Not content with the far-reaching policy which aimed ultimately at a cosmopolitan counter-revolution, the party of movement desired to begin forthwith by a local counter-revolution. Italy was to be reconstituted as a confederation of four States—the Papal States, Naples, Tuscany, and Piedmont. This, cries Friedrich, is a new task for a Council,—a Council called to make a revolution![289] But the bishops knew more of the world than the Curia.
Party spirit now ran high. Those who had adopted the tactics of opposing infallibility only on the ground of opportuneness, while they really objected on principle, found that they had gained nothing in point of conciliation, and had lost almost everything in point of moral power. How could ordinary consciences understand a man who admitted, or seemed to admit, that a doctrine, affecting the representative of God on earth, was true, and yet denied that it ought to be proclaimed? Compared with this position, that of the Pope was bold sensible and Christian. "We must never fear to proclaim the truth or to condemn error." Many, as well as Dupanloup, who first departed from the false line that he had seemed to mark out, found that they must object to the principle. Even if they had not previously studied the question at all, the glaring attempts now made to palm off admissions of primacy for assertions of infallibility opened their eyes. An ex-Anglican like Manning might easily accept that or grosser fallacies, but others had been taught to distinguish. The party of movement, on the other hand, raised a cry for action, which swelled higher at every sign of opposition. Their allegations are briefly expressed by Sambin (p. 105):—
Pontifical infallibility is the sign to be spoken against. If it is defined, the question is near to its settlement. The Catholic social Liberalism of France, and the scientific Liberalism of Germany, are indeed menaced. It is, therefore, a question of life or death for Liberalism, as for Gallicanism and Febronianism.
The opposition to "the divine prerogatives of the Pontiff," says this author,[290] "had now become so pronounced that it was necessary to act."[291] Saviours of society always come to that point on the eve of the coup d'état.
M. Veuillot, who had long endeavoured to smother the opposition by asserting that no opposition existed, now declared that the opposition was so grave that it made the proposed definition a necessity. Quirinus says that the Address in favour of infallibility owes its preponderance of signatures principally to the three hundred boarders and the South Americans, while the counter-address represents "the overwhelming predominance in numbers of souls, in intelligence, and in national importance" (p. 173). One topic of constant complaint on the part of the Opposition was the disproportionate number of bishops to people in Italy as compared with other nations. For the seven hundred thousand people then in the Papal States there were sixty-two bishops, while for the twelve million Catholics of Germany there were fourteen. One million seven hundred thousand in the diocese of Breslau had but a single prelate, and he was not placed on any committee whatever. The nine millions of ignorant and superstitious people in Naples and Sicily had no less than sixty-eight bishops. On the other side of this question, M. Veuillot played off the name of London. If Paris and Vienna, Munich and Lyons, Milan and Turin, were on the wrong side, the Archbishop of London was on the right one.
Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore, issued a project for a decree which, without formally defining the dogma of infallibility, should bind all to an interior assent to the infallibility of Papal decrees in faith or morals. He pointed out the evils attendant on a formal definition, and that in a manner which afterwards enlivened the controversy between Dupanloup, Deschamps, and himself. The work wherewith Deschamps regaled his Christmas Day was that of proposing no less than ten anathemas;[292] for if the Fathers could not propose things in Council, they could send a suggestion to the committee. Ten new anathemas dated expressly on the Nativity of our Lord by a Christian bishop! That day Reisach died.
FOOTNOTES:
[272] "A French prelate, commenting upon the text of this discourse, sneered at the simpletons who allowed themselves to be led by a one-eyed man (un borgne). It is well known that the Bishop of Orleans has lost an eye by study."—Ce Qui se Passe au Concile, quoting the Moniteur of March 24.
[273] We quote from the Cologne Gazette, April 4, 1874, which, quoting the Presse, says, "The Count will remember the walks in the gloaming, and another by the baths of Diocletian, and so will be able to tell where the letters come from."
[274] Le Concile, etc., par Mgr. L'Evêque de Grenoble. Paris, 1869.