Chapter VIII

Memoranda of Thirty-six chosen Bishops, consulted under Bond of Strictest Secrecy, April to August, 1865--Doctrine of Church and State--Antagonism of History and the Embryo Dogma--Nuncios admitted to the Secret--And Oriental Bishops.

On April 10 his Holiness sanctioned a letter to thirty-six select bishops of different countries, intimating under the most binding secrecy his intention of holding a Council in the Holy City, at some time yet undetermined, and requesting them to communicate their views as to the subjects proper to be treated.[54]

In August, nearly all the answers had arrived. Out of the thirty-six, only three bishops cast doubts on the wisdom of the project; all the others were rejoiced.

The letters of the thirty-six, according to Cecconi, expressed views on the present condition of society coinciding with those of the purpled in Rome. The thirty-six generally remarked on the absence of any special heresies. When we come to particulars, the subjects which our author finds specified are: the right of the Church to hold land; her independence of the State; her right to control education; her right to judge what promotes and what hinders religion. Among other matters noted, the chief are: the obligation of the faithful to adhere to the decisions of the Church, and in particular to those of the Holy See, and the necessity of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, with "similar points."

After Cecconi has apparently concluded his summary of the suggestions of the thirty-six, a sentence is slipped in, saying, that among the verities which ought to be propounded by the Council, some mentioned Papal infallibility--"a doctrine admitted in all Catholic schools, with a few exceptions." Hereupon departing from his general rule, and adopting marks of quotation, he gives the words of one particular bishop, without naming him. These bear directly on the point most agitated before and during the Council. Such English readers as know much of the controversy, will probably risk a guess as to the author, and it may be that persons in Munich will hardly stop at guessing, but will say they know. It plainly was no Bavarian, not even a German, neither of whom would fall into such an expression as "Munich in Bavaria." "At present there are but few who impugn this prerogative of the Roman Pontiff; and they do so, not from a theological point of view, but the better to assert and maintain the freedom of science. It would seem that a school of theologians has sprung up with this object, at Munich, in Bavaria, in whose writings the principal aim is to lower the Holy See, its authority and its mode of government, by the aid of historical dissertations, and to bring it into contempt, and above all to combat the infallibility of Peter teaching _ex cathedrâ_."

This language intimates that the science for which especially freedom was claimed at Munich was history, which wants no other freedom than that of learning the truth and telling it, that of detecting lies and forgeries and exposing them. Even the Court historian feels the significance of this announcement of the mutual antipathy existing between history and the embryo dogma.

Among the "isms" designated for anathema by the chosen thirty-six, those which have any bearing on divinity proper could be named by most ordinary readers. One "ism" to be condemned is regalism, or the doctrine that the king is supreme in his own country; another is liberty of conscience and of the Press; and of course the bishops no more forget magnetism, somnambulism, and freemasonry, than their purpled superiors of the Curia.

Two points brought out under the head of discipline, are, the mobilization of the clergy, and the educational rights of the Church; strong condemnation being levelled against mixed schools.

After the secret preparations in Rome had been continued for nearly twelve months, the circle of confidential advisers was further extended. On November 17, 1865, the Cardinal President of the Directing Congregation communicated the intention of his Holiness to the nuncios in Paris, Vienna, Munich, Madrid, and Brussels; and requested them to name canonists and theologians of sound principles, exemplary life, and distinguished learning who might be called up to Rome to serve on the preparatory committees.

The next extension of the circle was to the Oriental bishops, who were consulted by Cardinal Barnabò, the Prefect of the Propaganda. They hailed the prospect of a Council, hoping that it might at length remove barriers which held the East in separation from Rome. Of these barriers they name both ancient and modern instances. Among the former the worst appears to be "national spirit," and among the latter we find Protestantism and the everlasting Freemasons. "Nationalism" is a trial to the Papal Church in the west as well as in the east. Cardinal Manning, in the Pastoral issued just before the Council met, said--

The definition of the infallibility of the Pontiff, speaking _ex
cathedrâ_, is needed to exclude from the minds of Catholics the
exaggerated spirit of national independence and pride, which has,
in these last centuries, so profoundly afflicted the Church. If
there be anything which a Catholic Englishman ought to know, it is
the subtle, stealthy influence by which the national spirit invades
and assimilates the Church to itself; and the bitter fruits of
heresy and schism which that assimilation legitimately bears.[55]

The clearest instance of the national spirit invading and assimilating the Church to itself occurred in decaying Rome. The military and absolutist spirit of the empire supplanted in the ministry and organization of the Church the original spirit of humility and brotherhood. The spirit of the national pomps supplanted the primitive superiority to sensation and display. The spirit of the governing classes set up side by side with the simple code of Christ a new code, meant avowedly to restore the old Roman domination of law, under the form of a spiritual empire. The spirit of that domination claimed to impose upon other churches the will of the Church of the capital and did not scruple to call her the mother-church, and to support her claims with lie and forgery oft repeated. But after the Pope, conspiring with the minister of the Frankish king, and rising with him against their two sovereigns, had erected himself into a petty prince, the national spirit of the empire began to narrow down to the municipal one of aboriginal Rome. Ever since that time the municipal spirit has increasingly become the spirit of the Papacy. Whatever that power has effected, it has never been able to make itself a nation. Aiming at a universal empire, the spirit of its rule has become more and more close, local, bureaucratic as that of any wee Italian republic of the middle ages. Men must not only act and move, but must also think and speak, according to rules excogitated by certain guilds within the Aurelian walls.

There is a curious but striking contrast between this professedly supernatural institution and one which scarcely claimed a regular place among natural institutions. Coming up amid the decline and corruption of an empire older, richer, and more populous than had been the empire of Rome, the East India Company, in a couple of generations, made a nation out of some hundreds of States among which had raged yearly conflicts. That nation still contains many thrones, but within its circle, and in spite of their jealousies, no less than two hundred and forty millions of men, a family immensely greater than Rome ever cursed with war or blessed with law, now live in peace and freedom such as were unknown to the ages which had aforetime passed over their country. On the plains around the presidential cities of India, where a century ago Mahratta, Moslem, and Rajpoot were wont to ravage, now reigns peace at seed-time and peace at harvest. Security sits and sings on every tree, and Industry, building her nest in every bush, sends out broods that, free from fear, busily cover the land. What a contrast with the endless whirl of war which in what are called the Ages of Faith--ages when the spells of the chief priest in Rome had power over semi-barbarous chiefs--ever eddied on the plain around Rome, a glorious plain, growing waste and more and more waste, while kings came, now to be crowned, now to put a Pope in prison, and while Italians and foreigners rose and sank by turn in the alternating surges--foreigners, however, most frequently coming into the fight at the call of a self-asserting but mongrel and parasitical government, which claimed to be the heaven-sent superior, not only of commercial corporations like the East-India Company, but also of the very kings and emperors whom it played off against one another, and on whom it had always to rely. A national spirit indeed! Such a national spirit as we see in reformed countries, and as was once in an inferior degree seen in the Gallican nation, is large, tolerant, and magnanimous compared with the tight, pretentious municipal spirit unconsciously depicted by Liverani when he enumerates the small men from small towns, puffed up with the name of cities, who, in the Curia, swelled themselves out with notions of world-commanding importance--notions rendered possible only by their own helpless narrowness.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: _Cecconi_, p. 324.]

[Footnote 55: _The OEcumenical Council_, p. 52.]