Front matter (continued 9)

The Bull professing to limit the censures of the Church, was found to be another case of a winning title to a dreadful document. The censures with which it dealt were only a portion out of Rome's store, those, namely, under which one falls by the very act of committing the offence, without any need of trial or sentence. They are called offences Latae Sententiae, or judged already. He that confesses to one such act is, ipso facto, excommunicate, or, in the less heinous cases "suspended." The Bull, as we have said, professed to limit the number of these cases; many of which represent multitudes in all Roman Catholic countries, who must either shun the confessional, knowing that in that tribunal they are judged already, or must go to it to find themselves pronounced outside of the kingdom of grace, and incapable of restoration except by special powers granted from Rome, which always imply special fees.

It was freely said, This is a re-issue of the Bull In Coena Domini, the terrible syllabus of excommunications, at one time annually published; a custom which had ceased since the days of Clement XIV. This cessation was often cited as indicating greater mildness in the spirit of the Roman Court. In the new Bull Apostolicae Sedis these excommunications reappeared. They were under different heads. Three classes were reserved to bishops, so that no ordinary priest could release from them. Twenty-nine classes were reserved to the Pontiff, so that no bishop could release from them. Four classes were not reserved to any one.[240] Some bishops declared that they found excommunications here of which they had never been aware up to that moment. Vitelleschi said that if some found in old books were omitted, the Bull re-enacted all of the penal code of the Church that was in force. According as men looked at this document, from a fiscal, hierarchical, or monarchical point of view, their appreciation of it varied. Beyond excommunicating all heretics and heretical books, with the readers, abettors, and so forth, it dealt with few matters which any true theologian would not gladly banish from his bounds, as trespassers.

The hierarchical aspect of the Bull was striking. More than one of its sections pronounced excommunication upon the sin of appealing from any act of the Pope to a future General Council. This was the mortal blow to the doctrine that a Council could judge, and even depose, the Pope, as Councils had done. Being issued in the face of a General Council actually sitting, no alternative remained but that of conflict between the Council and the Pope, or else final abandonment of this once vigorous doctrine. The defiant crowings of the Gallican cock were for ever hushed by this one grip in the claws of the Vatican eagle. This Bull, as compared with the action of the Council of Constance, which deposed two Popes and itself elected one, served to measure the decline of the episcopal and the growth of the pontifical power in the Church. Many of the bishops were old enough to have maintained the doctrine that the Council was above the Pope, against Protestants, who innocently accused all Roman Catholics of being Papists. If any one of them thought of standing by the old flag, what was he to do? To put a notice of motion on the books? That was not permitted. To send a suggestion to the Twenty-six? It might as well go into his own wastepaper basket as into theirs. To speak upon the point? That would be out of order, for bishops were to speak only on matters proposed, and nothing was to be proposed but what the Pope proposed. Moreover, even if in speeches irrelevant matter should be allowed, such matter as that now contemplated would be at once pronounced rebellion. It would be an attempt to discuss what the Holy Father had already decreed. Thus the question of the relative judicial powers of the single Bishop of Rome, and of all the other bishops of the world collectively, was settled by an arbitrary sentence, uttered in the face of all the bishops assembled in conclave; and their assembly, though called a General Council, had no liberty to canvass the decision!

It was a hard dilemma for a man to be placed in who had a sense either of human rights or of a divine office to defend. But the hand of power was over the bishops. No man who opposed even embryo Decrees could ever reasonably hope for a hat; and he who should venture to attack a Bull actually issued must expect to see his mitre reduced to an empty dignity by the withdrawal of his faculties. So the bishops saw a Bull which "thrust the souls entrusted to them by thousands out of the Church"; and what could they do? "The more excommunications, the more perplexed and tormented consciences," cries Quirinus—reminding us of what might often be heard in the old times from thoughtful men in Rome. The whole effort of the priests, they would say, is to keep the conscience in agony, or at least in unrest; for this drives people to the confessor, and hence no end of gains.

A diplomatist regarded the political aspects of the Bull as serious.[241] Excommunicating men for an appeal to a General Council was, as he took it, both the forerunner and the application of the dogma of infallibility. Excommunicating all who should punish bishops, or higher officers of the Church, without making an exception for any breach whatever of law, and, moreover, excommunicating any who, directly or indirectly, should obstruct the execution of Papal mandates, were not only blows but stabs at all civil authority. The diplomatist argued that the way in which the Pope abolished privileges granted by his predecessors was a poor pledge of the value of any engagements into which the Papacy might enter. The diplomatist ought to have known that the immunity of the clergy from lay jurisdiction was an essential part of the restoration to be accomplished. He ought also to have known that "the free communication" of the Pope with the faithful, or his right to promulge in all countries his decrees as their highest law, was equally essential. The excommunication, not only of heretics, but of all who should harbour or defend them, ay, or should even read their books, led Vitelleschi to raise a question for young theologians, whether the Pope has not excommunicated himself and his own government, seeing he had done more than harbour heretics in an inn, by allowing them a church outside the Porta del Popolo.

The Bull, said some, is only one of a series of measures to be framed, assuming the infallibility of preceding Popes. The dispute as to Bulls which taught any dogma in theology or morals must for ever end. The very points which Liberal Catholics had alleged to be without binding force must be beyond appeal bound on earth, and of course ratified in heaven. A little circumstance not without significance was the fact that, in publishing this document, the Civiltá did not, as it usually does with official documents, furnish a translation of the Latin; and the Stimmen, for Germany, followed the example.

In Germany or other Protestant countries an unfavourable impression might be taken of the means to be resorted to for restoring Papal ascendancy when, in the terrible category of offences judged already, without power to remit the sentence being reserved to any one, even to the Vicar of God, were found the following deeds, which many Christians would do with as cool a sense of duty as that with which under slavelaws they would have befriended a fugitive slave: "Injuring or intimidating Inquisitors, informers, witnesses, or other ministers of the Holy Office; tearing up or burning the papers of its sacred tribunal; or giving to any of the aforesaid aid, counsel, or favour." If the day ever comes for attempting to put this law in force on the now happy soil of England, blessed among her sons or daughters will that one be who first has grace to endure the torments of the Holy Office rather than not break the wicked law!

The fiscal bearing of the Bull would be the one first to strike and most to occupy the Romans. Among men of the different orders, it would occasion many a chat over questions of sin, sacraments, crime, communion, dispensation, remission, and redemption from purgatory, and of the fees flowing from each respectively. Quirinus represents the Jesuits as beholding both the present and the future in rosy hues. The bishops would not be able to give absolution in the reserved cases, but the Jesuits, in very many of them, would have plenary power. Hence the bishops and the parochial clergy would suffer both in fees and influence, while the confessionals of their powerful rivals would be thronged. "So, each of those multiplied excommunications is worth its weight in gold to the Order, and helps to build colleges and professed houses."[242] Against the complaints which greeted the Bull, the Civiltá alleged that it contained nothing new, and above all that it had been posted up in the customary places in Rome, and was therefore already the law of the Church universal. It was, on the other hand, boldly alleged that there were many new cases of suspension, interdict, or excommunication. Cardinal Antonelli, however, said that there were three hundred excommunications which were not included in the Bull. Lord Acton (p. 70) quotes a passage from the organ of the Archbishop of Cologne, which shows that a good many more will have to be added before all actions are placed under perfect control. The Bull, it is said, does not prohibit "the works of Jews, since Jews are not heretics; nor does it prohibit heretical pamphlets and journals, for these are not books; nor is the hearing of heretical books when read aloud forbidden, since hearing is not reading."

Some doubt hangs round the feeling of Cardinal Antonelli as to the Council. It was often asserted that he had been opposed to it from the first, and was still decidedly so. This seems very probable. A worldly-wise man, capable of amassing a colossal fortune amid the ruins of a petty State, was hardly likely to believe that the à priori fabric of Tarquini and the other Jesuits, and the hot-headed schemes of the Pope, were solid enough to bear what was to be built upon them, or would lead to anything but defeat of the Papacy, and misery to the nations. But in contradiction to this view, Quirinus says that Antonelli was too good a statesman and financier not to see the gain that would flow from the new dogma in power and revenue. The new dogma would doubtless enormously increase the power of the Curia within the Church and over all her organizations. It would thus increase the facility of bringing pressure to bear on a government by threats of disaffection and agitation; but it would at the same time arouse all statesmen, and eventually all intelligent men, except real disciples, against this sacerdotal empire. The most likely explanation of any zeal Antonelli may have shown for the new order of things would perhaps be that while retaining his own view of the risks about to be run, he knew that what was to be was to be, and determined to make the best of it.

Papers immediately preceding the Bull in the pages of the Civiltá[243] seemed to indicate steadiness in the purpose either to bend the States or to break them. One article rang the changes on the old theme of the royal placet or exequatur, "the crime whereby ecclesiastical judgments are submitted to lay examination." "The Church," it adds, "is not a foreign power, and hence concludes that the State has no right of precaution jus cavendi, in respect of her." The internal power on which the Curia counts, in any country, being that of threatening political agitation, the denial to the State of all right of precaution is essential to the full application of the principle of the Pope's "free communication" with all his subjects. A physical impediment to the promulging of a Bull was, in old times, not more a precaution than is, in our day, the principle that the law of the land is supreme. Just as the physical impediment was unlawful, so is the legislative one; both stay the free course of "the divine word." The old dukes, kings, and emperors, knowing that in the popular conscience the law of the Pope ranked above all civil law, put a check upon the promulgation of his Bulls. We say, Promulge what you please, but the law of the land is the only law in the land. "Here is the ground on which the future battle is to be fought out."

Just between this article and the catalogue of excommunications came a discussion on unfulfilled prophecy. The Jesuit Father, Soprano, had, by comments on the prophecies of Balaam, Daniel, and the Apocalypse, clearly proved (according to his reviewer) that the city of Rome was destined of God to be in perpetuity the centre of the Catholic Church. The war against the kingdom of Christ was to fail, because "she" could not lose her empire. But certain points as to the issue of the war now raging between the innovators and the kingdom of Christ, were open to inquiry—"What dynasties will survive, what forms of government will prevail, what end will such and such kingdoms come to? Finally, we may ask whether the Holy City, the mount of God, the capital of the Catholic world, Rome, may for a time fall under the power of sinners and parricides, to be outraged by fire and sword, and defaced with crimes." But, on the other hand, as to Rome being the stable domicile of catholicity, we might doubt of that only if the mount which cannot be moved could be levelled with the ground.

This expositor is true to the old interpretation that the Babylon of the Apocalypse is Rome, but that was the Pagan Rome, which "fell with the victory of Constantine." It will be observed that he takes the possibility of a temporary fall of the sacred Rome into the hand of the enemy as but an episode in a war that is to continue through a long series of years.

Since 1870, such forecasts as the above, when uttered, have not the same triumphant tone. Nevertheless, they are now as clearly expressed as ever. But at the time of which we speak, if the bishops only read what was written for their learning they could not doubt as to the kind of service which was expected of them in the future. Friedrich intimates that they did not read it, when he relates that, in trying to enlighten one of them, he told him that the only way to understand the Council was to study it with the Civiltá Cattolica in one's hand. But some of them showed a solicitude that could not be explained on any ground short of a perception of the dangers on which the Pope was running the hierarchy. They evidently did not take the view either of those who thought that the Pope, erected into a vice-God, was about to become the real as well as the titular governor of the world, or the view of those who looked on such dreams as matter to laugh at. The calculations which produced the Crusades and the Thirty Years' War, were dreams; but could the Church afford the indemnity which mankind would exact for the miseries of such another struggle?

December 16 marked the second failure in the organization of the Council. The first was the irremediable one of the absence of Cardinal Reisach, and now, before serious discussion had begun, the third General Congregation had to be postponed from the 16th to the 20th,[244] because nobody could be heard in the hall. So six days passed without a sitting. Debates were actually to take place—a thing which had neither been desired nor expected. The hall was a good place for spectacle, but a bad place for a parliament. In vain do bishops frown and editors sneer at the writers who said that the Curia had not expected much discussion. Cecconi comes to the support of the "liars," as in official indignation they were called who told just what there was to tell (p. 180)—

It was a deeply-rooted belief of the Directing Congregation that but rarely would anything have to be referred to the committees of the Council, because the Directing Congregation so well knew how profound had been the attention given by the Preparatory Commissions, that it seemed extremely difficult to believe that the Drafts so prepared should not be received with general favour by the Fathers.

This, in fact, is the excuse put forward by the Nine for not having given the bishops a word to say to the Drafts of Decrees before they were confronted with them, as being already in a form to be voted upon. The practice at Trent had been to state the question as a question. Then it was first discussed by the doctors in the presence of the bishops, who after that appointed a small committee of their own number to put resolutions into shape. The Council proceeded to discuss the Drafts so prepared, amending and again amending them, until they were in a form on which (if the subject was doctrine) almost every one could agree.

It was now, however, coolly assumed that so complete had been the work of the secret commissions that the bishops would not raise any difficulties.

Great variety of opinion, say the Nine, would probably be rare, seeing that the matters to be treated would be already prepared, with great accuracy, by the special Commission, formed by his Holiness, in conjunction with the Directing Congregation (Cecconi, p. 180).

Cecconi repeats that the great confidence felt in the excellence of the work of the theologians had generated in the majority of the members of the Directing Congregation this conviction. He is candid enough to give the reason for bringing the Drafts ready made into full assembly, which was to prevent them from being exposed to the influences which a restricted number of prelates might exert. That amounts to saying that the able men whom a free assembly would have chosen to consider and digest its forms of resolution, were not to be allowed any chance of unitedly studying the forms prepared in secret for them. The Court would bring its own plans, with all their details and complex notes, before the full assembly, which could never thoroughly sift them, and in which the majority was assured.

While in almost everything else the rejection of parliamentary forms was commended, as becoming an assembly which had to contend against both the principles and results of parliamentary government, the practice of our own Houses in bringing in Bills ready drawn was pleaded in favour of the course taken in preparing extended drafts of dogmatic decrees. But our Parliament has never yet been called together to vote that laws are as good if issued by the Crown, without the advice of Lords and Commons, as with it. Nor has it ever been asked to pass a measure which neither it nor any succeeding Parliament could recall. Our Parliament is never asked to discuss a Bill without first having the right to say whether it shall or shall not be brought in. It never finds a Bill before it which, if it pleases, it may not refer to a special committee. Any member can move the rejection or the postponement of the whole, can move the omission or amendment of any part, and can take the sense of the House. None of these things could be done at the Vatican Council. The bishops could make Latin speeches in a row, first on the Draft as a whole, and then, in a second row, on the parts. But only twenty-four of their number could ever put a hand to the amending of the proposed statute. With those twenty-four were associated irresponsible persons, non-members. As that mixed body finally shaped the propositions, must the Fathers vote upon them, with a Yea or Nay that sealed the creed of their churches for ever.

It was not wonderful that the Curia should believe in the perfection of the Roman theology, since they took their own government for perfect, and the capital for a model city of the saints. The German estimate of the Court theology is indicated by Quirinus when he says that "though the Pope had four hundred theologians, theology is now rare, very rare, in Rome." He goes on to assert that if one should say that ability to read the Greek Testament and the Greek Fathers in the original was a necessary qualification of a theologian, "he would be ridiculed." As to the divinity even of the bishops, the evidence of Quirinus is little more flattering than that of Friedrich; but the discussions yet to come will show that men of real power were not wanting.

The first Scheme or Draft of Decrees on dogma now appeared. It was nothing less than a book of one hundred and forty quarto pages, containing eighteen chapters and fifty-four paragraphs. Frond makes it folio and of 131 pages.

The Rheinischer Merkur quotes a Catholic journal which in admiration of this masterpiece says that when adopted by the Council it would form a text-book. Yet this mass of divinity, any phrase, almost any word of which might affect the vital truths of religion, was put before the bishops with only a few days to study it, and they were expected to vote it as an irreformable creed, to be ready for promulgation, as bound on earth and bound in heaven, on January 6, the day decreed in the first session! Friedrich, looking at this bulky pamphlet, cries, All through we have the language of the schools; any one familiar with the Jesuit writings sees at once by whom it has been prepared.

Graf W., a Roman prelate, paid Friedrich a visit arrayed in all his vestments and decorations. Surprised at such a display by a stranger, Friedrich asked himself, Does he want to make an impression upon me, or to excite a longing for similar clothes? The conversation turned upon infallibility, and the Count Monsignore said that it would be carried through; for when the Curia had committed itself to anything, it was not to be balked. Friedrich, saying that for his part he had nothing to do but to speak according to his conscience, and that as a priest he knew well what must be his course when once the point was decided, went on to state that, not having his eye on a canonry or a bishopric, and being happy in his independent position as a professor in the university, he felt free. This surprised the Curialist, but Friedrich in turn was still more surprised when the man in soft raiment and living in kings' houses said that it was otherwise with him. He belonged to the Roman prelacy, and if he meant to continue in it, he must do what he was bid.

The German doctor was struck by hearing people assure him that life was tolerably safe in Rome if you were sure of your cook, your doctor, and your chemist (p. 30).

The German bishops had not, like the French, asked permission to meet among themselves, but their place of meeting had been cared for. Monsignor Nardi, a slashing writer, and a conspicuous member of the Curia, spared no pains to secure them for his own house. Cardinal Hohenlohe offered his for the purpose, but he scarcely received a civil answer. Even German bishops said as much as that they should compromise themselves by being identified with him. They began to feel their position very delicate. As they were assembled on December 22, with Cardinal Schwarzenberg in the chair, they were joined for the first time by three favourites of the Curia—Senestrey, Martin, and Leonrod. But when Senestrey found that they were discussing the propriety of petitioning the Pope for a relaxation of the Rules, he remembered that business required his presence elsewhere. We may be ready to smile at men, holding professedly the position of members of a Council, who durst not rise in their places and insist on having liberty to propose what their consciences dictated; and who, when refused that liberty, instead of declining to take part in the mock Council, went into a caucus, and drew up a petition to the autocrat who had snatched away their rights.

But their position was very difficult. If they attempted in their places to speak on the matter, the fatal sentence fell upon them that what the Holy Father had decreed could not be discussed. What then could they do but decline to take part in the Council? This would be coming into direct collision with the Pope. The moral education of their lives had aimed at fixing in their own minds, and they, in their action upon others, had aimed at fixing in their minds, one conviction—that the crime exceeding and comprehending all others was to break with the Pope. They were so placed as to have no alternative but either "disobedience" or the surrender of their individual and collective rights. They seem, indeed, to have thought that it was rather a spirited proceeding to send in a petition.

Archbishop Haynald of Hungary proposed that they should request the Pope to divide the Fathers into eight national groups. This was suggested with some idea of counter-balancing the fictitious majority made up by titular bishops and vicars apostolic. Had one nation been allowed to balance another, the effect no doubt would have been considerable; but how these venerable men could imagine that this scheme had any chance with the Pope, we cannot tell. The bishops in partibus, and the missionary bishops, being mostly Italians, would have been well nigh lost in such an arrangement. The Curia well knew that it had been tried at Constance, and was not to be caught.

What Friedrich heard of the opinions of the prelates as to the Draft Decrees, was unfavourable. Cardinal Rauscher was reported to have said that he would allow the paper to be read in his seminaries as the work of a student, but that to propose it to a German Council was too bad (p. 35). Many of the bishops said that its condemnations were untimely, and that it was unworthy of the dignity of a General Council. It was said to be the work of the Jesuit Fathers Schrader and Franzelin; but instead of the latter, Kleutgen was often named. The Dominicans spoke slightingly of it. The Bishop of Ascoli, a Carmelite, said he had only patience to get through half of it, and then he threw it away. Strossmayer said to Friedrich, Why must the Council at this time of day pronounce condemnations as to squabbles heard of only in the schools, and worn out even there? (p. 37). Kagerer told Friedrich that the bishops had agreed not to tell their theologians what passed at their private meetings; on which Friedrich remarks that the bishops were right, for the chaplains and secretaries by whom they were served could not be properly described as theologians. He then gave a sigh for Hefele. Meanwhile, he said, it was hard to listen to the talk of men, like Kagerer, who had come up without preparation, who were not furnished with books, and who drove a trade in theology by guesswork.

Monsignor Nardi's hospitality to the German bishops had not a smooth course. After having met at his house for the greater part of December, when they alighted one night in the Piazza Campitelli, they found the servant of Cardinal Schwarzenberg posted there to send them back again. The Cardinal had received from Nardi a request to be relieved of their further presence, giving so short notice that there was no means of meeting the case but that of setting the servant to turn the bishops away from the door. Thenceforth they found a German host, Cardinal Rauscher.[245]

The General Congregation of December 20, after learning the names chosen for the Permanent Committee on Faith, had been occupied with the election of the Permanent Committee on Discipline; but as the Acta contain no records of any transactions of the Congregations, beyond the bare lists of the committees elected by them, the strictly official means of ascertaining what passed are all but nil. The Acta Sanctae Sedis may be fairly considered as official in a looser sense; and it is strange how the brief but clear occasional notes of particulars which they contain, almost invariably confirm the profane writers in statements denied, or apparently denied, at the time by faithful ones. Deputations, including among others Strossmayer, went hither and thither in search of a hall to meet in. Quirinus thought that the one in the Vatican by the Sistine Chapel would not be of good omen, on account of the picture of St. Bartholomew's massacre. Had any real wish existed to find a place in which seven hundred gentlemen might sit and speak, it could easily have been done; but the wholesome exhalations from the tomb of St. Peter would not have been so potent anywhere else, even in Rome, as in the Vatican. One-third of the space in the hall was now curtained off. The debates were to open on December 28, that is, after twenty days had been lost.

News of the death of Cardinal Reisach destroyed the hope that his influence might prevent the Germans from standing with the Opposition. The preparations for a code regulating civil and ecclesiastical relations, on which he had spent years, were not to see the light. It had already been resolved not to present to the Council the Drafts prepared by his Commission on Ecclesiastico-Political Affairs. Cecconi (p. 266) thinks that probably the absence of the Cardinal "contributed to the shipwreck" of his proposals. The subject was "thorny"; and again, it was not decorous to make inoperative laws, or expedient to make combative ones. It would seem that the supreme cause of the shipwreck was the practical consideration that nowadays civil governments, "which form an essential element in such matters," oppose ecclesiastical laws, instead of taking charge of their execution. The official historian, however, is of opinion that the failure of this first attempt to indite a code of ecclesiastico-political law is not final. A time, he thinks, may come when it can be renewed, with hope of success—a declaration full of instruction as to the future. The time for renewing the attempt to prepare such a code will, according to the Archbishop of Florence,

arrive when this rapid and ceaseless movement, political and social, going on under our eyes, and making us daily spectators of great and often of unlooked-for events, shall have reached its ultimate period, to which will certainly succeed (unless the last days succeed) an entirely new era in the history of the human species. When that day comes, I know not what portion of the old institutions will remain standing; but sure I am that one of them will have survived, though peradventure externally bruised and lacerated. She alone will be mistress of the field that day, and the princes (if indeed the sound of that name will still be heard), but certainly the nations, having then, after long and cruel experience, made up their minds that out of her there is no well-being, either in this life or beyond the tomb, will demand from her the laws of tranquil repose, together with the earnest of eternal happiness (p. 301).

This language is the more significant as having been written since the war in 1870, and even since the outbreak in Germany of imperial resistance to the movement for priestly domination. With regard to princes, it seems to breathe the threat which was screeched out by the Jesuit organs in 1869 and 1870, that if they were not to sink in the coming struggle, they must make peace with the Church.

As to the nations and the laws of the Church, it adroitly represents the nations, not as submitting to receive the law at her dictation, but as demanding from her the laws which give repose. The ever-recurring alternative of submission or disturbance, if not destruction, is smoothly but gravely put. Still, the historian seems as if he wrote thus rather by official duty than by personal impulse. But, like all the "inspired" writers, he takes it for granted that the Church holds the "repose" of nations in her power. Cardinals count on the effect of thorns planted in the pillows of statesmen. They know how to teach principles that form a people within the nation ready to obey a foreign word of command, and they know how and when to give the word. They always—so say men in Italy—know how to find an Ahithophel, and how a Delilah!

Fears were often expressed lest an attempt should be made on December 28 to carry Papal infallibility by acclamation. The bishops, however, seem to have had backbone enough to determine upon a formal protest should this occur. Friedrich tells how those dignitaries who make little of denouncing the laws of their respective countries were very anxious in Rome to find some mode of giving expression to their complaints and desires without printing, which in the Model State they durst not do.

He also states that on the day before the opening of the discussion the Pope was greatly depressed. It may have been a diplomatic depression. What bishop could be so heartless as to make speeches that would weigh on the spirit of the Holy Father, and in fact to call in question Draft Decrees prepared by his authority and proposed in his name? What bishop, by obstructing their adoption, could occasion a risk that the day fixed by Decree for the second session should arrive without any Decree being ready? One of Friedrich's statements, which, before Cecconi published, seemed the most improbable of all, was that Cardinal Bilio, the President of the Preparatory Commission on Dogma, had reckoned on the Draft being carried with scarcely any discussion. Much as we knew of the displacement of the idea of conviction by that of submission, this statement seemed too monstrous. But the Archbishop of Florence appears unconscious of anything strange in the case. If Italian novelists and journalists, with whom the indifference of the national mind to religion is a favourite idea, had combined to give an illustration of that indifference, they could hardly have invented anything so expressive. A Cardinal taking it for granted that seven hundred bishops could hastily adopt for ever as doctrine binding upon themselves, their successors, and their Churches, a considerable work, every single phrase of which any serious man would weigh before he accepted it for his own creed, but would weigh ten times more carefully before he imposed it upon others—before he took it upon his soul to curse all who did not accept it, and to declare them cut off from the kingdom of God! Yet it is plain that not only Bilio, but the Curia generally, expected the passing of the Draft as almost a matter of course. In their minds the idea of submission to the Papal authority had first displaced, and then completely replaced, the idea of religious conviction.

The first Vatican Decree passed after the Council had been declared open, fixed the feast of Epiphany (January 6) as the day of the second session, in the expectation that this Draft, or a portion of it, would by that time have been adopted. But, like the first Vatican appointment, the first Vatican Decree had been not ratified in heaven. The Civiltá said (VII. ix. 227), "As the discussion on the Draft proposed is not terminated, no Decrees will be published in the second session." The Acta Sanctae Sedis curtly wrote, "No Decree was published because none was ready."[246]

Meantime the relative attitudes of the Council and of the Catholic governments had become more clearly defined. Following France, and rejecting the view of Bavaria and Portugal, the governments had determined not to interfere. Portugal had sent to her minister his credentials as ambassador to the Council, but finding that he should be alone, Count Lavradio did not present them. France, which for the last ten years had been abused by the Papal organs, was now loudly praised. Even M. Veuillot said that she was more liberal and more Christian than the other nations, for her bayonets were at Civitá Vecchia to restrain the violence of the Italians, and God would not forget it to her. True, French statesmen every now and then did show some apprehension as to what might come to pass if every child in France should learn in his catechism that the Pope was infallible, and if most of them should grow up under teachers who would gently show how the Modern State rebelled against the divine constitution of the world as implied in that fundamental truth, for the government of the nations. It was even said that Darboy plainly declared that should infallibility be proclaimed, the French troops would no longer remain in the Papal States. However that might have been, all that fell from the inspired pens was pervaded with quiet reliance on France. It seemed as if the writers believed that, just then, events depended more on one Spanish lady, in the Tuileries, than on all the Frenchmen in Paris and the departments.

It cannot be said that the compliance with the wishes of the Curia shown by politicians, was repaid by a milder attitude. The new Bull, technically called Apostolicae Sedis, popularly called the new In Coena Domini, was menacing. The grave Civiltá (VII. ix. 134) said—

Whom would the people obey? God and the Church, or the State?... As it is evident that the Church assembled in Council can only repeat, and that more strongly than ever, that as between God and men, as between the Church and the State, obedience is to be rendered to God and the Church instead of to man and the State, and as it is evident that in Catholic and civilized countries, in spite of all the efforts of sects, respect for the Church endures, and increases, while all respect for States and governments diminishes, it is clear that the Liberals, who are dominant almost everywhere, tremble at the Council, which is bound to proclaim more loudly than ever, We must obey God rather than men.

Even the little review at the Villa Borghese set M. Veuillot reflecting on the restoration of that "Christian order" which consists in the due submission of the natural to the supernatural order—

If we only think that the Council has to re-establish the Christian order without restoring the ancient aristocracy, irremediably fallen, and has to replace the social laws in a position where property and liberty shall be freed from the grasp of democracy, which is no more than an administrative aristocracy, we shall conclude that the task is not a trifle, and that the seed to be sown is not of a kind to ripen in a day.

In most Papal countries, indeed, the ancient aristocracy has fallen, and, much as priests like titles and stars in their train, they like broad acres still better, and legislative power even better still. Even when barons held lands in fief under prince-bishops and abbots, they were frequently tempted to insubordination. And in the Model State, the career open to a lord was as nearly as possible that which in our chaotic state is open to a lady. So, the aristocracy were not to be restored. But in the new Christian order both freedom and property were to be taken out of the hands of the democracy. This had been well done in the states of the Church, and partly done elsewhere, in the middle ages. In the formula, "The Pope and the People," people does not, we repeat, mean democracy, but subject populace, with a ruling priesthood and nobody to come between priest and mob. Matters would be greatly simplified if both an aristocracy and an administrative democracy were removed out of the way. But, true to the far-aiming plans of the school, M. Veuillot was thinking of the seed-time, knowing that the harvest was as yet far off. When the prize is no less than the supremacy of the world, a year may well be counted for a day.

M. Veuillot, alluding to those profane creatures the correspondents of worldly newspapers, said he had had to do with government spies, but Press spies made him respect the former. The Press spies detested respectable men, seeming to think that they spoiled the profession, and prevented it from enjoying all the hatred and contempt it merited (i. 33). M. Veuillot could afford to assume this attitude. The Univers was sanctified by the Pope's blessing, and certified by his brief. This high-caste scribe had not, however, said a word about the device by which the election of committees had been carried, though he gloried in the choice of men. He had not mentioned the electoral tickets, nor alluded to the prohibition of collective meetings of the French bishops, nor to the petition sent in by some of their number for a few morsels of liberty. He had, however, told the faithful that none of the bishops had any desire to be put on the committees, and that a prelate from South America, on finding himself elected, wept and said, "What do you mean? I am not fit. I know nothing." Writing on January 20, after the division of parties had become clearly defined, M. Veuillot said that should an Opposition group be formed, as some feared would be the case, it would only be small, and would be rather outside of the Council than in it. "Outside," said a bishop to me yesterday, "there is some room for the spirit of man; inside there will be no room for anything but the Spirit of God; and though unanimity is by no means necessary, it will nevertheless seldom fail." It was, at this time, still hoped that the "pontifical secret" would leave no chink by which the tenor of the debates could leak out. "How," exclaims M. Veuillot, "will this assembly be able to distribute its incalculable labours, and carry them to an end? Immense questions arise on all sides. It is the human species that has to be set in march. Nature feels its infirmity." Still, it will prove, he asserts, that the Council can more easily make decrees for centuries, than modern governments can make constitutions to last a few months.

An address to the Holy Father, from the Society of Catholic Italian youth having its headquarters in Bologna, declared that in answer to the infernal fury of the enemies of the sacred Council, they protested their resolution to obey its Decrees as the holy gospel, as the decrees of God Himself, and to defend its disciplinary acts as the acts of God Himself. In conclusion, they call the Pope, among other titles, the living Peter, the infallible mouth of the Church and of Christ Himself, the Vicar of God, "whose word for us and the Catholic universe is the truth of God which endureth for ever."[247] A strong force of equally well-trained youths in every country would do something to give substance to the dream of universal empire, by a Crusade of St. Peter.

To say that the Civiltá and the Unitá Cattolica contradicted nearly all the facts reported by the journals of Europe, would be a tame statement of the case. They not only gave the lie, but did so with all sorts of aggravating epithets. The Italian papers were most belied, because they, feeling no respect for the men of the Curia, did not care to put on any, but tore off false covers relentlessly, and even with mockery. According to an ordinary Italian saying, respect for the Curia begins outside the walls of Rome, and increases in proportion to distance. Still, the French, German, and English papers, though more respectful—the last, in comparison, deferential—were denounced as lying and lying again. This went smoothly till the lie-givers descended to particulars. Even then it answered, to some extent, till time brought facts to the test. Now, it is sad to look at these contradictions, and compare them with documents registered in the same pages, or with facts which even there are no longer disputed. Any one who wants a lesson in the art of giving the lie may go to an article in the Civiltá (VII. ix. p. 327), and succeeding ones. After studying them an Englishman would be more charitable to Romans when they say that if the Jesuits contradict a thing well, they begin to think it must be true. But he would discover that, under an apparent contradiction, there is often preserved a possibility of saying that there was no real one. A statement has been made containing one main fact, which was perfectly true, but with two or three accidental appendages, some one of which was not true, and the whole is treated as false. For instance, the whole tale of Nardi dismissing the German prelates is to appearance ridiculed, because one journal says that Nardi had made a secret door, at which he played the eavesdropper. Of course it was an Italian journal—La Nazione—which thought that a probable action for a monsignore of the Curia.

The Nuova Antologia, a review of high standing in Italy, published articles on the Council, which formed the basis of Vitelleschi's book. The Civiltá assigned them to Salvatore de Renzi, spoke of them as being not more inaccurate than others, and after general charges came to particulars. The author's "want of reflection" appeared in his supposing that though abbots and generals of orders both had seats, only the former had votes. Moreover, he had said that in the sessions the Fathers always wore the read pluvial and mitre; whereas in the first two sessions they had worn the white ones, and the statement as to the mitre was falsissimo, as false as could be, for in Rome, and in the presence of the Pope, they always wore one of white silk or cloth. When all Catholics were in serious excitement, when they knew that hands were laid on their creed to alter it for them and their children, it was such matters as the above which weighed upon the minds of the Jesuits, and justified outcry against men who strove to get and give some little information.

The first article of professed intelligence in the Civiltá after the Council had really got to work, spoke of giving only the external news, which was what all the "good Press" professed to give. What it gave was indeed external. A person turning to these official pages in hope of learning what he would have to believe by-and-by, found paragraphs about "clothes" (VII. ix. 99). "We have told our readers of the vestments worn by the Fathers in the public session. They will be pleased to have a translation of the notice appointing the ceremony to be observed in the Congregations"—the ceremony meaning the ceremonial garments. The men who were undertaking to change for the priests and people the conditions of their membership in the Church, to revolutionize their relations with their neighbours and even with their nations, were yet persuaded that while all this was going on, priests and people must be thinking of how the gowns of the Fates were dyed, and not of what threads they were spinning. So, with conscientious exactness, the faithful were informed that the Most Reverend and Most Eminent Lords the Cardinals would wear the red and violet mozzetta and mantelletta over the rochet; and the Most Reverend Patriarchs the violet mozzetta and rochet, etc., etc., etc.

A touching incident of private life came to soften the feelings of the Fathers on the eve of the struggle. The son of De Maistre, the champion of the pen, and the daughter of Lamoricière, the champion of the sword, had, four months previously, been married. "Two such fair names," exclaims M. Veuillot—yes, two stately figures, bending in vain to stay a falling oak. The young wife was smitten with death, and the widow of the hero could only reach Rome in time to close her daughter's eyes. The whole city united in sorrowing over the mingled tears of the houses of De Maistre and Lamoricière. Noble Lamoricière! During the four dreadful days of June, 1848, in Paris, his chivalrous sword formed a shield behind which thousands sat in safety. None who were of the number, as we were, can ever without gratitude think of him, or of the stainless Cavaignac.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IV

First open Collisions of Opinion—Pending Debate—Fear of an Acclamation—Rauscher opens—Kenrick—Tizzani—General discontent with the Draft—Vacant Hats—Speaking by Rank—Strossmayer—No permission to read the Reports, even of their own Speeches—Conflicting Views—Petitions to Pope from Bishops—Homage of Science—Theism.

The moment had come at last when it was to be seen whether the parliamentary proceedings of a discussion suspended in the Catholic society for three hundred years, was actually to be revived; or whether the bishops, justifying the confidence in their gravity and wisdom which the Curia would fain have cherished, would now set the world an example of magnifying authority, by adopting the all-comprehensive dogma of Papal infallibility by acclamation, without running the risk of any debate. That once done, minor points would settle themselves, whether in the Council or out of it. The fears of a scheme to organize an acclamation were strong, not to say feverish. Cardinal Schwarzenberg wrote, "In case a demonstration is attempted for an acclamation, a formal counter demonstration is already provided for."[248] Before the commencement of the sitting, Cardinal De Luca, now Senior President, gave an assurance that no acclamation would be attempted; adding, however, that he could only give the pledge for that one sitting. Strossmayer, relating this fact the next day, in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe, added that, should it be attempted hereafter, the bishops of the minority would put in a protest, in the name of Christ, of the Church, of their rights, of their people, and of sound reason.[249]

Lord Acton's picture of the scene before the sitting is more distinct than that of the other writers. It is Darboy whom he describes as demanding an assurance that there would be no acclamation. When the promise for the first sitting was coupled with a statement that there could be no guarantee for the future, he said a hundred bishops were resolved, in case that proceeding was resorted to, that they would leave Rome, and "carry the Council away in their shoes."[250]

The uncertainty which had hung over everything but dress was so great that some prelates had prepared their votes, thinking that, owing to the determination to have some Decree ready for promulgation at Epiphany, a division would be pressed on that day.[251]

In print, the tribune, or desk, prepared for the Council, is a laudable specimen of Roman art. To look at, it is what we must call a commonplace pulpit. It was carried from place to place—more than one writer says, carried all round the hall—to try to find a spot in which it would be possible for a speaker to be heard. When the desk was at last fixed, two priests, as reporters, took their place in front of it.[252] Cardinal Rauscher, Archbishop of Vienna, was the first who ascended. Behind him he saw his own achievement—that Concordat by which he had secured for Rome the abolition in Austria of the Josephine Laws. Before him lay the Draft of Decrees, for the most part, as it was believed, the handiwork of Schrader, whom he had himself installed as a professor in the University of Vienna, and who was doubtless a fit man to make it what it was—a dogmatic reflection of the earliest portions of the Syllabus. The sagacity of Rauscher told him that the success of these proposed Decrees would be the doom of the Concordat. Hence, he rose, not to support the theology of his nominee, but to save his own diplomatic achievement.

So the discussion opened with a brilliant address, as Friedrich calls it, delivered in the round, rough Latin pronunciation of the Germans. Darboy soon left the hall, saying that it was undignified to sit professedly listening to speeches which one could not make out. What with the mocking of the echoes and what with the pronunciation foreign to all but Germans, none could understand but the few in whose favour combined all the advantages of keen ears, a good position, and some familiarity with German intonation.

All that we know of the discourse of Cardinal Rauscher has become known in spite of the silence of every official organ; and it amounts to no more than the fact that he opposed the Draft Decrees with firmness and ability. The strict Church régime assured by his Concordat to Austria had not been followed by the halcyon days which such a régime was said to guarantee. Loud complaints were made that the moral statistics of Vienna, previously very bad, had, under the new law of marriage, become worse. However that might be, there was no doubt that under the Concordat Austria had undergone both Solferino and Sadowa. If, after all this, new fetters were to be forged, Rauscher was well aware that the chain would snap.

After Cardinals, Archbishops! So the Irish-Latin of Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, succeeded to the German-Latin of Rauscher. The voice from the Mississippi joined that from the Danube in making light of the theological performance of Rome. The next who followed was Tizzani, nominally Archbishop of Nisibis, really Chaplain-General of the Papal army. A blind old man, he did not mount the desk, but, speaking from his place, he was the first who gave forth the Latin in the clear, full pronunciation, which must be nearer to the natural one than the others. He said that the Draft was words, words, and nothing but words. Three other Italians followed on the same side. It was still the turn of the Archbishops; and Connolly, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, closed the discussion of the day. There are two versions of his concluding innuendo. One is, that the Draft was to be honourably interred; and the other, that it was not to be amended but erased. Cum honore esse sepeliendum ... non esse reformandum censeo sed delendum. Fourteen names had been entered, but when seven had spoken, it was one o'clock, and the weary work of attempting to hear was brought to an end. The old men had been already four hours in the hall.

The Giornale di Roma and the Civiltá gave the names of the speakers, but not a syllable of information as to what they said. The same course was taken by all the "good Press." It professed to give information only of the exterior of the Council. Even the Acta Sanctæ Sedis, in its Latin veil, does not utter a hint of what view any speaker took. It does, indeed, say that no one replied to observations for, against, or beside the proposals of the Decree, thus confirming the common remark that there was no real debate.[253] Among all the charges of lying, shameless lying, lurid lying, and so on, brought against the lay Press, we do not remember any attempt to contradict the particulars circulated as to this day's proceedings, unless indeed it be Cardinal Manning's general treatment of all that had been said respecting an intention to get up an acclamation, as ridiculous rumours.

Cardinal Bilio, as President of the Commission on Dogma, from which the Draft had emanated, would naturally be, as Friedrich says he was, downcast; and we may well believe the same witness, that the Cardinals generally were disconcerted. On the other hand, Cardinal Schwarzenberg said, "It has gone excellently"; and Archbishop Scherr, of Munich, thought that it was as if one had heard "the rushing of the wings of the Holy Ghost"—one of the expressions in which that sacred name was often lightly taken during the Council, and which, from hints found elsewhere, seems to have fallen on this occasion also from other lips. Strossmayer was by no means so elated, knowing that the Curia was in a position to hold its own.

This discussion raised the spirits of the minority, and filled them for a while with illusory hopes. It seemed as if the one liberty left, that of making Latin speeches, might turn to great account. Meanwhile, according to Lord Acton, speculation ran on the possible effects of fifteen vacant hats, which were supposed to have the power of doing wonders, and which the genuine Romans would certainly expect to turn episcopal heads in whatever direction they might happen to be held. Darboy said, "I have not a cold in the head: I do not want a hat."

Quirinus points out the bearing of such multiplication of anathemas as was aimed at in the Draft on the ascendancy of the Jesuits. These anathemas would supply abundant matter for accusation, and so enable the Jesuits to keep men belonging to other orders in constant fear of being charged with heresy. This would tend to make other theologians dependent upon their order. He adds, moreover, that if the Draft Decrees should be passed, scarcely any professors of Old Testament exegesis would escape the charge of heresy.

Two days later the debate was resumed. The archbishops were still in possession; but after one more of them had spoken came the turn of the bishops. Rank carried it against the rule that in council all are equal. Athanasius the deacon, and Constantine the layman, were both outside the door. And outside the door were also the "presbyters" who alone at Nicæa represented Rome. Unity had come to mean a sharp separation of the Church into the Teaching Church and the Learning Church. The Teaching Church consisted of the Pope and bishops; the Learning Church consisted of priests and people.

Those who desired to speak entered their names at least one day beforehand; and of those so entered Cardinals spoke first, Patriarchs next, then Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Generals, according to their grade.

The first bishop who rose was Strossmayer. As he had before attempted to speak upon the Rules, so did he now attack the heading of the Decree, namely, the formula "Pius IX., with the approbation of the Council," instead of the Tridentine formula, "This Sacred Council decrees." He was called to order by Cardinal De Luca. That point, he ruled, was not to be discussed, for it had been settled in the Rules of Procedure, and also in the form used in the opening session. No one supported Strossmayer in his objection, and, in point of form, the President was doubtless right. The bishops had allowed their birthright to be taken away, and it was now too late to reclaim it. True, if they had been united, they might have alleged that the taking of it away had been done both violently and stealthily; but still, it had been done before their eyes.

Strossmayer's speech gave to modern Rome a sensation strange to her, though familiar to ancient Rome—the feeling caused by the echoes of impassioned reasoning in favour of freedom. And this time it was freedom commended by the voice of a bishop! The degree of freedom advocated was, indeed, only such as anywhere else would have been a minimum. The reports given of the eloquence of the speaker were exciting, and it would appear that even those of opponents were often laudatory. Lord Acton gives the following passage—

What do we gain by condemning what has been already condemned? What end is promoted by proscribing errors which we know to have been already proscribed? The false doctrines of sophists have vanished like ashes before the wind. They have corrupted many, I confess, and infected the spirit of the age. But can we believe that the contagion of corruption would not have taken effect had errors of this sort been smitten down with anathema, by Decree? We have no means given to us beyond cries and prayers to God, whereby to defend and conserve the Catholic religion, but those of Catholic science in complete agreement with the faith. The heretics assiduously cultivate science unfriendly to the faith, and therefore true science friendly to it should be cultivated among Catholics, and advanced by every effort. Let us stop the mouth of opponents, who cease not falsely to impute to us that the Catholic Church represses science, and restrains all free thought, so that within her bounds neither science nor any liberty of intellect can flourish or exist. Further, it has to be shown, and that both by words and deeds, that in the Catholic Church there exist true liberty for the nations, true progress, true light, and true prosperity.[254]

This proposal to fight thought only with thought, and to allow institutions to be tested by their fruits, was well fitted for any soil where the Bible was the statute-book, but was untenable ground in Rome. The excitement was great.

Ketteler embraced Strossmayer as he came down. Senestrey, on the other hand, stated that he had said things for which he must have been called to order in any assembly. Dinkle said he had spoken on his own account, and showed no inclination to share risks with him.

The first French prelate who came to the desk was Ginoulhiac, of Grenoble, who also spoke against the Draft. What he then said we know not. What he had just previously published under his own hand we do know. Resisting the idea of an acclamation, he said—

To insist upon dispensing with previous examination, because of the immense importance of the question, or because the subject of the question was that which in the Church is greatest, would be not merely to depart from the practice of all ages, but it would also be to commit a most serious error, and to awaken in all grave minds just suspicions of the decision which might be arrived at. In past times nothing was so feared as the appearance of not devoting to important decisions sufficient time, and of not giving sufficient satisfaction even to the minds of the prejudiced (p. 43).

Speaking of the liberty essential to a real Council, he had said (p. 46)—

Little does it matter whether the liberty of deliberation and of vote be violated in one way or another, whether by fear or by guile, whether the violence exerted is physical or moral; so soon as liberty is gravely hampered, the Church no longer recognizes herself as truly represented.

Friedrich tells how Strossmayer, the day before, had said that he would write out his speech and send it in; for the reporters were so unskilful that their manuscripts were of little use. But we do not see how he could do more than guess what their reports were. At the same time (it was in the house of Cardinal Hohenlohe), he said that now, since he had been in Rome, he could understand how both the Reformation and the Greek Schism had originated. It was in his view a real crime for the Pope to claim to be the successor of Christ instead of the successor of Peter; the way in which bishops were driven was, he added, inconceivable, when one remembered that it was they that kept up the dignity of the Pope, and prepared the minds of the people to acknowledge it.

A prelate of different views was he to whom Friedrich had said that, in order to understand the events of the Council, one must read the Civiltá, further adding that had he been Prince Hohenlohe in Bavaria, he would have answered the Civiltá by expelling the Jesuits from Regensburg. "They are innocent people," said the Bishop. "Individually," replied the Professor, "they may be innocent people, but they represent an order which propagates doctrine dangerous to the State." He tells also how it was found that the French, German, Austro-Hungarian, and American bishops had an International Committee of three; but that the Pope, regarding this as savouring of Nationalism, and of a revolutionary spirit, forbade it. Lord Acton (p. 52) mentions another prohibition scarcely less significant, namely, that the printed Rules of Procedure of the Council of Trent were, with the utmost strictness, withheld from the members of the Vatican Council. These rules, and the real minutes of that Council, had at that time never been published, and only saw the light in 1874, by the private efforts of Theiner. Of course, the Decrees and Canons had long been before the world. Among the many denials we do not remember any attempt to deny this specific allegation. An argument could be easily constructed, on the principle now accepted, to prove that it was no interference with liberty to deprive the bishops of the physical possibility of informing themselves of the extent of rights which they had inherited from their predecessors at the latest General Council.

Lord Acton says that one effect of the determination to keep the discussions secret was that it led the bishops to express themselves more strongly than they would have done had they expected their words to be read at home and conned over by Protestants. At the same time, much leaked out. All agree that the inhabitants of Rome took little interest in the discussions, while, in the religious aspect of the question, the Italians generally took scarcely any; and this indifference reacted on the interest they might have taken in its political aspects. They committed the error of despising their enemy. Knowing the men and their communications, they allowed their own estimate of the worth of priests to affect their calculation as to their influence.

There is a well accredited story of Lord Acton going to Florence, full of the burning questions which were to affect the future of every Roman Catholic. Dining with a relation in the very centre of the political circle, and meeting several members of the Cabinet, he naturally expected to find them taking some interest in the cosmopolitan politics then under treatment by the Senate of Humanity, the Supreme Legislature of the Human Species. But the Italians were buried in some passing question of grist, or the like, and had no ear for the principles which were to shape the future of nations. They saw little in the proceedings more than that the Pundits of an expiring caste were passing resolutions to adjourn the nineteenth century and to conserve the eleventh.

German and English Catholics were not capable of thus treating principles as husks. Whether Fallibilists or Infallibilists, they knew that the destiny of that Society, which both agreed to call "The Church," was now at stake, and that, at least, the repose of nations, if not their destiny, was also implicated. The Liberal Catholics, holding that the attempt to restore a theocracy would only lead to wars, and that humanity would avenge itself on the Papacy for again fomenting bloodshed, hoped that somehow God would save the Church from the blindness of the Curia. The Catholics, on the other hand, equally aiming at ultimate peace, and even regaling their imaginations with a vision of millennial repose, so soon as all nations should have accepted the Vicegerent of God as the representative of Christ Himself, were in the meantime profoundly convinced that the only way to obtain that repose was through the very conflict from which their faint-hearted brethren shrank.

The Infallibilists could not harbour the idea of the Church failing in the struggle. That was to them like supposing that the gates of hell should prevail. To the Liberal Catholics the Jesuits were conspiring against humanity and all its franchises. To the Jesuits, on the other hand, the Liberal Catholics seemed to be risking the loss of such an opportunity as might never recur, of putting the Church in a position to constrain governments to accept the principles by which alone nations could be saved. Therefore did they look upon any shrinking from the struggle as indicating worldly fear rather than foreseeing care for the Church. If Liberal Catholics looked upon the Jesuits as conspiring against humanity, the Jesuits looked upon the Liberal Catholics as agitators against divine authority. No wonder that in such a state of feeling, what Lord Acton describes took place, "The word-war of the hall was always fought over and over again outside, with the addition of anecdotes, epigrams, and inventions."

It was on Sunday, January 2, that two petitions were sent in to the Pope. The first was signed by forty-three prelates, headed by Cardinals Schwarzenberg and Rauscher, and the Primate of Hungary.[255] This was no Bill of Rights, not containing even a challenge of that exercise of prerogative which it sought partially to relax. The privileges for which two princes and forty-one magnates petitioned, "prostrate at thy feet," were—

(1) That the Fathers might be distributed into, say, six groups, in which Draft Decrees could be considered in the principal living languages before being brought on for discussion in Latin, in the General Congregation. (2) That speeches delivered in the General Congregation might be printed for the exclusive use of the members of the Council, and under the same bond of secrecy as that under which the Draft Decrees were communicated to them. (3) That the Draft Decrees on faith and discipline might all as soon as possible be laid in a connected form before the Fathers, and should not any longer be presented, as hitherto, piecemeal. (4) That the Fathers, after having in the vernacular meetings considered the Draft Decrees, might be allowed to send a couple of delegates from each group to the committee to represent their views. (5) That the Fathers might be allowed to print, in addition to speeches delivered in the General Congregation, writings in which questions could be treated more thoroughly; these however to be printed subject to the same bond of secrecy as the Draft Decrees. (6) "Prostrate at thy feet, we crave the apostolic benediction for ourselves and the faithful committed to us."

We do not know that even the last of the six things here prayed for was granted, for the petition never received an answer. These dignitaries clearly state to their royal master the grounds on which they petitioned for some of the elementary rights of human creatures. They say that Decrees cannot be really sifted by speaking a dead language in an assembly of seven hundred persons from all parts of the world, unless, first, in companies speaking living languages, the Fathers have had the opportunity of examining their contents. And further, that however well acquainted with Latin all might be, there were many prelates who did not speak it. Moreover, the petitioners, admitting that the Council Hall was admirable as being so near the tomb of St. Peter, state that in the first General Congregation, though some of the speakers had excellent voices, not one of them could make himself heard by all. Even since changes had been effected, the greater part of the members could not hear all the speakers. Another of their points is this: Although men well worthy of confidence—viri fide dignissimi—had assured them that the reports of the speeches should be distributed to the Fathers in print, so that they might read what they had not been able to hear, "in this hope we have been disappointed."

They appeal thus to their master, "Most Blessed Father, by thine excelling wisdom, wilt thou perceive that, as the Fathers can neither hear what is spoken, nor read it, proper consultation is not possible."[256] They go on to urge that even if the discussions were held in a place where men with the weakest voices could be heard, it would still be desirable that the members should be in a position to look over what had been advanced in successive sittings. "Matters of weightiest moment," they add, "are being treated, and frequently the addition, omission, or change of a single word may adulterate the sense." If, say they, the Fathers had the opportunity of explaining their views in writing, they could lay many things before their fellow members which could not be brought into speeches. As to obtaining an understanding of the proposals, they urged that, in questions of doctrine, one thing so connects itself with another, and discipline is so much affected by doctrine, that they are not in any position to give a judgment on Draft Decrees, obviously forming but part of a scheme, while as yet other parts of it are kept from their knowledge. The relation between the unknown parts and the parts before them is an element in any judgment to be formed.

The second petition, dated on the same Sunday,[257] was signed by twenty-six prelates, including several of those who had signed the other, and a few additional ones, such as Kenrick of St. Louis. Cardinal Rauscher did not sign it, but Cardinal Schwarzenberg did. It set out by indirectly asserting more in principle than the other; but it ended by asking less in practice. It seemed both to assume the right of proposition on the part of the prelates, and to imply that the taking of it away would deserve blame; but it had not the courage to say that it had been taken away. Those are not wanting, say the petitioners, who interpret the Rules as not recognizing the right of the Fathers to propose in the Council what they may think conducive to the public good, but as conceding it only exceptionally and as a matter of grace. This may be a diplomatic way of indicating what the Rules said without confessing the fact that they did say it. But what they did say was too plain for any such finesse. The prayer of the petition is confined to two points: that some members of the Commission on Proposals should be elected by the Committee, and that the authors of proposals should have access to the committees, and thus have some part in the treatment of the particular matter in which they were interested.

These petitions say more than all the assertions of the much contradicted Liberal Catholics about the want of freedom in the Council, and the want of the old spirit of bishops in the men who composed it. According to Friedberg, the first of the two was drawn up by Cardinal Rauscher (xli.). No name of an English, Irish, or Colonial prelate is attached to either petition. Nearly all the names are those of Germans and Hungarians, the only American one being that of Kenrick. His signature proves that the English-speaking group knew of the petitions, and the absence of all other names belonging to that group would seem to indicate that members of the hierarchy from America, the British Isles, and our Colonies did not approve of bishops of their Church being entrusted with such extensive liberties as those for which their brethren petitioned. It is pretty certain that the American archbishop who signed this petition was not one of the prelates who told the Archbishop of Westminster that their Congress was not freer than the Council. Do senators and members of the House prostrate themselves at the feet of the President, petitioning for leave to meet in a place where they can hear and be heard, for leave to read reports of one another's speeches, and for leave to print memoranda—for leave even to elect a few members of a committee which decides what may and what may not be recommended to the President, to be proposed should he approve of it? If they do not, we must only believe that America sends some citizens to Europe whose information as to the institutions of their country is not to be relied upon. Did Ginoulhiac, whose observations on the necessity of perfect freedom in a Council we have lately seen, consider legislators free who had to petition for such things? Outside of the number of Cardinals resident in Rome, could even a Cardinal have been found beforehand to assert that liberty would not be gravely hampered, in any legislative assembly, whenever those who were called legislators were compelled to indite petitions such as we have described? We doubt if even a resident Cardinal would beforehand have dared in terms to deny that when, in a professed Council, liberty is gravely hampered, the Church does not recognize herself as represented. Now, it is easy to turn the point of all such arguments. Peter the Infallible has only to say what rights James and John, Thomas and Paul shall enjoy, and in exercising them they possess all the freedom that God has been pleased to grant to them.

The allusion in the petition to the ease with which the sense of a speech may be altered seems like a remark of Strossmayer, quoted by Friedrich, that reports which were under no check but that of the Curia, and which even the speakers themselves were not allowed to inspect, could not be of any use. To this Friedrich adds, How much would the weight of the remark have been increased after an incident on July 9, "when the majority of the Council, and a committee of the Council, did not scruple formally to deceive the minority."

The prayer of the petitioners for a sight of the whole scheme, as prepared, before they should be called upon to erect part of it into irreformable Decrees, was doubtless caused in part by the obvious relation between the Drafts already brought to light and the Syllabus. That compendium was not mentioned any more than it had been in many other public instruments, but the first Draft fitted to its first sections, just as the Encyclical which accompanied its issue had done to the whole document. Notwithstanding its authority, its form made it of doubtful interpretation, and these Decrees aimed at giving statutory form to its sentences. An Index Schematum, or List of Drafts, had come to light,[258] which let the bishops see that what had hitherto been produced was but the first instalment of projected legislation covering all the ground occupied by the Syllabus. The first Draft treated only the philosophical and theological portion of the subjects; but how were the principles enunciated to be applied, when the sections on Church and State should be arrived at? The somewhat obscure teaching in the Draft on the elevation of man into the supernatural order, would, to mere politicians, look like theological nebulae, and, to mere theologians, like ill-digested divinity. To men versed in the esoteric dialect, it was clearly intended to prepare the way for the doctrine of the elevation of man by baptism above the control of civil law, in all that affects his loyalty to the supernatural order of the Church, whose Decrees had, by that regeneration, become his supreme statutes, her courts his supreme tribunals, and her priests his supreme magistrates. It was the dogmatizing of the principle which has already passed under our eye, that in baptism the subjects of the civil power are changed. Another principle now habitually underlies that one, namely, that man by redemption through Christ is raised above the government of the natural order, and placed under that of Christ, through His Vicar. The studious among the Liberal Catholics knew that under the name of Naturalism their principles were condemned.

On the Monday following the day of the petitions, when the Congregation opened, after the prayers had been read, Cardinal De Luca rang the bell, and solemnly addressed the Fathers. Here, for once, we are able to give the very words that sounded in that hall of concealment, and this time not from an unofficial publication of official documents. It is the Acta Sanctae Sedis that now actually give us a speech. But it is a speech about the dead. The Cardinal is not so confident as to their happiness as were the writers of the Crusaders of St. Peter respecting that of those who fell in the Crusade. But he presents the two forms of the Papal worship of and for the dead, which differs from both the Chinese and the Brahminical. We see the two sides of it—the patronage of the living by the dead, and the patronage of the dead by the living. The Cardinal said—

Most Reverend Fathers,—It is known to you that since the opening of the Œcumenical Vatican Council four Fathers have passed away by a death precious in the sight of the Lord, namely, the Most Eminent Charles Augustus de Reisach, Bishop of the Sabina and First President of the General Congregations; the Most Eminent Francis Pentini, Deacon of St. Mary in Portico; the Most Reverend Anthony Manastyrski, Bishop of Przémysl of the Latin rite; and the Most Reverend Bernardin Frascolla, Bishop of Foggia. The Christian virtues and the shining merits towards the holy Church of God and this Apostolic See, wherewith they were most largely adorned, inspire us with a sure and pleasant hope that their souls already enjoy rest eternal in the embrace of the Lord, and that in the presence of God they patronize our labours by their intercession. Since, however, human frailty is such that they may even now stand in need of our suffrages, let us not neglect earnestly to commend them to the divine mercy.

After this De Luca announced that in place of Reisach had been appointed Cardinal De Angelis. Thus one who, just before the Council opened, knew, or professed to know, so little that he told Cardinal Hohenlohe that nothing was to be done beyond condemning the principles of 1789, but who had served the Curia by the device of an election ticket, took the first seat, in which elevation the Opposition saw the reward of service in the elections. Next was announced the appointment by the Pope of Cardinal Bilio as President of the Committee on Faith, and that of Cardinal Caterini as President of the Committee on Discipline. The committees were not allowed to choose their own chairmen, nor yet was the Council allowed to name the chairmen of its committees.[259] The next day, after Mass had been celebrated by Archbishop Manning, again had Cardinal De Luca to announce a death. It was that of the Bishop of Panama, a Dominican. The statement as to his sufferings here is plain. But as to his happiness hereafter, the full confidence felt in the case of the Crusaders, and the qualified confidence felt in the case of the two Cardinals, and of the two bishops whose deaths were reported with that of Cardinals, are both wanting. We have not here the "in peace" which in Rome, before priests learned to make a commerce of the dead, the poorest Christian wrote, it might be in the roughest scrawl, over the head of his wife or child; nor have we here the life and immortality whereof the light makes the happy believer "rejoice for a brother deceased." Eduardo Vasques was not a Crusader, and was not a Cardinal, and had not even the happiness of being reported dead in company with a Cardinal. He was but a bishop, and, without doubt, in the pains of purgatory; so De Luca just said that he had died last night, after great suffering, borne with exemplary patience. "Proper mortuary services will, as soon as possible, be performed. In the meantime, let us commend him to the mercy of God, both by the sacrifice of the Mass, and by other works of Christian charity."[260]

The day before the second session, a procession moved to the Vatican, of seventeen carriages, carrying seventeen deputations, each bearing an address, with signatures, in a richly bound volume, for presentation to the Holy Father. These addresses conveyed that homage of science to the Pontiff the appeal for which has been already mentioned. The cultivators of science at the feet of Pius IX, and, The cultivators of science at the throne of the Holy Father, were the titles of articles in Catholic journals. The way was led by the deputation from the pontifical academy of the Immaculate, which had initiated this movement.

They were received in the Throne Room. A long address to the Pontiff was read. He sat, unmoved, to hear it. Then, "he lifted his eyes to heaven with an ineffable expression," and uttered a prayer that the sentiments conveyed in the address might spread among the multitudes of scientific men whose false science was ruining society. The Pope would quote Scripture, as he often tries to do; and his text was Captivantes intellectum vestrum in obsequium fidei—Taking your intellect captive to the obedience of the faith. Probably he was thinking of 2 Corinthians x. 5, "Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ," where the Vulgate translates, "Every thought (νὁημα), every intellect." He then assured them that pride was the sin of the day, and that it was all a repetition of the original "I will not serve"—alluding to Satan's "Better reign in hell than serve in heaven." Cold men of science hearing this language from him who was striving to put all human honours, titles, and powers below his own, might think that some scientific test of his humility would not be amiss. The Pope rose, the savans knelt down, and he gave them the benediction.

Having then resumed his seat on the Throne, "Here I am," he said, familiarly; "here I am, to receive your gifts." There was a scientific test of their professions! The President of the Academy of the Immaculate advanced, presented his volume containing the address and signatures, and with it an elegant purse full of gold. The head of the next deputation followed, presented his volume and his purse of gold, and so on, until the seventeen had completed their offering. The Pope had a pleasant word for each. Then saying, "God grant that your example may be followed by many," he closed the audience.[261] How different was it now from what it was when "science was the echo of the Pontiff," or even from what it was when Galileo had to face the Inquisition, and to argue with Bellarmine![262] At the latter moment, the two revolted tongues, German and English, with their smaller kinsmen, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish, were unknown in the schools. Their libraries were yet to be. They had but lately received into them the source of their literary life—the Bible. But into them had the Bible come, not lapped in the languor of the cloister, but instinct with the life of a great revival.

Except a few northern schools, which had made themselves a name in the strife of the Reformation, all seats of learning on the Continent were on the side of the Pope. Now, how changed! Out of his own Model State, where were the universities canonically instituted? They had ceased to be. Meantime, the nations which at the Reformation were but emerging out of barbarism, had become learned in all the learning of the ancients and moderns. The two revolted tongues, German and English, had filled the world with a literature such as the Latin, even when Augurs and Pontiffs were called Cicero and Aurelius, had never known. The Portuguese, which had at one time promised to be the lingua franca of all the ports from Morocco to Japan, had given place, first, largely to the Dutch, then universally to the English. The Spanish and French, which had promised to divide between them North and South America, were sundered, and were both overshadowed by a dominating growth of English. That north-western tongue, cradled amid stern winds, was found by the Reformation as the rude but hardy dialect of some six or seven unlettered millions. Now it had become the wealthy and flexible, the noble and all-expressing speech of at least eighty millions. Thirty millions in Europe, with between forty and fifty millions in America, called it, with a common family pride and a common family joy, their mother-tongue. In Australasia, a future Europe promised to call it her mother-tongue. In India it was teaching the pundit, in China the mandarin, in Japan the daimio, in Africa the Kaffir chief, the Negro freedman, and the merchant of the Nile. That single language had now more schools and colleges, more laboratories and institutes of research, more books and journals, more patronage and discussion of Art, than all the Papal languages put together. And as to the German, if the lack of equal liberty had reined the people in, while the effects of the Thirty Years' War, joined to those of the chronic splitting up into small States, had prevented their growth and expansion in a similar measure, they had, nevertheless, with huge and patient power, piled up a Titanic literature, and in many a movement in the higher march of intellect their banner led the van. Men of the Catholic schools of Germany so felt their own superiority to the science and literature of actual Rome, that the strokes of their contempt not unfrequently fell even on the reputed sages of the Curia, sometimes laid on in a fashion more scholastic than scholarly.

In the General Congregation of January 4, the Curia had the satisfaction of hearing, not only a diocesan bishop, but a German one, defend the Draft.[263] It was Bishop Martin, of Paderborn, to whose eminent qualities official writers bear loud testimony, though in the eyes of the Liberal Catholics he does not seem to be a prodigy. He blamed the manner in which the bishops had treated a document proposed by the Pontiff, which ought to have been handled with reverence, and rebuked such language as "to be erased." He desired the adoption of the Syllabus just as it stood. As the way to bring back the stray sheep to the Holy Father, he enjoined the recognition of his infallibility, which would reclaim Protestants. Both the expectation of Martin and Manning that the new dogma would facilitate the conversion of Protestants, and that of all the Ultramontane leaders that it would hasten the submission of governments to the Lord Paramount of the world, lose part of their marvellousness when we find bishops like Bonjean proclaiming it as of great importance for the conversion of Hindus. Bishop David, of St. Brieuc, alluding to Martin's warning, said if he must not say that the Draft was to be erased, he would say that if it was dead let it rise again; but some bishop must breathe new life into it. Friedrich says that Cardinal Bilio was particularly hurt by this speech.

Bernardou, Archbishop of Sens, read a speech for Audu, the Patriarch of Babylon. The Chaldean solemnly pleaded against the levelling proceedings of Rome, maintained the ancient immunities of his Church, and ventured to throw out a warning against innovations, lest the Orientals should be altogether alienated. He afterwards received a message to repair to the Vatican, and to come unattended. About seven o'clock on that January night, the man of seventy-eight passed the Swiss guards, in their stripes and slashes of yellow, black, and red, with their halberds and their helmets, and while lonelily pacing the corridors, had time to remember how the house of the Inquisition stood over the way, and how utterly he was in the power of the King of the Vatican. It will be some time before what befell him comes to light.

Theiner, the celebrated Prefect of the Vatican Archives, had been long engaged, as was universally known, in preparing for publication the Acta of the Council of Trent. He had been arrested in this project. This was attributed to the instigation of the Jesuits. On January 4 Friedrich went to Theiner to beg permission to consult the Acta of Trent. "Theiner told me that he was now forbidden to let any one even see the Acta. All I could obtain from him was this—he showed me the piles of the copied documents in the distance" (p. 65). There is a picture for the days of an Œcumenical Council![264] The day following, another German on the banks of the Spree, was busy with the Council. To Bismarck the state of things so far was chaotic. "I should not think it wise," he says to Arnim, "for us to intermeddle in this misty chaos, where we do not yet see clearly enough to choose the right basis of operations." He sees that Rome may make aggressions, but rests in proud repose in the power of the nation to throw her back within her proper bounds. The continuance of peaceful relations is greatly to be desired, but it is not for the government to attempt to give a direction to the events of the Council. It can only cherish sympathy with the efforts of the German bishops, and, if they desire it, give them its support. Bismarck expressly declines to support by any diplomatic step the proposal for vote by nations. Such a step would involve a serious recognition of the pretensions of the Curia. We must, he says, hold ourselves aloof from the Council, and free to bring its conclusions to the bar of our laws. He, therefore, does not deem it wise to attempt a permanent united meeting of diplomatists, with a view to influence the Council. All that can be done is to encourage the German bishops, and to assure them that their rights will be maintained in their own country. But they must be made fully to understand that serious changes in the organization of the Church would compel the government to alter its relation to her, both in legislation and in administration.[265] Had Bismarck known all the plans of the five preceding years, and all the events that were to follow, it is doubtful if he could have taken a better course. And had his main object been to live at peace with Rome, and not merely to do the wisest thing for Germany, he could hardly have guarded more jealously against undue or premature interference.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER V

The Second Public Session—Swearing a Creed never before known in a General Council—Really an Oath including Feudal Obedience.

The same tone of disappointment in which the Civiltá had said that as the discussion of the Draft was not concluded, no Decree would be promulged in the second session, pervaded the additional remark that the world would describe as a vain ceremony the recital of the creed with which it had been resolved to fill up the day. Writers of different shades, as if by concert, did describe it as a religious ceremony,—a mere ceremony, an empty ceremony, a vain ceremony, and a tedious ceremony.

So far from taking this session as a vain show, we take it for one of the most distinctive footmarks left in the deposits of history by the mammoth which we call the Papacy. Without contrivance of man—in contravention, indeed, of arrangements made with patient forethought—the Vatican Council was compelled, under guise of reciting a creed, to exhibit its bishops as if barons swearing allegiance to a prince in peril of losing his estates. The creed recited was one never before seen or heard of in any General Council. An apparent accident set the faith of the early Church, and the modern composite oath and creed, before the eye of history in a contrast sharper than any artist could have devised.