December 16 marked the second failure in the organization of the Council. The first was the irremediable one of the absence of Cardinal Reisach, and now, before serious discussion had begun, the third General Congregation had to be postponed from the 16th to the 20th,[244] because nobody could be heard in the hall. So six days passed without a sitting. Debates were actually to take place—a thing which had neither been desired nor expected. The hall was a good place for spectacle, but a bad place for a parliament. In vain do bishops frown and editors sneer at the writers who said that the Curia had not expected much discussion. Cecconi comes to the support of the "liars," as in official indignation they were called who told just what there was to tell (p. 180)—
It was a deeply-rooted belief of the Directing Congregation that but rarely would anything have to be referred to the committees of the Council, because the Directing Congregation so well knew how profound had been the attention given by the Preparatory Commissions, that it seemed extremely difficult to believe that the Drafts so prepared should not be received with general favour by the Fathers.
This, in fact, is the excuse put forward by the Nine for not having given the bishops a word to say to the Drafts of Decrees before they were confronted with them, as being already in a form to be voted upon. The practice at Trent had been to state the question as a question. Then it was first discussed by the doctors in the presence of the bishops, who after that appointed a small committee of their own number to put resolutions into shape. The Council proceeded to discuss the Drafts so prepared, amending and again amending them, until they were in a form on which (if the subject was doctrine) almost every one could agree.
It was now, however, coolly assumed that so complete had been the work of the secret commissions that the bishops would not raise any difficulties.
Great variety of opinion, say the Nine, would probably be rare, seeing that the matters to be treated would be already prepared, with great accuracy, by the special Commission, formed by his Holiness, in conjunction with the Directing Congregation (Cecconi, p. 180).
Cecconi repeats that the great confidence felt in the excellence of the work of the theologians had generated in the majority of the members of the Directing Congregation this conviction. He is candid enough to give the reason for bringing the Drafts ready made into full assembly, which was to prevent them from being exposed to the influences which a restricted number of prelates might exert. That amounts to saying that the able men whom a free assembly would have chosen to consider and digest its forms of resolution, were not to be allowed any chance of unitedly studying the forms prepared in secret for them. The Court would bring its own plans, with all their details and complex notes, before the full assembly, which could never thoroughly sift them, and in which the majority was assured.
While in almost everything else the rejection of parliamentary forms was commended, as becoming an assembly which had to contend against both the principles and results of parliamentary government, the practice of our own Houses in bringing in Bills ready drawn was pleaded in favour of the course taken in preparing extended drafts of dogmatic decrees. But our Parliament has never yet been called together to vote that laws are as good if issued by the Crown, without the advice of Lords and Commons, as with it. Nor has it ever been asked to pass a measure which neither it nor any succeeding Parliament could recall. Our Parliament is never asked to discuss a Bill without first having the right to say whether it shall or shall not be brought in. It never finds a Bill before it which, if it pleases, it may not refer to a special committee. Any member can move the rejection or the postponement of the whole, can move the omission or amendment of any part, and can take the sense of the House. None of these things could be done at the Vatican Council. The bishops could make Latin speeches in a row, first on the Draft as a whole, and then, in a second row, on the parts. But only twenty-four of their number could ever put a hand to the amending of the proposed statute. With those twenty-four were associated irresponsible persons, non-members. As that mixed body finally shaped the propositions, must the Fathers vote upon them, with a Yea or Nay that sealed the creed of their churches for ever.
It was not wonderful that the Curia should believe in the perfection of the Roman theology, since they took their own government for perfect, and the capital for a model city of the saints. The German estimate of the Court theology is indicated by Quirinus when he says that "though the Pope had four hundred theologians, theology is now rare, very rare, in Rome." He goes on to assert that if one should say that ability to read the Greek Testament and the Greek Fathers in the original was a necessary qualification of a theologian, "he would be ridiculed." As to the divinity even of the bishops, the evidence of Quirinus is little more flattering than that of Friedrich; but the discussions yet to come will show that men of real power were not wanting.
The first Scheme or Draft of Decrees on dogma now appeared. It was nothing less than a book of one hundred and forty quarto pages, containing eighteen chapters and fifty-four paragraphs. Frond makes it folio and of 131 pages.