OALLICANISM
356
GALLIOANISM
forth hardly any protests from the adversaries of
Gallieaiiisni. It was not so with the fourth Article,
which implied a negation of papal infallibility. Rest-
ing chiefly on history, the whole Galilean argument
reduced to the position that the Doctors of the Church
— St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, St. Basil, St. Thomas,
and the rest — had not known pontifical infallibility;
that pronoimcements emanating from the Holy See
had been submittetl to examination by councils; that
popes — Liberius, Honorius, Zosimus, and othens — had
promulgated erroneous dogmatic decisions. Only the
line of popes, the Apostolic See, was infallible; but
each pope, taken individually, was liable to error.
This is not the place to discuss the force of this line of argument, or set forth the replies which it elicited ; such an en()uir>' will more appropriately form part of the article devoted to the primacy of the Roman See. Without involnng ourselves in technical develop- ments, however, we may call attention to the weak- ness, of the Scriptural scaffolding upon which (iidlican- ism supported its fabric. Not only was it ojiposed by the luminous clearness of Christ's words — "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build My Church"; "I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not . . . confi'-m thy brethren" — but it finds noth- ing in Scripture which coukl warrant the doctrine of the supremacy of council or the distinction between the line of popes and the individuals — the Series and the Sedens. Supposing there were any doubt of Christ's having promised infallibility to Peter, it is perfectly certain that He did not promise it to the council, or to the See of Rome, neither of which is named in the Gospel.
The pretension implied in Gallicanism — that only the schools and the cluirches of France possessed the truth as to the pope's authority, that they had been better able than any others to defend themselves against the encroachments of Rome — was insulting to the sovereign pontiff and invidious to the other churches. It does not belong to one part of the Church to decide what council is oecumenical, and what is not. By what right was this honour refused in France to the Councils of Florence (1439) and the Lateran (151.3), and accorded to that of Constance? Why, above all. should we attribute to the decision of this coimcil, which was only a temporary expedient to escape from a deadlock, the force of a general principle, a dogmatic decree'? And moreover, at the time when these decisions were taken, the council presented neither the character, nor the conditions, nor the authority of a general synod; it is not clear that among the majority of the members there was present any intention of formulating a dogmatic definition, nor is it proved that the approbation given by Martin V to some of the decrees extended to these. Another characteristic which is apt to diminish one's respect for Galilean ideas is their appearance of ha\ ing been too much influenced, originally and evolutionally, by interested motives. Suggested by theologians who were under bonds to the emperors, accepted as an expedient to restore the unity of the Church, they had never been more loudly proclaimed than in the course of the conflicts which arose between popes and kings, and then always for the .advantage of the latter. In truth they savoured too much of a courtly bias. "The Gallican Lilierties", Joseph de Maisire has said, "are but a fatal compact signed by the Church of France, in virtue of which .she sultniitted to the out- rages of the Parliament on condition of lieing allowed to pass them on to the sovereign pontiff". The history of the assembly of 1682 is not such as to give the lie to this severe judgment. It was a Gallican — no other than Baillet— who wrote: "The bi.shops who served Philip the Fair were upright in heart and seemed to be actuated by a genuine, if somewhat too vehement, zeal for the rights of the (Irown; whereas among those whose advice Louis XIV followed there
were some who, under pretext of the public welfare,
only sought to avenge themselves, by obUque and
devious methods, on those whom they regarded as the
censors of their contluct and their sentiments. "
Even apart from every other consideration, the practical consequences to which Gallicanism led, and the way in which the State turned it to account should suffice to wean Catholics from it forever. It was Gallicanism which allowed the Jansenists con- demned by popes to elude their sentences on the plea that these had not received the assent of the whole episcopate. It was in the name of Gallicanism that the kings of France impeded the publication of the pope's instructions, and forbade the bishops to hold provincial councils or to write against Jansenism — or, at any rate, to publish charges without endorsement of the chancellor. Bossuet himself, prevented from publishing a charge against Richard Simon, was forced to complain that they wished "to put all the bishops under the yoke in the essential matter of their ministry, which is the Faith ". Alleging the Liberties of the Gallican Church, the French Parliaments ad- mitted appcls commc d'abus against bishops who were guilty of condenming Jansenism, or of admitting into their Breviaries the Office of St. Cjregory, sanctioned by Rome; and on the same general principle they caused pastoral letters to be burned by the common executioner, or condemned to imprisonment or exile priests whose only crime was that of refusing the sacraments and Christian burial to Jansenists in re- volt against the most solemn pronouncements of the Holy See. Thanks to these " Liberties ", the jurisdic- tion antl the discipline of the Church were almost entirely in the hands of the civil power, and F^>nelon gave a fair idea of them when he wrote in one of his letters: "In practice the king is more our head than the pope, in France — Liberties against the pope, servitude in relation to the king — The king's authority over the Church devolves upon the lay judges — The laity dominate the bishops". And Fcnelon had not seen the Constituent Assembly of 1790 assume, from Gallican principles, authority to demolish completely the Constitution of the Church of France. For there is not one article of tluit melancholy Constitution that did not find its inspiration in the writings of Gallican jurists and theologians. We may be excused the task of here entering into any lengthy proof of this; indeed the responsibility which Gallicanism has to bear in the sight of history and of Catholic doctrine is already only too heavy.
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