisfied till the acknowledgment of civil rights is made to depend upon the profession of the Catholic faith. He adds that a promise to compromise till we had the power would content no one, because the modern world has learned that nothing is settled till the principle is settled. He says, We are determined to have the Church a Church, and the State a State. But this a postulate which demands, as its condition, individual freedom. According to him it was Christ that introduced among men the idea of independence, and that of a limit existing to the power of the State, by distinguishing His own kingdom of love and grace from that of law and compulsion. "When the Church authorities," says Stumpf, "do admonish the rulers of the State, their first counsel should be to consider it their highest duty to protect freedom of conscience. They ought to warn them, before any other kind of unrighteousness against the use of force, for or against any form of religion which is not inconsistent with the maintenance of moral law"; and he adds, what we shall emphasize, "privation of civil equality is an employment of force." Such, he says, was the counsel given by the early Christian teachers; and though later teachers reversed it, their course is not to be justified before the law of Christ.

The end of the State, as viewed by Stumpf, is much loftier than that assigned to it in the Papal theory. In the great collection of families called by men a State, he does not see a body politic without a moral mission, existing, according to the ruinous theology of Rome, only for temporal ends—a body politic which would be unworthy of God or man. According to Stumpf, the end of the State is the maintenance of general moral order. This theory does not bind the families of a country acting in their collective capacity, to prescribe the creed and cult of individuals. No more does it bind them, on the other hand, to resign all moral aims, leaving every moral question to be decided for them without any appeal to the common conscience, to fruits or to the Bible, by a power which would strip the State of every moral quality, and would also prescribe the creed and cult of all. The theory of Stumpf holds that the collective authority of the nation, in the affairs common to all the families of that nation, is called to regulate action so far as action affects the common good, but does not hold that it is called to regulate belief. Claiming for the Church the full right of asserting and urging moral principles, Stumpf, with great solemnity, claims for the legislator freedom to frame law according to his own conscience, and to his belief in what tends to the maintenance and the perfecting of moral order. This he has to do without the direction of any ecclesiastic, but knowing that he must give account to God. No omnipotent word of Church authorities can or shall deter us from this work. Then he interjects, Would it not be pleasant to have to consult the theologians of the Civiltá and the Stimmen? The Jesuits, he alleges, had no conception of any exercise of moral power upon one another but in the way of commanding and obeying. The Church in the middle ages, by her influence in secular affairs secularized herself, and lost her moral influence, which was never recovered to Christianity till the States had done what the Jesuits call apostatizing from Christ, and so opened the way for a return of true moral Christian influence. The early Church, he truly and nobly points out, was able, in the face of the omnipotent heathen authorities, to pervade society with her true moral influences; and he contends that nothing can give back to the Church her position as the first force in culture, but the recognition of the independence of the State.

One very curious part of this grave and forceful essay is the protest of the layman against the twisting of Scripture by the Jesuits. He puts together a number of the texts upon which they ring the changes, making them prove their own ideas by the simple process of putting those ideas into them, and reiterating them again and again. The first of the texts which he quotes is, "Teach all nations." He, apparently, is not aware that this is now as handy a weapon with those theologians as "obey God rather than man." In their lips "teach" means "make laws," and "all nations" means, not every creature, but, collectively, all States. Therefore the words "teach all nations" are, in the lips of the Jesuits, a commission to the Pope to give laws to all countries, or, in highflown language, "to exercise the supreme magisterial office." The Jesuits had saucily told the laymen of Coblentz to ask the nearest theologian for an explanation of the relations between the natural order and the supernatural. But this particular layman gave them as good as they brought. When men write as he does, they have begun to be Catholics, have ceased to be Papists, and are, however unconsciously, in process of ceasing to be Romanists.

The Allocution of June 22, in which the constitution and new laws of Austria were condemned, had proved as distasteful to Liberal Catholics as it had been agreeable to the Jesuits. "The Curialistic notion," says the author of Reform in Head and Members, "that the law of the Church must be the inviolable rule for all laws and statutes, and for all and every kind of activity in the life of the State, runs through it like a black thread. The Austrian Magna Charta of civil, political, religious and scientific freedom was called a sacrilegious law. Moreover, the Pope," he proceeds to say, "had declared that these laws themselves, together with all that should arise out of them, are and ever will be invalid and of no effect.... Every enlightened person among the Catholics of Germany and France concealed himself in silence and in mourning at this rude opposition of Rome to the public law of the entire Western world." Count Beust, in a despatch dated about ten days after the Allocution was delivered, said that "the Holy See had extended its animadversions to subjects 'which we by no means can allow to be under its authority.'" We shall hereafter see how clearly and completely Count Beust had now grasped the question as between the Papacy and the life of nations.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER X

Conflicting Manifestoes by Bishops—Attacks on Bossuet—Darboy—Dupanloup combats Infallibility—His relations with Dr. Pusey—Deschamps replies—Manning's Manifesto—Retort of Friedrich—Discordant Episcopal Witnesses.

In November 1869 the Bishop of Versailles, writing of Bossuet, said that the fame of the Eagle of Meaux was from day to day declining (Friedberg, p. 81). This was but a symptom of the new war against nationalism. Professor Ceccucci, though writing for a French audience, did not scruple to say, "If Bossuet escaped excommunication, he owed it to the benign and paternal indulgence of the Holy See" (Frond, iv. p. 112). Bishop Dupanloup soon took occasion to show that Innocent XI sent Bossuet two briefs congratulating him on having written in a manner calculated to win back heretics and increase the propagating power of the Church.[165] If the Church, even before infallibility had been proclaimed, began to be so conscious of its narrowness that it could hardly contain Bossuet, what will it be when a few centuries more have passed over it?

As the opening of the Council drew nearer, feeling grew warmer in political and religious circles. Archbishop Darboy sketched the impending dangers in a pastoral—

"You have been told that articles of faith which hitherto you have not been bound to believe, are to be imposed upon you; that points affecting civil society and the relations of Church and State are to be treated in a spirit opposed to the laws and usages of the age; that a certain vote is to be carried by acclamation; that the bishops will not be free, and that the minority, even if eloquent, will be treated as an opposition, and will soon be put down by the majority.... It must be owned that much has been done to spread these alarms by writers taking different sides."[166]

Bishop Dupanloup, when about leaving home for the Council, published a memorable letter. He seemed to regard the desire of the French clergy for centralization as the origin of the cry for a dogma. The change, however, from a national to a Papal spirit was natural. Was it likely that youths from the schools of the Christian Brothers, passed through an episcopal seminary, would comprehend the national spirit and episcopal convictions of Darboy or even of Dupanloup?[167] The lower education of the country had been just long enough in the hands of Rome to begin to bear fruit. Dupanloup meant no ill to France when he succeeded in binding Louis Philippe to Gregory XVI, by inducing him to give the priests their way in schools, in return for forbearance in baptizing the Comte de Paris, as the son of a mixed marriage, and of a mother who refused to abjure her Protestantism. But he then did one of the most hurtful deeds to France, and to the future of European peace, that man could have done.

This letter, cries Sambin, gave an episcopal head to the revolt; ... the objection was pointed against the opportuneness of defining the dogma of infallibility, but it was hardly possible to be deceived—the principle of infallibility itself seemed to be attacked.... The acts of the sovereign Pontiff were presented in a light so far from the truth, that a feeling of profound astonishment passed through the ranks of pastors and people. They were grieved to see the paling away of the triple halo which had hitherto hovered around the author's brow (Sambin, p. 49).

This was published in France in 1872, after Dupanloup had "submitted," and rendered new and conspicuous service to the Papacy. As Dupanloup's pamphlet will be hard to find hereafter, and as it is a representative document, we may give a general idea of the argument it presents.

For two years, says Dupanloup, thousands of printed papers have been circulated in the streets, containing a vow to believe in the personal infallibility of the Pope. Agents have got them signed by persons who did not understand the first word of the question.

He contrasts the confidence and freedom of speech granted to the Civiltá and the Univers with the secrecy observed toward bishops. Naming Manning and Deschamps as the leaders in the agitation for the new dogma, he adds, "I say new, because for eighteen hundred years the faithful have not, on pain of ceasing to be Catholics, been bound to believe it." Alluding to the freedom which, it was said, the bishops would have in the Council, he asks what freedom was left to them even now, when any who expressed an unwelcome opinion were denounced in the papers, beforehand, as schismatics or heretics.... "After having taught for eighteen hundred and seventy years, the Church is now to come and ask in a Council, Who has the right of teaching with infallibility?... When the oak is twenty centuries old, digging to find the parent acorn under the roots is the way to shake the tree."

The Bishop proceeds, with tact and great earnestness, to plead for the necessity of moral unanimity in defining new dogmas. He relates a fact of interest, and one very closely affecting the person of Pius IX. We have seen that, in 1864, the Pope formally initiated official preparations for the Council; that he had long before 1867 decided important questions as to its constitution and procedure; that he had set commissions to work, consulted bishops in different countries, and ordered nuncios to select theologians; and that it was only political perplexity which prevented the assembly of 1867 from being the General Council.

Yet Bishop Dupanloup, whether then aware of these facts or not, makes the following statement—

I well remember, and more bishops than one who were present in Rome in 1867 can recall, the fact that one of the most serious anxieties of Pius IX, before deciding on holding the Vatican Council, was, lest questions should arise calculated to provoke stormy discussions, and divisions in the episcopate. But the Pope remembered the sagacious conduct of the Council of Trent and of Pius IV, and proceeded, in the hope that it would not be forgotten at the future Council.

One of Dupanloup's solemn sayings is, "I have read and read again the catechism of the Council of Trent, on purpose to find if it spoke Yes or No about the infallibility of the Pope; I have ascertained that it does not say a word about it."

Again, he states that in 1867 one hundred and eighty-eight Anglican ministers wrote to the Pope asking for the basis of a union. In his reply, the Pope spoke of the authority of the Church and the supremacy of the Pope, but he did not speak of his infallibility. Yet journalists, screening themselves behind his name, tried to shut the mouths of bishops by attacks full of violence and gall. This was meant for M. Veuillot, who was not slow to reply.

As to Greeks and Protestants, Dupanloup points out that what is proposed amounts to telling them, "A ditch now separates us; we are going to make it an abyss.... Two years ago. Dr. Pusey said to me in Orleans, 'There are eight thousand of us in England, daily praying for a union.'" ... When Pitt thought of relaxing laws against Catholics in England and Ireland, he asked several learned bodies what was the real doctrine of the Roman Church on the power of the Pope. "I have under my eyes the replies of the Universities of Paris, Douay, Louvain, Alcala, Salamanca, and Valladolid." They all "answer expressly that neither the Pope nor the Cardinals, nor yet any body or individual in the Roman Church, hold from Jesus Christ any civil authority over England, any power to release the subjects of his Britannic Majesty from their oath of fidelity." Such doctrine was calculated to reassure Pitt, as against the contrary doctrine, professed in celebrated Bulls by more Popes than one. But what if the Pope be declared infallible?

As to Catholic governments, their standing jealousy of the ecclesiastical power would be increased. Had not Boniface VIII taught that the temporal sword also belonged to Peter, and that the spiritual power had a right to institute and judge the temporal? Had not Paul III released all the subjects of Henry VIII from their oath of allegiance, offered England to any one who would conquer it, and given all the goods of the dissident English, real and personal, to the conqueror? Was not that Bull a great misfortune to Christendom? "I am sad—and who would not be sad?—in recalling these great and painful historical facts; but they force us to it—those whose levity and rashness have stirred these burning questions." After the dogma shall have been proclaimed, he contends that from the point of view occupied by governments, "all civil and political rights, like all religious belief, will be in the hand of a single man." The journals which claim to be purest in their Romanism "treat the doctrine, so strongly held by the Catholic sovereigns, as well as others, that each of the two powers is independent in its own sphere, as tainted with atheism."

The following passage in the Bishop's argument suffices to show that there may be more senses of the statement that Catholics do not owe any divided allegiance, than plain English folk ever dreamed of in their philosophy—

We lately read, as quoted with praise in a French paper, the following, which compares those to the Manicheans who deny that the two swords are in the same hand: "Are there two sources of authority and power, two supreme ends for the members of the same society, two different objects in the intention of the Being who orders all and two distinct destinies in one and the same man, who is both member of a Church and of a State? Who does not see the absurdity of such a system? It is the dualism of the Manicheans if not atheism."

We ought to interject the remark that "the two swords in the same hand" is not strict but popular language. The two are in the same power, but only one is in the spiritual hand. Again, the taunt of Manicheism frequently falls from Jesuit pens. Boniface VIII set the example of calling people something like Manicheans, if they believed in any supreme power in princes on a level with that of the Pope.

Coming to the crucial question, What is speaking ex cathedrâ? Bishop Dupanloup shows that the diversity of doctrine on this point is almost endless, and perplexing beyond belief. The lay Professor of Theology in the seminary of the Archdiocese of Westminster, Dr. Ward, formerly an Anglican minister, goes beyond the great majority. They hold that a condition necessary to an infallible utterance is that the Pope shall address the whole Church, but Dr. Ward thinks that this is not necessary. The majority think that the intention of binding the belief of the faithful must be clearly expressed, but Dr. Ward again thinks that it need not be so. Phillips, the German doctor, holds that the Pope need not consult a Council, the Roman Church, the Cardinals, or any one; nor is it necessary that he should maturely deliberate or carefully study the matter by the light of God's written word and of tradition, or even that he should put up a prayer to God before pronouncing sentence. "Without any one of these conditions," says the Bishop, "his decision would not be less valid, authentic, or obligatory on the whole Church, than if he had observed every condition dictated by faith, piety, and good sense." He adds the words of Phillips, that the definition ex cathedrâ may be verbal or written and with or without anathema, but must be given by him to all believing Christians as Vicar of Jesus Christ, in the name of the Apostles Peter and Paul, or in virtue of the authority of the Holy See, or in other similar terms. The Church, he says, according to Phillips, has no right to fix any condition or restriction whatever.

Citing the cases of Popes Stephen VI, Honorius, and Pascal II, Dupanloup shows that heavy facts obstruct the historical path to the new dogma.

He proceeds to point out that the difference between the universal infallibilists and the dogmatical infallibilists is very grave. The former argue that the dogma, if adopted in the sense of the latter, would involve a peril. A Pope infallible in some cases and fallible in others is, they think, a contradiction. If, as a private teacher, the Pope should err in doctrine, might he not impose his error on the Church? If this is not possible, you have either a Pope who thinks one thing and defines another, or a perpetual miracle! And why distinguish, ask the universal infallibilists, when Christ has not distinguished? "That thy faith fail not"—that means the faith of Peter in every sense, personal and pastoral. These theologians contend that a Pope could not, even if he would, fall into an error, public or private.

As to the effect of the change on the episcopate, Dupanloup contends that Councils will be rendered superfluous. Hitherto, the bishops have been judges of the faith, real judges, though in union with the Pope—co-judges, as was said by Benedict XIV. But if the proposed change is made, their judgment before or after will be of little account; as Monsignor Manning has said, the Pope can determine "without the episcopate, and independently of it." The bishops, he proceeds, are now Doctors, not mere echoes. With the Pope they constitute the Teaching Church. After the change they will not be a voice, only an echo.

Drawing a glowing picture of the services of the French bishops to the Papacy, he says—

"Ah! I dare to affirm that so much devotion to Rome and to the Catholic world gives to the Church of France the right to be trusted, to be heard." He adds, anticipating his arrival in Rome, "I shall no sooner touch the sacred ground, no sooner kiss the tomb of the Apostles, than I shall feel myself in peace, out of the battle, in the midst of an assembly presided over by a father and composed of brethren. There the noises will all die away, the rash interferences will cease, the indiscretions will disappear, the winds and waves will be calmed down."

The statement, frequently repeated, that Bishop Dupanloup in this letter admitted the doctrine, and contested only the opportuneness of defining it, is incorrect. This was pointed out at the time by Dr. Reusch, of Bonn, in the Literaturblatt. Dupanloup once or twice says that he will not touch the question of its truth, one way or the other. He never, directly or indirectly, indicates belief in it. Many of his arguments more than indirectly oppose the very substance of the doctrine. He plainly feels that it is unscriptural, uncatholic, and unwise; but he knows that it is and has long been gospel in Rome.

Bishop Dupanloup was replied to by Archbishop Deschamps, of Malines. Monsignor Deschamps was following the straight path to the purple. He roundly lectured Dupanloup. "Why should not that trouble me which rejoices the enemies of the faith and of the Church?" "You have committed an error, Monsignor," he says, repeatedly. He correctly states that Dupanloup has not confined himself to the question of opportuneness. "You have handled the principal question, ... your fears have disturbed your vision."[168] Dupanloup prepared a rejoinder to Deschamps, but was prevented from publishing it by circumstances which taught him that in leaving France for Rome he had not passed from disturbance to tranquillity, but from regulated conflict to all-triumphant violence, compelling inaction, unless action was on its own side. In Rome, where any movement of an ecclesiastic is often accounted for by the prospect of some ribbon, robe, or perquisite, it was freely said that Napoleon had promised Dupanloup the archbishopric of Lyons if he would head the Gallicans. An English paper repeated this Roman scandal, fathering it on well informed circles. Certain circles are always well informed as to the motives of men who oppose them.

The pastoral from the banks of the Thames forms a contrast to that from the banks of the Loire. True, Archbishop Manning no longer speaks of the extinction of Protestantism, or the restoration of the Pope's dominion over the East, as probable effects of the Council. He even shows some dawning consciousness that the war which he had announced in 1867 with a light heart, would not be carried through so lightly. In the earlier part of his treatise he more than once coolly speaks of the bishops as being unanimous in the belief of Papal infallibility! Before the conclusion, Bishop Maret's work extorts the admission that he must now call that doctrine Ultramontane, which two years before, he had asserted to be Catholic. He none the less eagerly presses for the carrying out of the programme. The Church is far too large. She permits differences of belief, which are not only unseemly, but dangerous. After an outbreak of questioning thought and conflicting will, such as had been occasioned by a simple demand for only one or two new dogmas, tighter and tighter binding up seems to Dr. Manning to be not merely becoming, but even necessary.

While panting for additional fetters for his own Church, he speaks of Protestants as sighing for something beyond insular narrowness. In fact, it would seem as if he had no perception of the difference between a big sect and a large creed, or of the possible harmony between a local organization and a universal brotherhood. There is no insular narrowness, much less Pontine-Marsh narrowness, in the definition of a Church given by the English Church, whereby she marks her relation to all other Churches. That definition is large, catholic, and scriptural. It leaves the English Churchman free from any obligation to unchurch other Christians, and therefore he may rest and be thankful, when others feel bound, by the narrowness of their sect, to unchurch him. The Church of Christ was catholic when she could number only one hundred and thirty adherents in the whole world. She will never become more catholic than she was then. No sect can increase its catholicity by adding millions of ignorant and bigoted people, and calling them Christians.

Dr. Manning resented, as a sort of rebellion, objections taken against multiplying terms of membership, and adding new conditions of salvation. To him every increase of narrowness seemed an increase of unity. If there are men in the English Church sighing in a similar way for bonds and anathemas which, thank God! our island does not forge, they are not the men inspired by the catholic creed of their own Church, but men infected by the municipal creed of the Popes.

Like Dupanloup, Archbishop Manning made an attack and provoked a retort. He denounced the historical school of theologians in Germany, and especially in Munich, and was pitilessly cut up by Friedrich, in the Literaturblatt. The Archbishop, like Auguste Comte, had reached a point in the development of theory when it was necessary that it should conquer history. Preparatory to the attack on the Catholic Faculty of Munich, he writes in mother English matter like the following (p. 10): "The day is past for appeals to antiquity. If Christianity and the Christian Scriptures are to be maintained in controversy against sceptical criticism, the unbroken, world-wide witness of the Catholic Church must be invoked."

A number of equally exposed positions are taken up in face of the Liberal Catholic scholars, and that with all the contempt which official power often feels for reasoning power—

"They who, under the pretensions of historical criticism, deny the witness of the Catholic Church to be the maximum of evidence, even in a historical sense, likewise ruin the foundation of moral certainty in respect to Christianity altogether" (p. 125). "No historical certainty can be called science except only by courtesy. It is time that the pretensions of 'historical science' and 'scientific historians' be reduced to their proper sphere and limits. And this the Council will do, not by contention or anathema, but by the words 'It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us'" (id.).

However confused in his ideas of catholicity and of historical authority the Archbishop had become, the struggle he had done something to occasion and to exasperate already began to awake him to the difference between an ordinary addition to the creed and that change of base which he was moving heaven and earth to procure—

There is a difference, also, between a definition of the infallibility of the Pope and that of any other Christian doctrine. In the latter case the authority of the Church may be sufficient to overcome any doubt. In the former it is this very authority, the principle and foundation of all certainty in faith, which is in question (p. 31).

These portentous words tell where Dr. Manning had placed himself—in pupilage to a power which, having left the divine "fountain of all certainty in faith," was disputing as to what cistern, of all the cisterns it had hewn out, was the one into which the true spring overflowed. Where will the dogma be found to conquer the history made by the Archbishop's own hand when he wrote those words—history proving that after he had been for years flourishing before Anglicans his Papal Society as affording absolute certainty in faith, he himself declared her to be in the throes of a combat as to "the principle and fountain of all certainty in faith"? Where will a dogma be found to conquer the history made at the moment when his Papal Society, in accordance with his wishes, adopted an unchangeable decree, which, if true, proves that for all the time of her existence, she had not only been fallible, but had indeed failed, and that right grievously—failed as to the doctrine of her head, by withholding from him the recognition of his attributes and rights? If from the beginning the Popes were infallible, the Church, which never consented to recognize them as such till 1870, had up to that year failed in the doctrine of her head, and failed in opposition to her head. If they were not from the beginning infallible, she in 1870 failed in the doctrine of her head, and failed in conjunction with her head. The decree of 1870 fixes her in the fork, and out of it she cannot wrestle: if the decree was true she had been in a fault of faith up to that day; if it was not true, she committed that day a fault in faith.

Archbishop Manning did not fail to hold out once more a warning to the governments. For some months past the tone of the Vatican Press had been that of men who felt that they now held the internal peace of many a nation at their mercy; being able to menace almost any government with serious unrest, and some with overthrow. The habit of insinuating such threats seems to be native to the bad air which Dr. Newman truly speaks of as hanging around the foot of the Pope's rock.[169] But the following is too close a copy of those revolutionary vaticinations for the banks of the Thames—

The Catholic Church now stands alone, as in the beginning, in its divine isolation and power. "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth." There is an abyss before you, into which thrones, and rights, and laws, and liberties may sink together. You have to choose between the Revolution and the Church of God. As you choose, so will your lot be. The General Council gives to the world one more witness for the truths, laws, and sanctities which include all that is pure, noble, just, venerable upon earth. It will be an evil day for any State in Europe if it engage in conflict with the Church of God. No weapon formed against it ever yet has prospered (p. 130).

The last words might be enough to account for Cardinal Manning's dislike of history. They flatly contradict it, and it flatly contradicts them; for by the Church of God is here meant the Church of the Pope. The weapons which have most prospered from the days of the Reformation to this day are those that have been turned against the Pope. The nations that have most prospered have been those that have declared him a pretender; and in these nations the reigns that have been distinguished for prosperity have been the most decidedly Protestant. England was long ago put to the choice between the Reformation and the Church of the Pope, and happily chose the good part, and as she chose, so, ever blessed be the God of nations, has been our lot. We will repeat the choice of our fathers, and the lot of our children shall be better and better. And they will have to pity, even more than we are called to pity, those who, having rejected reformation, have placed themselves under a continual terror and a liability to a periodical outburst of revolution.

Friedrich, in the Literaturblatt (v. p. 164), replied to the attack on the historical theologians of Munich. He said that the abuses of the middle ages had crept in through the total neglect of history. On the other hand, Protestant theology had risen up and had matured as a strictly historical theology. Baronius had attempted to win this weapon back to the service of Rome, and the Munich scholars had followed in his steps. If archives and original works were to be wrested out of their hands, it meant nothing more nor less than laying down their arms in the presence of their antagonists. Friedrich would not allow the ambiguous expression "the witness of the Church" to cover anything more than her infallible utterances.

He said that the Archbishop had a false idea of the way in which a Council should proceed, because he seemed to think that the Church might speak without first using all human means to ascertain the truth. If he thought so, he was under a delusion of which a careful study of the history of the Councils might cure him. The statement of Manning, "I have already said," that the proofs of Papal infallibility outweighed those of the infallibility of the Church without the Pope, provoked the remark that as the Archbishop had adduced only his own authority, "I have already said," we might still doubt the infallibility of the proofs until he had produced his credentials as one inspired. Friedrich says that while blaming others for attempting to influence the Council, Manning himself tried to impose his authority upon it, in such a manner that it might be fancied that the Council was not to utter the words of the Holy Ghost, but those of the Archbishop of Westminster. Thus he indignantly flings back in the face of the prelate the assertion that it was an attempt to interfere with the freedom of the Council when the Theological Faculty of Munich gave an opinion to the king of the country in answer to questions put by him. The Archbishop, he protests, has no title to deprive theologians of their calling, or of their right to investigate historical evidences or to give their views, so long as the Church has not spoken.

He reminds the Archbishop that, severe as he is against those who do not go as far as himself, even he does not go far enough, for his allies now begin to require people to say, that the Church may define dogmas without having any support in the Bible and tradition, and that indeed when nothing but apocryphal documents are in favour of the definition. And, moreover, that the authority of a General Council (as distinguished from that of the Pope) is only human authority. These innovations, says the sturdy German, we abhor; and then he leaves the Englishman to the care of his Jesuit allies with these words: "If what everybody here says" (he writes in Rome) "is true, that the Archbishop, at every opportunity, declares we have only one school to fear, the historical school, I grant to him and grant to his allies that they have the light of history to fear."

With various feelings the bishops now set forth to bear witness as to the faith of their respective Churches. This was the most dignified of the professed duties of a bishop in Councils as they used to be. It had some show of a foundation so long as the rule of "apostolic" tradition was adhered to. Of course, however, that became antiquated. So "ecclesiastical" tradition was set up side by side with apostolic, as what was so called had been set up side by side with the Word of God.

Darboy set out, from his diocese of two millions of souls, to bear witness that the doctrine of Papal infallibility was not the faith, and never had been, on the banks of the Seine. Manning set out to testify that it was the faith and the tradition on the banks of the Thames. Clifford set out from Clifton to declare that it was not the faith on the Avon. Deschamps went to prove that it was the faith in Malines. Dupanloup went to prove that it was not, and never had been, the faith in Orleans. Cullen left Dublin to demonstrate that it was, and ever had been, the true faith of Ireland. MacHale left Connaught, bracing up his fourscore years, to go and bear witness that it was not the faith he had learned, no, nor any of his coevals. Spalding embarked from Baltimore to testify that it was the ancient faith in America. Kenrick set forth from St. Louis to protest that this was the reverse of the truth, and to prove that he had never been taught it in Maynooth, and even to tell of the first time when the doctrine was broached within the walls of that college. Rauscher left Vienna and Schwarzenberg Prague; Haynald left Hungary and Strossmayer Croatia; Von Scherr left Munich, Melchers Cologne, and Förster Breslau, to testify that the faith and tradition of their Churches had not ignored, but had withstood, the new doctrine. They had to add that the conscience of the people was so set against it that it was as much as the authority of the Church was worth to attempt to impose it upon them. Von Ketteler left Mainz to testify loudly, but with so uncertain a sound that no ordinary man could "know what was piped or harped."

On the other hand, the bishops of Spain, Italy, and South America almost unanimously sallied forth to testify that in their Churches the new dogma was an old doctrine.

Their testimony was reinforced by some from more ancient sees. Hassun set out from New Rome, as the Orientals call Constantinople, to bear witness, as Patriarch of Cilicia, that the City of Paul, and the Churches planted by him, had always held the faith and tradition of Papal infallibility. Valerga turned his back on the Mount of Olives, on Sion, and on Bethlehem, to give evidence, in the sight of God and man, that the Church of Jerusalem had always held the faith, and conserved the tradition, that the Roman Pontiff was infallible and his decrees irreformable.

Darboy, in his farewell pastoral, said to the Catholics of Paris, "In these matters, bishops are witnesses who prove, not authors who invent."

Had the contest lain between these two forces, the weight of talent, character, and supporting Churches would have decided it in favour of the status quo. But bishops sailed from Jaffna in Ceylon, and Jaro in the Philippines, from India, China, and Siam, from Swan River and New Caledonia, to swamp with their traditions those of Bishops from Churches which might pretend to have a tradition. The fact that theirs could not set up any such claim was one objection urged against their votes, another being that they were dependent on the Propaganda. With these came also a number of Oriental bishops, in the same financial position, of whom Vitelleschi says that they brought the finest wardrobes and the steadiest votes. In aid of these a thick growth of bishops in partibus sprang out of the well-warmed conserves of Court patronage.

Roughly stated, the result was, that out of Italy and Spain old and educated Churches, when represented by prelates trained in their own bosom, generally declared in opposition to the new dogma. Where they did otherwise, they were often represented by prelates trained in Rome, and, like Cullen and Manning, specially selected to imbue the National Church with the municipal theology of Rome, and, in case of need, to impose it upon the clergy. Those from really ancient cities, like Jerusalem, who supported the Curia, were dependents of the Propaganda. With these came the occupants of sees created by Pius IX, most of which, from Westminster to Oceania, were represented by witnesses in favour of infallibility.

Many of the bishops had for travelling companion a small pamphlet. It was called Considerations (Erwägungen?), and put the case against Papal infallibility in a form and compass seldom equalled, in any composition, for clearness, depth, fulness, and compression. It was no secret that the author was Döllinger, but he had not chosen to put his name on the title.

In this manner was prepared for the world a drama of many scenes, which has left permanently in the eye of history four great spectacles—(1) How an ancient aristocracy, claiming to be the senate of humanity, was made the instrument of destroying its own legislative rights; (2) How masters of ceremony, habituated to employ it for both political and religious ends, were made its victims, ceremony being brought into operation to carry away surreptitiously their constitutional forms, and with them their legal privileges; (3) How they who had declared "ecclesiastical" tradition to be as good a foundation for doctrine as the Word of God, went through the process of building on the sand; (4) How a Head of the human species, a King of kings and Lord of lords, was erected by priests, and humiliated by Providence.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XI

Diplomatic Feeling and Fencing in Rome, November 1869—Cross Policies on Separation of Church and State—Ollivier, Favre, De Banneville—Doctrines of French Statesmen ridiculed at Rome—Specimens of the Utterances approved at Court—Forecasts of War between France and Prussia—Growing Strength of the Movement in France for Universities Canonically Instituted.

Those who arrived in the autumn months in Rome, perhaps with the hope of preventing the dreaded proposals from being brought forward, or with the intention, if they could not succeed in that, of organizing an opposition to them, found to their surprise that the tone of the Curia was very gentle. The Cardinals and Monsignori, for their part, really did not care about infallibility. Indeed, the subject might have been passed over in silence had not such false rumours as to the designs of Rome been set afloat. Lord Acton names Cardinals Antonelli, Berardi, and De Luca, and also Bishop Fessler, the Secretary of the Council, as declaring that the utterances of the Civiltá were not to be relied upon, and that if the idea of proposing infallibility had been entertained, it was given up. He also quotes a letter written home by a bishop, afterwards known among the Opposition, saying that there was no ground for the idea that in Rome they meant to make infallibility a dogma. That seemed to be an imagination, spread abroad with no good design. Still, after the agitation which had taken place the Council could hardly pass the matter over in silence. The Holy See would not curb the zeal of the bishops if they resolved to give effect to their persuasion, but would not itself take the initiative. But if anything was done, it would be some moderate measure, that would satisfy all, and give no pretext of a party triumph.

Lord Acton further says, what is confirmed from many quarters, that Cardinal Antonelli feared that the Pope was about to bring upon himself difficulties similar to those which beset the earlier years of his pontificate. Some treat Antonelli's apparent coldness as a ruse. But, Englishman-like, Lord Acton takes the hypothesis that requires least dissimulation, crediting the foresight of Antonelli with real apprehensions.

Lord Acton expresses a belief that there might have been some idea of finding a substitute for infallibility in the suppression of freedom of faith and conscience; with the expectation that the most prominent hindrance to the new dogma would be removed so soon as the Inquisition should be recognized as having one and the same legal position with Catholicism itself. He thinks that a great step in that direction would have been taken if the proposition of the Syllabus had been confirmed which condemns the assertion that the Pontiffs and Councils had ever transgressed the bounds of their power, or usurped the rights of princes. As to usurping the rights of princes, a writer like Lord Acton is at a disadvantage, compared with one like Professor Ceccucci, who wrote the history of General Councils, for the voluminous work of Frond. Ceccucci settles the point with an ease of which Lord Acton has no idea. The Church "never did usurp political power; that possessed by her has always been the most legitimate on earth" (Frond, vol. iv. p. 358).

But one point stated by Lord Acton is that infallibility had been looked upon as a means to an end; and this is the kernel of the matter. Just as, logically, the doctrine of infallible judgment was developed out of that of unlimited power, so, practically, unlimited power must be exercised by an infallible judge. Admit that God has given all power upon earth to one man, and surely you will not deny that, in mercy to His creatures, He will make that man infallible. Admit, on the other hand, that the judgment which bids the secular arm smite this and shield that is infallible, and surely you will own that the secular arm should obey. Liberal Catholics were, not unnaturally, incensed at the writing in the Civiltá at a moment when those in power might have been expected to set an example of moderation. The Freemasons were told that the reason why they dreaded the Council was that they would be condemned, and that no respectable persons would join them after that. And the Liberal Catholics were told that their reasons for dreading the Council were much the same. They professed similar principles with those of the Masons, which were sometimes called Principles of '89, sometimes Principles of Modern Society, or Toleration, or Liberty of Conscience and the Press, or Modern Constitutions, or the Rights of Science, or the Boons of Progress, or Liberalism. No wonder that men who had championed the Church of Rome as the Catholic Church, should tremble when they saw her sinking into a sect so strait as to put all these principles under ban (Civiltá, VII. viii. p. 285).

On November 9 the Pope received the Marquis of Banneville, newly returned to his post as ambassador of France. After many signs of vacillation, the Emperor had finally decided not to ask for the admission of an ambassador. This policy met the views both of the Papal party and of those who desired the entire separation of the Church and the State. The latter had adopted the notion that they took a step towards separation by leaving the Church, while still an establishment of the State, to legislate for the nation over the head of the State. As early as July 10, 1868, M. Emile Ollivier, in the Corps Législatif, dwelling on the fact that the Pope, in his Bull, did not name the Emperor, and that he held all those addressed in it bound by it simply through its being posted up in Rome, said: It is declared that, by the simple fact of its being issued in Rome, every bishop in France is bound and must betake himself to Rome, on pain of disobedience. The Emperor or the civil power is not thought of. It is the gravest act accomplished since 1789. It is the separation of Church and State, proclaimed, for the fist time, by the Pope himself.

On April 9, 1869, Ollivier again raised the subject, protesting that the abstention of the government from the Council amounted to an abrogation of the organic articles of the Concordat. Jules Favre said that it was the separation of Church and State, and as such he gratefully accepted it. These consequences were denied by the minister, M. Baroche, who asserted, "After the Council, the rights of France will remain entire."

This boast passed in France, but not so at the Vatican. The Unitá Cattolica for April 14 showed that the usual ambiguity of the Bonaparte policy marked the replies of the ministers on this critical occasion. The bishops were to go to the Council with "their conscience in full liberty," and yet "after the Council the rights of France were to remain entire." "What," asks the Unitá, "does that mean? Does France want to be free either to relieve or to oppose what the Council will define? After having permitted her bishops to take part in an assembly which every Catholic must believe to be infallible, does Napoleon III mean to hold himself free to prosecute them if they preach the doctrines defined, and enforce the discipline enjoined by the Council?"

This straightforward question shows that M. Picard hit nearer to the point than either Ollivier or Favre; for he cried, "It means a Church free in a State not free."[170] Even that is not quite the truth; which strictly is, A State not free in a Church which is free; for the State is part, and the Church whole; or, to recall the image from the early pages of the Civiltá, the State is the leg and the Church the man. We have seen it roundly asserted by the Civiltá that the Church free means canon law free. That being so, for any man to speak of the State being free, in any modern sense, is trifling. In its expositions of the Syllabus the Civiltá had laid down the true doctrine as follows: The first condition of an efficient alliance of the laws of the State with the laws of the Church, is the application in every case wherein spiritual penalties are insufficient of the means of coercion whereof the State disposes. The voice of the pastor has not always efficacy sufficient to drive away the rapacious wolves from the fold of Christ. Therefore does it appertain to the prince invested with the authority of the sword to arm himself with its force, in order to repel and put to flight all the enemies of the Church (VI. ii. 137). Refusing to stand in this position is, in the esoteric sense, separating the State from the Church. To a conscientious Ultramontane it is absurd to say that a State in this manner subject to the Church is not free, as it would be to say that a body ruled by its informing mind is not free. That is the figure of speech which recurs at every turn of discourse on the subject.

After it had been determined to ratify the policy censured by Picard, De Banneville had his interview. Most writers describe him as a willing tool of the Curia, and as doing all he could to lead France in the way which it might trace out for her. Lord Acton regards him as honestly hoping to compose a difference between the Italian and German schools of theology, by the moderating weight of French influence.[171] Banneville's despatch, on the occasion now in question, would rather seem to countenance the former opinion than the latter.[172] But the Pope in the interview did not say a word indicating his personal opinion as to the questions to be decided. He did, however, say that all must be left to the wisdom of the Fathers—as if all had not been prepared, and doubly prepared. He further said that the rash conjectures of hasty spirits—in manifest allusion to the Civiltá—were to be regretted, as also the premature discussion of questions which would have been better reserved to the Council itself.

It is not probable that this deceived M. de Banneville as to the past, for he well knew how the Pope had encouraged the "premature discussions"; but he might take it as the covering of a retreat from a position found to be too advanced. But a wary man might have felt that perhaps the retreat was only a feint.

The despatch of M. de Banneville shows that Pius IX, like every Italian, knows how to keep his own counsel. Even his renowned saying, I am tradition—La tradizione son io—is no more than what M. Veuillot had said in proving that the Pope could not be an innovator—"Peter can no more be an innovator than the Holy Spirit, which reveals tradition to him."[173]

The tranquillity of the Curia on this occasion was that of perfected preparation. The dissimulation would not provoke a remark from a Roman. The effect of both was to prevent the anti-infallibilists from organizing any opposition.

Some examples of the points kept before readers arriving at the Holy City at this particular time may be of permanent interest. The Canadian Bishop of St. Hyacinthe was quoted as writing, "Sublime assembly, in which the eye of faith contemplates with wonder, poor and simple mortals who, sitting as judges, do not hesitate to impose the responsibility of their decisions and judgments on the Holy Spirit, because they know and believe that they form together with Him one tribunal." The emphases are given as we find them.[174]

A Latin pamphlet on the crisis, by a layman, was ridiculed, and one point, which seemed most comical to the reviewer, was that the author proposed two such queer anathemas; first, if any one offends against charity, let him be anathema; secondly, if any one begins war, let him be anathema.

The Archbishop of Lima, being ninety-four years of age, was unable to come in person, but sent his pastoral staff as a present to the Pope. It was of pure Peruvian gold, and of the value of two thousand pounds.

From the thrice-blessed Republic of Ecuador came the Archbishop of Quito, presenting a chalice of gold, rich with precious pearls. He bore valuable gifts in addition. That "illustrious Catholic," the President, Garcia Moreno, had, on a public occasion, been presenting prizes to students, when they joyfully laid down their medals to send them as an offering to the Holy Father. On seeing this, the President took from his breast a medal of rare value, all studded with gems, which had been presented to him by the government for distinguished services to the country. This he added to the tribute of the youths, and the Archbishop had the joy of laying the united oblation at the feet of the Pontiff.[175]

From Venezuela the Archbishop brought more than three thousand pounds in money. His people had also laden him with their valuables, ladies having taken off earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and rings to send, as tokens of their devotion to the impoverished Pope.

Had our English journalists devoutly pondered the elaborate description given at this cheerful juncture of a bell designed by a priest, and presented for the use of the Presidents in the Council, they would not have wasted so much criticism as they did on the rhetoric of a speech reported in the Daily News, in 1875, as having been made by the Pope, censuring Mr. Gladstone. His Holiness spoke of that gentleman as a viper attacking the bark of St. Peter, or something of that sort. Now the bell in question was described as being symbolic, within and without. The clapper of it was the ship of Peter, round the hull of which was coiled a serpent attempting to board the vessel, but it was finally precipitated with its head down, and the three-forked tongue shooting out.

The doubt of our men of letters as to whether the Pope could use a metaphor describing a snake attacking a bark, illustrates, in general, what Cardinal Manning said of those gentlemen on the particular occasion of the Council—"When English Protestants undertake to write of an Œcumenical Council of the Catholic Church, nothing less than a miracle can preserve them from making themselves ridiculous."[176] It would require a miracle to prevent any one from making himself ridiculous who should criticize the Speeches of Pius IX, assuming that his metaphors must have been subject to some rule.[177]

We find the revolution called by the Civiltá "the executioner of the Church"; and it is said that the Pontiff in his distress is rendered more and more like Christ upon the Cross, whom he represents, and with whom he can repeat, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" (Id. p. 514).

The Word of God is shown to be the source of human redemption, and then the following applications are made of this principle—[178]

"The State indeed must be civilized and modernized by separating it from the living Word in the Church, that it may die.... The laws must be civilized and modernized by putting them in opposition to the laws of the Word, that they may be laws of death.... Some would wish the Word to reconcile Himself with Satan.... Schools must be civilized and modernized by separating them from the schools of the Word, that they may be schools of death. Wedlock must be civilized and modernized by separating it from the consecration of the Word, that it may be the wedlock of death. Public speech must be modernized and civilized by separating it from the influence of the Word, that it may be the speech of death. Everything, in fine, must perish, since everything must be secularized, or torn away from that God who upholdeth all things by the Word of His power.... The modern revolution, inspired by Satan, would find that all its weapons directed against the Vatican were destined to have no other effect than that of multiplying the victories of the Word of God, who reigns there in the humble person of His Vicar" (pp. 522-26).

The Court, if we may judge by its organs, was deeply affected at the want of faith displayed by many Catholics, who expressed fears lest the Council should define anything that it ought not to define. Did they not know that the Holy Ghost would preserve it unerring? Why then all this solicitude? Could they not trust a body so guided to go right, without their advices and warnings? They treated it "as an ordinary human assembly." This sounded like mockery to those who had any idea of how much Rome had done in employing art and man's device to prevent the Council from going wrong and to forestall all possible impulses in any direction not predetermined. Had they only known of the long labour and the jealous precautions which we shall see gradually coming to light, the retorts they did make would have been much more indignant.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XII

Mustering, and Preparatory Stimuli—Pope's Hospitality—Alleged Political Intent—Friedrich's First Notes—The Nations cited to Judgment—New War of the Rosary—Tarquini's Doctrine of the Sword—A New Guardian of the Capitol—November and December, 1869.

While the chiefs of the Curia and the leading prelates were testing their diplomatic skill, and the former were, on that field, meekly winning the prizes, the rank and file of the hierarchy were flocking in from all the winds of heaven. The Roman nobles in many cases gave up their palaces to the Fathers of the Council. With his habitual personal liberality, the Pope freely offered hospitality to all who would accept it. This simple act, natural to his station, and still more to his disposition, was smiled at as a good bid for votes. About three hundred bishops made themselves, in whole or in part, dependent for their daily expenses on the bounty of the man upon whose exaltation they were to decide. The Civiltá, as if to emphasize their dependence, told how they were lodged, supported, and assisted by him in all the necessaries of life. Hence the mocking name of the "Pope's boarders," which greeted any manifestations of opinion on their part. It is said that his expenses for the entertainment of the bishops amounted to one hundred pounds per day.

A case of history repeating itself is suggested by these allegations as to the diplomatic value of the Pope's hospitality. Dr. Karl Benrath has restored to his place among Italian worthies one of the most picturesque figures of the many-hued life of that nation in the sixteenth century. This was Frà Bernardino Ochino, the all-eloquent General of the Capuchins, whom the blot of the Inquisition had covered from the common eye for three centuries. Ochino, who became a guest of Cranmer and a prebendary of Canterbury, wrote on the banks of the Thames, among other works, one called The Tragedy. Conceiving of the Papacy exactly as all modern Italian Protestants do, as the anti-Christ, and the masterpiece of Satan, he traces the rise of this dread power. Besides supernatural sources of ascendancy, he alleges the fact that in early ages the Bishops of Rome entertained bishops out of the provinces when they fled to the capital from persecution, or came from other causes, and thus the Roman prelates acquired great influence over the others. Their object then was "Primacy," out of which infallibility was in our day to come. Ochino puts into the mouth of the secretary to the Emperor, after he has discovered the Pope's yearnings, the following words: "O Lord God, that there can be so much ambition in the heart of a man! it is no marvel that he entertains in so friendly a manner all strangers who come to Rome."

Besides bishops came a mixed multitude—the devout Catholic, the keen politician, the commonplace tourist from every country, the gay sightseer, the American politician, the artist, the charlatan, the Indian civilian on furlough, and the learned official theologian. Few, but intent, came a new class of spectators—Italian Protestants, watching with eyes as open to all priestly arts as men of the sixteenth century, but with a readiness to affiliate each part of a Roman show on its Pagan original, much beyond what was even then common among our countrymen.

The Count Henri de Riancey, beholding the hierarchy pressing to the sacred walls, exclaims—

Open then thy gates, metropolis of the world; open thine everlasting gates, that the Queen of glory may come in! And who is this Queen of glory? It is the Church.... Make way, then, for the angels of the Churches, spoken of by St. John. Make way for the divine hierarchy, the ranks of which are moving, with order, force, and holiness, terrible as an army with banners (Frond, vol. i. p. 9).

One of the theologians has published a diary (Tagebuch), which will always remain one of the original sources of information on the Council. Its accuracy, like that of the Letters of Quirinus, has been assailed, and with not dissimilar result. Strong general assertions and weak proof, except on such minor points as show that the substance is unassailable, leave its accuracy but slightly impeached, and its truthfulness not at all discredited. The author states things which, by our standard, would be held private; but however that may be by the standard of his own country, the things, when once published, take their place among the materials of history.

Dr. Friedrich, a professor of Munich, was appointed theologian for the Council to Cardinal Hohenlohe. He began his diary before leaving home. He found that it was vain to seek in the palace of Archbishop Von Scherr for such works in the original as a set of the Fathers, or a collection of the Acts of the Councils. The Reverend Secretary said, "You know little of bishops if you think that those people study anything." This gentleman, who was to be the Archbishop's theologian at the Council, himself read only pamphlets. When Friedrich was on the railway platform, observing the two Archbishops of Munich and Bamberg, taking their departure for the Council, the confidential servant of the latter came up to the Professor and said, "You are not surely coming to Rome as a spy?" Answering not the man but the master, he replied: "Let bishops take care that they do not betray the Church, for just as they are bound to speak to the best of their knowledge and conscience, so am I as a theologian."

Thus Friedrich evidently expected to have to speak, as it would seem that Newman also did. He did not know how the secret plans had put aside all such possibilities. But if surprises awaited him as to the new part reserved for the doctors, there were surprises for the bishops also.

Friedrich remarked that, as he travelled farther south, less and less respect was shown to the clergy, till in Italy the difference, as compared with Germany, became painful. At Trent, a scholar warned him to beware of poison, and said that it was well that Döllinger had not gone to Rome, as he would never have returned.