THE VATICAN COUNCIL
The chief event of the century, from the point of view of Roman Catholicism, is undoubtedly the holding of the Vatican Council. Since the Council of Trent the bishops of the Catholic world had not met in common under the guidance of the Bishop of Rome. The gravest interests of religion seemed at stake after more than a century of public infidelity and the overthrow of all former safeguards of faith. The character of doctrinal authority and its visible tangible possessor were declared by the dogma of Papal infallibility. The genuine relations of reason and revelation were set forth in unmistakable language.
The troubles that followed the close of the Council in some parts of Europe were neither serious nor long-lived, since its teachings were in keeping with the general sense of Catholicism. It promoted, notably, mutual respect and concord among the bishops and gave to the multitudes of Catholics in the Old and New Worlds a new sign of the unity and internal vigor of the Church. The scenes of the Council are indelibly fixed in my memory, for I was the youngest and humblest of the six hundred and sixty-seven bishops who composed it.
A General Council is the very highest act of the life of the Church, since it presents within a small compass, and at once, all the movements that have been developing in the course of centuries, and offers to all the faithful and to all outside the Church straightforward answers to all the great ecclesiastical problems that come up for settlement. Had the Vatican Council been finished it would have taken up the grave subject of ecclesiastical discipline. That is reserved for the reopening of the Council at some future date.