[163] Ibid. 340.
[164] Civiltá, VII. viii. pp. 209 ff.
Conflicting Manifestoes by Bishops—Attacks on Bossuet—Darboy—Dupanloup combats Infallibility—His relations with Dr. Pusey—Deschamps replies—Manning's Manifesto—Retort of Friedrich—Discordant Episcopal Witnesses.
In November 1869 the Bishop of Versailles, writing of Bossuet, said that the fame of the Eagle of Meaux was from day to day declining (Friedberg, p. 81). This was but a symptom of the new war against nationalism. Professor Ceccucci, though writing for a French audience, did not scruple to say, "If Bossuet escaped excommunication, he owed it to the benign and paternal indulgence of the Holy See" (Frond, iv. p. 112). Bishop Dupanloup soon took occasion to show that Innocent XI sent Bossuet two briefs congratulating him on having written in a manner calculated to win back heretics and increase the propagating power of the Church.[165] If the Church, even before infallibility had been proclaimed, began to be so conscious of its narrowness that it could hardly contain Bossuet, what will it be when a few centuries more have passed over it?
As the opening of the Council drew nearer, feeling grew warmer in political and religious circles. Archbishop Darboy sketched the impending dangers in a pastoral—
"You have been told that articles of faith which hitherto you have not been bound to believe, are to be imposed upon you; that points affecting civil society and the relations of Church and State are to be treated in a spirit opposed to the laws and usages of the age; that a certain vote is to be carried by acclamation; that the bishops will not be free, and that the minority, even if eloquent, will be treated as an opposition, and will soon be put down by the majority.... It must be owned that much has been done to spread these alarms by writers taking different sides."[166]
Bishop Dupanloup, when about leaving home for the Council, published a memorable letter. He seemed to regard the desire of the French clergy for centralization as the origin of the cry for a dogma. The change, however, from a national to a Papal spirit was natural. Was it likely that youths from the schools of the Christian Brothers, passed through an episcopal seminary, would comprehend the national spirit and episcopal convictions of Darboy or even of Dupanloup?[167] The lower education of the country had been just long enough in the hands of Rome to begin to bear fruit. Dupanloup meant no ill to France when he succeeded in binding Louis Philippe to Gregory XVI, by inducing him to give the priests their way in schools, in return for forbearance in baptizing the Comte de Paris, as the son of a mixed marriage, and of a mother who refused to abjure her Protestantism. But he then did one of the most hurtful deeds to France, and to the future of European peace, that man could have done.