The Pope, the Kings and the People / A History of the Movement to Make the Pope Governor of the World by a Universal Reconstruction of Society from the Issue of the Syllabus to the Close of the Vatican Council

by William Arthur

What is to be the Work of the Council—Fears caused by Grandiose Projects—Reform of the Church in Head and Members—Statesmen evince Concern.

Curiosity as to what the particular work of the Council was to be grew all the more rapidly, because no authoritative indication of it was given. Were the Jesuit tenets of Papal authority and Papal infallibility to be raised into dogmas? Was the Pope to make another offering to the Virgin by proclaiming as an article of faith, that her body had been carried to heaven? By the repetition of such questions, tens of millions partially awoke to the consciousness that they belonged to a religion which knew not what might be its standard of faith next year, much less did it know to what particular tenets it might be committed.

Then, as to the position of the bishops, were they to be only councillors, or also judges? If the latter, they would first hear the doctors, as did their predecessors at Trent; would next deliberate, and finally would formulate decrees, which decrees without alteration, would be confirmed by the Pontiff. But if the bishops were no longer judges of the faith, but simply councillors of the one judge, their place would be to argue points, as the doctors had done at Trent, while the decree should be that of the Pope, and they would merely assent.

Again, as to the composition of the Council, were the bishops in partibus to be members? Was Darboy, whose diocese counted two millions of souls, to be balanced by some Court creature with a title from Sardis or Ecbatana? or was Schwarzenberg, with Bohemia at his back, to be balanced by an instrument of the Curia, who, independently of his patrons, had not a month's bread to call his own? Were those who represented ancient and numerous churches, and who were as far free agents as men under Rome can be, to be voted against, man for man, by vicars apostolic, without churches, or with only new and ignorant ones—men depending on the Propaganda even for their travelling expenses and board?

Finally, as to the mode of procedure, were the bishops, as they did at Trent, to agree upon their own rules of procedure, to evolve by mutual consultation the questions demanding solution, and to discuss them till all were ready to vote? Or could there be truth in the suspicion that everything was being cut and dried beforehand, and that the Court would impose ready-made rules of procedure, and allow no one but itself to introduce any subject for discussion?

As to the burning question of moral unanimity, would projected formulae be passed from hand to hand, as was done at Trent, examined in meetings of groups, retouched, and, if need be, remoulded till a form was arrived at in which all but two or three acquiesced? Or was it possible that formulae for new articles in a creed prepared behind the backs of the bishops would be imposed on millions and for ever, by a majority made up with the help of the bishops in partibus?

All this time, the nine determined men forming the secret Directing Congregation, were coolly looking at the same questions, and, step by step, as we shall see, when events bring out the secret plans, were settling those questions in the sense most dreaded, and going to lengths not, we believe, suggested in any of the anticipatory expressions of fear.

Earnest theologians who had not been converted by the infallibilist propaganda of recent years, were thrown into consternation. Some bishops, able administrators, saw no essential difference between Papal infallibility as a doctrine taught in many of the schools, and believed by great numbers if rejected by others perhaps greater, and the same opinion as an article of faith. In such a view, the men of thought saw the superficial glance of "practical men," as they call themselves, who never discover anything but by feeling it, and who live by acting out to-day what others thought out in time gone by.

Little difference! thought the men of foresight. We are going to be compelled to alter our catechisms and creed in the face of the Protestants; going to be compelled to teach the opposite of what we have always taught; going to part with immemorial safeguards against altering the conditions of salvation, or further narrowing the terms of membership in the Church—to part with the necessity before every such change of the open and formal process of a General Council! The proposed dogma is unlike any now in the creed, in the all-important point of being self-multiplying. If it is adopted, we shall be liable to have eternal obligations laid upon our souls, without a week's warning.