Cantù has hit on the sore place there; for it is precisely their having pointed out the long line of numerous and systematic forgeries, on which the [pg 307] Roman claims of Infallibility are based, and which are used to further other aims of the Italians, that is the main ground of the hatred of the Germans. And now Frenchmen too, like Gratry, come forward and publish these facts over land and sea in their cosmopolitan tongue and clear incisive style.
To return to what preceded the publication of the new order of business; in the last sittings of the Council coming events threw their shadows before. The Bishops of Carcassonne and Belley declared roundly that Infallibility must be proclaimed, and in order, said the latter, to restore the menaced or broken unity of the Church. The impatience and vexation of the authorities are constantly on the increase. Manning said there was only one way of stopping the definition, and that was to cut the throats of half the 500 Bishops of the majority. Of course the Prelates who heard him cried out, like the Emperor Charles V. at the Diet of Augsburg, when Count George of Brandenburg wanted to cut off heads for another doctrine, “No heads off! no heads off!” At the last sitting on the Schema de Catechismo, on the 22d, a scene occurred which presages what is to become the regular practice. The Bishop of Namur had said, in reference to some previous attacks [pg 308] on the Breviary, that no one who spoke against it could be a good Christian. For the information of your readers I must premise a few words here. The Breviary is a collection of prayers and lections for the clergy, introduced by Rome, consisting chiefly of psalms and passages from the Bible and the Lives of the Saints.[58] The Curia has used this, like so many other things, as an instrumentum dominationis, and a number of fables and forgeries devised in the interest of the Papal system have been interpolated into it. The French Church had long since adopted the precaution of employing a Breviary of her own, much better and purer than the Roman. It was against observations made about this in the Council that the harsh comment of the Bishop of Namur was directed.
Twenty-Sixth Letter.
Rome, Feb. 28, 1870.—Our last letter closed with an account of a scene in the Session of February 22, occasioned by some attacks on the Roman Breviary. The Bishop of Namur had maintained that no one who attacked it could be a good Christian.
Haynald was one of those who had censured the present condition of the Breviary, and he now replied to Bishop Gravez that in criticising it he had the Fathers of Trent and the Popes themselves for accomplices (complices). A tempest broke out at these words. But Haynald went further and said, with reference to Bishop Langalerie of Belley, that the majority, with their proposals for new dogmas, were the cause of the disunion which had broken out in the Church, and that it would be much better for the heads of the Church to confine themselves to preserving the ancient doctrines in their purity, instead of adding new [pg 310] ones. The Church had succeeded very well with the old doctrines. At this first open attack in Council on the Infallibilist project the storm grew fiercer, and Capalti seized the bell of the President, De Angelis, rung it violently and forbade the speaker to proceed. “Taceas et ab ambone descendas,” he exclaimed. When Haynald went on all the same, a wild cry broke from the majority. The Archbishop of Calocsa at last came down, and so great was the excitement that the sitting was closed and the next postponed to March 2.
Meanwhile more attention and care than before has been devoted in Paris to what is going on at Rome. The Emperor and his present ministers understand the gravity of the situation; they know what would be meant by such journals as the Monde and the Univers daily appealing to infallible Papal decisions, and under their authority calling in question every institution and law of France, and proving beforehand to their readers that there is no obligation in conscience to submit to them, because the Pope has directly or indirectly signified his disapproval. Archbishop Lavigerie of Algiers brought back word to Cardinal Antonelli, on returning to Rome from his mission, that France was in no condition to tolerate the definition of Infallibility, [pg 311] which might lead to a schism, since not only the whole body of State-officers, but the writers, and even the Faubourg St. Germain, were opposed to the new dogma. Antonelli is not apt to be much influenced by such representations, which he views as mere idle threats; he is spoilt by the courtly flatteries of the ever obsequious M. de Banneville, whom he has managed completely to disarm. He has three devices of domestic diplomacy by which he knows how to make excellent use of both Banneville and Trautmansdorff. At one time he says, “It is not we—Pius, the Curia and I—who want the dogma, but the foreign Bishops, and we should be encroaching on the freedom of the Council by impeding them. And we ought not to subject ourselves to that reproach.” Then, for a variety, he adopts another line. “The Pope,” he says, “has all he wants already, and the dogma of Infallibility would not give him anything more. As it is, and with a Council assembled, all the decrees emanate from him and receive from him their validity, and he can summon or dissolve the Council at his pleasure, so that it only exists by his will and would crumble into dust without him. It is therefore the interest of the Bishops, not ours, that is in question here, and they will know well why [pg 312] the dogma is so valuable to them.” His third formula is, “Every good Christian believes the doctrine already, and therefore little or nothing will be changed in the Church by defining it, and we have not the least desire to use the new decree for calling in question the existing compacts and Concordats. We shall gladly leave alone the concessions we have already granted.” These resources of the Cardinal have hitherto sufficed. But new powers and demands seem to be coming to the front, which his diplomatic counters will no longer satisfy. I have copies of two letters of Count Daru, of January 18 and February 5. These official expressions of opinion from Paris have made the Civiltà Jesuits bitterly angry, and their famous article on the Policastri, in its original form, contained a violent attack on the French statesmen, who were classed with the other ministers and diplomats in such ill repute at Rome. But this roused the alarm of the supreme authority, and so the Jesuits had to eat their own words, and to substitute for their attack a high commendation of Count Daru and the loyalty of France to the Concordat. There is some good in having the articles of the Civiltà regularly revised in the Vatican. I understand that it is intended at Paris to send a special ambassador to Rome to the Council.
Meanwhile the Bishops of the minority are consulting how they shall deal with the new order of business. It was announced to the Fathers at the Session of February 22 that, in accordance with these new regulations, they must hand in all their observations on the first ten chapters of the Schema de Ecclesiâ in writing within ten days.
Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore has not receded from his ludicrous notion that his Infallibilist formula is milder and more tolerable than that of the 400. He has laid it before the thirty-five French Bishops (of the minority), who have unanimously rejected it. Its essence consists, as was mentioned before, in asserting that everybody must receive with unconditional inward assent every Papal decision on every question of faith or morals or Church life. On all theological principles such faith can only be accorded in cases where all possibility of error is excluded, or, in other words, where a revealed truth is concerned; and therefore to accept this formula would be to set aside the limitation of Papal Infallibility, hitherto recognised even in Rome, to decisions pronounced ex cathedrâ. And thus, in the crush and confusion of the innumerable and often contradictory decisions of Popes, theology would degenerate [pg 314] into a lamentable caricature of a system—“science” it could no longer be termed—involved in hopeless contradictions. If the good Spalding had the slightest acquaintance with Church history, he would know that he was bound, in virtue of his inward assent paid to all Papal decrees, first of all to reject his own orders as invalid.[59]