Sixty-Ninth Letter.
Rome, July 19, 1870.—On the evening of the 15th a deputation of the Bishops of the minority waited on the Pope, consisting of Simor, Primate of Hungary, Archbishops Ginoulhiac, Darboy and Scherr (of Munich), Ketteler and Rivet, Bishop of Dijon. After waiting an hour they were admitted at 9 o'clock in the evening. What they tried to obtain was in fact much less than the Opposition had hitherto aimed at: they only asked for the withdrawal of the addition to the third chapter, which assigns to the Pope the exclusive possession of all ecclesiastical powers, and the insertion in the fourth chapter of a clause limiting his infallibility to those decisions which he pronounces “innixus testimonio Ecclesiarum.” Pius gave an answer which will sound in Germany like a maliciously invented fable,—“Je ferai mon possible, mes chers fils, mais je n'ai pas encore lu le Schéma; je ne sais pas ce qu'il [pg 801] contient.” And he then requested Darboy, who had acted as spokesman, to give him the petition of the minority in writing. He promised to do so, and added, not without irony, that he would take the liberty of sending with it to his Holiness the Schema, which the Deputation on Faith and the Legates had with such culpable levity omitted to lay before him, when it wanted only two days to the promulgation of the dogma, thereby exposing him to the peril of having to proclaim a decree he was ignorant of. This Darboy did, and in a second letter to the Deputation severely censured their negligence in not even having communicated the Schema to the chief personage, the Pope.
Pius added further, whether ironically or in earnest I know not, that if only the minority would increase their 88 votes to 100, he would see what could be done. He concluded by assuring them it was notorious that the whole Church had always taught the unconditional infallibility of the Pope. Bishop Ketteler then came forward, flung himself on his knees before the Pope, and entreated for several minutes that the Father of the Catholic world would make some concession to restore peace and her lost unity to the Church and the episcopate. It was a peculiar [pg 802] spectacle to witness these two men, of kindred and yet widely diverse nature, in such an attitude, the one prostrate on the ground before the other. Pius is “totus teres atque rotundus,” firm and immoveable, smooth and hard as marble, infinitely self-satisfied intellectually, mindless and ignorant, without any understanding of the mental conditions and needs of mankind, without any notion of the character of foreign nations, but as credulous as a nun, and above all penetrated through and through with reverence for his own person as the organ of the Holy Ghost, and therefore an absolutist from head to heel, and filled with the thought, “I and none beside me.” He knows and believes that the holy Virgin, with whom he is on the most intimate terms, will indemnify him for the loss of land and subjects by means of the infallibility doctrine and the restoration of the papal dominion over states and peoples as well as over Churches. He also believes firmly in the miraculous emanations from the sepulchre of St. Peter. At the feet of this man the German Bishop flung himself, “ipso Papâ papalior,” a zealot for the ideal greatness and unapproachable dignity of the Papacy, and at the same time inspired by the aristocratic feeling of a Westphalian nobleman and [pg 803] the hierarchical self-consciousness of a Bishop and successor of the ancient chancellor of the Empire, while yet he is surrounded by the intellectual atmosphere of Germany, and with all his firmness of belief is sickly with the pallor of thought, and inwardly struggling with the terrible misgiving that after all historical facts are right, and that the ship of the Curia, though for the moment it proudly rides the waves with its sails swelled by a favourable wind, will be wrecked on that rock at last.
The prostration of the Bishop of Mayence seemed to make some impression on Pius. He dismissed the deputation in a hopeful temper. It was of short duration. For directly the report got about that the Pope was yielding, Manning and Senestrey (de grands effets par de petites causes) went to the Pope and assured him that all was now ripe, and the great majority enthusiastically set on the most absolute and uncompromising form of the infallibilist theory, and at the same time frightened him by the warning that, if he made any concession, he would be disgraced in history as a second Honorius. That was enough to stifle any thought of moderation that might have been awakened in his soul.
The sitting of July 16 was held to consider the proposals of those who had voted juxta modum. The Legates had promised to pay as much consideration as was possible to their wishes, and they redeemed their pledge by striking out one passage and inserting another. The majority decided, on the motion of certain Spaniards, which was adopted by the Deputation on Faith, to strike out the words at the opening of the fourth chapter, saying the Pope will define nothing “nisi quod antiquitus tenet cum cæteris Ecclesiis Apostolica Sedes.” This was felt to impose too narrow limits on the Pope's infallibility and arbitrary power of defining. And as the minority had the day before expressed to the Pope their special desire that the consent of the Church should be laid down as a requisite condition of doctrinal definitions, it was now resolved, in direct contradiction to their wishes, again on the motion of Spanish Bishops, not only to leave the words “definitiones Pontificis ex sese seu per sese esse irreformabiles,” but to add to them “non autem ex consensu Ecclesiæ.” And thus the infallibilist decree, as it is now to be received under anathema by the Catholic world, is an eminently Spanish production, as is fitting for a doctrine which was born and reared under the shadow of the Inquisition.
In the last sitting of the Congregation three Bishops of the Deputation on Faith spoke, the Neapolitan D'Avanzo, Bishop of Calvi and Teano, Zinelli, Bishop of Rovigo, the author of the notorious addition to the third chapter of the third canon, and Gasser, Bishop of Brixen. D'Avanzo was jocose: “As,” said he, “the angel bade the Apostle John swallow a book, telling him it would make his belly bitter but taste sweet as honey in his mouth, so must we Bishops swallow this infallibilist Schema, and I have done so already. It will no doubt give many of us a stomach-ache, but we must act as if we had honey in our mouths.” Gasser, who as a speaker is “se ipse amans sine rivali,” to quote Cicero's saying about Pompey, made a speech of endless length, exhausting the patience of his hearers; but there was some gold mixed with all this dross. Such was his declaration that Councils had hitherto been useful only for people of unsound faith, who did not chose to believe the Pope's ipse dixit, which every good Christian had always believed. But now “quid credendum sit unice ab arbitrio Pontificis in posterum dependebit.” On this a well-known Hungarian Bishop could not refrain from observing to his neighbour, “Si etiam infallibilitas Pontificis contenta esset in Sacrâ Scripturâ [pg 806] magis compromitti non posset quam hoc levissimo ac ineptissimo sermone, quo auditores ex integro jam lassos ad vomitum movit et martyres reddidit.”
An amusing scene occurred at the close of this sitting, the last attended by the Bishops of the minority. A printed address was read out and distributed to the Fathers, in which the Legates complained in the strongest language of certain works describing the course of the Council. Two were named and characterized as “calumnious,” both published at Paris. The one, by Gaillard, was Ce qui se passe au Concile; the other was by a man distinguished alike for intellect, eloquence and learning, a member of the Council, who has had almost unique opportunities of seeing through the whole business. It is the work I have before mentioned, La Dernière Heure du Concile, in which the personal intervention of the Pope and the pressure brought to bear by him are forcibly depicted in strict accordance with truth. This pamphlet had already created a great sensation, and when the Legates called on the Bishops to join them in condemning it, the Italians and Spaniards, who—being for the most part ignorant of French—had not read it, immediately shouted out “Nos condemnamus.” “We do not,” cried the Bishops of the minority. Two copies of [pg 807] the address were then handed to each of them, one of which they were ordered to return with their names subscribed. The result was not successful; Haynald told the Legates, in the name of the Hungarian Bishops, that they had better first translate La Dernière Heure into Latin, and then he and his colleagues would see whether it was really as bad as the Cardinals maintained.
All the Bishops from South and Central Italy who could be whipped up, or who had previously obtained leave of absence on account of illness or age, were peremptorily recalled for the Solemn Session of July 18. Of the Cardinals, Hohenlohe was absent. The rest appeared, including Antonelli, but only three, Patrizzi, Bonaparte and Pambianco, threw a certain spontaneity and energy of voice and manner into their Placet by standing up to deliver it. Guidi was the one most observed; he sat there with an oppressed and abstracted air, and his scarcely audible Placet escaped with difficulty from his lips. The two negative voters were Bishops Riccio of Cajazzo and Fitzgerald of Little Rock. When the Monsignore who was repeating the names and votes had credited one of them with a Placet out of his own head, the Bishop shouted in a stentorian voice, “No; Non placet!”