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

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СКАЧАТЬ who are its own creatures, and many of them in its pay. With the help of this troop of devoted followers it can get rid of every disagreeable proposal before it is even submitted to discussion.

      The Sessions of the Council are solemnities only held for the formal promulgation of decrees already discussed and passed; the real business is done in the previous Congregations. Every Bishop who wants to speak there is to give notice the day before, but those who wish to speak without having given notice are not to be prevented. A congregation of twenty-four members is to be chosen by the Bishops from among themselves, for the purpose of specially investigating subjects on which differences of opinion have been expressed, and reporting on them. At least nine-tenths of the Prelates are condemned to silence simply from being unable to speak Latin readily and coherently through want of regular practice. And to this must be added the diversities of pronunciation. It is impossible, e. g., that Frenchmen or Italians should understand an Englishman's Latin even for a minute.14

      There will no doubt be some subjects on which the Bishops may really speak and determine freely. But the moment a question in any way affects the interests and rights of the Roman Curia, there is an end of their freedom. For every Bishop has sworn not only to maintain but constantly to increase all the rights of the Pope, and it is notorious that at Rome, and in regular intercourse with the Papal Congregations, one can take no step without being reminded, directly or indirectly – by courtly insinuation, or rudely and openly, – of this oath, and the enormous extent of the obligations incurred by it, which embrace the whole range of ecclesiastical life. The Bishops then are so far free in Council, that no Bishop who expresses an opinion unpalatable to the Curia is threatened with imprisonment or bodily injury.15 Those Bishops enjoy a larger freedom who have the moral courage to incur the reproach of perjury and the threat of Papal displeasure and its consequences; who, knowing well that they can only carry out the most indispensable rights and duties of their office by virtue of Papal privileges and delegations – quinquennial faculties and the like, – yet vote simply according to their convictions.16 The only question is how many Bishops will act thus.

      The members of the Court of Rome vie with one another in assurances that perfect freedom will be left to the Bishops in the grand question of the proclamation of the new dogma of Papal Infallibility. This is confidently asserted by those Germans who are more deeply initiated into the views of the Curia, such as the Jesuits Franzelin, Schrader, and Kleutgen. And above all, Bishop Fessler, the Secretary of the Council and favourite of the Curia, who was the first among the Bishops to declare that it was the main business of the Council to formulate and proclaim the new dogma, takes especial pains to convince the Bishops that the Pope has no intention of bringing the subject before them himself. He admits that the preparatory Commission has discussed this most important and comprehensive of all doctrines, and has almost unanimously decided it to be both true and opportune; and that their reporter has shown conclusively, that considering the boundless devotion to Rome of the present episcopate (at least the majority of them), no more favourable moment could be chosen for enriching the Church with this new and fundamental article of faith.

      This is now their watchword. All the initiated repeat it, and some episcopal optimists try to persuade themselves and others that the danger is really past, and the scheme abandoned for this time. But the truth is this: the authorities know well enough that the absolutists among the Bishops – all those who hope to strengthen their dominion and extend it over secular matters by means of Papal Infallibility – are both numerous and organized, and only await the intimation that the right moment has arrived to come forward themselves with a motion powerfully supported. To begin with the Germans, there is the Bishop of Paderborn, whose Jesuit theologian, Roh, says that, precisely because Papal Infallibility is called in question by Bishops like Dupanloup and Maret, the Council must define it, to make any repetition of this atrocity impossible for the future. Then there are the Bishops of Regensburg, Würzburg, St. Pölten, and Gratz, the Belgian and English Prelates, and those of French Switzerland, among whom Mermillod rivals Manning in his fanatical zeal for the new dogma; the Spanish Prelates – men selected for promotion by Queen Isabella and the nuncio at Madrid, simply for their thorough-paced ultramontanism – pure absolutists in Church and State, who would gladly see the new dogma ready-made at once, but have to be restrained for a while. To these must be added such French Prelates as Plantier of Nîmes, Pie of Poitiers, the Bishops of Laval and Montauban, and others. One knows least of the votes of the Italian and United States Bishops, who, like the Irish, will probably be divided. In any case the Court party can count on a considerable majority in favour of the new dogma.

      Of course the opposite party, who wish to stave it off, is strong and numerous. To it belong the majority of the German and Austrian, as well as the Bohemian and Hungarian Prelates, and among the French, the Archbishops of Paris, Rheims, and Avignon, the Bishops of Marseilles, Grenoble, Orleans, Chalons, and many more. And on the point of the time being inopportune for defining the Infallibilist dogma, a portion of the “old Papal guard,” – viz., the Italian Bishops – will join them, not to speak of American and Irish Prelates.

      But – and in this lies their weakness – they are only held together by a very loose bond. The one point they are agreed upon is that the promulgation of the new dogma will cause great embarrassments to the Church and to themselves personally, and involve them in all sorts of conflicts. On the main question, whether this substitution of an infallible man for an infallible Church is true, and attested by Scripture and Tradition, they are themselves divided. If the confidants of the Curia understand how to insert the wedge into this split, and drive it home, they may perhaps contrive to break up the whole Opposition, and carry through, by an imposing and apparently almost unanimous vote, this Alpha and Omega of ultramontanism, in which all their wishes and hopes are concentrated. Meanwhile no stone will be left unturned, and very various methods will be applied, and arguments used, in working upon different Bishops. The earnest desire of the Holy Father will be urged on some soft-hearted Prelates; they will be told that the only way the Council can rejoice his heart amid his bitter trials, and brighten the evening of his life, is by freely offering him that crown of personal infallibility which former Popes have striven for, but never obtained. To others it will be intimated that the Council itself must look like a play with the chief figure left out, or an abortion, if the Syllabus and Infallibility are not made into dogmas, for there is no other question important enough to justify collecting 500 Bishops from five quarters of the world. Those who agree with the doctrine, but shrink for the present from the unpleasant consequences it might entail upon them, will be told, “Now, or perhaps never.” With freedom of the press established everywhere, it will be impossible much longer to keep the poison of historical criticism, so especially rife in Germany, out of the theological schools and seminaries, and so perhaps the next generation of clergy will not believe so absolutely in Papal Infallibility as the clergy in many countries do now, and then the new dogma will come at an unseasonable time, and encounter powerful opposition. Besides, it is best to lose no time in putting the iron bar of the new dogma across the way, for then all historical facts that witness against Infallibility, all results of criticism and investigation, all appeals to the forgeries and fictions which helped to build up the edifice, are once for all got rid of and destroyed, at least within the Church. No Catholic will any longer venture to appeal to them, and if he is an historical student, he will only be able to console himself by saying, Credo, quia absurdum. The dogma has triumphed over history, as Manning has so admirably explained in his last Pastoral.

      Their favourite argument is the common one about increasing the strength and security of the coercive power of the Church. The Bishops are told that the personal infallibility of the Pope will make not only him but them, his delegates and plenipotentiaries, much more powerful, and that under its shadow they will rule with a stronger hand, for resistance will, in most cases, be blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, speaking through the Pope and his chosen instruments. Who, for instance, would any longer dare to defend a book condemned by the Congregation of the Index, after it had become infallible? On the other hand, the Bishops have their scruples, and some of them may be heard saying that this СКАЧАТЬ