The excitement in Germany now reached a point at which the bishops began to be alarmed. The "good Press" undertook to extenuate the importance of the changes dreaded, and threw doubts on the probability of their being adopted. The perplexity became greater when, in France, appeared a book in two volumes from the pen of Monsignor Maret, said by some to be the most learned prelate in the country, and who, at all events, was Dean of the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne. He combated the proposed innovations with French tact and skill, raising a voice, if not for the old Gallican doctrines as a whole, at least for some remains both of them and of the liberties with which are identified the names of the most renowned Churchmen in France since the Reformation.[156] The book made a profound but passing impression. It was called Religious Peace and the General Council; but the Jesuit historian Sambin (p. 47) styles it a brand increasing the conflagration. The question raised was that between a constitutional but oligarchical government and a personal one for the Church. Maret holds that in her constitution a check upon the monarch was provided by the "aristocracy," that is, the bishops (vol. ii, p. 107). The democracy is formed by the priests and the laity. But we may point out that this is very loose language. Democracy means a people with power, not a populace excluded from all functions of government. The people in the Papal Church are absolutely stripped of all part in government. They are a mere populace. The clergy are disfranchised officials. That Church is a society with a populace, but without a democracy. Before the Vatican Council, it had a constitutional aristocracy. Since then, the bishops are nobles without any but delegated power. Maret clearly states the familiar fact, that in the earlier centuries both clergy and laity took part in the election of bishops. But when he comes to speak of the part taken by kings in their election, the facts glide out of sight, as noiselessly as writers of his school generally say that they are wont to do in the hands of a Jesuit. A reader might imagine that kings first got the idea of a right in the election of bishops by some grant of the Church; whereas even the Bishops of Rome were for a long time elected on imperial or royal order, coming from Greek or Goth, from Arian or orthodox prince, as the case might be.
Maret quotes Cardinal de la Luzerne as saying that a General Council, in which the order of priests was not represented, would be illegitimate though not invalid (vol. i. p. 125); and gives it as the general opinion of theologians that their presence was necessary. He also admits that the presence of laymen in the Councils is attested by a large number of documents.
Von Schulte reviewed this work in the Literaturblat of Bonn (v. pp. 2 and 54). Looking at it in a popular sense, Schulte thought it was a book to mark an epoch. It was likely to produce a great effect among the clergy, little among the laity. Time has not justified this anticipation. The fact is, all the younger clergy had been educated out of French ideas and sympathies, and such of the young laity too as had been brought up by priests. Men were but beginning to find how the Christian Brothers, and convent schools, and episcopal seminaries had changed France.
The Civiltá, in reply, objects even to Maret's formula, the Pope with the bishops superior to himself alone. Such an objection implies that in Council all the bishops add to the Pope nothing at all. So many mitres without any heads in them would add at least as much. We believe, indeed, that great thinkers have doubted whether a judge with his wig is not superior to the same judge without his wig. But the Pope with all the bishops is not superior to the Pope without any bishop! The Jesuit writer says that he thinks he expresses the mind of Maret with exactness when he puts it thus, The supreme power resides in the Pope together with the bishops; in the Pope as supreme, whose strict duty it is nevertheless, to obey; in the bishops as subordinate, who, nevertheless, have the right to command (Civiltá, VII. viii. p. 257 ff.).
The choicest auditories of Paris had often crowded noble Notre Dame, quaffing with delight the sparkling eloquence of the Carmelite preacher Hyacinthe. Now the ear of the country was thrilled for a moment, by a cry from that eloquent voice. "By an abrupt change," he wrote to the General of his order on September 20, 1869, "for which I blame not your own feelings, but a party in Rome, you now accuse what you did encourage, and blame what you did approve, commanding me to hold a language, or to preserve a silence, which would not represent my conscience."
Placed in this difficulty, he must forsake General, order, and convent. He continues: "My profound conviction is, that if France in particular, and the Latin races in general, are delivered over to social, moral, and religious anarchy, the principal cause is, not assuredly Catholicism itself, but the manner in which it has been understood and practised for a long time."[157]
St. Peter's Day, always a great day in Rome, was, of course, of surpassing importance in the year of the Council. The Civiltá celebrated it in an article very like one of the Pope's Speeches. This article yields an example of a dualism in the government of the universe which must glide in as the unconscious but inevitable complement of the doctrine into which Papal writers fall, in explaining away what to others seems the blight of Providence on whatever they rule according to their own principles. They begin by separating the God of Providence from the God of grace. They end by turning the bounties of Providence into the bribes of the evil one. It will be seen that in what follows national prosperity comes from the devil. The increase of our fields, the blessing in our basket and our store, are in reality a curse. This, though unseen to the poor Pope who teaches such things, presents a true and a very hurtful form of Manicheism. It is another proof that they who readily forge and hurl bad names are not safe from the errors which those names when correctly used denote.
In June the Curia had to set up a strong resistance to the movement originated in Austria for the abrogation of the Concordat. That instrument, which had formed the diplomatic triumph of Cardinal Rauscher and had crowned the professional reputation of Schulte, had legally restored to the Papal Church much of what it calls its liberties; but the clergy complained that they never practically got all that was promised upon paper; In the Frond biographies of the Cardinals, that of Rauscher describes the condition of the Church in Austria, under the Josephine laws, as deplorable! Instead of leaving her, like Protestant Prussia, to manage her own affairs, without having defined either what "manage" or "her own" meant, Austria, knowing how Rome interprets, had taken a different course. There was left, according to our authority, no canon law, but only such legislation as was imbued with Febronianism and Caesarism. Bulls, briefs, rescripts, and even the pastorals of bishops were subject to the royal placet. Marriage was withdrawn from under the control of the Church. The State pushed into everything, "and the Catholic Church had none of the liberties claimed by the tolerance of the age for all religions." Rauscher had succeeded in getting these grievances redressed, but now the national spirit was rising against his work. His Concordat bound Austria to concede to the Church "all rights and privileges to which by the divine order and by canon law she is entitled." Probably the Emperor but imperfectly comprehended what that implied. Rauscher comprehended it. He was as honest a man as any Papal priest is likely to be. He was the adviser of the Emperor, and his sworn personal friend. Any one may tell what such friends do for princes who will only master what Rauscher managed to bind his sovereign to. The minister, Von Hasner, put the plea for the abrogation of the Concordat on ground exceedingly offensive to the Pope and those around him. When the Concordat was contracted, said Hasner, Rome was an independent State. Now, it has ceased to be so, and is sustained only by foreign arms. The reply from the Vatican was: So long as the Pope is sustained by Christian arms, he can never be sustained by those of foreigners. The reply of the politician would have been that in 1855, when the Concordat was concluded, the Papal State was as much dependent upon foreign arms as in 1867, the only difference being that at the former time the arms holding a great portion of it were those of Austria.
On the anniversary of the Pope's accession, his speech, addressed to the Sacred College, contained the following passage: "The two societies of which the world consists," said his Holiness, are, first, the Tower of Pride, i.e. Babel; secondly, the society whose prototype is seen "in the upper room, on the day of Pentecost, where Peter, the Apostles, and thousands of the faithful of different nations, heard one and the same language and understood it." Those who wish to form a clear idea of what these two organs of two hostile societies are—the Babel tongue and the Pentecostal tongue—must just keep their eyes open as we go on. (Civiltá, VII. vii. p. 130.)