The spectacle will have been exhibited of a bishop who had, during a life already long, given strong proofs of devotion to the Church and to the Papacy, becoming all at once the butt for insult and for those indignities against which you protest, because on a capital question he said what he believed, and still believes, to be for the true interests of religion and of the Papacy.[321]
Ebullitions like this were but a sample of the increasing irritation on both sides. The majority naturally wanted to have done with the strife, the result of which was already certain. Vitelleschi says that the Curia desired that the Council should be merely a great ceremony for the solemn fulfilment of a pre-arranged program (p. 76). They bitterly accused the minority of egging on the governments to oppose the Council, to menace the Church, to insult the Holy Father, or even to dictate to the Holy Ghost. Every objection to the new dogma was denounced as rebellion against the Pontiff, hostility to the Council, disloyalty to Peter, and so forth. Documents such as those of Beust and Daru were a complete reversal of all that was right. At the moment when Rome was "officially taking the affairs of the world in hand," it was insufferable for people representing provinces such as Austria or France, to attempt to control the Mistress of the world. Strictly speaking, Beust and Daru did not represent those two provinces any more than Menabrea represented Italy. They represented only the carnal and inordinate jealousy of the supernatural order entertained by the natural order in those provinces. They must be made to learn the meaning of the commission, "Teach all nations."
The members of the minority, trained by Rome to rush to statesmen and importune them for everything that could serve the Church, now that they believed her to be drifting to a terrible peril, did as they had been accustomed to do. Personally they were stung by hard words, not only from the Pope, but from all officials down to small diocesan editors, emulous of Don Margotti and M. Veuillot. Even priests in their own dioceses were set against them. As a party, the minority were irritated by restraint, suspicion, manœuvres, affronts, offers, and even by espionage. Their one solace was, they felt, a vain one. They could indeed speak, but they could not really debate. Their one refuge was vainer still. They could draw up petitions, but they might as well address them to Julius Cæsar for any answer that was ever vouchsafed. The air was full of complaints of long speeches. Some proposed that no more should be read, some that no more should be delivered in any form; but that they should be written, printed, and distributed among the Fathers. Some combined the two propositions, suggesting that only they should deliver speeches who could do so extempore, and that the others should print theirs for those who liked to read them. The Unitá Cattolica hailed the proposal to have no more speeches; it would shorten the Council.
Others, again, tried to form a third party, on the basis of some compromise which would satisfy the Court by giving it in substance all the concentration of power it wanted, and yet would save the minority from the difficulty of accepting Papal infallibility in express terms. Bishop Vitelleschi was named in connexion with this attempt. They who made it did not fully realize either the political or the theological bearing of the points at issue. The whole conduct of future operations must depend on the ability of the central authority to act at any moment and in any place, without the remotest fear of hesitation or delay on the part of the instruments; above all, without any possibility of that old bugbear, an appeal to a General Council, being raised up again.
The pretensions which Pius IX had set up under the veil of secrecy now began, through publicity, to drag Rome on to her doom. She would not have dared, at first, to face governments with her present claims. She had silently spread them in her schools, had excited her fancy with the echoes of them coming back mysteriously from provincial synods and from episcopal thrones, had shaped them into formulæ, one part of which her fears had cast away, and another part of which publicity had put to shame. Some now asked her to stop when the coach was at full swing down hill! The attempt to do so would be attended with extreme danger. She would lose, not only the new authority at which she had been grasping, but also a considerable part of the old authority, out of which that was to have been developed.
The Canons which had been the occasion of the protest from governments could indeed well be spared, if the supreme authority and infallible judgement of the sovereign were proclaimed but without that the Canons would be paper laws in the hand of a discredited administration The Syllabus, cried M. Veuillot, had lighted a torch, five years beforehand, by which to study the objects of the Council (vol. i. p. 55). The Curia had studied the objects during the five years by that light. For it retreat on the main point was now an absolute impossibility. Had France really withdrawn her troops, the Curia could have broken up the Council under the justification of physical fear, and so would have escaped the dilemma by an intervention of Providence. But it was not to be. And we may as well here slightly anticipate our narrative, in order to complete the incident of the French note. Daru was one of the ministers who resigned on finding out that the Emperor's professions of setting up a responsible ministry were such as to remind one of the mot attributed to Dupin, at the very height Napoleon's power: "It is really too bad: one cannot now believe even the opposite of what he says."
It was reported in Rome that, within twenty-four hours, two telegrams had arrived from Paris. The first read: "Decidedly Daru will not have infallibility. He announces that there will be a rupture." The second read: "Daru retires. Ollivier replaces him. The Council free." If it is true, cried M. Veuillot, it is glorious for M. Ollivier (vol. i. p. 462). The despatch of Ollivier, on taking over the office of Foreign Affairs from Daru, would have been thought straightforward if proceeding from any Court but such a one as that of the Tuileries then was. After stating that the Emperor had not sent an ambassador to the Council, and had scrupulously abstained from interfering with its proceedings, but that recently, when warned by the rumours in Europe of dangers menacing the cause of religion, he had for a moment stepped out of his reserve and offered counsel, Ollivier proceeds:—
The Holy Father has not seen it right to listen to our counsels, nor to accept our observations. We do not insist, and we resume our attitude of reserve and expectation.
You will not seek or accept, henceforth, any conversation, either with the Pope or with Cardinal Antonelli, on the affairs of the Council.
You will confine yourself to gaining information, and keeping yourself acquainted with facts, with the sentiments which have prepared them, and with the impressions which have followed them.[322]
So terminated an incident that caused, for a time, a considerable flutter, and seems to have offered to the Curia the only fair escape from the dilemma into which it had got. It was now felt that the legislation necessary to put the new constitution into working order, must be pressed into as small a space of time as possible. The restoration of ideas had not advanced satisfactorily since the meeting of the Council and the restoration of facts had made no progress at all. The voluminous Drafts had already brought Court theology into contempt.