The Petition for the new Marian dogma had 300 signatures on January 31. In managing such affairs the Jesuits are unrivalled, for the Order is like a great actor, such as Garrick, e.g., whose every limb from top to toe moves, speaks, and conspires to express the same idea. Then they have an Infallibilist Petition from the East, the only one known to have been got [pg 218] up; that is to say, they made the Maronite boys and youths of their educational establishment sign the Petition they had drawn up.
As I now hear, the majority, on January 25, resolved to let their Address and Petition drop, if the minority will accept Spalding's proposed addition to the third Schema. They are indeed very magnanimous, for that addition, as was observed just now, goes much further and stands to the Address somewhat as Dido's ox-hide cut up into thongs to the hide before it was cut: it will embrace whole countries and cities. Spalding desires too to have the Index placed completely under the shield of Papal Infallibility, and therefore the opinion that the Pope can have made any mistake about the sense of a book is to be condemned. Next day, the Petition of the minority, who knew nothing of the decision of the other party, was presented to the Pope and rejected by him. The Infallibilists appear to have spread the report that their Address had been actually given in simply for the purpose of catching their opponents in a trap.
On Sunday, January 23, the Commission named by the Pope for examining motions proposed held its first [pg 219] sitting, under the presidency of Cardinal Patrizzi and not of the Pope himself, as was thought—seven weeks after the Council met and when a number of motions had long been awaiting its scrutiny. This delay had evidently been designed. It has now been resolved to arrange and examine proposals, not according to subjects but nations, so that the proposals of the French, Germans, etc., will be separately discussed and decided upon.
Cardinal Rauscher has written, or got written, a treatise on the Infallibility question in German, which is now being translated into Latin, and which does not merely oppose the dogma as inopportune, but attacks the whole principle and, as I am assured, on fundamental grounds. But it cannot be printed here, where the Roman censorship is constantly growing stricter. It will be printed in Vienna, and copies will then have to be sent here under cover to the Austrian Embassy. To the representations of the German and French Bishops against the oppressiveness and injustice to the minority of the order of business, the Pope has not seen fit to make any reply. Væ victis! Woe to them who do not belong to the faithful and devoted majority! This is what resounds here, morning, noon and night. [pg 220] Meanwhile the Papal Committee of the Council has devised a new means for paralysing the minority, and cutting short discussions which might easily become inconvenient. It is directed that all objections or proposals for modifications of the Schemata are first to be handed over in writing to the Presidents and referred by them to the Commission de Fide, which rejects or admits them at its pleasure. If the authors of the proposals appeal against the decision of the Commission, the whole Council decides, of course by simple majority of votes. If this arrangement were really to be introduced, the minority—i.e., the German and French Bishops—would be deprived of all possibility of exerting any influence on the composition of the decrees or warding off any decree they considered injurious; they would always be outvoted, and the Council would more and more take the form of a mere machine for outvoting them. The Bishops would soon learn to spare themselves the useless trouble of proposing changes, and a much closer approach would be effected to the great object of making new articles of faith and decrees by a mere majority of votes. The only question is what the French and Germans intend to put up [pg 221] with from the Italians and Spaniards, for it is clear that here again the question of nationalities turns up in the background, and the Brennus sword of the Southern and Latin majority is always ready to be thrown into the scale.
Eighteenth Letter.
Rome, Feb. 6.—The report of the dissolution or prorogation of the Council gains in strength. Manning has found it important enough to have it contradicted in his journal, the Tablet. He writes, or makes somebody write, “The Holy Father is full of strength and confidence, and has no intention of proroguing the Council, as his enemies say.” As far as the Pope is concerned, I hold the statement to be true. Pius is still absolutely confident of success and firmly convinced of two things—first, of his divine, legitimate and irresistible fulness of power, which requires that a conspicuous example, memorable for all future ages, shall be made of the Bishops who oppose him; secondly, of the special protecting grace and guidance accorded to the Council by the Holy Virgin, on whose benevolence he notoriously maintains that he has very special [pg 223] claims. He has issued an Indulgence for the whole Church, which gives us some insight into his connection of ideas and religious views. In the Bull of December 1869, he says that the Dominican General, Jandel, has represented to him that the new method of prayer, consisting of 150 repetitions of the “Hail, Mary,” was first introduced at the time the grand crusade against the Albigenses was organized. But our own age is infected with so many monstrous errors that this new method of prayer should be employed now also, in order that under the mighty protection of the Mother of God the Council may destroy these monsters. Whoever, therefore, after confession and communion, recites the Rosary daily for a week, for the Pope's intention and for the happy termination of the Council, may gain a plenary indulgence of all his sins, applicable also to the dead. The Pope adds that even when a child, and far more as Pope, he has always placed his whole confidence in the Mother of God, and that he firmly believes it to be given to her alone by God to destroy all heresies throughout the world. How this special power of the Holy Virgin consists with the fact that many heresies have now lasted quietly for fourteen centuries, it would be interesting [pg 224] to know. The rest the reader may find himself in the German Pastorals.
Pius has even had his naïve but robust belief in his own heavenly illumination and vocation to proclaim new doctrines sensibly embodied in a picture. In a chamber beyond the Raphael Gallery there is a picture painted by his order; he stands in glorified attitude on a throne proclaiming his favourite dogma of the Immaculate Conception, while the Divine Trinity and the Holy Virgin look down from heaven well pleased upon him, and from the Cross, borne in the arms of an angel, flashes a bright ray on his countenance. Thus Pius stands in a special mystical relation to Mary; she guides and inspires the Council through him, and he in turn will proclaim, with its assent, the decrees she has inspired and which will destroy the monstrous errors of the present day, or will at least give them a fatal blow. Unfortunately, not one single decree has yet been brought out after exactly two months, and all the heresies continue just as strong as before the Council met. And yet the pregnant and successful Councils of the ancient Church did not require a longer time for their decisions; the Council of Nice was finished in two months, the Council of Chalcedon in [pg 225] six weeks. Certainly it was not then supposed that Mary had first to give the Pope, and then he to give the Council, the weapons for destroying heresies: they were content to rely on the Paraclete promised by Christ.
Meanwhile the present assembly has nothing in common with those ancient Synods, except in being composed of persons called Bishops. But our Bishops are unlike those of the ancient Church, for they have to yield up to the Curia three-fourths of the rights possessed by their predecessors, and it would be simply ridiculous to liken the state of tutelage and restraint they are now placed under by the Curia to the free and independent attitude of the fifth-century Councils. The more free-spoken among them have just addressed, on 2d February, another Petition to the Pope, requesting that the so-called Council Hall in St. Peter's may be exchanged for a more suitable chamber; for now that serious discussions on the dogmas and decrees are to begin—and the third Schema will be met with strong and persevering opposition in many of its articles—the present arrangement becomes still more intolerable than before. Any regular discussion is simply impossible in the present Council Hall; there is no doubt of that. “That is just right,” say the Papal [pg 226] officials; “we neither desire nor need discussion, but simply that the propositions should be voted.” “But this is an unheard-of thing, against all conciliar usage and all natural right,” reply the Bishops. Archbishop Darboy said, “We are called on to anathematize doctrines and persons; to pass sentences of spiritual death. But would any jury in the world pronounce capital sentence without first having heard the defence?” And thus the Council has entered on a very critical period, and a spirit of irritation is becoming visible, increased by the constantly deepening conviction that the Bishops are to be used for purposes alien to their minds and suicidal. One word describes the entire plot—outvoting by majorities. The united German, French and North American Bishops are opposed to a well disciplined army of about 500, who will vote as one man at the beck of the Pope. This army consists of 300 Papal boarders, the 62 Bishops of the Roman States who are doubly subject to him, 68 Neapolitans, 80 of the Spanish race, some 110 titular Bishops without dioceses, the Italian Cardinals, 30 Generals of Orders, etc.[45] In a word, the Latin South is arrayed [pg 227] against the French and German North. And therefore the design of the Curia, to carry decrees or dogmas on every question of Church and State, etc., by a mere calculation of plus and minus, is doubly monstrous and utterly unchurchlike. For, first, it must inevitably produce a deep national irritation, if it is said hereafter in Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, France and the United States, “The Italians and Spaniards have triumphed over our views and interests at Rome, simply because their dioceses are much smaller than ours and they have 50 Bishops for 100,000 souls, while we have only one.” Secondly, it involves a complete break with the past of the Church and the practice of Councils. Some Bishops have examined the official records of the Council of Trent by the Roman historian Pallavicini, and have found there that Pius iv. directed his Legates—and that too with special reference to a decree on the fulness of Papal jurisdiction—to make no decrees the Bishops were not unanimously agreed upon.[46]