If Döllinger’s present views were correct, the immunity of the church from error could not for a moment be maintained, no matter where it might be claimed its infallibility resided. Döllinger subordinates the church to science and the decisions of the church to the final judgment of the learned, more especially to the final judgment of historians. Such is his theory, and such, practically, his answer to his ecclesiastical superiors.
Not without reason, therefore, does the Archbishop of Munich in his pastoral, dated Palm Sunday, say: “In this manner the church’s divine commission and all Catholic truth is called in question.” It cannot for a moment be doubted that a man who speaks as does Döllinger in his declaration of the 28th of March last, has lost completely the Catholic idea of the church. The only difference between him and the Protestants is that, in addition to the Bible, he admits, tradition, “the unanimous consent of the fathers,” to be a source of religious truth; and this a Protestant may also do, provided no external authority be constituted the court of final appeal; and Döllinger in fact claims that there is no such court, since he subordinates both Pope and Council alike to what he calls “science.”
In point of fact, however, even if not expressed in precisely those words, these were Döllinger’s views years ago. We long since foresaw what was coming, and just as it has come. It was then a matter of no little surprise to us that his course caused no uneasiness even in ecclesiastical circles; and that no importance was attached to the remarkable revelations to which we now call attention, although the circumstances attending and the persons concerned in them were calculated to invest them with a character of the highest
importance. We have already referred to the revelations in question as throwing light on the internal history of Bavaria, and on Döllinger’s dangerous complication with certain tendencies of the late government; but we must return to the subject, and treat it more particularly. We refer especially to the academical oration held by Dr. Döllinger on the 13th of March, 1864, on King Maximilian II.
In his oration, he happens to speak of the remarkable interest felt by the deceased monarch in historical research, and reveals to the world a very strange, “a more secret” motive for the royal interest. The reader, to understand the full bearing of the history which we give below entire on Döllinger himself, must bear in mind the peculiar characteristics of a man who has lived more among his books than among men. It would be hard for any one to be more subject to external influences than Döllinger is, and, at the same time, to be less conscious of their presence or effect. He unconsciously puts forth to-day, as the result of his own experience, what he happened to hear expressed yesterday by another. Döllinger is always the product of his surroundings, and hence his change, as he lost his old friends, one after another, by death or by alienation, and fell in almost exclusively with the society of the so-called “Bernfenen.” This explains also how it came to pass that many younger men, and the members of the scientific guild—for example, his little Mephistopheles, Huber—exercised so unwarranted and increasing an influence over him. Bearing all this in mind, it is impossible to overestimate the effects and influence of the overtures which King Maximilian made to Dr. Döllinger. He was completely intoxicated by them, and his new
friends found means to prevent his return to his sober senses. The impression made on Döllinger in the conference in question must have been the more lasting, as Döllinger, the acknowledged head of the Ultramontane party, could not have hoped to stand any higher in his majesty’s favor than any other of that abused class. To express the whole matter in a few words, we are convinced that the careful observer will discover the later as opposed to the earlier Döllinger in the following account, or in his cradle.
The following extract is from the oration above referred to:
“As I have permitted myself to refer to the deeper thoughts which guided the king in his government, and especially in his attitude towards science, I may also recall certain other communications which I received from his own mouth. An upright, faithful Christian, he believed in the lasting future of Christianity, and, therefore, could not conceive that its divisions and the struggle of the different confessions should continue for ever; that Christians should waste their powers in mutual injury. The division, he was of opinion, had had its time, and God had permitted it for some high purpose; and that time, even where not entirely past, was near its end; and he believed firmly that in spite of all polemical bitterness, in spite of the sordid spirit of self which had intruded itself into the controversy, the day of union for Christian nations would come, and the promise of one fold and one shepherd be fulfilled. And the great ecclesiastical bodies of the West being once reconciled and working with more than redoubled intellectual vigor upon the Græco-Russian church, the latter would not long resist the powerful magnetic influence of unity. Or, on the other hand, when once
the union of the Catholic and Anatolian churches was effected, the various Protestant sects would be gradually drawn into the current and meet their brethren.
“Naturally, however, the attention of the king was claimed in the first instance by whatever could be looked upon as tending in a proximate or remote degree to the reconciliation of the East, and particularly of Germany. He saw that the future union could not be a simple, unaccommodating mechanical coming together of the separated confessions. Neither did he think for a moment of the absorption of one church into another. It was necessary, he thought, that both bodies should first undergo a purgative process, and that each should acknowledge that it might receive, though, perhaps, in an unequal degree, some good from the other; that each might help to free the other from its peculiar defects and one-sidednesses, and supply what was wanting in each other’s ecclesiastical and religious being; that each might heal the other’s wounds; and that neither should be required to surrender anything which its life and history had proved to be a positive good. Under these conditions, sooner or later, the process of reconciliation and of union would take place in the heart of Europe, in Germany.