From the Great Session to the Suspension of the Council, October 20, 1870—The Time now come for the Fulfilment of Promises—Position and Prospects—Second Empire and Papacy fall together—Style of Address to the Pope—War for the Papal Empire foreshadowed—Latest Act of the Council—Italy moves on Rome—Capture of the City—Suspension of the Council—Attitude of the Church changed—Last Events of 1870.
The reader may perhaps feel that we have now reached a point at which many prophecies await their fulfilment, and many calculations their test. The enthusiasts had, on religious grounds, foretold that the utterance of the "creative word," would be attended with portentous religious effects. A Baptism of Fire, a New Pentecost, a rapidly diffused reign of righteousness all the earth over, and other such expressions, intimated the marvels that were to inaugurate the fresh era. The calculating men had counted on the display of power and union, whereof the Papacy was made the centre, to produce a great impression upon princes and politicians; an impression to which they would, on the other hand, be predisposed by the fear of revolution.
Thus, when the consummation should be reached, and a ruler should be solemnly set up by the bishops of the whole Church before the kings of the earth, like, to use the favourite simile of the time, the Lord setting His King upon His holy hill of Sion; and when this king should be officially declared to have the government upon his shoulders, to be invested with all authority for the moral regulation of human affairs, they expected that the princes, bowing down, would accept him as their supreme judge and arbiter. Indeed, at one time, the confident talk, not merely of men among themselves, but of the publications most in the confidence of the guiding men, had been about laying down conditions to kings and governments on which they might hope to rule in peace. Hints had not been spared, that only two alternatives could be allowed to them—the acceptance of the new moral order on the one hand, or the loss of their places on the other.
The restoration of society to what was called the Catholic ideal, its reconstruction on the new divine basis, its deliverance from the chronic plagues which in modern times had wasted it, were at once to begin, and moral order was to smile where of late chaos had lowered. Already these theorists beheld society crying for the Pope as its saviour. Furthermore, during the days of preparation for the Council, and during its deliberations, only one among all the nations had been singled out for solemn blessing and glowing assurances that God would not forget her services to the Church. Italy had been warned and cursed. Austria and her new constitution had been formally condemned. Russia had been laid under every possible anathema. Spain, ever since her change of government, had shared the same condemnation. As to the heretical countries, they were generally left, without separate mention, in the depths to which their sins had sunk them. But the Ultramontane organs in Germany and France had marked Prussia out for signal detestation, and denounced the union of Germany under the leadership of Prussia for the relentless opposition of the Church of God. France alone was blessed with the withering benediction of the priest.
The hour had come that was to show how far the seers had read the future, and how far the calculators had reckoned well. So far as related to the great dogma, and the definition of it, all that had been designed was happily accomplished; indeed, more completely accomplished than had been proposed in any design avowed up to the eleventh hour. So far, therefore, both seers and calculators were justified. They had not seen a false vision, so long as they contemplated the dogmatic issue; nor had they reckoned without their host, so long as they had reckoned upon bishops, priests, and friars. Events were now to tell how far the transformation of Society into the accepted model, how far the homage of kings, how far the self-surrender of Parliaments, how far the submission of codes to be remodelled by the Church, and how far the general consent of the human race to be guided by him who claimed to hold the place of God among men, were to pass from the realm of hope into that of experience.
The progress of the Council, and of opinion contemporary with its sittings, had dissipated many illusions. Even the bishops had to be conquered, and were not won. Europe had been awakened and had not been attached, but alienated. Great as the glories of the spectacles had confessedly been, and much as they dazzled spectators, they had not carried legislative effect, except where the artistic legerdemain had admitted of immediate application. The vote of the minority on July 13 was one symptom of failure. Their final record of dissent, put into the Pope's own hand, was a more serious symptom. Their flight from the last public session was more serious still. The absence of the representatives of the governments from that session was yet far more depressing. All, therefore, that was now to be hoped for from the Church was submission; and the very utmost that any calculating man dared to hope for from governments was endurance. The worst was that statesmen had learned much more than they were ever meant to learn, and had seen into matters a deal further than laymen ought to see. And so the first night of the new dispensation closed in under dull skies, both physically and morally.
When the Romans, always curious to see how facts can be dressed for appearance outside of the walls, looked to the Giornale di Roma for an account of the session, they found there that all the bishops who had not appeared—upwards of two hundred—were placed in one class, "absent from different legitimate and recognized reasons." This was followed by the assertion that "the great majority of them held the same doctrine as that which had been defined." Accustomed as the Romans are to this method of putting facts in vestments, the occasion was solemn before God and exposed to the eye of man. Vitelleschi wrote that in these representations the minority might find "a foretaste of the false statements and judgments they must in future expect." Some readily account for such assertions by saying that it was hoped that the documents which proved the contrary would never come to light. But much is due to the habit of reckoning on the power of a great organ to set officials upon repeating what it says, till the facts are forgotten. The Civiltá copied these statements, and yet at a later date gave a truer account of the absentions.