The minority have resolved to send a deputation to [pg 689] the Pope to petition for the adjournment of the Council, since it is horrible to detain so many aged men, many of whom are sick, by violence in this unhealthy city. They will of course meet with a positive refusal, for the Jesuits and the holy Virgin, who is always appealed to, are for carrying out the compulsory system to the last. But you may judge how the heat and the moral and physical miasmas are working on the Bishops from the fact that there are now only five or six on a bench where thirty Bishops used to sit, though most of the others are in Rome or the neighbourhood. Indeed they are kept prisoners here, and Antonelli said recently to a diplomatist, “Si quelque Evêque veut faire une partie de campagne (like Förster) la police n'a rien à y voir, mais s'il voulait quitter le Concile, alors ce serait différent,” so that every foreign Bishop lives here under the inspection of the police, who are to take care that he does not escape. This statement seemed to the diplomat to whom it was made so seriously to affect the sovereign rights of his Government, that he at once reported it.
The Roman logic, as may be seen from the Civiltà, is simply this: the Council is what it is through the Pope alone; without him it can do nothing and is an empty [pg 690] shadow. Freedom of the Council therefore means freedom of the Pope: if he is free, it is free. You may infer what reception will be accorded in the Vatican to the petition just resolved upon for a secret voting on the Papal Schema. There could be no more eloquent testimony to the real state of things and the estimate formed of the freedom of the Council, for it is dictated by the knowledge that a secret ballot would give a very considerable number of negative votes, at least 200, if the private expressions of opinion of the Bishops may be relied upon, while no one here ventures to hope for more than 110 or 115 non placets in a public voting. There are certainly some hundred, even of the Papal boarders, who would say Non placet, if their votes were sheltered by secrecy. Neither the Catholic nor the non-Catholic public has any idea of the extent to which a Bishop in the present day is dependent on Rome, and how difficult or impossible the administration of his office would be made for him by the disfavour of Rome. The worst off of all are the Bishops under Propaganda, who have simply no rights. For them to speak of freedom, after the Pope has announced his wish, would be ludicrous, and to this category belong not only all the Oriental and Missionary Bishops, but [pg 691] the American and English also. And even for the Bishops of the older Sees, who are under the Congregatio Episcoporum et Regularium, and are protected by the common law or by Concordats, the practice of the Curia is a field full of man-traps, a belt studded with nails, which only needs to be drawn in by curialistic hands to make the nails pierce the body of the obnoxious Bishop. As things now are here, and after Pius has gone further than any Pope for centuries in glaring partisanship and open threats of enmity against all dissentients, secret voting must appear the only possible means of securing even a shadow of freedom for the decrees of the Council. If the voting is public, the word freedom, as used of the Council, could only be regarded as a mockery. And it is very well known here that the Pope's entourage do everything in their power to maintain him in his belief that the Opposition will melt away at last like snow before the sun, and hardly four negative votes will remain.
Last year the theologians summoned for the preliminary work were sent home at the beginning of June, and scarcely one or two even of the directing Commission of Cardinals stayed longer in Rome. Now the 15th or 20th of July is spoken of as the day for the promulgation, [pg 692] and if it should be a little earlier there will still be many of the prelates who will return from Rome ill and with their constitutions permanently shattered. The ancients found the word “amor” reversed in the name of the eternal city (Roma), and the Bishops are daily reminded of it. Meanwhile the brilliant recompense of Cardoni's services has rekindled the hopes of the majority; there are fifteen or sixteen vacant Hats, which will be given to those who have deserved best of the new dogma. The merits of the Italians are not conspicuous; they have most of them done moles' work, chiefly as spies, for that business is conducted here to an extent almost unheard of in Europe. Valerga is of course an exception, who has excelled all the Italians as a speaker. After him, Mgr. Nardi has so greatly distinguished himself by his active zeal that a red Hat would seem a fitting ornament of his head, but then there are very suspicious circumstances, only too notorious in Rome. The men who have done and will do the most important services, who are indeed the modern Atlases to carry the main weight of the new dogma on their lusty shoulders, are of course the Jesuits. Pius is penetrated with the feeling that their services are above all praise and recompense. A [pg 693] Jesuit cannot be rewarded with titles and colours and dresses, but he can receive a Cardinal's Hat. The names of Toletus, Bellarmine, Pallavicini, de Lugo, recall grand memories. Not long before its dissolution in 1736, three of the Order were in the Sacred College together—Tolomei, Eienfuegos and Salerno. That might happen again, and the College would gain in capacity and working power. As Kleutgen cannot be thought of, on account of his trial before the Inquisition, and Perrone is too old, the next candidates would be Curci, Schrader and Franzelin. Father Piccirillo, from his intimate relations to the highest personage, would possess the first reversionary claim, and his services have been rewarded in a manner greatly desired and long aimed at by his Order, for he has received the permission, unprecedented in the history of Rome, to go alone into the secret archives and there work. Such an event would at other times have been regarded at Rome as a downfall of the heavens or a sign of the last judgment, and even now it has produced perplexity and amazement in genuine Roman circles. For every one who passes the threshold of the chamber of archives incurs ipso facto excommunication. So the Order is firmly seated in this unapproachable sanctuary. There is no [pg 694] fear of indiscreet publications. Piccirillo, far from publishing anything, will excel in mere negative activity.
Among foreign candidates for the Cardinalate Manning stands out as a star of the first rank in the Roman firmament. He may claim some paternity of the great idea of at last treating the apotheosis of the Papacy seriously, and he long ago suggested to Darboy how nice it would be for the two chief capitals of Europe, London and Paris, each to have its Cardinal, which could be best brought about by furthering the infallibilist definition. But Darboy would hear nothing of it. Next to Manning comes Dechamps of Mechlin; but as the Pope has named him primate, which is indeed a mere title, he is thought here to have had his reward. Spalding, who has deserved so well of Rome, would of course create a great sensation in the United States by the red hat, which has never yet been seen there. Among the French, Dreux-Brézé of Moulins and Pie of Poitiers come first in order. There is great difficulty about Simor, the ill-advised and ungrateful son who had the Cardinalate, so to speak, in his pocket, and is now causing such distress to the lofty giver. How fortunate, say the Court party, that d'Andrea is no longer [pg 695] alive. Rauscher, Schwarzenburg, Guidi, d'Andrea, Simor—that would be too much. But now for the Germans! There it is difficult to select; all the faithful ones must be rewarded, who have literally sweated and are sweating daily in the interest of the good cause—Fessler, Martin, Senestrey, and then Stahl, Leonrod, Rudigier and the Tyrolese Gasser and Riccabona. The Tyrol has had no Cardinal since Nicolas of Cusa (Bishop of Brixen) and Madrucci (Bishop of Trent), and there most especially would the return of a countryman with a red hat be kept as a national festival.
Margotti has had a denial inserted in the Univers of the fact that a Sicilian Bishop related the story of St. Peter and the Virgin Mary in the Council Hall. On this I have merely to remark that it was told me the same evening by three Bishops, none of whom heard it from one of the others, and the speaker was Natoli, Archbishop of Messina. We know what Margotti's assertions and denials are worth.
Sixtieth Letter.
Rome, June 23, 1870.—On reading the last document emanating from the Council, composed by the most distinguished of the American Bishops, an inexpressible feeling of astonishment comes over me, as often before, at the new and unprecedented spectacle so boldly offered to the startled world, and I again recognise the necessity of accounting to myself for the condition of the Catholic Church which has made this possible, and remembering that the position of the Papacy in the modern Church for some time past has been hardly less novel and strange than this present infallibilist Council.
The two great events of modern history, the Reformation and the Revolution, have made the Papacy what it is,—the Reformation by forcibly driving the Catholic half of Christendom into centralization, the Revolution by removing the last remaining independent powers [pg 697] within the Church, viz., the Gallican Church with the Sorbonne and Parliament. So it came to pass that with the Restoration the Church was surrendered to the discretion of the Papacy, just as at the same time the Roman States, by the withdrawal of all provincial and corporate independence, became a uniform and absolute monarchy. The very spirit of the nineteenth century, without much help from Rome, contributed to the consolidation and strengthening of this new system. The re-awakening and growth of distinct Church feeling in powerful classes of the educated nations, the legitimist ideas of the ruling classes of Europe, and later on the combined Catholic and Liberal interest of the struggle against hostile bureaucracies and the antipathy of parliamentary majorities—principles of reaction and principles of freedom all alike in turn subserved the cause of the Church, i.e., the Papacy. For although Papacy and Church were still not wholly identified in fact, to say nothing of right, the times did not suggest the need for distinguishing between them.