Letters From Rome on the Council Part 6

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 _Civilta_; the abiding marvel is that 400 Bishops could be induced to sign such a doc.u.ment 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 doc.u.ment coming from the Pope himself, is natural; but that 400 pastors of the Church, a.s.sembled 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.

A Pet.i.tion has been set on foot by the Jesuits, and hawked about with the Pope's approval, proposing that the bodily a.s.sumption of the Mother of the Lord should be made an article of faith, and all who henceforth doubt of it, or point to the notorious origin of the notion from apocryphal writings, be anathematized. This anathema would inevitably fall on every one who is acquainted with Church history and patristic literature. This pa.s.sionate delight in anathemas, curses and refusals of absolution has been powerfully aroused, as you may see from the canons which reproduce the Syllabus and are added to the third _Schema_. The augurs of the Gesu do not indeed smile, but simper, when they meet each other, for they know that the rich harvest from these seeds will drop into the bosom of their Order. Here again it is shown plainly that the interests of the Bishops and of the Jesuits are sharply opposed.

That Bull, with its many curses and cases reserved to the Pope, which fills the Jesuits with hope and joy (though not they but the Dominicans of the Inquisition are its authors), is for the Bishops a source of discouragement and despair, so that the Bishop of Trent is said to have lately observed that he would rather resign his See than publish it. It is now a.s.serted that the Pope has again suspended it, partly on account of remonstrances of the French Government, partly to put the Bishops in better humour for the Infallibilist definition.

The Pet.i.tion for the new Marian dogma had 300 signatures on January 31. In managing such affairs the Jesuits are unrivalled, for the Order is like a great actor, such as Garrick, _e.g._, whose every limb from top to toe moves, speaks, and conspires to express the same idea. Then they have an Infallibilist Pet.i.tion from the East, the only one known to have been got up; that is to say, they made the Maronite boys and youths of their educational establishment sign the Pet.i.tion they had drawn up.

As I now hear, the majority, on January 25, resolved to let their Address and Pet.i.tion drop, if the minority will accept Spalding's proposed addition to the third _Schema_. They are indeed very magnanimous, for that addition, as was observed just now, goes much further and stands to the Address somewhat as Dido's ox-hide cut up into thongs to the hide before it was cut: it will embrace whole countries and cities. Spalding desires too to have the Index placed completely under the s.h.i.+eld of Papal Infallibility, and therefore the opinion that the Pope can have made any mistake about the sense of a book is to be condemned. Next day, the Pet.i.tion of the minority, who knew nothing of the decision of the other party, was presented to the Pope and rejected by him. The Infallibilists appear to have spread the report that their Address had been actually given in simply for the purpose of catching their opponents in a trap.

On Sunday, January 23, the Commission named by the Pope for examining motions proposed held its first sitting, under the presidency of Cardinal Patrizzi and not of the Pope himself, as was thought-seven weeks after the Council met and when a number of motions had long been awaiting its scrutiny. This delay had evidently been designed. It has now been resolved to arrange and examine proposals, not according to subjects but nations, so that the proposals of the French, Germans, etc., will be separately discussed and decided upon.

Cardinal Rauscher has written, or got written, a treatise on the Infallibility question in German, which is now being translated into Latin, and which does not merely oppose the dogma as inopportune, but attacks the whole principle and, as I am a.s.sured, on fundamental grounds.

But it cannot be printed here, where the Roman censors.h.i.+p is constantly growing stricter. It will be printed in Vienna, and copies will then have to be sent here under cover to the Austrian Emba.s.sy. To the representations of the German and French Bishops against the oppressiveness and injustice to the minority of the order of business, the Pope has not seen fit to make any reply. _Vae victis!_ Woe to them who do not belong to the faithful and devoted majority! This is what resounds here, morning, noon and night. Meanwhile the Papal Committee of the Council has devised a new means for paralysing the minority, and cutting short discussions which might easily become inconvenient. It is directed that all objections or proposals for modifications of the _Schemata_ are first to be handed over in writing to the Presidents and referred by them to the Commission _de Fide_, which rejects or admits them at its pleasure.

If the authors of the proposals appeal against the decision of the Commission, the whole Council decides, of course by simple majority of votes. If this arrangement were really to be introduced, the minority-_i.e._, the German and French Bishops-would be deprived of all possibility of exerting any influence on the composition of the decrees or warding off any decree they considered injurious; they would always be outvoted, and the Council would more and more take the form of a mere machine for outvoting them. The Bishops would soon learn to spare themselves the useless trouble of proposing changes, and a much closer approach would be effected to the great object of making new articles of faith and decrees by a mere majority of votes. The only question is what the French and Germans intend to put up with from the Italians and Spaniards, for it is clear that here again the question of nationalities turns up in the background, and the Brennus sword of the Southern and Latin majority is always ready to be thrown into the scale.

EIGHTEENTH LETTER.

_Rome, Feb. 6._-The report of the dissolution or prorogation of the Council gains in strength. Manning has found it important enough to have it contradicted in his journal, the _Tablet_. He writes, or makes somebody write, "The Holy Father is full of strength and confidence, and has no intention of proroguing the Council, as his enemies say." As far as the Pope is concerned, I hold the statement to be true. Pius is still absolutely confident of success and firmly convinced of two things-_first_, of his divine, legitimate and irresistible fulness of power, which requires that a conspicuous example, memorable for all future ages, shall be made of the Bishops who oppose him; _secondly_, of the special protecting grace and guidance accorded to the Council by the Holy Virgin, on whose benevolence he notoriously maintains that he has very special claims. He has issued an Indulgence for the whole Church, which gives us some insight into his connection of ideas and religious views. In the Bull of December 1869, he says that the Dominican General, Jandel, has represented to him that the new method of prayer, consisting of 150 repet.i.tions of the "Hail, Mary," was first introduced at the time the grand crusade against the Albigenses was organized. But our own age is infected with so many monstrous errors that this new method of prayer should be employed now also, in order that under the mighty protection of the Mother of G.o.d the Council may destroy these monsters. Whoever, therefore, after confession and communion, recites the Rosary daily for a week, for the Pope's intention and for the happy termination of the Council, may gain a plenary indulgence of all his sins, applicable also to the dead. The Pope adds that even when a child, and far more as Pope, he has always placed his whole confidence in the Mother of G.o.d, and that he firmly believes it to be given to her alone by G.o.d to destroy all heresies throughout the world. How this special power of the Holy Virgin consists with the fact that many heresies have now lasted quietly for fourteen centuries, it would be interesting to know. The rest the reader may find himself in the German Pastorals.

Pius has even had his nave but robust belief in his own heavenly illumination and vocation to proclaim new doctrines sensibly embodied in a picture. In a chamber beyond the Raphael Gallery there is a picture painted by his order; he stands in glorified att.i.tude on a throne proclaiming his favourite dogma of the Immaculate Conception, while the Divine Trinity and the Holy Virgin look down from heaven well pleased upon him, and from the Cross, borne in the arms of an angel, flashes a bright ray on his countenance. Thus Pius stands in a special mystical relation to Mary; she guides and inspires the Council through him, and he in turn will proclaim, with its a.s.sent, the decrees she has inspired and which will destroy the monstrous errors of the present day, or will at least give them a fatal blow. Unfortunately, not one single decree has yet been brought out after exactly two months, and all the heresies continue just as strong as before the Council met. And yet the pregnant and successful Councils of the ancient Church did not require a longer time for their decisions; the Council of Nice was finished in two months, the Council of Chalcedon in six weeks. Certainly it was not then supposed that Mary had first to give the Pope, and then he to give the Council, the weapons for destroying heresies: they were content to rely on the Paraclete promised by Christ.

Meanwhile the present a.s.sembly has nothing in common with those ancient Synods, except in being composed of persons called Bishops. But our Bishops are unlike those of the ancient Church, for they have to yield up to the _Curia_ three-fourths of the rights possessed by their predecessors, and it would be simply ridiculous to liken the state of tutelage and restraint they are now placed under by the _Curia_ to the free and independent att.i.tude of the fifth-century Councils. The more free-spoken among them have just addressed, on 2d February, another Pet.i.tion to the Pope, requesting that the so-called Council Hall in St.

Peter's may be exchanged for a more suitable chamber; for now that serious discussions on the dogmas and decrees are to begin-and the third _Schema_ will be met with strong and persevering opposition in many of its articles-the present arrangement becomes still more intolerable than before. Any regular discussion is simply impossible in the present Council Hall; there is no doubt of that. "That is just right," say the Papal officials; "we neither desire nor need discussion, but simply that the propositions should be voted." "But this is an unheard-of thing, against all conciliar usage and all natural right," reply the Bishops. Archbishop Darboy said, "We are called on to anathematize doctrines and persons; to pa.s.s sentences of spiritual death. But would any jury in the world p.r.o.nounce capital sentence without first having heard the defence?" And thus the Council has entered on a very critical period, and a spirit of irritation is becoming visible, increased by the constantly deepening conviction that the Bishops are to be used for purposes alien to their minds and suicidal. One word describes the entire plot-outvoting by majorities. The united German, French and North American Bishops are opposed to a well disciplined army of about 500, who will vote as one man at the beck of the Pope. This army consists of 300 Papal boarders, the 62 Bishops of the Roman States who are doubly subject to him, 68 Neapolitans, 80 of the Spanish race, some 110 t.i.tular Bishops without dioceses, the Italian Cardinals, 30 Generals of Orders, etc.(45) In a word, the Latin South is arrayed against the French and German North. And therefore the design of the _Curia_, to carry decrees or dogmas on every question of Church and State, etc., by a mere calculation of _plus_ and _minus_, is doubly monstrous and utterly unchurchlike. For, _first_, it must inevitably produce a deep national irritation, if it is said hereafter in Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, France and the United States, "The Italians and Spaniards have triumphed over our views and interests at Rome, simply because their dioceses are much smaller than ours and they have 50 Bishops for 100,000 souls, while we have only one." _Secondly_, it involves a complete break with the past of the Church and the practice of Councils.

Some Bishops have examined the official records of the Council of Trent by the Roman historian Pallavicini, and have found there that Pius IV.

directed his Legates-and that too with special reference to a decree on the fulness of Papal jurisdiction-to make no decrees the Bishops were not _unanimously agreed upon_.(46)

But now just the contrary is to take place. The decisive contest on that point-if it comes to an open contest-will not be fought on the third _Schema_, _On __ the Church and the Pope_, but at once on the first _Schema_, the handiwork of the Jesuits, when it is returned to the Council, professedly modified but in substance unchanged, from the Commission of two Jesuits and three Infallibilists. As we hear, no attention has been paid to the counter representations of the Bishops, some of whom have objected to it altogether as superfluous and mischievous, some as erroneous and exaggerated. It will now without further discussion, which is simply impossible in the Council Hall, be accepted by the mere majority of votes of the compact troop of Infallibilists, who are at the Pope's command as _valets a tout faire_, and proclaimed as a dogma by Pius, _approbante Concilio_, as the form runs. Thereby, according to approved Roman doctrine, has the Holy Ghost spoken by the mouth of His divine representative, "causa finita est;" and it only remains for the 150 or 200 opposing Bishops to make all haste to perform a great mental evolution, to change their laws of thought, to reverence as revealed truth what they have hitherto rejected as error, and to force the clergy and laity under them by excommunication and suspension to perform the same gymnastic feat of leaping at one jump from unbelief into firm and immoveable faith.

The modern and purely mechanical scholasticism has brought matters to such a pa.s.s that many seriously look upon the Council as a machine, which only needs turning to get new dogmas carried and authorized by the Holy Ghost.

Formerly, theologians used to say that the voice of a General Council is nothing but the voice of the whole Church concentrated in one place; that every Bishop bears witness to the traditional belief of his Church and of his predecessors; and that the harmony of these testimonies proves what is the universal belief, and thus attests the truth and purity of the profession of faith sanctioned by the Council. But now all this is entirely changed. The Bishops have come, without any previous knowledge as to what they were to vote about; long-winded and ready-made doc.u.ments are laid before them on questions most of them have never examined in their lives, of which their flocks at home know nothing and have never heard; they are expected to pa.s.s decrees the necessity and opportuneness of which appear to them highly problematical, and to p.r.o.nounce a string of anathemas, because the Pope and Jesuits will it. They are cooped up in a treadmill called a Council, and must willingly or unwillingly grind what is thrown into it. It cannot indeed be exactly said that this procedure is new and unprecedented, for the same thing occurred, on a much smaller scale, at the Fifth Lateran Council under Julius II. and Leo. X.; but then only the Italian Bishops were made use of, who had long been broken in to the _role_ of flunkeys. Now, on the contrary, the Bishops of all nations have been brought into prison at Rome, and are to say Yea and Amen to the decrees the _Curia_ and the Jesuits have drawn up and mean to make obligatory.

But the minority have taken courage, and stand on the defensive; and so the machine is at a standstill. The opponents of Infallibilism have not decreased; on the contrary, it is now thought that about 200 will vote against it. Many, who at first were only "inopportunists," have now through more careful investigation of the question become decided opponents of the doctrine itself.

Antonelli does not spare a.s.surances, that the Governments may be quite at ease as to the decrees to be issued by the Council; he says they only affect theology, that nothing will be changed in practical life by them, and that the _Curia_ has no intention of employing them for the purpose of interfering with political affairs. But these rea.s.suring declarations are only made orally; great care is taken to avoid putting them into a written, and therefore binding, form. Meanwhile the French Government perfectly comprehends the situation and the objects aimed at, and has already announced that it will fully support its Bishops and protect them against the threatened domination by majorities. Archbishop Lavigerie has gained nothing in Paris, and the decision of France has been communicated to the Cardinal Secretary of State, to the effect that the Government will not allow the 33 French Bishops and their allies of the German and English tongue to be crushed and forced into adopting dogmas they have rejected.

The _Civilta_ has just been singing the praises of Count Daru, who is a living proof that there are still real statesmen; it will very soon adopt just the opposite tone.

Among the points which make the Bishops the more astonished, the longer they stay here and the more narrowly they inspect the condition of things, is the decline of study in Rome, and the want, not merely of learned men but even, and most especially, of well-grounded theologians. Rome was never a favourable soil for serious study and true learning; a resource was found in attracting foreigners here, which could easily be done by means of the great Religious Orders whose Generals reside here. But now these Orders, with the exception of the Jesuits, are in the same state of decay. Where are men of distinguished learning to be found among the Dominicans, Carmelites, Cistercians and Franciscans of our own day? To the Pope himself and those immediately about him this is a matter of indifference; Pius feels instinctively that, if there were real theologians at Rome, they would all offer at least a pa.s.sive resistance to his _penchant_ for creating new dogmas. Only the Jesuits and their pupils favour that sort of thing; and as long as there were real theologians in Rome, history knows of no Pope who was possessed with this abnormal pa.s.sion for fabricating dogmas.

Now, indeed, among the 41 Italian Cardinals, only two are named as theologians, the Thomist Guidi and the Barnabite Lulio. Of the achievements of the latter nothing is known, and he has left the Jesuits to their own devices in the elaboration of the _Schemata_; but in the Council he is the chief representative of Roman theology. More distinguished than Lulio is the Piedmontese Prelate and Professor, Audisio, author of a History of the Popes, which of course cannot be measured by a German standard. Vincenzi, a good Orientalist and author of a learned-but in the main erroneous-apology for Origen, being a quiet, modest man who goes his own way, is thought nothing of here, and has neither t.i.tle, dignities, nor benefices, although in knowledge he outweighs twenty Monsignori. De Rossi, the most acute and learned among the genuine Romans, who has educated himself by the study of German works, is a layman and therefore cannot be anything. The Dominican Modena, Secretary of the Congregation of the Index and as such director of the whole inst.i.tution, who died a few weeks ago, pa.s.sed here for a learned theologian, but no monuments of his knowledge and research are extant outside the Index. When a foreigner observed to him shortly before his death that, in order to condemn German or English books, one should understand something of the language, he showed great surprise at so unheard-of a demand, and replied that for Italians, who notoriously far excel all nations in genius and acuteness, if a foreigner translated a couple of pa.s.sages from a book into Latin or Italian, that supplied quite enough materials for p.r.o.nouncing a censure on the book. The Dominican Gatti has now succeeded Modena as Secretary of the Index, and therefore as supreme judge _ex officio_ of the literature of the world. On his scientific capacity and literary achievements history is silent. And so the few learned works produced here have to be provided by foreigners domiciled at Rome.

Theiner publishes doc.u.ments from the Archives, so far, that is, as they serve "the good cause;" much he is notoriously forbidden to publish. The French Benedictine, Pitra, now a Cardinal, edits the original doc.u.ments of Greek canon law; the French Chaillot writes the single important Church journal or record, _a.n.a.lecta Juris Pontificii_, where, notwithstanding its rigid Ultramontane line, useful collections or ancient treatises not previously printed may here and there be found. Dogmatics and theological philosophy-_i.e._, philosophy adapted to dogmatic needs and ends-are provided here by the three German Jesuits, Schrader, Franzelin and Kleutgen. For here Germans are only thought available when they have first been transformed into Jesuits and thereby, as far as possible, un-Germanized. That Order, on which the features of the Spanish national character of the sixteenth century are still indelibly impressed, cannot tolerate a genuine German in his natural shape; it would be compelled to eject him as Etna vomited out the brazen slipper of Empedocles. It is well known that the most industrious and learned of the Roman Prelates, Liverani, was obliged to leave Rome; he lives, I believe, at Florence.(47)

If we examine the names of the Professors at the Roman University of the Sapienza, we find among the teachers of theology, with the solitary exception of the Canon-Regular, Tizzani, who is now blind, only monks-Dominicans, Carmelites and Augustinians-and these mere names wholly unknown beyond the walls of Rome. No less lamentable is the view presented by the philosophical, mathematical and philological departments. The best that can be said of this University, the intellectual metropolis of 180,000,000, is about this, "que c'est une fille honnete qui ne fait pas parler d'elle."

On the whole, the air here is much too raw, the soil inhospitable, the Index too near, and the censors.h.i.+p too merciless, for scientific works and serious investigations. The Italians say of a mindless work, "e scritto in tempo di Scirocco." And here there is an intellectual scirocco established in permanence. And thus the brave German Benedictines, who a.s.sembled here some years ago under an Italian Abbot, Pescetelli, in St. Paul's without the Walls, have become victims of the unhealthy atmosphere-that is, besides the mental scirocco indigenous here, the sharp north wind blowing from the Gesu. They had energetic men among them, such as Nickes and others, were anxious to work in German fas.h.i.+on, and made a good beginning in a volume of _Voices from Rome_, published in 1860; a German Cardinal was their protector. But no sooner had they been denounced to the Pope by the Jesuits-German and of ill-repute for orthodoxy are synonymous terms here than they had to decamp. The Abbot, weary of these chicaneries, resigned his office and returned to Monteca.s.sino. But the Benedictines generally are looked on most unfavourably by the authorities here. As it was said in a capital sentence at Paris, in 1794, that the condemned man was "suspected of being suspected of deficient sense of citizens.h.i.+p," so must it be said of the Benedictines here that they "are suspected of being suspected of a deficient sense of Papalism." They are not devoted enough towards the _Curia_; these little religious communities cannot be so entirely kept in hand, the Jesuits from of old are hostile to them, and it is found in Rome that they have not hitherto rendered sufficient service to the great cause of strengthening Roman domination. They are therefore to be revolutionized, and, like the Jesuits and the Mendicant Orders, to receive a monarchical const.i.tution. Their autocratic General will then reside in Rome, and the Pope will do with them what he did with the Dominicans, when he made Jandel, the Jesuit pupil, their General. Then the Benedictines will be for the Jesuits what the Gibeonites were for the Israelites, their "hewers of wood and drawers of water."(48)

Such a project for revolutionizing the Benedictines, who would then of course cease to be sons of St. Benedict, is reputed to be among the measures prepared for the Council. If the present condition of Rome be compared with earlier ages, as late as Benedict XIV.'s reign, or even twenty or thirty years later, there is truly an enormous difference, and this deep decay and intellectual collapse cannot be explained by external causes merely; inward and more hidden motives must be taken into account, which I think I well understand, but will not here speak of. That does not trouble our Roman clergy of to-day; they inst.i.tute no comparisons, and don't even know the names of the men who dwelt in the same spot a century ago. And the thought of their own poverty of intellect and culture, if it ever occurs to the Roman clerisy, does not at all hinder their always admiring themselves, like Dante's Rachel,

"Mai non si smaga Dal suo miraglio, e siedo tutto giorno Ell' e de' suoi begli occhi veder vaga."(49)

NINETEENTH LETTER.

_Rome, Feb. 8, 1870._-It is a most exciting drama that is being exhibited here, and notwithstanding much that is both little and painful in its details, one of great and moving import; and those who have the opportunity of inspecting its machinery more narrowly, can hardly at times avoid feeling very strongly on the subject. The figure of Laoc.o.o.n, with the snakes coiled round him, is constantly recurring to my mind; for I seem to be witnessing the strategical arts and skilful evolutions of a general, who is trying to surround a little band of opponents with his immensely superior forces, so as to compel them to lay down their arms and surrender at discretion without striking a blow. The disproportion is indeed enormous; first there is the Pope, whose mere name still is a host in itself, and that Pope is Pius, who for twenty-four years has had such homage and flatteries heaped upon him as no Pope ever had before, and who is accustomed to shake the Roman Olympus by his nod. Then there are the Cardinals and Prelates, the whole spiritual staff of Congregations-the Papal family-all fully united and resolved, and the _contribuens plebs_ of foreign Bishops, who are fairly caught in the net, and will not be suffered to escape without the bonds and chains of the most stringent decrees securing their obedience. On the other side stand from 150 to 200 Bishops, of divers tongues and nations and now for the first time united by a common need and a common danger, like a s...o...b..ll liable to melt at the first breath of milder air, and fighting like those Spaniards of the Cortes, who, with one foot chained to a stone, compelled the Mexicans to spare their lives. One asks every morning in doubt and terror, how far the solvents employed have attained their end? Many would gladly capitulate if only they were met half-way by tolerable conditions, and such would secure them a rather less cold reception on their return to their dioceses.

Meanwhile the eyes and the hopes of all educated Catholics, not only in Germany but in Italy, France and North America, are fixed on the chosen band of 300 Bishops.

But how are matters likely to proceed? The Opposition is tough and tenacious. Every new _Schema_ bears so unmistakeably the impress of the interests of either the Jesuits or the _Curia_, that the Bishops cannot help growing constantly more cautious, suspicious and reserved. And to make their designs still clearer, the Jesuits supply the practical commentary in their official journal, the _Civilta_, to the effect that no measures of the Governments against the encroachments of the Church on the civil jurisdiction, or her summons to transgress the laws of the country, would bind the consciences of their subjects. The subjoined anathema against every one who refuses to acknowledge that laws are annulled by the ordinances of the Church (_i.e._, the Pope), is a sorry consolation for the Bishops; for experience has shown too often that courts of justice and statesmen don't trouble themselves about the excommunications incurred in the discharge of their official duties. The Bishops accordingly foresee nothing but endless rubs and collisions with the civil power, as well as with whole cla.s.ses of the population at home; and when the Jesuits are commended to them as pledged and triumphant allies in the contest to be waged against Governments, const.i.tutions and laws, they generally shake their heads suspiciously and with no particular feeling of triumphant joy.

The Pope's 300 episcopal foster-sons cost him 25,000 francs daily, and that makes the pleasant little sum of 1,500,000 francs for two sterile months, during which these doughty warriors have sat a good deal, but accomplished nothing by their sitting; for the old Roman proverb, "Roma.n.u.s vincit sedendo," has not been verified here. The Pope is gradually getting frightened at this daily expenditure, and, after the fas.h.i.+on of great lords, who readily lay the blame of the failure of their own plans on the bad advice of their subjects, he said to-day, in an outbreak of disgust, "per furia di farmi infallibile, mi faranno fallire."

The proceedings of the Council must therefore be expedited and curtailed.

At the same time nothing must be remitted of the matters it is to deal with and vote into canons and decrees. Therefore the order of business must be changed. Cardinal Antonelli says now that "the speeches have been too long and too many, and must be entirely put an end to; the Bishops must be content with handing over their observations in writing to the Commission of twenty-four or the Commission for Pet.i.tions." He tries to sweeten the bitter draught to their lips by remarking that this decision is for their own advantage, for, after being so wearied out with the long sittings and listening to speeches, they must be glad to be relieved of the burden. The Bishops, however, experience no such joyful feeling, but say that the last vestige of conciliar freedom is now abolished. They have the more reason for saying so, since it is notorious that the Infallibilist and purely Romanist party is exclusively represented on the Commissions, so that it may be clearly foreseen that the remarks and suggestions of the liberal-minded and reforming Bishops will simply be thrown into the waste-paper basket, or, under the most favourable circ.u.mstances, be buried in the archives of St. Angelo. At the moment I am writing the new _Regolamento_ has not yet been published, owing to the urgent requests and representations of certain Bishops. But to judge from Antonelli's statement, the authorities seem determined to drop the last veil, and show quite openly to the world that the Council has been arranged as a mere machine of Roman administration, and must therefore of course be forced back into the path from which it had wandered. Many a Bishop now looks back with painful regret to the Council of Trent, where, notwithstanding the haughty insolence of the Italians, the amba.s.sadors of Spain and France acted as protectors to the foreign Prelates, and were a great check on the arbitrary violence of the Legates. Now, Antonelli a.s.sures every diplomatist who says a word on the unprecedented method of procedure, and the hostile character of the proposed decrees towards the State, that these things have only a theoretical and doctrinal significance, and that in practice the _Curia_ will study a wise moderation, and place itself on a friendly footing with the Governments.

He means, that when one fills one's a.r.s.enal with new and effective weapons, that is no proof that they will at once be discharged. I don't know whether this satisfies the diplomatists. Perhaps Count Trautmansdorff is satisfied, for his Government has repeatedly announced its resolve to wait quietly till the Council is over and the _Curia_ is put in possession of all the decrees and dogmas it wants. Then, when the new doctrines are already inserted in all the catechisms and taught in all seminaries and enforced in every confessional, it will be time enough to consider what line the civil power should take in the matter. M. de Banneville and the Paris Government do not seem to be of this opinion. I don't imagine they are minded at Paris so entirely to sacrifice the Bishops to the arbitrary will of the _Curia_ and its paid majority, and for the last few days the French amba.s.sador has been engaged in a lively telegraphic correspondence with his own Government. We may very soon expect important disclosures.

As far as I can make out, the conviction still prevails among the Roman clergy and their episcopal allies that the dogma of Infallibility in the third _Schema_ will be accepted by the Council, at least in a somewhat modified form, but one easily capable of being extended and quite sufficient for present exigencies. They say, "We will first take the vote on the question of opportuneness, and a mere majority may very well decide that. It has decided already by the 400 or 410 signatures to the (Infallibilist) Address, and the Bishops who have themselves answered No, will be obliged to yield to this decision, and so to come to the vote on the dogma itself, _i.e._, to declare whether they personally hold the Pope to be dogmatically fallible or infallible." The Romans expect that, when matters have come to this point, not a few Bishops-especially Ketteler of Mayence, and, it may be hoped, many more with him-will come over to their side and profess their faith in Papal Infallibility. In whatever form they clothe their belief, it comes to the same thing in the end. At last there will only remain a little band of obstinate Prelates who will protest.

They may talk if they please, and then it will be proclaimed to the world, by an overwhelming majority of perhaps 700 votes, that it has become Infallibilist. Then might a new St. Jerome say, with greater force than the former one said of Arianism, "Miratus est orbis se esse factum infallibilistam." A Roman clergyman, who expressed this expectation to me with peculiar confidence, added that there had been a like occurrence at the Council of Trent and it would now be repeated. I perfectly understood him, and the matter deserves to be mentioned here as a striking parallel to certain recurring possibilities. The Council, which was meant to reform and thereby to save the Church, was brought to an early consideration of the universal neglect of Bishops to reside in their dioceses and the need for recognising this duty as one of Divine obligation. But it appeared at once, in the first period of the Council, that the Court of Rome and its faithful Italians in the a.s.sembly had the strongest interest in preventing the a.s.sertion of this simple and logically necessary truth. For, as regards the past, it would have implied severe censure of the practice followed by the Popes since the beginning of the thirteenth century, which would be shown to be a constant violation of the Divine law; while, in regard to the present and future, it would have seriously limited the plenary power of the Popes, for it was always held a principle in the Church that no one could dispense from the law of G.o.d. But the non-Italian Bishops, and nearly all the Italians themselves, were at first in favour of declaring it to be "the Divine law," so strong was the evidence. And it was seen clearly enough that from the divinely imposed obligation must again be inferred the equally divine rights and inst.i.tution of the episcopate. Meanwhile the Jesuit General made his two famous speeches to show that all episcopal authority was a mere emanation from the Pope. For ten months, from September 18, 1562 to July 14, 1563, all sessions of the Council had to be suspended to prevent any decree being made on the subject; and at last, on July 14, 1563, the twenty-eight Spanish Bishops and "the Divine right of residence" succ.u.mbed to the majority of 192 votes, about three-fourths being Italians. _Absit omen!_

The _Civilta_ of February 5, 1870, in its article, "I Politicastri ed il Concilio," has supplied a noteworthy commentary on the canons or decrees of the third _Schema_, which affirm the Church to be an inst.i.tution armed with coercive powers of inflicting bodily punishments; for that is obviously the meaning. The "Politicastri" are those statesmen who imagine that the State has a sphere of its own, independent of the legislation of the Church and the interposition of the Pope. That, according to the Roman Jesuits, is a most abominable error. A law which contradicts a law of the Church has not the slightest validity for men's consciences. For the authority of a Council-and _a fortiori_ of a Pope, from whom, on the Jesuit theory, Councils derive all their force and validity-is above the authority of the State.(50) Should the State therefore require obedience to a law opposed to an ordinance of the Council, it would do so without any real right (_senza vero t.i.tulo giuridico_), and, should it enforce compliance, would be introducing a suicidal tyranny. It is further explained that this by no means applies to those religious laws only which rest on Divine ordinance, but also to those which are purely ecclesiastical, and therefore on Catholic principles are variable.

Let us take the twelfth of the _Canones de Ecclesia_, which anathematizes all who doubt the Church's power to inflict corporal punishment; and consider further that the Popes have most solemnly declared that by baptism all heretics are become their subjects, are amenable to the laws of the Church, and must, if needful, be compelled to obey them.(51) Consider further that the Syllabus condemns the toleration or equality of different religions, and no doubt can remain as to what system it is intended to introduce.

The second Letter of the famous Oratorian and member of the French Academy, Father Gratry, has just come here, and has produced a great impression. It treats of the gross forgeries by which the way for the introduction of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility has been gradually prepared, first in the ninth and then in the thirteenth century; and dwells especially on the fact that the theologians-above all Thomas Aquinas, who rules in the schools, and his many disciples and followers-were deceived by these fabrications, and that even the Popes themselves were misled by them. Gratry's exposition is clear and convincing; but he goes beyond the middle ages. He shows how dishonestly the Breviary was tampered with at Rome at the end of the sixteenth century, and how, up to the present time the Jesuits, Perrone and Wenninger,-the latter in a truly amazing fas.h.i.+on-have followed the practice of citing fabulous or corrupted testimonies.

One grand result of the Council its authors have not foreseen or reckoned upon, which, however, has already attained alarming dimensions; I mean the scandal it has given. They seem to have really believed with a childish _navete_ that the Council could be hermetically sealed up, like birds under a gla.s.s bell, and its members shut up apart,-that 3000 persons could be reduced to silence by a Papal edict about matters they feel there is the strongest necessity for speaking of. Such a notion could only grow up in the heads of Roman clerics, who are wont to look at the world beyond their own narrow sphere only through crevices of the open door, or through the key-hole. Only too much has become known. The Jesuits, the _Civilta_, the _Univers_, the _Monde, et id genus omne_, have done their best to reveal the sharp contrast of opposite parties, and the world of to-day, sceptically disposed as it is and little inclined to cover the shame and nakedness by turning away its face, is present at a double spectacle: it witnesses the system of force and intrigue by which a Council is managed, and it watches with keen observation the process of manipulating a new dogma. Men say now, what Cardinal Bessarion said before, according to an anecdote current here, that the way Saints were canonized in his own time made him very suspicious about the older Saints and Canonizations. In the same way the Protestant and Catholic laity, who are here in such numbers at present, say, "We know and see now how matters are managed in the Church when a new dogma is to be made; what artifices, and deceptions, and methods of intimidation are employed to gain votes. Must it not have been the same at former Councils?" I have heard even Bishops here say that such thoughts pressed upon them, and were severe temptations against faith. And if these things are done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?

Is it different with you in Germany?

TWENTIETH LETTER.