Front matter (continued 8)

In front came chamberlains, chaplains, and officials of sixteen ascending grades. After these came the Fathers of the Council,—first the generals of orders, next mitred abbots, and then followed bishops, archbishops, primates, and patriarchs, in succession of still ascending rank, every man in appropriate splendour. The Orientals outshone their western brethren even more than usual; for the robes of the Latins, being confined to the white of the day, were at a disadvantage beside the eastern coats of many colours. The Senator, as the incumbent is called of a quaint old office under the Papal government, which we might call that of honorary mayor of Rome, marched between the prelates and the throne in golden robe of rich variety. He was accompanied by the conservators, whom we might call something like honorary councilmen, and also by the commandants of the three orders of guards—the noble, the Palatine, and the Swiss. Finally, sitting aloft, with the fans and the bearers, and the poles and the canopy, came the Pontiff. The moving throne was followed by a lengthened rear procession, formed of sundry officials, and closing with the priests, who had for some time been practising shorthand, in order to act as reporters.

The faithful from east and west gazed with enraptured eyes. Many were proud to recognize their own bishops; some still prouder to see their own gifts in robe or gem shining among the adornments of the day. Any Hindu present, looking at priest and soldier, might have exclaimed in the words of the Bhagavad Gita: "Many a wondrous sight, many a heavenly ornament, many an upraised weapon; adorned with celestial robes and chaplets; anointed with heavenly essence, covered with every marvellous thing."[204]

From early morn, "the holiest," to use the term of one of the priestly descriptions, had been exhibited upon the altar; but out of tenderness to the throng had been veiled till the procession approached. As it entered the temple, every member of it uncovered to "the holiest." Those who were not members of the Council, after reaching the high altar, defiled to the left. The Fathers of the Council approaching the altar, each in his turn bent the knee before the Host; and then turning to the right, beheld the front of the Council Hall erected between two of the piers which sustain the great dome of Michael Angelo. Over the door was a picture, professing to represent the Eternal Father. The door was kept by the military figures of the Knights of Malta and the noble guards. Each prelate, in turn, entered the hall, bowed to the cross erected upon the altar, and was shown to the place assigned to him, according to his rank and seniority; for care was taken that the bishops should not group themselves either according to nation or according to opinion. There, standing and bareheaded, they awaited the Holy Father (Frond, vii. p. 98).

After the procession had been for some time moving up the nave, a whisper, "The cross, the cross," passed from lip to lip. The cross was borne immediately in front of the Fathers of the Council. Priest told priest of its choice beauty and immense costliness. Designed in the Gothic of the thirteenth century, and rich with gems, it represented Christ, not in His passion, but crowned, as conquering Lord, in glory. Among the expressions of delight, the proudest was, "It is a present to the Pope from the English convert, the Marquis of Bute."

The Pope did not, on this occasion, as he usually does, pass up the whole of the nave on his portative throne—a process which guide-books describe as representing the Lord of Glory entering Paradise. He now alighted at the entrance of the basilica, and, with deliberate step and thrice radiant smiles, his head alone mitred while all others were uncovered in presence of the "holiest," he marched among soldiers, priests, and subjects, a sovereign in excelsis. Before him went his hundreds of lieutenants, in attire which would have dazzled ancient Pontifex, Flamen, and Augur. Every one of them was prepared to contend with princes in his cause, to set his name before that of their king, and to claim, in their respective countries, a supreme sway for his sceptre. Not a few of them had endured prosecution or prison to uphold his law against that of their country, and no note of the lyres that sounded the praises of the day was sweeter than that which commemorated the name of any martyr-bishop, hero of the kingdom of God, against the naturalism of the age.

The Cardinals had not followed the bishops into the hall. They now stood near the high altar. Two bishops were at the faldstool, with book and candle. At the altar itself stood the officiating Cardinal, with a priest, a deacon and sub-deacon, a master of the ceremonies, five acolytes bearing candles, and three clerks of the chapel. On arriving at the altar the Pontiff bowed upon the faldstool. Then the last strophe of the Veni Creator was exquisitely sung by the choir. To use the words of a priest, written, not for Spaniards or Brazilians, but for Germans: "Every member of the historical procession cast himself upon his knees before our God and Saviour in the form of bread, before whom all kings bow."[205]

After the adoration of the Host the Pope, still kneeling, recited aloud the prayer, "Look upon us, O God our protector!"—Protector Noster Aspice Deus—and for some time he continued reciting prayers in alternation with the choir. "Rising up," says Monsignor Guérin, "he recited a prayer to the Holy Sacrament, another to the Holy Spirit, a third to invoke the aid of the Holy Virgin and that of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, a fourth to God" (Guérin, p. 76).

The Cardinals, with their train-bearers, now turning to the right, entered the Hall of the Council, where the bishops had been waiting for some time.

As the Pope advanced to the eventful enclosure, two former comrades in one lawyer's office held the corners of his pluvial—the Cardinals Antonelli and Mertel. If these ministers deserved half of the ill that was said of them by the common voice of Rome, or even by a writer like Liverani, who shuns private scandal, and only treats of public acts, Pius IX was not at that moment to be congratulated on the character of his companions. Confiding in the patronage of her whom he had set on high, he once more passed among the ornate hundreds of his mighty but docile servants. Approaching the altar he offered up a prayer; then passing to the throne at the far end of the Hall, he, in the words of Sambin, "dominated the whole assembly, and appeared like the teaching Christ" (p. 55).

The German Jesuit who wrote for the Stimmen said, "The bloodless offering was being presented on the altar, and soon must the invisible Head of the Church be present in form of bread. Opposite sits His representative upon a throne; below him, the Cardinals; around, the Catholic world, represented in its bishops" (Neue Folge, vi. p. 162).

This localized presence, not yet actual, but to come at the word of the priest, was the same as that "divine presence" which Cardinal Manning, when leaving home, said many in the English Church were sighing for as having formerly been in their churches. The early Christians saw the most sublime token of God's presence in that absence of any similitude which perplexed the heathen soldiery at Nicomedia, which, in India, first perplexes and then awes the Hindu, and which to spiritual worshippers says, in the deep tone of silence—

Lo, God is here, let us adore!

At this point, rather more than twenty of the particulars set down in the program had been got through, but there were one hundred and forty-eight of them in all. It would be well worth while for any merely philosophic politician to follow them one by one, marking the directions by which every act, posture, and prayer, whether audible or silent, was prescribed. The science of government by spectacle really deserves study by men of sense, because the practice of it is so mighty with all who take an impression for a reason. The program is in the Acta, and those who choose to read it will find a prescription for each minutest move.

The Archbishop of Iconium, whose real office was that of Vicar of St. Peter's, approached the throne, holding his mitre in his hands; he made a profound obeisance, then drawing near, he kissed the Pope's knee. After this, mounting the pulpit, he preached, in cope and mitre, a sermon unlike that of Father Bianchi. It was long and tame, and hardly had the true Infallibilist ring. He felt that they were entering upon an untried and thorny path. "Tribulation," he said, "will arise, bitter days and innumerable sorrows" (Acta, pp. 204-214). After the sermon the Pope rose and gave the benediction, during which the cardinals and bishops stood, the abbots and generals of orders kneeling down. "It is," says Monsignor Guérin, "the Moses of the new law, with his shining brow." He then offered up a prayer, with invocation of the Church triumphant and of all saints, "the formidable army which is drawn up around the Pope and the Council, and which assures victory to the Church," as Guérin expounds it. The preacher then published the indulgences from the pulpit. Now came an interlude preparatory to a transaction of grave importance. To prescribe the action of the interlude, it required all the articles of the program from thirty-seven to fifty. To perform that action took up in a Christian place of worship probably a full half-hour of the time of seven hundred bishops, of several thousand clergymen, of Knights of Malta, of noble guards, Palatine guards, Swiss guards, of some two thousand soldiers, and of probably twenty thousand people. Two bishops, with book and candle, draw near to the throne. The Pontiff recites Quam dilecta, etc. The sub-deacon apostolic, who is a judge of the high court of the Rota, called the Supreme Tribunal of the whole Christian world, advances. He is accompanied by two judges of the high court of the Signet, to which even the Rota, in spite of its title, is subordinate.[206] The three judges solemnly bear to the throne in a scarf of silver cloth the apostolic stockings and slippers trimmed with gold lace. The Pontiff puts on stockings and slippers. Monsignor the Sacristan takes his place at the altar ready to give out the robes. The two judges of the high court of the Signet stand at the altar ready to take the robes from Monsignor the Sacristan, and to hand them to the cardinal deacon. Then the cardinal deacon approaches the throne. The senior cardinal priest ascends the steps of the throne and takes the ring from off the Pontiff. The judges of the high court of the Signet bring the robes to the throne. Then the senior cardinal priest, assisted by the cardinal deacons, takes off from the Pontiff the mitre, takes off the formal, the pluvial, the stole and the girdle; after which he puts on the cord, the pectoral cross, the fanon, the stole, the tunic, the dalmatic, the gloves, and the white chasuble wrought with gold. The sub-deacon apostolic now bears the pallium to the throne, and one of the judges of the high court of the Signet accompanies him, bearing the pins. The cardinal deacon then puts upon the Pontiff the sacred pallium, takes the mitre and replaces it on the Pontiff. Finally, the senior cardinal priest again ascends the steps of the throne and puts on the ring which he had before taken off. And seven hundred bishops, and several thousand priests, and a couple of thousand soldiers, and some twenty thousand people, all were agreed that this was imposing, impressive, divine.

This public toilet was in preparation for what Cecconi calls "the sublime and moving rite called the Obedience"; the homage of the vassals to the ruler of the world. First the Cardinals one by one arose, slowly approached the throne, performed an obeisance, and kissed the hand of the sovereign. Then patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, approaching in their turn, made low reverences before the steps of the throne, and, slowly drawing nigh, kissed the Pope's right knee. Abbots and generals of orders knelt before reaching the steps of the throne, rose, drew nigh, knelt again, and kissed the king's right foot. For an hour and a quarter this act of homage was continued. From the banks of the Thames and of the Seine, of the Ganges and the Hudson; from the Alps and the Andes; from historic lands of Asia, whence the light of history had long faded; from emerging countries in the New World, on which its first beams were beginning to strike—came forward lordly figures of men accustomed to command, and sometimes to domineer. Each, with chosen and awe-struck movement, drew near to the king of his heart and conscience, and rendered up his homage, like gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Vitelleschi, in a vein generally Roman, alluding to these "five quarters of an hour" spent in bowing, kneeling, and kissing; says, "What strength of memory is necessary for him who being humbly entitled the Servant of the Servants of God, had to keep that modest formula in mind during the whole ceremony!" But if the scene at this particular point might tax the memory of the Pope, it would surely cheer the hopes of those "august minds" that, having adapted their code to the views of confessors, were now idle spectators of the Council, while other kings were on their thrones. The ex-sovereigns of Naples, Tuscany, and Parma, looking on that display of widely-extended power, and viewing through the stained windows of a Catholic imagination the political forces represented by it, might be both excused and commiserated if they saw signs of happy days returning.

The Jesuits said, "Surely those non-Catholics who witnessed this action must have perceived that Catholicity, like unity, is found only where Christ lives, speaks, and reigns—in Peter; that is, in the Roman Church, of which Pius IX is now Peter." But we may quietly ask, Could even those writers fancy Peter, at the only Apostolic Council, seated upon a throne somewhere on Mount Zion, while John, James, and Paul came up in the presence of the assembled Church and kissed his knee, and Philip, Barnabas, and others knelt and kissed his foot? Far as the aesthetics of those Jesuits had descended, by a long materializing process, they must surely have read enough of the Holy Scriptures to feel that the scene enacted in St. Peter's, though a fine edition of a Durbar, was a sad fall from an Apostolic Council. You promise the pupils of Plato a higher wisdom than they ever knew in the Academy, and they find for wisdom the gewgaws of Freemasons. Such a scene was bad in manners, bad in politics, and bad in religion. In manners, it tended to make men servile in a lower position and arrogant in a higher; in politics, it tended to make them either slaves or despots; in religion, it tended to make them either unbelieving or superstitious. Is it part of the penalty of Rome that barbaric forms should linger at its Court, when the spirit of Christianity has banished them from the Courts of Christian kings? Our own monarch, at the head of her two hundred and eighty millions, is too good a Christian to make her subject Rajahs, as a spectacle for her commons and her troops, come and fall down and kiss her foot. The words which commanded the followers of Christ not to exercise over one another the kind of lordship which the kings of the Gentiles exercised over them were, with pompous action, publicly trampled upon in this scene of "the obedience," and that both in the spirit and in the letter. He who complacently sat and acted out that scene in the house of God for an hour and a quarter, might better claim to represent many known in the history of ambition, than the lowly Lord of Peter.

Up to this time only sixty-seven articles of the program had been performed. Thirty more were exhausted by postures, manipulations, and devotions. The officiating cardinal-priest then came forward, bearing the reeking censer. He waved it before the enthroned priest, around whom swelled up the clouds till subject eyes looked up to him through a sacred haze, and till he looked down on his subject creatures from a sky of fragrant mist. This ceremony fulfilled, all took their seats with their mitres on, and the Pontiff, rising, delivered his allocution. It overflowed with joy and hope. It clearly pointed out the enemy to be destroyed. "A conspiracy of the wicked, mighty by combination, rich in resources, fortified with institutions, and using liberty for a cloak of maliciousness." Obviously this enemy was not a theological but a political one. Vitelleschi, who naturally heard with Italian ears, says that the language, though using a cloak, was plain enough to show what enemy was meant.

As the Pontiff drew to the close of his allocution, he, with a burst of feeling, put up two invocations, one to the Holy Spirit, the other to the Blessed Virgin. After this, with contagious intensity of emotion, he threw up both hands to heaven. At a bound, the whole assembly stood up. Then he poured forth the final invocation with the fullest resonance of his wonderful tones—tones which might have served in chanting from Gerizim to Ebal. He invoked angels and archangels, Peter, Paul, and all the saints, more particularly those whose ashes were venerated on that spot. This speech from the apostolic throne, exclaims Monsignor Guérin, beginning with the liveliest joy, afterwards expressing divine agonies, concluded with firm and tranquil confidence!

Now followed another round of ceremonies, at the close of which the master of the ceremonies proclaimed, "Let those who are not members of the Council withdraw." The royal and noble spectators left the scene; the doors were closed. The Knights of Malta and the noble guard stood sentry between the faithful, who were to receive the creed as it might be shaped, and the Fathers, who were to decide for them what their creed should be. What would take place before those doors should be opened again? Persistent rumour had said that the extreme party meant to attempt an acclamation. Therefore many believed it possible that in one brief sitting the basis of infallibility might be shifted from that of an infallible Church to that of an infallible man.

Other rumours asserted that some French prelates had let it be known that if any attempt at getting up an acclamation should be made, they would leave the Council. But what might take place behind those charmed walls, who could tell? All that could be said with certainty was that now, for the first time in the history of man, one hundred and seventy millions, perhaps two hundred millions, were standing idle spectators of the process of altering their creed. They had not a single representative; not one channel of expression, not one possible resort in appeal. What used to be a general council was now a conclave; sitting behind a guard of armed men. King and priest, councillor of state and doctor of divinity, were equally shut out. The Catholic multitude appeared indifferent. The few who were not indifferent were powerless. They had all been parties to narrowing the idea of the Church to that of the clergy. That idea was now, without the consent of any one being asked, formally narrowed from that of the clergy to that of the bishops and Court prelates. It might further be narrowed from that of the Episcopate to that of the Pope. It appears to us not very easy to call men fanatics who have done so much with mankind, when they propose and expect to do still more!

The point at which we now stand in the program of the day is the 109th Article, which is the first of several prescribing a ceremony with a substance. Bishop Fessler, Secretary of the Council, and Bishop Valenziani of Fabriano, approached the throne. The Secretary handed a document to the Pontiff. The Pope handed the document to Valenziani, who thereupon, ascending the pulpit, turned towards the throne, made a profound obeisance, took off his mitre, and read out as follows—"Pius, the Bishop-Servant of the Servants of God, with the approbation of the Holy Council." Having now pronounced the title of the decree, he again put on his mitre, seated himself, and proceeded to read the substance of the Decree. This consisted of one sentence, declaring the Council opened. In that ill-constructed hall few heard what was read; and many were wicked enough to hint that, if ill-constructed, the hall was not ill-contrived. Once more laying aside the mitre, Bishop Valenziani rose and asked, "Is the Decree now read agreed to?" The bishops were seated in their mitres, the abbots standing bareheaded. There was no formal vote. Those who understood what was said, cried Placet, and others repeated the cry. No one dissented. This result was communicated to the sovereign, and he from the throne proclaimed—"The Decree now read is agreed to by the Fathers, none dissenting; and we decree, enact, and sanction it, as read."

These forms were exactly repeated, and a second Decree was passed. Like the first, it consisted of a single sentence, which fixed the next public session for January 6. The two Promoters of the Council, as they were called, now advancing, first knelt on the lowest step of the throne, and then addressed the notaries, saying, "We pray you, Protonotaries here present, to draw up an authentic document, recording all and singular the acts done in this public session of the all-holy Œcumenical Vatican Council." The senior protonotary then appealing to the Majordomo and the High Chamberlain, who stood on the right hand of the throne, said, "We shall draw it up, ye being witnesses" (Frond, vii. p. 119).

The constitutional crisis had come and gone, and very few were aware of it. Those who had thought of the program as anything more than the order of a pageant, must have observed that the signification of those acts amounted to no less than putting aside the conciliar form of Decree, and adopting in its stead that of the Papal Bulls. We have already seen that Friedrich, as a Church historian, saw this at a glance. It need not be said that the ancient Councils, representing the whole Church, spoke in their own name, themselves decreeing and enacting. As to the only Council "over" which Pontiff Peter I "presided," it would not do to cite it as an example.[207] As late as Trent, every Decree bore upon the face of it the words, "This holy Council enacts and decrees." All the statutes of the Council of Trent, without alteration of a word, were immediately confirmed by the Pope, he having beforehand promised, in writing, to do so. The formula then used was, of course, liable to the interpretation that it indicated the superiority of the Council to the Pope. That interpretation had been actually put upon it by schools in the Church, at one time, including whole nations.

The Decrees now passed had never been before the Council for deliberation, but were handed from the throne ready made. The Pope, according to the formula, did not merely sanction, but decreed, enacted, and sanctioned—that is, he took the part of both parliament and crown.

The Council is only mentioned as "approving" of this absorption of its own powers into those of its head. The part thus allowed to this so-called Œcumenical Council, this Senate of Humanity, in framing Decrees, is less than the part allowed to the College of Cardinals in the framing of Bulls. Take, for instance, the Bull of Convocation. It expressly says that, in issuing it, the Pope acts not only with the consent of the Cardinals, but by their counsel.

This expresses more than "with the approbation." All, therefore, that the collective episcopate did for the College of Cardinals was somewhat to curtail its relative legislative importance. Alone, both its counsel and consent were recognized. When united with all the bishops, only its consent. This looked like telling the bishops that their counsel was superfluous. In the Bull history conquered dogma. The counsel and consent of the Cardinals was the memento of the historical fact that the Bishop of Rome originally spoke with authority only when he spoke as the mouthpiece of the local clergy. In the Decree dogma conquered history. The Bishop of Rome alone was to appear as speaking with authority, and all other bishops were to appear only as approving, but neither as counselling nor confirming; as for the clergy, they were no longer of the Teaching Church. The substance of the Decrees passed was perfectly innocent. They had, moreover, the advantage of exactly copying the acts done in the first session at Trent, while destroying the forms there employed. In the Acta of that Council two resolutions, declaring the Council opened, and fixing the day for the second public session, were entered as constituent acts, before the heading given to Decrees of the constituted body began to be used. The two constituent resolutions were not even headed by the name of the Council, while the name of the Pope does not occur in the heading of any of the Decrees, much less does it stand as the sole legislative authority.

At Trent it was not a private member of the Council, like Bishop Valenziani, but the first presiding legate, Cardinal De Monte, who read out the draft of a resolution, in the form of a question declaring the Council opened. To this question the Fathers "all with one consent answered, Placet." The second resolution was put in the same form. Both, as we have intimated, were entered without the heading of Decrees, and stand as the acts of a body organizing itself, but not as legislative acts of that body when organized. Every subsequent Decree is a real legislative act, and therefore bears the formal heading, "The All-Holy Council of Trent, in the Holy Ghost lawfully assembled ... ordains and decrees."[208]

The formula adopted in the Vatican Council had the advantage of determining, once for all, what that Council was to be, namely, a secret consistory of bishops, to give an approval to Papal Constitutions. Its Presidents were Cardinals, an office unknown to the Christian Church—princes simply of the Court of Rome, though most of them bear the orders of priest. Of the members of the Council a vast number, though called bishops, were really no more than mitred equerries and chamberlains. In the means it took to deprive the diocesan bishops of their inherited powers in Council, the Curia knew its men. Brought up in the sentiment that an effective "function" is the sublimest stroke of civil or ecclesiastical government, it would have been a revolt against all their instincts to disturb a pageant so unrivalled as the one in which they that day had the felicity of bearing a part. The Curia placed them in this dilemma: Either they must rise up amidst that blaze of splendour and resist the act of the sovereign at whose feet they had just bowed, or they must learn at a later stage, if they should then challenge the Rules of Procedure, that the moment for objection was past. The success of the Curia was complete. The general drew out his men for a review, and turned the Thermopylæ of the opposition without having ever seen a Spartan. Those who had come up resolved to oppose changes in their creed soon found that the one pass that might have been held against overwhelming odds was already in the enemy's rear. The Nine had not spent nearly ten months on the Rules of Procedure for nothing.

When this brief episode in the drama of the day had passed over, the doors were thrown open, and the spectators who had been excluded resumed their places. Many of the priests outside would feel disappointed that they had not heard the hall resound with the voices of an acclamation. That would have told that Papal infallibility was adopted without discussion. Friedrich lets it appear that he felt relieved at the opening of the doors before there had been any exulting sound, and doubtless many shared his feeling.

Rumours, persistently kept up, declared that Archbishop Manning would propose the dogma, and that the majority, breaking out into acclamation, would bear down all opposition. If such a design was ever entertained, it had been thought—some say it had been found—that it would prove wiser not to proceed so hastily. The passing of two Decrees in the form of Papal Constitutions was enough to carry "the forms of the house," while the issuing of the Rules of Procedure as a Bull, before the Council was opened, had taken away every pretext for alleging that they were open to revision by the Council itself, as being its own acts.

Archbishop Manning, on his return to England, in a pastoral, treated the rumour of an intended acclamation as if it was only laughable. A reason which he assigns for this is that Rome had had enough of acclamations, seeing that many who acclaimed infallibility in 1867 had openly turned against it. The rumours, however, were too consistent, and too well supported by the hints of the Civiltá and by the plain words of Monsignor Plantier and others, to be prudently dismissed with a smile—at least, anywhere but in England. They were not what Dr. Manning represents them, rumours of an acclamation without a definition, but of a definition carried by acclamation, as in the case of the Immaculate Conception. On the other hand, Archbishop Manning's thrust at those who had in 1867 signed language that might seem to mean everything included in infallibility, without themselves intending to express that doctrine, is natural in one who had not wholly unlearned the Protestant worth of words. Nevertheless, of all grounds on which the prefects of the Pope should begin to trip one another up, the ground to be selected by preference is scarcely that of finesse in the interpretations they put on what they say. As to the part assigned to Dr. Manning personally, it is possible that the rumour represented no more than the fact that both they who hoped for an acclamation, and they who feared it, mentioned the name which occurred to them as that of the most likely instrument of such a procedure, and both happened to pronounce the same name. As if to justify this instinctive selection of both parties, Dr. Manning, on his return home, said that if the Council "had defined the infallibility at its outset, it would not have been an hour too soon; and perhaps it would have averted many a scandal we now deplore."[209]

A Roman noble thus notes the zeal of Dr. Manning—

No one is so devoted as a convert. Having himself erred for half his lifetime did not restrain him from becoming the most ardent champion of infallibility. This circumstance raised a presumption of a deficiency, on his part, in that traditional ecclesiastical spirit which is never fully acquired but by being early grounded and by long continued usage—a presumption which was justified by his excessive and intemperate restlessness. This seemed a cause sufficient to lessen his authority with the Conservative portion of the ecclesiastical world, which judges with more calmness and serenity.[210]—(Vitelleschi, p. 35.)

The real work of the day was now done. It was time to sing the Te Deum. The Pontiff sounded the first note, and was followed by the Fathers of the Council, by the choir, by the thousands outside in the Basilica. The strain was caught up in nave and aisles, in every chapel and every gallery; it mounted aloft into vaults and dome, till all who were beneath the gorgeous roof thrilled under that returning swell of exulting sound; and many felt as if the world was falling, overwhelmed with harmony, at the feet of Pio Nono.

The eighteen articles of the program still remaining contained little beyond unrobing, re-robing, and dissolving.

The people had been for seven hours in the Cathedral. It still rained in torrents. The clerical organs said the providential rain had prevented mobs in different places from making hostile demonstrations. During the time spent in the Cathedral, the people had not heard—except so far as some of them could make out the Latin—a sentence of the Word of God or of the words of man. The seven hours of the twenty thousand had been spent in an intermitting gaze. All went away, not only praising the pageant of the day, but extolling it. Friedrich quotes a diplomatist who said it was "superb." The correspondent of the Times said: "It has been my fortune to see many pageants in Rome, but none of them equalled, in majestic solemnity, the scene presented by the procession of bishops from all countries in the world."[211] Monsignor Guérin cried: "It offered the most majestic and enchanting spectacle which it was ever given to mortals to behold here below." M. Veuillot said that bishops were there from the rising to the setting of the sun—men who would invade regions as yet closed against them—the light-bearers and the God-bearers.[212] These old men, he added, would overthrow darkness and death, and the day would break (vol. i. p. 12). Vitelleschi remarked that there was indeed a bishop from Chaldea and one from Chicago, but the former did not represent a Catholic Chaldea, nor the latter a Catholic Chicago. Even, he added, in countries called Catholic, what proportion of the population are really of their flocks? He might have further added, And if their teaching is true, what proportion of their flocks are really Catholics?—for they teach that a doubt on any single article of faith propounded by their Church, or a doubt on one of her interpretations of a text of Scripture, taints one with heresy. How many Italians were, on the day of the opening of the Council, free from that taint?

We are reminded of an Englishman whose name, when he was only thirty years of age, gained for him distinguished attention at the Vatican. His Protestantism was much influenced by his early study of the corruptions of Christianity at the centre of them. Had John Milton witnessed that pageant we know exactly what he would have said. First he would have shown that when the filial spirit of Christianity had been lost, the servile spirit of Paganism supervened. When men ceased to come to God as children to a father, they sought circuitous access through upper servants. Then followed what he describes in a sentence with a strong flavour of the Phædrus—

They began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the very shape of God Himself, into an exterior and bodily form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of joining the body in a formal reverence, and worship circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the flamin's vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul, by this means of over-bodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward: and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous colleague the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcase to plod on in the old road, and drudging trade of outward conformity.... They knew not how to hide their slavish approach to God's behests, by them not understood, nor worthily received, but by cloaking their servile crouching to all religious presentments, sometimes lawful, sometimes idolatrous, under the name of humility, and terming the piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies, decency.—Of Reformation in England, first book.

A writer in the Stimmen thought that if those who were separated from the Church had only been present they might have been won back. It would be an easy way to settle the merits of a religion, if it could be done by the simple experiment of what body had the grandest building for a display, or the greatest number of richly dressed men to perform. We do not presume to say whether Peter ever did visit Rome or not; but, supposing that he did, the question between him and the sovereign Pontiff of the day, as to the value of their respective religions, would soon have been settled in favour of Nero, if it had gone by buildings, statues, robes, and retinues. Probably the poor itinerant preacher was so conscious that, as Milton would say, his religion "to the gorgeous solemnities of paganism, and the sense of the world's children, seemed but a homely and yeomanly religion," that he would not have challenged comparison with the purpled Pontiff on that ground. Any writer who could imagine that the tendency of a "function" performed in the manner of the one we have described is to convince Protestants that the Church of Rome has in her forms much likeness left to the Church of Christ, must be unaware of the first elements of a comparison. When we search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so, the estrangement of the Papacy from the Christianity of Christ, and its affinity to the Romanism of the Pagan Pontiffs, become more and more impressive.

The feeling in St. Peter's did not permit guards to be dispensed with. It transpired that extreme precaution had been taken to prevent the Basilica from being blown up. At the time, the general impression appeared to be that some of the National party had played upon the fears of the priests, hoaxing them with hints of such a design. But after what occurred in Paris during the reign of the Commune, one can hardly think it impossible that some of the violent and ignorant may have entertained wild plans. In 1867, a startling example of what might be done had been shown in the blowing up of a barrack of the zouaves. When populations which have long been governed by spectacle, set out for a political sensation, they sometimes go dreadful lengths to find a stirring one.

The city was to have been grandly illuminated, but the drenching rain would have mocked all effort to keep in the tender life of the lamps. Let us hope, said the clerical writers, that the blue sky of Rome will smile on the close of the Council, and that then the eternal city will glow brighter even than Ephesus in 431 (Stimmen, N.F., p. 166).

In addition to human helps to faith, it was announced that divine helps had been vouchsafed. On this ever-memorable day the bones of the martyrs at Concordia had distilled water, which in that part of Venetia was a recognized presage of a joyful future. This is announced in the organ of that Court which was soberly undertaking to inaugurate a new era for all the societies of men (Civiltá, VII. ix. 104).

The same periodical in the very next sentence gave samples of fanatical English Protestants. Citing the Pall Mall Gazette, it told how a series of meetings had been held in Freemasons' Hall, at the suggestion of Dr. Merle d'Aubigné, to pray for the Council. It went on to say that the Chairman, Mr. Arthur Kinnaird, had told how similar meetings for prayer were to be held all over the world, and even among the Protestants of Italy. It quoted two of the petitions said to have been offered up. Canon Auriol prayed that all the machinations of Rome might be turned to confusion, and Dr. Cumming that the day of her imagined triumph might prove to be that of her prophesied ruin.

It was much pleasanter work to tell of the Anti-Council of the Freethinkers at Naples. Praying Protestants are to be hated and extinguished. But vaunting infidels are to the Jesuits what fires are to insurance offices—their apparent foes, but their only real supports. That assembly spent a couple of days in vague and sometimes vast talk. It abused the Pope, and the Jesuits say it blasphemed God. It proposed to find a code of morals without religion, those flowers without any stems which are the holy grail of such knights errant. Finally, it attacked the French Emperor and the Italian monarchy, and was dissolved by the police. Demonstrations of a somewhat similar kind were attempted in a few other cities of Italy. In France, on the contrary, the following cities were illuminated, and were lauded not only in their local clerical journals, but in the great Civiltá: Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulouse, Limoges, Clermont, Saint-Etienne, Laval, Moulins, Nismes, Auch, "and others." Even in Paris many convents illuminated their facades. (Guérin, p. 78.)

At Vienna a meeting of the nobility, gentry, clergy, and officials composing the Catholic Societies, and numbering, it is said, four thousand, was held to celebrate the day. The only Italian city specified as having made any favourable demonstration was Brescia; and the account amounted to no more than that of an attendance of some Society of young men at Mass, and of the sending of a promise of adhesion to the Council.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER II

First Proceedings—Unimportant Committees and All-Important Commissions—No Council if Pope dies—Theologians discover their Disfranchisement—Father Ambrose—Parties and Party Tactics—Were the Bishops Free Legislators?—Plans of Reconstruction—Plan of the German Bishops—Segesser's Plan—New Bull of Excommunications.

The day following the wonderful Wednesday, of which the proceedings filled up the last chapter, was not too much for rest, and probably, indeed, was too little for the bishops to tell how effective the function had been. On the Friday, however, they had again to meet for the first General Congregation, or deliberative sitting. This was presided over by the Cardinals appointed, whereas the Pope in person presided over the Public Sessions, or solemnities, for formally promulging Decrees. Cardinal De Reisach, Chief President, was not in his chair, but upon his death-bed. As we have seen, he had superintended the drawing up (it is believed that with his own hand he had drawn up) the first code of laws to regulate the relations of the Church to civil society; but his code has never met the public eye.

From this first General Congregation, writes Friedrich, even the theologians were shut out.

The occupation of the day for nearly eight hundred bishops was to elect two committees of five each: one to examine applications for leave of absence; and the other to settle contests as to precedence, and similar matters, which contests at Trent often proved to be serious, indeed ere now the streets of Rome have witnessed bloodshed arising out of disputes of this sort between bishops. The members of these committees were called respectively Judges of Excuses and Judges of Complaints and Disputes. The mode of election was simple; every one wrote five names on a card. It proved that Fallibilists must not expect the smallest share of office. Cardinal De Luca took the chief place, and opened the Congregation with a few simple sentences. These were translated by interpreters for the Orientals who did not understand Latin. The prelate who on this occasion celebrated Mass at the opening of the sitting was the Bishop of Osimo, afterwards Cardinal Vitelleschi, to whom some have ascribed the authorship of the work of his brother, which we often quote.[213]

The real business of the day, too important to be left to the episcopate, had been done without them. It consisted in appointing the Commission of Proposals. Twelve Cardinals, twelve archbishops, and two bishops were announced as the men whom the Pontiff had put in charge of the rights of their brethren. Prelates with titles from Antioch, Jerusalem, Thessalonica, and Sardis; one from Chili and one from Baltimore; one from Spain, one from Westminster, two Italians, and a few others, were empowered to say whether the men who ruled the sees of Paris, Lyons, Munich, Cologne, and Milan, and those of Hungary and Portugal, were or were not to be recommended to the Pope for permission to bring forward any proposal. The Commission could not grant them leave to do so, but it could report to the Pontiff, who alone could determine.

As some seven hundred and fifty bishops found all their hopes of proposing anything placed at the discretion of these twenty-six men, it was not for them to reason why: it was for them simply to read in the names now announced the record of past services and the fate of future suggestions.[214] They had not stayed the proceedings when they found that the Pro-synodal Congregation had been used to fasten upon them an edict which took away their right of self-organization, and it was now hopeless to attempt to recover that right. The three youngest archbishops on the list were Giannelli, Manning, and Deschamps; the secretary of the Nine, and the two hottest Infallibilists—all three on the way to the purple, which they have since received at one and the same time.

But the sensation of the day, perhaps brought about at this moment to divert attention from the painful inroad just made upon episcopal rights, was a Bull determining the course to be taken should the death of the Pontiff occur during the Council. This edict determined that the bishops must not, in that case, elect a successor or transact any business, but that the Council must be held as suspended till another Pope should be duly elected by the Cardinals alone, and till it should be again called together by him. Pius IX ordained that this law should endure for ever, as the rule in all similar cases. This measure made the Council an appendage to the person of the Pope, not capable of sustaining its existence without him, and consequently having no imaginable power over him. It also made it inferior to the College of Cardinals—an abnormal body, composed of "creatures" of the crown, without any pretence to a constitutional place in the Christian Church—"Princes," and some of them, like Antonelli, not even priests. "Pivots," as their name imports, true "pivots"[215] of the Court, which has turned a religion into a school of costume, policy, and arms, they have, we repeat, as Cardinals, neither name nor place, neither order nor office, in the known constitution of the Catholic Church. When men who held that bishops were successors of the Apostles allowed the right of all the bishops in the world to choose their own head to be confiscated by an edict in favour of these Court officers, they were not likely afterwards to be strong supports of any true authority, only of that arbitrary will which finds all the sanction of its acts in itself. The Cardinals may well denounce nationalism, since to uphold their pretensions the mitres of all nations must bow to the hat of a prince in the suite of one little king. It would be unreasonable to think less of a man for wearing a scarlet hat and scarlet stockings, if his position in life calls him to it; almost as unreasonable as to think more of him for it. But to put a prince into that grotesque Court dress, and then turn him, by virtue of his Court position, into a titular bishop, or archbishop, and to expect his irregular office to be recommended by his incongruous attire, is a proof of the unlimited faith of the Curia in costume.

The experience of the day taught two lessons. First, the hall proved to be utterly unfit for deliberation, as every architect or public speaker must have known that it would prove, though about twenty-four thousand pounds had been spent in adapting a space within the Cathedral. But the second lesson of the day's experience was of a different kind. It had become plain that Fallibilists and Infallibilists were to be parted off from one another by a hard official line, and that no distinction would be made between Fallibilists and Inopportunists. The Curia, instead of showing any fear of the minority, was evidently resolved on letting it be known that Rome was not the place to form an opposition. The Rules had in fact already disposed of the minority.

We have intimated that possibly theologians came up to the Council with no more knowledge of what awaited them than the bishops. This was at least the case with Friedrich. On the Monday after the opening ceremony, accompanied by Kagarer, theologian to his Grace of Munich, he waited on the Secretary of the Council. I knew, says the Professor, that at Trent every theologian was not entitled only, but bound, to take part in the labours of the Council, by preparing papers and publicly discussing questions. But, he adds, "we were undeceived with a witness." The Secretary told them that the duty of theologians in connexion with the Council was "nothing." They were only to give information or advice to their respective bishops, as it might be asked for.

The decision thus announced to the doctors had been taken eleven months previously. The Nine, at their meetings of January 24 and 31, (Cecconi, p. 205) had determined that there should be no congregation of inferior theologians, as the doctors were called, in opposition to the bishops, the superior theologians. The open discussions which had given light to the people on the one side and to the prelates on the other were thus quenched. The people were no more to have any means of ascertaining what was being done with their creed, nor even, when something had been done, were they to have means of ascertaining what were the processes by which the new dogmas had been established. All that they were now to learn was to be the fait accompli, henceforth to become the standard of faith for all and in all. The order of priests was to be shorn of its last vestige of representation in the Councils of the Church. The bishops, on the other hand, were not to be allowed to know what could be said for or against a proposed dogma, before they were called upon to close it up for ever. This one turn of the screw wrung even from Cecconi a mild but distinct expression of doubt. He feels (p. 205) that "the Fathers generally lost a mighty assistance in the discharge of their high office." He ventures to quote Pallavicino, the Jesuit historian of Trent, whose language shows that the old Jesuits had broad views compared with those now ruling. Pallavicino's words remind us of the cry of poor Monsignor Liverani: "We might be allowed to be Liberals up to the mark of Bellarmine"—

Many of the bishops were learned in the science of theology, but the most eminent, as is the case in all sciences, were the private theologians, since they had not been diverted by public cares from regular study, without which eminent prudence is often acquired, but not eminent erudition.

But Pius IX had no intention of allowing bishops to satisfy their consciences by hearing all that could be said on both sides before they gave a judgment.

It would be hard to find a neater specimen of the terms in which the abolition of a venerable franchise may be couched than in the words of Cecconi. He lets us know that on the 4th of July, 1869, the Nine resolved to "confer on the theologians of bishops the right of being eligible to be called to serve the committees of the Council." It would be only in keeping with a system of quotation regularly practised if this statement of Cecconi should be, hereafter, used to prove that the theologians at the Vatican Council did not suffer any curtailment of their rights, but received an increase of them. But exclusion from the right of pleading before "my lords" was not all the degradation awaiting the unfortunate doctors. Bishop Fessler told them that they were free to give information or advice each to his own bishop, but, adds Friedrich, only to him. We wonder what man was not free to give private advice if asked for it. They were not to be allowed to attend meetings of the bishops; not even to meet among themselves to consult in common upon questions affecting the Council.[216] Friedrich was not the most to be pitied of the theologians. Father Ambrose, a Carmelite, had been brought up from Germany by his general, a Spaniard. At the first interview the general told him that the all-important question was that of Papal infallibility. Father Ambrose declared himself a Fallibilist, and produced a work which he had prepared on the subject. He at once lost his post; and the general wished to send him off to Malta. Cardinal Hohenlohe pleaded for his restoration, but in vain. The general feared that the order would be utterly put to shame if in addition to the scandal of the Cracow nun, and that of Father Hyacinthe's defection, a theologian of the Order brought up to the Council should be known as a Fallibilist. The poor man had even to go to Cardinal Hohenlohe, and to beg of him to give him back a copy of his little work which he had presented to his Eminence. This the Cardinal refused to do, saying that even if the general had ordered it, he had nothing to say to a Cardinal. Ambrose was permitted to return to Würzburg, and before he started a prelate said to him, "I should rejoice if any one recalled me or sent me home. We bishops have been ordered here to the Council without being told what we were to deliberate upon, and now that I know it, I could gladly turn my back upon the Council and Rome."

Another minute touch of Friedrich at this moment shows how he heard a devoted Roman adherent of the Papacy say that an officer had sent him twenty scudi (about four pounds) as an offering to Peter's Pence; but he had returned the money, telling his friend he would do better to spend it on his family. "His conscience had dictated this course," for he knew how Peter's Pence were spent.

The correspondent of the Stimmen must have been under the triumphal influence of the opening, when he informed his German readers that wonderful unanimity reigned, and that what might be called the Opposition was daily shrinking up into nothing, and would soon reward only microscopical research.[217] The Unitá Cattolica of January 1 alleged that the Français, in using the expression, "A fraction of malcontents," might possibly be right, if it meant an almost impalpable fraction; but if it meant anything more, it was false. The alleged discontent, it went on to say, was spoken of as if it related to the Commission of Proposals appointed by the Pope. Some were said to wish that the Council itself should have had the selection of a committee. It was false; no one complained. It could not be disputed that the Pontiff, having the right to convoke, rule, and guide the Council, had also the right to determine what questions should be submitted to it. Pius IX had, indeed, himself confirmed this in the Bull by which he settled the Rules of Procedure. This is not conscious but unconscious irony. It reflects the course of the Papacy, displaying its administrative force and its logical infirmity in one word. A right is first desired, then secretly assumed, next insinuated in indirect forms, and finally embodied in an act assuming it as already ascertained; after which, this very act is taken as proof that it was previously established. When the Nine met, they confessed that it was questionable if the right existed to lay down rules for a General Council of the Catholic Church by a sub-committee of the Cardinals. But they assumed the right as unchallenged, embodied the assumption in an edict, and now turned to that edict as proof of the pre-existing right. A few days later, the correspondent of the Stimmen again said that, while the intelligence furnished to the ordinary journals was absurd, one thing might be relied upon, namely, that what was called an Opposition was daily diminishing.[218]

Another Jesuit, writing after the Council, did not confirm these statements of the inspired organs, but followed the profane journals, whose intelligence was at the time decried—

Behold, says Sambin, two camps face to face! On one side, Rome and her Sovereign Pontiff, surrounded by a vast majority of the bishops, displaying the banner of the Church as set up by her divine Redeemer. On the other side, an uncertain number of men belonging to all ranks of the hierarchy, seduced by illusory appearances or frightened by the danger of attacking modern ideas in front—men who fancy that the Church ought to parley with the notions of the age.[219]

The orthodox view on this point was expressed by the Civiltá in its first number after the Council was opened. "The Press and public meetings are the two mainsprings by which the spirit of the age, or Masonry, or, to give things their proper names, Satan, moves public opinion for his own ends."[220] At that moment Satan was busy not only with the Italian and German Press, but with the Standard, Saturday Review, and other English papers.

Another aspect of the Council was exhibited, not in the secular newspapers, but in the clerical periodicals. Eight days after the opening session, the Stimmen was informed how, on an afternoon as mild as summer, the grounds of the Villa Borghese were enlivened by a review in honour of the Fathers of the Council. The troops were much commended, not omitting the Squadriglieri, whom the Italians profanely charged with having been recruited from the brigands but whom the Jesuits described as excellent Catholics. The Civiltá was really edified by this display. In the military review, it says—and we repeat word for word—the profane spectacle was dominated by the thought of the new crusaders defiling before so many bishops, spectators and a spectacle no longer witnessed at a military review. It was well and truly said that this review looked like a function in St. Peters'.[221]

A few days later, the faithful, whose supply of news never related to either doctrine or discipline, were edified by an account of a performance in a military casino, in honour of the Austrian and Swiss bishops. It is inferred that the Pope's foreign troops must be highly educated, because the beautiful scenery had been entirely painted by the soldiers. The curtain represented St. Michael the Archangel overcoming the first great rebel. The first great rebel, by some wonderful prolepsis, was clad in a red shirt, and wore the features of Garibaldi. No writers so well know as the Jesuits how to make fun of Garibaldi's bit of ritualism, with his red shirt and poncho. A German war-song of the middle ages, addressed to St. Michael, was sung with loud applause, and sung encore. Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg, the Archbishops of Salsburg and Cologne, the Bishop of Mainz, and the Prussian Military Bishop, with a retinue of counts and one prince, hallowed and graced the performance.[222]

In spite of these diversions, and the protests and assertions of perfect unanimity made by the clerical writers, the indications which had for some time been making themselves obscurely felt of a Court party and an Opposition party, had at last emerged into painful consciousness on both sides. The idea of a sovereign above any party was too lofty for the place. One party, as we have seen stated by Sambin, was Rome and her Pontiff, while the other was an opposition, not against the opinions of Infallibilists, or the plans of a Cabinet, but against the Sovereign. Both sides had been very reluctant to acknowledge the reality of such antagonism, even long after its existence began to be tolerably evident. The Curia had nursed the hope, as we shall see, of all but unanimous adhesion to its preconcerted plans. It reckoned on the ascendant of the Pope when in presence, on that of the Sacred College, on the sympathy of numbers, the witcheries of ceremony, the baits of promotion, and, if need should arise, on wholesome fear.

On the other hand, even the prelates who most feared what was about to be done, disliked the idea of being in opposition, not only to the Curia, but to the Pontiff, and that on a personal question. They flattered themselves, moreover, that the good feeling of the Pope would lead him to moderate his prompters, and would not allow him to expose bishops to difficulties with their flocks and their governments, which they clearly foresaw. The men hoped that the general would modify his plans, and would win the campaign by strategy, without forcing them against stone walls.

Even before the opening, a painful feeling, according to Friedrich, had seized upon some of the bishops, when studying the Rules of Procedure. Fessler, he states, had told Dinkel, of Augsburg, that some dogmatic Decrees would be forthcoming on the opening day. Yet not a hint had been given as to what these Decrees might be; and such secrecy on matters so solemn was taken ill.[223] So far as the Curia was preparing a counter revolution, it acted only like any other political body in keeping its plans hidden. But it was a different matter to make secret preparations for effecting changes in a creed that men had taught until they were grey-headed, and then to expect them to face the alternative of either accepting the change or ruining their official prospects.

Scarcely had the opening session passed, when an address was signed by fourteen French prelates and the powerful Croatian Bishop Strossmayer, representing to the Pope in humble yet clear terms the danger of any restraint on the liberty of the Council. They did not rise in their places and move that the Council itself should frame its Rules of Procedure; they did not even move to accept the Rules laid before it in the Bull Multiplices Inter, with certain specified amendments. Nothing short of this would have asserted the freedom of their Assembly. On the contrary, like all men trained under absolutism, they did not know how to maintain their inherited rights against encroachment and at the same time to abide loyal and true; but submitted, grumbling at their wrongs, and groping for some opening in the wall which shut them in. Had they attempted to bring forward such a motion as we have supposed, it would soon have been seen whether the assertions were or were not true which were made by English and American bishops about the Council being as free as the Senates of their own nations. Any one attempting to make such a proposal would have been informed that in the Pro-Synodal Congregation the Rules had been issued as a Papal Bull, and that in the first session the forms therein prescribed had been acted upon; so that those Rules, not being an act of the Council, but of the Pope, were not subject to revision by the Council; and, furthermore, that the Council had already practically adopted them. In fine, the prelates stood to some ideal Council in some such relation as we stand in to the Parliament; we cannot propose a motion, but we can send in a petition. Yet our petition would go to the House itself, not to the Cabinet. It would be named in the hearing of the House, and noted on its records. The petition of the poor bishops could not be presented in the Assembly, no trace of it is in the Acta; its only open way was to the steps of the throne. It was never answered, never mentioned in the official documents, and the faithful who sought information in the accredited organs that rang with charges of misrepresentation against worldly ones, never received a hint of any such transaction.

"Unless the thoroughness of examination and the perfect freedom of discussion are as clear as day," say the fifteen prelates, it is to be feared that the effect will be to lower religion in public esteem and to aggravate the troubles of the Church.[224] The first point on which the petitioners fastened was the right of proposition. Yet, simple as this right was, they had not the courage to claim it. Perhaps even they were deceived, as Quirinus and many other writers evidently were,[225] at the first glance, by the way in which the denial of that right was veiled over in the Rules of Procedure. The mode of putting it is one often employed in the documents of the Roman Court. When some serious restriction is to be announced, you may find at first a sentence or paragraph which conveys an impression of something different, perhaps opposite to what is to be the conclusion. Indeed, practised Liberal Catholics sometimes write as if with them it was a tacit canon of interpretation that when in Jesuit teaching you find a principle affirmed in the opening of a paragraph, that is the principle which is to be rendered nugatory by qualifications ere you reach the close; and when you find a principle disclaimed, that is the principle which, under veils and covers, is to be set up.

In the Rules of Procedure the section on proposals did not say that no Bishop should be permitted to propose anything in the Council, which was the thing meant. To plainly say what was meant, would be to copy the Tower of Babel, the wicked modern Parliament. The section said that though the right of bringing forward proposals belonged to the Pope alone, he wished the bishops freely to exercise it. This sufficed to set many writing good news home. They did not wait to weigh the following words. These showed that the right of proposition, handsomely announced to the Fathers of the Council, was just the right which everybody in the world possessed, that, namely, of forwarding a suggestion to the Pope. Curiously enough, even that common right was granted here only in a circuitous way, for the Pope himself named a Commission to receive propositions from the bishops, to consider them, and to report to him. If, after such report, he should wish any of them to come before the Council, he would send them forward. Most of the bishops, being unused to Parliamentary forms, began only by slow degrees to realize the fact that thus they had no right of proposition whatever. It was a good while before they became aware that they were simply in the position of private people. Anybody in Rome, or in Calcutta, could forward a suggestion to the Pope without going to a Royal Commission.

The address of the fifteen bishops requests that authors of proposals shall be admitted to a hearing before the Commission, and also that the latter shall be required to assign reasons when it reports against any proposal. But the bishops do not even ask leave to put their suggestions upon the books. That would, at least, have given members the right of letting their fellow members know what they wished to see done. The idea of entering a notice of motion would of course have been in that atmosphere not liberty but licence. They do, however, venture to suggest that some members of the Commission might be elected by the Council. They also point out that secrecy cannot be really maintained. The address, as we have said, was not even answered.

Hergenröther, the writer on whose authority Cardinal Manning requires us to rely, devotes some strength to this question. He begins by affirming that in Trent there was no fixed order. His proof for that assertion is that there is no written Code of Procedure, the record showing only the course actually followed from time to time. He also asserts that the bishops in the Vatican Council had perfect liberty of proposition. He moreover informs those who learn from such as he, that in all great assemblies the right of the President includes that of proposition, at least so far as to give him the decision, as to the order in which the proposals are taken.[226] Hergenröther, moreover, affirms that Friedrich wished to deny the right of proposition to the Pope—a blunder arising from not distinguishing between a right and an exclusive right. The Directing Congregation made a distinction as singular as was this failure to distinguish on the part of Hergenröther. It held that the Pope had the direct right of proposition, and the bishops the indirect right. But the fact was that they had no right of proposing to the Council whatever. They had no right beyond that of making a suggestion to the Pope, which, we repeat, anybody in the world could do; the only difference being that the one suggestion went before a Royal Commission, while the other did not.

The Directing Congregation had been first of all inclined to let the Fathers choose a committee of their own, but finally determined that the Pope himself should appoint a commission. This was an arrangement open to objections which even they did not wholly fail to see; but the Court historian finds a perfect answer by saying that if a good proposal should rest unheeded the author of it would have the satisfaction of having done his duty, and he must trust to divine Providence, which would never fail the Church.[227] Clouds of words were raised about this simple matter. The Catholics made solemn asseverations that the bishops had as perfect liberty of proposition as the members of any public body. The Liberal Catholics protested that they had not. They were cried down as slanderers.

Hefele, a learned German, gave confused and even contradictory advice as a consulter; first contending that the bishops should have a right of proposition, and then suggesting the very arrangements finally adopted. Sanguineti, a Roman consulter, plainly stated what was to be aimed at, namely, that the Pope alone should have the right of public proposition, leaving to the bishops what he calls the right of private proposition; as the directing Congregation calls it, of indirect proposition, or, as we call it, of suggestion.[228]

The result, then, was that the bishops could not bring in any substantive motion, could not move for a subject to be taken into consideration, could not put a notice of motion on the books, could not move an amendment on what the President proposed, could not move the previous question, could not move to decline taking the matter into consideration, could not move to postpone it. All that they could do was to speak to what the President proposed, to send suggested amendments before a committee, and finally to vote Yea or Nay upon the question, in the form into which that committee ultimately put it. No minutes of proceedings were printed, or even read day by day. No knowledge was allowed to speakers even of the reports taken of their own speeches; no sight of the reported speeches of others.

Notwithstanding all this, bishop after bishop returned from the Council to denounce in pastorals those who had said that they had not the liberty of proposition. Even our English tongue had to make itself the vehicle of such statements for two mighty nations. Bishop bore witness to bishop, and they were true and all men were liars. Archbishop Manning told how bishops "of the freest country in the world" had said truly, "The liberty of our Congress is not greater than the liberty of the Council."[229] We fear that American bishops might have quoted similar declarations from English ones. It is for members of Congress and of Parliament to judge.

La Liberté du Concile is a tract which, Friedrich says, if not written by Darboy, was inspired by him.[230] Only fifty copies were printed during the Council, for distribution exclusively among the Cardinals, and with the strictest injunctions of secrecy. The whole is given in the Documenta ad Illustrandum.[231] It is introduced by an article from the Moniteur of the 14th February, 1870. One of its earliest sentences compresses the secret history of Cecconi into a few words. "The first unhappy thought, and that from which the Council now suffers, was the wish, so to speak, to make the Council beforehand, and to make it without the bishops." It is right to mention that M. Veuillot says that this writer recounts ill, reasons worse, and draws inferences worst of all.[232]

For two years, complains this writer, the bishops had been refused any programme. They had not been afforded any possibility of studying questions about to be raised, or of preparing themselves to discuss them.[233] It would seem that the writer did not know that the preparations had extended over five years instead of two. He says that the Council had not made its Rules of Procedure; the Pope had imposed them. It had not chosen one of its officers, not even a scrutineer; the Pope had selected them all beforehand. The reason for the restraints imposed on the liberty of the bishops was stated by M. Veuillot as being to take away the liberty of evil, which the writer considers an insult to the bishops. We may remark that this is a principle which, had it been acted upon by the great government above us all, would have precluded every question as to the origin of evil. This tract affirms that the Commission for Proposals was composed exclusively of declared partisans of the Court. That statement is not quite accurate. Rauscher was a mighty instrument of the Curia in its ordinary aggressions on the civil power, but too sensible to approve of its present projects. Cardinal Corsi also, though at last he voted with the majority, was all along reputed as averse to the definition of infallibility. The next complaint is that the Committees for the important subjects of Dogma, Discipline, the Religious Orders, and Oriental affairs, are permanent, chosen once for all, and chosen by a strictly party vote, excluding every Fallibilist. Thus, is it urged, only ninety-six bishops out of nearly eight hundred would ever know anything of those real deliberations which principally determine the results of the Council. These Committees would have to decide upon all alterations to be made in Drafts of Decrees after the first Drafts had been discussed by the bishops generally. They would have the sole responsibility of bringing them forward in the definitive shape in which they must be voted upon, Yea or Nay. Thus, he repeats, seven hundred out of eight hundred are absolutely excluded from a share, at any time whatever, in the most important operations of the Council. The indignation of the author would not have been lessened had he known that this particular point had been carefully weighed by the Nine. They at first resolved to allow the Council to elect, as had been done at Trent, committees for each particular matter as it arose. It was, however, subsequently foreseen that this regulation might open the way to the election of men who were not safe. After a discussion, a man who had displayed ability in treating the matter in hand might be elected on the committee for that reason alone! If, on the other hand, committees were chosen once for all, it would be easy to secure the exclusion of wrong names in that one election, and no opportunity of changing them would ever arise.[234]

The writer of La Liberté du Concile proceeds to say that a number of bishops urgently requested the Pope, in order to ensure a wise selection of these all-controlling committees, to direct that the Fathers should be divided into groups, and should in these discuss pending questions separately, on the plan adopted in the Bureaux of the French and Italian Chambers. Thus the Fathers, who for the most part were perfect strangers to one another, would in a little time learn who were the capable men, and would be in a position to make a proper selection. This appeal, probably the one we have already mentioned, was not even answered.

The lords of wide dioceses, accustomed to rule their clergy with military authority and to face statesmen with considerable pretensions, were now reduced to struggle for very small liberties. They attempted to form themselves into groups, by nation or by language. So far as the French were concerned, this arrangement failed. Each of their two Cardinals, De Bonnechose and Matthieu, received a group in his own house. Cardinal De Bonnechose would not consent that all the French bishops should meet together. Even when they divided, he went for advice to Antonelli, who intimated that they ought not to meet in larger groups than fifteen or twenty. The effect of all this was, that when the time for making arrangements for the election of the committees came, they had no concert among themselves; and the writer states that after that election, the annoyances confronting Cardinal Matthieu were so great, that he felt obliged for a time to leave Rome. Hereupon the bishops who had previously met at his house resolved to go to that of Cardinal De Bonnechose, who had, for once, to receive them; but he again consulted Antonelli, and declared that this first general meeting should also be the last.

The bishops desired to select the best men of their own nation to be nominated as members of the permanent committees. The Curia, however, had provided for all that. The "ticket" of Cardinal De Angelis, as it would be called in America, was the counter move. The German and Hungarian bishops had shown more cohesion than the French. They met together, and made a selection of the principal men from their own number; but that resulted in nothing. The Curia had selected those whom it preferred, setting aside the men who stood high with their fellow-countrymen, and putting forward those who with them would have had no chance. An official list was prepared bearing the name of Cardinal De Angelis. Of course the bishops in partibus, the missionary bishops, and all the mere dependents of the Court, voted for the official list; and thus the whole of the four permanent committees were composed, as the secret preparatory commission had been, exclusively of the nominees of the Curia. The Jesuit Press gloried over this result. M. Veuillot said that the Committee on Faith was an echo of the great commission appointed by the Pope. Sambin recorded the triumph, with satisfaction, for permanent history. The result showed that the Court could count on about 550 votes.[235] De Angelis was appointed to the vacant post of Chief President, in room of Reisach. Cardinal Schwarzenberg was not on any committee, Hohenlohe was out of the question. Even the Archbishop of Cologne was only on a petty committee for granting leave of absence. But Bishop Senestrey, of Regensburg, the author of the throne-upsetting speech, was on the all-important committee for dogma.

This manœuvre excited strong indignation amongst all shades of the marked men. They found themselves shut off from such a part in deliberations as would have been granted by any worldly cabinet to an honourable Opposition. Then, the mode of securing the result by the expedients of a political election caused bitter recollections of frequent admonitions, given both verbally and in the Press, not to reason about the Council as an ordinary human assembly, but to evince a worthy confidence in the all-guiding power of the Holy Ghost. The Rheinischer Merkur remarked that the Romans had a saying, that at the beginning of a conclave the devil reigns, then the world carries all before it, and only at the last does the Holy Ghost turn both out and regulate things according to His own will. This genuine specimen of Roman mockery is applied to the Council by the Merkur saying that as yet the third stage had certainly not set in.[236] The selection, said the Merkur, of committees was one-sided and narrow-minded. The Archbishop of Paris and the Bishop of Orleans saw themselves thrown aside, and nominal bishops put in the places they ought to have occupied. The German bishops, who had strongly confided in the moderation of the Curia, found that no amount of trimming would avail; nothing short of a sound profession on the question of infallibility. Vitelleschi says that the clearest, most sincere and disinterested opposition was that of the German bishops. They knew what they meant, and also knew that they expressed the collective sense of their people; besides, they always acted with moderation. He ascribes this moderation to two causes, namely, the fact that they consciously did express the views of their people, and that they were, more or less, influenced by Protestant modes of thinking. We confess that we see little proof that any German bishops but the Curialistic ones were clear. We should rather have said that they were at sea. As to the moderation, however, Vitelleschi adds that no such moderating influence of Protestant opinion appeared in the case of the English prelates. "Several bishops, with Manning at their head, more Catholic than the Pope, are noted for their Ultramontanism" (p. 45). He adds, that even the Irish bishops were less uniformly Infallibilists than the English. Of the Belgians, he says that some naturally took the more liberal direction. De Mérode, well known in Rome as a Court prelate, placeman, and speculator, like Dupanloup, had been a champion of the temporal power, but now proved to be an anti-infallibilist. Et tu, Brute, fili mi! exclaims the Roman. As to the Spaniards, Vitelleschi says that they had been trained in the school of Torquemada; and if they were content with being only Ultramontanes, that was something gained. These are the divines of whom Quirinus says that if ordered by the Pope to vote that there were four persons in the Trinity, they would do it. Vitelleschi remarks that the prelates of the United States were simpler than their brethren, and less practised in ecclesiastical politics. Their want of any political importance at home, he believes, had predisposed them to warmer sympathy with Curialistic views than might have been expected from them. Nevertheless, it proved in time that, under the forms of ecclesiastical discipline, the spirit of citizens of a free country did now and then make its appearance among them. Another of his remarks is, that, with the exception of Portugal, most of the bishops from small countries were in the interest of the Curia. Speaking of Mermillod, from Geneva, Quirinus says that he "rivals Manning in his fanatical zeal for the new dogma." Of course the Italian bishops, with very few exceptions, were Infallibilists, and those from South America were all upon the same side. The bulk of the Opposition bishops were German, Hungarian, and French, reinforced by some of the older ones from Ireland, a few of the English, a good many of the North American, and only about twenty of the entire body of the Italian.

The various groups had now everything to stimulate them to put their proposals into shape. Those of the Curia were in shape already. They naturally took the old direction of conforming the creed to innovations in practice. At Trent this was done with many innovations, which must either fall into discredit or be lifted above dispute. In this way was the demand for a reform of the Church to raise her to the level of the creed, met by a determination to bring down the creed to the level of the Church. The two movements were confronted. Reformation, on the one side, renovating the condition of the Church; and Conformity, on the other side, adulterating the creed. Both together resulted in the wide separation which has been witnessed ever since. The necessity now pressing sprang from different causes. No party had arisen to challenge the primacy of the Pope, even in the form of all but unlimited monarchy, into which, under cover of the gentle word "primacy," it had been monstrously developed. On the contrary, indeed, of late years the faithful had shown increasing submissiveness, proportioned to the dangers surrounding the Pope. But the Papacy itself was moving for constitutional powers which demanded a new dogmatic basis.

In comparison with the magnificence of the scheme of one fold and one shepherd, the notions of the German bishops, as disclosed by Friedrich, are an illustration of how administrators putter when immense issues press for solution. While the architects were designing a new coliseum, the joiners and stone-cutters were great upon cusps and corbels. In answer to the seventeen questions issued in Rome at the centenary of St. Peter, the German bishops had deliberated at Fulda for five days. Marriage, as a mine yielding richly to the local authorities in fees, and to the Curia in dispensation taxes, and also as a means of power over females, and over the education of children, was naturally one of the main points. Another point included the offences for which parish priests should be liable to deposition. On this the bishops advised the addition of two offences to the list—notorious fornication and open concubinage.

Hints were thrown out about abolishing all benefices, as they were said to be feudal. The clergy could not be fully mobilized but by the abolition of permanent appointments. The whole effect of the questions was to bring out the existence in Germany of too great toleration of intercourse with Protestants; intercourse to a degree not consistent with the militant footing on which things were to be put. This applied to christenings, weddings, burials, and other events of life, where the milk of human kindness sometimes will overflow, and men will forget that they belong to a society which scarcely regards those who are not of it as morally entitled to existence. The bishops naturally desired that the number of causae majores, or reserved cases, should be curtailed, as that would increase their own freedom and power. They also expressed a wish that censures should not be enforced against Catholic judges who found themselves obliged to pronounce sentences adverse to the canon law. This they advised in order to avoid the exclusion of Catholics from the judicial bench. They moreover suggested that unreasonably contracting debts and habitual drunkenness should be added to the list of causes warranting the removal of a priest. They did touch a few minute points of a properly religious kind, connected with the forgiveness of sins, ordination, and other questions.

Friedrich remarks that these ideas tended to the omnipotence of the bishops by sacrificing the parish priests. This object, however, was a natural complement of the sacrifice of the bishops to the Curia. If the bishop is himself an absolute dependent on the Court, all his subordinates must be left to his mercy. The Curia knew how to lure on the bishops to the forfeiting of their own franchises, by using their love of power against the franchises of the priests.

Friedrich gravely says that the movableness of the parish priests would not cure the moral evils complained of. It is not by outward correction that a man becomes morally better, but by the ennobling of the inner man, which, alas! is so little aimed at among the clergy. When a French bishop can say in the Senate, "My clergy are a regiment; they are bound to march, and they do march," he only shows how the Christian spirit has evaporated from among the hierarchy. A few weeks before Friedrich left home he had conversed with Döllinger upon the seventeen questions, and he says that they were the only points respecting the Council on which they did converse together. What the aged provost said, observes Friedrich, will always remain in my memory. "On one occasion, Windischmann remarked in my presence and that of others, 'If I was compelled to answer according to the contents of the ordinary's book, whether celibacy should be abolished or not, I should have to speak unconditionally for its abolition.'"

We have seen, in a previous chapter, that some of the lower clergy had indicated plans of considerable range, but they pointed in a direction in which Rome was incapable of going. Great attention was attracted by a project, appearing with the name of a learned layman in Switzerland, Dr. Segesser.[237] His charter had no less than twelve points, which are well worth a moment's notice.

1. He held that the Church, in having, for the first time in her history, declined to invite the co-operation of governments with the Council, must now declare for the separation of Church and State.

2. The Council must be a Reform Council in the fullest sense of the word.

3. It must certify the freedom of its members to the world.

4. It must be declared that all who believe in the redeeming work of Christ belong to the Christian communion.

5. No dogma must be added unless urgently called for, not only by theologians, but by the faithful.

6. The primacy being divine, but the Papacy being only a joint product of Roman jurisprudence and theology, the dogma of the pontifical infallibility of the Pope, which would lead back to theocratic ideas, would set the Church and State on a war of mutual annihilation. Therefore it is the absolute duty of the Church to declare herself completely released from the theocratic ideas of the great Popes of the middle ages.

7. The question of infallibility must not be passed over in silence, but must be solemnly declared to be in opposition to the right idea of the constitution of the Church.

8. In mixed questions, such as those of the Church and State, laymen should have some voice.

9. The temporal power must be treated as a local Roman institution, and not confounded with the affairs of the universal Church.

10. Freedom of teaching, of organization, and of worship, and equality with all other communions, must be proclaimed; and the Church would do well if she gave up all claim to the immunity of her property, and placed it entirely under the control of the common law.

11. The Index to be given up.

12. We give this in full: "The Christian State was a great ideal, but a yet greater is a State of Christians. To attain to the last the Church must not domineer, but must possess freedom, and give it."

The language of this Liberal Catholic, brought up among German Protestants on the one hand and Swiss ones on the other, would sound altogether alien to the ears of the Cardinals, and would only deepen their painful impression of the evil influences of Protestant teaching upon the children of the Church. Enough occurred at the Council to show that, even among the bishops, there were one or two who would have dared to propose some of the points in Dr. Segesser's scheme, had the members of the Council been permitted to make proposals.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER III

Further Party Manœuvres—Election of Permanent Committees—Bull of Excommunications—Various Opinions of it—Position of Antonelli—No serious Discussion desired—Perplexities of the Bishops—Reisach's Code suppressed—It may reappear—Attitude of Governments.

Authors differ as to the actors in an incident which marked the second General Congregation, on December 14. Quirinus and Fromman say that Darboy and Strossmayer (Friedrich says that Dupanloup and Strossmayer) attempted to speak on the Rules of Procedure, but were stopped by Cardinal De Luca, on the ground that what the Holy Father had decreed could not be discussed. The official writers at the time said not a word of the incident, nor is it named in the Acta Sanctae Sedis, nor in Frond.

Thus the bishops had now ascertained their position, but too late. Quirinus naturally says that had the assembly been, in some measure, prepared for the Rules, there would have been opposition; but good care had been taken that the assembly should not be prepared, and should not have any chance of offering opposition. The first gleam of hope, adds this author, excited by the announcement that the bishops would be allowed to propose measures, had speedily vanished. Lord Acton says (p. 63): "The bishops felt themselves in an entangled position. Some began to speak of going home. Some complained that the Rules foreclosed questions involving divine rights, and said that they felt bound to put even the existence of the Council to stake."

The election of the Permanent Committee on Dogma was the great work of the day. Archbishop Kenrick's Latin note[238] states that lithographed lists were distributed some days before the election, with the inscription, To the honour of Mary, conceived Immaculate; and that these lists were recommended by the name of Cardinal De Angelis. Four hundred of the votes sent in gave the list entire. It was by these tactics that every Fallibilist, without exception, was excluded from the committees. But Canon Pelletier, who wrote what in Frond passes for the history of the Council and is a good history of the ceremonies and the dresses, declares that the election proved the perfect freedom of the Fathers, for though all the names on the official list were chosen, they were not brought in according to the order in which they stood on that list. The French prelates of the minority were especially incensed, both against their leaders and against those whose superior tactics had frustrated their unskilful attempts to unite. Every Frenchman felt that all who represented the traditions and the spirit of the Roman Catholic Church in France were now, in Rome, placed under a species of ostracism. The Fathers left this exciting sitting with another Bull in their hands. Again Letters Apostolic to the present! The Acta Sanctae Sedis affirm that the work of preparing this Bull could not be got through in time to send it to the Fathers before the Council. Its title was gentle. It was a Bull to Limit the Censures of the Church. Quirinus mentions a mission undertaken by Cardinal Pitra, a Frenchman, with the intention of bringing the prelates of his own country into accord with the Curia. This he followed up by a similar attempt with the German bishops. Pitra began by describing Dupanloup to the latter as "a mischievous teacher of error," but he was stopped, and told that the Germans agreed with Dupanloup.

A favourite topic of conversation now was the chance of disorganizing the Opposition. The first checks appeared to have had the effect of consolidating it, but the resources of the Court were generally assumed to be efficacious. Over and over again was it asserted that the hope of a robe of some distinguishing hue, or of a title on the list of domestic prelates of the Pope, would win over almost any bishop, an assertion which proved not to be correct.[239] Quirinus, in common with German writers generally, speaks of the honour of being on that list as one that ought to be coveted rather by menials than by dignitaries; and Italians may often be heard saying much the same thing. Again, faculties enabling a bishop to give absolution, or dispensations, in certain reserved cases, yield to him both power and fees. "Nine bishops out of ten want favours"—an assertion of Quirinus—seems bold, but it was written in Rome.