The editor speaks of the great learning of the author, and says "he writes with science and precision, and with the pen of a man of genius." It may be so, but we have not discovered it. His book we have found very dull, and it has required all the effort we are capable of to read it through. To our understanding it is lacking in both science and precision. It is a book of details which are attached to no principles, and its arguments rest wholly on loose and inaccurate statements or bold assumptions. A work more deficient in real logic, or more glaringly sophistical, it has seldom been our hard fortune to meet with. As for learning, we certainly are not learned ourselves, but the author has told us nothing that we did not know before, and nothing more than may be found in any one of our Catholic treatises on the authority of the see of Peter and the Roman pontiff. All his objections to the papacy worth noticing may be found with their answers in The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, by the lamented Francis Patrick Kenrick, late archbishop of Baltimore, a work of modest pretensions, but of a real merit difficult to exaggerate.
Though M. Guettée's book is far from bewildering us by its learning or overwhelming us by its logic, we yet find it no easy matter to compress an adequate reply to it within any reasonable compass. It is not a scientific work. The author lays down no principles which he labors to establish and develop, but dwells on details, detached statements, assertions, and criticisms, which cannot be replied to separately without extending the reply some two or three times the length of the work itself, for an objection can be made in far fewer words than it takes to refute it. The author writes without method, and seems never to have dreamed of classifying his proofs, and arranging all he has to say under appropriate heads. Indeed, he has no principles, and he adduces no proofs; he only comments on the proofs of the papacy urged by our theologians, and endeavors to prove that they do not mean what we say they do, or that they may be understood in a different sense. Hence, taking these up one after another, he is constantly saying the same things over and over again, with most tiresome repetition, which require an equally tiresome repetition in reply. Had the author taken the time, if he had the ability, to reduce his objections to order, and to their real value, a few pages would have sufficed both to state and to refute them. As it is, we can only do the best we can within the limited space at our command.
The author professes to write from the point of view of a non-united Greek, who has little quarrel with Rome, save on the single question of the papacy. He concedes in some sense the primacy of Peter, and that the bishop of Rome is the first bishop of the church, nay, that by ecclesiastical right he has the primacy of jurisdiction, though not universal jurisdiction; but denies that the Roman pontiff has the sovereignty of the universal church by divine right. He says his study of the subject has brought him to these conclusions:
"1. The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries possess the authority of divine right that he has since sought to exercise;
2. The pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of divine right over the whole church was the real cause of the division," or schism between the East and the West. (P. 31.)
These very propositions in the original, to say nothing of the translation, show great lack of precision in the writer. He would have better expressed his own meaning if he had said: The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries hold by divine right the authority he has since claimed, and the pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of the whole church by divine right has been the real cause of the schism. We shall soon object to this word sovereignty, but for the moment let it pass.
These two propositions the author undertakes to prove, and he attempts to prove them by showing or asserting that the proofs which our theologians allege from the Holy Scriptures, the fathers, and the councils, do not prove the primacy claimed by the bishop of Rome. This, if done, would be to the purpose if the question turned on admitting the claims of the Roman pontiff, but by no means when the question turns on rejecting these claims and ousting the pope from his possession. The author must go further. It is not enough to show that our evidences of title are insufficient; he must disprove the title itself, either by proving that no such title ever issued, or that it vests in an adverse claimant. This, as we shall see, he utterly fails to do. He sets up, properly speaking, no adverse claimant, and fails to prove that no such title ever issued.
It suffices us, in reply, to plead possession. The pope is, and long has been, in possession by the acknowledgment of both East and West, and it is for the author to show reasons why he should be ousted, and, if those reasons do not necessarily invalidate his possessions, the pope is not obliged to show his titles. All he need reply is, Olim possideo.
That the pope is in possession of all he claims is evident not only from the fact that he has from the earliest times exercised the primacy of jurisdiction claimed for him, but from the council of Florence held in 1439. "We define," say the fathers of the council, "that the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff hold the primacy in all the world, and that the Roman pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles and true vicar of Christ, and head of the whole church, the father and teacher of all Christians, and that to him is given in blessed Peter, by our Lord Jesus Christ, full power to feed, direct, and govern the universal church; et ipsi B. Petro pascendi, regendi, et gubernandi plenam potestatem traditam esse."
This definition was made by the universal church, for it was subscribed by the bishops of both the East and the West, and among the bishops of the East that accepted it were the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria, and the metropolitans of Russia, with those of Nicaea, Trebizond, Lacedaemon, and Mytilene. We know very well that the non-united Greeks reject this council, although the Eastern Church was more fully represented in it than the Western Church was in that at Nicaea, the first of Constantinople, Ephesus, or Chalcedon; but it is for the non united Greeks to prove that, in rejecting it and refusing obedience to its decrees, they are not schismatic. At any rate, the council is sufficient to prove that the pope is in possession by the judgment of both East and West, and to throw the burden of proof on those who deny the papal authority and assert that the papacy is schismatic.
Before producing his proofs, the author examines the Holy Scriptures to ascertain "whether the pretensions of the bishop of Rome to a universal sovereignty of the church have, as is alleged, any ground in the word of God." (P. 31.) The translation here is inexact; it should be: "Whether the pretensions, etc., to the universal sovereignty of the church have, as is alleged, their foundation in the word of God." The author himself would have expressed himself better if he had written "the sovereignty of the universal church," instead of "universal sovereignty of the church." But the author mistakes the real question he has to consider. The real question for him is not whether the primacy we assert for the Roman pontiff has its ground in the written word, but whether anything in the written word denies or contradicts it. The primacy may exist as a fact, and yet no record of it be made in the Scriptures. The constitution of the church is older than any portion of the New Testament, and it is very conceivable that, as the church must know her own constitution, it was not thought necessary to give an account of it in the written word. The church holds the written word, but does not hold from it or under it, but from the direct and immediate appointment of Jesus Christ himself, and is inconceivable without her constitution.