Further Party Manœuvres—Election of Permanent Committees—Bull of Excommunications—Various Opinions of it—Position of Antonelli—No serious Discussion desired—Perplexities of the Bishops—Reisach's Code suppressed—It may reappear—Attitude of Governments.
Authors differ as to the actors in an incident which marked the second General Congregation, on December 14. Quirinus and Fromman say that Darboy and Strossmayer (Friedrich says that Dupanloup and Strossmayer) attempted to speak on the Rules of Procedure, but were stopped by Cardinal De Luca, on the ground that what the Holy Father had decreed could not be discussed. The official writers at the time said not a word of the incident, nor is it named in the Acta Sanctae Sedis, nor in Frond.
Thus the bishops had now ascertained their position, but too late. Quirinus naturally says that had the assembly been, in some measure, prepared for the Rules, there would have been opposition; but good care had been taken that the assembly should not be prepared, and should not have any chance of offering opposition. The first gleam of hope, adds this author, excited by the announcement that the bishops would be allowed to propose measures, had speedily vanished. Lord Acton says (p. 63): "The bishops felt themselves in an entangled position. Some began to speak of going home. Some complained that the Rules foreclosed questions involving divine rights, and said that they felt bound to put even the existence of the Council to stake."
The election of the Permanent Committee on Dogma was the great work of the day. Archbishop Kenrick's Latin note[238] states that lithographed lists were distributed some days before the election, with the inscription, To the honour of Mary, conceived Immaculate; and that these lists were recommended by the name of Cardinal De Angelis. Four hundred of the votes sent in gave the list entire. It was by these tactics that every Fallibilist, without exception, was excluded from the committees. But Canon Pelletier, who wrote what in Frond passes for the history of the Council and is a good history of the ceremonies and the dresses, declares that the election proved the perfect freedom of the Fathers, for though all the names on the official list were chosen, they were not brought in according to the order in which they stood on that list. The French prelates of the minority were especially incensed, both against their leaders and against those whose superior tactics had frustrated their unskilful attempts to unite. Every Frenchman felt that all who represented the traditions and the spirit of the Roman Catholic Church in France were now, in Rome, placed under a species of ostracism. The Fathers left this exciting sitting with another Bull in their hands. Again Letters Apostolic to the present! The Acta Sanctae Sedis affirm that the work of preparing this Bull could not be got through in time to send it to the Fathers before the Council. Its title was gentle. It was a Bull to Limit the Censures of the Church. Quirinus mentions a mission undertaken by Cardinal Pitra, a Frenchman, with the intention of bringing the prelates of his own country into accord with the Curia. This he followed up by a similar attempt with the German bishops. Pitra began by describing Dupanloup to the latter as "a mischievous teacher of error," but he was stopped, and told that the Germans agreed with Dupanloup.
A favourite topic of conversation now was the chance of disorganizing the Opposition. The first checks appeared to have had the effect of consolidating it, but the resources of the Court were generally assumed to be efficacious. Over and over again was it asserted that the hope of a robe of some distinguishing hue, or of a title on the list of domestic prelates of the Pope, would win over almost any bishop, an assertion which proved not to be correct.[239] Quirinus, in common with German writers generally, speaks of the honour of being on that list as one that ought to be coveted rather by menials than by dignitaries; and Italians may often be heard saying much the same thing. Again, faculties enabling a bishop to give absolution, or dispensations, in certain reserved cases, yield to him both power and fees. "Nine bishops out of ten want favours"—an assertion of Quirinus—seems bold, but it was written in Rome.
The Bull professing to limit the censures of the Church, was found to be another case of a winning title to a dreadful document. The censures with which it dealt were only a portion out of Rome's store, those, namely, under which one falls by the very act of committing the offence, without any need of trial or sentence. They are called offences Latae Sententiae, or judged already. He that confesses to one such act is, ipso facto, excommunicate, or, in the less heinous cases "suspended." The Bull, as we have said, professed to limit the number of these cases; many of which represent multitudes in all Roman Catholic countries, who must either shun the confessional, knowing that in that tribunal they are judged already, or must go to it to find themselves pronounced outside of the kingdom of grace, and incapable of restoration except by special powers granted from Rome, which always imply special fees.
It was freely said, This is a re-issue of the Bull In Coena Domini, the terrible syllabus of excommunications, at one time annually published; a custom which had ceased since the days of Clement XIV. This cessation was often cited as indicating greater mildness in the spirit of the Roman Court. In the new Bull Apostolicae Sedis these excommunications reappeared. They were under different heads. Three classes were reserved to bishops, so that no ordinary priest could release from them. Twenty-nine classes were reserved to the Pontiff, so that no bishop could release from them. Four classes were not reserved to any one.[240] Some bishops declared that they found excommunications here of which they had never been aware up to that moment. Vitelleschi said that if some found in old books were omitted, the Bull re-enacted all of the penal code of the Church that was in force. According as men looked at this document, from a fiscal, hierarchical, or monarchical point of view, their appreciation of it varied. Beyond excommunicating all heretics and heretical books, with the readers, abettors, and so forth, it dealt with few matters which any true theologian would not gladly banish from his bounds, as trespassers.
The hierarchical aspect of the Bull was striking. More than one of its sections pronounced excommunication upon the sin of appealing from any act of the Pope to a future General Council. This was the mortal blow to the doctrine that a Council could judge, and even depose, the Pope, as Councils had done. Being issued in the face of a General Council actually sitting, no alternative remained but that of conflict between the Council and the Pope, or else final abandonment of this once vigorous doctrine. The defiant crowings of the Gallican cock were for ever hushed by this one grip in the claws of the Vatican eagle. This Bull, as compared with the action of the Council of Constance, which deposed two Popes and itself elected one, served to measure the decline of the episcopal and the growth of the pontifical power in the Church. Many of the bishops were old enough to have maintained the doctrine that the Council was above the Pope, against Protestants, who innocently accused all Roman Catholics of being Papists. If any one of them thought of standing by the old flag, what was he to do? To put a notice of motion on the books? That was not permitted. To send a suggestion to the Twenty-six? It might as well go into his own wastepaper basket as into theirs. To speak upon the point? That would be out of order, for bishops were to speak only on matters proposed, and nothing was to be proposed but what the Pope proposed. Moreover, even if in speeches irrelevant matter should be allowed, such matter as that now contemplated would be at once pronounced rebellion. It would be an attempt to discuss what the Holy Father had already decreed. Thus the question of the relative judicial powers of the single Bishop of Rome, and of all the other bishops of the world collectively, was settled by an arbitrary sentence, uttered in the face of all the bishops assembled in conclave; and their assembly, though called a General Council, had no liberty to canvass the decision!
It was a hard dilemma for a man to be placed in who had a sense either of human rights or of a divine office to defend. But the hand of power was over the bishops. No man who opposed even embryo Decrees could ever reasonably hope for a hat; and he who should venture to attack a Bull actually issued must expect to see his mitre reduced to an empty dignity by the withdrawal of his faculties. So the bishops saw a Bull which "thrust the souls entrusted to them by thousands out of the Church"; and what could they do? "The more excommunications, the more perplexed and tormented consciences," cries Quirinus—reminding us of what might often be heard in the old times from thoughtful men in Rome. The whole effort of the priests, they would say, is to keep the conscience in agony, or at least in unrest; for this drives people to the confessor, and hence no end of gains.
A diplomatist regarded the political aspects of the Bull as serious.[241] Excommunicating men for an appeal to a General Council was, as he took it, both the forerunner and the application of the dogma of infallibility. Excommunicating all who should punish bishops, or higher officers of the Church, without making an exception for any breach whatever of law, and, moreover, excommunicating any who, directly or indirectly, should obstruct the execution of Papal mandates, were not only blows but stabs at all civil authority. The diplomatist argued that the way in which the Pope abolished privileges granted by his predecessors was a poor pledge of the value of any engagements into which the Papacy might enter. The diplomatist ought to have known that the immunity of the clergy from lay jurisdiction was an essential part of the restoration to be accomplished. He ought also to have known that "the free communication" of the Pope with the faithful, or his right to promulge in all countries his decrees as their highest law, was equally essential. The excommunication, not only of heretics, but of all who should harbour or defend them, ay, or should even read their books, led Vitelleschi to raise a question for young theologians, whether the Pope has not excommunicated himself and his own government, seeing he had done more than harbour heretics in an inn, by allowing them a church outside the Porta del Popolo.