Letters From Rome on the Council. Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger

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СКАЧАТЬ the school of Rome and the Council, and have already grown out of that naïve belief in the disinterested generosity and superhuman wisdom of the Curia which most of them brought here. To-day the Pope paid them a visit at the American College, conversed in a friendly way with the Bishops individually, said obliging things, and, in a word, displayed those well-known powers of fascination he has such a command of. “A month ago this would have taken effect,” said an American priest who was present, “but now it comes too late.” He also assured me that not five of the forty-five American Bishops would sign the Infallibilist Petition or vote for the dogma.

      I have heard many, and especially French, Prelates say, during the last few days, sometimes in obscure hints, sometimes clearly, that the Council will soon – in a few weeks – be closed or dissolved; an opinion all the more surprising, because nothing as yet has been done. In that case the Bull with the many Excommunications will have to be treated as issuing from the Council.43 But the only relation of the Bishops to that Bull is as the suffering and punished party.

      The third Solemn Session was to have been held on February 2, but had again to fall through from the want of any materials. And there are still mountains of work and numbers of elaborate Schemata awaiting the Council; for the decrees it is summoned to make, or rather which Pius ix. intends to proclaim to the world, “with the approbation of the Council,” are to be veritable pandects embracing the entire doctrine and constitution of the Church, regulating all relations between Church and State, and restoring the Papal supremacy over the bodies and souls of all men. The domain of morals, properly so called, is alone excluded; for there the Jesuits have good reasons for wishing to keep their hands free. In short, the projected work that still remains to be done would occupy at least a year and a half. And for this end everything has been chosen and sharpened into the form of canons, which can only introduce complications, provoke conflicts with the civil Governments, embitter the relations of rival Confessions, prejudice the position of the Bishops, and foster the hatred of the lay world against the clergy. And accordingly, with many Bishops, the wish to escape taking any part in these discussions may be father to the thought, and a speedy end of the Council may appear to them a sort of conciliar euthanasia. To many a Bishop has the old proverb already occurred, in reference to the Council, that the best thing would be not to have been born and the next best to die early. It is not the Swiss only who have a home-sickness. And then there is the treatment; I heard a French Count here say to-day, “On les traite d'une manière brutale.”

      I have just received the last number of the Paris Correspondant, with its article by the Viscount of Meaux, Montalembert's son-in-law, who is here. His account of how the Council is treated is so much to the point, and so thoroughly confirms my own statements, that I will quote it for you.

      “The Schemata,” he says, at p. 347, “are prepared beforehand, the order of business is imposed by authority (imposée), the Commissions are elected before any consultation, from official lists, by a disciplined majority which votes as one man. On these Commissions the minority is not represented, and there are no other deliberations except in Congregation. Before these Congregations the subjects are brought in all their novelty and laid before the 700 members, without any previous explanations. It is difficult to understand the speeches, and there are no reports which the Fathers can inspect, so that no Bishops have the opportunity of submitting their thoughts to the deliberate examination of their colleagues. Moreover, they are forbidden to have anything printed here for the Council. All these characteristics indicate an assembly summoned to approve, not to discuss, intended to exalt, not to moderate, the power which has summoned it. And with what haste does it push on in this direction! How impatiently does the majority press for a declaration of Papal Infallibility!” So far the Viscount. Matters must indeed have come to a pass when so cautious and strictly Catholic a journal as the Correspondant presents its readers with this picture of the Council.

      There are two serious dangers to which we are always exposed. The first I have already spoken of, which is introducing the plan of passing the Schemata by majorities, so that the desired dogma would be carried as it were by assault. The second danger – and it seems to me far more threatening – is that one of those involved and disguised formulas which the Infallibilists vie with one another in devising, in order to deceive and catch the votes of the less sharp-sighted Prelates and thus incorporate it into the third Schema, may really succeed with the greater number of the hitherto opposing and protesting Bishops. This notion is in fact implied in the phrase one has heard so often, that a middle party must be formed among the Bishops; for the programme or shibboleth of this middle party is to be an elastic formula, or one only expressing the thing metaphorically, or, again, one not sharply dogmatic but rather pious and edifying in sound. By the help of this middle party the formula might be made acceptable to the rest of the Prelates, and the desired end be happily attained. Thus Mermillod and two others have to-day invented a phrase, which seems to them suited to square the circle and to satisfy and unite all. They say they wish to declare that the Pope, whenever he speaks on doctrine, speaks tanquam os et organum Ecclesiæ. And by this they understand that the Church has no other mouth than him and without him is dumb, from which it obviously follows that he is infallible. I doubt if many Bishops will be detained in the meshes of a net so coarsely spun. No better is the formula invented by Spalding, which might be called a pretty downright one, – that everybody must inwardly assent to every doctrinal decision of the Pope on pain of everlasting damnation.44 That goes far beyond even the Manning-Deschamps Address, which limits his infallibility to decrees addressed to the whole Church, while this formula of Spalding's declares every conceivable Papal utterance (judicium) infallible; for a Christian can only give the assent of inward belief, when there is no possibility of error and when there is a really divine authority and revelation. Every theologian must declare this invention of the Archbishop of Baltimore's to be the most monstrous demand ever made on the conscience and understanding of the Catholic world. It is as if a courtier at Teheran were to say, “I will not indeed affirm that our Shah is almighty, but I do assert confidently that he can create out of nothing whatever he will and that his will is always accomplished.” The reverend Fathers who torment themselves with inventing such devices would perhaps do best if they were to make a collection among themselves, and offer a prize of 100 ducats for that form of circumlocution or involution most securely adapted for entrapping the innocent souls of Bishops. Then the most ingenious heads from all Europe would compete in sending in their suggestions, and the right bait might be discovered among them.

      Seventeenth Letter

      Rome, Feb. 5.– To supplement and partly to verify the news in my last letter, I will now tell you some facts that came to light yesterday and the day before.

      The Opposition Addresses were presented to the Pope on January 26, subscribed by forty-six Germans and Hungarians, thirty French, and twenty Italian Bishops, together with some of the North American Bishops, the Portuguese, and certain others. Cardinal Barnabo had employed all available means of intimidation to prevent the Orientals from signing, and hence the number of signatures was somewhat below what had been expected. Of the Germans, Martin, Senestrey, Stahl and Leonrod had signed the Infallibilist Address, which, as was only afterwards discovered, has not been presented, because – it was countermanded. It is not, as I first informed you, composed by the Episcopal Committee, but by the Jesuits, and emanates from the bureau of the Civiltà; the abiding marvel is that 400 Bishops could be induced to sign such a document without even verifying a single one of the pretended facts cited in it. That an Infallibilist should subscribe in blind confidence, and without examination, a document coming from the Pope himself, is natural; but that 400 pastors of the Church, assembled for deciding and therefore for examining ecclesiastical questions, should endorse on faith the composition of a nameless Jesuit, is an occurrence the Order may pride itself on.

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