The absence of conviction in the whole affair is so evident that we may well yet remain in doubt concerning the position of Döllinger’s colleagues; and that in spite of the fact that the libellous articles of the Allgemeine Zeitung are to be found in the widespread pages of Janus. We have already looked into this department of the literature of our day; we have done so already. Not only was infallibility condemned in it; but the primacy, at least since 845, is there made to appear as an infinite series of deception and forgeries, or, as Janus expresses it, as a sickly, uncouth, consumptive-engendering excrescence on the organism of the church. Not only was the future council condemned before it was held, but the Council of Trent was turned into “a should-be œcumenical council,” which was arbitrarily governed by legates, in which the Roman party alone had sway, and which, in a word, was nothing but an assemblage of fools and pickpockets. This view of the Council of Trent Döllinger seems to have forgotten, when he wrote his declaration of the 28th of March of the present year, in which he refers to the Tridentine article of faith which he had twice sworn to, and in which he leaves out the essential part of the oath, namely, the promise to interpret the Holy Scripture only “in
the sense approved by Holy Mother Church.”
The foreign office and its zealous co-operator, the learned professor, now began their campaign against the Council. The reporter of the Leipzig Grenzboten of the 24th of June, 1870, thus expresses himself on the subject: “The alarming circulatory dispatches of Prince Hohenlohe have turned to political account the results obtained by Janus, and introduced them into governmental and diplomatic circles.” The Bavarian ambassador, a man of no distinction and one who favored the “Curia,” was recalled and replaced by Count Tauffkirchen, the most talented diplomatist at that time at the disposal of the government.
His operations in Rome were very influential; and if the matter furnished by the events in the Council became immediately the subject of discussion in the press and in the literature of the day, the Bavarian Embassy is not entitled in the least to the merit of it. The rest was accomplished by Döllinger, as is now well known, and by his intimate young friend Lord Acton.
About the end of the year appeared the pamphlet, Considerations for the Bishops of the Council on the Question of Papal Infallibility. This time he appeared again anonymously, but without making any extra effort to conceal himself as the author. A little later, he appeared under his own name in the official organ of the new Catholic theology, the Allgemeine Zeitung, in the “Declaration in the matter of the address touching Papal Infallibility,” on the 19th January, 1870. From this declaration, says the Lepzig correspondent more than once referred to above, proceeded his agreement with the views of Janus.
The publication of his name was no sooner made than the party of
progress took it as a signal to make him their own entirely.
This had already been done in the press; now it was accomplished in the House.
On the 7th of February, Dr. Völk, a deputy, seized the opportunity presented by the debates on the “address” to drag Döllinger into the field against the “patriotic” majority. He read the most objectionable and most venomous parts of the “Considerations” and “Declaration,” and imputed these views to the majority of the House as their own opinions, endeavoring to drive them to declare themselves for Döllinger and against the Pope and the Council. The “patriotic” majority had taken care not to embitter the debates by introducing questions ecclesiastical into them; but now a defence was called for. The stenographic report describes the scenes, which were closed with the following words from Deputy Törg:
“I have been on the most intimate terms with the gentleman whom Deputy Völk so formally parades before the House, for years. I became acquainted with him shortly after the time of the ‘genuflexion question’ in Bavaria; and, surely, no one then imagined that a time would come when Dr. Döllinger would be thus quoted before the whole House by Dr. Völk. I consider it a terrible misfortune, and accept it as such; yes, gentlemen, as a personal misfortune. Dr. Döllinger was an authority for me; he is such no longer; for he has fallen the victim of blind passion and lost the calmness necessary to the forming of an opinion; and he is no longer in a condition to formulate a dogmatic question as a theologian ought to be able to formulate one.”