Letters From Rome on the Council

by Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger

Rome, June 22, 1870.—On the 13th the votes were taken on the changes proposed in the preamble, and taken by rising and sitting down.[147] Instead of “Vis et salus Ecclesiæ ab eo (Papâ) dependet” was proposed “Vis et soliditas in eo (Papâ) consistit.” The majority seem to have thought that stronger. The debate began with the speech of the Irish Archbishop of Cashel, a member of the Commission. It is precisely in our days, he said, that it is so necessary for the Pope to have absolute and irresponsible authority, for therein lies the one safeguard, first, against the encroachments of Liberalism; secondly, against the Radical and anti-Church policy of the Governments; thirdly, against the poisonous and unbridled influence of journalism; and fourthly, the absolute Pope can alone meet the ecclesiastical and national enterprises of Russia or subdue [pg 680] the political sects and ward off the Revolution which is impending everywhere. In short, human society requires a deliverer, and this deliverer must be omnipotent and infallible. So it is said in the Commission, and the Irish prelate, who was specially alarmed by Fenianism, spoke in its name. As soon as the Pope with the assent of the Council—or indeed without it—has ruled his own omnipotence and infallibility, the deliverance of mankind is accomplished.

The French Benedictine, Cardinal Pitra, undertook to lift the assembly out of this cloudy region back to the firm ground of facts, viz., the facts disclosed by himself. He expatiated on the collection of canons in the Greek Church, saying that those relating to the Roman See had been falsified, and the Russian Church was above all implicated in this system of forgery, which had brought things to such a pass that there was no authentic collection of canons in the Oriental Church. This was probably intended to serve as a diversion, for the enormous fabrications in favour of papal omnipotence, which were carried on for centuries and are incorporated in the codes of canon law, had been frequently before referred to in a very suspicious manner in the Council. Even the Bishop of Saluzzo, who is [pg 681] almost a thorough-going Roman absolutist, had called the collection of canons (Gratian's, etc.) an Augean stable. Pitra went on to indulge in an uncommonly fervid philippic against the Machiavellian and persecuting Russia. But he forgot to say one thing, viz., that in no country would the impending decrees be received with such satisfaction as in Russia, nowhere would they give greater pleasure than in that great Northern State which considers itself the happy heir of Rome in the East. So much must be known even in Rome, that on the day the dogma is promulgated all the bells in Mohilew, Wilna, Minsk, etc., will resound to ring the knell of Rome. Pitra was followed by Ramirez y Vasquez, Bishop of Badajoz. He maintained in the style and tone of Don Gerundio de Canpazes, the doctrine that the Pope is Christ in the Church, the continuation of the Incarnation of the Son of God, whence to him belongs the same extent of power as to Christ Himself when visibly on earth. Maret had announced his intention of speaking, with the view of combating the four anathemas of Dechamps, which were so manifestly directed against his book. But Dechamps, on learning this, told the Bishop of Sura that, if he would keep silence, he would withdraw his anathemas, and excused [pg 682] himself by alleging his zeal for the new dogma, assuring Maret that he had a good heart and meant no harm. So Maret renounced his design of speaking.

On the 14th, Haynald, in spite of his bodily suffering, delivered a long polemical speech against the majority, and maintained his reputation of being the best Latin speaker after Strossmayer. Jussuf, the Melchite Patriarch of Antioch, came next with an apology for the Oriental Churches and their liberties. He pointed out in earnest words the danger of their defection, if the present design of taking away their ancient rights was carried out. He produced letters from his home telling him that he had better not return at all than bring back from Rome decrees curtailing their ecclesiastical liberties. And if the Pope chose to send back another Patriarch instead of him, they might be very sure he would not be received. Bishop Krementz of Ermeland observed that Holy Scripture made, not Peter, or as is here understood the Pope, the foundation of the Church, but Christ, and then as secondary foundation the Apostles and Prophets. Only after these and in dependence on them could this designation be applied to the See of Rome.

It had indeed been already observed among the [pg 683] minority how monstrous it was to make the Pope “the principle of unity in the Church,” as the Schema puts it, and that the ancient Fathers speak indeed of an “exordium unitatis” established in the person of Peter, but had never called him, and still less the Bishop of Rome, the principle of ecclesiastical unity, which would be logically inconceivable. In the voting, which was again taken by rising and sitting down, the little band of dissentients disappeared before the consentient mass, and the expression “principium unitatis,” opposed as it is both to logic and tradition, was accepted. Before the voting Bishop Gallo of Avellino had uttered in the name of the Commission some Neapolitan mysticism about Adam and Eve and the mysteries already revealed in Adam and Eve of the Church resting on the Pope.

Cardinal Mathieu was the first speaker on the fourth chapter on infallibility. His long and powerful speech was mainly directed against Valerga, who had outraged the French by his attack on the “Gallican errors.” It was a well-delivered panegyric on the French nation, which had shed the blood of her sons to restore Rome to the Pope, and without whose troops at Civita Vecchia the Council could not remain in Rome. The only doubt is whether this Valerga is worth as much notice [pg 684] as the French have accorded to him. After Mathieu Cardinal Rauscher spoke. His speech was very inaudible owing to the nature of the Council Hall, but was clear and well grounded, and showed how the acceptance of a personal infallibility, by virtue of which every utterance of a Pope must be believed by all Christians under pain of eternal damnation, is equally at issue with facts and with the former tradition of the Church, and must have a fatal effect in the future. He referred to Vigilius, Honorius, the reordinations of Sergius and Stephen, and the contradiction between Nicolas iii. and John xxii., and commended the formula of Antoninus requiring the consent of the Church as a condition. He could never assent to the Schema without mortal sin. “We knew all that from your pamphlet,” said Dechamps while he was speaking. “But you have never refuted it,” replied Rauscher.

Cardinal Pitra was to have followed, but he was unwell, and the sitting was broken off. The Presidents had issued an instruction that no one should speak out of his turn, and if prevented on the regular day should lose his right altogether. The rule in this case affected the zealous infallibilist Pitra, and accordingly the Bishops were dismissed before the usual hour.

The two next days, the 17th and 18th, were festivals, and there was no sitting held. As there are already 75 speakers enrolled for the fourth chapter, the promulgation obviously cannot take place on June 29, and the Council will last on into July. There is indeed a simple means of gratifying the desire of the Pope and curtailing the pains of the Bishops, who are now absolutely tortured by the heat: the majority can any day cut short the special debate, as they have already cut short the general discussion. It may of course be objected that this procedure, of depriving the Bishops of their right of speaking and violently imposing silence upon them, overthrows the nature of a Church Council, where every Bishop is meant to bear witness not only to his own belief, but to the tradition of his country and the faith of his diocese. If the Bishops are deprived of this right—and that too where so momentous a question is at issue and there is such diversity of opinion—the freedom essential to a Council is wanting.

The Pope becomes more lavish of his admonitions and instructions every day. In the last Papal Capella Patrizzi assured him the faithful were impatiently awaiting the proclamation of infallibility, whereon Pius, in presence of several Bishops of the minority, replied that [pg 686] there were three classes of opponents of the dogma, first, the gross ignoramuses, who did not know what it meant; secondly, the slaves of princes, he said “of Cæsar,” referring both to Vienna and Paris; thirdly, the cowards, who feared the judgment of this evil world. But he prayed for their enlightenment and conversion.[148] This was of course applied here universally to the Bishops of the Opposition. Moreover the Pope had just before had a letter written to certain canons of Besançon, saying that all the objections raised now had been triumphantly refuted a hundred times over, and that as to appealing to the results of historical criticism and the examination of texts, viz., to the huge mass of deliberate falsifications and forgeries, these were “des anciens sophismes ou mensonges contraires aux prérogatives du St. Siége.” The remark touches Rauscher, Schwarzenberg, Dupanloup, Hefele, Maret, Kenrick, Ketteler (in the pamphlet he circulated), and some thirty more. There is much dispute here as to the paternity of those views which Pius emits both orally and in writing. Has he got them from the Civiltà, or are the Jesuit writers of that journal only the [pg 687] pupils of the Pope, who has received this information “by infused science” from the Virgin Mary? On that point opinions differ. The majority, who are quite aware that every one would think it a joke to call Giovanni Maria Mastai a learned theologian, hold to the latter view, and to the well-known picture painted by the Pope's own order, where the “actus infusionis” is represented to the eye. Their favourite watchword is that every one who does not accept the decree is, or in a few days will be, a heretic and enemy of the Church; his non placet consummates his separation from her, and hence Manning has already proposed that each of these Bishops should have his excommunication handed him with his railway-ticket when he leaves Rome. Livy says, “Hæc natura multitudinis est, aut servit humiliter aut superbe dominatur;” the “multitude” in the Hall combines both characteristics.

On June 18 the Pope observed a German priest among those admitted to an audience, and asked who he was, when he replied that he was secretary to a Bishop, who is well known for his learning and his fallibilist views. Pius turned away with an exclamation of disgust. Of another very eminent dignitary of [pg 688] similar views he is wont to say in the bitterest terms, that his opinions are prompted solely by personal enmity to himself.

The majority are said to be very impatient, so that many anticipate the violent closing of the debate on Saturday, the 25th. And the greater number of the intending speakers on the fourth chapter, now increased to a hundred, belong to the Court party, who might say that they are only willingly renouncing the pleasure of hearing their own ideas put forward. But then the speeches of Darboy, Place (of Marseilles), Maret, Clifford, Schwarzenberg, Simor, Dupanloup, and Haynald would also be suppressed. Hefele was the first to put down his name, as he was not allowed at the time to answer the fierce attack of Cullen. On his inquiring after some days when his turn would come, he was told that he was the fifty-first in order, as all who came before him in age and rank must speak before he could be permitted to open his mouth. A little later he was told he came seventy-first, so that his hope of being able to vindicate himself in the Council is almost at an end. Meanwhile he has had a brief reply to the attack of a Frenchman, de la Margerie, printed at Naples.