How can M. Döllinger not see this? He who in 1832, at Munich, where the encyclical of Gregory XVI. reached M. de Lamennais, insisted with the latter, with all his force as a theologian, that he should submit to the pontifical encyclical, which, in the doctor's eyes, was binding on conscience, although no council had adhered to it—how can he now, in his own case, resist the decisions of Pius IX. and the Council of the Vatican? He who has written so many works of grave learning, and in particular that one on The Church and the Churches, how comes it that he does not see that he is no longer in the church, and that he is seeking a shelter for his revolt in the smallest, the poorest, and the most dilapidated of those churches of a day which, in the name of history, he has so severely condemned? How can he find himself at ease and his soul tranquil in those ridiculous conventicles of Munich and of Cologne, by the side of Michelis, of Reinkens, Friedrich, Schulte, the ex-abbé Michaud, the ex-father Hyacinthe, and surrounded by Jansenist and Anglican bishops, by Protestant and schismatic ministers, by rationalists of all colors? How comes it that his faith and his learning are not shocked when brought into the midst of that confusion of doctrines and of tongues, and of ignorance of all kinds, which rendered the Congress of Cologne so notorious; that congress whereat the question was discussed “of the reunion of the old Catholics with the other churches having affinity of faith,” which means with all the sects separated from Rome, to the exclusion of the great universal church of S. Augustine, S. Thomas, Pascal, Descartes, Bossuet, Fénelon, de Maistre, Lacordaire, of the eight hundred bishops of the council, and of the sainted Pontiff Pius IX.? How can he, a man of learning, a priest, advanced in years, on the brink of eternity, prefer to put himself under the pastoral crook and the jurisdiction of the Jansenist Archbishop of Utrecht, or of a schismatic Armenian bishop, and fraternize with the Anglican bishops of Lincoln, Ely, and Maryland, [pg 494] rather than remain an humble priest, but proud of that Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church whose admirable unity bursts forth in the midst of the vast persecution which is being begun and prepared for her, and of which the Provost of Munich consents to be the guilty instrument?
This closes my parenthetical remarks on Dr. Döllinger and the Old Catholics, who are in reality merely old Jansenists and very old Protestants, and I come back to M. von Bismarck and to his policy.
Prince von Bismarck and the governments of Germany have no occasion to trouble themselves about the question of settling whether infallibility attaches to the Pope speaking ex cathedrâ, or to the Pope united to the council; these are all dogmatic theses with which they have no concern. The pretext got up by politics for trespassing on the domain of religious faith is the following: The politicians allege that the declaration of the council has conferred upon the Pope a new authority, that this authority is absolute and unlimited, and that this state of things affects the relations between the church and the state, which is thereby thrown upon its defence against possible usurpation. The Emperor of Germany, in a conversation which he recently had at Ems with M. Contzen, the courageous Burgomaster of Aix-la-Chapelle, brought out this singular idea of the politicians when he alleged “that the church, by proclaiming the dogma of infallibility, had declared war to the state.”
How can this be? In what respect does the question of the infallibility of the church touch the relations between the church and the state?
The declaration of the Vatican Council is not new; it belongs almost textually to the Council of Florence when it proclaimed the faith which had existed for centuries; it is ancient; all, or nearly all, the bishops at the late council were agreed, and are now all agreed, as to the ground of the doctrine; they were only divided on the question of opportuneness, and Mgr. the Bishop of Orléans, in his pastoral letter of assent, declared that he has always professed the doctrine which had been proclaimed.
Nothing, then, has been changed, and church and state remain in precisely the same situation of reciprocal independence in their distinct spheres, and of harmony in their relations, in which they were before the council.
Some either imagine, through most admirable ignorance, or hypocritically make show of believing, that the pontifical infallibility is a personal privilege, in this sense, that it is conferred on a person who cannot err in anything, that the Pope is infallible in all that he says and in everything; that he could lay upon the faithful the obligation of believing any decision that he might proclaim whether in the exclusive domain of science or in the exclusive domain of politics, where faith is not at all involved.
The object of infallibility is the doctrine of the faith and of the revealed law. The church has the deposit of revelation, of the Holy Scriptures, and of tradition; the Pope is its supreme guardian; the evangelical promise of infallibility is nothing else than the promise of fidelity in the custody of this sacred deposit! When the Pope or the council united to the Pope declares that a truth is contained in the deposit of revelation, they do not invent matter, they repeat and discern; they do not create a new truth, they confirm an old one, and cause new light to beam from it.
Infallibility is, then, not personal in the absurd sense in which the word [pg 495] is used; neither is it absolute and without limits; its domain, which is that of faith and morals, is clearly marked out by the constitution of the Vatican Council. “According to the perfectly clear text of the decree,” say the Prussian bishops who met at Fulda in 1871, “all allusion to the domain of politics is completely excluded from the definition of this dogma.” His Eminence Cardinal Antonelli, in his despatch of the 19th of March, 1870, to the Nuncio at Paris, is even more precise. “Political affairs belong,” he says, “according to the order of God and the teachings of the church, to the province of the secular authority, without any dependence whatever on any other.”
But, as between the secular power and the church, relations are necessary, these are settled by the two authorities through arrangements or concordats.