The absorbing care of the Curia and its instruments was now directed to the one end of constraining all to vote placet. The victory was no longer doubtful, but to procure unanimity was of great practical moment. The Pope himself was indefatigable. His admirers resented such epithets as "unscrupulous" when applied to his conduct. But they took good care not to grapple with the details of alleged facts which, if they could be credibly told about the conduct of one of our sovereigns in respect to his nobles or to Parliament, would be described in much stronger epithets than unscrupulous. His tongue was evermore scattering rebukes or blandishments, and enlivening the city with crackling sparks of gossip. There were but few bishops of note among the minority whose portraits, etched by the infallible acid, were not handed round the salons, lay and clerical. His letters were bitter and undignified. Quirinus quotes the words of a French bishop (p. 627): "There is no longer any scruple as to what is done to gain votes. It is a horror. There has never been anything like it in the Church." These words recall to us a scene in Rome. A remarkable head—one of those heads which bear on the brow a diploma of gifts and letters—was stooping in the light of a lamp by which pages had been penned that had been heard of beyond Italy. The stoop was pensive, and the thinker said, "I saw so much of what was done during that Council, that it has destroyed all my faith in anything that ever was done in the Church before."
It would seem as if, at the last, argument and appeal had begun to tell on some of those who were of a milder mood among the Curialists. It is said that even of the chosen three champions, Manning, Deschamps, and Pie, the last wished to find some formula less offensive than the one projected. Martin of Paderborn even proposed a note which contained a recognition of the teaching authority of bishops, though in an indirect way. On the other hand, the members of the Opposition tried to discover some turn of expression which would save the Church from the shame of being publicly disavowed by her wilful lord. Conolly spoke of proposing, as a formula which would still give her a recognised voice, words declaring the Pope infallible when he spoke, "as head of the Church teaching with him." Others again wished to reinstate the formula of St. Antoninus, of Florence, declaring the Pope infallible when he acts with the counsel of the universal Church.[427]
Men now began to realize the full effect of the proposed dogma, both in its executive and in its retrospective aspects. Many must have remembered how happy they had been in argument, or in diplomacy, when the ambiguous state of the case, as it had hitherto existed, enabled them to evade the charge that such and such were the principles of the Church. It was so convenient to be able to say No, they have never been sanctioned by a Council; they are only the words of a Papal Decree. Now, however, all these words were to have fresh life breathed into them, and whatever they contained affecting a general principle of belief, or practice, was to be taken for divine,—was, in fact, to rank as the word of God.
Delay now became the forlorn hope of the minority, and expedition the watchword of the majority. The minority were sure that the Pope would not be so cruel as to force them to continue in Rome during the summer heats. Hence, they thought that by delay they were certain of a prorogation before the fatal deed was done. They forgot the history of the Pope's prisons and executions. Perhaps they had never read it, or had used their fatal facility of calling an unpleasant statement a lie. Antonelli had generally carried away the chief part of the blame for the blood of the political victims. However, he seems completely to have escaped reproach for the broiling of the bishops. Whether the fierce language ascribed to the Pope was correct or not, nobody doubted its aptness.[428] When even the faithful M. Veuillot said, Since they have put the Council upon the gridiron, they shall broil (ii. p. 352), everyone treated him as only echoing the language of his idol. When once the heats had begun to tell, the feelings of majority and minority, as Vitelleschi points out, changed. Men from the north, accustomed to the bracing air and pure streams of Germany, could ill bear up against the miasma from the Roman marshes and the torrid heats that were withering the city and making even natives look pale. They therefore began to long for an escape, and not a few of them took their way homewards. They received not only ready but glad permission. Thus every day was diminishing the strength of the Opposition. The majority, on the other hand, consisting of Italians, South Americans, and Spaniards, were inured to the heats, if not to the malaria, and felt that the sun and the marshes were conspiring with them. Apollo had come to camp shooting over the heads of the natives, but laying low the men from beyond the sea.
There was now only one consideration that would make the Pope anxious for despatch, and that was the daily pressure upon his finances caused by supporting his three hundred boarders. This certainly had proved a useful ground of appeal for funds. The sums collected everywhere had been great. The Civiltá reproaches the Liberal Catholics with not sending money any more than they had sent men to fight for the Holy Father, and sets in contrast with their stinginess and want of military spirit the fact that the Univers alone had sent in more than nine thousand pounds (234,410 francs).[429] The Holy Father said, "They fear making the Pope infallible, but they do not fear making him fail."[430] But M. Veuillot, on the contrary, did not fear making him infallible, and did everything possible to prevent him from failing. Hence it was no wonder that he should have briefs to publish which would perform a service for the exchequer of the Univers similar to what the Univers performed for the exchequer of the author of the briefs. The words of the Pope spoken to the deputation of scientific men were representative words, "Here I am to receive your offerings."
Theiner, the celebrated Prefect of the Vatican archives, now fell publicly under displeasure. He had allowed Hefele and Strossmayer, and perhaps others, to see the order of procedure of the Council of Trent, and probably had in other ways shown leanings not acceptable to the Jesuits. He was ordered to give up his keys to Cardoni, who had been the first chosen secretly to prepare Drafts of Decrees on Infallibility before intentions were disclosed, and had kept his counsel well. The archives were actually closed against Theiner. It is said that the passage into them from his own rooms was walled up. The disgrace of Theiner, and the honour of Cardoni, sharply symbolized the favourite saying that the dogma must conquer history. Here again Antonelli escaped all reproach of a share in the blundering injustice. Cardoni was one singled out by name in a celebrated letter of Döllinger as having largely employed falsified authorities. But that charge, to us so revolting, is a familiar sound wherever the shadow of the Curia extends.[431] We ourselves once heard a member of the Congregation of the Index claim, unmindful of the presence of a Protestant, "You must never trust any edition of any work whatever that has passed through the hands of the Jesuits."
The exciting matters now remaining to be treated in the Council were the all-important particulars of those Drafts which had already been under a general review. The two chapters teaching the institution of the primacy in the person of Peter, and the transmission of that primacy through the Roman Pontiffs as his successors, were speedily disposed of. Had all the fathers attempted to answer the arguments of Desanctis on these points, arguments familiar to many Italians, they would not have found it light work. But the third chapter was one of immense importance. It defined the scope and nature of primacy, distending that term till it was made to cover absolute, immediate, and ordinary control in the whole domain of the Church—control over bishops and people, control over not only all matters ordinarily included under the expression "faith and morals," but over all things held to be necessary for the government or discipline of the Church. This last expression, as any one acquainted with the views of those in authority, even so far as they are recorded in our preceding pages, must know, covers almost every possible question that can arise. The words of Vitelleschi (p. 174) are well considered. He speaks of the "supreme jurisdiction, ordinary and universal, of the Pope over all Churches, singly and collectively, over pastors as well as flocks; from which doctrine it follows that bishops in exercising any jurisdiction or authority, only do so as official delegates of the Pope." Dr. Langen puts it thus: "Seeing that there can be only one bishop in a diocese, as soon as the Pope is declared to have ordinary jurisdiction in that diocese, he becomes its Ordinary, and the other person called a bishop is nothing more than his delegate and representative."[432] Men who cover a dominion of this sort under the pretext of primacy, and who advance a claim of primacy in order to deduce from it an absolute dictatorship, never do anything more sensible than when they decry reason and relegate Scripture to the tradition-heap; when they call for pictures instead of books, and processions and fireworks instead of a free press and free discussion. There was political philosophy in M. Veuillot's exclamation on witnessing the Easter rejoicings in Rome, especially the fireworks representing "the heavenly Jerusalem," that it was impossible not to respect a people for whom such entertainments were provided.
The first assertion in the Decree of ordinary and immediate jurisdiction over all Churches, oddly does not describe that jurisdiction as belonging to the Pope, but as belonging to the Roman Church (par. 2). No sooner, however, has principality been ascribed to the Roman Church than it is instantly transferred to the Pontiff, and is again instantly affirmed to be a truly episcopal power. This confusion, in such a document, would be amusing if the matter were not so serious. That a Church should be a bishop is certainly new; and that a truly episcopal power should reside in a Church which is not a bishop, is one of the many mysteries created by the Vatican Council. But that the source of the Pontiff's authority should in this very Decree be sought in the Church, is a proof how hard a task is theirs who determine to make dogma conquer history. In the very language of the Decree, history conquers the dogma.
If the document contains this one taint of dualism as between Church and Pope, it is clear of all reproach of dualism as between the Pope and Princes. The latter are legislated out of all rights that could possibly conflict with those of their Lord Paramount. Notwithstanding the slight dualism as between Pope and Church, the latter is also legislated out of all her ancient claims; but incidentally she appears in clauses which, if she was only infallible without the consent of the Pope, as he is infallible without her consent, might in time prove very awkward. He has only as much infallibility as she has: that is a clumsy admission just before the assertion that he is infallible without her consent. However, wherever the power resides, or springs from, it is a power over all pastors and all believers, and extends, as we have said, not only to faith and morals, but to all things which affect the government of the Church. Thus it includes every mixed question whatsoever, and all things of any kind which in the estimation of the Pope of Rome may relate to the interests of that kingdom of which he is the king. This power, moreover, is immediate, and as such can act without being legally restricted to any processes, any agencies, or any forms. Being ordinary, it can never be obliged to wait until the ordinary jurisdiction has been tried and failed. Being immediate, it can never be told that it must take this, that, or the other line of procedure. This language for ever settles the point which had been contested in the famous passage of letters with Darboy.
How it could be necessary to add another word after these affirmations we can hardly see. Even Councils, or the pastors collectively, had but one office assigned to them—the office of obeying. After this the abstract proclamation of Infallibility, or Irreformability, or Inerrancy, could add nothing to a power that was universal, ordinary, and immediate, and towards which the people or bishops, singly or collectively, stood in one relation only—that of subjects in presence of an authority which they were bound absolutely to obey. It naturally follows that it is in this obedience that Rome finds unity. That is, in fact, her ideal of unity. Christians are Churchmen, not by being Christians, but by obeying the Roman Pontiff. Under the Papacy a Christian is outside the family of God if he does not obey the Cæsar of the Church.