Chapter XIII: Preface (13)

It is commonly assumed that all the Cardinals are infallibilists as a matter of course, and the more so as this is at bottom the only doctrine which may be said to have been exclusively invented and built up by men who either were already or were soon about to become Cardinals. Still this is not quite the case. Apart from the non-resident Cardinals, Rauscher, Schwarzenberg and Mathieu, there are some among the residents who would gladly be dispensed from voting for the new foundation article of faith on which the whole edifice is henceforth to rest. But one of them said to-day, “We shall ruin our position, lose all influence, and become the mark of endless attacks. And as every one here has some weak and vulnerable point in his past life, he dare not expose himself to these fatal assaults on his character and honour from which there would be no escape.” At the same time the Cardinal admitted that the whole College has so lost its influence and become so insignificant, that for six months the Pope has not once assembled them. Antonelli and a few favourites, with the Jesuits of the _Civiltà_, are the people who now construct the history of the world and the Church.

FORTY-EIGHTH LETTER.

_Rome, May 20, 1870._—The first week of the great debate is drawing to a close. The Archbishops of Vienna, Prague, Gran, Paris, Antioch and Tuam have spoken against the infallibilist definition. So much is gained; the Catholic world knows that it is represented in Council, while the Court party is robbed of some illusions about the strength of the resistance to be looked for. The only fruit of its better knowledge as yet observable is seen in an increased obstinacy and a greater insolence of tone. The Commission has already declared by anticipation, in its reply to the remarks of the Bishops against the dogma, that the denial of infallibility is condemned under pain of censure, and scientific arguments are no longer available. The giving out of this watchword does excellent service to the majority, who are very shy of theological arguments and treat their opponents as heretics. That far-famed courtesy, which has hitherto been an ornament if not exactly a real excellence of Rome, has greatly diminished, and the hypocrisy so long spun out has disappeared; it has become necessary to recognise the broad gulf which divides parties. And this has produced a tendency on the side of the Court and the majority to push their claims to the extremest point, to play for high stakes, and hold out no prospect of concessions beforehand. The minority is in their eyes not a power to be negotiated with but a gang of insolent mutineers to be put down. The mass of the majority have carried their leaders with them, and only passion now prevails in that camp. But the harshness and roughness the _Curia_ has thought it necessary to display has done more to strengthen the Opposition than the changes and concessions already pre-arranged will do to dissolve it. They have been suffered in this way to gain a position which they might never have won if the _Curia_ had exercised more foresight. Whether all the elements of the Opposition will be found reliable, pure in their aims and loyal in their hearts, the future will show. At present I only record the audacious policy of the majority based on cunning calculations, as it has been evinced in the early days of the discussion. But the majority naturally includes men of different minds; there are some who would like to be well rid of the affair, and others who would gladly discover a formula not looking like a positive innovation which might satisfy opponents, while the great mass of them want the blow to be struck so that, after crushing the Opposition within the Council, they may annihilate it without the Council also. These last have the upper hand in the majority, and will probably retain it till the general debate is over and the doctrine itself and its definition come to be discussed. They are led by cool, calculating heads, but consist for the most part of the uneducated and unlearned mass of the episcopate who have no independence, the people who during Strossmayer’s speech presented the spectacle of a rabble of conspirators rather than an ordered assembly. To keep them in the requisite state of exaltation the speeches must be adapted to their intellectual level. And as they are more easily excited than controlled they do not of course exhibit the majority in a favourable light, and one may be prepared at any moment for the Council being disgraced by an outbreak of their frenzy. Nothing more of the kind however has happened yet.

At the head of the extreme party stands the close ally of the Jesuits, the Archbishop of Westminster. He was the first to say out with the utmost distinctness that infallibility belongs to the Pope alone and independently of the Episcopate. The ultramontane speakers, Pie, Patrizzi and Deschamps, have vied with one another in their endeavours to get this extreme view of Manning’s accepted, which they themselves did not all share before. The emancipation of the Pope from the entire Episcopate is the very turning-point of the whole controversy, the object for which the Council was put on the stage; infallibility tied to the consent of the united or dispersed Episcopate nearly all the Bishops would accept, for very few indeed clearly understand that even Councils depend on another consent than that of the Episcopate. But such a definition of infallibility would cost Rome the very thing she has laboured so much and sinned so much to gain. It is a great advantage for the Opposition that in this matter there are no formulas of compromise possible but such as are manifestly perfidious and insincere.

On the 17th Deschamps, Archbishop of Mechlin, made perhaps the most important, certainly the most remarkable, speech delivered in favour of the _Constitutio_. He is considered the ablest speaker of his party, which notoriously has no superabundance of good speakers, and is said to be a superficial man who takes things easily. He not only committed himself to the extremest section of the party, but denounced his opponents as bad Christians not walking in the fear of God. The change of tone was much remarked in him, as in the Bishop of Poitiers. Manning exhibits the same change, who now maintains that all who do not submit to the majority might well be excommunicated directly after the promulgation of the decree. Two German Bishops, Greith and Hefele, spoke on the same day; and indeed in this debate many weighty voices will be raised from every land where the contest about the Church is being fought, to point to the practical dangers involved in the circumstances of the case—a kind of argument Pius is wont to put aside with a “Noli timere.” Greith of St. Gallen spoke for Switzerland; as a learned theologian he declared himself against the definition on scientific grounds, and as a Swiss Bishop on account of the present circumstances of his country; for he is persuaded that his Swiss brother bishops, with their zeal for the infallibilist decree, are simply forging weapons against the Church for the Radicals. Bishop Hefele of Rottenburg touched in the course of his speech on the affair of Honorius, which must later on come into the discussion. Next day Hefele read Cardinal Rauscher’s speech. But Cardinal Schwarzenberg’s address exceeded all expectations and left a profound impression. Cardinal Donnet and the Archbishop of Saragossa, who spoke in the name of the Deputation, did not bring the defence any further or develop any new points of history, and—which is more important—gave no further information about the plans and hopes of the _Curia_ and the majority.

On Thursday the 19th Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin, spoke, who for twenty years has been the protagonist of Romanism in the British isles. With sound tact he chose the most learned Bishop of the minority, Hefele, for attack, and assailed not his speech but his publications. Yet he did not attempt to refute him, but only to prove that he had contradicted himself, since the account of Honorius given in his History of Councils is different from that in his latest work. It is true that in the History, where no doctrinal inferences were to be drawn, the theological significance of the condemnation of Honorius does not receive the same exhaustive appreciation and exposition as in the little tractate on the question whether he was justly condemned for heresy. But there is no difference of principle between the two works; in both Hefele says plainly that Honorius was justly pronounced a heretic, even if he was no heretic at heart. But when the two passages are separated from each other, it can be made to look as though he had maintained in the former that Honorius was really orthodox whereas he now declares that he was a heretic. But the process could with equal reason be reversed, and the heresy of Honorius shown to be affirmed in the History and his orthodoxy in the pamphlet. But what use would even an orthodox Pope be for upholding the purity of the Church’s doctrinal deposit, if he used heretical formulas to express his own really true opinion?

None the less however was Cullen’s attack received with great satisfaction, for the ruling powers know well enough on what the Bishop of Rottenburg’s opposition is based, and think to subdue German science—_i.e._, the devil himself—in his person. On the same day the Patriarch Jussuf uttered words that deserve to be laid to heart on the consequences such a dogmatic blunder would entail in the East—a significant indication that the Orientals are not prepared to bend obediently under the yoke of a decree aimed at their ritual and their rights as well as their tradition. The Archbishop of Corfu answered him next day. There is very little that can be properly called debating, for the order of proceedings is better suited for academical addresses than for real discussion; the practice of making prelates speak in their order of precedence makes any honest interchange of blows impossible. But the Greek coming forward to speak looked like a preconcerted answer to the Armenian. The Archbishop of Corfu insisted that, so far from the dogma rendering the reunion of the Greek Church more difficult, such a result was inconceivable without it, nor could the dogma excite any suspicion, because the Greeks found it in their tradition as well as their Fathers and Councils, and envied the Latin Church her infallible Pope. In evidence of this he cited the passages where the Pope’s primacy is recognised. The great body of the Fathers listened to this with grave faces: it was only following the style of their own theologians.

But three more important speakers had been heard before the Corfiote. The first was Simor, primate of Hungary, who was chosen, as is well known, into the Deputation on Faith and has shown himself a more zealous advocate of its proposals and adherent of the _Curia_ than ever. The majority believed that it possessed in him a master of Latin who could rival the eloquent leader of the Opposition, and Simor justified his reputation as an accomplished Latinist. But he spoke—assuredly to the no small disgust and amazement of the majority—as an unequivocal opponent of the proposed decree. And this implied that the whole Hungarian Episcopate would vote against it. He was followed by a feeble old man whose speech fell flat after that of the eloquent primate, and who could only be known to a few of his hearers, though he holds an important place in the history of the last generation. This was John MacHale, for the last thirty-five years Archbishop of Tuam and formerly the most powerful prelate in Ireland, a famous name in the days of O’Connell; but his political rôle has long been played out, and he belongs to a bygone age and an obsolete school. For the twenty years during which Cullen has been introducing Roman absolutism into Ireland his influence has been on the decline, and while he was expounding his antagonism to the definition to-day in a long and complicated address, men said to themselves, “magni nominis umbra.” It was the accumulated debt of twenty years he paid off to Cardinal Cullen. But he can hardly be expected to have gained over any of his countrymen to the Opposition besides the three or four of them who already belong to it.

MacHale was succeeded by the Archbishop of Paris, the most accomplished and skilful, and therefore the most feared, of all the Opposition prelates. Darboy was lately the most influential advocate of that system of dallying and postponement which has so grievously injured the minority, and was involved through his intimate alliance with the Tuileries in the unhappy policy of his Government, so that he had become somewhat less trusted and influential. So much greater was the impression produced by his speech to-day, wherein he declared distinctly and repeatedly that a dogmatic decree not accepted by the whole Episcopate could not have any binding force. A suppressed murmur which ran through the ranks of the majority as he spoke seems to herald coming storms.

So far the Opposition has made its voice clearly heard. That it has on its side reason, Scripture and history signifies nothing for the moment; what is important is that it makes its strength felt, that it has won over waverers or doubters to its ranks, and that it has at last spoken plainly. The position of parties and the question itself will take many new shapes, when the separate chapters of the Constitution come on for discussion.

FORTY-NINTH LETTER.

_Rome, May 26, 1870._—The intellectual superiority of the Opposition has made itself so sensibly felt in the course of the debate on infallibility that they have visibly won in spirit and confidence, while a decrease of the assurance of victory hitherto manifested by the majority is observable. There is no sign yet of the breaking up of the Opposition or the desertion of its members to the infallibilist camp. The Court party had confidently reckoned on a considerable number of mere inopportunists giving in and separating from the opponents of the actual doctrine of infallibility, as soon as the dogma came to be discussed. The latter was said to be a mere tiny fraction, who would eventually take fright at their own impotence and come over. But as yet this hope has not been realized, and there are many indications that it is not likely to be realized, for the course of events and their experiences in Rome, as well as the discussions, both oral and written, have converted inopportunists into decided fallibilists. Cardinal Schwarzenberg has spoken with great power and dignity, and even the most zealous adherents of the Roman dogma must have been somewhat impressed by his declaration that its effect in Bohemia would be to make the nation first schismatic and then gradually Protestant. It at the same time illustrated the conduct of the Jesuits in a way that will not be forgotten. When the Archbishop of Paris affirmed that the much desired infallibilist decree was not one of the causes of the Council, but its sole cause, every one felt what a bitter truth had been uttered, and that the veil would thereby be torn away from that web of untruths and dishonest reticences about the object of the synod, by which the Bishops had been deceived and enticed as it were into a trap to Rome. Veuillot indeed had openly said in his official organ at the end of April, that to decree the new dogma was the principal and at bottom the sole office of the Council. That was at the very time when about eighty Bishops put out their strong protestation that they had come to Rome under the erroneous impression, deliberately suggested by the _Curia_, that the question of infallibility would not be brought before the Council; while yet Cardoni had many months before, in the Commission on Faith, presented by command of the Pope the report which has lately been printed, and the whole Commission had agreed with him that papal infallibility should be defined. That same Commission, with the Jesuit Perrone and Dr. Schwetz of Vienna at its head, has now presented an address to the Pope urging the definition of the new article of faith, without which those worthies think they cannot exist any longer.

The infallibilist speaker who created most sensation was Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin. He gained the warm applause of his party by the aggressive tone of his speech, in which he attacked especially Hefele and Kenrick. He appealed to the testimony of MacHale to show that the mind of Ireland has always been infallibilist—a glaring falsehood, as is proved by the famous Declaration of the Irish Catholics in 1757 formally repudiating the doctrine. And it made no slight impression, when the grey-haired MacHale rose to repudiate the pretended belief in infallibility not merely for himself but for Ireland. But it is certainly true that in former times for more than a century the Irish people, like the Spanish, was victimized to papal infallibility. Every Irishman or Spaniard, who knew the history of his country, would recoil with horror from a theory which has borne such poisonous fruit for both nations in the past and may be equally injurious in the future. To acquaint the Catholic tenants in Ireland with the infallible decisions of Popes about heresy and heretics would be enough at once to increase ten-fold the agrarian crimes prevalent there, and would be the surest means for reproducing such a massacre as occurred there in 1641.

When Cullen replied to the Archbishop of St. Louis, “non est verum,” the aged prelate requested leave of the Legates to defend himself briefly. It was refused. Hefele was as little free to answer Cullen’s attack, and has therefore had a pamphlet in his justification printed at Naples. A new work by one of the most illustrious of the French Bishops is also expected from Naples, designed to prove against the Jesuits of the _Civiltà_ the necessity of moral unanimity for dogmatic decrees. Another Irishman, Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel, said such absurd things in favour of the Court dogma that his speech was considered a clear gain for the minority.

There are 89 speakers inscribed for the general debate, and not a third of them have yet spoken. This opens out a prospect of the debate being spun out to a great length, oppressive as the tropical heat is now become. The _Curia_ still relies on the Northerners being tamed down. If only a good many of them would emulate the example of the Bishop of Hildesheim, and go away! The plan has often succeeded with English and Irish juries, of locking them up, when they could not agree, till they found a true verdict. But that won’t answer here. On the contrary the longer the debate lasts, the more numerous the Opposition party becomes. At first many Bishops thought they might fairly gratify the good and amiable Pius, who won all hearts, even by making a new dogma, and give him the present he so greatly longed for. But Pius has completely cured his former worshippers of this disposition to make an article of faith “pour les beaux yeux du Pape.” It has no doubt happened before that Italian Bishops have been treated by the Pope like servants, hired for the day’s work and dismissed again if they did not obey the orders of the _Curia_. One need only refer to that parody on a synod, the fifth Lateran assembly, when Leo X. propounded downright forgeries and untruths to his Italian Bishops, who had to call themselves an Œcumenical Council, and dictated their votes. But even there no one ventured to treat Transalpine Bishops—Germans, French and Hungarians—with the insolent contempt now shown, to refuse even a reply to their urgent petitions and representations, and to make them drain the cup of humiliations and grievances to the very dregs. But the great task to be achieved in the first months of the Council was the kneading and manipulating the Bishops in all possible ways, so as to make them feel the immeasurable gulf between the master and the servants, that they might be more ready at last to sacrifice their episcopal dignity and ancient rights on the altar of Roman supremacy. When once they have assented to the infallibilist dogma, they neither can nor ought to be or desire to be anything else but passive and unintelligent promulgators and executors of papal commands and decrees on faith. That what is really required of them is to abdicate their office as a teaching body and themselves abolish their authority, Ketteler has lately declared without reserve in the Congregation; and he is a man who has profited much by his Roman schooling, though in a quite different sense from what his master intended. The Roman system of drill does not succeed with Germans, Hungarians and Americans.

A note received a fortnight ago from Paris by M. de Banneville, to be communicated or read to Cardinal Antonelli, has created great excitement here, owing to his studiously concealing it from his diplomatic colleagues. Its substance is as follows: France renounces any further interference with what is going on here, and contents herself henceforth with taking note of the decisions of the Pope and the Council. The Government has done its duty, as a friendly Catholic power, in seeking to withdraw the Court of Rome from the perilous path on which it has entered. The attempt has proved fruitless. The _Curia_ seems resolved to ruin itself. France will maintain the attitude of a passive spectator, but accepts the altered condition of things introduced by this declaration of war on the part of the Roman Court. On the day of the definition the Concordat ceases to be in force and the previous relation of Church and State expires. The State separates itself from the Church and the French troops leave Rome. Separation of Church and State means in France and elsewhere that the budget of worship will be dropped, and the clergy must be supported by the faithful. And here I may mention a fact which has come to my knowledge on the best authority. When Count Daru was going to despatch his famous memorial to the Holy See, he wished for an interpolation in the Chamber on the attitude of the Government towards the occurrences in Rome, and a friend of his applied on the subject to one of the most celebrated orators of the Left, who declined, saying, “Rome fait trop bien nos affaires pour qu’il soit de notre intérêt de lui créer des embarras.” The contents of the note mentioned above are confirmed by the words of a leading statesman at Paris, quoted by a Bishop who has lately returned from thence, that for his own part he considered the separation of Church and State in France inevitable. He had however assented to the well-meant attempt of Count Daru to warn the Pope, and if possible deter him from his short-sighted enterprise; but as that attempt had proved futile, it remained to take advantage of the blunders of the _Curia_. So enormous a spiritual power as the Court of Rome was aiming at was incompatible with the possession of secular power, and accordingly the French troops must be withdrawn from Rome, and matters left to take their course.

Even now there is a wish discernible among Cardinals like di Pietro, Corsi and Bilio, to discover some intermediate formula, while the party men, like Manning, Pie, Cullen, and all who have been concerned in the agitation and have staked their credit on its result, hold to the most uncompromising form, as laid down in the existing programme. The latter reckon on their overpowering preponderance of numbers, on the power of the Pope, and the dread of ecclesiastical methods of coercion, such as excommunication and the like, whereby all resistance will be certainly put down. On the other hand, the Cardinals and members of the Papal Cabinet just referred to prefer to set their hopes on the hazy views and yielding temper of many Bishops of the minority, and think that an ambiguous formula might serve at once to delude and divide them. Their watchword is “conciliazione, un partito di conciliazione.” But all their ingenuity is expended in the elaboration of a phrase which may contain in a somewhat allegorical and obscure form the infallibility and universal monarchy of the Pope. To this conciliatory section also belongs a man who understands the greatness of the danger clearly enough, and who so lately uttered words which have become notorious here: “This Pope began by destroying the State, and now will close his career by destroying the Church too.” Yet the speaker of these words does not scruple to use his high position and influence for actively furthering the undertakings which must lead to the catastrophe.

It is impossible for outsiders to form anything like an adequate conception of the complication of views and plans and the multifarious activity of the Roman _prelatura_. Things happen which must appear incredible to every one who has heard of the proverbial skill and gift of accurate calculation possessed by the ruling clergy here. Thus a member of a powerful Order is sentenced to six years’ imprisonment by the Holy Office on account of an occurrence in a nunnery here, the convent being at the same time broken up and the nuns distributed over other convents. Yet after scarcely two years’ imprisonment this man, who is unhappily a German, is brought back here, and intrusted with the preparation of the draft decrees for the Council, and now the Court trusts to its favourite “segreto del S. Ufficio” for the cause of his sentence and of the dissolution of the convent not coming to the ears of the Bishops, but in vain. The matter has created too great a sensation, and the culprit is too well known.

Meanwhile the minority are being plied with reasons, which are only mentioned cursorily, or not at all, in the printed documents of the Court and the majority. They are told that all their own interests depend on the papal authority being preserved intact, and that the evils they fear from the proclamation of the dogma cannot come into comparison with this common interest. They are bidden to remember how far the Pope has already committed himself in this matter; since John XXII.—more than 600 years ago—no Pope has thrown the Brennus sword of his authority into the scale to decide a question of doctrine, but Pius has cut himself off from all possibility of retreat by his _Schema_, his conversations with many Bishops, and his letters of encouragement and commendation to infallibilist writers. He has declared, not once or twice but a hundred times, that he knows and _feels_ his infallibility, and wills the Catholic world to believe it. He might simply by a Bull condemn all who oppose it as heretics, and how many of the Bishops would summon courage to resist the Bull?

As yet these reasons, practical as they appear, have not produced much effect. The Opposition grows visibly, and the speeches of its members have produced an impression quite unexpected by themselves. The words of the Melchite Patriarch, Jussuf, have kindled a flame among the Orientals too, and there are Bishops who tell me they had not thought it possible for a discourse in the Council Hall to produce so great a revolution of feeling. But I will not conceal from you that you may find in Margotti’s _Unita_, which draws its information from the highest authority, news in comparison to which my statements must appear pure fables. He writes from here on the 18th of May, “The action of the Holy Ghost is beginning to be felt; the Opposition diminishes daily. Cardoni has just issued his masterly work on papal infallibility, and now every one comprehends that it is the sole remedy and defence against the dominant pest of journalism and a free press. We must have a Pope who, being himself infallible, can _daily_ teach, condemn and define, and whose utterances no Catholic ever dares to doubt.”(102) So runs the statement in the _Unita_ of May 24. Inconceivable blindness of past generations, who allowed whole centuries to pass without needing or asking for a single papal definition! Henceforth the definition wheel, which the Pope is to turn, is never to remain still for a day—because of journalism.

Thus does civilisation increase the wants of men. Our forefathers had to lead a joyless life without sugar, coffee, tea, alcohol and cigars, and stood on so low a level of cultivation that they fancied they got on very well without any infallible papal definition. But we, who are so gloriously advanced, require besides bodily enjoyments many—if possible very many—daily infallible definitions, and the Pope, out of sheer inexhaustible goodness, is on the point of acceding to the earnest prayers of 180 millions and opening the definition machine. Veuillot lately declared it was high time that the fact of the Pope’s permanent divine inspiration should be universally acknowledged; Margotti says that we want not only this, but daily definitions.(103) In this noble rivalry of the two Court journalists the Italian has evidently stolen a march on the Frenchman.

In my former statistics the number of Americans was put too high and of French too low. Only 23 Americans were lately calculated to belong to the Opposition, to whom must be added 10 Orientals, 4 Portuguese, 10 Italians and 5 Spaniards, making the whole minority over 120.

FIFTIETH LETTER.

_Rome, May 27, 1870._—New speakers are continually inscribing their names for the debate on infallibility. And as only four can usually speak in one sitting, it is impossible to foresee the end of the general debate, after which the detailed discussion of the separate chapters is to follow. The minority seem resolved at this second discussion to enter thoroughly for the first time on the numerous separate points, exegetical, dogmatic and historical, which offer themselves for consideration. If the majority and the Legates allow this, the end will not be near reached by June 29; and after that date residence in Rome is held to be intolerable and the continuation of the Council impracticable. This last assumption I conceive to be mistaken. The Pope can very easily go to Castel Gandolfo for his summer holidays, while he leaves the Council to go on here. That it should consist of hundreds of Bishops is quite unnecessary; former Popes have known how to manage in such cases. Eugenius IV. had his Florentine Council nominally continued, after the Bishops were all gone except a handful of Italians; Leo X. was content with about sixty Italians at his so-called fifth Lateran Council. What is to hinder Pius IX. from keeping on the Council, after the Northern and distant Bishops are departed, with the Bishops of his own States and the titular episcopate resident in Rome, together with a host of Neapolitans and Sicilians? Some too would be sure to remain of the leaders and zealots of the majority. But the Court party can cut short the discussion and push matters to a vote whenever they like. The order of business enables them to do so, but of course this imperial policy will only be applied when the Pope gives the signal.

Nearly the whole sitting of May 25 was taken up by a speech of Manning’s, who justified the expectations formed of him by assuring the Opposition that they were all heretics _en masse_. But he left the question undecided, whether they had already incurred the penalties of heresy prescribed in the canon law. Ketteler’s speech made a precisely opposite impression. Men were in a state of eager suspense as to what he would say, for he was known to have passed through a mental conflict. Ten months ago, in his publication on the Council which was then convoked, he had come forward of his own accord as the advocate of papal infallibility; he had come to Rome full of burning zeal and devotion for the Pope, though at Fulda he had declared the new dogma to be inopportune. I omit the intermediate steps of the process of disillusionizing and sobering he has gone through. His speech has shown that, like many others, he has become from an inopportunist a decided opponent of the dogma itself.

Such a change of mind based on a conscientious weighing of testimonies and facts is inconceivable and incredible to a regular Roman. When some of the Vicars Apostolic who are supported at the Pope’s cost signed the representation against the definition, the indignation was universal among the Monsignori and in the clerical world here. “Questi Vicari, che mangiano il pane del Santo Padre!” they exclaimed in virtuous disgust. That a poor Bishop, and one too who is maintained by the Pope, should yet have a conscience and dare to follow it, is thought out of the question here; and this view comes out with a certain _naïveté_. The anxiety of the German Bishops about the new dogma perplexing so many Christians and shaking or destroying the faith and adherence to the Church of many thousands can hardly be mentioned here, so impatient are the Monsignori and Cardinals at hearing of it. People here say, “That does not trouble us the least; the Germans at best are but half Catholics, all deeply infected with Protestantism; they have no Holy Office and have little respect for the Index. Pure and firm faith is to be looked for among the Sicilians, Neapolitans and Spaniards; and they are infallibilists to a man. And even in Germany your women and rustics are sound. Why do you have so many schools, and think every one must learn to read? Take example from us where only one in ten can read, and all believe the more readily in the infallible living book, the Pope. If thousands do really become unbelievers, that is not worth speaking of in comparison with the brilliant triumph of the Papacy now rendered infallible, and the inestimable gain of putting an end to all controversy and uncertainty in the Church for the future.” When I look at the careless security of the majority, I could often fancy myself living in the year 1517. The view about foreign countries and Churches prevalent here is just what Molière’s Sganarelli expresses about physicians and patients: “Les veuves ne sont jamais pour nous, et c’est toujours la faute de celui qui meurt.”

The finance minister has had the bad condition of the papal treasury communicated to the Bishops; a standing annual deficit of 30 million francs, and the Peter’s pence decreasing! Some new means of supply must be discovered, and the extremest extension of ecclesiastical centralization and papal absolutism has always been recognised at Rome as the most productive source of revenue. Every one here believes that the new dogma will prove very lucrative and draw money to Rome by a magnetic attraction. It will make the Pope _de jure_ supreme lord and master of all Christian lands and their resources. The ultramontane jurists and theologians have long maintained that he can compel States as well as individuals to pay in to him such sums as are required for Church purposes. And there is no more urgent need for the Church now, than that an end should be put to the deficit of the Roman Government. And if it should be impossible or unadvisable to put in force these supreme monetary rights of the Papacy at once, still, when the temporal supremacy of the Pope is made an article of faith, Rome possesses the key which may be used at the right moment for opening the coffers and money-bags. And therefore the opponents of the dogma are regarded as enemies of the Roman State economy and the wealth of the Roman clergy; and the variance between the two parties is embittered.

Meanwhile the Pope is never weary of carrying on his personal solicitations for the votes of the Bishops; he has the right of being a persevering beggar. But one hears less of conversions to the majority than of men going over to the Opposition; and the effluences from the Tomb of the Apostles close to the Council Hall, of which such great expectations were formed, seem to act in the opposite direction.

A new system of tactics has been for some time adopted, in France principally, and is now to be introduced into Germany. The clergy in the dioceses of Opposition Bishops are to be seduced into signing addresses expressing strongly their belief in papal infallibility and desire for its speedy promulgation. This device has been pursued with great success through means of the Paris nunciature and the _Univers_. The French parish priests who, since the Concordat, have been removeable at the will of the Bishops and have suffered sufficiently from their arbitrary caprice in transferring or depriving them, see their only resource in the _Curia_, and the notion has lately been disseminated among them that the infallibilist dogma will procure their complete emancipation from episcopal authority. Accordingly almost every number of the _Univers_ contains enthusiastic addresses, which might be tripled by making all the nuns subscribe, as they would do with the greatest pleasure.

The plan which has proved so successful in France is to be adopted now in Germany also. The nuncio at Munich reports that there is a swarm of red-hot infallibilists there, and that the clergy are eagerly awaiting the news of the definition; the diocesan organs of Munich and Augsburg, together with the clerico-political daily papers, are quoted as indubitable testimonies, and the Bishops of Cologne, Augsburg, Munich, Mayence, etc., are told on high authority that they have nobody behind them, and that their claim to represent the faith of their dioceses is in contradiction with facts. There are indeed no numerously signed addresses to show in Rome, but the daily papers give weighty evidence. Silence, it is thought here, implies consent, the women and the rustics are certainly for the Pope. The Pope says in his supreme self-satisfaction, “Scio omnia.” He knows the true state of things beyond the Alps far better than the Bishops; the Jesuits and their pupils and the nuncios take care of that. Hugo Grotius says, with reference to Richelieu, “Butillerius Pater et Josephus Capucinus negotia cruda accipiunt, cocta ad Cardinalem deferunt.” So it is here, the Jesuits do what the Fathers Boutillier and Joseph did in Paris. Pius receives only what is “cooked,” and twice cooked, first in the Cologne and Munich kitchen and then in the Roman. The German Bishops remember with some discomfort that they themselves sharply rejected and censured every declaration of adhesion, and violently suppressed the movement only just beginning.

The Cardinal General-Vicar has ordered public prayers for a fortnight by the Pope’s command: the faithful are to invoke the Holy Ghost for the Council, since the whole world presents so wretched an appearance (_miserabile aspetto dell’ orbe_), and the longer the conflict (of the Council) with the world increases, the more glorious will be the victory, and then, it is said, will all nations behold miracles—which appears from the context to mean that, considering the opposition of the world (and of so many Bishops), the erection of the new article of faith must be regarded as a miracle of divine omnipotence, but a miracle which will certainly be wrought. Many interpret this to mean that people must be prepared for a conciliar _coup d’état_. But as matters stand, it can hardly be supposed that the Court party will let matters come to a _non placet_ of at least 120 Bishops, nor would anything be gained by cutting short the debate. In the last analysis the main ground of the dogma with the majority always resolves itself into this—that the present Pope and his predecessors for many years past have held themselves infallible. That is the only ground on which the Dominicans, Jesuits and Cardinals have interpolated it into the theology of the schools. Pius might certainly define it in a Bull to the entire satisfaction of the majority, and thereby put an end to the contention of the Bishops. An end? it may be asked. Well, yes—the end of the beginning.

FIFTY-FIRST LETTER.

_Rome, June 2, 1870._—The debate drags on its weary length without any turning. Of real discussion there is none, for very few of the prelates can speak in Latin without preparation. As I have said before, academical discourses are delivered, almost always without any reference to what has immediately preceded. Only the majority have the right of reply allowed them. If a Bishop is attacked or calumniated, he cannot answer till his turn comes, which is often not for some weeks, as was Kenrick’s case; and if he has spoken already, he cannot speak again in the same debate, and cannot therefore defend himself at all, as occurred with Hefele. But the members of the Deputation can speak whenever they choose; they interrupt the order and interpose as often as seems necessary to them for defending their proposals or weakening the force of an important speech on the other side. Very often they break in on the course of proceedings quite arbitrarily and without any connection with previous speakers. They have the stenographic reports before their eyes, and thus know the exact words of the speaker and can answer them while their opponents have no similar advantage. That all this implies an iniquitous injustice and want of freedom never occurs to the dominant party, who are on the contrary astonished at the kindness and patience of the Pope in allowing an opponent of his omnipotence and advocate of doctrines long since condemned to use St. Peter’s as the theatre, and his Council as the occasion, of a persevering attack on his dearest wishes, ideas and acts. They ask themselves how long he will tolerate so strange a reversal of his plans and views. It is certain that his excitement has reached fever heat, but it has not yet been resolved to break off the debate, which is so far remarkable, inasmuch as according to the opinion of the Court it can neither have any practical results nor any character of sober reality. As they did not regard it from the first as a means for establishing the truth, it must now appear to them simply a hindrance in the way of the truth already ascertained. For those who attack infallibility, and thus utter error and blasphemy over the tomb of the Apostles, freedom of speech can be no right in the opinion of the majority, but simply a favour dependent on the pleasure of the deeply injured and offended chief. It is characteristic of the present stage of the affair, that during this debate there has been no disposition shown to interrupt the speakers of the minority. Signs of discontent have been frequent enough, but no further attempt to stop a speech by force.

There is still an immense and unprofitable number of speakers enrolled. Above a hundred have sent in their names since the beginning, who might easily have been debarred from doing so, and the tediousness of the discussion is aggravated by the members of the Deputation, who lengthen it out still further by their frequent and usually prolix interpositions.

The chief events of the last fortnight have been the speeches of Manning and Valerga for the dogma, and of Ketteler, Conolly and Strossmayer against it. The Bishop of Mayence spoke on Monday, May 23, when he expressed his opinion more forcibly and gave more offence than any previous speaker. He defended the constitution of the Church against the Roman conspiracy, citing the arguments contained in the pamphlet he had before distributed, and denounced against ecclesiastical centralization the same penalty of revolution, incident to a centralized State, which, he said, is already knocking at the doors. He gave his decisive adhesion to those who demand unanimous consent, and declared that he had always held the personal infallibility to be “opinio probabilissima,” but could find no necessary certainty in it, neither “certitudo dogmatica” nor “veritas dogmatizanda.”

One might think that a man who is so unclear about the logic of history and the principles of morals belongs to the majority. However the impression produced by Ketteler’s speech was favourable to the minority, and all who have watched his attitude before the last four months, especially at Fulda, must have recognised the decided advance in the line taken by the Opposition. Many think the conversion is complete, and the great wound of the Opposition—its containing members ready sooner or later to turn renegades—finally closed. The Bishop of Mayence was at first believed to be the author of the pamphlet he has distributed, but it was not composed under his eye or under his influence, nor even at his suggestion, and bears no trace of his mind. The general line is Maret’s, but his leading idea, that in case of a conflict a Council is superior to a Pope, does not occur in it. Ketteler must have acquired a great deal of Roman experience and non-Roman development before he would denounce a papal decree to his country and his diocese as uncatholic. But the advance which he, like others, and more than many others, has already made, is unquestionably a gain, and gives a peculiar force to his words. But it has damaged and discredited the minority that so many Bishops are more careful about the position and influence of the Church than about the purity of doctrine.

I must return once more to Manning’s speech of May 25, as it was very interesting and important. He asserted roundly that infallibility was already really a doctrine of the Church, which could not be denied without sin (_sine publico peccato mortali_) or proximate heresy (_proximâ hæresi_), and therefore they did not want to make a new dogma but simply to proclaim an existing one. In these bold but highly significant words Manning pointed to what many better men choose to be blind to. He no longer acknowledges the opponents of the doctrine as brothers in faith, as members of one and the same Church, since they do not satisfy his conditions of orthodoxy; his faith and theirs are not the same. He has been the first to proclaim this great truth in Council, and it is time for the minority to ask themselves, whether unity still really survives in the sense hitherto maintained against Protestants, whether the foe is really still outside and has not penetrated into the inmost sanctuary of the Church, for the temple must be cleansed before the nations are converted. The minority can no longer live in peace with Manning and his like, or imagine that the contest does not threaten the very existence of the Church. Manning has indeed said that he does not think the decree strong enough. The Spaniards agree with him, and an open difference on this point has arisen in the Deputation. The great majority would be glad to find a formula less offensive to the Opposition, but Manning has the Pope on his side, and gets him worked upon by certain sacristan-like natures, like the Bishops of Carcassonne and Belley, who have won the special confidence of Pius IX. through having a certain mental affinity with him. Manning’s whole speech was an attempt to hinder concessions, and keep the _Curia_ to the point of forcibly suppressing the minority. And it counts also for a sign that the Pope is resolved to go all lengths. The fanatics would prefer the Church being exposed to the danger of schism to modifying their theory in the least particular, for the latter would be a humiliation for themselves, while the other kindles a contest the end of which they feel no doubt about. It is reckoned certain that of the Bishops who will vote against the dogma, not all have the courage for a protest, and that of those who do protest some will rather resign their sees than undertake the contest with the _Curia_ under excommunication.

Manning’s argument for infallibility from the condition of England was remarkable. It is unquestionably his chief motive, and what gives the stamp of sincerity to his position, to make Catholicism more compact and closely united in Protestant England. He hopes by means of the dogma to suppress those differences of opinion which are a source of disturbance and weakness, so that all will re-echo his words, uphold his theology in the face of a disintegrating Protestantism, and his policy in the face of political parties with the combined strength of five million men. He conceives that the Christian element is more and more disappearing from the Established Church and the sects of England, and sees a general dissolution of belief which offers a future to Catholicism as the one definite authority. But he maintained in the Council that the English Catholics were in favour of infallibility, and that even Protestants testified that it would strengthen his hands. That the leading English theologian, Newman, has spoken so strongly against the definition he of course did not say. It was only consistent with the bitter enmity between the two to ignore it. Nor did he say that the English Bishops present at the Council are equally divided—himself, Ullathorne, Chadwick and Cornthwaite being infallibilists, against Errington, Clifford, Amherst, and Vaughan, who are fallibilists. He read extracts from Protestant papers, stating that papal infallibility is the logical outcome of Catholicism; to such miserable weapons was he driven for defending his cause. Clifford, who followed him, had an easy task in exposing these misrepresentations and falsehoods. One point in his speech his hearers missed: he said that the mischief the definition threatened the Church and the mischief it had already done to the interests of religion in England, might be gathered from the letter of an illustrious English statesman, for the authority of which he could appeal to an Archbishop there present. This Archbishop was Manning himself, and the allusion was to a letter addressed to him by an English minister, saying in substance that in England it was the most vehement Protestants, and those most notorious for their hostility to the Catholic Church, who eagerly desired to see infallibility and the Syllabus made into dogmas, and that the present policy of Rome had so greatly increased the anti-Catholic feeling of the country that every step taken by the Government to extend the rights of Catholics and improve the social condition of Catholic Ireland met with the most persistent opposition.

The Italian Valerga, titular Patriarch of Jerusalem, delivered on Tuesday, May 31, a more spirited, piquant and insolent speech, which I will give a report of in my next letter.

The great debate may last till the middle of June, when it is hoped that the chapter on the primacy may be carried without difficulty, and the special debate on infallibility be brought to a successful end before the middle of July. But there is sure to be a lively and protracted discussion on the primacy, which may easily exhaust the patience of the majority, for the continuance of the present situation is a deep humiliation for the Pope and _Curia_. The Opposition, whose existence at first was so boldly denied, and of which there was originally only a germ in the Episcopate, subsequently developed in Council through the clumsy tactics of Rome, places the Roman See in an unwonted and what is thought an intolerable light. What Pius IX. and the Jesuits reckoned on accomplishing, first in three weeks, then in four months, at Easter, at Pentecost, on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, by acclamation, by unanimous consent, is not done yet and seems to recede further and further. The Roman people are losing their reverence for the Pope, though they await the doctrine with equanimity. They say, “Si cambia la Religione,” and laugh good-humouredly. But I heard the words from the mouth of a Roman priest, “L’idola restera al Vaticano, ma l’altare serà deserto.”

It is certain attempts will soon be made either to cut short the debate or adjourn it and overcome the opposition by some compromise. Such an attempt was made before by a Cardinal, but the Bishop of the minority to whom he applied would not even look at the formula. Then the Dominicans conceived a similar idea, but were answered that there were strong reasons not only against the wording of particular forms, but against any reference to the question. Such proposals are sure to be repeated in spite of Manning and the fanatics. But the Opposition Bishops cannot entertain them separately without breach of word to their colleagues, though it is always possible that some formula or other may find friends and advocates among them.