The address of the fifteen bishops requests that authors of proposals shall be admitted to a hearing before the Commission, and also that the latter shall be required to assign reasons when it reports against any proposal. But the bishops do not even ask leave to put their suggestions upon the books. That would, at least, have given members the right of letting their fellow members know what they wished to see done. The idea of entering a notice of motion would of course have been in that atmosphere not liberty but licence. They do, however, venture to suggest that some members of the Commission might be elected by the Council. They also point out that secrecy cannot be really maintained. The address, as we have said, was not even answered.
Hergenröther, the writer on whose authority Cardinal Manning requires us to rely, devotes some strength to this question. He begins by affirming that in Trent there was no fixed order. His proof for that assertion is that there is no written Code of Procedure, the record showing only the course actually followed from time to time. He also asserts that the bishops in the Vatican Council had perfect liberty of proposition. He moreover informs those who learn from such as he, that in all great assemblies the right of the President includes that of proposition, at least so far as to give him the decision, as to the order in which the proposals are taken.[226] Hergenröther, moreover, affirms that Friedrich wished to deny the right of proposition to the Pope—a blunder arising from not distinguishing between a right and an exclusive right. The Directing Congregation made a distinction as singular as was this failure to distinguish on the part of Hergenröther. It held that the Pope had the direct right of proposition, and the bishops the indirect right. But the fact was that they had no right of proposing to the Council whatever. They had no right beyond that of making a suggestion to the Pope, which, we repeat, anybody in the world could do; the only difference being that the one suggestion went before a Royal Commission, while the other did not.
The Directing Congregation had been first of all inclined to let the Fathers choose a committee of their own, but finally determined that the Pope himself should appoint a commission. This was an arrangement open to objections which even they did not wholly fail to see; but the Court historian finds a perfect answer by saying that if a good proposal should rest unheeded the author of it would have the satisfaction of having done his duty, and he must trust to divine Providence, which would never fail the Church.[227] Clouds of words were raised about this simple matter. The Catholics made solemn asseverations that the bishops had as perfect liberty of proposition as the members of any public body. The Liberal Catholics protested that they had not. They were cried down as slanderers.
Hefele, a learned German, gave confused and even contradictory advice as a consulter; first contending that the bishops should have a right of proposition, and then suggesting the very arrangements finally adopted. Sanguineti, a Roman consulter, plainly stated what was to be aimed at, namely, that the Pope alone should have the right of public proposition, leaving to the bishops what he calls the right of private proposition; as the directing Congregation calls it, of indirect proposition, or, as we call it, of suggestion.[228]
The result, then, was that the bishops could not bring in any substantive motion, could not move for a subject to be taken into consideration, could not put a notice of motion on the books, could not move an amendment on what the President proposed, could not move the previous question, could not move to decline taking the matter into consideration, could not move to postpone it. All that they could do was to speak to what the President proposed, to send suggested amendments before a committee, and finally to vote Yea or Nay upon the question, in the form into which that committee ultimately put it. No minutes of proceedings were printed, or even read day by day. No knowledge was allowed to speakers even of the reports taken of their own speeches; no sight of the reported speeches of others.
Notwithstanding all this, bishop after bishop returned from the Council to denounce in pastorals those who had said that they had not the liberty of proposition. Even our English tongue had to make itself the vehicle of such statements for two mighty nations. Bishop bore witness to bishop, and they were true and all men were liars. Archbishop Manning told how bishops "of the freest country in the world" had said truly, "The liberty of our Congress is not greater than the liberty of the Council."[229] We fear that American bishops might have quoted similar declarations from English ones. It is for members of Congress and of Parliament to judge.
La Liberté du Concile is a tract which, Friedrich says, if not written by Darboy, was inspired by him.[230] Only fifty copies were printed during the Council, for distribution exclusively among the Cardinals, and with the strictest injunctions of secrecy. The whole is given in the Documenta ad Illustrandum.[231] It is introduced by an article from the Moniteur of the 14th February, 1870. One of its earliest sentences compresses the secret history of Cecconi into a few words. "The first unhappy thought, and that from which the Council now suffers, was the wish, so to speak, to make the Council beforehand, and to make it without the bishops." It is right to mention that M. Veuillot says that this writer recounts ill, reasons worse, and draws inferences worst of all.[232]
For two years, complains this writer, the bishops had been refused any programme. They had not been afforded any possibility of studying questions about to be raised, or of preparing themselves to discuss them.[233] It would seem that the writer did not know that the preparations had extended over five years instead of two. He says that the Council had not made its Rules of Procedure; the Pope had imposed them. It had not chosen one of its officers, not even a scrutineer; the Pope had selected them all beforehand. The reason for the restraints imposed on the liberty of the bishops was stated by M. Veuillot as being to take away the liberty of evil, which the writer considers an insult to the bishops. We may remark that this is a principle which, had it been acted upon by the great government above us all, would have precluded every question as to the origin of evil. This tract affirms that the Commission for Proposals was composed exclusively of declared partisans of the Court. That statement is not quite accurate. Rauscher was a mighty instrument of the Curia in its ordinary aggressions on the civil power, but too sensible to approve of its present projects. Cardinal Corsi also, though at last he voted with the majority, was all along reputed as averse to the definition of infallibility. The next complaint is that the Committees for the important subjects of Dogma, Discipline, the Religious Orders, and Oriental affairs, are permanent, chosen once for all, and chosen by a strictly party vote, excluding every Fallibilist. Thus, is it urged, only ninety-six bishops out of nearly eight hundred would ever know anything of those real deliberations which principally determine the results of the Council. These Committees would have to decide upon all alterations to be made in Drafts of Decrees after the first Drafts had been discussed by the bishops generally. They would have the sole responsibility of bringing them forward in the definitive shape in which they must be voted upon, Yea or Nay. Thus, he repeats, seven hundred out of eight hundred are absolutely excluded from a share, at any time whatever, in the most important operations of the Council. The indignation of the author would not have been lessened had he known that this particular point had been carefully weighed by the Nine. They at first resolved to allow the Council to elect, as had been done at Trent, committees for each particular matter as it arose. It was, however, subsequently foreseen that this regulation might open the way to the election of men who were not safe. After a discussion, a man who had displayed ability in treating the matter in hand might be elected on the committee for that reason alone! If, on the other hand, committees were chosen once for all, it would be easy to secure the exclusion of wrong names in that one election, and no opportunity of changing them would ever arise.[234]
The writer of La Liberté du Concile proceeds to say that a number of bishops urgently requested the Pope, in order to ensure a wise selection of these all-controlling committees, to direct that the Fathers should be divided into groups, and should in these discuss pending questions separately, on the plan adopted in the Bureaux of the French and Italian Chambers. Thus the Fathers, who for the most part were perfect strangers to one another, would in a little time learn who were the capable men, and would be in a position to make a proper selection. This appeal, probably the one we have already mentioned, was not even answered.
The lords of wide dioceses, accustomed to rule their clergy with military authority and to face statesmen with considerable pretensions, were now reduced to struggle for very small liberties. They attempted to form themselves into groups, by nation or by language. So far as the French were concerned, this arrangement failed. Each of their two Cardinals, De Bonnechose and Matthieu, received a group in his own house. Cardinal De Bonnechose would not consent that all the French bishops should meet together. Even when they divided, he went for advice to Antonelli, who intimated that they ought not to meet in larger groups than fifteen or twenty. The effect of all this was, that when the time for making arrangements for the election of the committees came, they had no concert among themselves; and the writer states that after that election, the annoyances confronting Cardinal Matthieu were so great, that he felt obliged for a time to leave Rome. Hereupon the bishops who had previously met at his house resolved to go to that of Cardinal De Bonnechose, who had, for once, to receive them; but he again consulted Antonelli, and declared that this first general meeting should also be the last.