The bishops desired to select the best men of their own nation to be nominated as members of the permanent committees. The Curia, however, had provided for all that. The "ticket" of Cardinal De Angelis, as it would be called in America, was the counter move. The German and Hungarian bishops had shown more cohesion than the French. They met together, and made a selection of the principal men from their own number; but that resulted in nothing. The Curia had selected those whom it preferred, setting aside the men who stood high with their fellow-countrymen, and putting forward those who with them would have had no chance. An official list was prepared bearing the name of Cardinal De Angelis. Of course the bishops in partibus, the missionary bishops, and all the mere dependents of the Court, voted for the official list; and thus the whole of the four permanent committees were composed, as the secret preparatory commission had been, exclusively of the nominees of the Curia. The Jesuit Press gloried over this result. M. Veuillot said that the Committee on Faith was an echo of the great commission appointed by the Pope. Sambin recorded the triumph, with satisfaction, for permanent history. The result showed that the Court could count on about 550 votes.[235] De Angelis was appointed to the vacant post of Chief President, in room of Reisach. Cardinal Schwarzenberg was not on any committee, Hohenlohe was out of the question. Even the Archbishop of Cologne was only on a petty committee for granting leave of absence. But Bishop Senestrey, of Regensburg, the author of the throne-upsetting speech, was on the all-important committee for dogma.
This manœuvre excited strong indignation amongst all shades of the marked men. They found themselves shut off from such a part in deliberations as would have been granted by any worldly cabinet to an honourable Opposition. Then, the mode of securing the result by the expedients of a political election caused bitter recollections of frequent admonitions, given both verbally and in the Press, not to reason about the Council as an ordinary human assembly, but to evince a worthy confidence in the all-guiding power of the Holy Ghost. The Rheinischer Merkur remarked that the Romans had a saying, that at the beginning of a conclave the devil reigns, then the world carries all before it, and only at the last does the Holy Ghost turn both out and regulate things according to His own will. This genuine specimen of Roman mockery is applied to the Council by the Merkur saying that as yet the third stage had certainly not set in.[236] The selection, said the Merkur, of committees was one-sided and narrow-minded. The Archbishop of Paris and the Bishop of Orleans saw themselves thrown aside, and nominal bishops put in the places they ought to have occupied. The German bishops, who had strongly confided in the moderation of the Curia, found that no amount of trimming would avail; nothing short of a sound profession on the question of infallibility. Vitelleschi says that the clearest, most sincere and disinterested opposition was that of the German bishops. They knew what they meant, and also knew that they expressed the collective sense of their people; besides, they always acted with moderation. He ascribes this moderation to two causes, namely, the fact that they consciously did express the views of their people, and that they were, more or less, influenced by Protestant modes of thinking. We confess that we see little proof that any German bishops but the Curialistic ones were clear. We should rather have said that they were at sea. As to the moderation, however, Vitelleschi adds that no such moderating influence of Protestant opinion appeared in the case of the English prelates. "Several bishops, with Manning at their head, more Catholic than the Pope, are noted for their Ultramontanism" (p. 45). He adds, that even the Irish bishops were less uniformly Infallibilists than the English. Of the Belgians, he says that some naturally took the more liberal direction. De Mérode, well known in Rome as a Court prelate, placeman, and speculator, like Dupanloup, had been a champion of the temporal power, but now proved to be an anti-infallibilist. Et tu, Brute, fili mi! exclaims the Roman. As to the Spaniards, Vitelleschi says that they had been trained in the school of Torquemada; and if they were content with being only Ultramontanes, that was something gained. These are the divines of whom Quirinus says that if ordered by the Pope to vote that there were four persons in the Trinity, they would do it. Vitelleschi remarks that the prelates of the United States were simpler than their brethren, and less practised in ecclesiastical politics. Their want of any political importance at home, he believes, had predisposed them to warmer sympathy with Curialistic views than might have been expected from them. Nevertheless, it proved in time that, under the forms of ecclesiastical discipline, the spirit of citizens of a free country did now and then make its appearance among them. Another of his remarks is, that, with the exception of Portugal, most of the bishops from small countries were in the interest of the Curia. Speaking of Mermillod, from Geneva, Quirinus says that he "rivals Manning in his fanatical zeal for the new dogma." Of course the Italian bishops, with very few exceptions, were Infallibilists, and those from South America were all upon the same side. The bulk of the Opposition bishops were German, Hungarian, and French, reinforced by some of the older ones from Ireland, a few of the English, a good many of the North American, and only about twenty of the entire body of the Italian.
The various groups had now everything to stimulate them to put their proposals into shape. Those of the Curia were in shape already. They naturally took the old direction of conforming the creed to innovations in practice. At Trent this was done with many innovations, which must either fall into discredit or be lifted above dispute. In this way was the demand for a reform of the Church to raise her to the level of the creed, met by a determination to bring down the creed to the level of the Church. The two movements were confronted. Reformation, on the one side, renovating the condition of the Church; and Conformity, on the other side, adulterating the creed. Both together resulted in the wide separation which has been witnessed ever since. The necessity now pressing sprang from different causes. No party had arisen to challenge the primacy of the Pope, even in the form of all but unlimited monarchy, into which, under cover of the gentle word "primacy," it had been monstrously developed. On the contrary, indeed, of late years the faithful had shown increasing submissiveness, proportioned to the dangers surrounding the Pope. But the Papacy itself was moving for constitutional powers which demanded a new dogmatic basis.
In comparison with the magnificence of the scheme of one fold and one shepherd, the notions of the German bishops, as disclosed by Friedrich, are an illustration of how administrators putter when immense issues press for solution. While the architects were designing a new coliseum, the joiners and stone-cutters were great upon cusps and corbels. In answer to the seventeen questions issued in Rome at the centenary of St. Peter, the German bishops had deliberated at Fulda for five days. Marriage, as a mine yielding richly to the local authorities in fees, and to the Curia in dispensation taxes, and also as a means of power over females, and over the education of children, was naturally one of the main points. Another point included the offences for which parish priests should be liable to deposition. On this the bishops advised the addition of two offences to the list—notorious fornication and open concubinage.
Hints were thrown out about abolishing all benefices, as they were said to be feudal. The clergy could not be fully mobilized but by the abolition of permanent appointments. The whole effect of the questions was to bring out the existence in Germany of too great toleration of intercourse with Protestants; intercourse to a degree not consistent with the militant footing on which things were to be put. This applied to christenings, weddings, burials, and other events of life, where the milk of human kindness sometimes will overflow, and men will forget that they belong to a society which scarcely regards those who are not of it as morally entitled to existence. The bishops naturally desired that the number of causae majores, or reserved cases, should be curtailed, as that would increase their own freedom and power. They also expressed a wish that censures should not be enforced against Catholic judges who found themselves obliged to pronounce sentences adverse to the canon law. This they advised in order to avoid the exclusion of Catholics from the judicial bench. They moreover suggested that unreasonably contracting debts and habitual drunkenness should be added to the list of causes warranting the removal of a priest. They did touch a few minute points of a properly religious kind, connected with the forgiveness of sins, ordination, and other questions.
Friedrich remarks that these ideas tended to the omnipotence of the bishops by sacrificing the parish priests. This object, however, was a natural complement of the sacrifice of the bishops to the Curia. If the bishop is himself an absolute dependent on the Court, all his subordinates must be left to his mercy. The Curia knew how to lure on the bishops to the forfeiting of their own franchises, by using their love of power against the franchises of the priests.
Friedrich gravely says that the movableness of the parish priests would not cure the moral evils complained of. It is not by outward correction that a man becomes morally better, but by the ennobling of the inner man, which, alas! is so little aimed at among the clergy. When a French bishop can say in the Senate, "My clergy are a regiment; they are bound to march, and they do march," he only shows how the Christian spirit has evaporated from among the hierarchy. A few weeks before Friedrich left home he had conversed with Döllinger upon the seventeen questions, and he says that they were the only points respecting the Council on which they did converse together. What the aged provost said, observes Friedrich, will always remain in my memory. "On one occasion, Windischmann remarked in my presence and that of others, 'If I was compelled to answer according to the contents of the ordinary's book, whether celibacy should be abolished or not, I should have to speak unconditionally for its abolition.'"
We have seen, in a previous chapter, that some of the lower clergy had indicated plans of considerable range, but they pointed in a direction in which Rome was incapable of going. Great attention was attracted by a project, appearing with the name of a learned layman in Switzerland, Dr. Segesser.[237] His charter had no less than twelve points, which are well worth a moment's notice.
1. He held that the Church, in having, for the first time in her history, declined to invite the co-operation of governments with the Council, must now declare for the separation of Church and State.
2. The Council must be a Reform Council in the fullest sense of the word.