Matters of Discipline—Remarks of Friedrich on the Morals of the Clergy—Also on the War against Modern Constitutions—Morality of recent Jesuit Teaching—Darboy's Speech—Melcher's Speech—A Dinner Party of Fallibilists—One of Infallibilists—Gratry—Debate on the Morals of the Clergy.
The Draft Decrees on discipline now in the hands of the bishops affected their remaining rights. It had taken three hundred years to develop the practical effects of the legislation of Trent in curtailing those rights. Paolo Sarpi may say that the prelates entered Trent as bishops and left it as parsons; but it was long before new regulations had worn down old procedure so far that an Archbishop of Paris, for instance, could be treated in the manner in which we have seen Darboy treated. The bishops, however, now feared, says Vitelleschi, lest their office should be further mutilated.
According to Friedrich (p. 88), when, at one of the first meetings of the German and Hungarian prelates, Strossmayer said that the matter before them was the resignation of their collective rights and the centring of the whole in the hands of the Pope, he was ridiculed; but when he repeated that statement, on Saturday, January 8, it was received with universal assent. On the other hand, Roman ecclesiastics were alarmed at the pretensions of the bishops. Two Dominicans begged Cardinal Hohenlohe to use his influence to prevent the Germans from speaking as extravagantly as the French. "It is really frightful," they said; "what is to become of Rome? These bishops want spiritual decentralization." Friedrich now thinks that he begins to see what is the religious principle of the Roman clergy—domination, as a means of existence. The bearing of this remark on spiritual decentralization rests on the fact that spiritual causes referred to Rome bring money to the bureaux, and the bureaucracy are the clergy.
The professional observations of Friedrich on the Drafts touching discipline give insight into certain interior aspects of Romanism, which affect not only its own condition, but, through it, affect all society. We therefore let him speak directly (p. 89 ff.)—
The first chapter on the Office of a Bishop closes so abruptly that only at the end is it said that bishops must be examples for the flock. It is, however, praiseworthy that they are told to take the lead of the faithful even in knowledge. Alas for this pious wish: It will be as it has been! Further on, the words "let ecclesiastical discipline be maintained" strike the eye, and that in respect of the mulieres subintroductæ, or γυναἱκες σονεἱσακτοι, in which character the parsonage cooks appear. This regulation is the most insulting imaginable; the most degrading for the parish priest, the most lowering and humiliating for the curates; altogether a dark spot in Church life. No regulation stands in such glaring contrast with Canons and Councils. It is a great offence against Christian morality, by which it is forbidden that any one should be placed in proximate occasion of sin; but in this manner the independence of a clergyman, and the placing of him in proximate occasion of sin, are connected together. The Fathers of the Council must themselves say whether this is or is not the greatest of cankers in the life of the clergy. They can tell whether it is necessary to direct the attention of the Council to this sore spot. One of the Fathers of the Council himself told me that he once spent a night in a parsonage where the rural dean (Dechant) and the cook were parents of both curates. It is said in the Draft, De vita et honestate clericorum: "If a clergyman, unmindful of his own dignity, is given to immodest defilements or to impure concubinage, or dares either in his house or elsewhere to have a woman of whom suspicion may be entertained, or to seek her company, let him be proceeded against, with the penalties prescribed by the sacred Canons, especially by the Council of Trent, and that without noise or the forms of a trial, only by simple inquiry into the truth of the facts." But what will this avail? Those directions have long existed, yet things go on as of old, and any such directions must necessarily be insufficient. Why is not the regulation of the ancient Church once more taken up, and carried through with a firm hand, according to which every woman, except nearest relations, was suspected, and was not to be admitted to the house of a clergyman? If our Church-princes of to-day will not return to the old regulation, which indeed sufficed not to hinder all excesses, and if they are incapable of finding new and better ones, it would be preferable, at all events, and would involve less responsibility for them, if they allowed their clergy to marry outright rather than give them up to arrangements which place their reputation in so ambiguous a light. The fact that this subject had to be brought forward here in its regular place is sad enough, and should be taken as proof that we cannot go on in the present way. Has it not already come to this, in certain dioceses, that the bishops find themselves obliged to hush up, rather than to punish?
Further on, in the same chapter, it is said, "While they preach to the people due reverence and obedience towards the powers of this world, let them all with one mind and heart, taking counsel together and uniting their deliberations and strength, earnestly maintain the rights of the Church and of this Holy See, so that their common guard and defence may more perfectly assure the interests of the common cause; but let them admit of nothing which will lower the honour and dignity of their rank, and let them keep the admonitions of the Council of Trent on this point under their eye." These sentences are doubtless well meant; but, practically, will be without result. Nothing is gained by such general propositions. This being self-evident, nothing should be said in Decrees of a Council beyond the laying down of positive directions. The conclusion of the chapter is vague, but, perhaps, very dangerous. "We require princes and magistrates to cover and protect the sacred chief pastors (antistites) and ministers of the Church, and their most excellent work, with their powerful patronage and defence, that due honour, respect, and obedience may be paid by all to the ecclesiastical authority. Knowing that bishops promote not only the cause of the Church, but also that of their nations, and that above all the boldness and wickedness of men who perversely seek to mislead minds and corrupt manners may be restrained and constrained by them in the exercise of their pastoral office."
First of all, what is meant here by most excellent or highest work (optimum operant)? who are included in by all (ab omnibus)? Not only is honour to be paid to the spiritual authority by all, but obedience. According to the notes, by all includes princes and nations; that by the Council princes and nations may be moved to venerate the sacred pastors, and to render them obedience and reverence. Are we to understand that the unbelievers and misbelievers in a State are to pay obedience to the bishops? Does this wrap up the mediæval notion that heretics after all are under the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, as Bishop Martin lately gave himself out as the bishop of the heretics in his diocese? Also that unbelievers have no moral right of existence, and so on? And what is meant by the concluding words? Do they imply that the bishops have a right of interfering with the freedom of the press, of belief, and of conscience as granted by modern constitutions? A General Council should speak clearly and definitely.[293]
But who would have believed that in the second chapter on the Residence of Bishops a condemnation of the constitutional usages of modern times should be attempted, even indirectly? It provides that bishops must not be absent from their sees more than two, or at the utmost three, months in a year, whether continuously or at intervals. Such absence cannot be allowed even for causes otherwise admitted as lawful—alias jure admissis—except by express permission of the Pope, or, in the United Greek Churches without the permission of the Patriarch. One is here compelled to ask, Could not those cases have been foreseen in which seats in Upper Houses are permanently connected with many bishoprics. Why this needless increase of requests for dispensation? But, according to the Civiltá Cattolica, it is only as compelled by existing circumstances that bishops can properly take part in the objectionable constitutional life. It is said in the notes that the necessity of an express apostolic permission is to be remembered as being even now required by the constitution of Boniface VIII—Sancta synodus—even if there exists one of the four grounds of absence admitted as legitimate by the Council of Trent in its twenty-third session. These four grounds were, visiting the thresholds of the apostles (i.e. Rome), attending provincial synods, attending a General Assembly in which ecclesiastics are wont to sit, or discharging an office or duty to the State connected with the Churches themselves. But (says the note) because the Decrees of Urban VIII contemplate assemblies of a kind which do not at present exist, mention of this as a just cause of absence was omitted in the Decree, in which also was omitted, for a similar reason, mention of discharging an office or duty to the State. Thus the Chambers which have taken the place of those ancient assemblies do not exist for the Curia, or it feels bound to ignore them—quite in harmony with Jesuit fantasies. Should the session of the Chamber last more than three months, those Bavarian bishops who are members of the Reichsrath would require an express permission from the Pope to fulfil their duty to the State. They might receive from the Pope a prohibition against staying any longer at the Reichsrath and fulfilling their obligations as citizens. Very edifying for our governments and States! They, however, would know how to help themselves, and would simply withdraw such a seat from the bishop.
Friedrich then dwells on the new contrivance of centralization by which every metropolitan is ordered, before publishing the acts of a Provincial Synod, to send them to Rome. The Curia is not to give them any formal approbation, but to correct them, should anything seem to call for correction. After this they are to be issued as the acts of the Provincial Synod. To execute this feat of shaping provincial decrees within the chambers of the Curia, Pius IX had appointed a new Board or Congregation. Friedrich calls this a new censorship. That would appear to mean that whereas formerly only private authors required an imprimatur, now even the collective episcopate of a province requires one. It would, however, seem to involve more than a censorship, because the new matter inserted in Rome has to go before the world under the provincial names. Authors were not compelled to father the corrections of the censor. They could leave the work unpublished.
That sense of impending danger to the Church which, of late years, had weighed on many Catholics, arose not a little from the moral teaching of the Jesuits, whose influence, under the smile of the Pope, they saw gradually rising. Out of regard for the honour of the Church, many Roman Catholics suppressed the horror they felt at what they discovered in the books of the Jesuits. Only those who have read some books—those which reflect the modern phases of their moral teaching—can appreciate the weight that must have lain on the hearts of some good men when striving to uphold before their imagination the Church as the perfection of beauty. Among the disciples of the Church of Rome are many who hold close to the Christian side of her theology, and seem to forget its Pagan side; many who avoid what is material in her cult, and, by aid of that same theology, cherish spiritual worship; many who turn to the noble morals of the Gospel, from the lower and ever deteriorating morals of the schools; and many to whom the secular spirit of the Papacy and the earthly empire aimed at by the Jesuits are repugnant.
Friedrich learned, in Rome, that those who confess to the Jesuits are not to be trusted. Any one who will read even one hundred pages out of the seven hundred of Gury's Casus Conscientiæ would not think of trusting—would only think of pitying any creature into whose head the principles of that bad book had been put. Friedrich evidently does not repeat any light talk when he says that he heard it stated, upon good authority, that the Jesuits in Rome were in the habit of employing women as lures to procure the overthrow of men who stood in their way, which women would then return to the Jesuit confessionals as penitent Magdalenes; and this, he adds, the Pope knows right well. When Vitelleschi speaks of the evils arising from severity against errors of the intellect, and indulgence to errors of the will, he means what we should describe as strictness as to Papal principles, and laxity as to moral practices.
According to Vitelleschi, Darboy had only to stretch out his hand to take a Cardinal's hat. The impression that this was the case, and the terms on which he was known to stand with the Curia, gave great interest to his first appearance in the desk, which took place on January 19. How gladly would the Curia have seen him stretch forth his hand in the direction where the hat hung; but no, he reached it out in that direction where he had only reproaches to gather.[294]