Since the apostolic bull convoking the General Council of the Vatican, now in session, has been issued by Pius IX., an immense literary activity has manifested itself in most countries about the great and important questions which are supposed to claim the attention of that august assembly of the Catholic Church. Not only Catholic, but also Protestant reviews have engaged in various ways in the discussion of matters relating to the council. Very numerous, indeed, are the pamphlets—nay, books and volumes of greater import—that have been published within the last ten months in Italy, Belgium, France, England, and Germany. It is particularly in this latter country that publications concerning more or less the present council have been most numerous, and prominent reviews have given able and elaborate notices of most of them. Several publications, of this character have been rendered accessible to Italian, French, and English readers, thus exhibiting the importance attached to them outside of Germany.
It is our present purpose to enter upon a closer examination of a work which we have already briefly noticed in a former number, we mean the book, The Pope and the Council, by Janus, of which an authorized translation appeared both in England and in this country.
We adduce this fact as a very peculiar one, which will cause still greater surprise to the reader when he is informed that an authorized French translation appeared but a short time after the original itself.
The reader has already been told what he is to think of the orthodoxy of Janus, when his doctrines are judged by the criterion established by the church. But let us state here at once that we have a right to apply the Catholic test to the doctrine set forth by Janus. For they, namely, the authors (p. 14,) expressly profess to be in communion with the Catholic Church, though "inwardly separated by a great gulf from those whose ideal of the church is an universal empire." The translator, too, presents Janus as "a work of Catholic authorship," and declares "the authors members of a school, morally if not numerically strong, who yield to none in their loyal devotion to Catholic truth!"
In view of such declarations, we may proceed to inquire, What is the aim of Janus? The authors can best answer this question; for, in their opinion, since the forgery of the Isidorian Decretals, about the year 845, the primacy has been distorted and transformed.
"The papacy, such as it has become, presents the appearance of a disfiguring, sickly, and choking excrescence on the organization of the church, hindering and decomposing the action of its vital powers, and bringing manifold diseases in its train."
Moreover, Janus boldly asserts à priori that the approaching council will not enjoy that freedom of deliberation necessary to make it truly œcumenical.
"The recently proclaimed council is to be held not only in Italy, but in Rome itself; and already it has been announced that, as the sixth Lateran Council, it will adhere faithfully to the fifth. That is quite enough; it means this: that whatever course the synod may take, one quality can never be predicated of it, namely, that it has been a really free council." (Pp. 345, 346.)
These extracts would be quite sufficient to show the aim of Janus, and his view of the "pope and the council." How such harsh and preposterous language may be reconciled with loyal devotion to Catholic truth, and that commendable piety which the authors of Janus profess, we ask candid and impartial readers to decide.