"'Father Mateo,' said the guardian when they had gone, 'they are terribly frightened, and have taken you for St. Francis. It is better so; for they are wicked men, and they are furious.'
"'They honor me too much,' answered the good man; 'but give me leave, your fathership, to depart at daybreak for a seaport, and from thence to America, before they have time to think better of it, and hang upon me this miracle of St. Francis.'"
THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.
NUMBER EIGHT.
The proceedings of the Vatican Council have reached a stage that allows us to witness again its external splendor and imposing presence. Grand and most august as it certainly is, still every thing that strikes the eye fades away as one thinks of its sublime office, of its important, unlimited influence and effect. The nature of the subject it has just treated will necessarily make that influence overshadow all ages to come, and that effect cease to be felt only with the last shock of a world passing away.
The question that for more than a year has agitated all circles of society, that for the past three months has been a subject of exciting debate among the fathers of the council, could not have been of greater weight. It is one of those truths essential to the existence of the church, and had it not been practically acknowledged among the faithful throughout the world, Christianity, unless otherwise sustained by its Author, would have been an impossibility. The vital point examined was the essence of the union of the church, of the union of faith, to determine dogmatically in what it consists, who or what is the person or body that can so hold and teach the faith as to leave no doubt of any kind whatsoever regarding its absolute divine certainty.
Up to the present day the infallibility of an œcumenical council, or of the whole church dispersed throughout the world, has been recognized as the ultimate rule by all who lay claim to orthodoxy; but with that council, or with that church dispersed throughout the world, as a requisite—sine qua non—was the communion and consent of the sovereign pontiff. Where he was with the bishops, there was the faith; no matter how many bishops might meet together and decree, if Peter was not with them, there was no certainty of belief, no infallible guidance. Nay, their decrees were received only in so far as approved by him. Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia, was the formula recognized by tradition. In a word, where Peter was, there was to be found infallible teaching; where Peter was not, there neither was the teaching infallible. None in the church ever thought of gainsaying this. But there came a time when the element all agreed hitherto to look on as essential began to be a subject of doubt and of discussion. Writers went so far as to say that the pope could be judged by the other body of teachers, the bishops; and this followed naturally from a mistrust in the unfailing orthodoxy of the sovereign pontiff. The greater phases of this movement are well known. The Council of Constance had hardly closed when the Council of Basle put in practice the principles broached by its predecessor, and deposed the reigning head of the church, putting in his stead Amadeus of Savoy with the title of Felix V. In the midst of this confusion, Eugenius IV. held the Council of Florence, in which the remarkable decree was published that declared the pope the vicar of Christ, the ruler of the flock, and the doctor of the universal church. Those of the French clergy who clung with tenacity to the principles of Basle, refused to receive this decree, under pretence of the unœcumenical character of the Council of Florence. The Jansenists availed themselves of the advantage this pretext gave them. Although eighty-five French bishops wrote in the year 1652 to Innocent X., according, they say, to the custom of the church, in order to obtain the condemnation of these heretics, the latter still held their ground, and were able to accuse the French assembly of 1682 of inconsistency, in attempting to force on them a decision of the pope, whom the assembly itself declared fallible. The celebrated Arnould taught that the refusal of its approbation to a papal decision on the part of one individual church was enough to make the truth of such a decision doubtful.
We shall try to give some idea of the importance of the question of papal infallibility by a parallel development of two opposite teachings, in a rapid sketch.
The cardinal principle of Gallicanism is the denial of the inerrancy of the sovereign pontiff in his solemn ruling in matters of faith and morals when teaching the whole church. Any one who attentively looks at the question must see the close connection of the primacy with the claim to unerring certainty in teaching. The domain of the church is in faith, in spirituals; temporals being secondary, and the subject of legislation only in so far as necessarily bound up with the former. The only reason why a teacher can lay claim to obedience is because he teaches the truth, and this is especially the case where faith and conscience are concerned. If the sovereign pontiff have not this faculty of teaching the truth without danger of error, then he cannot demand implicit submission. The church dispersed throughout the world, being infallible, cannot be taught by one who is capable of falling into error. The ordinances therefore and decrees of the pontiff, being intimately connected with faith, and issued on account of it, must follow the nature of the submission to his teaching. But as this latter, in the Gallican view, is not obligatory unless recognized as just by the whole church, so neither are the ordinances and decrees to be looked on as binding except under a like reservation. It follows from this, clearly and logically, that the supremacy of the pope can be called supreme only by an abuse of terms; consequently, 1st, the texts of canon law and of the fathers that teach a perfect supremacy are erroneous or false, and have no foundation in tradition, which is the truth always, everywhere, and by every one held in the same way; 2d, the texts of Scripture that refer to Peter are to be restricted to him personally, or, when seeming to regard his successors, are to be interpreted in a sense not favorable to the idea of a perfect supremacy. The pope thus becomes amenable to the church; he is a divinely constituted centre, nothing more; the official representative of the bishops of the whole church dispersed throughout the world, which alone is the ultimate criterion of truth. He can, therefore, be judged by the bishops, be corrected by them, deposed by them, and his asserted right to reserve powers to himself to the prejudice of ordinaries, or to legislate for dioceses other than his own, is to be set aside. A species of radicalism is thus introduced into the church. The bishops themselves are not to be looked on as infallible judges of the faith of their flocks even, and the faithful themselves, or the people, become the ultimate judges of what is to be held as of faith. Instead of being taught, they teach; instead of being a locus theologicus, they become the ecclesia docens; and the teachers and rulers become the ruled and taught. As the people themselves are liable to be swayed by the influence and teaching of artful men, we have in consequence a weak and uncertain rule to go by; weak, because of the moral impossibility of knowing the sense of the whole church, for even the members of an œcumenical council might not exactly represent the faith of their individual churches; uncertain, because of the facility with which in past time the people of many individual churches have been led astray.
As we write, it seems as if we heard some indignant protest against what we have just said. We reply that we do not refer to individual opinions; many Gallicans refused to go the length of their principles; a sense of danger alarmed their piety and put them on their guard. For our part, we treat of the principles themselves, and deem perfectly consequent what we have asserted. It would be an easy matter to illustrate it with facts of the present as of the past; but it would be beyond our scope just now. Any student of history will have no difficulty in recalling the manner in which defections from the church have been brought about, and the errors of those who once seemed columns of the temple. The inadequacy of the Gallican rule is still further shown by its practical inconvenience. It is fortunate that in the early church it had no place whatsoever. Peter being then recognized as the head and teacher of the church, all controversies were referred to him, and by him they were settled. Petrus per os Leonis, per os Agathonis locutus est; so spoke the fathers of Chalcedon and of the Sixth Council. Suppose for a moment it had been otherwise; suppose, when the Pelagian heresy arose, it had been necessary to hear the voice of the whole church scattered over the earth—this being the rule—the whole church, not any one part, was to give the doctrine from which it was not lawful to depart. Zosimus was but one bishop; so, too, was Innocent I.; Augustin was only one learned man, and Prosper of Aquitaine, a Christian poet and polished scholar, but only one other father after all. Those who wrote with them bore witness each for his own particular church. What had become of the churches of Scythia, of Lybia, of Ethiopia, of Arabia? Who had penetrated into the Indies, or set sail for the islands of the sea, or reached the far-off coasts of the Sinenses? Who was to explain with accuracy to those distant Christians the cunning dealing of Celestius and Pelagius, that had deceived the vigilance of the eastern fathers, and lay bare the hypocritical professions that had misled even Zosimus? Who was to bring back the opinion or belief of these isolated churches without danger of misunderstanding or misinterpretation? Those were not days when communication was easy. Weeks and months amid all kinds of dangers and uncertainty were required to reach even those places that lay near the shores of the Mediterranean. It was physically impossible to ascertain with unerring sureness the belief or condemnation of those far-off Christians; and as long as their assent was not given there was no adequate rule of faith. Consequently, there was no prompt or efficacious means of correcting error; the means at hand were of probable worth, therefore not sufficient to use against heresy, that could always appeal to the universal church dispersed throughout the world, and when condemned by those near, fly to the probable protection of those at a distance, without the least possibility of ever knowing the belief of those to whom they appealed. In the meanwhile, heresy crept into the flock, established itself there; for there was none to cast it forth; and the fold became tainted. Thus from age to age Christianity would have been a mass of error, the truth being obscured or suffocated by the weight of falsity from the want of a prompt practical means by which heresy could be detected and crushed at its birth. Happily no such state of things existed; the chair of Peter was the abode of truth; it was set up against error, and the quick ear and intuitive eye of Christ's vicar heard and saw the evil, and met it at the outset.