The Bull, said some, is only one of a series of measures to be framed, assuming the infallibility of preceding Popes. The dispute as to Bulls which taught any dogma in theology or morals must for ever end. The very points which Liberal Catholics had alleged to be without binding force must be beyond appeal bound on earth, and of course ratified in heaven. A little circumstance not without significance was the fact that, in publishing this document, the Civiltá did not, as it usually does with official documents, furnish a translation of the Latin; and the Stimmen, for Germany, followed the example.
In Germany or other Protestant countries an unfavourable impression might be taken of the means to be resorted to for restoring Papal ascendancy when, in the terrible category of offences judged already, without power to remit the sentence being reserved to any one, even to the Vicar of God, were found the following deeds, which many Christians would do with as cool a sense of duty as that with which under slavelaws they would have befriended a fugitive slave: "Injuring or intimidating Inquisitors, informers, witnesses, or other ministers of the Holy Office; tearing up or burning the papers of its sacred tribunal; or giving to any of the aforesaid aid, counsel, or favour." If the day ever comes for attempting to put this law in force on the now happy soil of England, blessed among her sons or daughters will that one be who first has grace to endure the torments of the Holy Office rather than not break the wicked law!
The fiscal bearing of the Bull would be the one first to strike and most to occupy the Romans. Among men of the different orders, it would occasion many a chat over questions of sin, sacraments, crime, communion, dispensation, remission, and redemption from purgatory, and of the fees flowing from each respectively. Quirinus represents the Jesuits as beholding both the present and the future in rosy hues. The bishops would not be able to give absolution in the reserved cases, but the Jesuits, in very many of them, would have plenary power. Hence the bishops and the parochial clergy would suffer both in fees and influence, while the confessionals of their powerful rivals would be thronged. "So, each of those multiplied excommunications is worth its weight in gold to the Order, and helps to build colleges and professed houses."[242] Against the complaints which greeted the Bull, the Civiltá alleged that it contained nothing new, and above all that it had been posted up in the customary places in Rome, and was therefore already the law of the Church universal. It was, on the other hand, boldly alleged that there were many new cases of suspension, interdict, or excommunication. Cardinal Antonelli, however, said that there were three hundred excommunications which were not included in the Bull. Lord Acton (p. 70) quotes a passage from the organ of the Archbishop of Cologne, which shows that a good many more will have to be added before all actions are placed under perfect control. The Bull, it is said, does not prohibit "the works of Jews, since Jews are not heretics; nor does it prohibit heretical pamphlets and journals, for these are not books; nor is the hearing of heretical books when read aloud forbidden, since hearing is not reading."
Some doubt hangs round the feeling of Cardinal Antonelli as to the Council. It was often asserted that he had been opposed to it from the first, and was still decidedly so. This seems very probable. A worldly-wise man, capable of amassing a colossal fortune amid the ruins of a petty State, was hardly likely to believe that the à priori fabric of Tarquini and the other Jesuits, and the hot-headed schemes of the Pope, were solid enough to bear what was to be built upon them, or would lead to anything but defeat of the Papacy, and misery to the nations. But in contradiction to this view, Quirinus says that Antonelli was too good a statesman and financier not to see the gain that would flow from the new dogma in power and revenue. The new dogma would doubtless enormously increase the power of the Curia within the Church and over all her organizations. It would thus increase the facility of bringing pressure to bear on a government by threats of disaffection and agitation; but it would at the same time arouse all statesmen, and eventually all intelligent men, except real disciples, against this sacerdotal empire. The most likely explanation of any zeal Antonelli may have shown for the new order of things would perhaps be that while retaining his own view of the risks about to be run, he knew that what was to be was to be, and determined to make the best of it.
Papers immediately preceding the Bull in the pages of the Civiltá[243] seemed to indicate steadiness in the purpose either to bend the States or to break them. One article rang the changes on the old theme of the royal placet or exequatur, "the crime whereby ecclesiastical judgments are submitted to lay examination." "The Church," it adds, "is not a foreign power, and hence concludes that the State has no right of precaution jus cavendi, in respect of her." The internal power on which the Curia counts, in any country, being that of threatening political agitation, the denial to the State of all right of precaution is essential to the full application of the principle of the Pope's "free communication" with all his subjects. A physical impediment to the promulging of a Bull was, in old times, not more a precaution than is, in our day, the principle that the law of the land is supreme. Just as the physical impediment was unlawful, so is the legislative one; both stay the free course of "the divine word." The old dukes, kings, and emperors, knowing that in the popular conscience the law of the Pope ranked above all civil law, put a check upon the promulgation of his Bulls. We say, Promulge what you please, but the law of the land is the only law in the land. "Here is the ground on which the future battle is to be fought out."
Just between this article and the catalogue of excommunications came a discussion on unfulfilled prophecy. The Jesuit Father, Soprano, had, by comments on the prophecies of Balaam, Daniel, and the Apocalypse, clearly proved (according to his reviewer) that the city of Rome was destined of God to be in perpetuity the centre of the Catholic Church. The war against the kingdom of Christ was to fail, because "she" could not lose her empire. But certain points as to the issue of the war now raging between the innovators and the kingdom of Christ, were open to inquiry—"What dynasties will survive, what forms of government will prevail, what end will such and such kingdoms come to? Finally, we may ask whether the Holy City, the mount of God, the capital of the Catholic world, Rome, may for a time fall under the power of sinners and parricides, to be outraged by fire and sword, and defaced with crimes." But, on the other hand, as to Rome being the stable domicile of catholicity, we might doubt of that only if the mount which cannot be moved could be levelled with the ground.
This expositor is true to the old interpretation that the Babylon of the Apocalypse is Rome, but that was the Pagan Rome, which "fell with the victory of Constantine." It will be observed that he takes the possibility of a temporary fall of the sacred Rome into the hand of the enemy as but an episode in a war that is to continue through a long series of years.
Since 1870, such forecasts as the above, when uttered, have not the same triumphant tone. Nevertheless, they are now as clearly expressed as ever. But at the time of which we speak, if the bishops only read what was written for their learning they could not doubt as to the kind of service which was expected of them in the future. Friedrich intimates that they did not read it, when he relates that, in trying to enlighten one of them, he told him that the only way to understand the Council was to study it with the Civiltá Cattolica in one's hand. But some of them showed a solicitude that could not be explained on any ground short of a perception of the dangers on which the Pope was running the hierarchy. They evidently did not take the view either of those who thought that the Pope, erected into a vice-God, was about to become the real as well as the titular governor of the world, or the view of those who looked on such dreams as matter to laugh at. The calculations which produced the Crusades and the Thirty Years' War, were dreams; but could the Church afford the indemnity which mankind would exact for the miseries of such another struggle?