Moreover they felt secure about the eventual attitude of the minority, or at least a considerable portion of them, for it was known that two German Bishops had said, “We shall resist to the last moment, but then we shall submit, for we don't wish to cause a schism.” This gave great joy to the Court party. I heard a monsignore say, “These are our best friends, more so than those who already vote for and with us, for their coming over at the critical moment can only be ascribed to the triumphant and irresistible power of the Holy Ghost poured out through the Pope upon the Council; each [pg 758] of them is a Saul converted into a Paul, who has found his Damascus here at Rome, and becomes a living trophy of the vice-godship of the Pope and the legitimacy and œcumenicity of this Council. We can desire nothing better for our cause than these late and sudden conversions.” And thus at last an understanding satisfactory to all parties was come to; on July 4 all the speakers enrolled withdrew, only reserving their right of presenting their observations in writing to the Deputation.
Sixty-Fifth Letter.
Rome, July 7, 1870.—I must go back a few days and tell you something more of the speeches made since St. Peter's Day. It is for the interest of the contemporary world and of posterity that the Roman system of hushing up and deathlike silence should not be fully carried out, and that it should be known what truths have been uttered and what grounds alleged against the fatal decision of the majority and rejected by them.
Soon after Bishop Martin a man spoke who had gained the highest respect from all quarters, Verot, Bishop of Savannah, a really apostolical character, compared in America with St. Francis of Sales. On a former occasion, on June 15, he had pointedly criticised the conduct of the Court party and the attempt to surrender all that yet remains of the ancient constitution of the Church to a centralized papal absolutism. “If,” he said, “the Pope wants to possess and exercise a direct and immediate jurisdiction in my diocese, only [pg 760] let him come over to America himself, and bring with him plenty of the priests who are so abundant here to my country where there are so few; gladly will I attend him servant and observe how he, riding about in my huge diocese, judges and arranges everything on the spot.” And, as some Bishops of the majority had given out the favourite Roman watchword, that historical facts must yield to the clearness and a priori certainty of doctrine, Verot replied briefly, “To me an ounce of historical facts outweighs a thousand pounds of your theories.” This time he was not interrupted, as he had always been before,—by most no doubt not understood. Maret too, in the sitting of July 1, attacked the projected absolutism which the Church was now to be saddled with. In the political world, he said, it is done away with and disappears more and more under a common feeling of repugnance, and now it is for the first time to be confirmed in the Church, and Christians, “the children of heavenly freedom,” are to be reduced, after the protection afforded by the consent of the episcopate is abolished, to spiritual slavery, and forced into blind subjection to the dictates of a single man. He said this in more courteous language than this brief epitome gives scope for.
Among the most important speeches was that which followed, of Bishop David of Saint Brieuc in Bretagne. It was one of the speeches of a kind I said in an early letter would not be tolerated, the result has refuted me. The Bishop said that the proposed article of faith was first invented in the fifteenth century, when a new form, different from that ordained by Christ, was given to the Church, at the expense of the inalienable rights both of the Bishops and the faithful. If the hypothesis of papal infallibility really belonged to the deposit of faith, it must have been defined and universally acknowledged in the earliest ages, as it would evidently be a fundamental doctrine indispensable for the whole Church. The parallel drawn between this and the lately defined and previously undetermined and open doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is quite irrelevant. It is clearly evident, he added, that this new attempt to exalt the Papacy will produce the same disturbance as the earlier one in the sixteenth century. A sign of it is the sudden and rapidly growing alienation of the French clergy from their Bishops, which is instigated from a distance. Passing on to a vindication of the much abused Gallican doctrine, he showed that the former Popes themselves declared it to be allowable and [pg 762] only reprobated the attempt to make it into a special and separate rule of faith for the French Church alone.
The Spanish Bishop of Cuenca, Payà-y-Rico, followed, and began by affirming in the bragging and bombastic style of his country, that in Spain the infallibilist doctrine had always prevailed. This was a glaring falsehood; it would have been enough to cite against him the names of Tostado, Escobar, Victoria, and others, the Spanish Bishops and theologians at Trent, and the fact that the Inquisition first made the doctrine dominant in Spain. But immediate replies are not permitted in the Council Hall, and the majority were so charmed with his disclosures that they loudly applauded him. Encouraged by this he turned round upon the Opposition, observing that a short interval was still allowed them to come over to the majority, and that, unless they made a good use of it, their only choice lay between a subsequent meritorious submission or condemnation for heresy.
The minority, who meet daily either in national or international conferences, were engaged in drawing up a formula requiring the consent of the episcopate as indispensable, but soon gave this up and resolved to abstain from any demonstration, as they could gain nothing by it. Several thought this would compel the [pg 763] majority, if they really wanted to gain the concurrence of the Opposition, to make proposals on their side for some tolerable formula. But at present that is highly improbable.
In the sitting of July 5, where the only business was to vote on the third chapter, in consequence of the general withdrawal of the speakers, an unexpected occurrence intervened. Some days before Bishop Martin of Paderborn had proposed in his own name and that of some of his colleagues that in a Supplement, designated as a monitum, the doctrinal authority of the Bishops should be mentioned, but only incidentally and in a sense compatible with the Pope's prerogative of personal infallibility. When the Pope heard of this, he was much displeased, and peremptorily ordered that a canon should be laid before the Council for acceptance enouncing emphatically and under anathema the papal omnipotence over the whole Church. The Deputation had already had the third canon printed and distributed in the following amended form:—“Si quis dixerit, Romani Pontificis Primatum esse tantum officium inspectionis et directionis et supremam ipsius potestatem jurisdictionis in universam Ecclesiam non esse plenam, sed tantum extraordinariam et mediatam—anathema [pg 764] sit.” But in order to carry out the Pope's command, the Bishop of Rovigo, as a member of the Deputation, read the canon in a more stringent form, which in fact left the extremest absolutist nothing to desire, but which was not in the printed text and was either not heard or not understood by the greater part of the Bishops, while yet it was to be voted on on the spot—in contradiction to the distinct directions of the order of business. This more stringent version of the canon runs thus:—