The international Committee of the minority thought it necessary that a treatise should be expressly composed to discuss the weighty question of moral unanimity being required for dogmatic decrees, and Dupanloup has undertaken the task. He had a pamphlet on the subject printed at Naples and laid before the Fathers. He first proves from history that this condition was never wanting in any Councils which count as œcumenical, and was distinctly recognised and maintained at Trent by the Pope himself. He then examines the opinions of the chief theologians of all ages, including St. Vincent of Lerins and St. Augustine, and Popes Leo i., Vigilius and Gregory the Great, who all agree in making moral unanimity an indispensable condition for a decree on faith. He proceeds to observe that in matters of discipline and canon law a numerical majority is enough, as decisions of that kind may be altered afterwards, but for a dogma there must be moral unanimity of the Council and the Churches to whose faith it bears witness, or else Catholicism would be annihilated. But great theologians and theological schools of former ages opposed papal infallibility, and it is opposed now by a large number of Bishops at the Vatican Council representing great Churches and Catholic nations. A [pg 590] Council is only then infallible when the assembled Bishops of the whole Church bear witness to the faith inherited from the beginning. The majority must therefore either convert the minority to their views by free discussion or give up their design; were they to suppress the minority by mere brute force of numbers, that would be unconciliar and unprecedented in Church history. It is not mere probability but unquestionable certainty that is required for defining a dogma, and a considerable number of distinguished members of the Council have no such firm belief in papal infallibility. To define it in spite of this would be to act as judges and masters of faith, not as its depositaries and witnesses. A minority denying a dogma which had been the perpetual belief of the Church would be in the wrong, but not a minority repudiating the definition of a doctrine which had never been held an article of faith. Even the Pope cannot by his authority raise the decision of a mere majority to the dignity of a dogma, for he only promulgates decrees on faith “sacro approbante Concilio,” and without moral unanimity the Council has not approved. The words of the Bishop of Orleans are directed principally against the Civiltà, which has notoriously laboured to establish the opposite [pg 591] hypothesis, and he asks, “Are we at a Council or not? If we are, the rules of Councils must be observed, or else a great assembly of Bishops is reduced simply to playing the part of a theatrical exhibition.”
Dupanloup goes on to remark on the storms and incalculable evils which the definition of papal infallibility would bring on the Church and the Papacy. He concludes with these words: “If ever moral unanimity was requisite for a dogmatic decision, it is so at a Council like the Vatican, where there are 276 Italian Bishops, of whom 143 belong to the States of the Church; 43 Cardinals, of whom 23 are not Bishops or have no Sees; 120 Archbishops or Bishops in partibus, and 51 Abbots or Generals of Orders—while the Bishops present from all Catholic countries of Europe, exclusive of Italy, only number 265, so that the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and diocesan Bishops of the whole world are outnumbered by the diocesan Bishops of Italy alone.[104] At a Council so composed a mere majority can never decide; and the less so when the personal intervention of the Pope makes itself felt, when the freedom of the Bishops is so seriously hampered, and in so many ways, when the question of infallibility has been so [pg 592] unscrupulously and violently brought forward for discussion by a mere sovereign act—a sort of coup d'état—when consciences are tormented and a number of writings are issued which have created a great sensation and give evidence of the anxiety of the faithful, and when lastly the Bishops themselves let a cry escape from their tortured hearts which the whole press re-echoes. Under such circumstances it is impossible to settle the matter by a mere coup of the majority; and if it is done all kinds of mischief must be feared. Nor is it I alone who say so; there are 100 Bishops who say, ‘An intolerable burden would be laid on our consciences. We should fear that the œcumenical character of the Council would be called in question, and abundant materials supplied to the enemies of religion for assailing the Holy See and the Council, and that it would be without authority in the eyes of the Christian world, as having been no true and no free Council. And in these troubled times no greater evil can well be conceived.’ ”
Fifty-Second Letter.
Rome, June 3, 1870.—Valerga attacked the “Gallicans,” drawing a parallel between the Pope and Christ, and between the Fallibilists and Monothelites. As in Christ the human will co-existed with the divine, so in the Pope may personal infallibility co-exist with moral sinfulness, and to conclude from the former against the latter—to draw an argument from scandals in papal history against the privilegium inerrantiæ—is analogous to the error of the Monothelites, who denied the possibility of a human will subject to sin co-existing with the divine will in the same person. Never has the well-known spirit of the Roman Curia shown itself so openly and with such technical adroitness as in this carefully elaborated and minute accusation against the Opposition. As Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati expressed it, it was “exemplum sophismatum artis ad instar congestorum,” and great expectations might be [pg 594] formed of its salutary effect on the French. Purcell answered shortly and pointedly that the charge applied equally to the Council of Trent and the sixth, seventh, and eighth Œcumenical Councils, and that he and his colleagues were content to endure the patriarch's anathema in such good company. Even Bellarmine quotes a whole cloud of witnesses against infallibilism, and neither he nor later writers had refuted them. It is a matter of thankfulness to God that he has never suffered this opinion to gain dogmatic authority. Purcell then cited clenching proofs of the public erroneous teaching of Popes, and among them the history of the ordinations and reordinations of Formosus and Sergius. The standpoint which he took as a republican was interesting. He said that the Church was the freest society in the world, and was loved as such by its American sons, for the Americans abhorred every doctrine opposed to civil and spiritual freedom. As kings existed for the good of the peoples, so Popes for the good of the Church, and not vice versâ. Perhaps he was thinking of the words of the absolutist Louis xiv., “La nation ne fait pas corps en France, elle réside tout entière dans la personne du roi.” For “nation” put “Église,” and the words describe precisely the papal system, as it is now [pg 595] intended to be made exclusively dominant by means of the Council.
The most important speech in this sitting, and one of the most remarkable theologically since the opening of the Council, was that of Conolly, Archbishop of Halifax. Formerly an unhesitating adherent of personal infallibility he had come here without having specially studied the question, and under the full belief that the Allgemeine Zeitung had calumniated the Roman See in representing this dogma as the real object of the Council. But when he found what was expected of him here, he instituted a searching examination, and thoroughly sifted, as he said, what the classical Roman theologians cite for their favourite doctrine. He now frankly submitted to the Council the result of his studies,—that the whole of Christian antiquity explains the stock passages of Scripture alleged for papal infallibility in a different sense from the Schema, and bears witness against the theory that the Pope alone, without the Bishops or even in opposition to them (etiam omnibus invitis et contradicentibus), is infallible. But what our Lord has not spoken, even though it was certain metaphysically or physically, can never become the basis of an article of faith, for faith [pg 596] comes by hearing, and hearing is not by science, but by the words of Christ. It is the speciality of Catholicism not to interpret passages of Scripture singly and by mere critical exegesis, but in the light of tradition and in harmony with the Fathers. To found a dogma on the rejection of the traditional interpretation would be pure Protestantism. It is not therefore the words of Scripture simply but the true sense, as revealed by God and attested by the perpetual and unanimous consent of the Fathers, which all are pledged by oath to follow, that must be called the real revelation of God. To cite modern theologians, as Bellarmine does, is nothing to the purpose. I will have nothing, he said, but the indubitable word of God made into a dogma. The opinions of 10,000 theologians do not suffice me. And no theologian should be quoted who lived after the Isidorian forgeries. But no single passage of Fathers or Councils can be quoted from that earlier time of genuine tradition, which affirms the Pope's dogmatic independence of the rest of the Episcopate. If there be any such, let it be shown; but there is none, and innumerable and conclusive testimonies can be cited on the other side. Even at the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem St. James proved the teaching of Peter by the Prophets, and [pg 597] appealed to it because it agreed with theirs and not on account of his authority. Conolly was ready for his part to believe that no Pope could wilfully and knowingly become heretical,—i.e., persistently hold out against all the rest of the Church; but that did not prove papal infallibility, and to define it would be to bring the Vatican Council into contradiction with the three Councils which condemned Honorius, to narrow the gates of heaven, repel the East, and proclaim not peace but war. To those who said, “Pereant populi sed promulgetur dogma,” Conolly replied that the loss of one soul was serious enough to outweigh all the advantages looked for from the new dogma. He declared, against Manning, that no one was justified in calling an opinion “proximate heresy” which the Church had not condemned as such; for it was a duty to follow and not to anticipate her sentence. A Pope had said that no one should censure a doctrine before the Holy See had spoken, and the Penitentiary had declared in 1831 that the Gallican Articles were not under any censure. He had worked thirty-three years among Protestants, and could testify that what Manning affirmed was the reverse of the truth.
Conolly is a man who is on the whole in tolerable [pg 598] harmony with Roman views, but who is therefore all the more resolved to vote against infallibility. While he forbids the Gallican doctrine being taught in his diocese, he protests here against the Roman. There is evidently a process going on in his mind, which in so cultivated a theologian can have but one result. He ended by declaring that he would accept the definition if the Council proclaimed it, for he was convinced that God was among them. But that merely meant that he was convinced the dogma would never be proclaimed. On the strength of that conviction he was almost the first speaker who briefly but decisively maintained the doctrine to be untenable.
Yesterday, Thursday, Vancsa, Bishop of Fogarasch, of the Greek Rite, quoted the testimonies of Greek Fathers against infallibility, and his speech was thought a remarkable one. Dreux-Brézé of Moulins followed him, and again had the misfortune immediately to precede Strossmayer. He contended that, as the Pope is supreme teacher, and the French call him “Souverain Pontife,” and he is the highest judge, he must be infallible. As Vicar of Christ, he is also king, for Christ said to Pilate, “Thou rightly callest me king,” and the royal title was affixed to the cross. But if Christ was [pg 599] infallible as king, so is the Pope. He supported all this by texts of Scripture, and spoke against the Fathers who accused the Pope of despotism or maintained that the new dogma would be the formal introduction of the grossest despotism. Without the Pope, who is “Episcopus universalis,” and can seldom exercise his office on account of the number of the faithful and of his labours, the Bishops have no jurisdiction, and cannot even absolve without powers derived from him. “Let us therefore go on,” he concluded, “to unity and agreement, and give Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar, and the Pope what belongs to the Pope.”
Strossmayer followed him, and declared that papal infallibility was against the constitution of the Church, the rights of the Bishops and Councils, and the immutable rule of faith. He explained the constitution of the Church according to the holy Fathers and especially St. Cyprian (De Unitate Ecclesiæ), who did not hold their jurisdiction to be limited to their dioceses, since by virtue of their character they often had to exercise authority in the concerns of the universal Church, and were obliged to do so, as, e.g., in Councils. This sharing of authority and rights between the Pope and the Episcopate was evident from the controversy between Pope [pg 600] Stephen and Cyprian in the third century about the rebaptism of heretics, in which the latter did not the least admit any personal and absolute infallibility bestowed on the Pope by our Lord. And St. Augustine defended him on the ground that the question had not yet been decided by a General Council, which shows that the sole authority in matters of faith and morals was in his opinion a General Council, united with its head.