The True Story of the Vatican Council/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH.
The additional chapter on the Infallibility of the Head of the Church was distributed, as we have seen, on the 7th of March, and in the last days of April the amendments of the bishops on the schema on the Primacy and the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff were printed and distributed to the Council. The schema consisted of an introduction and four chapters, of which the first related to the institution of the primacy in the person of S. Peter, the second to its perpetuity in his successors, the third to the nature and character of the primacy, and the fourth to the infallibility attached to the primacy.
The general discussion on the schema opened on the 13th of May by a report of the Commission on Faith. It lasted through fourteen sessions—that is, from the 14th of May to the 3d of June. By that time it had become evident that the general discussion of the subject was exhausted. Not a new argument was to be heard; the old were endlessly repeated. The general discussion had anticipated even the special discussions on the chapters. Sixty-four had spoken. A hundred more had put down their names to speak. But inasmuch as there were five special discussions yet to come, in every one of which every one of the seven hundred members of the Council might speak—that is to say, in all, each one five times—it was obvious that to continue the general discussion was only to talk against time. The hundred bishops whose names were down had still the privilege of speaking each one of them five times more—that is, on the introduction and the four chapters. The remaining six hundred in the Council, besides, might do the same. In all human affairs the limits of common sense must be respected at last. By the regulations of the Council, or, as we should say, by the order of the House, any ten bishops might petition the presidents, not indeed to close the discussion, but to do, what any two members of our Legislature may effect, to put it to the vote of the whole Council whether the discussion should be continued or closed. A petition was sent in signed not by ten but by a hundred or a hundred and fifty bishops; and the question of closing was put to the Council, which, by an immense majority, closed the general debate.
Then began the special discussions. On the introduction and the first two chapters there was little to be said. On the introduction seven spoke, on the first chapter, five, on the second only three. On the 9th of June began the debate on the third chapter, in which thirty-two spoke. The introduction, together with the first, second, and third chapters, and the amendments proposed, were then sent back to the Commission of Faith. On the 15th of June began the discussion of the fourth chapter—that is, on the infallibility, which occupied eleven sessions, during which fifty-seven spoke. No one asking permission to speak further, the discussion closed, and the chapter, with the amendments, was sent to the Commission as before. The whole time given to this discussion extended over nearly seven weeks—that is, from the 14th of May to the 4th of July. The introduction and the first two chapters were then reported and accepted almost unanimously. On the third chapter the amendments were seventy-two, which were reported on the 5th of July. Many were accepted, but many were further amended twice or three times, and the whole chapter was sent back once more to the Commission for further revision. Then on the 11th of July the report was made on the fourth chapter, relating to the infallibility, on which ninety-six amendments had been proposed. A new title and three new paragraphs had been added to it by way of introduction. On the 13th of July the third and fourth chapters were passed by a great majority. The whole schema was then printed again and distributed to the Council, and the final vote was taken. There were present 601 fathers of the Council. The Placets, or ayes, were 451; the Non placets, or noes, were 88; the Placets juxta modum, that is aye with modifications, were 62. These written amendments, to the number of 163, were sent as usual to the Commission. They were examined and reported on the 16th of July. Many were adopted, together with two amendments proposed by the commission. The whole was then reprinted and distributed, put once more to the vote, and passed.
In the same General Congregation a protest was read by the Cardinal President, which was to the following effect:—
From the time that the Holy Vatican Synod opened by the help of God, the bitterest warfare instantly broke out against it; and in order to diminish its venerable authority with the faithful, and, if it could be, to destroy it altogether, many writers vied with each other in attacking it by contumelious detraction and by the foulest calumnies; and that, not only among the heterodox and open enemies of the cross of Christ, but also among those who give themselves out as sons of the Catholic Church, and, what is most to be deplored, even among its sacred ministers.
The infamous falsehoods which have been heaped together in this matter in public newspapers of every tongue, and in pamphlets without the authors' names, published in all places and stealthily distributed, all men well know, so that we have no need to recount them one by one. But among anonymous pamphlets of this kind there are two especially, written in French, and entitled Ce qui se passe au Concile, and La dernière heure du Concile, which, for the arts of calumny and the licence of detraction, bear away the palm from all others. For in these not only are the dignity and full liberty of the Council assailed with the basest falsehoods, and the rights of the Holy See denied, but even the august person of our Holy Father is attacked with the gravest insults. Wherefore we, being mindful of our office, lest our silence, if longer maintained, should be perversely interpreted by men of evil will, are compelled to lift up our voice, and before you all, most reverend fathers, to protest and to declare all such things as have been uttered in the aforesaid newspapers and pamphlets to be altogether false and calumnious, whether in contempt of our Holy Father and of the Apostolic See, or to the dishonour of this Holy Synod, and on the score of its asserted want of legitimate liberty.
From the Hall of the Council, the 16th day of July 1870.
Philip, Cardinal de Angelis, President.
Antoninus, Cardinal de Luca.
Andrew, Cardinal Bizzari.
Aloysius, Cardinal Bilio.
Hannibal, Cardinal Capalti.
Whether history will ever record by whose hands the works here censured by name were written cannot now be said. I am glad that it does not fall to my lot to reveal them. The Council had been enveloped for eight months in a cloud of all manner of publications, from pamphlets to articles in newspapers sufficiently near to the truth to impose upon the world at large, and so far from the truth as to be calumniously false. Nobody was spared. The chief torrent of misrepresentation broke upon the august head of the Church, and fell upon all that were near to him in the measure of their nearness. Not only acts which were never done, words that were never spoken, motives that were never thought of, were imputed to those of the majority whose duty forced them to choose truth before popularity. The majority in the Council was a minority compared with their assailants from without, who by every form of opposition attacked them through eight long months. But they were supported by two things—the consciousness that the unbroken tradition of Divine Revelation was at their back, and that the sympathy of the Catholic Church throughout the world surrounded them on every side. Therefore they were silent till the conflict was over, and the work was done. With this protest closed the 85th General Congregation of the Council. There remained only one further act, the fourth Public Session.
The summer heat had long begun to affect the health of the Council. Many of the bishops had been compelled by illness to return home; many were still in Rome, but unable to attend the sessions; some were dead. It was therefore desired by a great majority that the fourth Public Session should be held without delay. To this was added the daily expectation of war between France and Prussia. On the evening of the 17th, fifty-five bishops signed a declaration announcing their intention not to appear at the Public Session. On the next day it was believed that they left Rome. Tuesday, the 18th of July, was fixed for the Public Session. It was held with all the usual solemnities, Pius the Ninth presiding in person. After the solemn mass the Holy Scriptures were placed open upon the lectern on the high altar, the Veni Creator was sung as usual. The Bishop of Fabriano then read the Decree de Romano Pontifice from the ambo, and the under-secretary of the Council called on every father of the Council by name to vote. Each, as his name was called, took off his mitre, rose from his seat, and voted. There were present 535; of these 533 voted Placet, 2 only voted Non placet. The scrutators and the secretary of the Council, having counted up the votes, went up to the throne, and declared that all the fathers present, two only excepted, had voted for the decree. The Pontiff then confirmed the decree in the usual words. In a brief address to the Council he prayed that the few who had been of another mind in a time of agitation might in a season of calm be reunited to the great majority of their brethren, and contend with them for the truth. The words of the allocution were as follows:—
The Te Deum was then sung, and the pontifical benediction closed both the fourth Public Session of the Council of the Vatican and a conflict which for centuries had troubled the peace of the Church. In the first voting on this Schema before the Public Session, 601 fathers of the Council voted. Of these 451 voted for the decree, 88 against it, and 62 for it juxta modum, or aye conditionally. In the fourth Public Session 535 voted: 55 absented themselves, which would raise the number to 590. Eleven were absent, from what cause is unknown; but as permission had been given some days before to leave Rome, they may have set out on their journey homeward. In the majority of 533 were included 52 of the 62 who voted juxta modum, or conditionally, in the last general congregation. This raised the 451 of that day to 503. Therefore 30 who had been absent from the congregation had returned to vote in the last Public Session. The two bishops who voted on that day against the decree, as soon as Pius the Ninth had confirmed it, at once submitted and made a profession of their faith. They proved by their adverse vote the liberty which the 55 who left Rome equally possessed; and by their prompt submission they showed to the world that their opposition had been offered not to the truth of the doctrine, but to the expediency of defining it.
An English journal which throughout the Council laboured week by week to deride or to depreciate the Council and all its acts, described this closing scene in these words: 'The ceremony (of the 18th of July), taken as a ceremony, appears to have fallen very flat.' The Council had been for eight months engaged in something more than ceremonies. Such, however, was not the estimate of another witness.
Other critics saw in this thunderstorm an articulate voice of divine indignation against the definition. They forgot Sinai and the Ten Commandments.
Having closed the narrative of what passed in the Council, we must now turn back to notice what had been passing outside, and we must go someway into the past. We have already seen with what activity the Bavarian Government had endeavoured, from the spring of 1869, to bring down the united opposition of all the governments of Europe upon the Holy See before the Council assembled, and even to prevent its meeting. The Council was no sooner opened than the same policy was pursued by diplomatists in Rome. They were in intimate and constant communication with those who were in opposition within the Council. Many of them obtained every schema as it was distributed to the bishops. It is to be remembered that this fact proves the violation of the secret imposed on all who were within the Council, and in those who had sworn to its observance it involved perjury. One exception is to be made. An ambassador of a great Catholic power rejected every offer to obtain for him the schemata, and when at last he desired to have some particular document,, he wrote openly to the Secretaiy of the Council to ask for it. The document was at once sent to him with the assurance that whatsoever he desired should be at once placed in his hands. The schemata surreptitiously obtained were without delay published in the Augsburg Gazette. One of the least scrupulous of these agents expressed himself in these words:—
The governments are by degrees acting an almost ridiculous part towards the Council. First boasts, then embarrassment, connected with meaningless threats; and at last the confession that the right time has passed by, and that the Curia has command of the situation. If German science had not saved its position, and been able to establish a firm opposition in the Council, even in contradiction to its own will, and kept it alive, and if our Lord God had not also set stupidity and ignorance on the side of the Curia and of the majority, the governments would have been put to shame in the sight of the whole world. Prince Hohenlohe, in fact, is the only statesman possessed of a deeper insight in this question, and by degrees he has come ta be looked upon as belonging to the minority.[2]
This inflated vainglory neither needs comment nor is worth censuring. But it proves to all what ought to be known, how the bishops of 'the minority' were pursued and harassed by men of a lower mind, some being of the priesthood, and others of the laity who gathered in Rome to conspire and intrigue against the Council. They were well known, and their words and acts were noted; but inasmuch as they were not feared, they were let alone. A despatch was sent to Cardinal Antonelli on the 20th of February by Count Daru, then Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris, for the purpose of preventing the definition. It was answered on the 19th of March in a reply which demonstrates that the notion of incompatibility between the infallibility of the Pope and the civil allegiance of subjects is a chimera. Ever since a Christian world existed, States have been in peaceful relations with an infallible Church. They have not cared to enquire whether the infallibility resided in the head, or in the body, or in both.
During the eight months of the Council, Rome was full of rumours as to the intentions of governments. It was believed that the French army would be withdrawn, and that the Italian Revolution would be let in. Letters came from France threatening the withdrawal of the French troops. When these tidings reached Pius the Ninth, he said to an English bishop, 'Do they think that the Vicar of Christ, unworthy as he is, can be moved by such threats?' Renewed attempts were made to induce the governments to join in a final and united pressure upon the Council, the effect of which was, as might have been foreseen, to demonstrate more clearly than ever that the supreme authority of the Church as the witness and teacher of Christianity was at stake. The necessity of the definition was once more forced by these facts upon those who for a while hesitated. After this there were in the Council only those who believed the definition to be inopportune, and those who saw it to be necessary.
It has seemed better to reserve until the end of this narrative a subject of which the adversaries of the Catholic Church have endeavoured to avail themselves in their warfare against it—that is, the attitude of a certain number of the bishops towards the decrees and action of the Council. Pomponio Leto, who writes as their friend and partisan, has done them a grievous wrong. His history reads like the history of a Parliamentary opposition. Such the world believed them to be, and tried to make them; but they were Catholic bishops, and the world was disappointed. The Council of the Vatican was held under obstructive and menacing circumstances of a kind to which no council was ever hitherto exposed. The world has opposed all councils, the civil powers have been often either openly or secretly hostile, but down to the Council of Trent, and the Council of Trent also included, no council has been the passive and silent butt against which the tongues and the pens of the world were so unceasingly levelled. The press of Europe in all languages, and almost every day for eight months, discharged every weapon of ridicule, sarcasm, and misrepresentation against the Pope and the Council. Solid argument there was little indeed. But the world is more swayed by ridicule than by argument. The havoc made in France in the last century by the spirit of mockery is recorded in history as a terrible example of the deadly evil which can be wrought by so contemptible an agency. But there was in activity another and a darker power. The indiction of the Council had hardly been published when "Janus" appeared, true to his name, double-faced and double-tongued—a book more full of false accusations than any that ever came from nominally Catholic hands. Published in all languages, and greedily devoured by those who are not of the Catholic unity, no book has perhaps placed more stumbling-blocks in the way of men who were seeking the truth. The odium, suspicion, and prejudice excited by it in the minds of our separated brethren will cost many who were on the threshold of truth the grace which is beyond all price. In the face of these boisterous winds, the Council of the Vatican, trusting to its Divine Master, launched out into the deep. For eight months it held on its way without changing its course, bearing unmoved the stress of the storm. But though the Council was unmoved, individual men were shaken. We have seen before how governments and diplomatists were already in motion conspiring against the Council. "Janus" had told the world what the Council would do, and the civil powers were invoked by the same hands and voices to prevent its acts, or even to hinder its meeting.
When, therefore, at the outset of the Council, it was heard that a certain number of bishops had formed themselves into an opposition, the world and the newspapers, the non-Catholics outside the unity of the Church, and a small number of discontented or pretentious minds within it, thought that the Council was divided, and that Rome would be defeated. From that moment the press teemed with eulogies of the bishops who were supposed to be in opposition. They were learned, eloquent, far-sighted, noble-minded, manly, independent. The majority was a herd of ignoble, uncultured, servile, ignorant flatterers. The bishops of the opposition were mortified, day after day, by praise for words and acts they had neither done nor spoken; they were dishonoured by commendations for conduct which, as Catholic bishops, they abhorred. It was hardly possible for them to clear themselves without violation of the secrecy of the Council. They had to bear what members of Privy Councils and of Cabinets have to suffer—the eulogies which dishonour them at the expense of their colleagues and the perversion of their conduct, which they cannot clear without a breach of integrity. Nevertheless, at last the bishops of Mayence and of Rottenburg were compelled to expose the falsehoods of their admirers.[3] Thus much it is necesssary to say in order to protect a number of Catholic bishops from the claim laid upon them by the world as its servants, and to protest once for all that the motives, conduct, and intentions of the bishops who opposed the definition of the infallibility, are to be judged not by the representations of newspapers, of non-Catholics, or of false brethren, but by their own words and actions.
As for the motives of those who opposed the act of defining, we have already seen that the arguments for and against the opportuneness of defining the infallibility were many and grave. No man would be a safe or competent judge of the arguments in favour of defining who could not also fully weigh the gravity of the arguments against it. These reasons have been amply given already in the last chapter, and they need not be repeated here. As for the motives which governed the fifty-five bishops who absented themselves from the fourth Public Session, we are bound to believe their word. Who should know their motives if they themselves did not? It is mere trifling, or worse, for others to pretend to know better. They tell us that they thought it unseasonable, inexpedient, and inopportune to make a definition. Posterity will believe them rather than their detractors, who are already forgotten or rejected as false witnesses. So much for their motives, which no man may judge, but God only; and when we remember who they were, and what some of them have done and suffered for conscience' sake, history will jealously protect them from the breath of the world, whether in slander or in praise.
But next as to their conduct. When Pius the Ninth first announced his thought of holding an Œcumenical Council, he not only invited but laid upon his counsellors, whether in Rome or from other nations, the obligation to declare to him as before God whether it was opportune to hold a Council, and what it would be opportune for the Council to treat. Everybody was then either opportunist or non-opportunist, for the main question was "what is opportune? " The Council was not called together to register edicts; it was convened for the purpose of discussion. Discussion, among mortals, means divergence of minds, and two sides at least. When the schemata were laid before the Council, Pius the Ninth expressly told the bishops that they were not his work, and did not bear the stamp of his authority. They were put into the hands of the Council to examine, discuss, amend, reject, and even "bury," as one said, if found to need interment. The Council had a liberty of speech so great that a bishop of one of the freest countries of the world said: "Our Congress has not greater liberty of discussion than the Vatican Council." Why then should it be turned to the reproach of any bishop if he used the right which the whole Council possessed? The bishops opposed freely whatsoever they thought to deserve it. The first Constitution on Faith was opposed, totally recast in form, but in doctrine was immutably the same; and it was finally passed by an unanimous vote of 667, including, therefore, the vote of every bishop who before had offered opposition. The schema of the Little Catechism was opposed. The "order" of the Council was opposed. It was amended and opposed again. The introduction of the infallibility into the Council was opposed. The schema was opposed at every stage in what may be called its second reading and in committee, and clause by clause. It was sent back, recast, and opposed again. In every stage of its progress those who dissented used their right and privilege, which may be called innate in a council or constitutional in a commonwealth, to oppose whatsoever they thought to be inexpedient or inopportune. In this certainly they were acting within the rights possessed by all members of the Council, and the exercise of this right was in itself legitimate.
But it may be said that they used their right too freely and with pertinacity when they saw, or might have seen, that an immense majority of the Council was opposed to them. It is not the duty of an historian to extenuate any fault, but he ought to be still more careful not to impute faults too readily. It is not to be denied that the Council—for by that term may rightly be described its great and united majority—judged that the privilege of opposition was used too freely in matters of an indifferent or unimportant kind, and that it was persevered in too long when it was evident that no legitimate result could be obtained. The Council saw, or believed itself to see, that after a certain date the inordinate prolongation of discussion could have no effect but to render the definition impossible, not by argument or reason, conviction or persuasion, but by the chapter of accidents or by talking against time. But this would be entering once more into the realm of intentions, which is under a higher jurisdiction than that of history. Looking back upon the Council after six years of strange and afflicting events, which have calmed and united the minds of those who were then opposed to each other, we are better able to weigh and appreciate the conduct of men as they acted either singly or together. Moreover, the memory of many among the foremost in those events gives a great solemnity to*our judgment. The Archbishop of Paris was a man of great culture and intellectual gifts. The playfulness of manner with which he bore himself towards those who were most opposed to him took off all sharpness from the conflict in which they were mutually engaged. We then little thought of the vision of horror in which he was soon to be enveloped, and of the death which should so soon be inflicted on him in odium Christi. His heroic refusal for the sake of others to save his life has raised him to the fellowship of those who have won a martyr's crown. All this makes the task of history lighter. To this memory, again, must be added the noble fortitude of the German episcopate with the Archbishop of Cologne at its head. The bishops of Germany have won for themselves the dignity of confessors for the supreme and infallible authority of the See of Peter. They were the first to vindicate the Council of the Vatican by their courage. We might go further, and enumerate the great public services rendered by eloquence and energy to the Church in France by some who left the Council before the 18th of July. All these things weighed together will incline future historians to sum up the contest for the definition of the infallibility in some such way as this:—"Since the last Œcumenical Council a theological question of the gravest kind, relating to the doctrinal authority of the head of the Church, and therefore pervading his whole jurisdiction, had divided the minds of some in France, and partially also in Germany and in England. An Œcumenical Council was summoned to meet, in 1869, in Rome. Five hundred bishops in 1867 had affirmed in the amplest terms the doctrinal authority of the head of the Church. Of these the majority desired that in the coming Council all questions on this doctrine should be closed, and all future controversies ended. By word and by writing they declared their desire for such a definition. On the other hand, some who had joined in the acts of 1867, and had shared in the composition of the address, were of opinion that, as a matter of prudence, the subject ought not to be brought before the Council, or, if brought before it, should, as a matter of prudence, be set aside. For months before the Council assembled efforts were made on both sides, openly and without reserve, in public documents, in pastoral letters, in theological works, to promote or to prevent the definition. There was no concealment or intrigue on either side; it was needed by neither, it would have been worse than useless if it had been attempted. All was as open as a general election in England. On either side every act was known, and the desires and intentions of each side were manifest. Under such circumstances the Council met in December 1869. At once on both parts those who held for and those who held against this definition drew together. It was natural and legitimate that they should confer and unite, and form themselves into some kind of permanent combination. On which part this was done first no history can certainly tell, but the interval at most could only be that of a few days sooner or later. Those who were opposed to the definition were believed by the number of names attached to one of their petitions to amount to about 120. The first test of the number of those who desired the definition was by the month of February known certainly to be more than 450, for many declined to sign the petition who declared that if the definition were proposed they would give it a steadfast support. The two sides may henceforward be called the majority and the minority. Now, without doubt, on both sides there was often a feeling that some things ought not to have been said or done. Bishops are men, and men are liable to infirmities; nevertheless, the whole was conducted with perfect openness and in the light of day. It was a fair trial of reason, argument, and legitimate strength. The majority steadily grew greater, the minority steadily grew less. In the final and solemn vote, 533—that is, 33 more than the unanimous 500 of the Centenary—voted for the definition, 2 voted against it, and 55 stayed away, making in all 57 adverse votes. This was all that remained of the 120 supposed, but never known, to be in opposition. The majority was therefore all but ten to one." With these facts before their eyes men have no need to fetch about for intrigues and cabals to account for the action and result of the Vatican Council. It was a fair, open contest. About a tenth part of the Council endeavoured by argument, reason, influence, and the powers given to them by the order or procedure of the Council, to prevail upon the vast majority of their brethren, which was morally, indeed, the episcopate of the Church, to follow their guidance. The majority were unable to swerve from their conviction of what was not only most opportune, but of absolute necessity for the welfare of the Church, for the authority of its head, and for the certainty of its doctrine. The majority prevailed over the minority. The universal law of civilised life and of human society governed the Council of the Vatican. The minority were not wronged because the majority would not swerve. What injury was done to them if the Council declined to yield to the judgment or will of those who were only a tenth of its number? The only complaint that could be made would be that a majority would not yield to a minority; but would that complaint be just or reasonable?
Some adversaries of the Vatican Council have catered for the world with stories of violence, and outcries, and tumults. Among others an anonymous narrator, Pomponio Leto, who declares himself to be an outsider, and could therefore only speak by hearsay, is quoted as an eye-witness. He graphically describes the confusion of the cardinals, "who pulled their red hats over their eyes."[4] The cardinals had no hats, red or otherwise, and the eye-witness is convicted of fabrication. But it is not Pomponio Leto who says he saw this scene; it is the addition of those who have endeavoured to serve their hostility by destroying the honour of Cardinal Vitelleschi. In spite of. repeated categorical denials from his brothers, Pomponio Leto is, for controversial purposes, still declared to be Cardinal Vitelleschi. Now the cardinal certainly would not have talked about red hats. Nevertheless Pomponio Leto, who was inside when the cardinals pulled their hats over their eyes, was outside when the great tumult arose in which Cardinal Schwarzenberg was carried fainting from the Ambo to his seat. He saw, he tells us, the servants outside rushing to the doors of the Council, fearing for the lives of their masters. It is with such melodramatic and mendacious stuff that those who wish to think evil of the Vatican Council are fed and duped.
But history has other witnesses to depend upon. Members of the Council who were never absent from its public congregations except about five or six times in all the eighty-five sessions have declared that no such scenes as Pomponio Leto, following the Italian papers, has described, ever took place. On two occasions the ordinary calm and silence of the Council was broken. In its sessions no applause was ever permitted, no expressions of assent or dissent were allowed. The dead silence in which the members had to speak contrasted strangely with all other public assemblies. It was like nothing but preaching in a church. But on two occasions the speaker tried the self-control of his audience beyond its strength. Strong and loud expressions of dissent were made, and a very visible resentment, at matter not undeserving of it, was expressed. And yet nothing in the Council of the Vatican went beyond or even equalled events of the same kind in the Council of Trent. It is indeed true that one excess does not justify another; but the events prove that when men deliberate on matters of eternal import, they are more liable to be stirred by deep emotions than when they are occupied with the things of this world. When the prelates at Trent heard a speaker say that the Archbishop of Salzburg claimed to confirm the elections of bishops, we read that they stirred up a mighty noise, crying "Out with him! out with him!" Others repeated "Go out! go out!" and others "Let him be anathema!" Another turned to them, and answered, "Be you anathema."[5] There may have been noise in the Council of the Vatican, but it did not reach this climax. Reference might be made to a certain debate on the 23rd of March in this year, 1877, when the majesty of the Commons of England lost itself in clamour, chiefly because a majority declined to let a minority have its way.
The axiom, "Where there is smoke there is fire," is sure enough. And these tales and tragedies could hardly have been invented if somebody by his imprudence had not made a momentary disturbance, and if the disturbers had not made more noise than they ought in their sudden heat. But in truth the Italian papers and the Augsburg Gazette are the chief sources of these mendacious exaggerations. An Italian paper'gave in full the speech of Bishop Strossmayer, who was the subject of one of these Homeric commotions. In that speech he was made to apostrophise by name, as present before him and as a chief offender, a bishop who was not there at all to be apostrophised. When the speech had gone the round of Europe in a polyglot version, Bishop Strossmayer in a Roman paper denounced it as a forgery, and his letter has been reprinted again and again in England. Nevertheless the speech is reprinted continually to this day at Glasgow and Belfast, and sown broadcast by post over these kingdoms, and probably wherever the English tongue is spoken.
These details are given not to show that the Vatican Council was never disturbed, or that the Council of Trent was outrageous, but to show that, as it ought to be, a spot upon the rochet of a bishop is more visible than upon the broadcloth of a layman; and so, if a bishop or a council of bishops are for a moment stirred beyond their self-command, if for once or for twice in eight months there is a clamour such as happens almost every week in our Legislature, the world will dilate the fault into an outrage, and will deceive itself by its own exaggerations. It can be said with the simplest truth that not an animosity, nor an alienation, nor a quarrel broke the charity of the fathers of the Council. They were opposed on a high sense of duty, and they withstood each other as men that are in earnest; if for a moment the contention was sharp among them, so it was with Paul and Barnabas; and if they parted asunder on the 18th of July, it was only for a moment, and they are now once more of one mind and of one heart in the world-wide unity of the infallible faith.
And here we may leave the story of the Council. What remains is to examine the cause of all this tumult round about the Council, and in the governments and newspapers and non-Catholic communities of the world; for within the Council and within the Church the movement of men's minds was deep but still, and soon subsided into tranquillity, like the agitation of pure waters which return to their former calm and leave no sediment.
- ↑ Times correspondent quoted in the Vatican, August 5, 1870.
- ↑ Friederich's 'Diary,' p. 202.
- ↑ "Mgr. Hefele and Mgr. von Ketteler have found it necessary to publish a statement with reference to documents which have appeared in the Augsburg Gazette. 'We can neither speak,' says the Bishop of Rottenburg, 'of what the schemata contain, nor of anything which is said by the orators in the general congregations. But it is evident that there are people, not bishops, but having relations with the Council, who are not restrained by duty or conscience. … The memorial of a certain number of German and Austrian bishops against the definition of infallibility ought not to have been published before it was presented to the Holy Father. I myself, who signed it, could not obtain a copy of it. Yet what has happened? Before the address was sent to the Vatican it was printed in the newspapers—I need not say to our great displeasure—and to this day we do not know how it was done. … It is probable that the auri sacra fames has something to do with it.' The Bishop of Mayence also protests against 'the systematic dishonesty of the correspondent of the Augsburg Gazette.' 'It is a pure invention,' he observes, ' that the bishops named in that journal declared that Döllinger represented, as to the substance of the question, the opinion of a majority of the German bishops. And this,' the German prelate adds, 'is not an isolated error, but part of a system, which consists in the daily attempt to publish false news, with the object of deceiving the German public, according to a plan concerted beforehand. … It will be necessary one day to expose in all their nakedness and abject mendacity the articles of the Augsburg Gazette. They will present a formidable and lasting testimony to the extent of the injustice of which party men, who affect the semblance of superior education, have been guilty against the Church.'"—From the Vatican of March 4, 1870.
"There was a time when I was a grateful disciple of the Provost Döllinger, and when I respected him sincerely. During several years I attended all his lectures at Munich. I was then of one mind with him on almost all the great questions of ecclesiastical history. At a later period, in 1848, we were associated together as deputies in the
German Parliament of Frankfort. Even at that date, when all the great questions of our time were so frequently agitated, I think that I coincided with him in his political views. I recognise with grief that there is now a complete opposition between the opinions of the Provost Döllinger and my own as to the substance of the question which actually occupies our attention. The Provost Döllinger has been publicly pointed out as having co-operated with the author of that libel which appeared under the name of 'Janus,' and which is directed against the Church; and we have no evidence that he has hitherto thought fit to declare, as an obedient son of the Catholic Church, that he does not share the opinions which animate that work. The book of 'Janus ' is not only directed against the infallibility of the Pope, but even against his primacy, against that great and divine institution in the Church to which we owe so manifestly, by means of her unity, the victories of the Church over all her adversaries in all ages. 'Janus' is moreover a tissue of numberless falsifications of the facts of history, to which perhaps nothing but the 'Provincial Letters' of Pascal can be compared for violation of truth. And not only has the Provost Döllinger failed up to the present time to disavow his co-operation with the author of 'Janus,' but he is himself notoriously the anonymous author of the writing entitled 'Considerations presented to the Bishops of the Council on the Question of the Infallibility of the Pope ' a writing which is indeed much more moderate than 'Janus,' but which is nevertheless so perfectly similar to it in general tone of thought, and betrays aims so exactly identical, that the world, has justly inferred a most intimate connection between the authors of 'Janus' and of the 'Considerations.' … As to what concerns myself, and the notion that I may be one of those who agree with Dr Döllinger as to the substance of the questions most earnestly debated at this moment, I formally declare that nothing can be less true. I am in agreement only with the Dollinger whose lessons formerly filled his disciples with love and enthusiasm for the Church and the Apostolic See; I have nothing in common with the Döllinger whom the enemies of the Church and of the Apostolic See now load with praises.—† William Emmanuel, Baron von Ketteler, Bishop of Mayence. Rom: February 8, 1870.' From the Vatican of February 25, 1870. - ↑ Controversialists and adversaries of the Catholic Church have asserted and reasserted with such tenacity, after reiterated contradiction, that the work entitled Eight Months in Rome during the Vatican Council by Pomponio Leto, was the work of the late Cardinal Vitelleschi, that it may be well to give an outline of the case.
On its publication in Italy some years ago it fell dead from the press; but when translated into English it fell upon a soil prepared by Janus and Quirinus. It was at once said that it was reported to be the work of Cardinal Vitelleschi; next, that it was probably so; then, that it was certainly so; finally, it was quoted without question or doubt as the work of the cardinal. None of this happened during his life; it began immediately after his death. Pope Honorius was declared to be a heretic forty years after his death—Cardinal Vitelleschi was declared to be Pomponio Leto as soon as he could not expose the imputation. The hope of setting one cardinal against another was a motive too strong to be resisted. The Times first began cautiously: the Daily Telegraph pushed on more boldly. The brothers of Cardinal Vitelleschi, hearing of this stain cast on the memory of their brother, wrote to expose its falsehood. Their words were published, but commented on as evasive; and the calumny was repeated. Next, on the 5th of July 1876, the Guardian reasserted and filled out the charge with circumstances. Then came the Saturday Review. Then the Contemporary, which over and over again says, "Cardinal Vitelleschi writes," "Cardinal Vitelleschi affirms," "Cardinal Vitelleschi tells us," &c. As if the two Marchesi Vitelleschi, brothers of the cardinal, had not pledged their honour in a public contradiction. Then the Quarterly Review which, with a candour that stands alone, inserted in its first
number of this year a correction of this injurious error. But after all this, on the 24th of February 1877, the Saturday Review, as if nothing had happened, speaks of Cardinal Vitelleschi as regarding the decrees of 1870 with alarm and disgust. Cardinal Vitelleschi voted for those decrees on the 18th of July 1870. After all this it is not wonderful that the two brothers, Marchesi Vitelleschi, should write the the following letter with a just indignation:
"Rome: January 8, 1877.
"I am grieved beyond measure that there should be in England anyone who still persists in the will to believe that the author of the book entitled 'Pomponio Leto' was my lamented brother, Cardinal Vitelleschi. At the end of June last year, 1876, a protest was inserted in one English journal, signed by us his brothers, in refutation of this odious calumny. I pray, however, that, if thought fit, this renewed protest be inserted in some newspaper, by which I repel, on the part also of my brothers, this most false assertion. And I declare, with full certainty of my conscience, that Cardinal Salvatore Vitelleschi was not in any way the author of the said book; so that whosoever shall say the contrary falsifies shamelessly, and can only say it to outrage the Church of which my deceased brother was a member without reproach."(Signed)Angelo Nobili Vitelleschi."As to the true authorship of Pomponio Leto various things are affirmed. It belongs to the anonymous school of Janus and Quirinus, and seems to be the work of more hands than one, and to betray both a German and an English contributor.
- ↑ Theiner, Acta genuina S. Œc. Conc. Tridentini, tom. ii., p. 606.