Letters From Rome on the Council

by Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger

Thirty-Fifth Letter.

Rome, April 12, 1870.—Veuillot says, in the Univers of April 2, that there are three great “devotions” in Rome, the Holy Sacrament, the holy Virgin, and the Pope. For the moment, and in regard to the Council and all that concerns the Curia, the devotion to the Pope is of course the chief affair. How that devotion may best be erected into the supreme law of religious thought and feeling—how to effect that henceforth, in all questions of the spiritual life, every one shall turn only to Rome and take his orders and look for certainty from thence alone—this is the task the Council has to achieve; all else is subordinate, or is merely the means to an end.

Next to the Jesuits Veuillot is unquestionably the man to whom infallibilism is chiefly indebted; and when it is made a dogma, a grateful posterity must give honourable place to his name among the promulgators of the new article of faith. He is much too [pg 414] modest, when he says his rôle in the Church is only that of the door-keeper who drives out the dogs during divine service. Veuillot is much more to his readers than any Father of the Church. Continual dropping hollows out the stone, and for years past Veuillot has been familiarizing his readers, in numberless articles where the copious verbiage concealed the poverty of thought, with the notion that papal infallibility is the first and greatest of all truths. His journal is read even in Rome in the highest circles, and read by those who read nothing else, except perhaps Margotti's Unità Cattolica.

The Univers is very successful in the business of stirring up the inferior clergy against their bishops in the dioceses of Opposition prelates, and getting them to present addresses in favour of infallibilism. In the number of April 2, e.g., they are directed to get their petitions for the new dogma sent here through the Paris nunciature, and to take particular care that they are printed—“de plus, il importe de les publier.” The Monde has invented a peculiar means of advancing the good cause. It announces that the Freemasons are the people who disseminate writings against papal infallibility, and then intimates to the Italian Bishops the [pg 415] important fact that the minority of the Council are affiliated to Masonic Lodges.

The Unità Cattolica, the organ of Margotti, the Italian Veuillot, has 15,000 subscribers and 100,000 readers, and has more influence than all the 256 Italian Bishops put together. Their pastorals are powerless as compared with this daily paper, and they themselves are divided between their fear of the powerful Margotti and their regard for the judgment of the educated classes. But as most of these last are indifferentists, and give no moral support to a Bishop, the journalists carry the day, who treat every opponent of the pet Roman dogma as Veuillot does.

An Anglican clergyman named Edward Husband, who not long since became a Catholic, has again left the Church, because the dispute about papal infallibility and the extravagant cultus of Mary were too great scandals for him. It is only to the exasperation caused by proceedings at Rome, as an English statesman has written word, that we owe the passing in the House of Commons by a majority of two of a Bill for the civil inspection of Convents, which had always previously been rejected. The minority had done their best to avert it, but were overruled, and Newdegate—a person who [pg 416] was hitherto almost regarded as a joke—triumphed. All reports from England confirm the belief that this is only one symptom of the hostile state of feeling rapidly spreading there. Among English statesmen there is not one, within the memory of man, who has shown such sympathy for Catholics and their Church as Gladstone, as neither have any had so extensive a knowledge of theological and ecclesiastical questions. Yet he too took occasion, during the debate of April 1 on the Irish Education question in the Commons, to speak his mind on the tendencies of the Roman Jesuit party. After quoting an unfavourable comment of his former colleague, Sir George Grey, on the demands of the Irish Bishops, he proceeded to say, with raised voice and in most emphatic tones, amid the “loud cheers” of the House, that “events have occurred and are occurring, in a great religious centre of Europe, of such a character that it is impossible for a statesman to feel himself in nearer proximity with the opinions of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy than he stood four years ago.”[74]

I have already pointed out that, as soon as the new articles of faith are defined, their effects will be manifested in the education question throughout pretty well [pg 417] the whole of Europe. This enrichment of the creed will at once be repaid with losses and humiliations of the Church in the popular schools, and in the whole system of education. In England this is making itself felt already. The agitation for secularizing the schools, the immense majority of which have hitherto been denominational, gains continually in force and range under the influence of the news from Rome. The Daily News, e.g., said that the fact of ultramontanes desiring denominational schools was quite enough to convince Protestants of the superiority of secular and national schools. Yet Manning goes on asserting in the Vatican, that the infallibilist dogma will be the powerful magnet to draw Protestants by thousands into the Church. They are only too glad to believe him.

You know already that the Roman Jesuits have declared it, in the last number of the Civiltà, to be a wicked error to require moral unanimity of the Council for a dogmatic decree. They call it a Gallican heresy to make the consent of the whole Church, or the whole Council, a condition of dogmatic decisions. A simple majority is quite enough, for it is ultimately the will and mind of a single individual, viz., the Pope, wherein resides the whole force and authority of the decision. [pg 418] If he assents to the judgment of a minority of the Bishops, it thereby becomes a law of faith for the whole Christian world; but if the majority is with him, all shadow of doubt vanishes. Whenever a controversy arises, whether in the scattered or assembled Church, it is the Pope's office to settle the difference by his decisive sentence, and to say, “This is truth: whoever believes it belongs to the Church, and whoever believes not, let him be accursed.” Once again it is clear that the Jesuits are of a different mind from the rest of the world. The world supposes that the Pope is to be declared infallible by the Council, and that only then will this infallibility become an universal article of faith. The Jesuits of the Civiltà, on the contrary, think that the Pope—and he alone—is already and ever has been infallible, and that all authority in matters of faith is merely a light streaming forth from him and merging in his authority; the sole ultimate ground on which the Council, whether unanimously or by a majority, can declare the Pope infallible is because it knows that former Popes have held themselves to be infallible, and that the present Pope believes in and “feels” his own infallibility. And thus on the Jesuit theory we have the symbol of eternity, the snake biting [pg 419] its own tail. Why must we regard the Pope as infallible? Because he says so, and every one must believe his word on pain of damnation. Why must we believe his word? Because he is infallible. And why are the Bishops of the whole world summoned to Rome? To bear witness to this logic of the Jesuits and the Curia, much like the compurgators in German law. The Pope affirms, “I am infallible,” and the 700 Bishops affirm that he is a trustworthy witness, and because he says so it is certain. The infallibilist Bishops admit the new theory of the legal force of dogmatic decrees of a majority. They too say, “When the Pope adheres to the majority, the article of faith is already defined, and to reject it is heresy.” They too revolve in the logical circle of the Jesuits. “Infallibility is always on the side taken by the Pope.”

The pretence of impartiality maintained for some time by the Vatican, and under which Antonelli sheltered himself against diplomatic inquiries and warnings, has now been abandoned. The Pope has taken his side in the most emphatic way; he feels and denounces as a personal injury every hesitation about the projected dogma, and his expressions of displeasure [pg 420] grow constantly bitterer, and are sedulously disseminated, so that many Bishops are already terrified or driven into the infallibilist camp by the dread of his biting reproaches, for his words are immediately spread about in their dioceses and pass like a coin from hand to hand. Every work that appears anywhere in favour of his pet dogma is rewarded and sanctioned by a commendatory papal Brief, as being excellent, profoundly learned and conclusive, while the opponents of the dogma are branded in these documents as fools, blind or wicked assailants of what they inwardly know to be the truth. The Univers lately contained three such papal missives on the same day.[75] Meanwhile the opportunity of an allocution is seized for whetting the consciences of the Bishops of the minority, and telling the world how impure are the motives of their opposition, and how virtuous and noble-hearted are the prelates of the majority, the Italians and Spaniards. On March 28, the Osservatore Romano published a speech addressed by Pius to the Oriental prelates and papal vicars of the Latin rite, in which he said, totidem verbis, that in the representative of Christ was renewed [pg 421] what happened to Christ Himself before the tribunal of Pilate. Pilate suffered himself to be terrified by the assurance that, if he delivered Christ, he was no friend of Cæsar, and gave him up through fear of men. And so now, when the principles of eternal life and the rights of the Church and the Papal See are at stake, they are attacked by men who call themselves friends of Cæsar, but are really friends of the Revolution. “Be united,” added the Pope, “with me, and not with the Revolution, and be not misled by the desire for popularity and applause; to me and not to public opinion must your minds be directed (poiche dovete tener rivolte le menti a me e non alla opinione publica). Put no trust in your own lights.” And he concluded, “On the basis of humility we will fight for the kingdom of God, without despairing and without fear of error.”