VI.—THE VATICAN COUNCIL.
It is folly to attempt to interpret any society without having first discovered its animating principle and fairly studied the nature and bearings of its organization. How great, then, is the folly of those who seem not to have even a suspicion that the greatest and grandest and the most lasting of all societies and organizations that the world has ever known—the Catholic Church—can be fathomed by a hasty glance! Yet there are men well known, and reckoned worthy of repute, who bestow more time and pay closer attention to gain knowledge of the structure and habits of the meanest bug than they deem requisite before sitting in judgment on the church of the living God. There is in our day a great variety of demagogues, and their number is very great, but a truly scientific man is a rara avis.
There are also men standing high in the public estimation, and some of them deservedly so in other respects, who imagine that the decree of the Vatican Council defining the prerogatives of the successor of St. Peter has seriously altered the constitution of the Catholic Church, when it has done nothing more or less than make the common law of the church, whose binding force from universal usage and universal reception was admitted, a statute law.
Starting off from this serious mistake as their premise, they wax warm and become furious against the Vatican Council and its decree concerning the Roman Pontiff. And the new-born pity with which they are seized for benighted Catholics, would be worthy of all admiration, were there not good grounds to question their common sense or suspect their sincerity. They talk about “a pontifical Cæsar imposed upon the Catholic Church,” “priestly domination carried to its highest point of development,” “the personal infallibility of the pope,” “the Roman Church transformed into an enlarged house of the Jesuit Order,” “the incompatibility of the Catholic Church, with its new constitution, with the state,” etc., etc. Then follows a jeremiad over “the mental dependency of Catholics,” and so forth. All this and much more has, according to their opinion, been accomplished by a single decree of the Vatican Council. Apparently this class of men look upon the Catholic Church as a mere piece of mechanism, abandoned to the control and direction of a set of priests swayed by personal ambition and selfishness, and whose sole aim is to exercise an absolute tyranny over the consciences of their fellow-Christians; or as an institution still more absurd and vile, for heresy and infidelity have in some instances succeeded in so blinding men’s minds that they do not allow the good the church does as hers, and, stimulated by malice, heap upon her every conceivable vice and evil. Christ had to defend himself against the Jews, who accused him of being possessed by a devil; and is it a wonder that his church should have to defend herself against the charge of misbelievers and unbelievers as being the synagogue of Satan? The servant is not greater than his master.
Even Goethe, in spite of his anti-Christian, or rather his anti-Protestant, instincts, would have saved these men from their fanatical blindness and their gross errors by imparting to their minds, if they were willing to receive it, a true insight into the real character of the Catholic Church. “Look,” he says, after premising that “poems are like stained glasses—”
“Look into the church from the market square;
Nothing but gloom and darkness there!
Shrewd Sir Philistine sees things so:
Well may he narrow and captious grow
Who all his life on the outside passes.
“But come, now, and inside we’ll go!
Now round the holy chapel gaze;
’Tis all one many-colored blaze;
Story and emblem, a pictured maze,
Flash by you:—’tis a noble show.
Here, feel as sons of God baptized,
With hearts exalted and surprised!”[[3]]
The “Philistines” we are speaking of infuse into the Catholic Church their own forensic spirit, and fancy that she is only a system of severe commandments, arbitrary laws, and outward ceremonies enforced by an external and absolute authority which, like the old law, places all her children in a state of complete bondage. They are blind to the fact that the Catholic Church confines her precepts, such is her respect for man’s liberty, chiefly to the things necessary to salvation, leaving all the rest to be complied with by each individual Christian as moved by the instinct of divine grace.[[4]]
The aim of the Catholic Church is not, as they foolishly fancy, to drill her children into a servile army of prætorian guards, but to raise up freemen in Christ, souls actuated by the Holy Spirit—to create saints.
They are also ignorant of the nature and place, of the authority of the church, as they are of her spirit.
It is the birthright of every member of the Catholic Church freely to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and the office and aim of the authority of the church is to secure, defend, and protect this Christ-given freedom.
To make more clear this relation of the divine external authority of the church with the divine internal guidance of the Holy Spirit in the soul, a few words of explanation will suffice.
It is the privilege of every soul born to Christ in his holy church in the waters of regeneration, to receive thereby the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the bounden duty of every Christian soul to follow with fidelity the promptings of the Holy Spirit. In order that the soul may follow faithfully the indwelling Holy Spirit, it must be secured against all mistakes and delusions and protected against all attacks from error. Every child of the church has therefore a claim in justice upon the authority of the church for this security and protection. But it would be absurd and an intolerable indignity for the soul to obey an authority that might lead it astray in a matter concerning its divine life and future destiny; for in the future world no chance or liberty is left for a return to correct the mistakes into which the soul may have fallen. Therefore the claim is founded in right reason and justice that the supreme teaching and governing authority of the church should be divine—that is, unerring. And it is the intrusion of human authority in the shape of private judgment, or that of the state, as supreme, in regard to the truths of divine revelation, that is the radical motive of the resistance to Protestantism as Christianity on the part of Catholics.
Now, when the soul sees that the authority which governs is animated by the same divine Spirit, with whose promptings it is its inmost desire to comply, and appreciates that the aim of the commands of authority is to keep it from straying from the guidance of the indwelling divine Spirit, then obedience to authority becomes easy and light, and the fulfilment of its commands the source of increased joy and greater liberty, not an irksome task or a crushing burden. This spiritual insight springing from the light of faith is the secret source of Catholic life, the inward principle which prompts the obedience of Catholics to the divine authority of the holy church, and from which is born the consciousness of the soul’s filiation with God, whence flow that perfect love and liberty which always accompany this divine Sonship.
The aim of the authority of the church and its exercise is the same as that of all other authority—secondary. The church herself, in this sense, is not an end, but a means to an end. The aim of the authority of the church is the promotion and the safeguard of the divine action of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the soul, and not a substitution of itself for this.
Just as the object of the authority of the state is to promote the common good and to protect the rights of its citizens, so the authority of the church has for its aim the common good of its members and the protection of their rights. And is not the patriotic spirit that moves the legislator to make the law for the common good and protection of his fellow-countrymen identically the same spirit which plants in their bosoms the sense of submission to the law? Consequently, to fix more firmly and to define more accurately the divine authority of the church in its papal exercise, seen from the inside, is to increase individual action, to open the door to a larger sphere of liberty, and to raise man up to his true manhood in God.
It does, indeed, make all the difference in the world, as the poet Goethe has so well said, to “look at the church” with “Sir Philistine” in a “narrow and captious” spirit from “the market square” stand-point, or to gaze on the church from the inside, where all her divine beauty is displayed and, in a free and lofty spirit, fully enjoyed.
VII.—THE VATICAN COUNCIL (continued).
To define the prerogatives of the papal authority, and its place and sphere of action in the divine autonomy of the church, was to prepare the way for the faithful to follow with greater safety and freedom the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, and thus open the door wider for a fresh influx of divine life and a more vigorous activity. Thanks for these great advantages to the persistent attacks of the foes of the church; for had they let her authority alone, this decree of the Vatican Council would not have been called for, and the prerogatives of the papal functions might have been exercised with sufficient force as the unwritten and common law, and never have passed into a dogmatic decree and become the statute law.
The work of the Vatican Council is not, however, finished. Other and important tasks are before it, to accomplish which it will be sooner or later reassembled. Divine Providence appears to be shaping events in many ways since the adjournment of the council, so as to render its future labors comparatively easy. There were special causes which made it reasonable that the occupant of St. Peter’s chair at Rome should in modern times be an Italian. Owing to the radical changes which have taken place in Europe, these causes no longer have the force they once had. The church is a universal, not a national society. The boundaries of nations have, to a great extent, been obliterated by the marvellous inventions of the age. The tendency of mankind is, even in spite of itself, to become more and more one family, and of nations to become parts of one great whole rather than separate entities. And even if the wheel of change should, as we devoutly hope, restore to the Pope the patrimony of the church, the claims of any distinct nationality to the Chair of Peter will scarcely hold as they once held. The supreme Pastor of the whole flock of Christ, as befits the Catholic and cosmopolitan spirit of the church, may now, as in former days, be chosen solely in view of his capacity, fitness, and personal merits, without any regard to his nationality or race.
It must be added to the other great acts of the reigning Pontiff—whom may God preserve!—that he has given to the cardinal senate of the church a more representative character by choosing for its members a larger number of distinguished men from the different nations of which the family of the church is composed. This, it is to be hoped, is only a promise of the no distant day when the august senate of the universal church shall not only be open to men of merit of every Catholic nation of the earth, but also its members be chosen in proportion to the importance of each community, according to the express desire of the holy œcumenical Council of Trent. Such a representative body, composed of the élite of the entire human race, presided over by the common father of all the faithful, would realize as nearly as possible that ideal tribunal which enlightened statesmen are now looking for, whose office it would be to act as the arbitrator between nation and nation, and between rulers and people.
Since the close of the first session of the Vatican Council nearly all the different nations of Europe have, of their own accord, broken the concordats made with the church and virtually proclaimed a divorce between the state and the church. This conduct leaves the church entirely free in the choice of her bishops; which will tend to bring out more clearly the spiritual and popular side of the church; to set at naught the charge made against her prelates as meddling in purely secular affairs; and to wipe out the stigma of their being involved in the political intrigues of courts.
Modern inventions and improvements, such as telegraphs, railroads, steamships, cheap postage, the press, have added time, increased efficiency, and lent an expansive power of action to men which poets, in their boldest flights of fancy, did not reach. These things have changed the face of the material world and the ways of men in conducting their secular business.
Pope Sixtus V. readjusted and improved in his day the outward administration of the church—a reform that was greatly needed—and placed it by his practical genius, both for method and efficiency, far in advance of his times. This same work might, in some respects, be done again and with infinite advantage to the interests and prosperity of the whole church of God.
One of the most, if not the most, important of the congregations of the church is that De Propaganda Fide. It is the centre of missionary enterprises throughout the whole extent of the world. No other object can be of greater interest to every Catholic heart, no branch of the church’s work calls for greater practical wisdom, more burning zeal, and more energetic efficiency.
There is, perhaps, no position in the church, after that of the papal chair, so great in importance, so vast in its influence, so wide in its action, as the one occupied by the cardinal prefect of the Propaganda. Could it be placed on a footing so as to profit by all the agencies of our day, it would be better prepared to enter upon the new openings now offered to the missionary zeal of the church in different parts of the world, and become, what it really aims to be, the right arm of the church in the propagation of the faith.
Who can tell but that one of the results of the present crisis in Italy will lead by an overruling Providence to an entire renewal of the church, not only in Italy, but throughout the whole world? Such a hope has been frequently expressed by Pius IX., and to prepare the way for it was one of the main purposes of assembling the Vatican Council.