Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility/Preface
PREFACE
The following pages have been written to show the difficulties experienced by Roman Catholics in assenting to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. No attempt is here made to write a complete account of the Vatican Council. Indeed, many subjects discussed in that Assembly are entirely omitted. Our interest is with one doctrine alone. What is attempted is, simply to sketch the inner history of Roman opposition to the dogma in different countries and several centuries, until and after the memorable Decree of 18th July 1870. We are simply concerned to show the process by which a very considerable section of Bishops, priests, and laity in the Roman Church were constrained to pass from one belief to its opposite.
The literature of the subject is, of course, immense. A considerable part of the details here recorded have never appeared in English before. They lie buried in enormous German treatises, or in the vast official Acta of the Council; or in the documentary collections of Cecconi, Von Schulte, Friedrich, Friedberg, and many others; or in scattered pamphlets and periodicals to which access is now by no means easily obtained.
The materials for a history of the opposition to the doctrine have of recent years largely increased. All the principal actors in the Vatican disputes have, by this time, passed away; and a large series of biographies have placed at our disposal private letters never published while they lived.
But it will be obvious that an Ultramontane biographer of a Bishop who vehemently opposed the doctrine may be gravely perplexed between the conflicting claims of history and of edification. His loyalty to truth, his reverence for the personage of whom he writes, his regard for living authority, with its tremendous powers to revise, cancel, or condemn, his proper disinclination to scandalise the faithful by rigorous records of episcopal unbelief, or to reveal the family disunions before an incredulous world—are elements which, when they coexist, may, even in the sincerest mind possibly blend together in very various proportions. At any rate the biographies of certain great French Bishops of the Vatican struggle manifest marked reluctance and hesitation in recording fully the facts. And even when the facts have been fairly fully recorded, the English translator has—for whatever reasons—condensed them, we had almost said mutilated them, beyond recognition.
The recently published selection of Lord Acton's letters has increased our knowledge of his attitude toward the Infallibility Decree; but the entire omission of correspondence during ten most critical years of the struggle suggests, what other considerations endorse, that there is yet considerably more remaining unrevealed.
Still, with whatever drawbacks, the resources at a writer's disposal to-day are vastly greater than they were some years ago.
Accordingly the following pages are written under a strong sense that the material is ample, that the history of the minority has never yet for English people been fully told, and with a desire to supply the omission.
It should be added that the adverse criticisms herein repeated are almost entirely derived from Roman Catholic sources, and are, as far as possible, given in the actual words. Protestant criticism has been systematically excluded. The object being simply to describe how the doctrine of Pontifical Infallibility appeared; what difficulties, intellectual, historic, and moral, it created; what fierce and desperate strife its increasing ascendency awakened; how, and with what results, moral and intellectual, it was finally regarded, not by the outer world, nor by other religious communions, but by clergy and laity within the limits of the Roman Catholic Church.
Since these pages have passed through the press, Turmel's Histoire du Dogme de la Papauté has been placed upon the Roman Index of prohibited books (5th July 1909). It is therefore among that lengthy list of modern writings which no member of the Roman Obedience may "dare to read or retain." The interests of edification are conceived by Authority as incompatible with those of historical research. Such procedure deprives the historian of that freedom to report results without which history cannot be written.
The author desires to express his deep indebtedness to the kindness of the Reverend Darwell Stone, Librarian of the Pusey House, who has read through the proof sheets of this book. He is of course in no way responsible for its contents; but it has been the greatest privilege to have the encouragement and aid of so critical and learned an adviser.
Note.—The number of Bishops who, though resident in Rome, absented themselves from the Vatican Council on the day of the Decree is variously given on page 268 as 91, on page 271 as 70, and on page 281 as more than 80. It will be noticed that these variations are due to the authors quoted; the first being that given by Quirinus; the second by the letter of the Opposition to the Pope; the third by Dr Newman.