Chapter XVIII: The Minority After the Vatican Decree (2)

“disgraceful apostasy of the German Bishops, seeing that after
they had pledged themselves, before their departure from Rome, to
decide nothing about the Dogma of Infallibility without previously
taking council together, they should nevertheless have submitted
individually.

“When one views the moral ruin, the complete lack of honour among the
Bishops, one shudders at the influence which the Jesuitical element
in the Church can exert on human nature.”

It is natural to enquire what overt action the advocates of these views and its sympathisers in the Roman body would adopt. The excommunication of Döllinger roused still further feeling; and an important meeting of political opponents of things ultramontane was held in Berlin. There was among them a strong desire for action of some kind, and for emphatic opposition. But Prince Hohenlohe disapproved.

“I demonstrated,” he says, “that it was necessary above all things
for us to remain in the Catholic Church. So long as we had no
Bishops, no clergy, and no congregations, but only a number of
cultured laymen, we could not talk of an old Catholic Church. It was
a case of waiting till the Pope should die, and then there was hope
of a better spirit in the Catholic Church. If we left the Church--and
this might be the result of any serious step--the Catholic Church
would lose so many reasonable men to no purpose.” It was therefore
decided to remain quiet. “I do not think,” Prince Hohenlohe wrote,
“that the agitation will produce any great results. Interest in the
person and fate of Döllinger, for it is nothing more, does not make a
reformation. Interest in dogmatic subtleties no longer exists.”

The Prince recorded his personal convictions in the following memorandum:--

“I am of opinion that the Concilium Vaticanum of 1869–1870 is in no
way ecumenical, and that the time will come when the Infallibility
of the Pope proclaimed therein will be pronounced heresy. But as the
Bishops collectively and almost all the clergy have accepted the
doctrine set forth, he who denies the doctrine must secede from the
Catholic Church.... I have, therefore, refrained from expressing
my opinion openly, especially as I believe that the Old Catholic
Community cannot remain where it now stands, but will be driven
further.... So far as I am concerned, I wish the Catholic Church to
reform herself. That can and will be done only with the co-operation
of her Bishops. This co-operation will not take place until the
moment has come for the assembling of a really Ecumenical Council.
Even if this is an empty hope, it in no case alters my present
opinion. In this case the Catholic Church is doomed to fall, and then
other forms of religion will be constituted, which we need not now
discuss. In the meantime I have this hope, and therefore am waiting.
Hence I remain a member of the Church, without going over to the
Ultramontanes.”

IV. IN GERMANY

1. Hefele, Bishop of Rottenburg, formerly Professor of Theology in the University of Tübingen, and learned, perhaps above any man then living, in the Councils of the Church, was held in high reputation for his history of the Councils, which is still the best modern authority on the subject. He was well known as the reverse of ultramontane. Twelve years before the Vatican Council assembled he stated the facts about Pope Honorius in such a manner as to show that history absolutely forbade the ascription to a Pope of the attribute of Infallibility.

Being consecrated Bishop at the end of 1869 he had a place in the Vatican Assembly, where he was most active in opposition. Just in the critical hour of the Infallibility debate he published (in April, 1870) at Naples, since Papal regulations prevented its publication in Rome, a forcible pamphlet on the case of Pope Honorius, and his treatment by the Sixth General Council. Hefele now declared that Honorius “set aside the distinctively orthodox technical term for the two wills, human and Divine, in Christ; sanctioned the distinctively technical term of the Monothelite heresy; and commended this double error to the acceptance of the faithful.” Further, he maintained that the sixth Ecumenical Council had claimed the right to pass judgment on this authoritative Papal decision, and to pass anathema upon the Pope as a teacher of heresy. Finally, he maintained that from the fifth to the eleventh century each Pope in his consecration oath had made a declaration which involved two things: first, that a Council can condemn a Pope for heresy, and secondly, that Honorius was rightly so condemned for having supported an error by his decree on faith.

This emphatic rejection of Infallibility was circulated among the members of the Council in Rome, with intention to prevent the doctrine from being decreed.

Hefele also wrote from Rome to Döllinger, complaining that the majority interfered with the minority’s freedom of speech; that the Pope’s personal interventions and criticisms on the minority made their independent action exceedingly difficult; that these experiences were diminishing the courage, if not the numbers, of the opposition; that it was difficult to know what movement to take when a halter was round your neck; that hardly anybody dared openly to say what their ultimate intentions were; that the majority meanwhile confidently assured them that the Pope would settle everything, and that then the alternative would be submission or excommunication.

On the 13th of July Hefele voted in the negative. On the 17th he signed the protest and then returned to his diocese without waiting for the Public Session. In a letter to Döllinger he attempted to justify this. He said that from the number of negative votes on the 13th of July he had hoped that many Bishops would remain for a final protest in the Public Session of the 18th. But in the general exodus this hope evaporated. He acknowledged that the written protest sent to the Pope was weak, because destitute of formal validity. It could not possibly avert the public definition of the Decree. As for himself he feels that his duty is clear. He has been in consultation with his Chapter and his Theological Faculty. He cannot accept the new dogma, as it stands, without the necessary limitations. He knows that Rome may suspend him, and excommunicate him. Meantime he has been urging upon another Bishop that disbelief in the Council’s validity is not heretical. His own line consists in quiescence, so long as Rome does not actively intervene. What else to do he does not know in the least. At any rate to hold as Divinely revealed what is not true is for him simply impossible (September 1870). He can no more conceal from himself in Rottenburg, than he could in Rome, that the new dogma is destitute of any true rational, Scriptural, or traditional foundations. It is injurious to the Church in incalculable ways. The Church has suffered no severer and deadlier wound of modern times than that inflicted on the 18th of July. Yet he can see no way of escape. He writes repeatedly to Döllinger; complains that Dupanloup persists in asking questions, but will not say what he intends to do. Meanwhile, Hefele is being worried and baited on every side. Appeals pour in from France and America, urging submission. He is certain that a schism would have no chance. The world is too indifferent, and the opposition too dispersed. There is nothing for it but submission, or exclusion. On the other hand, it is to him indisputably clear that the final session of the Vatican Council had no ecumenical character. Romanism and Jesuitism have altered the nature of the Catholic Church. Hefele’s letters become still more piteous. His troubles are increasing. His own diocese is turning against him. He had not believed it possible that the dogma could so pervade his diocese. Even his oldest friends are turning against him. Rome also is improving the occasion. He is refused the usual faculties, so that people in all parts of the diocese cannot get married, and the local clergy are utilising this to set the people against him. What on earth is he to do? He gives way to lamentations. The position of a deprived and excommunicated Bishop is to him abhorrent--one he could hardly tolerate. At an earlier stage it was open to him to resign, and gladly would he lay down an office which has made him such an oppressed and unhappy man. He must resign or yield.

Which of the two it will ultimately be it is not by this time difficult to predict. Hefele can see no glimmer of hope in any distant development. It is not to be expected that the Constitution Pastor Eternus will be revoked by a future Pope, or the fourth session of the Vatican Council pronounced invalid. The utmost that can be looked for is a further explanation. By this time he is the only German Bishop who has not published the Constitution. He cannot adequately express his grief that Döllinger should see no escape from suspension or excommunication. Is there no compromise with the Archbishop possible? He utters wild and useless laments over the Synod of German Bishops at Fulda. Oh, what might not have been done in Germany if only the Bishops at Fulda had stood firm! Yet he took no steps against them. Then he ends with deploring Döllinger’s own impending fate. To think that Döllinger, so long the champion of the Catholic Church and its interests, the first of the German theologians, should be suspended or excommunicated; and that by an Archbishop who has not done a thousandth part of the service that Döllinger had done! That is terrible! The conclusion was now quite plain. Döllinger’s replies were useless, and Hefele proceeded to publish the Vatican Decree.

It remained, and this was more difficult, to revise the case of Honorius in the light of the new dogma. In the second edition of his “History of the Councils,” Hefele observes:

“We always were of the opinion that Honorius was quite orthodox
in thought, but, especially in his first letter, he has unhappily
expressed himself in a Monothelite fashion.” This opinion he still
retained, “even if ... as a result of repeated new investigation of
this subject, and having regard to what others have more recently
written in defence of Pope Honorius, I now modify or abandon many
details of my earlier statements, or in particular, form a milder
judgment of the first letter of Honorius.”

Still, even now, his historic sense constrains him to speak of the “the unhappy sentence, ‘accordingly we acknowledge one will of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ which taken literally is quite Monothelite.” Still he is constrained to say, “Honorius ought to have answered.” And as for the Monothelites themselves, “the fact that the Pope gave utterance to this their primary proposition must have given essential assistance to their cause.”

2. Melchers, Archbishop of Cologne, professed himself in the Council ready to accept the dogma as a personal belief; but he accumulated many arguments to show the extreme unwisdom of enforcing it upon the Church, especially in the existing state of sharply-divided opinion. On the critical 13th of July he gave a conditional vote. His own subsequent compliance was, therefore, comparatively easy. It was entirely another matter to restore unity to his diocese.[418] Back in his diocese he called the German Bishops together at Fulda. Only nine arrived, but they agreed to take measures to impose the doctrine upon the recalcitrant. It became the Archbishop’s function to reduce to submission the Theological Faculty of Bonn, among others the distinguished professors, Langen and Reusch.

[418] See pp. 241, 242.

3. The interview between the Archbishop of Cologne and Professor Reusch has been recorded.

The Archbishop told the Professor that the highest authority had spoken, and submission was his duty. The Professor replied that his convictions would not allow it. The Archbishop retorted that he laid too much stress on his convictions. Reusch replied that he dared not go against them. The Archbishop restated the duty of submission to authority; the Professor said that he could only leave his convictions to the judgment of God.

But, persisted the Archbishop, the Council was free and ecumenical, and the definition unquestionably valid. He acknowledged that he had himself implored the Pope not to allow the discussion to begin; but the majority thought otherwise. And, added the Archbishop, with a happy inspiration, you know that the doctrine has been recently taught in the Catechism of this diocese. Until now, replied Reusch, the opposite doctrine has been taught in all the schools, in a book bearing the episcopal _imprimatur_. The Archbishop could only reply that the book would be altered now, and that its author had already conformed. But, objected the Professor, if the opposite has been taught up to the 18th of last July, it cannot be a heresy.

The Archbishop could only enquire whether the Professor would make any concession of any kind. He said he would avoid contradiction, and study further. The Archbishop pointed out that Rome would never be satisfied with that. Do you wish, he asked, to die without the Sacraments? The interview was adjourned, and then resumed, but fruitlessly. The Archbishop recommended him to go into retreat. The Professor doubted whether this could alter facts of history. His reward was excommunication.

Reusch’s reflections on the interview with his Archbishop show what resistance cost him. “How painful it was, he wrote, although I continued calm and the Archbishop always friendly, you can well imagine. But I formed a gloomier opinion of his narrow-mindedness than ever before.” Melcher’s insistence on the duty of unlimited intellectual submission left, so far as Reusch could see, no room for reason. It provoked the criticism that the Archbishop would credit four Persons to the Trinity if a papal constitution demanded it. But for himself, Reusch wrote in terms almost of despair. That he might no longer pursue his mission as a teacher was hard enough. That he might no more discharge his priestly functions, nor obtain absolution and communion was terrible. But yet he would be more unhappy still if these had been obtained at the price of assenting to the dogma. And Reusch uttered his grief in the words of Ecclesiastes:--

“Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the
living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which
hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under
the sun.”

There remained, however, a work for Reusch to do. He found within the old Catholic communion a freedom to retain unaltered the faith which, up to that year, he had taught within the communion of Rome.

4. The fate of Langen, Theological Professor of Bonn, was somewhat similar to that of Reusch. When asked for his assent to the new Decree, Langen contended that the University statutes secured him his office conditionally on assent to the decisions of Trent; and that no alteration of these conditions could be made without approval of the Government. The Archbishop overruled this contention, and Langen declined to submit. Like Reusch, he was excommunicated. Langen has left behind him a history of the Roman See, and an extremely learned and exhaustive history of interpretation of the Scripture-texts usually adduced in behalf of the papal claims. Both these works display that Langen could not accept the new definition without falsifying the facts of history.

5. Another German rejection of the doctrine is that of Dr Hasenclever.[419]

[419] 1872.

“With countless other companions in faith I find myself reduced by
the Papal Decree of 18th July 1870 to the alternative of either
denying against my conscience the ancient faith as I received it, and
on the basis of which I have remained for five and twenty years in
the Catholic Church, or of placing myself in hopeless antagonism to a
justly revered authority through refusal to submit.”

Undoubtedly the principle is true that when the Church has once spoken all uncertainty is taken away; but no less undoubted is the principle that where a contradiction exists, a manifest deviation from tradition, it is impossible that it is the Church which has spoken. It is impossible, he says, for him to bring into harmony the new teaching on the Pope’s Infallibility with the Catholic Faith taught him by the Tridentine and Roman Catechism.

The constitution of the Church, he argued, differs from that of a State, for while the latter may assume at various periods a democratic, an aristocratic, a monarchical form--the former must maintain its self-identity. This principle of identity and continuity is, he acknowledges, recognised in the Anglican Church which, while uncertain of the validity of its claims, he admits, is thereby distinguished from the Protestant types. But his sympathies are with the principle that the constitution of the Church cannot change its form. He is as opposed to a spiritual dictatorship as to Protestantism itself. Is it possible that the conception of supreme authority in the Church which has held good for eighteen hundred years, is no longer decisive? So men enquired in amazement when the news of the schemes of the Roman Curia began to circulate. That some reforms should be necessary was natural enough; but that a radical change must be made in the constitution of the supreme teaching body--this was incredible even to many of the blindest followers of the Curia. The Church has never exhibited a trace of uncertainty on the method of securing finality in a question of faith. It has been through the Collective Episcopate united with its chief. In the Collective Episcopate as representative of Christendom at large, the Church has acknowledged the apostolic teaching office, the witness to its faith, the judge of error. The mission of a Universal Council is to give collective testimony to the faith of the Fathers. This collective testimony might be voiced through the Holy See, but it is impossible to discover in Revelation a basis for the theory that the collective testimony is not valid until the Holy See endorses it. The ancient principle is to rest in the testimony of all churches:--

“Ecumenical Councils,” says Alzog, speaking of the early centuries,
“the real representatives of the Catholic spirit, were in these ages
of burning controversy the decisive authority, the supreme tribunal
which ended all dogmatic disputes. And,” adds Hasenclever, “it was
exactly when this principle became challenged by another that the
risk of schism appeared.”

Moreover, a mathematical formula may illustrate the effect of the papal claim on the Episcopate. If _a_+_b_=_a_ then _b_=_0_; or, at any rate, is a practically negligible quantity.

Hasenclever complains that he can nowhere obtain a direct response to the question, How is it that innumerable treatises and works of all kinds approved by the Church have hitherto affirmed that Papal Infallibility is no part of the Catholic Faith? What particularly scandalised him was the sudden condemnation, by placing on the Index, books which have been for a considerable period accepted authorities within the Church. He failed to see that to bestow sanction publicly upon a treatise, and afterwards to pronounce it heretical, was consistent with the maintenance of an unchanged faith. Moreover, if Papal Infallibility had been the traditional principle, the entire history of the Church must have presented a very different appearance from what it does. Where, he asks, is any faith in an infallible Pope exhibited in the Church during the Arian struggles? Certainly the Bishops of the Sixth Ecumenical Council conducted matters on somewhat different lines from those suggested to us by infallibilists to-day. They treated the Pope Honorius just as they would have treated any other heretic. And his successors did the same. The infallibilist falls into Scylla if he escapes Charybdis. When entreated to make a sacrifice of his intellect to this demand of the Vatican Decree, Hasenclever can only reply that such sacrifice paralyses the innermost depths of personal existence. To him it is nothing less than a suicidal suppression of that characteristic which raises us into resemblance to God. Those who cannot bring themselves to this abandonment of their human dignity will be constrained to say, in spite of all the seductions of superficial and sophistic reasonings, that the doctrine of the personal infallibility of the Pope stands in irreconcilable contradiction with the actual faith of the Catholic Church; and, accordingly, it is impossible that a real Ecumenical Council should have decreed it.

6. But these were minor incidents. The religious attention of Germany centred on Döllinger at Munich. On 17th July Archbishop Scherr of Munich left Rome with the minority. On the 18th the new dogma was proclaimed. On the 19th Archbishop Scherr was back in Munich again. On the 21st the Theological Faculty, headed by Döllinger, met him. Scherr’s criticisms of the Roman procedure, says Döllinger’s German biographer, Friedrich, confirmed them in the views of the Council which they had already taken. But, said Scherr, Rome has spoken. There was nothing for it but submission. The Theological Faculty were totally unprepared for the Archbishop’s surrender. Upon Döllinger it created the most painful impression. He knew that the Archbishop’s convictions, better judgments, sympathies, were all on the other side; and that, like the other Bishops of the minority, he had abandoned the Council because he could neither bring himself to acquiesce silently in the proclamation of what he deprecated, nor summon courage to protest for what he had hitherto believed. The feebleness of the Archbishop’s excuses, the frank condemnation pronounced by him on the methods by which the result had been secured, only set in stronger light the incongruity of his submission. Naturally they served to confirm Döllinger still more in his opinion of the absence of real freedom in the Council Chamber at St Peter’s.

Dr Liddon, who was in Munich on 29th July, gave the following account of Döllinger some ten days after the passing of the Decree:--

“A large amount of our conversation, of course, turned on the
Council and the Definition; and he speaks with the most entire
unreserve. He says that the great danger now is lest the Bishops of
the minority, being separated from each other, and exposed to the
powerful influences which can be brought to bear on them, should
gradually acquiesce. Nothing would be worse for the cause of the
Church in Germany than the spectacle of such submission to a purely
external and not really competent authority (he dwells much on the
scheme _de concilio_, as completely destroying the freedom, and so
the authority, of the Council), with a notorious absence of any
internal assent. The Archbishop of Munich is very anxious. He told Dr
Döllinger that the deputation which went to the Pope, begging him to
spare the Church, nearly carried its point.”

It is clear from this and other sources that the Archbishop of Munich, if left to himself, had no desire to proceed to extremities with the opponents of the Decree. But Döllinger fully realised, ever since the first mention of Infallibility as a subject for decision, that excommunication lay before him if the Decree was passed. Archbishop Scherr found himself reluctantly driven to the painful task of imposing on the theologians a reversal of belief similar to that which he had himself undergone. Rome was determined that the Munich stronghold of the minority should be brought into line with the new Decree. The Archbishop was made the instrument for effecting this. He wrote a letter to the Munich Faculty of Theology, in which he said that harassing doubts widely prevailed as to the attitude which the Theological Faculty meant to adopt toward the Vatican Council. It was his duty as Archbishop to set these doubts at rest. As for himself, he frankly owned that, during the deliberation at Rome, he gave utterance to his own opinion with all the positiveness of a conviction attained after mature consideration. “But,” he added, “I never intended to retain this conviction of mine if the decision should turn out differently.” Accordingly he invites the Theological Faculty to follow suit. The faculty, as a body, complied. But neither Friedrich nor Döllinger. The Archbishop waited two months. Then he wrote entreating Döllinger to conform. To this Döllinger replied that assent to the recent Decree would require him to refute his lifelong historical teaching. He would have to declare that his doctrine hitherto was false and perverted. In the face of his public declarations no one would believe in the sincerity of his submission. All the world would consider the transition a hypocritical instance of convictions denied from fear and personal interest. In the terribly painful situation into which recent events had brought him, Döllinger asked for further delay. This was granted, but, of course, to no purpose. Just in this hour of critical suspense, when the decisive step must be taken, came the piteous appeal from Hefele. Was no compromise with the Archbishop possible? That Döllinger, the first of German theologians, should be suspended or even excommunicated; and that by an Archbishop who had not done a thousandth part of the service Döllinger had rendered to the Church! This was terrible. Hefele’s letter gave Döllinger what he calls the first completely sleepless night in his life. But it could not alter his convictions. Döllinger sent his answer in to the Archbishop. He took his definite and final stand on the ancient principles. He could do no other. Döllinger said, in his reply, that the Jesuits, in advancing their scheme of papal absolutism, assured their adherents and disciples, and convinced many, even Bishops, that the noblest Christian heroism consists in the sacrifice of the intellect, and in surrendering one’s mental judgment and self-acquired knowledge and power of discernment to an infallible papal _magisterium_ as the only sure source of religious knowledge. This, in his opinion, was to elevate mental sloth to the dignity of a meritorious sacrifice, and to renounce the rights and the claims of history.

The question of Papal Infallibility was an historical question, which must be tested by historical investigation; by the patient scrutiny of facts in the centuries past. If this doctrine were true, it would assuredly be not merely one truth among many, but the actual foundation of the rest. How could the basal principle have been obscured through centuries?

“We are still,” wrote Döllinger to the Archbishop, “waiting the
explanation how it is that, until 1,830 years had passed, the
Church did not formulate into an article of faith a doctrine which
the Pope, in a letter addressed to your Grace, calls the very
foundation principle of Catholic faith and doctrine? How has it been
possible that for centuries the Popes have overlooked the denial of
this fundamental article of faith by whole countries and in whole
theological schools? And was there a unity of the Church when there
was a difference in the very fundamentals of belief? And--may I
further add--how is it then that your Grace yourself resisted so
long and so persistently the proclamation of this dogma? You answer,
because it was not opportune. But can it ever be ‘inopportune’ to
give believers the key to the whole building of faith, to proclaim
the fundamental article on which all others depend? Are we not now
all standing before a dizzy abyss which opened itself before our eyes
on the 18th July?” Döllinger concluded with a deliberate and emphatic
rejection of the new Decree: “As a Christian, as a theologian, as a
historian, as a citizen, I cannot accept this doctrine.”

Döllinger’s biographer assures us that this reply to the Archbishop of Munich brought Döllinger hundreds of letters, telegrams, addresses from Germany, Austria, and Italy, in congratulation for his firmness and strength. The Archbishop was in great perplexity. He sent a telegram to Rome asking what his next move should be. Antonelli replied promptly and curtly that the whole affair was exclusively within the Archbishop’s jurisdiction. This cut off all delay and all retreat. Archbishop Scherr was thus driven forward from Rome, and reluctantly forced to take the final step. A protest signed by forty-three Catholic professors against episcopal tyranny was naturally without effect. So also was an appeal with many thousands of signatures. Theological students in Munich diocese were now forbidden to attend his lectures; and he was informed that although the Archbishop could not prevent his lecturing, yet he could only continue to do so in open opposition to his Bishop. This was followed a fortnight later by his formal excommunication, in which his biographer, Friedrich, was included.[420]

[420] 17th April 1871. See _Declarations_, p. 113.

The exasperation at Munich is shown in a strongly worded protest[421] issued at Whitsuntide 1871, in which the signatories declare themselves confirmed in refusing the Vatican Decree by the duty, which neither Popes nor Bishops can dispute, of abiding in loyalty to the ancient faith even though an angel should teach them otherwise. It has been hitherto no doctrine of the Church, no part of Catholic faith, that every Christian possesses in the Pope an absolute overlord and master, to whom he is directly and immediately subjected, and whose decisions in faith and morals he is bound under penalty of eternal damnation to obey. It is notoriously no part of the teaching of the Church hitherto that the gift of Infallibility is entrusted to one individual. Peter speaks unmistakably to us in Scriptures through his deeds and his words and his letters; but all these breathe a totally different spirit from that of papal absolutism. The German minority Bishops show their bewilderment in their Pastoral letters. For none of them can induce themselves to follow Manning and the Jesuits in interpreting the Decrees in their natural obvious meaning. Moreover, the undersigned deplored that the Bishops are not ashamed to answer the conscientious outcry of their own dioceses with invectives against reason and learning. In previous centuries, when Bishops resorted to excluding a man from the Church, they did so on the ground of the novelty and untraditional character of his teaching. It was reserved for the present generation to see, what eighteen centuries have never beheld, a man condemned and excluded precisely because he clings to a doctrine which his fathers in the Church have taught him; refuses to change his faith as a cloak might be exchanged. That an unjust excommunication can only injure its inflicters--not the individual upon whom it is inflicted--is the universal teaching of the Fathers. Such excommunications are as invalid and ineffective as they are unjust. They cannot deprive the believer of the means of grace, nor a priest of his right to dispense them.

[421] Von Schulte, _Der Altkatholicismus_, pp. 16–22.

Such was the strain in which the Munich protest was written. Among the signatures which follow are those of Döllinger, Lord Acton, and Reinkens, afterwards Bishop of the Old Catholic Communion. The German Catholics, whom the Decree of Infallibility had excluded, gathered to form the Old Catholic Community.

Döllinger confesses that he had no hope whatever that under the next or one of the next Popes any important or essential change would be made for the better, since the order of the Jesuits formed the soul and sovereign of the whole Roman Church. Formerly there were counterbalancing influences: powerful religious orders, full of vitality, correcting the tendencies of the followers of Loyola. But these had become either powerless shadows, or satellites of the Jesuit dominating body.

“The tendency of events since 1870 was shown,” said Döllinger, “in
the solemn proclamation of Liguori as Doctor of the Church:--

“A man whose false morals, perverse worship of the Virgin, constant
use of the grossest fables and forgeries, make his writings a
storehouse of errors and falsehoods. In the whole range of Church
history I do not know a single example of such a terrible and
pernicious confusion.”

The public papers repeatedly announced Dr Döllinger’s reconciliation with the Roman Communion. On one occasion he replied:--

“This is now the fourteenth time that my submission has been
announced by Ultramontane papers; and it will often occur again. Rest
assured that I shall not dishonour my old age with a lie before God
and man.”

Ten years after the Vatican Decision, Döllinger received a pathetic, imploring appeal from a lady of high social position, entreating him to rescue himself from the everlasting destruction which his exclusion would entail, and to have mercy on his own unhappy soul.

Döllinger’s answer is memorable:--

“I am now in my eighty-first year, and was a public teacher of
theology for forty-seven years, during which long period no censure,
nor even a challenge that I should defend myself, or make a better
explanation, has ever reached me from ecclesiastical dignitaries,
either at home or abroad. I had _never_ taught the new Articles of
Faith advanced by Pius IX. and his Council.... Then came the fatal
year, 1870.... It was in vain that I begged them to let me remain
by the faith and confession to which I had hitherto been faithful
without blame and without contradiction. Yesterday still orthodox,
I was to-day a heretic worthy of excommunication; not because I had
changed my teaching, but because others had considered it advisable
to undertake the alteration, and to make opinions into Articles of
Faith.”

But why not make a sacrifice of his intellect:--

“Because,” says Döllinger, “if I did so in a question which is for
the historical eye perfectly clear and unambiguous, there would
then be no longer for me any such thing as historical truth and
certainty; I should then have to suppose that my whole life long I
had been in a world of dizzy illusion, and that in historical matters
I am altogether incapable of distinguishing truth from fable and
falsehood.”

But this would undermine his whole confidence in historic fact, and thereby shatter the foundation of his religion. For it is on historic facts that Christianity itself reposes. Prior to the historic problem of the Papacy is the historic problem of the Apostolic times. “I must first be convinced that the principal events narrated in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are essentially true and inviolable.” And to destroy confidence in historic judgment in one case is to ruin its validity in all others.

Archbishop Scherr was succeeded in the diocese of Munich in 1878 by Von Steichele, a former pupil of Döllinger, and attached to him by feelings of the deepest veneration. Von Steichele made overtures for Döllinger’s reconciliation with the Papacy. He wrote in 1879 a delightful letter:--

“With the thankfulness of a pupil to a venerable teacher; with
the respect of a disciple for the honoured bearer of the richest
knowledge; with the love of an anxious Bishop for the brother who
unhappily is not yet at one with him in things of highest moment.”

Döllinger sent a frank but decided reply. Return was impossible. He said that his excommunication had been unjust, his treatment unexampled in the history of the Church. The mediæval theory of excommunication rendered the individual liable to bodily harm. It would appear that this theory was not obsolete; for the chief of the police had warned him to be on his guard, as they had knowledge that an act of violence was plotted against him. Friedrich says elsewhere that the house in which he and Döllinger lived, was specially protected by the police for a year after the excommunication. These dangers, said Döllinger, were long since past. But he could not enter again into relationship with the authors of these actions. He had long ago challenged his former colleagues to know how they reconciled acceptance of the Vatican expositions with their conscience and their knowledge of the facts:--

“The answer was always an evasive one, or an embarrassed shrug of the
shoulder. They said that this was a question of detail, which the
individual priest or layman did not need to enter into. Or they said
that the very essence and merit of believing consisted precisely in
giving oneself up blindly and implicitly to the powers that be, and
in leaving it to them to settle any contradictions that might exist.
I do not need to tell you what an impression deplorable subterfuges
of this kind have made upon me.”

This was Döllinger’s final attitude toward the Roman Communion up to the last moment of consciousness on earth. He never by any act of will deviated from testimony to the Church’s traditional Faith, in which the theory of Papal Infallibility was not included. To the end of his days he held that this theory could not possibly be reconciled with the broad facts of Christian history.

V. LORD ACTON’S SUBMISSION

The new decree was profoundly uncongenial to the mind of Lord Acton. He had already expressed his sense that recent developments of papal authority were inconsistent with the earlier principles of Christendom, and disastrous alike to freedom of investigation, and to the real interests of the Church. Manning’s theories on papal sovereignty were a trial to Lord Acton’s historical intellect. Manning simply reproduced the mediæval exaggerations of temporal power which had done incalculable mischief ever since Boniface VIII. endorsed them in his struggle with France.

“You are certainly not too severe on Manning’s elaborate
absurdities,” wrote Lord Acton;[422] “I had no idea he had gone so
far.... It is impossible to exaggerate the danger of such doctrines
as his. I wish you would take the line of Catholic indignation a
little.”

[422] _Lord Acton and his Circle_, pp. 211, 212, 215.

While the Council sat, Lord Acton was in Rome, where popular opinion ascribed the Articles in the _Augsburg Gazette_ to his instrumentality. “People do not venture to proceed against Acton,” wrote Gregorovius;[423] “but it is known that he writes, and that he pays highly for the materials that are supplied him.”

[423] _Roman Journals_, p. 356.

Archbishop Manning had positive knowledge that Lord Acton was in constant communication with Mr Gladstone, supplying him with information hostile to the Council; “poisoning his mind,” as Archbishop Manning phrases it, against Papal Infallibility and the Pope’s friends and supporters. Lord Acton, as a friend and disciple of Dr Döllinger, had great influence with the German Bishops, who, for the most part belonged to the Opposition; and was also on confidential terms with Mgr. Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, and with the Bishop of Orleans, and had not a little to do with bringing into closer union the Bishops of France and Germany. He was also active in furnishing the Opposition with Dr Döllinger and Professor Friedrich’s historical criticisms of the Papacy. Lord Acton, as Manning knew well,[424] did more than any other man, except the Bishop of Orleans, in exciting public feeling, especially in Germany and England, against the Vatican Council.

[424] Purcell’s _Manning_, ii. p. 434.

When, therefore, the Vatican Decree was passed and the process of reducing objectors to uniformity began, it was scarcely probable that Lord Acton would be left unchallenged. Nor did he continue silent. He published a sketch of the history of the Vatican Council[425] which, while confined strictly to facts, must have been supremely distasteful to the victorious side. When he said that Pius was bound up with the Jesuits; made them a channel for his influence and became himself an instrument of their designs; when he gave illustrations of authority overriding history, and the unscrupulous suppression of uncongenial facts; when he quoted at length Montalembert’s emphatic letter on the transformation of Catholic France into an anti-chamber of the Vatican--he was recording what was calculated to advance the other side. Yet, of course, the registration of adverse facts is a different province from personal belief.

[425] Acton, _Vatican Council_. München (1871).

But Acton went so far as to describe the Infallibility doctrine as independent of reason or history.

“The sentiment,” he wrote,[426] “on which Infallibility is founded
could not be reached by argument, the weapon of human reason;
but resided in conclusions transcending evidence, and was the
inaccessible postulate rather than the demonstrable consequence of a
system of religious faith.” The opponents were, according to Acton,
“baffled and perplexed by the serene vitality of a view which was
impervious to proof....

“No appeal to revelation or tradition, to reason or conscience,
appeared to have any bearing whatever on the issue.”

[426] _History of Freedom_, pp. 512, 513.

This persistent attempt to render authority independent of evidence was, if especially prominent in the Infallibility disputes, a deeply seated and long existing disease. It pervaded the theological school then dominant in Rome, but it had, according to Acton, exerted its baneful influence over the Roman Church for centuries. The Jesuit theologian, Petavius, in the seventeenth century supported existing authority at the expense of the past.

“According to Petavius, the general belief of Catholics at a given
time is the word of God, and of higher authority than all antiquity
and all the Fathers. Scripture may be silent, and tradition
contradictory, but the Church is independent of both. Any doctrine
which Catholic divines commonly assert, without proof, to be
revealed, must be taken as revealed.... In this way, after Scripture
had been subjugated, tradition itself was deposed; and the constant
belief of the past yielded to the general conviction of the present.
And as antiquity had given way to universality, universality made way
for authority.”

Thus in Acton’s view the dominant school in the Roman Church were resolved that “authority must conquer history.” He went so far as to say that:--

“Almost every writer who really served Catholicism fell sooner or
later under the disgrace or the suspicion of Rome.” Also that “the
division between the Roman and the Catholic elements in the Church
made it hopeless to mediate between them.”

Acton’s description of the Vatican Assembly itself could only leave one conclusion as to its methods and impartiality, on the reader’s mind. He records how the Bishops on arriving in Rome, were “received with the assurance that nobody had dreamt of defining Infallibility, or that, if the idea had been entertained at all, it had been abandoned.” He records the Pope’s assurance that “he would sanction no proposition that could sow dissension among the Bishops.” He asserts that the freedom of the Bishops was taken away by the regulations of the Bull _Multiplices inter_ imposed upon them without their consent, and with refusal even to allow their protests to be uttered. He says that many Bishops were “bewildered and dispirited,” by the character of these Regulations. He says:--

“It was certain that any real attempt that might be made to prevent
the definition could be overwhelmed by the preponderance of those
Bishops whom the modern constitution of the Church places in
dependence on Rome.”

He reveals his sympathies in the strongest way by pouring out his moral indignation on the minority Bishops for their weakness.

“They showed no sense of their mission to renovate Catholicism....

“They were content to leave things as they were, to gain nothing if
they lost nothing, to renounce all premature striving for reform
if they could succeed in avoiding a doctrine which they were as
unwilling to discuss as to define.”

The contemplation of all this causes Acton to write:--

“The Church had less to fear from the violence of the majority than
from the inertness of their opponents. No proclamation of false
doctrines could be so great a disaster as the weakness of faith
which would prove that the power of recovering the vital force of
Catholicism was extinct in the Episcopate.”

And then Acton traces the gradual tightening of the cords as the feeble and unhappy minority are more and more overcome. The new Regulations determined that decrees should be carried by majority. They could not be accepted by the minority without virtual admission that the Pope must be infallible. For

“If the act of a majority of Bishops in the Council, possibly not
representing a majority in the Church, is infallible, it derives its
Infallibility from the Pope.”

“But it was a point which Rome could not surrender without giving up
its whole position. To wait for unanimity was to wait for ever, and
to admit that a minority could prevent or nullify the dogmatic action
of the Papacy was to renounce Infallibility. No alternative remained
to the opposing Bishops but to break up the Council.”

This was exactly where their courage failed them. They protested, but submitted. And here comes Acton’s judgment on their submission:--

“They might conceivably contrive to bind and limit dogmatic
Infallibility with conditions so stringent as to evade many of the
objections taken from the examples of history; but in requiring
submission to Papal Decrees on matters not Articles of Faith,
they were approving that of which they knew the character, they
were confirming without let or question a power they saw in daily
exercise, they were investing with new authority the existing Bulls,
and giving unqualified sanction to the Inquisition and the Index, to
the murder of heretics and the deposing of kings. They approved what
they were called on to reform, and solemnly blessed with their lips
what their hearts knew to be accursed.”

The effect of this moral feebleness on the Roman authorities was, says Acton, that

“the Court of Rome became thenceforth reckless in its scorn of the
opposition, and proceeded in the belief that there was no protest
they would not forget, no principle they would not betray, rather
than defy the Pope in his wrath. It was at once determined to bring
on the discussion of Infallibility.”

Lord Acton’s objections to the Infallibility school were clearly of a triple character. In relation to History: it betrayed a resolve to instate Authority independently of proof. It was the product of indifference to fact. “The serene vitality of a view impervious to proof,” could only shock and distress a profound veneration for the actual. To those who build on facts such disregard for evidence must appear as building without foundation. In relation to method: if the origin of the doctrine was insecure, no less unsatisfactory was the method by which it was decreed. Acton’s description makes the Decree the product of cowardly weakness on the one side, and unscrupulous coercion on the other. The spiritual value of the result obtained might be measured by the immorality of the means employed. It could not, it did not, enlist his loyalty or command his reverence. In relation to results: plainly Acton did not believe that the limitless exaltation of Authority was beneficial, or that it could lead to anything but results disastrous to the real interests of the Church. The severity of his judgment on the minority, for investing with new Authority the Papal Decree, was born of a deep conviction that already, on countless occasions, that Authority had proved excessive, injurious to the advance of truth, and the freedom of the individual. It is probably quite correct that Acton’s objections were more on the moral and political or social side than on the strictly theological. But his sharp distinction between the Catholic and the Roman elements within the Church is really a distinction in dogmatic principles. And nothing can exceed his loathing for principles commonly known as Ultramontane. Acton and Manning stand at the opposite poles in their anticipations of the results of the dogma of Infallibility.

But Lord Acton went far beyond all this. He wrote a letter[427] to a German Bishop reproaching the minority with inconsistency in discontinuing their opposition after the Infallibility Decree was published. In this letter he gives the actual language of the leaders of the minority, and concludes--

[427] _Sendschreiben an einen Deutschen Bischof_ (September 1870).

“The Council is thus judged by the lips of its most able members.
They describe it as a conspiracy against truth and rights. They
declare that the new dogmas were neither taught by the Apostles nor
believed of the Fathers.”

This letter was described by the _Dublin Review_[428] as “an open and decisive revolt against the Church.”

[428] N.S. vol. xvi. (1871), p. 212.

Yet it does not appear that the writer was challenged to express his adhesion to the new Decree. But Lord Acton’s letters during this period are yet to be published. Abbot Gasquet[429] omits all the critical years from 1869–1874. Lord Acton, however, did not ultimately escape unchallenged. He was not in Manning’s Diocese or we may feel fairly certain that the Archbishop of Westminster would have pounced upon him.

[429] _Lord Acton and his Circle._

Meantime Mr Gladstone argued that the Vatican Decrees involved political consequences adverse to modern freedom.[430] The Church’s power to employ coercion was asserted by the Syllabus, and acknowledged by Newman.[431] Now that such consequences could be drawn from the Vatican Decrees Lord Acton did not dream of denying.[432] Gladstone’s argument could not be met by denial. And, of course, the whole sympathies of Acton’s mind were with Gladstone so far as repudiation of the use of coercive force in religion is concerned. Nothing in the world roused Acton’s moral indignation more than Inquisition and Liguori’s ethics. He admitted with characteristic sincerity that “Gladstone had not darkened the dark side of the question.” All he could answer was that it does not follow that inferences which _can_ be drawn _will_ actually be made. He held that “the Council did not so directly deal with these matters as to exclude a Catholic explanation.” The Council had not so acted “that no authentic gloss or explanation could ever put those perilous consequences definitely out of the way.” This was certainly a curious defence of an Ecumenical Decree. It does not exclude a Catholic explanation. But this was all he could say. He could not even say what that true explanation was; for on that ground his own authorities might reject him. “I could not take my stand, for good or evil, as an interpreter of the Decrees, without risk of authoritative contradiction.” This attitude, says Acton, “was no attack on the Council, although it was an attack on Ultramontanism.”[433]

[430] _Vaticanism_, p. 77.

[431] _Ibid._ p. 77.

[432] Gasquet, _Lord Acton and his Circle_, p. 366.

[433] Gasquet, _Lord Acton and his Circle_, p. 366.

But Lord Acton proceeded to defend the Council in the _Times_ newspaper[434] from Mr Gladstone’s inferences.

[434] 24th November 1874.

“I affirmed that the apprehension of civil danger from the Vatican
Council overlooks the infinite subtlety and inconsistency with which
men practically elude the yoke of official uniformity in matters of
opinion.”

And, as an illustration of this infinite subtlety in eluding authority, he quoted the example of Archbishop Fénelon, who “while earning admiration for his humility under censure [by the Pope] had retained his former views unchanged.” Fénelon wrote:--[435]

[435] _Pastoral_ (1699).

“I accept this Brief ... simply absolutely and without shadow of
reserve. God forbid that I should ever be remembered except as a
pastor who believed it his duty to be more docile than the humblest
of his sheep, and who placed no limit to his submission.”

Three weeks later Fénelon wrote to a friend:--

“I acknowledge no uncertainty either as to the correctness of my
opinions throughout or as to the orthodoxy of the doctrine which I
have maintained.... Unless competent persons rouse themselves in Rome
the faith is in great danger.”

It was no more than natural, after such public letters, that Lord Acton should be called in question by the authorities of his Communion. It was asserted in the Roman Church that he did not believe the Vatican Decrees. Manning wrote to enquire what construction he placed upon them in order that the minds of the multitude might be reassured. A curious and very instructive correspondence[436] ensued. Lord Acton took advice as to the answer he should give.

[436] _Lord Acton and his Circle_, pp. 359, 360, 364.

“The great question is,” he wrote privately to a friend, “whether
I ought to say that I _submit_ to the acts of this as of other
Councils, without difficulty or examination (meaning that I feel no
need of harmonising and reconciling what the Church herself has not
yet had time to reconcile and to harmonise), or ought not the word
_submit_ to be avoided, as easily misunderstood.”

After further reflection Lord Acton proposed to say:--

“I do not reject--which is all the Council requires under its
extreme sanctions. As the Bishops who are my guides have accepted
the decrees, so have I. They are a law to me as much as those at
Trent, not from any private interpretation, but from the authority
from which they come. The difficulties about reconciling them with
tradition, which seem so strong to others, do not disturb me a
layman, whose business it is not to explain theological questions,
and who leaves that to his betters.[437]

“Manning ... says he must leave the thing in the hands of the Pope,
as everybody tells him I don’t believe the Vatican Council. He means,
it seems to me, that he simply asks Rome to excommunicate me--a thing
really almost without example and incredible in the case of a man
who has not attacked the Council, who declares that he has not, and
that the Council is his law, though private interpretations are not,
whose Diocesan has, after enquiry, pronounced him exempt from all
anathema.”[438]

[437] _Ibid._ p. 364.

[438] _Ibid._ p. 368.

Against Lord Acton no further action was taken. The disastrous effect of the excommunication of Döllinger may have made Authority cautious in the exercise of this deadly weapon. Acton indeed submitted; but Manning’s misgivings seem more than justified. It is difficult to define the sense in which Acton became a believer in the new Decree. “He remained all his life,” says Bryce,[439] “a faithful member of the Roman Communion, while adhering to the views which he advocated in 1870.”

[439] _Biographical Studies_, pp. 385, 386.