Pius IX. And His Time

by Æneas MacDonell Dawson

Trent was attended by comparatively few bishops, who were from Europe, the Eastern Church and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. The Vatican Council consisted of prelates from at least thirty different nations, from the remotest regions of the habitable globe, from the numerous churches in India which owed their origin to the apostolic zeal of St. Francis Xavier, from North and South America, China, Australia, New Zealand and Oceanica. One-fifth of the churches existed not as yet in the time of Trent which sent their bishops to represent them at the Vatican Council. The countries in which many of these churches flourish had no place, when the Council of Trent was called, on the map of the world. From those vast regions which now constitute the United States of [pg 340] America, there was not so much as one bishop at Trent. At the Vatican Council there were no fewer than sixty. There were never more than three bishops of Ireland present together at Trent, and four only were members of that council. Twenty Irish prelates attended the Vatican Council. England sent only one bishop to Trent. He is mentioned as Godveus Anglus, Episc. Asaphensis. The Catholics of England were represented by thirteen English bishops at the Council of the Vatican. Scotland had no representation at Trent. The Catholics of that country were most worthily represented at the Vatican by Bishop Strain, now Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh; Archbishop Eyre, of Glasgow, and Bishop McDonald, of Aberdeen. There was only a very small number of English-speaking bishops at Trent. At the Vatican Council they were particularly numerous, constituting, as nearly as can be calculated, one-fifth of the assembled Catholic hierarchy. At Trent there were not many bishops from countries speaking different languages. Twenty-seven languages, and various dialects besides, were represented by prelates at the Vatican.

The greater facilities for travelling, which this favored age enjoys, no doubt rendered it more easy to attend the Council of the Vatican than it was to journey to Trent, even from the nearest lands. Nevertheless, there was laborious journeying to the Vatican. Prelates from the vast regions of Asia and Africa, America and Australia, knew what they would have to encounter, but they were not deterred. Some, on their way to the Vatican, travelled for whole weeks mounted on camels before they could reach the ports at which it behooved them to embark. Bishop Launy, of Santa Fe, was forty-two days on his land-journey, and travelled on horseback. Such of the laity as visited Trent were comparatively few, and only from places not very distant. One hundred thousand pilgrims, many of them from the most remote regions, repaired to the Vatican. The number of Fathers at any one time in council at Trent was somewhat under three hundred. Seven hundred [pg 341] and eighty-three took part in the Council of the Vatican. The Council of Trent, however, must not be underrated. It was a most important council, and admirably calculated to meet the wants of the time. It marked an era in the history of the Church. It provided remedies for numerous evils, and safety in the midst of danger. It became a power which time has not diminished. For three hundred years it has guided the destinies of Peter's barque, prelates and people wisely accepting its discipline, and meekly obeying its rule. It added, no doubt, to the importance of the Vatican Council that it was held at Rome, in the very centre of Catholicity and of Catholic unity, and near the tombs of the martyred apostles, the founders of the Church. In this it contrasts with Trent, which, although the Fathers assembled at an obscure village in the Tyrol, was not less, on this account, an Œcumenical Council. Papal legates presided at Trent, whilst the Holy Father himself was present at all the solemn sessions of the Vatican Council which have as yet been held.

INFALLIBILITY.

There was no intention at first, as has been shown, of laying the question of infallibility before the council. It happened, however, that a great clamor, in regard to this question, came to prevail both within and without the Church. The enemies of the doctrine railed so strongly against it, and they who did not deny it declaimed so loudly against the opportuneness of pronouncing any decision concerning it, that it was positively forced upon the attention of the assembled Fathers. When, therefore, they came to discuss the primacy and the temporalities of the Sovereign Pontiff in connection with the Church of Christ, they hesitated not to consider, at the same time, his immunity from error when speaking, as Head of the Church and successor of Saint Peter, ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals. The learning of theologians and the ability of orators were brought into requisition, and the fact came prominently out that it had been according to the mind of the [pg 342] Church at all times, that the Pope, the successor of St. Peter, is divinely assisted when pronouncing solemnly ex cathedra on questions of faith and morals. When so pronouncing, the decisions of the Supreme Pastor have always been accepted by the Church, whether dispersed or assembled in council. It is a received belief among Christians that to every legitimate office is attached a grace of vocation. Is it not, therefore, in accordance with reason and Christian faith, that such grace should belong, and specially to the highest and most important of all offices? Such grace or assistance was promised to St. Peter, and through him to his successors, who are appointed to bear witness throughout all time to the truths of Divine revelation. For our blessed Lord declared, “I am with you all days.” He could not better have secured the permanence of his religion—the kingdom of God on earth, for the salvation of men in every age of the world. When the Supreme Pastor speaks in the exercise of his sublime office, the Church also speaks. The teaching and testimony of the Head of the Church and of the great body of the Church are identical. They must always be in harmony, as was so admirably shown by the decision of the council on infallibility and the confirmation thereof by the Holy Father—confirma fratres tuous—“confirm thy brethren.” Let not the opponents of the Church and her salutary doctrines be carried away by the idea that a subservient council wished only to glorify their spiritual Chief by ascribing to him imaginary personal gifts. They were incapable of any such thing. They were an assembly of the most venerable men in Christendom, who felt all the weight of their responsibility to God and men in the exercise of their sacred functions. Their decision has not altered the position of the Supreme Pastor. Any writings or discourses which he may produce in his merely personal or more private capacity are received by the Christian world with that degree of consideration to which they are entitled on account of the estimation in which he is held by men as a theologian and a man of learning and ability. It is only when pronouncing solemnly ex [pg 343] cathedra, as the successor of St. Peter and the Head of the Church, on questions of faith and morals, that he is universally believed to be divinely assisted so as to be above the danger of erring, or of leading into error—in other words (and we cannot help who may be offended), that he is infallible.

FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR—WITHDRAWAL OF THE FRENCH GARRISON FROM ROME—ADJOURNMENT OF THE COUNCIL.

Events were now at hand which made it impossible for the council to hold another session. The French Emperor had greatly fallen, in the estimation of the people of France, from the time of his shameful abandonment of the chivalrous Maximilian and the popular design of establishing a Latin empire on the continent of America. In order to make amends and regain his prestige, he had revived the idea, so dear to the French, of rectifying the Rhine frontier of France by resuming possession of Luxembourg and some other adjacent provinces. He formally intimated his design to Prussia. That Power, however, aware of its rights and conscious of its military superiority, declined all negotiation on the subject. From that moment Prussia held herself in readiness to repel, with the sword, if necessary, any insolence that, in the future, might proceed from her aggressive neighbor, for whose tottering throne war was a necessity. The candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern for the throne of Spain now afforded a pretext, which Napoleon III. was only too anxious to find, for provoking by a fresh insult his powerful rival. It may be that he dreaded the accession of strength which might eventually accrue to Prussia if the crown of Spain were placed on the head of a Prince of the house of Hohenzollern. Napoleon remonstrated, and threatened war. The youthful German prince generously renounced a candidature which it was not hard to see would lead to a rupture between the two Powers, and cause a destructive war. The King of Prussia, head of the Hohenzollerns, sanctioned, if he did not command, this act of moderation on the part of the prince, his relative. But moderation [pg 344] was of no avail. Napoleon, surrounded by a Jacobinical ministry, insisted upon war. The very idea of proposing a German for the throne of Spain appeared to him to be a sufficient cause for issuing a declaration of hostilities. The gauntlet thus thrown down, the Prussian monarch was too chivalrous to decline the challenge. He relied on his great military strength, and could afford to despise the comparatively inferior preparations of the French Empire. With the vast resources of France at his command, the Emperor, one would suppose, might have managed, in the course of three years, to increase and discipline his army, garrison his fortresses and seek alliances. He might have taken more time if necessary. He had no need to precipitate events, as he so recklessly did, by declaring war when there was positively no preparation made for it. We shall presently see whether he were not one of those whom Providence deprives of reason when it has resolved on their destruction. In the absence of more effective preparations, the small garrison at Rome of five thousand men was withdrawn in order to augment the army which all France believed was destined to crush the formidable Teuton and capture Berlin. If, however, this had been Napoleon's only object in recalling the troops, he could have accomplished it as easily by ordering four thousand five hundred of the Roman garrison to join the invading army, leaving the remaining five hundred to guard the city of the Popes. This smaller number would surely have been as able as five thousand to repel a Piedmontese force of sixty thousand men. But there was question of more than mere physical power. So long as it was evident that France protected the Papal city, whether by a greater or smaller number of soldiers, the legions of Piedmont never would have marched against it. Napoleon's minister, M. de Gramont, revealed the pretext: “It is certainly not from strategetical necessity that we evacuate the Roman States, but the political urgency is obvious. We must conciliate the good-will of the Italian Cabinet.” Much, indeed, it availed them.

Viterbo was evacuated on the 4th of August. The last remnant of French troops embarked at Civita Vecchia, partly on the 4th and partly on the 6th, the very days on which the French army experienced its first reverses at Weissemberg, Wœrth and Spikeren. Instead of hesitating to perform a most cowardly act, which, viewing it only politically, proclaimed his weakness to all Europe, the Emperor Napoleon made all haste to complete it. He expressed regret. Who will say that he was sincere? Had he not perfected the master-work of his reign—his grand transalpine scheme? The Piedmontese minister, Visconti Venosta, gives a very distinct reply. Writing to the Piedmontese representatives at foreign courts, this minister says that as several governments had desired to know their views in regard to the relation of passing events with the Roman question, his government had no hesitation in making the clearest explanations. The convention of 15th September, 1864, had not sufficed to avert the causes arising abroad which hindered the settlement of the Roman difficulty. He then accuses the Roman Court of having assumed a hostile attitude in the centre of the peninsula, and that the consequences of such a position might be serious for Piedmont on occasion of the Franco-Prussian war and the complications to which it might give rise. Visconti Venosta further states that the basis of a new and definite solution of the Roman question had been confidentially recognized in principle, and was subject only to the condition of opportunity.

It is no pleasure, surely, to convict the late Emperor of a deep-laid conspiracy to revolutionize the Roman State, and rob the Holy Father of his time-honored patrimony. But there is no escaping the conclusion that he had never ceased to plot with the revolutionists. He was not yet vanquished and fallen himself when he left the Sovereign Pontiff to his enemies.

One of the chief calumnies of the time was directed by the revolutionists against Pius IX. They accused the venerable Pontiff of encouraging the Prussian monarch to wage war [pg 346] against France. The falsehood of this accusation can only be equalled by its absurdity. The Holy Father, on the contrary, earnestly endeavored, although in vain, before the commencement of hostilities, to avert the dire calamity of war. So early as 22nd July, 1870, he interposed between the two rival sovereigns. “Sire,” he wrote to the King of Prussia, “in the most serious circumstances in which we are placed, it will appear to you unusual to receive a letter from me. But as I hold the office of Vicar of the God of peace in this world, I cannot do less than offer you my mediation. It is my desire that all preparations for war should disappear, and that the evils which inevitably follow should be prevented. My mediation is that of a sovereign who, in his capacity of king, cannot, on account of the smallness of his territory, excite any jealousy, but who, nevertheless, will inspire confidence by the moral and religious influence which he personifies. May God hear my prayers! and may He also accept those which I offer for your Majesty, with whom I desire to be united in the common bond of charity.

Pius PP. IX.”