Petri Privilegium/II/Chapter 1

by Henry Edward Manning

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CHAPTER I.

Reverend and Dear Brethren,

In publishing, on the 27th of last May, the Apostolic Letters which direct us to invoke, in every Mass, the light of the Holy Ghost for the guidance of the coming Œcumenical Council, I refrained from adding any words of my own. But as the time now draws near when it will be my duty to leave you for a season, it seems fitting, and you may perhaps expect, that I should freely express to you the thoughts awakened by this event, and the intentions for which we ought to pray.

It has been said again and again, by those who desire what they say to be true, that the indiction of a General Council in ages past stirred the whole world, but in these days is received with complete indifference. If it be so, then the need of a General Council is proved, and the reason for convoking it is evident. If the Christian world be in a state of coma, it is time that the physicians should consult together. But is it the fact that the coming Council is ignored? What event in the last two years has excited so much attention? In what country of the Christian world has it been passed over in silence? What Government has not occupied itself about it? There have been interpellations in legislatures, diplomatic circulars, hundreds of articles in a thousand journals in all countries of Europe, speeches in convocations, books, pamphlets, and letters in newspapers from the invited and the uninvited, an universal stir and excitement, not indeed within the unity of the Catholic Church, where all is calm in the strength of quiet and of confidence, but outside, in the political and religious world. The diagnosis of the case is, therefore, hardly correct. The patient is not insensible, but highly sensitive; lethargic at times, perhaps, and unconscious of the extent of his maladies, but fully alive to what is passing around him and impending over him in the future. It is true, indeed, that the indiction of the Council of Trent, for example, fell upon the conscience of Christian Europe while as yet it was visibly united to the Holy See. The errors of the so-called Reformation were already in activity, and the minds of men were deeply moved by many passions. Most of the Civil Powers of Europe were then Catholic, and had therefore a large participation in the Council. Now all is changed. Half of Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England and Scotland, have ceased to be Catholic. The Civil Powers in countries of which the people remain wholly or almost altogether Catholic, are so no longer. It is not to be expected that they will be moved by hope or by fear, by good or by ill will towards the Council in which they have foregone their share. Nevertheless, even among them, both in public and in private, the coming Council already exerts an influence which is ever increasing in strength and in significance.

So true is this, that the question, who have or have not been invited, or who have or have not a right to sit in the Council, has been raised by many who are not of the unity of the Catholic Church. We should have thought that this question would solve itself. The convocation of Parliament is addressed only to its members, and its members are those only who are subjects of the Crown and are duly invested with the right to sit. The indiction of the Council is addressed to the Bishops of the Catholic Unity, who are subject to the authority of the Church, and members of its world-wide empire. By the Bull of Indiction all Bishops are, not invited, but obliged to attend. It is not an invitation, but a citation. They can be released from the obligation to appear only by the Supreme Authority which imposes it. It has been erroneously imagined that the two Apostolic Letters addressed, the first, to the Schismatical Bishops of the East, and the second, to all Protestants and others not Catholic, were issued to give an Œcumenical character to the Council. But this is a transparent error. The Council, by containing either numerically or morally the Pastors of the whole Flock throughout the world, subject to the Apostolic See, is thereby, ipso facto, Œcumenical. These two letters, therefore, were addressed in paternal charity to those who once were, and now unhappily are no longer, of the Catholic Unity. Their presence is not needed to make the Council Œcumenical. They are exhorted to avail themselves of the moment of reconciliation and of peace offered by the assembling of the Council; and all alike on one and the same condition, namely, a recognition and submission to the Divine Authority of the Catholic and Roman Church, by which the Council will assemble, deliberate, and make decrees. They who have the Episcopal character validly impressed by undoubted consecration would, upon submission to the Divine Authority of the Church, be admitted to sit with the Episcopate of the Catholic world. The invitation therefore is, first, to reconciliation, and then to verification of their episcopal character. The Bishops of the Churches in the East, now in separation from the Catholic Church, are without doubt, for the most part, validly consecrated. They might, upon the renunciation of schism and any doctrinal error, at once be restored to their rank as Bishops. There are others in the West claiming the episcopal character, and claiming likewise to be Catholic, as the Jansenists of the Low Countries, and others again nearer home. If they believe their episcopal character to be unjustly doubted or denied, the way is open for examination and redress. It is not for me to say what the Supreme Authority may or may not see fit to do. But this, at least, I may venture to say, for this the Supreme Authority has already done. It has invited all those who are now separate from its unity to avail themselves of this occasion. Let them bring before the coming Council any cause in which they have been wronged; any claims which have not yet been heard, any alleged rights of which they have been deprived. Three hundred years of contention, misery, and declining faith—not to go deeper into the dark memories of the past—may well turn the hearts of men once more to the Church in which their forefathers believed and died. God is not glorified by divisions, nor is our Divine Master honoured by contradictions among those who teach in His name. Let us hope, pray, and labour for unity in the truth. There are many signs of the times which betoken a happier day. Not to go further back than the last forty years, there has come over England a change which may be felt. A distinguished French writer has said that in the midst of the old England which is passing away, a new England is arising. The England of penal laws, and slavery, and unequal legislation is gone; the England of to-day has emancipated men from religious penalties, abolished slavery, and given equal laws to the people of these realms. This new England of to-day, with all its maladies—and they are indeed grievous and menacing, inherited from the sins of our forefathers—is, nevertheless, just, fair, merciful, and generous. There is a benevolence growing up where once was ill-will; and a reaction has set in towards those who have been wronged and falsely accused. Of this, evidence is on every side, in private and in public life; and this will have results hereafter which the most sanguine now do not venture to express. There may, perhaps, be found here and there some half-educated minds, or some interested and violent persons, who keep up the old rail against the Catholic religion. But the English people do not now believe you and me to be idolaters. Twenty years ago many did so. But the light of day, and their own good sense, has destroyed this superstition. They know us to believe in many mysteries of the supernatural order; but they profess to believe in supernatural mysteries themselves. They cannot call us superstitious or credulous, without accepting the name themselves. They are coming also to see that the supernatural order needs a more solid and stable foundation than they can find in the midst of their many contradictions; they see that at last they are compelled in argument to rest upon the witness and testimony of Christendom. But for whom does Christendom bear its witness? The day is past for appeals to antiquity. If Christianity and the Christian Scriptures are to be maintained in controversy against sceptical criticism, the unbroken, world-wide witness of the Catholic Church must be invoked. This consciousness of dependence has worked like a benign influence upon the minds of those who believe Christianity to be a divine revelation, and the books of Scripture to be inspired. And I joyfully bear witness that a pious belief in these two divine truths pervades the English people. In saying this I do not forget the materialism, ignorance, indifference, practical atheism of millions. Nevertheless the Christian tradition of England, though grievously mutilated and robbed of its divine authority, still survives. There are in the Anglican communion, and among Nonconformists, millions who believe in Jesus Christ, His person and His redemption, with a heartfelt and loving faith; and their faith bears noble fruits. Many of their errors come from a jealousy for these very truths. It was a master-stroke of the enemy of truth to make them reject the words and the will of Jesus Christ out of jealousy for His Person and His work. As they who killed His disciples believed they were doing a service to God, so they rejected the unity and authority of His Church and sacraments ordained by Him, and doctrines which came from His lips, in the belief that they were thereby honouring His Person and His truth. But this illusion of the Evil One has been at last found out. Fair and truthful minds acknowledge at this day that every truth for which they profess to be jealous is menaced, and in a multitude of minds altogether lost. But they cannot deny that in the Catholic Church these very truths are not lost or menaced, but universally taught and believed in all fulness and precision. The mission and work of the Catholic Church in England is like that of S. Paul in Corinth. In the midst of a highly civilised, intellectual, luxurious, refined, philosophical, and contentious race, he preached 'Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' Some asked for signs and others for wisdom; some were incredulous, others were critical; they sought after learning, eloquence, logic: he preached, affirmed, and re-affirmed again, as one having authority, sustained by a consciousness of a mission and a message both alike divine. Men chafed against both the matter and the manner, and against the manner even more than the matter of his teaching. It was perpetual affirmation. They would not see that his divine authority was a part of his message, and that the divine certainty of what he taught was the foundation of that authority; that their 'faith might not stand on the wisdom of man, but on the power of God.'^[1] If the people of England indeed believe in 'Jesus Christ and Him crucified,' we shall soon see the unity of faith arising out of our endless confusions: for to believe in Him we must know who He is, that is, that He is God, consubstantial, co-eternal, co-equal with the Father and the Holy Ghost, therefore we must know the Holy Trinity, One God in three persons; and His Manhood, therefore His Incarnation, two perfect natures in One Divine Person, and thereby also the dignity of His blessed Mother as Mother of God. We must believe also what He has done for us, that is, the redemption by His most precious blood; what He has taught us, or the whole undiminished truth which He has revealed; and what He has commanded us, or all the institutions and obligations of His moral and positive law. All these four assemblages of truth are contained in the knowledge of 'Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' No one can be said to know Him who does not know who He is, what He has done, what He has taught, what He has commanded; but no one can know these things who does not know the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the whole doctrine of faith, the whole order of the Church, its unity and authority, the institution of the Holy Sacraments, with all the grace they convey and the obligations they impose. But this is to know the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church; and as men become once more calm and candid, as the storms and passions of three hundred years subside, they will see that in their haste and illusions they have wounded Him whom they professed to honour, and have destroyed His work whom they have desired to serve.

For the last thirty years there has been an awakening in the mind of England, such as, for three hundred years, has never been before. There is a sense of loss and of privation, an honest acknowledgment of the evil done by the so-called reformers; a desire to restore what has been broken down; a painful consciousness of division, contention, and uncertainty; a conviction that these things are contrary to the will and commandment of our Divine Master: an aspiration after unity, a hunger for truth, a longing after the return of the Divine Presence which once dwelt in the old churches of England. Besides this, there is a consciousness that the Church of Christ cannot be cribbed up within four seas; that it fills the world, and that the insular Christianity of England, even if it were perfectly united in itself, could not live long when disunited from the Christian world. The spread of the British Empire, and the spread of Anglicanism to the colonies, has still more powerfully awakened this aspiration for a higher unity. Wheresoever the insular religion of England goes, it finds a Church and a Faith before it, which contains islands and continents, and the whole world, in its unbroken unity. The colonies of Great Britain are acting powerfully, both in politics and religion, on the mother country. They both give and receive an influence which will deeply modify and assimilate the whole British Empire to a type, not of the past, but of the future. The mother country has impressed its outlines upon the colonies; the colonies are now silently but surely transforming the mother country into their own likeness. But neither will ultimately prevail. Another image and likeness is returning upon both. The great principles, axioms, and maxims of our English law, derived from Catholic times and from the Catholic Church, lie imperishable at the foundation of our political order. They have been carried throughout our colonies, and have reproduced in all our dependencies a political and social life homogeneous to our own. This unity of first principles would seem to promise for the British Empire a future of solidity and endurance, if only the insular narrowness of England be wisely effaced. The Tudor legislation in religion, which for three hundred years has afflicted England and persecuted Ireland, has never been able to establish itself in our colonies. There, the Catholic Church has been always freer than it is even now in England and in Ireland. The abolition of the Tudor statutes is as certain as the rising of the sun to-morrow. In Ireland it is already done. In England it will not long tarry. A larger and more living spirit of justice and charity is bursting the bands which human violence imposed upon the liberty of divine faith. In this our colonies led the way, and the mother country must inevitably follow. We have seemed to be paradoxical and provoking when we say that S. Thomas of Canterbury is regaining his hold on the hearts of Englishmen. But it is emphatically true. He died for the liberties of the Church; and the liberties of the Church, howsoever they may be embodied in some particular cause in debate, resolve themselves ultimately and necessarily into these two principles, or axioms of faith: the one, that no human authority whatsoever of kings, princes, legislatures, or human laws may come between the soul and God; the other, that this perfect liberty of the soul in faith is derived from God, and has for its witness, guide and guardian, the Divine Authority of His Church. The English people have long professed the former of these truths. Even the established religion, the whole history of which is at variance with this principle, perpetually asserts it. One half of the English people have vindicated it by suffering under penal laws, unto bonds and death. It is this profound conviction which has helped to abolish the State Church in Ireland. The accumulated action of the colonies, of Ireland, and of half the population of Great Britain, will inevitably, and before long, abolish the state religion in England. The British Empire then, both in its political and its religious life, will have burst its bands, and will reconstitute itself upon a wider base than the area of our four seas. What faith, and what unity then, will be commensurate to such an empire, it is not difficult to foresee. Even the Russian despotism is powerless to maintain the unity of the Greek Church. Half the Russian population dissents from the established religion. If liberty of faith were granted, no church would long stand but that which is the fountain, guide and guardian, of the liberty of faith. To manifest this to the world, the Divine Head of the Church seems so to order its destinies that the two chief fields of its power and expansion should be the British Empire and the United States. In these two vast spheres of intense intellectual activity and vehement energy of will, an episcopate of a hundred and seventy Bishops rules over missionary churches the most united, vigorous, and prolific to be found in the whole world. I do not know how others may have regarded the assembly of the Anglican Bishops of England and America two years ago. Something may indeed have invited the criticism as much of their own flocks as of others. But to me it was a subject of hope. It was an explicit evidence of the desire for unity which is working in various ways on every side. They, no doubt, desired to confine that union within their own system; but they felt that the insular narrowness of England is not enough. They invited America and the colonies to bear a part. This alone proved a wider desire and a higher aspiration, which such an assembly can never satisfy. It gave a great impulse to those who have been praying for reunion. They do not fear to declare that America and Australia are not enough without Catholic Europe; and that even Constantinople is not enough without Rome. These ideas have been scattered broadcast; and where they have lighted they have infused desires and prayers in myriads of hearts up and down in England and throughout the Anglican system, which nothing can extinguish, nothing can stay. They will work on in silence with a potency which is not of man only, preparing for a time when those who are separate from the only unity of Divine foundation will be irresistibly absorbed by its supernatural power and grace.

It is certain, then, that in England the indiction of a General Council has come at a time when the minds of men are specially prepared for it. Even if they had been silent, their silence would not have been the silence of indifference. But there has been no silence. Both in public and in private, by word and by writing, an interest serious and respectful has been shown.

But in this country the interest felt about the Council is chiefly, if not altogether, in its bearing upon religion. In France, besides this, perhaps the chief interest arises from its bearing upon politics. The debate in the Corps Législatif in July of last year shows how profoundly the minds, not of Catholics only, but of mere politicians, are moved by the anticipations of what the Council may decree. In a moment of haste and precipitation, some French writers and politicians have interpreted the condemnations in the Syllabus as a condemnation of the principles of 1789. This is enough to rouse a great turmoil. But is it well to take for granted, and to make us who are at a distance believe, that the principles of 1789 are such as the theology and the morality of the Christian Church must condemn? We would desire to believe, if we can, that those principles, even if they bear the marks of a period of excitement rather than of calm and measured thought, are nevertheless in some way reconcilable with the great laws of political morality which lie at the foundations of human society, and are consecrated by the sanction of the Christian world. I should be sorry to believe that there is anything indelibly impressed on the political order of the great French people which is at variance with the intellectual and moral system of the Catholic Church.

In touching on this point, so dear to that illustrious nation, as hereafter in touching once more on another subject, relating to the history of 1682, I shall refrain as far as possible from using language of my own, lest unconsciously I should do, what a French writer has lately, unreasonably I think, and without cause imputed to me; that is, in any way wound ever so lightly the dignity of France. I shall in both cases use the words of devoted and distinguished sons of that great people. The Prince de Broglie, in treating of the variance between the Church and modern society, which is so sedulously preached by those who desire to exclude the Church from the political order, says that the Catholic Church has stood in relations with civil society these eighteen hundred years in all lands: 'from Constantine to Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Charles V., from Charles V. to Louis XIV., from Louis XIV. to 1789.' 'Why, then, should there be one only date, 1789, when this spirit of adaptation in Christianity has failed, and one only society which is bound to divorce Christianity on account of incompatibility of temper? … In reflecting on this singular fact, which is the great problem of our times, I can only find one cause to assign, namely, the abstract and philosophical character which society in France, by the organ of its legislators since 1789, has always affected to give to the principles on which it is constituted.' 'France,' he adds, 'is the only nation which has undertaken the generous but adventurous task to labour "not for one nation in particular, but for all the human race; not for one time, but for all times."' 'The only thing I shall permit myself to say is, that it is this philosophical character, impressed on all our laws, which has passed also into our manners and our language, that brings with it a complication, until now without example in the relations of a State, and of a society, with the Christian religion, and even with any religion whatsoever.' 'To recognise the principles of 1789 with the character of universal obligation which they affect, is to add an appendix to the Catechism, and ten or twelve articles to the Creed.' 'The French Revolution in making itself philosopher, metaphysician, and almost theologian, has entered upon the territory of the spiritual. It is a Church which it opposes to the Church, and a new Catholicism which it desires to substitute for, or associate with, the old. A concordat is not enough; many a Council would be necessary to complete such an operation. Such is, to my mind, the true point of difference between society in France and the Church. It does not limit itself, as all its predecessors, to demanding of the faithful and of their pastors to pay the taxes, observe the laws, lend their aid to the regular action of public functions: it exacts of them on points of doctrine, such as the origin of sovereignty, the liberty of thought, the natural equality of man, a veritable profession of faith, accompanied by an amende honorable for all adhesion, in other places and at other times, to doctrines contrary to itself.' 'It is not very surprising that a great institution, which has charge of souls in all the world, should hesitate to commit itself to a symbol of ideas so wanting in precision as to lend itself in fifty years to the Constitution of '91, the Charter of 1830, and to the Plébiscite of 1862.'

He then points out the ambiguity and uncertainty of a document which may be interpreted in four or five ways. ' Is it indeed the same principle which adapts itself to two interpretations so contrary to each other? In the matter of religious liberty, how many commentaries have we not had? There is the administrative interpretation, which recognises no other worships than those of which the State pays the heads, and fixes the legal status. … There is the liberal interpretation, which is much more respectful to the rights of individuals. … There is the revolutionary interpretation, which gives free course to all aberrations of thought. … So many schools are there, all sheltering under the common name of liberty of thought, of which the doctors and disciples, intolerant enough for each other, pretend alike to exclusive orthodoxy.'

'Imagine face to face our social elements, still in effervescence and in struggle, and that old power, resting on the immovable base of dogma clearly defined, which has seen crumbling at its feet the ruins of a hundred peoples and the dust of twenty ages.' He then imagines a dialogue 'between that antique spiritual power and the impatient sons of modern France. What do you ask of me? it seems to say to them. To live in peace with your governments? But I have already signed with them more than one concordat, and it is not I that desire to break them. Not to preach insurrection against your laws? I foment revolution nowhere. Do you wish me to recognise those laws as the crown of social progress, and that I should propose them as such to the imitation of the whole world, and to the admiration of future generations? That is what you will never obtain from me. Speak to me of charity, of necessity, of equity, of accomplished facts to be accepted, of acquired rights to be respected: I hear you and understand you, But do not talk to me either of the ideal or of the absolute; for the ideal for me will never be any other than the future I am awaiting, and, in my eyes, the absolute is the Truth, which I represent.' 'This lays the finger on the substance of the debate. If the society of France is willing to be taken like all its predecessors, as a mixture of good and evil, imperfect as all human things, the peace with the Church will be made, if it be not made already, But if its demand be that it should be held sacred, and all but canonised, I doubt if it will obtain that favour. All the advocates in the world, able or ardent, impassioned or powerful, statesmen and sectaries, will waste upon it their pains and their eloquence.'^[2]

These thoughtful and pointed words are enough to assure anyone how groundless and needless are the fears of politicians in France lest the Œcumenical Council should decree anything inconsistent with the true bases of civil society. And surely no French politician will admit that the principles of 1789 are out of square with those bases of political right. We have, however, a proof which has now attained the dignity of a very touching historical fact. Some ten years ago a young French priest, Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the seminary of Langres, Léon Godard, published a short treatise on 'The Principles of '89 in Relation to Catholic Doctrine.' His object was, if possible, to remove the supposed contrariety between the principles of '89 and the principles of the Christian Church: a wise and charitable purpose to which we are all daily invited, I may even say provoked, by the alternate tones of perplexity and of challenge which come up from friends and foes. In a matter so difficult, and so prejudged by the passions of men, it is no wonder that a good young priest should so have written as to lay himself open to censures not unjust. With the true spirit of a Catholic and a Christian, he went at once to the Holy See and submitted himself and his work to correction. The book was subjected, by the highest authority, to examination; and an edition, corrected and enlarged, was printed in Paris in 1862, with the authorisation of the Roman censors, and a truly paternal and consoling letter from the Bishop of Langres. In that letter are quoted the words of the President of the Roman theologians, addressed to the Bishop. They run as follows:—'This work, tried by a severe scrutiny by certain Roman theologians, was found by them to teach nothing in any way opposed to the dogmas of Catholic faith; wherefore they judged that it may be published.' I remember that I once saw M. Léon Godard at Rome while his book was under examination. He had visibly upon him the marks of sickness and of anxiety. Knowing how much he had suffered from the censures which had fallen upon him, I could not but express the sympathy every Catholic feels towards those who set so noble an example of sincerity and submission. Not long after, the tidings came that Léon Godard was gone to a world where there is no more any cloud upon the truth, nor any mistrusts among the servants of God. In the conclusion of his work, M. Léon Godard writes:—'Such is our profession of faith in regard to the principles of '89. We believe that they do not contradict any decision of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church, to the judgment of which we submit without reserve; and we are convinced that they are in harmony, in respect to opinion, with the judgment of the most accredited doctors of the Church and of the schools.' 'If, then, our pen has not betrayed our thoughts, it will be seen that there is nothing in common between our doctrines and those of false liberalism.' … 'We will maintain the principle of '89 inscribed in the constitution of our country; but with all the explanations which we have given, and which no one has a right to exclude, because, as we have said, the epoch of '89 is one of a double face, the one good the other evil; the one liberal in the legitimate sense of the word, the other revolutionary. The tactics of our adversaries are to draw us to a complete rejection of '89, in order at once to accuse us of a desire to set up again the ancien régime, with all its abuses, and to overthrow our existing laws. These tactics we will baffle, and we will not abandon an inch of ground which we have a benefit in defending and a right to hold.'^[3]

The work of M. Léon Godard will go a long way to relieve the fears and to rectify the misconceptions of certain politicians and political writers in France. It will show that neither the Council nor the Syllabus, interpreted, not by any individual, but by the Holy See, need cause the fears—I would venture to use a familiar word, and say the scare—which in some quarters appear now to exist.

 

1. 1 Cor. ii. 5.
2. Revue des Deux Mondes, février 1869: Le Christianisme et la Société, pp. 546, 553, par Albert de Broglie.
3. Les Principes de '89, et la Doctrine Catholique, par l'Abbé Léon Godard. Lecoffre, Paris, 1863.