The reply of Count Beust to this despatch was prompt and clear. True, he said, Decrees of the Church retain their validity though rejected by the government; but this was the very circumstance that showed the gravity of the position. It would become a serious matter, both for the Church and for Catholic governments, if laws which were valid for the one, were repudiated by the other. Again, as to the Cardinal's remark that refusing the Church liberty to promulge her laws was scarcely consistent with professions of giving liberty to publish anything, Count Beust thought that this remark could hardly be serious. "Respect for the law is the basis of all liberty," said the Count, "and liberty which passes that boundary, becomes licence." But this arrow would fall blunted from a conscience covered by the buckler of the Vatican. Any Vaticanist would simply say, Respect for a higher law is not disregard of law; and whenever Rome has spoken, her word is the higher law, respect for which is the real basis of order.
The reply of Antonelli to the despatch of Beust is a singular document. He is so generally credited with ability as a diplomatist that one would fear to say, even if one thought, that it is anything but an able paper, whether viewed in an intellectual or a diplomatic aspect. He states that the remonstrances of Beust were expressed in "not very delicate terms," and in weaker and much less courteous forms puts forward the arguments which we shall presently find employed in his reply to Daru. So far from accepting the reproach of want of delicacy, Beust instantly and formally repelled it, and said that the Pope's Nuncio, when appealed to, could hardly find an expression in his despatch on which to attempt to sustain the allegation of the Cardinal. He demanded a copy of the despatch, and, as soon as he had obtained it, instructed the ambassador at Rome to thank Antonelli for granting it, and to tell him that he had immediately laid it before the Emperor.[312] Whether the Emperor thought the despatch respectful to a power such as his we cannot say.
The day after that on which Count Trauttmansdorff reported his interview with Cardinal Antonelli, Count Daru, in Paris, despatched an important document to the Vatican. According to an analysis of it, contained in the reply of Antonelli,[313] the Count summed up the effect of the Canons in two propositions. First, the infallibility of the Church extends, not only to the deposit of faith, but also to all that is necessary to its preservation. Secondly, the Church is a divine and perfect society, and exercises its powers in two tribunals, the interior and the exterior. She is absolute in the domain of legislation, judicial procedure, and coercive force; and moreover exercises her power with full liberty, and in independence of any civil power whatever. The Count points out that the claims of the Church are now extended to authority over history, philosophy, and science, and involve an absolute subordination to the authority of the Church of the very principles of a national constitution, the rights and duties of governments, with the political rights and duties of citizens, both electoral and municipal. They are extended even to everything included in judicature and in legislation, in respect both of persons and things; to the rules of public administration, to the rights and duties of corporations, and in general to all the rights of the State, not excepting the right of conquest, and that of peace and war. Is it to be imagined, asks Count Daru, that princes will bow their sovereignty before the supremacy of the Court of Rome? Considering the protection granted by France to the Holy See for twenty years past, she has special duties before the world, and he, therefore, claims that projects of laws which are to be laid before the Council shall be communicated to the French government, and that time shall be allowed to forward the observations that may be deemed desirable before they are pressed for decision.
The reply of Antonelli to Daru has been generally looked upon as one of the ablest specimens of his skill. Unless at the moment the greatest daring was the greatest skill, we must think the impression of skill is made chiefly on the minds of those who have not carefully studied the Vatican dialect. It would seem that Count Daru, or his advisers, were perfectly aware of the meaning of the document; and to any one who was so, a more absolute statement of Papal suzerainty can scarcely be conceived. The technical term "direct" plays an important part in the various assertions. The Cardinal does not deny the extension of the Papal authority to any one of the matters pointed out by Daru. He never denies that that authority is absolute, but always takes care to couple with the world "absolute" the word "direct"—it is not "direct and absolute"; and the real meaning of much of the despatch would be brought out by the simple question, which any ecclesiastical adviser of the French Foreign Office who was true to the government would ask, Is it indirect and absolute? Moreover, the blank statement that the kingly power depends upon the priestly, is, in the form in which Antonelli puts it, an extension even of the ordinary Jesuit doctrine, which couples the dependence of the kingly power upon the priestly with several qualifications, practically not amounting to much, but theoretically necessary to be kept in view, because they enable men to seem to deny what they mean to maintain. Commencing by a complimentary paragraph as to the protection of France and the gratitude of the Pope, Antonelli goes on to express great surprise that the Canons should cause so much uneasiness. They only expressed the maxims and fundamental principles of the Church, published in all forms, taught in the schools, maintained for ages, and often approved of even by civil governments. The Church, continues Antonelli, never claims to exercise a "direct and absolute" power over the political rights of the State. Having received the mission to lead men, whether as individuals or as constituted into societies, to a supernatural end, the Church had received the corresponding authority to judge the morality of all acts interior or exterior, in respect of their conformity to laws natural and divine. "As no action, whether commanded by a supreme power or freely performed by a person, can be divested of a quality of morality or justice, it follows that the judgment of the Church, though directly turning upon the morality of actions, indirectly extends to all matters with which morality is connected." But this is not the same as direct interference in political affairs, which, by the order established by God, and by the teaching indeed of the Church, belong to the temporal power without any dependence on any authority. The subordination of the civil power to the religious one is in the sense[314] of the superiority of the priesthood. Hence the authority of sovereignty depends on that of priesthood, as human things depend on divine, and temporal on spiritual. And if temporal felicity, which is the end of civil power, is subordinate to eternal felicity, which is the spiritual end of the priesthood, it follows that to attain the end towards which God would have them respectively tend, the one power is subordinate to the other; and thus, as between them, there exists in one of the two a subordination of functions as there exists a subordination of ends.
Therefore, proceeds the despatch, if infallibility does extend to all that is necessary to conserve the faith, no prejudice will, on that account, arise to science, history, or politics. Of course (we may interject) the reasoning is, that any subordination arising from a divinely-appointed order cannot be the cause of prejudice, but only of advantage. Infallibility, he proceeds, has been exercised in times past, and princes have had no occasion to disquiet themselves. If the Church has been constituted by her divine founder a true and perfect Society distinct from the civil power and independent of it, with a plenary threefold authority, legislative, judicial, and coercive, no confusion will arise in the movements of human society, or in the exercise of the rights of the two powers. The Church does not exercise, in virtue of her authority, "a direct and absolute" interference in the principles and constitutions, in the forms of civil power, in the political rights of citizens, in the duties of the State, and in the other matters enumerated in the despatch of the minister.
Almost the only thing not clear in the remarkable State paper in which Daru replied to this despatch,[315] is the way in which he understood the last remarks we have quoted from the Cardinal. He speaks of them as being important, but in what sense? As showing a wish to allay the impressions made by the Draft of Decrees, which is all the Cardinal really professes? or as containing any statement properly calculated to allay those apprehensions? Count Daru had evidently not read hastily, and had not been without clear-headed interpreters. He could not, for a moment, think that Antonelli had said that the Church had no authority to interfere in political matters, when he really had said no more than that she did not exercise a "direct and absolute" interference, by virtue of her authority. No more could Count Daru suppose that saying that she did not do so was a promise that she would not do so, although, even had such a promise been made, couched in the terms employed by Antonelli, the word "direct" would have deprived it of any practical value. Every other portion of Count Daru's Memorandum must have made the Pope, to whom it was submitted, feel that the Minister of France understood the intentions of the Vatican.
The more one examines the doctrine of this document, the more impossible does it become to overlook the fact that, in the main, it amounts to the complete subordination of civil power to the religious society.... Unless we refuse to words their true and natural meaning, we cannot escape the conviction that the Draft Decree on the Church has, for its object and end, the re-establishment, in the entire world, of doctrines which would place civil society under the empire of the clergy.... Under the formidable sanction of the anathema, the infallibility and authority of the Church are to be extended, not only to truths handed down by revelation, but to all things that may appear necessary for preserving the deposit of tradition. In other words, her infallibility and authority have no other limits than those which the Church may herself assign to them; and all principles of civil order, politics, and science, fall, directly or indirectly, within their range. It is on this almost boundless field that the Church is to exert the right of pronouncing decisions and promulgating laws, binding the conscience of the faithful, independently of any confirmation on the part of the political authority, and even in direct opposition to laws emanating from it. It is on this domain, the bounds of which, it appears, the Church alone may fix, that the Canons ascribe to her a complete power, which is at once legislative, judicial, and coercive, and is to be put forth in the external tribunal as well as in the internal,—a power the exercise of which the Church may assure by material penalties, and Christian princes and governments would be bound to lend their assistance by chastising all who should attempt to withdraw themselves from under her authority.
No wonder that Count Daru draws the inference that "governments would retain no power, and civil society would retain no liberty, but the power and the liberty which it might please the Church to leave to them." The dearest rights of States, their political constitution, their legislation on property, on the family, and on instruction, "might any day be called in question by the ecclesiastical authority." Moreover, it is now proposed that to all this shall be added Papal infallibility. "That is to say, after having concentrated all political and religious powers in the hand of the Church, they will concentrate all the power of the Church in the hand of her head."
As to the artifice, that only principles were to be carried, but that the application of them would not be enforced, Daru says, No such statement suffices to reassure us. What, he asks, Are people in the forty thousand parishes of France to be taught that they are free to do that which they are not free to believe? He will not even treat this representation as grave. He gives the Church credit for intending a serious work, and, therefore, when once she has inscribed a maxim among the immutable truths, she will try to bring it into practice. The Pontiff has not assembled the bishops of the whole world to promulgate sterile laws.
Antonelli had alleged that the principles in dispute were not new. That, replied Count Daru, he knew too well, but kings and nations had never accepted those principles, and the attempt to establish them had always, even in the middle ages, caused bloody conflict. He concluded by declaring that if the propositions were adopted, they would have the inevitable consequence of bringing about grievous troubles.