INTRIGUES AND INTERPRETATIONS.
One of the most conspicuous manifestations of the spirit now prevailing among the leading nations, is that all of them are struggling to go forward and not backward. Italy, in this respect, does not constitute an exception to this general rule, as her present prominent position in Europe abundantly testifies. Hence, every sensible man well knows that the Government now existing there can not be overthrown, so that the temporal power of the pope can be restored, except by another revolution or by the military invasion of a foreign power. Which of these remedies it is the purpose of the papacy to invoke can only be conjectured. But since one or the other of them must, from necessity, be in contemplation, it is essentially important that the true relation which the dogma of papal infallibility bears to the temporal power should be well understood, in order to see—what will be apparent to any careful investigator—the impress of the Jesuits upon the papal policy, and that, but for them, the Church would be left to the enjoyment of its religious faith, without disturbance by any of the nations.
The temporal power was always an enemy to the peace of the Church—rending it into hostile factions—separating the Eastern from the Western Christians, and introducing feuds and strifes and schisms between popes and anti-popes, cardinals and clergy, and those who followed them in their long and angry conflicts. Before this tremendous power was usurped, and papal ambition was incited by the desire to possess it, the Church of Rome embraced within its fold almost the entire Christian world. Now, however, it finds itself representing only a minority of those who profess Christianity.[277] All this, and more than this, has been accomplished by restless and ambitious popes, who, defying the example and all the admonitions, not only of Christ himself, but of all the primitive Christians, entangled the Church in vicious alliances with potentates and kings, in order that they might wear crowns of temporal royalty themselves, and give increased strength and vigor to the principles of monarchical government by keeping the multitude in superstition, ignorance, and inferiority. And when, in the present enlightened age, there is no excuse for not knowing the wars, the bloodshed, the persecutions, and the misery, which followed this unholy alliance between Church and State, in order to create and preserve the temporal power of these usurping popes, he must have but little regard for the welfare of the human race who would again afflict any part of the civilized world with these or kindred calamities. The Roman Catholic people of Italy have, of their own accord, removed them, and those who are now seeking to reafflict them by alliances with foreign and alien powers, make themselves disturbers of the world's peace, by seeking to embroil other peoples and nations in dangerous combinations for such a purpose.
It is not easy to overestimate the importance and seriousness of the issue involved in the proposition' to restore the temporal power of the pope—whether in its relations to Roman Catholic or Protestant populations. In so far as the former are concerned, it involves the conversion of their religious faith into the illiberality and selfishness of Jesuitism; the sacrifice of the ancient faith of the Church to the principles of a society which boasts that it has plucked out of the hearts of its members every vestige of human sympathy and affection, and has spent the whole period of its existence in sowing seeds of strife and contention, and in so opposing the acknowledged authority of the Church when employed to curb their worldly ambition, that one of the best and most enlightened of the popes was constrained, by a sense of duty to the Church and to the Christian world, not merely to suppress them, but to declare, infallibly and ex cathedra, that the suppression was forever. To Protestants it presents but two alternatives, either to cast away all the rich fruits of the Reformation, or to rebuke the attempt to encroach upon the rights the people have acquired after centuries of conflict with monarchical and arbitrary power. Both these propositions command the most serious and thoughtful consideration, especially by citizens of the United States, where the form of government is designed to conserve all religions, and enable those who profess them—no matter how variant and conflicting they may be—to live in amicable and peaceful relations with each other. No intelligent mind can reflect upon the indisputable proofs of history and the philosophy they teach, without realizing that, with regard to this issue our own course is plain, clear, and unmistakable.
The ambitious popes—such as Gregory VII, Innocent III, and Boniface VIII, as well as others before and after them—acquired and maintained their temporal power by a long series of coercive and oppressive measures. In order to give these measures a religious sanction, they usurped the functions which pertained to the claim of infallibility, not only without the consent of the Church, but in face of the positive rejection of that dogma by several Councils, and against the almost unanimous sentiment of the multitude of Christians. The general polity of the European nations, under the dominion of monarchical power as it was united in Church and State, was favorable to them, as it kept the people in ignorance of their natural rights, and too feeble to assert them by revolution, if they had resorted to that remedy. Thus held in subjection, their non-resistance was held to be acquiescence in their own humility. Taking advantage of this, popes and other kings, as the allies of each other, asserted their divine right to govern according only to their own united will, and endeavored to establish the infallibility of the pope as a dogma of religious faith, in order to retain and increase their monarchical power. Thoughtful and intelligent Roman Catholics denied and repudiated this doctrine, but were powerless to relieve the multitude from the severity of this joint rule, because the entire coercive power was in the hands of those whose ambition was promoted by it, and who kept themselves in constant readiness to employ it whensoever their interests, both spiritual and temporal, were placed in jeopardy. If history does not prove all this, it proves nothing.
When the Reformation period began, and the popes and the clergy refused the necessary reforms in the Church, those who supported that great movement detached themselves, in large numbers, from the papal party, but continued to assert their unfaltering fidelity to the primitive Christian faith. The reigning authorities were thus confronted with a disintegrating Church, occasioned by their own refusal to reform acknowledged abuses—some of which were so flagrant as to furnish a reason to the Jesuits for the recognition of their society. It was not an easy matter to arrest this disintegration after the treatment of Luther by Leo X, and the difficulties were increased by the circumstances connected with the Council of Trent, as well as by the proceedings of that body. There are many evidences of this. Prominent among these is the fact that the popes were opposed to a General Council, mainly because of the fear that it would refuse to affirm their assumption of infallibility, which would necessarily tend to weaken their hold upon temporal power. But for the Emperor Charles V, it is not probable that a Council would have been then held. He repeatedly urged upon the pope the necessity of convening one, but without success. He was coquetting with the Lutheran Protestants in Germany by means of his celebrated "interim" and otherwise, in order to strengthen his armies by accessions from them. But, at the same time, he cherished the hope that a Council would contrive some method of inducing his Lutheran subjects to reunite with the Church, from which they had been driven by the usurpations of the papacy and the acknowledged vices of the clergy. His main purpose, however, was to make the union between the Church and the State so indissoluble as to maintain and perpetuate the monarchical principle as protection to both. Finding the popes unyielding in their opposition to a General Council, he ordered a national one to be held at Augsburg, in his own dominions, to consider and decide upon such matters concerning the Church as he deemed expedient. Clement VII was then pope, and it required but little reflection to assure him that if the emperor succeeded in holding a National Council in Germany, it would, with almost positive certainty, reaffirm the decisions of the Councils of Constance and Basel, rejecting the dogma of infallibility, and thus inflict a dangerous and probably fatal wound upon the papacy. He was completely checkmated by the emperor, and nothing was left him but to call a General Council to supersede the National Council at Augsburg. It was a game of statecraft between rival contestants for the supremacy—neither having been restrained by any higher motives than those which have their birth in personal ambition. As for the pope, he preferred that the disintegration of the Church should continue rather than run the risk of having his infallibility denied by a General Council, and the possible loss of his temporal power which that denial would have threatened. All this is sufficiently indicated by the impediments thrown in the way of the meeting of the Council by the popes. Clement VII died four years after making the call, but without fixing the time for its assembling. His successor, Paul III, was constrained to fix it for 1537, and to designate Mantua as the place. But this did not exhaust all the expedients for delay. Mantua was objected to for reasons not fully explained, and Vincenza was substituted. The time was accordingly postponed one year, until 1538. No meeting having then occurred, it was again fixed for 1542. Still, however, in order to gain more time, it was transferred to Trent, where it did not assemble until December 13, 1545—thirteen years after it was first called by Clement VII. Its last session was held December 4, 1563—eighteen years after it first assembled, and thirty-one years after it was first called—more than a generation of time!
During all these years the popes were striving after the surest method of perpetuating their claim of infallibility as the means of preserving their temporal power. While it is to be supposed that they, at the same time, desired to save the Church from overthrow, they so blended its cause with their own ambitious ends, that the Council, instead of being reformatory, was unable to accomplish anything more than the inauguration of a counter revolution to suppress the Reformation, which, by that time, was becoming more formidable everyday. The pope, Julius III, and Charles V had a common interest in keeping Church and State united, in order to ward off successfully any blows that might be aimed at the principle of absolute monarchism. But, apart from this, the pope had a separate and distinct interest of his own, in trying to secure, beyond the possibility of loss, the imperial rights and prerogatives of the papacy. Embarrassed as he was, with the eyes of all Europe centered upon him, he was compelled to look for support in every direction, and found no contribution to the papal pretensions likely to become more valuable than that offered by the Jesuits, who were then in readiness, under the lead of Laynez, their general, to devote themselves to whatsoever work should be necessary to extinguish the spirit of revolt against the monarchism of Church and State.
Remembering the services rendered by Loyola to the cause of absolute monarchy, and knowing that the central feature of the Jesuit constitution was specially designed for the advancement of that cause, the pope resolved to bring the united and compact body of Jesuits to his aid, by enlisting them as an army to defend the tottering cause of the papacy. The main object of Loyola during his life had been to drive back the tide of the Reformation; and, although he had signally failed in this, he exhibited such superior qualities as a general and commander of men, and had so succeeded in imparting these same qualities to Laynez, his successor, that the pope determined to send the latter as one of his legates to the Council, clearly indicating that he was both unwilling and afraid to trust the interests of the papacy in the hands of those who, by the existing organization of the Church, were intrusted with its administrative authority. He undoubtedly considered that the most certain, if not the only method of preserving the papacy, as distinct from the primitive Church, would be the infusion of Jesuit spirit and courage into the ranks of its defenders. We have heretofore seen how Laynez had succeeded at the French Council of Poissy in restricting the right of discussion to ecclesiastics alone, and it is fair to presume that the knowledge of this dictatorial spirit commended him to the pope. At all events, he was specially favored and distinguished as the representative of the pope and the Jesuits at the same time—a union that had but a single signification; that is, that the pope had accepted the Jesuits as his allies in preference to any of the existing monastic orders, because, as can not be doubted, the latter occupied the field of religious labor, while the former considered religious professions and practices as the stepping-stone to the acquisition of riches and temporal power. Thus favored above any other member of the Council, Laynez courageously entered into the contest between those who defended and those who denied the doctrine of the pope's infallibility, and exhibited his great ability in supporting to the utmost the extreme claim to spiritual and temporal sovereignty which such popes as Gregory VII, Innocent III, Boniface VIII, and others, now declared to have been infallible, had for centuries maintained in defiance of the enlightened sentiment of the whole Christian world. During the long and tedious sessions of the Council, it had been getting farther and farther away from such conclusions as would satisfy those who desired to see the integrity of the Church maintained; and it was not until the time for its closing sessions was approaching that Laynez announced the Jesuit doctrine with regard to the infallibility of the pope, and the authority and power it would confer upon the papacy. Although, contrary to the expectations of the pope, he did not succeed in procuring the affirmance of his doctrines by the Council—for if an effort had been made to embody the pope's infallibility in the articles of faith, the negative decisions of the Councils of Constance and Basel would have been repeated—yet he did succeed in assuring the papacy that its most formidable allies were the Jesuits, upon whom it could then and always thereafter rely to fight its battles in behalf of that dogma, as well as the temporal power, and whatsoever should become necessary to give strength and permanency to the principle of monarchism in the government of both Church and State. This having been accomplished, together with as much infusion of Jesuitism into the Creed as could then be safely ventured, the pope considered the papacy saved, at least for the time being, and dissolved the Council.