That same morning a Congregation was held to consider the suggestions made by those who had given conditional votes. Two Spaniards, according to Quirinus (p. 804), had made two propositions tending to complete the repudiation of the collective authority of the universal Church by the Bishop of Rome. The proposed Decree, as it stood, limited his definitions to "matters which the Holy See had held from ancient times in common with other Churches."[459]
This language, however vaguely, did recognize both antiquity and catholicity. The worthy Spaniard doubtless felt that the Vicar of God ought not to be limited by any such things; that he should be left free to define what he felt called to define. The committee had been of the same mind, and had adopted the proposal of the Spaniard that the above-quoted clause should be struck out. The Sub-Secretary cried, "The amendment proposed to 76 is accepted by the committee: those who are in favour of accepting it, stand up." Nearly all stood up. Ten or twelve stood up against it, and away went the antiquity and catholicity as expeditiously as any Cardinal could desire.[460]
The inner lights of the Pontiff were thus freed from any restraint arising out of ancient views, and the local creed of Rome was freed from any restraint arising out of a common Christianity as between that city and other Churches.
Now, however, came to pass a marvel, if anything could be marvellous there and then. The venerable men seated all around had spent their long lives in hearing and telling of one thing—the glory, the authority, the divinity of the Church, and the overwhelming conclusiveness of her consent. All who did not hear the Church were, according to them, lost. Even when, in preparing the way for the change of base which they had foreseen before leaving home, some of them had appeared to throw tradition altogether overboard, it was only in order to substitute for it the general consent of the Church. Which of us would have dared to tell devout Roman Catholics that their own bishops, when once in Rome under the terror of the Pontiff and the Jesuits, would disavow the consent of the Catholic Church, and say that without it the word of a single man was quite as good? They may now attempt to explain the words "not by consent of the Church," as meaning something small; or even to say that Popes ever and always formally disclaimed the necessity of her consent. The world must leave them to do so; but they know, as well as we do, that had we said that their bishops would of a sudden put words like these into the creed, they would have called us calumniators. Yet what came to pass?
That came to pass which had often been hinted as necessary by the zealots during the Council, but had always been looked upon as impossible by most men of the minority, although a few had openly said that in such a Council nothing was impossible. Another Spaniard, when he gave his conditional vote, had proposed that the words of the Decree which said, "The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves irreformable," should be amended so as to read, "The definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by consent of the Church, irreformable." Vitelleschi says that no information was given as to the authority at whose suggestion these metamorphic words were approved by the committee, but approved by the committee they were. So, without any opportunity of debate, the Under Secretary cried, "The amendment under number 152, having been modified, is accepted by the committee"; and reading it, he added, "Let those who are in favour of accepting it stand up." The great majority stood up. "Let those who are against accepting it stand up." "About thirty" stood up.[461] Thus were those ancient men called upon in their episcopal robes to extinguish the light of that lamp to which they had ministered oil all the days of their lives. They obeyed like soldiers, and the old, old light of a catholic consent was quenched for ever. Many of the eighty-eight were absent, and knew not of this new, swift, and crowning victory of the guild over the hierarchy.
Done in a moment! the Romish bishops had effaced from their law, and from their rule of faith, the consent of the Catholic Church! Talk of revolutions, of hasty parliamentary votes, of the sudden impulse of a mob; but where in history is there an instance of breaking with a long and loud resounding past, in such haste, and so irrevocably; irrevocably, not by the ordinary law which entails the consequences of an act upon the future, but irrevocably by the form and intent of the action itself? We know, alas! what these bishops are capable of representing; but it is for the unborn to judge the men who did that act and then faced round, saying that they changed nothing. And these men are to teach the human species the art of conserving all that they have "inherited and proved"! The Church of the Popes had long ceased, in the eye of Protestants, to have a claim to catholicity. Now, however, in the eye of Liberal Catholics she explicitly rejected catholicity by statutory and irreformable law. They saw her contract herself to the sect of one man and his retainers, to a religion made up of faith in one man, his inner light, and his faits accomplis.
The slow but irresistible operation of principles had at last worked out its ultimate issue. Liberal Catholics were the first to see that the religion of the Pope had now really ceased to be Catholic, or even national, or indeed municipal—that it had in fact become only palatial. They at once named it the religion of the Vatican. They did not so soon admit that the principle of one city church—not the mother, and not a model—being the mistress of all others, and practically the fountain of their faith, contained in itself the germ of all that had now come to fruit.
The sitting which began with deeds so very solemn ended in another way. For once the poor Pope had been exposed to the plague of pamphlets in the Holy City. It is pathetic to read the wailing over the destiny that subjected so holy a being to this in addition to his other "martyrdoms," "Calvaries," "crucifixions," and such like words, to win a tear. Many of the vexatious writings were in Latin. Thus if they had the additional bitterness of being the work often of bishops, always of priests, they still had the veil of a dead language. Not a few, however, had been written in living tongues. Two of the latter, which cut dreadfully deep, were in French—What is going on in the Council? and The Last Hour of the Council. We are now to see how these are dealt with. It is announced by the First President that a certain protest will be distributed. So papers are handed round. During this process the Under-Secretary calls out, Let the Fathers take notice that the sitting is not over! Then from the pulpit, in the name of the Presidents, he reads a protest against false reports in general, and the two pamphlets in particular. They were stinking calumnies and shameful lies—putidissimæ calumniæ ... probosa mendacia. The Italians and Spaniards, who could not have read them, cried, "We condemn them." The minority cried, "We do not condemn them." The President called upon those who did condemn them to stand up. Sambin says that so few remained seated that, to avoid exposing them to humiliation, the contrary was not put. Among these men Friedrich names Rauscher and Schwarzenberg. Two copies of the condemnation had been handed to every one of the bishops. The President now read a request that each would return one of them signed with his own name. This trap, however, was not successful. Haynald said that if the Presidents would translate La Dernière Heure into Latin, he and the rest of the Hungarians would be able to see if it was as bad as their Eminences had said it was.[462] The Acta Sanctæ Sedis make no mention of any demur, but notes that many prelates said, "Willingly, with all my heart, yes, even to blood!" But why giving bad names to two pamphleteers should call forth such heroic resolutions is not obvious. Thus did an Œcumenical Council spend its last legislative moment in recording a condemnation of two pamphlets which obviously the bulk of those who gave sentence could not have read. The presentation to every man personally of the two papers, and the call to sign, coming from the chair, was a symptom not calculated to dissipate certain fears that had got abroad among the minority. It was reported that if they dared to give an adverse vote in the public session, two papers would be immediately presented to them, the one being a subscription to the dogma, the other being the resignation of their sees. If they did not sign the first, they must sign the second. They knew that in case they refused to sign both, they were within the walls of Rome. And suppose a bishop to have signed his resignation and then to find himself in the hands of the Papal police! And men liable even to the suspicion of such menaces were free "judges and legislators!"
So ended the last of the General Congregations, being the eighty-sixth since the beginning. It will be ever memorable—a monument of despatch and versatility. It renounced, as lights in doctrine, antiquity, catholicity, and the consent of the Church, and it denounced two French pamphlets, and gave to Ce Qui se Passe au Concile and La Dernière Heure du Concile an immortality in the formal Acts of that assembly denied to all the petitions, suggestions, deliberations, and votes of the whole hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in their fourscore and six anxious and pregnant sittings in General Congregation.