Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility/Chapter 11

by William John Sparrow Simpson

CHAPTER XI

ULTRAMONTANISM IN FRANCE

1. A powerful if unintentional contribution to Ultramontanism was Napoleon's reconstruction of the French Episcopate.

The nineteenth century found the Church of France in a desperate condition. Overthrown by the Revolution, and deprived of its possessions and its sanctuaries, many of its Royalist Bishops were refugees in England from a form of government which they abhorred; and the Pope himself (Pius VI.) died, a captive of the Revolution, in French territory (1799).^[1] But with the new century Napoleon rose to power. He saw that, in spite of the dominant Atheism, France was Catholic at heart; and resolved upon a restoration of the Catholic Church. Accordingly he sided with the Papacy. But since the exiled prelates were notoriously hostile to the Revolution, being zealous adherents of the old Monarchy, he was convinced that their readmission would provoke social disorder and irreconcilable strife. On this ground he required Pope Pius VII. to make a clean sweep of the entire French Episcopate, either by their resignation or their deprivation.^[2] This was to be followed by a complete reconstruction of the dioceses, and reappointment to the newly-constituted Sees. Fifty diocesan Bishops were henceforward to exist, together with twelve Archbishops, while more than half the ancient Gallican Episcopate was to be entirely swept away. Against this revolutionary proposal Pius VII. protested, but he protested in vain. The master of France was inexorable, and Pius was compelled to yield. Cardinal Consalvi,^[3] the Papal Secretary, says that he vainly urged that the deposition of one hundred French Bishops without condemnation was unprecedented in the annals of Christendom, that nothing could be more ruinous to the famous Gallican liberties. But the iron will of Napoleon broke through all remonstrances, and the Pope was compelled to require the French Bishops to place their resignation in his hands.^[4]

Some complied. Some delayed and temporised. Others refused. The refugees in England replied that, holding their episcopal commission from the Holy Spirit, who had constituted them rulers in the Church of God, they could not submit to the Pope's requirements.^[5] Nevertheless, their existence was ignored, and the combined power of Pius VII. and Napoleon Bonaparte carried this ecclesiastical revolution into effect.

Napoleon reserved to himself the right of appointment to the newly constituted Sees.^[6] This unprecedented act of supreme authority^[7] was, of course, altogether distinct from Infallibility; but it formed a precedent for almost limitless submission, and promoted a spirit of resignation to authority, which afterwards exhibited itself in the province of dogmatic truth, and contributed indirectly not a little to the passing of the Vatican Decree. It also shook the whole constitution of the Church of France. Its effect on Gallican ideas was naturally great.

The French Minister Ollivier goes so far as to maintain that the Roman Court, in spite of its persistent efforts, would only have secured uncertain advantage if the French Revolution had not come to its aid.^[8]

But still down to 1870 the French Government retained in its control the right of nominating the Bishops. And this right it exercised independently of the papal desires. Pronounced Gallicans were elevated to the Episcopate in spite of Pius IX.'s objections. At times, when his concurrence was delayed, pressure was instantly brought to bear from France. And that pressure it was not prudent to resist; for at that period France was the protector of the Papacy.

It is sometimes said that the old Gallicanism perished in the French Revolution. This is misleading. The Church and the Monarchy had stood together, and the overthrow of the one broke the power of the other. In the altered circumstances the papal claim over monarchs became practically impossible. It was never denied at Rome, but it was not asserted. It was left discreetly in the background, and consequently the old Gallican political protest became meaningless. But the old spiritual principles were re-affirmed in France in 1820 by Cardinal de la Luzerne with not less vigour and frankness than in the days of Bossuet.

The independence of the temporal power from papal authority, says Cardinal Luzerne,^[9] is a question which he does not intend to discuss. Not because he has the slightest doubt upon the subject; on the contrary, the complete independence of the temporal power is of all the Gallican maxims that to which he is personally most strongly attached. He deplores from the depth of his heart that the Popes ever asserted the opposite principle. Their pretensions have been disastrous to the Catholic Church, and particularly so to the Holy See. But his reason for not discussing the subject is that the Gallican principle finds hardly any opponents even in Italy. Since Italian writers do not attack it there is no need to defend.

But on the question of Papal Infallibility he feels constrained to express his strong adhesion to the Gallican doctrine.^[10] The partisans of Infallibility affirm that when the Pope, taking the necessary precautions, speaks officially, he is infallible, and his decisions are unalterable laws for all the Church. That is the Ultramontane opinion. We, on the contrary, says Cardinal Luzerne, do not believe the Holy Father to be infallible. We believe that when he acts as Pope his decisions ought to be respected; but his dogmatic decrees, however worthy of regard, are not infallible, and only exact an outward submission, but not an inward assent until they are endorsed by the acceptance of the Universal Church. Papal decisions have weight—some more, some less. They are not equal in authority, and none of them are infallible. The Ultramontane system, that the Pope is infallible when he speaks officially, sins against the truth in the essential point of novelty.^[11] Gallicanism, if it had a political side, was essentially ecclesiastical and spiritual. Its political interest was to protect the rights and claims of a national Church. It regarded the Church of each people as a definite entity, although of course merged in the unity of the Universal Church. But this was not the fundamental principle of the Gallican idea. The heart and centre of their contention lay in the rights of the Collective Episcopate, as contrasted with the claims of the Papacy. And the whole of the struggle which issued in the Vatican Assembly of 1870 was a struggle between these two conceptions of spiritual authority.

The extent to which the old Gallican principles prevailed in France of the early nineteenth century may be gathered from Bergier's Theological Dictionary, which was the French popular encyclopedia of theology, and obtained a great circulation.

 

"Infallibilist—The name sometimes given to those who maintain that the Pope is infallible,—that is to say, that when he addresses to the entire Church a dogmatic decree, a decision on a point of doctrine, it cannot happen that this decision should be false or subject to mistake. This is the ordinary opinion of Ultramontane theologians."^[12]

 

Then after summarising Bossuet's teaching, the article concludes that, since it is an essential function of the pastors of the Church to witness to the universal faith, the witness of the sovereign Pontiff taken by itself cannot produce the same degree of moral certitude which results from a very considerable number of concurrent witnesses. As head of the Universal Church, the sovereign Pontiff is undoubtedly well informed as to the general belief and is its principal witness; but his witness, united to that of a vast multitude of Bishops, possesses quite a different force than when it is alone.

 

2. There were the Ultramontane writers in France, who contributed vastly to the propagation of Roman ideas.

One of the pioneers of Ultramontane development was Joseph de Maistre. Connected for some time in the first half of the nineteenth century with the Court of St Petersburg, he had all the instincts of the diplomatist; and his religious ideal was to see modern Christian society under the absolute control of the political papal dictatorship of the Middle Ages. Manning once ventured the remark that Gratry was no theologian. It has been said with far more accuracy that De Maistre was neither an historian nor a theologian, but rather one who transferred to the province of ecclesiastical control the principles and methods of diplomatic procedure. He was a man of remarkable vigour and pertinacity; a man of logic in his way, pushing relentlessly to extreme conclusions on the basis of a brilliant assumption; audacious in his assertions, and confident with an unsurpassed serenity.

The movements of modern thought, the aspirations towards larger freedom, were to De Maistre thoroughly repugnant.

 

"The audacious race of Japhet," he writes, "has never ceased to advance towards what it describes as liberty; that is, towards a state in which the governed is governed as little as possible, and is always on guard against its masters."

 

Such was his attitude towards European progress and development. This was written in 1844, and may doubtless be partly explained by the time; but this was the spirit in which he approached the doctrine of papal authority. And the method in which he attempted to advance the Ultramontane opinions may be gathered from such examples as the following.

If the Gallican School set the Council above the Pope, as the final judge in matters of faith, De Maistre entirely depreciates the significance of Ecumenical Councils. His estimate of their value as compared with his valuation of the Papacy is almost contemptuous. Councils are, in his view, periodical or intermittent exhibitions of sovereignty. They are extremely rare, purely accidental, without any regularity of recurrence; easier to assemble in primitive days when the extent of Christendom was comparatively small. But in modern times an Ecumenical Council is a mere chimera. It would take five or six years to arrange. If the objection is made, Why were all these Councils held if the decision of the Pope sufficed? De Maistre adopts for his reply the following—"Don't ask me; ask the Greek Emperors, who would have these Councils assembled, and who convoked them and demanded the consent of the Popes, and raised all this useless fracas in the Church." De Maistre goes further still. Quoting the opinion of Hume on the Council of Trent, that "it is the only General Council which has been held in an age truly learned and inquisitive," and "that no one expects to see another General Council until the decay of learning and the progress of ignorance shall again fit mankind for these great impostures"; he calmly observes that while in its spirit this is a "reflexion brutale," yet in its substance it is worthy of consideration. Hume is right to this extent: that "the more the world becomes enlightened the less it will think of holding a General Council." The world, he adds, has become too great for General Councils, which appear better adapted for the youth of Christianity. He admits that a Council may, indeed, be serviceable, and that perhaps the Council of Trent did what only a Council could do. But he is so exceedingly jealous of its possible interference with the absolute sovereignty of the Pope that he can find no more than this in its favour; except to conclude this portion of his remarks with a curiously incongruous protestation of his perfect orthodoxy on the subject of General Councils. Thus De Maistre's Ultramontane proclivities completely blinded him to the true nature of this form of Catholic self-expression. We should not gather from his depreciative words that the Spirit of God had anything to do with the Councils of Christendom. It is singular, moreover, that a leader of modern Extremist views should have written in this strain only twenty-six years before the Vatican Council.

De Maistre's treatment of the case of Honorius forms a most curious psychological study. The condemnation of Honorius by a General Council was to the Gallican School a conclusive proof that the Church which so expressed itself knew nothing of Ultramontane opinions on Papal Infallibility. De Maistre has a theory which we believe is entirely his own. He draws from imagination an account of what Honorius might, from an Ultramontane standpoint, be expected to have said if he had been living at the time, and had entered into the deliberations of the Council which condemned him. Here is the speech which Honorius, it appears, ought to have made:—

 

"My brothers, God has undoubtedly abandoned you, since you dare to judge the Head of the Church who is established to pass judgment upon you. I have no need of your assembling to condemn Monothelitism. What can you say that I have not said already? My decisions are sufficient for the Church. I dissolve this Council by withdrawing from it."

 

De Maistre could scarcely forget that the successor of Honorius, who on his theory ought to have made some protest against the Council's audacious treatment of their predecessor, omitted to make any. This is met with the remark that if certain successors of Honorius do not appear to have roused themselves against "the Hellenisms of Constantinople," their silence only proves their humility and their prudence, and has no dogmatic weight. The facts meanwhile continue what they are. The fact that the successors of Honorius for centuries went on reiterating his condemnation is not mentioned by De Maistre. But, as he truly says, the facts meanwhile continue what they are. Yet he implies that they do not. For he then suggests that perhaps the Acts of the Sixth Council have been falsified. The possibility of such dishonesty in ancient times is illustrated from the letters of Cicero. The application is then delicately left for the reader to make. As for the author, "Quant à moi, je n'ai pas le temps de me livrer à l'examen de cette question superflue."

De Maistre's argument for Papal Infallibility is a political argument pure and simple. All true government in human society is monarchy. And the ultimate decision in the political order must be regarded as an infallible decision. The sovereign power cannot permit the laws to be called in question. What sovereignty is in the political order, the same is infallibility in the spiritual. We only demand, therefore, for the Church the same prerogative of finality which we demand for the State.^[13]

Readers of Mozley on Development will remember his crushing reply to this transparent sophism.

 

"It is indeed absurd," writes Mozley, "to expect that the mind should be satisfied with it, because what the mind wants is to believe what is true; and this argument does not touch the question of truth or error in the doctrines themselves decided on by this ultimate authority. It tells us the fact that they are decided on, and no more. It views the Church simply as a polity, and professes to apply the same principles to it which belong to other polities; and, wholly omitting its prophetical office of teaching truth, makes it impose its dogmas on us on the same principle on which the State imposes Acts of Parliament."^[14]

 

This contribution to Ultramontanism received a criticism, also from the Roman Bishop Maret, just on the eve of the Vatican Council.

 

"These weaknesses," says Maret, "of an able mind may remind us that the true seat of sovereignty and infallibility in the Church is not to be reached by logic but by appeal to Scripture and Tradition. Joseph de Maistre has not recognised this necessity. If he had not been a partisan dominated by a pre-conceived theory based on insecure foundations, he would have realised that a writer's first duty was to make a careful study of the General Councils, if he would understand the Church's constitution. And this he has most inadequately done."^[15]

 

Here then, said a contemporary French critic,^[16] we have the doctrine of infallible authority humanised and rationalised. But the contradiction is too gross to permit this solution of the problem to be taken literally. The tour de force is too puerile. We decline to believe that De Maistre was altogether duped by it. It is impossible that he could not have seen the huge abyss which separates Infallibility, as the Church understands it, from civil sovereignty and final judicial appeal. The former not only demands submission, but assent, belief. The second only imposes respect and exterior obedience, without involving any interior conviction or belief; without preventing discussion, contradiction, and reversal by subsequent legislation.

The ability of De Maistre is everywhere acknowledged. But he is a crowning illustration of error by excess. He is afflicted, as the same critic said, with the malady of logical intemperance. He is a victim of his own love of paradox. His passionate, masterful desire to push everything to the most extreme conclusions lands one on the brink of an intellectual abyss frightful to contemplate. He escapes with acrobatic agility where in all reason he ought to fall, and would fall, if his passion did not sustain him; where certainly calmer men must fall.^[17]

In addition to De Maistre, there was Lamennais—a philosopher rather than a theologian; clever, acute, impassioned, rhetorical; a sort of French Tertullian. In profound mistrust of human reason, he threw himself with emotional violence into the work of exalting authority as the one refuge and salvation against error. Unbalanced and extreme in all he did, he ended in an equally violent reaction against the very authority which he had laboured to exalt. But the moral of the change was lost upon his countrymen. Scandalised by his apostasy, they clung to his earlier ideals, and continued to maintain what the master had forsaken. He lived in discredit and died in distress, after mournfully witnessing the wide extension of an Extremist school, which he had devoted his best years to create, but was totally unable to restrain.

 

3. A third important factor was the political pressure exerted by the French Government upon the Church. The influence of Napoleon promoted the very last thing he desired, "for a Church, pinched, policed, and bullied by the State, was inevitably thrown back upon the support of the Papacy."^[18]

From this despotic treatment at home the Church naturally turned its eyes towards Rome. Rome, with its troubles and misfortunes, grew more dear. A whole school of deeply religious and saintly men arose in France, filled with enthusiastic devotion to the See of Peter. Lacordaire—whether defending the cause of religious education, or submitting himself to an adverse decision from Rome when his master Lamennais broke away, or re-establishing the order of Dominicans in France, or advocating the papal authority in the Cathedral at Paris—produced an immense effect in enlisting the sympathies of men with Rome. The gifted Montalembert,—eloquent, imaginative, threw the weight of his power and high position into the papal cause, and became among laymen recognised leader of Roman interests. The great Bishop Dupanloup, warmest-hearted of men, impulsively gave the movement an indiscriminating blessing, and brought upon himself numerous expressions of papal gratitude.

None of these were far-sighted men; none of them realised in the least the ultimate drift of the authority they so powerfully advanced. Lacordaire died before the question of Infallibility came within the council chamber of the Church; but Montalembert and Dupanloup alike beheld the prospect with consternation, and expressed their vehement disapproval.

 

4. Another element which is said to have contributed to make the French priests as a body largely Ultramontane was the despotic power of the French Episcopate. Probably no Bishops in Christendom were such autocrats as the French. The account given by the French statesman Ollivier, which is confirmed from other sources, represents the ordinary priest as subjected to a virtual slavery. If the despotic power of the French Bishops over their priests was to some extent moderated by piety, yet anxiety to maintain their authority constantly issued in acts of pitiless severity. The greater portion of the French priests were dismissible at will, without judicial process, or adequate opportunity for self-defence. Ollivier considers the causes of dismissal to have been frequently quite insufficient. One Bishop alone removed one hundred and fifty priests in a single month, and the State declined to interfere. Under these circumstances the Pope intervened. He took the part of the priests against the Bishop, and asserted the right of the inferior clergy to appeal to himself. From that moment, says Ollivier, Ultramontanism, hitherto forlorn enough, pervaded the mass of the priesthood. Down-trodden by a Gallican Episcopate, the priest hastened to proclaim the infallibility of a Pope by whom his own superiors might be the more effectively controlled. Ultramontanism grew to be a passion in the clerical world. And this movement from beneath affected the Episcopate. Either they were driven on by the force of the stream, or left stranded without the general sympathy. Ollivier says that whereas, in the past, men spoke of Gallican independence, it became a commonplace of Vaticanism to speak of French docility.^[19]

 

5. Another impressive step in the direction of Papal Infallibility was taken in 1854 by Pius IX. when he declared the theory that the Blessed Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived to be a dogma of the Church. This theory rejected—by St Bernard and by St Thomas, "a thesis of a theological school of the Middle Ages" opposed by the Dominican order—was pronounced by Pius, on his sole authority, not with the concurrence of a Council of Christendom, to be of faith. And to this decree the entire Roman Communion submitted. No such act had occurred in the Church before. And although this act could bear constructions not involving Infallibility, for the Gallican might ascribe its validity to the tacit consent of the Church, yet it powerfully promoted the Infallibility view; and it was constantly appealed to as a practical exercise of infallible authority and a justification for the Vatican Decrees of 1870.

Thus, if the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Church as opposed to that of the Pope was formerly the prevalent belief in France, as the independence of the Church of France diminished, the authority of Rome increased. The pressure of episcopal authority over the priests led the latter to magnify the distant authority of the Pope as a balance to local control; and while the Bishops resented, the priests desired an increase of papal power. Meanwhile the Roman See, wherever practicable, filled places of influence with Ultramontanes. The whole weight of the Jesuit teaching was thrown unitedly, persistently, and with tremendous force, in all these schools into the scale of Infallibility.

1. Jervis, iii. p. 323.
2. Ibid.
3. Consalvi, Memoires, i. p. 345.
4. Jervis, p. 363.
5. Ibid. p. 373.
6. Ibid. p. 362.
7. Lord Acton calls it "the most arbitrary act ever done by a Pope."—Hist. Freedom, p. 323.
8. Ollivier, i. p. 280.
9. Works (Migne's ed.), ii. 14.
10. Works, ii. p. 37.
11. Ibid. p. 38.
12. Bergier, Dictionnaire de Théologie (1850).
13. Du Pape, p. 20.
14. Mozley, Essay on Development, p. 126.
15. Maret, ii. p. 313.
16. Revue des deux Mondes (1858), p. 643.
17. Revue des deux Mondes (1858), p. 630. Cf. Lenormant's opinion of Joseph de Maistre: "Il avait plus de talent que de science, et surtout de bon sens, et pour ma part, je ne me rangerai jamais parmi ses disciples."—Les Origines de l'Histoire, i. p. 67, n.
18. Cf. Cambridge Modern History. French Revolution, ix. p. 771.
19. Ollivier, i. p. 300. See also the anonymous pamphlet, "Pourquoi le Clergé Français est Ultramontane" (1879).