News of the death of Cardinal Reisach destroyed the hope that his influence might prevent the Germans from standing with the Opposition. The preparations for a code regulating civil and ecclesiastical relations, on which he had spent years, were not to see the light. It had already been resolved not to present to the Council the Drafts prepared by his Commission on Ecclesiastico-Political Affairs. Cecconi (p. 266) thinks that probably the absence of the Cardinal "contributed to the shipwreck" of his proposals. The subject was "thorny"; and again, it was not decorous to make inoperative laws, or expedient to make combative ones. It would seem that the supreme cause of the shipwreck was the practical consideration that nowadays civil governments, "which form an essential element in such matters," oppose ecclesiastical laws, instead of taking charge of their execution. The official historian, however, is of opinion that the failure of this first attempt to indite a code of ecclesiastico-political law is not final. A time, he thinks, may come when it can be renewed, with hope of success—a declaration full of instruction as to the future. The time for renewing the attempt to prepare such a code will, according to the Archbishop of Florence,
arrive when this rapid and ceaseless movement, political and social, going on under our eyes, and making us daily spectators of great and often of unlooked-for events, shall have reached its ultimate period, to which will certainly succeed (unless the last days succeed) an entirely new era in the history of the human species. When that day comes, I know not what portion of the old institutions will remain standing; but sure I am that one of them will have survived, though peradventure externally bruised and lacerated. She alone will be mistress of the field that day, and the princes (if indeed the sound of that name will still be heard), but certainly the nations, having then, after long and cruel experience, made up their minds that out of her there is no well-being, either in this life or beyond the tomb, will demand from her the laws of tranquil repose, together with the earnest of eternal happiness (p. 301).
This language is the more significant as having been written since the war in 1870, and even since the outbreak in Germany of imperial resistance to the movement for priestly domination. With regard to princes, it seems to breathe the threat which was screeched out by the Jesuit organs in 1869 and 1870, that if they were not to sink in the coming struggle, they must make peace with the Church.
As to the nations and the laws of the Church, it adroitly represents the nations, not as submitting to receive the law at her dictation, but as demanding from her the laws which give repose. The ever-recurring alternative of submission or disturbance, if not destruction, is smoothly but gravely put. Still, the historian seems as if he wrote thus rather by official duty than by personal impulse. But, like all the "inspired" writers, he takes it for granted that the Church holds the "repose" of nations in her power. Cardinals count on the effect of thorns planted in the pillows of statesmen. They know how to teach principles that form a people within the nation ready to obey a foreign word of command, and they know how and when to give the word. They always—so say men in Italy—know how to find an Ahithophel, and how a Delilah!
Fears were often expressed lest an attempt should be made on December 28 to carry Papal infallibility by acclamation. The bishops, however, seem to have had backbone enough to determine upon a formal protest should this occur. Friedrich tells how those dignitaries who make little of denouncing the laws of their respective countries were very anxious in Rome to find some mode of giving expression to their complaints and desires without printing, which in the Model State they durst not do.
He also states that on the day before the opening of the discussion the Pope was greatly depressed. It may have been a diplomatic depression. What bishop could be so heartless as to make speeches that would weigh on the spirit of the Holy Father, and in fact to call in question Draft Decrees prepared by his authority and proposed in his name? What bishop, by obstructing their adoption, could occasion a risk that the day fixed by Decree for the second session should arrive without any Decree being ready? One of Friedrich's statements, which, before Cecconi published, seemed the most improbable of all, was that Cardinal Bilio, the President of the Preparatory Commission on Dogma, had reckoned on the Draft being carried with scarcely any discussion. Much as we knew of the displacement of the idea of conviction by that of submission, this statement seemed too monstrous. But the Archbishop of Florence appears unconscious of anything strange in the case. If Italian novelists and journalists, with whom the indifference of the national mind to religion is a favourite idea, had combined to give an illustration of that indifference, they could hardly have invented anything so expressive. A Cardinal taking it for granted that seven hundred bishops could hastily adopt for ever as doctrine binding upon themselves, their successors, and their Churches, a considerable work, every single phrase of which any serious man would weigh before he accepted it for his own creed, but would weigh ten times more carefully before he imposed it upon others—before he took it upon his soul to curse all who did not accept it, and to declare them cut off from the kingdom of God! Yet it is plain that not only Bilio, but the Curia generally, expected the passing of the Draft as almost a matter of course. In their minds the idea of submission to the Papal authority had first displaced, and then completely replaced, the idea of religious conviction.
The first Vatican Decree passed after the Council had been declared open, fixed the feast of Epiphany (January 6) as the day of the second session, in the expectation that this Draft, or a portion of it, would by that time have been adopted. But, like the first Vatican appointment, the first Vatican Decree had been not ratified in heaven. The Civiltá said (VII. ix. 227), "As the discussion on the Draft proposed is not terminated, no Decrees will be published in the second session." The Acta Sanctae Sedis curtly wrote, "No Decree was published because none was ready."[246]
Meantime the relative attitudes of the Council and of the Catholic governments had become more clearly defined. Following France, and rejecting the view of Bavaria and Portugal, the governments had determined not to interfere. Portugal had sent to her minister his credentials as ambassador to the Council, but finding that he should be alone, Count Lavradio did not present them. France, which for the last ten years had been abused by the Papal organs, was now loudly praised. Even M. Veuillot said that she was more liberal and more Christian than the other nations, for her bayonets were at Civitá Vecchia to restrain the violence of the Italians, and God would not forget it to her. True, French statesmen every now and then did show some apprehension as to what might come to pass if every child in France should learn in his catechism that the Pope was infallible, and if most of them should grow up under teachers who would gently show how the Modern State rebelled against the divine constitution of the world as implied in that fundamental truth, for the government of the nations. It was even said that Darboy plainly declared that should infallibility be proclaimed, the French troops would no longer remain in the Papal States. However that might have been, all that fell from the inspired pens was pervaded with quiet reliance on France. It seemed as if the writers believed that, just then, events depended more on one Spanish lady, in the Tuileries, than on all the Frenchmen in Paris and the departments.
It cannot be said that the compliance with the wishes of the Curia shown by politicians, was repaid by a milder attitude. The new Bull, technically called Apostolicae Sedis, popularly called the new In Coena Domini, was menacing. The grave Civiltá (VII. ix. 134) said—