Count Daru, who now appears on the political stage in Paris, afforded some entertainment to Don Margotti, who is to Italy what M. Veuillot is to France, the leading Papal journalist, having, according to a saying of the Français, more power than all the bishops. According to Quirinus the redoubtable pair are "the two modern Fathers." Count Daru said, on January 11, that "our national maxims in matters of religion, the independence of the civil power, and liberty of conscience, cannot be menaced." This was child's play to Don Margotti. In his view, France needed the new Pope-Suzerain almost as much as Italy needed the restoration of the old Pope-King. Don Margotti[279] contends that the doctrine of modern parliaments is that they are themselves infallible. This he proves by a text from Emile Ollivier. That oracle on one occasion had said "We are justice!" but Don Margotti prefers an infallible Pope to an infallible people. Menabrea, Sella Minghetti, and such as they in Italy, according to him, represented God, the State. Margotti, therefore, looks on the mot of Ollivier as
providential, for it proves the necessity of an infallible Pope The world absolutely needs a permanent and infallible authority; if the authority is not the Pope, up starts Ollivier, and ascribes it to himself. It is time that infallibility should be defined, that we may have no more such absurdities as Ollivier proclaiming "We are justice!" Oh, let the dogmatic definition of infallibility speedily sound from the heights of the Vatican, and free us from modern justice, which calls itself now Baroche, now Ollivier!
Freeing us from modern justice and from M. Emile Ollivier are two different matters, though it is natural for Don Margotti to hail as providential an opportunity of treating them as one. The assumption of infallibility by parliaments is rather a favourite notion of Jesuit writers. They seem to mean that any authority which will not acknowledge its subordination to the Vicar of God must claim to be itself infallible. Yet, we might deem our own Parliament wiser than the Pope and his Curia, and morally superior, and still not think them anything more than erring mortals, with infallibility some way off. An English member of Parliament, repeating the Jesuit oracles, says that our Parliament claims to be infallible.[280] It would seem that no assertion of the Jesuits is too ridiculous to be seriously repeated by their Oxford converts, though many are kept back, but for other reasons than their absurdity. The decree in which the Parliament does declare its acts irreformable would be a great curiosity. So would even such an expression as the following, quoted by Don Margotti (January 18) from the archbishops and bishops of the province of Vercelli:—
Most Blessed Father, now and always shall we be found, in obedience and reverence to your Holiness, approving, and disapproving, whatever you, from your apostolic chair, do approve and disapprove; from which chair Jesus Christ Himself speaks in the Holy Spirit to the bishops and people of the whole world.
The meeting of the Italian Parliament having been postponed, to give time to a new ministry to prepare measures, Don Margotti, viewing the paralysis of the Parliament as a moral effect of the presence of the Council, said (January 22):—
The word of Rome imposes silence at Florence, and the Council of the Vatican does just as our Lord once did when He closed the mouth of the Sadducees. Gentlemen, you have talked enough. Now stand still, and hear the great word of God. Your day is past, the day of the powers of darkness; and now the days of the Lord will dawn, the days of truth and light.
The Address in favour of a definition of the dogma of infallibility had now become the talk of all. Vitelleschi (p. 85) states that it was carried round by the Archbishop of Westminster, and the Fathers of the Civiltá Cattolica, as the Jesuits are called who form the editorial college of the great magazine. A letter, inviting adhesions, and signed by several bishops, chiefly belonging to the class who had not any national ties, was circulated with the address. The signatures to that document itself were headed by the names of Manning, Spalding of Baltimore, and Senestry. What had been felt from the first was now openly declared on all hands, although the utterance of it had often been charged as a great sin upon the Liberal Catholics. We mean, that the object of the Council was the definition of Papal infallibility, and that all the rest was manœuvring. Brief as are the historical notes in the Acta Sanctæ Sedis they state that we may almost say that the whole Council was convened for the sake of the fourth session.[281]
Vitelleschi notes the fact that the citations given in the Address to prove that earlier Councils had propounded Papal infallibility, were not apposite. Quirinus says that the Address "bristles with falsehood." Veuillot, on the other hand, finds its arguments cogent,—indeed, unanswerable. Vitelleschi remarks that the writers speak with indifference or contempt of schisms which might arise from the measures they demanded. Friedrich calls it a compound of untruth and slander. Veuillot urges that the contradictions to the doctrine had now reached such a head as rendered its definition absolutely necessary. Yet all this contradiction had arisen since the personal organ of the Pope gave the signal for an acclamation.
That liberty of the Church which existed nowhere else upon this sinful earth, except in Ecuador, did exist in Rome; and, therefore, all other liberties were secured; that is, the liberty of doing everything not forbidden by divine authority. But printing in Rome, except by licence, was forbidden by the authority that never can be in contradiction to evangelical law. The Address for making that authority into an infallible one was, however, circulated in print, without imprimatur of any sort. This sign was understood on all hands. It was not to be mistaken. The divine authority asked for signatures. The canvass for them was keen.
Vitelleschi relates that the promotors of the Address were charged with dragging a question forward prematurely, which in the natural course of things, would have come on for discussion when the prerogatives of the See of Rome should be considered. To defend themselves, they said that the step they had taken was sanctioned by the Cardinal Presidents. This "indiscretion," he proceeds to say, "exposed the Roman Curia to the reproach of itself begging for its own apotheosis, devoid of feelings of the simplest propriety." Even the clergy, he thinks, were disconcerted at this proceeding, except the Jesuits. These were urged on by a fatality to proclaim "the infallibility of Clement XIV, who abolished them, and that of Pius IX, who had almost done so too, while they must find a formula to interpret the judgment of the next Pope who shall abolish them once more."