Part 39

At the sitting of July 2 the affair was to have been brought to a settlement. The minority had sketched out a notice in the Council Hall, stating that all speakers on their side withdrew, and handed it to Cardinal Mathieu to communicate to the French, but they declined to accept it, saying every one should be free to decide for himself. And so, on that day, out of twenty-two Fathers only four spoke, including Meignan of Chalons and Ramadie of Perpignan.

But it soon became irresistibly evident to both parties that it was advisable for them to put an end to the oratorical exercises. The Legates had frequently used the formula of the Index when a speaker gave up his turn, saying, “laudabiliter orationi renunciavit,” or “magnas ipsi agimus gratias.” The majority had two reasons for wanting the speeches to go on—first the wish of particular individuals to signalize themselves and lay up a stock of merits deserving reward; and secondly, that the Northern Bishops might succumb to the rays of the July sun, as Homer’s Achæans sunk under the arrows of Apollo. But they were made to understand that the Pope would account their simple “_Placet_, sans phrase” a sufficient service, and reward it according to their wish.

Moreover they felt secure about the eventual attitude of the minority, or at least a considerable portion of them, for it was known that two German Bishops had said, “We shall resist to the last moment, but then we shall submit, for we don’t wish to cause a schism.” This gave great joy to the Court party. I heard a monsignore say, “These are our best friends, more so than those who already vote for and with us, for their coming over at the critical moment can only be ascribed to the triumphant and irresistible power of the Holy Ghost poured out through the Pope upon the Council; each of them is a Saul converted into a Paul, who has found his Damascus here at Rome, and becomes a living trophy of the vice-godship of the Pope and the legitimacy and œcumenicity of this Council. We can desire nothing better for our cause than these late and sudden conversions.” And thus at last an understanding satisfactory to all parties was come to; on July 4 all the speakers enrolled withdrew, only reserving their right of presenting their observations in writing to the Deputation.

SIXTY-FIFTH LETTER.

_Rome, July 7, 1870._—I must go back a few days and tell you something more of the speeches made since St. Peter’s Day. It is for the interest of the contemporary world and of posterity that the Roman system of hushing up and deathlike silence should not be fully carried out, and that it should be known what truths have been uttered and what grounds alleged against the fatal decision of the majority and rejected by them.

Soon after Bishop Martin a man spoke who had gained the highest respect from all quarters, Verot, Bishop of Savannah, a really apostolical character, compared in America with St. Francis of Sales. On a former occasion, on June 15, he had pointedly criticised the conduct of the Court party and the attempt to surrender all that yet remains of the ancient constitution of the Church to a centralized papal absolutism. “If,” he said, “the Pope wants to possess and exercise a direct and immediate jurisdiction in my diocese, only let him come over to America himself, and bring with him plenty of the priests who are so abundant here to my country where there are so few; gladly will I attend him servant and observe how he, riding about in my huge diocese, judges and arranges everything on the spot.” And, as some Bishops of the majority had given out the favourite Roman watchword, that historical facts must yield to the clearness and _a priori_ certainty of doctrine, Verot replied briefly, “To me an ounce of historical facts outweighs a thousand pounds of your theories.” This time he was not interrupted, as he had always been before,—by most no doubt not understood. Maret too, in the sitting of July 1, attacked the projected absolutism which the Church was now to be saddled with. In the political world, he said, it is done away with and disappears more and more under a common feeling of repugnance, and now it is for the first time to be confirmed in the Church, and Christians, “the children of heavenly freedom,” are to be reduced, after the protection afforded by the consent of the episcopate is abolished, to spiritual slavery, and forced into blind subjection to the dictates of a single man. He said this in more courteous language than this brief epitome gives scope for.

Among the most important speeches was that which followed, of Bishop David of Saint Brieuc in Bretagne. It was one of the speeches of a kind I said in an early letter would not be tolerated, the result has refuted me. The Bishop said that the proposed article of faith was first invented in the fifteenth century, when a new form, different from that ordained by Christ, was given to the Church, at the expense of the inalienable rights both of the Bishops and the faithful. If the hypothesis of papal infallibility really belonged to the deposit of faith, it must have been defined and universally acknowledged in the earliest ages, as it would evidently be a fundamental doctrine indispensable for the whole Church. The parallel drawn between this and the lately defined and previously undetermined and open doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is quite irrelevant. It is clearly evident, he added, that this new attempt to exalt the Papacy will produce the same disturbance as the earlier one in the sixteenth century. A sign of it is the sudden and rapidly growing alienation of the French clergy from their Bishops, which is instigated from a distance. Passing on to a vindication of the much abused Gallican doctrine, he showed that the former Popes themselves declared it to be allowable and only reprobated the attempt to make it into a special and separate rule of faith for the French Church alone.

The Spanish Bishop of Cuenca, Payà-y-Rico, followed, and began by affirming in the bragging and bombastic style of his country, that in Spain the infallibilist doctrine had always prevailed. This was a glaring falsehood; it would have been enough to cite against him the names of Tostado, Escobar, Victoria, and others, the Spanish Bishops and theologians at Trent, and the fact that the Inquisition first made the doctrine dominant in Spain. But immediate replies are not permitted in the Council Hall, and the majority were so charmed with his disclosures that they loudly applauded him. Encouraged by this he turned round upon the Opposition, observing that a short interval was still allowed them to come over to the majority, and that, unless they made a good use of it, their only choice lay between a subsequent meritorious submission or condemnation for heresy.

The minority, who meet daily either in national or international conferences, were engaged in drawing up a formula requiring the consent of the episcopate as indispensable, but soon gave this up and resolved to abstain from any demonstration, as they could gain nothing by it. Several thought this would compel the majority, if they really wanted to gain the concurrence of the Opposition, to make proposals on their side for some tolerable formula. But at present that is highly improbable.

In the sitting of July 5, where the only business was to vote on the third chapter, in consequence of the general withdrawal of the speakers, an unexpected occurrence intervened. Some days before Bishop Martin of Paderborn had proposed in his own name and that of some of his colleagues that in a Supplement, designated as a _monitum_, the doctrinal authority of the Bishops should be mentioned, but only incidentally and in a sense compatible with the Pope’s prerogative of personal infallibility. When the Pope heard of this, he was much displeased, and peremptorily ordered that a canon should be laid before the Council for acceptance enouncing emphatically and under anathema the papal omnipotence over the whole Church. The Deputation had already had the third canon printed and distributed in the following amended form:—“Si quis dixerit, Romani Pontificis Primatum esse tantum officium inspectionis et directionis et supremam ipsius potestatem jurisdictionis in universam Ecclesiam non esse plenam, sed tantum extraordinariam et mediatam—anathema sit.” But in order to carry out the Pope’s command, the Bishop of Rovigo, as a member of the Deputation, read the canon in a more stringent form, which in fact left the extremest absolutist nothing to desire, but which was not in the printed text and was either not heard or not understood by the greater part of the Bishops, while yet it was to be voted on on the spot—in contradiction to the distinct directions of the order of business. This more stringent version of the canon runs thus:—

“Si quis dixerit, Romanum Pontificem habere tantummodo officium inspectionis vel directionis, non autem plenam et supremam potestatem jurisdictionis in universam Ecclesiam, tum in rebus, quæ ad fidem et mores, tum quæ ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ per totum orbem diffusæ pertinent; aut eum habere tantum potiores partes, non vero totam plenitudinem hujus supremæ potestatis; aut hanc ejus potestatem non esse ordinariam et immediatam sive in omnes ac singulas Ecclesias, sive in omnes et singulos pastores et fideles—anathema sit.”

A more shameless outwitting of a Council has never been attempted. Archbishop Darboy at once rose and protested against this juggling manœuvre, and the Legates were obliged, humiliating as it was for them, to let the matter drop for the present; but the addition will be brought forward again in a few days.

A proof has lately forced itself on my attention of the confusion of mind habitual to many of the Bishops of the majority. I asked one of them, who had expressed his surprise that so much fuss was made about this one dogma, whether he had formed any clear conception of its retrospective force and examined all the papal decisions, from Siricius in 385 to the Syllabus of 1864, which would be made by the infallibilist dogma into articles of faith. And it came out that this pastor of above a hundred thousand souls imagined that every Pope would be declared infallible, not for the past but for the future only!(153) But he was somewhat perplexed when I mentioned to him on the spur of the moment merely a couple of papal maxims on moral theology, which were now to be stamped with the seal of divinely inspired truths.

On Saturday the 9th the special voting is to take place on the emendation just mentioned of the third chapter of the third canon in the interests of papal absolutism, and on the same day or Monday the whole of the third chapter and the amendments on the fourth are to be voted on; on Wednesday, the 13th, the votes are to be taken on the whole _Schema_ “en bloc.” As yet the Opposition can still be reckoned at 97, exclusive of Guidi and the Dominican Bishops, who may not improbably come to its aid at the critical moment.

One of the witticisms circulating here, for which the Council affords matter to genuine Romans, is the following, that in the sitting of July 4 there was a great uproar among the Bishops, they were all set by the ears and the Pope himself ran away, and why all this? “E perchè tutta questa cagniara? perchè il Papa vuole esser _impeccabile_, e i vescovi non lo vogliono.”

SIXTY-SIXTH LETTER.

_Rome, July 14, 1870._—I must again interrupt my narrative of the occurrences and speeches between June 5 and 10 to communicate the details of the great event of the session of July 13—an event which has falsified all expectations on both sides, and created a sensation and astonishment in Rome which it will take people some time to recover from. Even beyond the Alps, in spite of the all-absorbing question of the war, it will rouse interest and joyful surprise. In the last few days before the critical morning of the 13th there was much discussion among the Bishops of the various nations as to whether they should vote a simple “No” or a conditional “Yes,”—a _Non placet_ or a _Placet juxta modum_. It was not merely the fourth chapter that was in question, which deals with infallibility, but the whole _Schema_ on the Papacy, which contains also the much-decried third canon of the third chapter, establishing for the first time the theory of the universal episcopate of the Pope, the very theory Pope Gregory the Great characterized as an abomination and a blasphemy. It was known that the Bishops who are mere dilettantis in theology—and their number is legion, as is natural under the present system of episcopal appointments—would greatly prefer voting _juxta modum_, _i.e._, with a conditioned “Yes.” That would always leave them free to reserve their further decision till the public voting “coram Sanctissimo” (as the Pope is here called), when only a direct “Yes” or “No” can be voted. Each of them could present in writing the conditions or wishes on which he desired to make his _Placet_ dependent, and then say “Yes” or “No” according to his pleasure in the Solemn Session, if his suggestions were disregarded—“Yes,” if he wished to direct the lightning flashes of the angry Jupiter to other heads than his own; “No,” if he could summon manliness and courage enough at the last moment. The Court party and the majority had neglected no means of impressing on the recalcitrants the uselessness of their negative votes and the personal disadvantages to themselves. Every one was told, “It is determined irrevocably to take no account of your ‘No,’ and to go on to the promulgation of the dogma. Supported by at least 500 favourable votes, and throwing the surplus weight of his own vote into the scale, the Pope, on the 17th or 24th July, will walk over your heads amid the presumed acclamations of the whole Catholic world; and how lamentable and hopeless a situation will yours be then! You are then heretics, who have incurred the terrible penalties of the canon law; you have surrendered at discretion, bound hand and foot, to the mercy of the deeply injured Pope. Consider, ‘Quid sum miser tunc dicturus, quem patronum rogaturus?’ ”

Thus they were worked on individually. And more drastic methods were employed as well. It was asserted that two documents had already been drawn up in the Vatican, which every Bishop would be compelled to sign before being allowed to leave Rome; the one a profession of faith comprising the new article of infallibility, and the other an attestation of the perfect freedom of the Council throughout its whole course. Whoever refused to sign either would thereby at once incur papal censures. “We shall thus have,” they were told, “your _Non placet_ and your ‘free’ acknowledgment under your hand of the article of faith you denied a few days before, and shall show it to the world. Do you wish then morally to annihilate yourselves in public opinion?”

As the Bishops who are resolved to give a negative vote knew well the more timorous temper of many of their colleagues, who were half-ready to be persuaded and half-ready to succumb, and remembered the Scriptural saying that “a high priest must have compassion on our infirmities,” some of them drew up a formula stating the basis on which the timid might vote _Placet juxta modum_. In the preamble of the _Schema_ the word “principium” was to be exchanged for “exordium,” and instead of “vis et virtus in eo (Papâ) consistit,” was to be put “præcipue in eo consistit;” the third canon of the third chapter was to be wholly omitted, and the word “episcopalis” left out of the chapter, and lastly, the formula of St. Antoninus was to be substituted for the fourth chapter. The proposed document ends with “Secus in Solemni Sessione dicturus sum, _Non placet_.”

On July 12 the Bishops of the minority held the most largely attended international conference which has yet taken place; about 70 were present. Three prelates, two German and one French—Ketteler, Melchers and Archbishop Landriot of Rheims—proposed that all should vote _Placet juxta modum_, but at the same time hand in a precise and decided formulas the condition of their assent, with a declaration that, if their demands were rejected or inadequately complied with, they should be obliged to vote _Non placet_ in the Solemn Session. This would have substantially secured the complete victory of the majority and the _Curia_. Every one would have naturally said, “Your ‘Yes,’ however conditioned, can only bear the sense that in the main point you agree with the _Schema_, and that main point lies in the two new and great articles of faith, which hang together and must shape the future of the Church, the universal episcopate of the Pope and his infallibility. By saying _Placet_ you affirm these two new dogmas, and after that it will matter little what particular collateral wishes or conditions you may choose to add. Whether they are acceded to or not, you must in consistency say ‘Yes’ on the great day of the public profession, when only a simple affirmative or negative vote can be given.”

The three Cardinals, the two primates Simor and Ginoulhiac, Strossmayer and others, spoke out repeatedly and emphatically against this mischievous proposal which would at the last moment have frustrated all their hopes, and annihilated the results of seven months’ sufferings and labours. A decisive impression was produced by the remark of the Archbishop of Milan, that there were many infallibilists who on various grounds would vote conditionally, and this peculiar kind of vote, which was better adapted to courtiers than Bishops, had better be left to them. “The only befitting course for us,” he said, “who are convinced of the falsehood of the doctrine, is to say ‘No.’ ” This was unanimously accepted. Tarnoczy, who for some time back has withdrawn from his German and Hungarian colleagues, and votes regularly with the majority, was not present. Cardinal Schwarzenberg said he should be glad if one of the Cardinals voted _Non placet_ before him, but if this did not happen he should be the first, and should count it a distinction to stand at the head of this noble band.

It was remarkable how generally the view prevailed that scarcely ten opposing votes would really be given when the time came. No means were spared, by rumours and inventions, to spread terror and despair among the ranks of the Opposition. Thus the report was circulated in foreign journals—where you will have read it—as well as here, that a “sauve qui peut,” and “débandade” had become the watchword of the Opposition, and not thirty would be left on the day for voting. We see now that this was all pure invention. Even Förster’s departure, which I reported myself, had not taken place; only Greith had gone. When Darboy had an audience of the Pope the day before the voting, and said that there was a considerable number of Bishops who would join him in saying _Non placet_, the Pope replied, “Perhaps many will vote _juxta modum_, but certainly not above ten _Non placet_.” For some time past Pius has notoriously known everything with absolute certainty, even the temper of distant countries. The formulas put into the Pope’s mouth by the Roman Chancery, “proprio motu” and “ex certâ scientiâ,” have been transmuted by the habit of twenty-four years into actual flesh and blood with him.

At the beginning of the sitting the news had spread among the majority that the negative votes would be much more numerous than had been supposed on the evening before. On this Dechamps of Mechlin went to the heads of the Opposition and entreated them with humble gestures and whining voice to vote _juxta modum_, saying there was really some disposition with the authorities to insert the “consensus” and “testimonium Ecclesiarum” into the fourth chapter. The trick was too barefaced to succeed, and sharp words were spoken on the other side. One of the Bishops said to the new primate, “C’est une impudence sans exemple,” and Darboy called the attention of the three Cardinals to this treacherous attempt at the last moment to divide and perplex the Opposition. Now began the voting “sub secreto,” as it was again called, and the sub-secretary Jacobini read the names of the Fathers from the pulpit. And then a wholly unexpected phenomenon came to light: out of 600 Fathers present in Rome—there were 764 in January—only 520 had appeared, and it was at once known that very many of the absentees had stayed away from dislike to the _Schema_, and to avoid the disagreeable consequences of a negative vote.

The line taken by the Orientals in the voting excites surprise here. The Propaganda has spared no means of exercising a strict supervision and control over them, and yet the upshot is that the most influential of them have voted _Non placet_, some _juxta modum_, and others have absented themselves. In fact all the real Eastern Bishops—_i.e._, those who represent dioceses—have voted against the dogma. Every one acquainted with the state of things in Asia foresees that the promulgation of the dogma, which will follow in spite of this, will lead to the definitive separation of the Uniate Churches in the East. But that makes not the slightest impression on the Pope and the Jesuits.

When the names of the _juxta modum_ voters were read out, the President said “quorum, quantum possible erit, habebitur ratio.” That sounded like open mockery: it meant, “We (the Deputation) have already settled among ourselves what is impossible, viz., making the co-operation of the episcopate a condition, but still there are some possible things. If, _e.g._, any Bishops wish to have ‘inerrantia’ substituted for ‘infallibilitas,’ perhaps they may be gratified.” But even concessions of that sort are doubtful, for one cannot give the lie to Bishop Gasser of Brixen, who has distinctly declared that “nec verbum addetur nec verbum demetur amplius.”

Among the conditional voters are Dreux-Brézé, certainly only because the decree is not strong enough for him. The whole Hungarian Episcopate remained firm in its opposition. The Austrians know now why Rudigier and Fessler were given them as Bishops. I send you with this the authentic list of the Fathers who did not vote with a simple _Placet_. It shows that it was just the Bishops of capital cities, as well as North American, Irish, English, and beyond expectation many North Italian prelates, who voted against the dogma. Only one, strictly speaking, was wholly false to his professions, the Bishop of Porto Rico.

The Pope is still sure that at the last critical moment a divine miracle will enlighten the benighted minds of the opponents and suddenly reverse their sentiments. The Holy Ghost will and must do this. Pius seems to have clear assurances on that point. He had lately a remarkable conversation about it with a French Bishop, whom he had never seen before. As he regards every opponent of the dogma as his personal enemy, he received him as such and reproached him with being Cæsar’s friend instead of the Pope’s; the Bishop replied that his white hairs testified to his having nothing to fear or hope for, but simply to follow his conscience, which constrained him with many of his colleagues to vote against the new dogma. “No,” exclaimed Pius, “you will not vote against it; the Holy Ghost at the decisive hour will irresistibly enlighten you, and you will all say _Placet_.”

When the French Government in 1733 had the cemetery of La Chaise surrounded with soldiers, to stop the miraculous cures at the grave of the Abbé Paris, the inscription was found one morning over the entrance—

De par le roi défense à Dieu, De faire miracle en ce lieu.

On the 17th or 24th July 1870 there might be written over the entrance of the Council Hall—

De par le Pape ordre au bon Dieu De faire miracle en ce lieu.