Austria has now announced by her ambassador, Count Trautmansdorff, that the Government will not allow decrees in contradiction with the Constitution to be promulgated in the country. This threat will produce little effect, for all the doctrinal decrees have full force throughout the whole Church from the mere fact of being promulgated at the Council; only the disciplinary regulations require to be promulgated in the various countries and dioceses. Thus the Council of Trent has never been promulgated in France, notwithstanding all the endeavours of the Curia, but the dogmatic decrees have always been in full force there as elsewhere.
Twenty-Third Letter.
Rome, Feb. 16, 1870.—The order of business is now to be altered, which means that an end is to be put to the speeches. The Bishops are to hand in their views, scruples and suggestions in writing to the Commission for revising motions, which will use its own discretion as to noticing or leaving unnoticed the proposals made with a view to their being submitted to the Council. There will then, in place of a discussion, be a mere voting, which individuals may give their reasons for, if they have previously stated the particular point they wish to speak on and obtained leave for it. And in the new order of business, the Pope's right to make and promulgate decrees on faith with a mere majority is said to be emphatically laid down. When this and the anticipated and dreaded Schema “On the Pope” are promulgated, we shall see what attitude the Bishops will assume towards them. Both are now suspended like [pg 277] two swords over the heads of the Fathers. All at last depends on whether the Opposition remains compact, or crumbles to pieces under the efforts of the curialists.
If the general war required by the principles of the new Schema against modern systems and governments, which conflict in numberless cases with the laws of the Church, is to be undertaken, the question arises, Where is the army to carry it on, and what weapons are to be employed? No doubt the trumpeters of the army are ready at hand, viz., the Jesuits of the Civiltà and the monastery of Laach, but it seems a doubtful look-out about soldiers. The Jesuits, indeed, command at present a considerable number of distinguished and wealthy females, but that will not go far in the great contest against laws, parliaments and governments. The Pope himself must principally supply the arms, which can only be the old ones of excommunication, interdict and processes of the Inquisition. Excommunication was formerly very effective, when the excommunicated could be proceeded against as heretics after a twelve-month, but that is no longer feasible. Interdict, too, is become a blunted instrument, which no Pope has ventured to make use of since Paul v. succumbed in his battle with Venice. The Inquisition only survives now [pg 278] for the 700,000 souls of the present States of the Church. That drastic means of giving up refractory populations en masse to slavery and spoliation, as applied by Clement v., Nicolas v., Julius ii., and Paul iii., cannot easily be adopted now. So they will be content for the time with establishing the principle, and must await more favourable circumstances for realizing it. But the Bishops are between two fires: they are discredited with Rome, because they must continue to acknowledge the civil laws, which are in fact condemned; they are exposed with their Governments and people to the constant suspicion of being on the watch for some political complication to secure the triumph, at least in particular cases, of the ecclesiastical principles recognised as valid at Rome—in other words, the Decretals—over the laws of the State.
It seemed to me important to ascertain more precisely the attitude of the Dominicans—who are still a powerful corporation, through their possessing such influential offices as the Inquisition, Index, Mastership of the Sacred Palace, etc.—towards Infallibilism. They have always been the standing rivals and opponents of the Jesuits, and before 1773 were often able to resist them successfully. Now, of course, everywhere out of [pg 279] Rome, they are out-flanked and repressed by the Jesuits, while in Rome they have no influence with the Pope. Yet they too are all decided Infallibilists, and that because of their great theologian, Thomas Aquinas. That he himself became implicated in this notion only through means of the forgeries in Gratian, and of another great fabrication, with spurious passages of the Fathers, specially devised for his own benefit, they neither know, nor are willing to believe when told of it. They say they have once sworn to the doctrine of St. Thomas, and must therefore adhere to the Infallibilist doctrine introduced by him into the schools, to avoid perjury.[55]
A certain feeling of discouragement betrays itself among many Infallibilists, and there is much in the occurrences of the last few weeks to account for it. Thus the Archbishop of Milan, whose diocese nearly equals in extent the whole States of the Church, has received an address from his clergy and people expressing agreement with his work against the dogma, which has greatly rejoiced him. And the news of the state of [pg 280] feeling in Germany is disheartening. Golden results had been reckoned on from the efforts of the Jesuits and their pupils there for the last twenty years. It was supposed here that a very considerable number of people beyond the Alps must be inspired with zeal for Papal Infallibility. When the impulse given by Döllinger evoked so many and such weighty expressions of opinion on the other side, it was confidently expected in Rome that a strong popular demonstration in favour of the dogma would burst out, like a mighty hurricane, from every district in Germany, as the 800 Jesuits at work there would easily be able to bring that to pass. But now it is evident that no single man of influence in the whole country will make himself responsible by name for this opinion, and that all who are eminent for authority and knowledge—especially historians and theologians—protest against the proposed new dogma. Even the Jesuit Catechism has not been able to effect everything in this respect. Can a new dogma be fabricated for Spaniards, Italians and South Americans exclusively? And even in North Italy an opposition is being manifested. It is a questionable policy to show to the German people so openly the gulf between their religious thoughts and desires and those of the [pg 281] Latin nations, and even to widen that gulf. And in what position would the episcopal signataries of the Fulda Pastoral find themselves, after giving such an explicit assurance to Catholic Germany, “that the Council would establish no new or different dogmas from those already written by faith on the hearts and consciences of all German Catholics”? The faith and conscience of the German Catholics, both theologians and laity, have now spoken loudly and unequivocally enough. And it is utterly impossible for a German Bishop to return home from the Council with the new dogma ready-made in his hand, and say to his flock, like St. Paul, “Ye foolish Germans, who hath bewitched you?” “You don't know yourselves what you have hitherto held in your faith and conscience. See, here is the true bread for your souls, just brought fresh from the bake-house of the Council. This is what you ought long ago to have believed; be converted, and confess that to be white which you have thought was black, and that to be a divine truth which you have taken for an invention of man.” It cannot be presumed that a Bishop would willingly contemplate exposing himself to the ridicule of all Germany.
The rumour of a speedy prorogation of the Council [pg 282] is constantly growing more definite. As this depends on one capricious will, it is quite possible in itself. But some striking result would have first to be attained, some conspicuous act accomplished by the Council; or else the fraud would be too glaring, the nakedness of the land too strikingly exhibited to the whole world. To the question, why ten precious weeks had been idly wasted without a single decree being achieved, the only answer would be, that the desire to deprive the Council of all independent action had led to the machine being cramped and fettered till it was brought to a standstill altogether. In accordance with the advice of the Jesuits the whole Council had in fact been pre-arranged, and nothing was to be left to the Fathers on their arrival at Rome but to affirm the thoughts and formulate the decrees suggested by others. The Schemata prepared shall be read one after the other, and the Fathers shall say Placet, and to prevent their having any temptation to criticise and mangle and curiously dissect and combat the motions laid before them, the Sessions shall be held in a Hall where the speeches cannot be heard, and all discussion is impossible. That was the programme; the result has proved that the Court had judged rightly of about 500 out of the 700 members, [pg 283] but had deceived itself as to the remaining 200. Veuillot, who communicates the correct views about the Council daily to the French, has declared that it was right to deprive the Bishops of the freedom of evil (qu'il ne fallait pas laisser aux Évêques la liberté du mal). This beneficent care for the health of the Bishops' souls has however been extended a little too far. Many of them are so ungrateful as to think they are treated too much like automatons, and that with the “liberté du mal” they have also been deprived of the “liberté du bien.” The Roman lists of names from which the Commissions had to be chosen are not forgotten. The right of proposing motions has been made illusory by the composition of the Commission appointed for examining them, and the arrangement for making the permission to bring them forward dependent on the pleasure of the Pope. And thus great uneasiness, not to say exasperation, prevails among the 200 Bishops. And on the other hand, the Pope has been for several weeks past in a chronic state of mingled indignation and astonishment at finding so many Bishops—even at Rome, in his own immediate neighbourhood—daring to think and say the contrary to what he, Pius ix., thinks and says.
This rebellion of thought has not indeed yet been directly and openly manifested in the Council Hall. But when the Schema de Ecclesiâ, and with it Infallibility, really come to be discussed, then even within the sacred precincts of St. Peter's, and close to the Tomb of the Apostles—which the Pope had assured himself would inspire very different thoughts into the Bishops' heads—bold utterances of contradiction will be heard, and will resound throughout Europe, for “publicity discloses the Acheron of the Council.” The expected and decisive sealing up of 3000 mouths is at an end once for all, and even that most correct and devoted of Romanists, Veuillot, has declared in his Univers that such a silence of the grave is impossible, especially for the French, and has accordingly blurted out such of the secrets of the Hall as seemed to him desirable without scruple. Nor have the authorities taken it at all ill of him. But to hear Bishops publicly in Council, and in the hearing of the Papal Legates, proclaiming views diametrically opposed to those of the Pope—and that, too, in a question so fundamental and so completely dominating the whole future life of the Church—would be a scandal which must be averted even at the heaviest cost. Some time before the Indiction [pg 285] of the Council, in 1866, Pius himself formally asserted, in the most significant terms, and in presence of a numerous assemblage of foreigners who had come to offer him their homage, his true attitude towards the world and the Bishops, whether assembled or dispersed. He spoke in French, and in words carefully prepared beforehand, and I give the speech precisely as it was reported, with the reporters' names subscribed, in the Monde, the Union, and the Observateur Catholique of April 1, 1866, p. 357:—“Seul, malgré mon indignité, je suis le successeur des apôtres, le vicaire de Jésus Christ; seul, j'ai la mission de conduire et de diriger la barque de Pierre, je suis la voie, la vérité, et la vie. Il faut bien qu'on le sache, afin de ne pas se laisser tromper et aventurer par la parole de gens qui se disent Catholiques, mais qui veulent et enseignent tout autre chose que ce que veut et enseigne l'Église.”