God gave revelation to mankind, teaching the world truth and justice, charity and every virtue, and imparting to man, in his weakness, strength to struggle against and overcome his own passions and the temptations from without. To his church, the pillar and ground of truth, Christ committed the duty of teaching all nations all things whatsoever he had taught, and promised to be with her, in the discharge of this duty, all days even to the consummation of the world. In its fulfilment she must meet opposition, trials, scandals, and difficulties of every sort. But the gates of hell shall never prevail against her.
Many a struggle has she gone through, in the eighteen centuries of her existence; and incalculable are the benefits the world owes to her, even by the confession of her enemies.
While she ever and always teaches the unchangeable truths and precepts given by her Divine Founder, she is ready to accept and bless what she finds of good among men, and labors to eliminate what is evil. From Greece she took what was pure in poetry and the fine arts, and true in philosophy. From Rome she gathered what was just and good in her admirable jurisprudence. Yet, even in the face of bitter persecution, she failed not to denounce immorality, however decked in classic verse; atheism and impiety, however clothed in words of seeming intellectual wisdom; and cruel tyranny, however upheld by power and authority, or made sacred by antiquity and the prejudices or manners of a people. In after times, under the debauched and luxurious rule of the Byzantine emperors, and still later, When the northern barbarians had overrun western Europe and destroyed all government, her powerful influence was felt. Hers was the only voice which could reach and in some measure control the fierce men who sat on thrones they had built with the sword, or could bring peace and the consolations of religion to the hovel of the poor and oppressed. She checked immorality and injustice and taught obedience to law. No one will now contest the truth, that it is to her the modern world owes what knowledge we have of the olden classic civilization. But for her, it would be as dead to us as that of Assyria is to the wild Arabs who pitch their tents on the mounds of Kouyunjik and Khorsabad. To her it owes those grand principles of law and justice, of stable government and individual rights, of holy marriage, and of arts and science, which go to constitute civilization. The church of Christ cannot be wanting in any emergency of men. It is her office to establish order where else chaos would reign.
Hence it is that in this present crisis, this time of so much good and so much evil, so many hopes and such great danger, she renews and increases her efforts, as of old, that what is good may be increased and confirmed, what is evil may be diminished or eliminated. She devotes to the work her most solemn and effective mode of action—an œcumenical council.
Assuredly no more remarkable event has occurred in this nineteenth century than the meeting of this Œcumenical Council of the Vatican, formally opened in Rome on December 8th last, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The civilized world seems conscious of its importance. Catholics and Protestants, believers and infidels, all treat of it, some with full faith and earnest hope, some with a dim sense of reverence, some with curiosity, and some with hatred. But none can ignore or despise it. The books that have been published, the stream of pamphlets in every language that is flooding Europe, the countless articles of every character in countless newspapers of every hue—all bear witness to the universal interest in an assembly so extraordinary in its character, and destined to wield so great a moral influence.
Men are struck with wonder at this singular and hitherto unprecedented representation of the whole world. The number of members is in itself large. There were present at the opening session, 5 cardinal bishops, 36 cardinal priests, 8 cardinal deacons, 9 patriarchs, 4 primates, 124 archbishops, 481 bishops, 6 abbots with quasi-episcopal jurisdiction, 22 mitred abbots, and 29 superiors of religious orders; in all, 719 of the 1050, or thereabouts, who would have the right to enter. Many dioceses in the world are vacant, the venerable bishops of others are too aged to travel so far, some are detained by illness and will come later, and some, to their regret, are detained by the special circumstances of their own dioceses. None of those under the Czar of Russia have come. His Tartar policy threw them into dungeons, where some died. Those that lived he sent to Siberia, some for their religion, some for being Poles. But among the bishops here every other nation of Europe has a full and strong representation. Besides all these, there are also forty-nine from the United States, eighteen or twenty from Canada and the British possessions of North America, and over forty from Mexico and the various states of South America. The eastern and the western shores of Africa have sent several; two have come from British Africa, at the south, and quite a number—among them a Coptic bishop from Egypt—represent the dioceses along the Mediterranean shores of Africa. All the ancient oriental rites of the church have patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops in the council; India, Thibet, China, Japan itself, Australia, New Zealand, and the isles of the Pacific are fully represented. Never before in the history of the world was there seen such a gathering of prelates from the uttermost parts of the earth. And the members who compose the council deserve individually special attention. They are chosen men, holding in their several homes posts of dignity, responsibility, and authority. The Catholic Church is in one aspect eminently democratic. She will take into the roll of her clergy men of every rank and station. She asks not what was their condition or their lineage. If a clergyman possess piety, learning, zeal, and administrative ability, the door is open for his preferment, even to her highest offices. If Pius IX. is noble born, his predecessor, Gregory XVI., was the son of a poor village baker, and owed his earliest education, and his entrance into the sanctuary, to the gratuitous kindness of a good monk, who was attracted by the bright eyes and intelligent look of the modest little boy, as he used to carry around to customers the loaves his father had baked. So too of these bishops. Some may be of lordly, or noble, or princely lineage. Others were born in humble, thatched cottages. Here they are equal. Some have doffed the ermine, some have quitted the bar, others left the army, where their names are still mentioned with praise and soldierly pride by their old companions in arms. Some have given up to younger brothers wealth and titles, that they might freely devote themselves to God's holy work. Some, filled with apostolic zeal, have given up friends and home and country to go to distant lands to preach Christ and him crucified; and some have been honored with chains and imprisonment and stripes for Christ's sake. They all pursued a long career of preparatory studies, they were afterward tried by long years of practice in the ministry, and have finally been chosen as qualified for their important and responsible positions. Differing, as they do, in language and nationalities and human feelings and prejudices, they have all the same faith, the same zeal, and have all come together at the summons of their common father. They all gather around the chair of Peter.
Well may the world look with wonder at such an assembly as this, containing so much of learning, such strength of character, such personal worth, wielding so much power over the minds and consciences of men, possessing such an intimate, practical knowledge of the whole world, of the good and the bad in it, and of the needs of men—an assembly every member of which has learned, by years of ministerial duty, to read, as no others can, the heart of man, and where all have come together with the same earnest purpose, and in the same singleness of heart, to confer candidly and frankly with each other, in order, with the aid and light of heavenly grace, to determine on such measures as shall best promote the glory of God, the interests of religion, and the spread of truth and virtue among men. Even to the man of the world, not to say to the Christian, can any thing be nobler or more worthy of respect than such a meeting? Must not every honest heart rejoice in the effort they will make, and wish them success?
But to the Catholic this œcumenical council has a higher character. We know that the church was founded not by man, but by Christ himself; that she stands, not by human learning or human wisdom and prudence, but by the power of God; that Christ is ever with her, that he has sent his Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, to abide with her for ever, to teach her all truth, to recall to her mind all things whatsoever he taught, and that so she is to us the pillar and ground of truth. We look back and see that in all the great emergencies of Christian truth, or rather emergencies of the world, it has been her custom to call together her bishops in councils like this. Thus, when Arianism arose, and the minds of simple men were thrown into confusion and perplexity concerning the divinity of the Saviour by the wily quotations of Scripture and the plausible teachings of error, the Council of Nice declared clearly and emphatically the original doctrine of the divinity of the Son; and guarded it by establishing the consecrated terms in which thenceforth Christian lips should express it. So, too, when Nestorius and Eutyches, and other later heresiarchs arose, other councils were held, solemnly setting forth the original doctrines received and held by the church, and pointing out and condemning the opposite errors. So, too, in the sixteenth century the Council of Trent met and gave to the world a full and clear statement of the Catholic doctrine of justification, so violently assailed by Luther and his followers and companions—a doctrine, by the way, which no small portion of those non-Catholics who still retain a belief in an actual divine revelation, now receive substantially and admit to be the only doctrine on that head reconcilable with reason and common sense.
So, too, in this nineteenth century, amid the confusing uncertainties of men, and the discordant clashing of opinions in the world, we turn with reverent hope, with fullest confidence in the words of the Saviour, and with grateful hearts and willing minds, to this first Œcumenical Council of the Vatican. We recognize in it the same authority which spoke at Nice, at Ephesus, and at Chalcedon, at Constantinople, at Lyons, and at the Lateran, and in Trent. We await the words of its teaching and its precepts of discipline. For it will speak with authority. "It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us."
Our readers are no doubt familiar with the chief antecedents of the council. It was in his address to the bishops assembled in Rome in June, 1867, to celebrate the centenary of St. Peter's martyrdom, that the Holy Father made the first public and official announcement of what had been for a short time before mooted and considered in private. It was his desire, at as early a day as circumstances would allow, to convene the bishops of the Catholic world in an œcumenical council. The prelates present, about five hundred in number, expressed their gratification and cordial assent. The attacks of the Garibaldians in November, 1867, if successful, would probably have frustrated the design. But under divine Providence it signally failed. Some thought that the bull of convocation would appear in December, 1867. But it was not published until the midsummer of 1868, and the council was summoned for December 8th, 1869. It was a solemn work. All felt that a most important day was approaching in the history of the church. Throughout the world, ever since, in every church and religious house, as often as the priest ascended the altar to celebrate the divine mysteries, or those vowed to the Lord assembled to sing his praises, petitions were offered unceasingly that God would bless the council, and give to the prelates such light and grace as would lead them to speak and act for his greater glory and the welfare of souls. As months rolled on and the time approached, clergy and faithful throughout the world united with redoubled fervor in triduums, novenas, and suitable religious exercises to obtain this special favor from Heaven.