[Footnote 129]
[Footnote 129: Concilii Plenarii Baltimorensis II. Acta et Decreta. Baltimorae, 1868.]
[Introductory Note—The periodical from which the following article has been translated is one of the highest character, published at Paris under the editorial supervision of the Jesuit fathers. The account which it renders of the late Council of Baltimore is made doubly valuable from the fact that it is the work of a foreign, and therefore an impartial, judge. We have been obliged to make a few corrections in the article. Several of these were suggested by the Most Rev. President of the Council, and the rest were required by obvious and quite natural inaccuracies of a writer living in a foreign country.]
The superior of the Grand Seminary of Baltimore has recently done us the honor of transmitting, in the name of his archbishop, [Footnote 130] a copy of the Acts of the Council held in that city in 1866. He asks us to make known the contents to the readers of the Etudes. It gives us pleasure to accede to this request.
[Footnote 130: Mgr. Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore, is the author of several interesting publications on the religious history of the United States. He has published two essays concerning the legislation of the early Protestant colonies respecting divine worship. In their legislation is to be found intolerance running to the most cruel extremes, and this almost until the Revolution of 1776. Besides these, he is the author of Evidences of Catholicity, Sketches of Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky, and Spalding's Miscellanea.]
On the eve of the great event which the Catholic world expects at the close of this year, it seems to us that there are few subjects more interesting, or more worthy to be treated of, than the present. The very organization of the present council, at which forty-six bishops were present, will give us a fair idea of what is to be done when all the prelates of all countries and churches are convened. Moreover, the decisions made in such an imposing assembly will not fail to clear for us some obscure points. But, better than all, the collection of decrees will make us comprehend the situation of Catholicity in the immense territories of the new world, where it is called to such a lofty destiny.
On the 19th of March, 1866, the Feast of St. Joseph, Mgr. Spalding, using the powers received for this purpose from the sovereign pontiff, convoked at Baltimore a Plenary Council, [Footnote 131] to be opened on the second Sunday of October, in the same year.
[Footnote 131: A council is called plenary at which the bishops of several provinces are assembled. After a general or oecumenical council there is nothing more solemn. The present is the second of this character which has been held at Baltimore. The first took place in 1852.]
If any bishops were prevented from appearing personally, they were to be represented by proxies furnished with authentic powers. The day having come, after a preliminary congregation, held the evening before to clear up certain details, the council opened with a grand, solemn, and public procession; in which figured forty-four archbishops and bishops, one administrator apostolic, two mitred abbots, together with the most distinguished of the American clergy. It was a spectacle alike new and imposing for that great city. More than forty thousand people met to witness it. In the streets through which the procession passed, there was scarcely a house which was not decorated. This was undoubtedly one of the grandest and most beautiful Catholic demonstrations which has yet been seen in that land of liberty, where all sects and communions find a rendezvous. The council furnished one of those striking lessons which the good sense of Americans does not forget, and which by little and little will lead them to understand that where there is unity there is also life.
Every deliberative assembly has need of order; the fathers began by tracing a plan for themselves; these are its principal dispositions.