Rome, May 20, 1870.—The first week of the great debate is drawing to a close. The Archbishops of Vienna, Prague, Gran, Paris, Antioch and Tuam have spoken against the infallibilist definition. So much is gained; the Catholic world knows that it is represented in Council, while the Court party is robbed of some illusions about the strength of the resistance to be looked for. The only fruit of its better knowledge as yet observable is seen in an increased obstinacy and a greater insolence of tone. The Commission has already declared by anticipation, in its reply to the remarks of the Bishops against the dogma, that the denial of infallibility is condemned under pain of censure, and scientific arguments are no longer available. The giving out of this watchword does excellent service to the majority, who are very shy of theological arguments and treat their opponents as heretics. That [pg 545] far-famed courtesy, which has hitherto been an ornament if not exactly a real excellence of Rome, has greatly diminished, and the hypocrisy so long spun out has disappeared; it has become necessary to recognise the broad gulf which divides parties. And this has produced a tendency on the side of the Court and the majority to push their claims to the extremest point, to play for high stakes, and hold out no prospect of concessions beforehand. The minority is in their eyes not a power to be negotiated with but a gang of insolent mutineers to be put down. The mass of the majority have carried their leaders with them, and only passion now prevails in that camp. But the harshness and roughness the Curia has thought it necessary to display has done more to strengthen the Opposition than the changes and concessions already pre-arranged will do to dissolve it. They have been suffered in this way to gain a position which they might never have won if the Curia had exercised more foresight. Whether all the elements of the Opposition will be found reliable, pure in their aims and loyal in their hearts, the future will show. At present I only record the audacious policy of the majority based on cunning calculations, as it has been evinced in the early days of the discussion. But [pg 546] the majority naturally includes men of different minds; there are some who would like to be well rid of the affair, and others who would gladly discover a formula not looking like a positive innovation which might satisfy opponents, while the great mass of them want the blow to be struck so that, after crushing the Opposition within the Council, they may annihilate it without the Council also. These last have the upper hand in the majority, and will probably retain it till the general debate is over and the doctrine itself and its definition come to be discussed. They are led by cool, calculating heads, but consist for the most part of the uneducated and unlearned mass of the episcopate who have no independence, the people who during Strossmayer's speech presented the spectacle of a rabble of conspirators rather than an ordered assembly. To keep them in the requisite state of exaltation the speeches must be adapted to their intellectual level. And as they are more easily excited than controlled they do not of course exhibit the majority in a favourable light, and one may be prepared at any moment for the Council being disgraced by an outbreak of their frenzy. Nothing more of the kind however has happened yet.
At the head of the extreme party stands the close ally of the Jesuits, the Archbishop of Westminster. He was the first to say out with the utmost distinctness that infallibility belongs to the Pope alone and independently of the Episcopate. The ultramontane speakers, Pie, Patrizzi and Deschamps, have vied with one another in their endeavours to get this extreme view of Manning's accepted, which they themselves did not all share before. The emancipation of the Pope from the entire Episcopate is the very turning-point of the whole controversy, the object for which the Council was put on the stage; infallibility tied to the consent of the united or dispersed Episcopate nearly all the Bishops would accept, for very few indeed clearly understand that even Councils depend on another consent than that of the Episcopate. But such a definition of infallibility would cost Rome the very thing she has laboured so much and sinned so much to gain. It is a great advantage for the Opposition that in this matter there are no formulas of compromise possible but such as are manifestly perfidious and insincere.
On the 17th Deschamps, Archbishop of Mechlin, made perhaps the most important, certainly the most [pg 548] remarkable, speech delivered in favour of the Constitutio. He is considered the ablest speaker of his party, which notoriously has no superabundance of good speakers, and is said to be a superficial man who takes things easily. He not only committed himself to the extremest section of the party, but denounced his opponents as bad Christians not walking in the fear of God. The change of tone was much remarked in him, as in the Bishop of Poitiers. Manning exhibits the same change, who now maintains that all who do not submit to the majority might well be excommunicated directly after the promulgation of the decree. Two German Bishops, Greith and Hefele, spoke on the same day; and indeed in this debate many weighty voices will be raised from every land where the contest about the Church is being fought, to point to the practical dangers involved in the circumstances of the case—a kind of argument Pius is wont to put aside with a “Noli timere.” Greith of St. Gallen spoke for Switzerland; as a learned theologian he declared himself against the definition on scientific grounds, and as a Swiss Bishop on account of the present circumstances of his country; for he is persuaded that his Swiss brother bishops, with their zeal for the infallibilist decree, are simply forging weapons against [pg 549] the Church for the Radicals. Bishop Hefele of Rottenburg touched in the course of his speech on the affair of Honorius, which must later on come into the discussion. Next day Hefele read Cardinal Rauscher's speech. But Cardinal Schwarzenberg's address exceeded all expectations and left a profound impression. Cardinal Donnet and the Archbishop of Saragossa, who spoke in the name of the Deputation, did not bring the defence any further or develop any new points of history, and—which is more important—gave no further information about the plans and hopes of the Curia and the majority.
On Thursday the 19th Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin, spoke, who for twenty years has been the protagonist of Romanism in the British isles. With sound tact he chose the most learned Bishop of the minority, Hefele, for attack, and assailed not his speech but his publications. Yet he did not attempt to refute him, but only to prove that he had contradicted himself, since the account of Honorius given in his History of Councils is different from that in his latest work. It is true that in the History, where no doctrinal inferences were to be drawn, the theological significance of the condemnation of Honorius does not receive the [pg 550] same exhaustive appreciation and exposition as in the little tractate on the question whether he was justly condemned for heresy. But there is no difference of principle between the two works; in both Hefele says plainly that Honorius was justly pronounced a heretic, even if he was no heretic at heart. But when the two passages are separated from each other, it can be made to look as though he had maintained in the former that Honorius was really orthodox whereas he now declares that he was a heretic. But the process could with equal reason be reversed, and the heresy of Honorius shown to be affirmed in the History and his orthodoxy in the pamphlet. But what use would even an orthodox Pope be for upholding the purity of the Church's doctrinal deposit, if he used heretical formulas to express his own really true opinion?
None the less however was Cullen's attack received with great satisfaction, for the ruling powers know well enough on what the Bishop of Rottenburg's opposition is based, and think to subdue German science—i.e., the devil himself—in his person. On the same day the Patriarch Jussuf uttered words that deserve to be laid to heart on the consequences such a dogmatic blunder would entail in the East—a significant indication that [pg 551] the Orientals are not prepared to bend obediently under the yoke of a decree aimed at their ritual and their rights as well as their tradition. The Archbishop of Corfu answered him next day. There is very little that can be properly called debating, for the order of proceedings is better suited for academical addresses than for real discussion; the practice of making prelates speak in their order of precedence makes any honest interchange of blows impossible. But the Greek coming forward to speak looked like a preconcerted answer to the Armenian. The Archbishop of Corfu insisted that, so far from the dogma rendering the reunion of the Greek Church more difficult, such a result was inconceivable without it, nor could the dogma excite any suspicion, because the Greeks found it in their tradition as well as their Fathers and Councils, and envied the Latin Church her infallible Pope. In evidence of this he cited the passages where the Pope's primacy is recognised. The great body of the Fathers listened to this with grave faces: it was only following the style of their own theologians.
But three more important speakers had been heard before the Corfiote. The first was Simor, primate of Hungary, who was chosen, as is well known, into the [pg 552] Deputation on Faith and has shown himself a more zealous advocate of its proposals and adherent of the Curia than ever. The majority believed that it possessed in him a master of Latin who could rival the eloquent leader of the Opposition, and Simor justified his reputation as an accomplished Latinist. But he spoke—assuredly to the no small disgust and amazement of the majority—as an unequivocal opponent of the proposed decree. And this implied that the whole Hungarian Episcopate would vote against it. He was followed by a feeble old man whose speech fell flat after that of the eloquent primate, and who could only be known to a few of his hearers, though he holds an important place in the history of the last generation. This was John MacHale, for the last thirty-five years Archbishop of Tuam and formerly the most powerful prelate in Ireland, a famous name in the days of O'Connell; but his political rôle has long been played out, and he belongs to a bygone age and an obsolete school. For the twenty years during which Cullen has been introducing Roman absolutism into Ireland his influence has been on the decline, and while he was expounding his antagonism to the definition to-day in a long and complicated address, men said to themselves, “magni [pg 553] nominis umbra.” It was the accumulated debt of twenty years he paid off to Cardinal Cullen. But he can hardly be expected to have gained over any of his countrymen to the Opposition besides the three or four of them who already belong to it.
MacHale was succeeded by the Archbishop of Paris, the most accomplished and skilful, and therefore the most feared, of all the Opposition prelates. Darboy was lately the most influential advocate of that system of dallying and postponement which has so grievously injured the minority, and was involved through his intimate alliance with the Tuileries in the unhappy policy of his Government, so that he had become somewhat less trusted and influential. So much greater was the impression produced by his speech to-day, wherein he declared distinctly and repeatedly that a dogmatic decree not accepted by the whole Episcopate could not have any binding force. A suppressed murmur which ran through the ranks of the majority as he spoke seems to herald coming storms.
So far the Opposition has made its voice clearly heard. That it has on its side reason, Scripture and history signifies nothing for the moment; what is important is that it makes its strength felt, that it has [pg 554] won over waverers or doubters to its ranks, and that it has at last spoken plainly. The position of parties and the question itself will take many new shapes, when the separate chapters of the Constitution come on for discussion.