The circumstances by which it was carried away are the Italian alliance abroad and the alliance with the national liberal party at home.
The temptation that misleads it is the hope, fortunately disappointed, which the stand of the inopportunist bishops of Germany and of Austria caused it to form, which stand the Berlin government had mistaken for a real dissent from doctrine, and destined to become the foundation of a national church separated from Rome by that dissent.
I call the question of Papal Infallibility a pretext, and, in fact, it is a groundless quarrel without any importance or earnest meaning.
I am not called upon to enter here into a theological dissertation upon the dogma of the infallibility of the church and of its sovereign magistracy, etc. I refer my readers to the excellent works which have been published on the subject, and I trust to be excused for mentioning in particular those written by my brother the Archbishop of Mechlin.
I will say but one word en passant on the question. For every Catholic, there is no longer any open question. Before the council, discussion was allowable; since the definition proclaimed by an œcumenical council united to the Pope, all discussion is closed.
Every one knows of the conversation between a very intelligent lady of great faith and the Count de Montalembert, shortly before the death of that illustrious friend, in which she asked him what he would do if the council together with the Pope should define infallibility. “Well, I will quietly believe it,” replied the great orator, with the firm accent of the Christian who knows his catechism, and who recites his act of faith.
In fact, no father nor doctor of the church, from Origen and S. Cyprian down to S. Thomas and Bossuet, no council, no theologian, no Catholic, has ever doubted the doctrinal infallibility of the church. The controversy lay with the Gallicans, who claimed that the words of the Pope addressed to the church ex cathedrâ needed the assent of a council or of the church throughout the world to acquire the character of infallibility.
All the old Catholics of all the schools, Gallican even included, were agreed to accord to the definitions of a council united with the Pope, that is to say, the church, the divine privilege of infallibility set forth in Holy Scriptures and in all tradition. On this point Bossuet holds the same doctrine as Fénelon and Count de Maistre.
Now, in the present instance we have a council united to the Pope, and no council, from that of Trent back to that of Nicæa, has been more numerously attended, more solemn, freer, or more œcumenical, than that of the Vatican. To deny this is downright nonsense, in which those take refuge who seek to hide their apostasy from their own eyes. If the Council of the Vatican has not been œcumenical and free, then manifestly no council in the past has ever been.
To reject the doctrinal definition of the Council of the Vatican, in which the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops of all the world, whether opportunist or inopportunist, have agreed, would undoubtedly be to abandon the church of Christ, and to renounce the Catholic faith; it would be going beyond Gallicanism, which never thought of calling in question the decisions of a council united to a pope; even beyond the Jansenism of Port Royal, which would perhaps have accepted the Bull of Innocent X. if sanctioned by a council; it would be going beyond 1682, back to Luther; that is to say, to open heresy, and to the entire abandonment of the church, our mother.