Chapter XVIII: The Minority After the Vatican Decree (3)

It is quite true that Acton was not an Anglican; he was still less a Protestant. He never joined the old Catholic movement, and is said to have dissuaded his friends from taking that course. But it is certain that he was never an Ultramontane. The distinction he drew between Catholic and Roman elements in the Church helps to explain his own position. He was a Catholic as opposed to the modern Roman type.

If, as Pius IX. asserted, Catholic and Ultramontane are synonymous, then Acton’s position was precarious. But their identity is what he persistently and firmly denied. He considered Ultramontanism as an unhappy and mischievous influence perverting truths and ignoring history, speculative in its origin, and injurious in its results. He was well aware, his historic insight made it clearer to him than to many, that the school he resented was a long-standing disease; that its presence could be traced for centuries, if in a less pronounced and virulent form than to-day. But the long-standing nature of the disease did not shake his faith in the certainty of a remedy, and a removal sooner or later. He did not, it has been well said, identify the long-lived with the eternal.

Sooner or later then, Ultramontanism, according to Acton’s views, was destined to pass away. It was no more than a temporary, if protracted, disease from which the Church must at length recover. Meanwhile, therefore, he held to his post, accepting the present discomfiture in the hope of better days; waiting until this tyranny be overpast. He had no thought of departure. The Roman Communion was the Church of his birth and of his devotional affinities. He spoke of it reverentially as “the Church whose communion is dearer to me than life.”[440] He would never have left it of his own accord. But, while wholly identified with the ancient Catholic conceptions, he absolutely repudiated the principles of the Ultramontane. By what process he retained his place while Döllinger was exiled seems not altogether clear. Acton felt acutely the possibility that, like Döllinger, he also might be cast out.

[440] Letter to the _Times_.

Whether wisdom or prudence or diplomacy refrained from him and let him alone, there at any rate he lived and died. But the legitimacy or consistency of his position was the theme of a fierce and bitter controversy in the Roman journals after he was dead.

So the great struggle in the Roman Communion between the episcopal and the papal conceptions of Authority, the collective and the individual, came to an end. Every Bishop of the minority submitted. This is a magnificent tribute to the power of Rome. It held its defeated Episcopate in unbroken unity. Only the old Catholic movement created an independent community. But when the motives are considered which induced the minority to yield, the strongest principle appears to be the maintenance of external unity. The abler minds resisted, after the Decree was known, so long as resistance was possible. Only when the presence of threatened excommunication drew them to an ultimate decision, the Bishops submitted, with what grace they could, to a Decree which they dared no longer resist. But the submission is, even then, cautious, reluctant, and reserved. In some instances it is yielded in a tone of curtness or asperity. In other instances, with comments and explanations, in private letters, wholly inconsistent with genuine faith. It is difficult to find in a single minority submission the joyous devotion which is surely due to a heaven-sent revelation of eternal truth. They do not accept the doctrine as a blessed enlightenment, but rather as a heavy burden to which they are unwillingly obliged to coerce their priests. They do not appear like men whose intensity of conviction enables them to say:--“It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.” They would infinitely sooner ask no questions, if Rome would only let them. They are driven to excommunicate others, much against their will, for continuing to hold what they themselves had taught them, and were, until recently, inwardly persuaded was true. It is a painful and unattractive sight. In the frankness of confidential utterances after the event they owned with manifest sincerity that they did not believe the Decision valid, nor the Doctrine part of the Historic Faith. But, being forced by Authority to choose between submission and excommunication, they mostly preferred submission. The choice is intelligible. They loved the Church. Taught to regard its limits as practically identical with those of the Kingdom of Heaven--yet certain that history contradicted what they were now required to believe, they were placed in the terrible dilemma of loyalty to reason against religious interest, or to religious interest against their reason. The issue was solemn whichever side they chose. But the prior question which the alternative raises is this: “What is the spiritual value of an Absolute Authority which inflicted such an awful dilemma upon its own devoted sons?”