# Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility/Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII
I
THE MINORITY AFTER THE VATICAN DECREE
The 18th of July 1870 is from any point of view one of the most critical days in the history of the Papacy. It is the transition from old Catholicism into new. It is the consummation of a theory of spiritual authority; the centralising and condensing of all power in one individual. It is not in the least the necessary or the logical conclusion of the principle of authority: for the expression of authority, either through the Collective Episcopate or through reception by the Universal Church, is just as consistent and just as logical; and has the additional advantage of corresponding with the primitive facts of Christian history.
The 18th of July was also a momentous date in the annals of the Roman temporal power. On the very next day began the Franco-Prussian War. From that date onwards the tragedy of conflict precluded any meeting of German and French Bishops in Council at Rome. The Council was necessarily interrupted, its resumption indefinitely postponed. The disaster to France meant the recalling of the French troops from Rome. Then followed the capture of the city by United Italy, and the establishment of the Italian Throne at the gates of the Vatican. The temporal power of the Papacy ​vanished like a dream, and Pius IX. considered himself a prisoner within the Vatican precincts. The canon of the Castle of St Angelo announced the entry of King Humbert, and various convents and palaces were seized and confiscated for secular departments and imperial uses.
A curious Italian comment on the opposition in the French Episcopate may be found in the diary of Cardinal Pitra, a learned member of the Benedictine Order, resident during the Council in Rome. Cardinal Pitra was librarian of the Vatican, and placed himself in that capacity at the disposal of the Bishops. If he kept aloof from the intrigues of every kind which, says his biographer, were then so numerous, he kept a careful diary of the events in which he displays himself as a decided Ultramontane. He even adopted the paradox that the passing of the new decree would diminish rather than increase the abyss between the Eastern Churches and Rome. But Pitra's comments after the French retreat illustrates contemporary feeling. He thought that the Franco-German War, which immediately broke out, was providentially designed to prevent concerted action between the Bishops of these two countries. When the Italians entered Rome one of their first acts was to destroy the villa where Dupanloup during the Council had resided. This was, according to Pitra, because Providence desired to efface the reminders of opposition. Pitra traced the course of the war, and noted how the soldiers advanced through Metz, Rheims, Paris, and Orleans—all Gallican cities; whereas they did not reach Besançon, Dijon, and Marseilles—all Ultramontane Episcopates. "We are here," murmurs the Cardinal, "witnesses to the preliminaries of the Judgment Day."
Cecconi, Archbishop of Florence, who collected many ​documents concerned with the struggle, relates that Pius IX. used to distinguish three periods of the Council: the preparations; the assemblies; the conclusion. Of these, the first period was Satanic, the second Human, the third Divine.
But before a minority Bishop could assent to the new Decree, there were questions to be faced and answered; questions which he must answer in his own behalf, and which also he was certain to find assailing him, whether from his Clergy or Laity, who like himself had hitherto deprecated the doctrine or disbelieved it. There was the question, perhaps, first of all, Is this Council ecumenical? Is it a true exponent of the Universal Church? There are Councils of many kinds, with varying degrees of authority, legitimately responded to with varying degrees of respect. Is this Council of the highest kind—that which possesses a real and absolute finality? This question was widely debated within the Roman body. It was said by high authorities in the Roman Communion that the Vatican Council did not fulfil the conditions of freedom essential to the creation of a dogma of the faith. Many writers of the period assert this; some in the most impassioned terms. Hefele emphatically declared it. Some affirmed that moral unanimity was essential to representation of the Universal Church. Such unanimity, it was notorious, the vote for Infallibility did not possess. Accordingly there was no rush of the defeated Bishops into immediate acquiescence. On the contrary, there was suspense, uncertainty, delay. Individual isolated Bishops took no decided steps. They waited to see what others would do, what time would produce, what thought and reflection might suggest.
Fessler, indeed, late Secretary of the Vatican ​Assembly, assured them that their course was clear. He drew a sketch of the conduct which he considered would be ideal for a perplexed Bishop under these trying circumstances.
"If even up to … the last General Congregation before the Solemn Session a Bishop is not satisfied as to all his difficulties, or if he thinks it better that the decision should not yet be pronounced on such and such a doctrine, he may, in the interval between the last General Congregation and the Solemn Session, acquire a full conviction on the subject by discoursing with other theologians, by study of the subject and by prayer, and may thus overcome his last difficulties, and see that it is well that the definition should be made."
This portion of Fessler's advice was not much use since it appeared subsequently to the final Session. Whether the advice to "acquire a full conviction" in the interval between the last General Congregation and the Solemn Session would have been very valuable, may be judged from the fact that the interval for "discourse with other theologians," "study and prayer," was two days. The subsequent struggles will show what the minority Bishops thought of acquiring a full conviction in two days.
Should, however, the best use of the interval prove unavailing, Fessler's advice was as follows:—
"Nay, even if he cannot attain this full conviction and insight into the matter by any exertion of his own, he will wait for the decision of the Council with a calm trust in God, without himself taking part in it, because up to this point he lacks the necessary certainty of conviction. When, however, the Council by its decision puts an end to the matter, then at length his Catholic conscience tells him plainly what he must ​now think, and what he must now do; for it is then that the Catholic Bishop, whom hitherto unsolved difficulties have kept from participation in the Public Session, and from the solemn voting, says: 'Now it is undoubtedly certain that this doctrine is revealed by God, and is therefore a portion of the Catholic faith, and therefore I accept it on faith, and must now proclaim it to my clergy and people as a doctrine of the Catholic Church. The difficulties which hitherto made it hard for me to give my consent, and to the perfect solution of which I have not even yet attained, must be capable of a solution; and so I shall honestly busy myself with all the powers of my soul to find their solution for myself, and for those whose instruction God has confided to my care."
Fessler omits all recognition of the possibility that men if placed in a dilemma between Authority and History may choose the latter. The effect of the Decree on many Bishops was not in the least to compel the confession, 'Now it is undoubtedly certain that this doctrine is revealed': rather it was to awaken the criticism, now it is profoundly uncertain whether this Council is ecumenical.
Such is Fessler's advice to Bishops who doubted the truth of the doctrine. To those who only considered its definition inopportune his counsel was:—
"Those Bishops who in the last General Congregation voted with the non placets, only because they really thought it was not a good thing, not necessary, not for the benefit of souls in countries well known to them, and who for this reason abstained from taking part in this decision, may after the solemn decision, if they think it advisible, represent to the faithful of their dioceses the position which they previously adopted towards the doctrine, in order that their conduct may not be misunderstood. But they must now themselves ​unhesitatingly accept the doctrine which has been decided, and make it known to their people in its true and proper bearings, without reserve, and in such a manner that the injurious effects which they themselves apprehended may be as much as possible obviated and removed; for it is not permitted to the Bishop, as the divinely-appointed teacher of the clergy and people, to be silent about or to withhold a doctrine of the Faith revealed by God, because he apprehends or thinks that some may take offence at it. Nay, rather it is his business so prudently to bring it about in the declaration of that doctrine, that its true sense and import may hereafter be clearly represented, all erroneous misrepresentations of it be excluded, the reasons for the decision of the doctrine brought out plainly, and all objections to it zealously met and answered."
No one gave greater weight to the obvious difficulties which the methods employed at Rome had created for the Decree, no one formulated them with more simplicity and frankness than Dr Newman. His letters showed how he laboured to suggest plausible grounds for assent to the new Decree, while leaving the ecumenical character of the Council for future solution. And, remembering that these letters were addressed to the believers and not to the outer world, nothing can show more strikingly than the arguments which Dr Newman employs, the profound perplexity into which many Romanists were thrown.
In a letter written six days after the Decree was passed he says:—
"I saw the new Definition yesterday, and am pleased at its moderation—that is, if the doctrine is to be defined at all. The terms are vague and comprehensive; and personally I have no difficulty in admitting it. The ​question is, Does it come to me with the authority of an Ecumenical Council?
"Now the primâ facie argument is in favour of its having that authority. The Council was legitimately called; it was more largely attended than any Council before it. …
"Were it not then for certain circumstances under which the Council made the definition, I should receive that definition at once.
"Even as it is, if I were called upon to profess it, I should be unable, considering it came from the Holy Father and the competent local authorities, at once to refuse to do so. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there are reasons for a Catholic, till better informed, to suspend his judgment on its validity.
"We all know that ever since the opening of the Council there has been a strenuous opposition to the definition of the doctrine; and that, at the time when it was actually passed, more than eighty Fathers absented themselves from the Council, and would have nothing to do with its act. But if the fact be so, that the Fathers were not unanimous, is the definition valid? This depends upon the question whether unanimity at least moral is or is not necessary for its validity? As at present advised I think it is. …
"Certainly Pius IV. lays great stress on the unanimity of the Fathers in the Council of Trent. … Far different has been the case now—though the Council is not yet finished. But if I must now at once decide what to think of it, I should consider that all turned on what the dissentient Bishops now do.
"If they separate and go home without acting as a body, if they act only individually or as individuals, and each in his own way, then I should not recognise in their opposition to the majority that force, firmness, and unity of view, which creates a real case of want of moral unanimity in the Council. …"
But it is impossible not to feel that dogmas which men are recommended to accept on such extenuating ​pleas, dogmas whose irregularity is acknowledged so long as their validity is saved, dogmas which depend for their acceptance on the melting away of the episcopal minority, were evidently straining the faith of Catholics almost to breaking point, or they would never have been defended in such a manner. Here is nothing of the devout thankfulness for fuller enlightenment, or the triumph of truth; nothing of the glad recognition of a decision guided by the Holy Ghost. Newman could never have treated the Nicene Council as he did the Vatican. Behind these endeavours, to prevent secession or schism, lies Newman's recorded conviction in his letter to Ullathorne.
Newman's theory that the ecumenical character of the Council might be ascertained from its ultimate acceptance, that acquiescence on the part of the defeated minority would atone for any irregularities in the passing of the Decree, by no means carried conviction to many of the perplexed. The nature of the doctrine decreed seemed to exclude this kind of defence. For if the utterances of the Pope are infallible of themselves, and not from the consent of the Episcopate, it is difficult to base that Infallibility upon episcopal consent. Instead of waiting to see what the Episcopate might do it would appear more appropriate to consider what the Pope had done. And in another letter written within the same anxious month this is precisely the view which Newman takes.
"I have been thinking over the subject which just now gives you and me, with thousands of others, who care for religion, so much concern.
"First, till better advised, nothing shall make me say that a mere majority in a Council, as opposed to a moral unanimity, in itself creates an obligation to ​receive its dogmatic Decrees. This is a point of history and precedent, and, of course, on further examination I may find myself wrong in the view which I take of history and precedent; but I do not, cannot see, that a majority in the present Council can of itself rule its own sufficiency without such external testimony.
"But there are other means by which I can be brought under the obligation of receiving a doctrine as a dogma."
And he proceeds to enumerate uninterrupted tradition, Scripture inference, etc. And then he propounds the theory that "the fact of a legitimate Superior having defined it, may be an obligation in conscience to receive it with an internal assent. … In this case I do not receive it on the word of the Council, but on the Pope's self-assertion."
This he supports by an appeal to the historic authority which the Pope has actually exercised, and to
"the consideration that our merciful Lord would not care so little for His elect people, the multitude of the faithful, as to allow their visible Head and such a large number of Bishops to lead them into error; and an error so serious, if an error."
No one can fail to be impressed with Newman's painful consciousness of the Council's indefensible irregularities; with his refusal to acknowledge a powerful majority as equivalent to moral unanimity; with his desire to see if the dogma cannot be accepted on other grounds than the Council's authority, and in particular on the Pope's self-assertion. All this would, of course, be absolutely unconvincing to any adherent of the ancient conception that the supreme authority is not to be found in the Pope's self-assertion, but in the Collective Episcopate. But it manifests profound misgivings about the Vatican Council and its methods. ​The thought that the merciful Lord would not permit His people to be led into error on so serious a subject depends for its value on the solemn question, whether the gifts of God are in any way conditional. If the transmission of grace depends upon conformity to conditions so also does the transmission of truth. If human co-operation is necessary to the achievement of human enlightenment, then the neglect of compliance with these conditions, the refusal of that co-operation, will be attended with serious losses which the merciful Lord must not be expected to prevent. The graver the misgivings created by the coercive methods of the Vatican majority, the more urgent becomes the enquiry, whether their refusal to comply with the true conditions of conciliar freedom would not be punished by the nemesis of a misleading Decree. Newman's misgivings on the Council's integrity cancel his appeal to the thought of the mercifulness of our Lord. This, at any rate, is what many within the Roman Communion undoubtedly felt. They did not believe in the rightfulness of expecting Providence to nullify the perverseness and self-will of an overwhelming majority.
Subtle, attractive, bearing in every line of it the distinctive impress of his wonderful personality, Newman's defence is remarkable rather as a tour de force than for argumentative solidity. Newman's personal assent to the dogma was indisputably complete. He said, indeed, all that it was possible to say. But even his brilliant genius could scarcely efface the effect of his own letter written to Bishop Ullathorne before the dogma was passed.
"Moreover," he wrote, "a letter of mine became public property. That letter … was one of the most confidential I ever wrote in my life. I wrote it to my own Bishop under a deep sense of the responsibility I ​should incur were I not to speak out to him my whole mind. I put the matter from me when I had said my say, and kept no proper copy of the letter. To my dismay I saw it in the public prints: to this day I do not know, nor suspect, how it got there. I cannot withdraw it, for I never put it forward, so it will remain on the columns of newspapers whether I will or not; but I withdraw it as far as I can by declaring that it was never meant for the public eye."
Certainly it needed no assurance from the writer to convince us that this letter was not designed for publicity. It is equally impossible not to feel that in that letter we have the writer's mind in its full expression. The very fact that it was never meant for the public eye means that it was written without that caution and restraint imposed by watchful critics and extremist partisans always ready to pounce upon Newman and denounce him as a minimiser at Rome. Thus we have his frankest declaration here. And that declaration was much too frank to be convenient. It naturally hampered him now that the doctrine was decreed. A certain inconsistency was required of him, and is reflected in his letters. Before the Council decreed he wrote of the disputed doctrine, " I have ever thought it likely to be true; never thought it certain." After the decision he wrote: "For myself, ever since I was a Catholic, I have held the Pope's Infallibility as a matter of theological opinion; at least I see nothing in the definition which necessarily contradicts Scripture, Tradition, or History." Before the decision he wrote: "If it is God's will that the Pope's Infallibility be defined, then it is God's will to throw back the times and moments of the triumph which He has destined ​for His kingdom." After the decision he wrote: "For myself I did not call it inopportune, for times and seasons are known to God alone … nor in accepting as a dogma what I had ever held as a truth, could I be doing violence to any theological view or conclusion of my own." No one will scrutinise too closely, or make exacting demands of rigorous self-identity, in letters written in the strain of so vast a change as that which the new Decree had wrought. Yet the various statements are part of the evidence to the effect produced, by the doctrine, upon the gifted mind then straining all its efforts to reassure the unsettled and retain them in the fold.
The second great question to be answered was, Does the Infallibility Dogma accord with History? Upon this subject Roman writers were greatly divided. Some asserted boldly that Papal Infallibility had always been held in the Church. Manning stated this in its extremest form. The doctrine had always been of divine faith. Newman was quite unable to accept this view, and supported Gladstone in rejecting it.
"Newman," says Ambrose De Lisle, in a letter to Gladstone, "considers your reply to Archbishop Manning's contention that Papal Infallibility was always held as a dogma of divine faith complete, and that you are triumphant in your denial of it—but, he adds, that is nothing to me. I conclude," says De Lisle, "because he deduces it, and holds that the Church has deduced it in these latter days out of the three texts he quotes in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk."
According to this view then of Newman, Papal Infallibility was not to be sought in history. It would not ​be found in the age, for instance, of the Fathers—an age which Newman knew profoundly. It has slowly dawned upon the self-consciousness of the Church, and come to be realised that it possessed this organ of infallible utterance. Thus the necessity for squaring the Vatican Decree with History was entirely dispensed with. The principle of development was utilised to facilitate its acceptance and explain the apparent anomalies.
The Pope said Newman is "heir by default" to the ecumenical hierarchy of the fourth century. What was then ascribed to all the Bishops is now ascribed exclusively to him. Precisely so. But by what right? Newman does not say. The possibility of development in excess, a perverse development, is not discussed.
Thus the new Decree was, according to Newman, if De Lisle rightly interprets him, a deduction from three texts, of which the chief undoubtedly was, "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not." No perpetual unvarying tradition could be claimed for it. But the Church makes inferences from Scripture, and comes to realise, what once it did not realise, that the Roman Pontiff is infallible.
Newman's theory of the relation of Papal Infallibility to History greatly perplexed some whom it was designed to help.
"I confess that would not satisfy me," wrote De Lisle. … I am far from going to all lengths with the Archbishop (Manning) yet … I hold … that Papal Infallibility restricted as it is by the Vatican Definition, was always a part of Divine Revelation. … I maintain that it was always believed by the orthodox. …"
Newman once wrote: "Whether the minute facts of history will bear me out in this view I leave to others ​to determine." This distressed a student of history such as Lord Acton. "Döllinger," said Acton, "would have feared to adopt a view for its own sake, without knowing how it would be borne out by the minute facts of history."
There were able and learned members of the Roman Communion to whom it was impossible to take refuge in Newman's theory, that this was a case of legitimate development. The Catholic consciousness of early ages presented a theory out of which Papal Infallibility could never legitimately grow. For the primitive conception was the negative, they held, of such a view. The primitive theory, as the Councils of the Church made plain, placed the final authority in the Collective Episcopate. The transference of this authority from the entire body to one individual was to them no true development at all, but a dislocation in the Church's original constitution. It really meant requiring one organ to discharge the functions of another; depriving the original organ of what had hitherto constituted its essential function. And this alteration or reversal of functions was beyond the legitimate power of any authority to make. It was indeed admitted to be a claim of vital character. Pius IX. declared the doctrine to be the very essence and basis of Catholicity. Strange, men thought, that this essence and basis had remained unrealised for many centuries in the Church's consciousness. And when it was said, in reply, that practically the Pope had exercised this Infallibility, and that its exercise had met with a practical recognition and acceptance, Roman writers answered at once, "No; this is not true." Undoubtedly the papal discussions have been accepted and believed. But hitherto there has always been space for belief that their validity ​depended not on their own inherent weight, but on the consent of the Church.
Professor Schulte, for instance, declared that though a Catholic born and bred, he had never believed in Papal Infallibility; nor could he find any authority for the July Decree either in Scripture, or in the Fathers, or in any other source of historical information.
Fessler endeavoured to crush this resistance by labelling it private judgment. He says of Schulte that he "refuses to accept the definition de fide of an Ecumenical Council; he cares nothing for the authority of the living teaching Church; only for what he thinks he finds in Scripture, in the Fathers, and in other genuine ancient sources. This is the way to forsake the Catholic Church altogether. Every one is to follow his own guidance, his own private judgment."
Expressed in such a form it seems a reductio ad absurdum. Surely the individual may be mistaken? And in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom. Professor This on one side, the Episcopate on the other: can we doubt which to follow? Why then should not the professor make a sacrifice of his intellect? Because if you destroy a man's confidence in his historic judgment in one instance, you ruin its validity in all others. Now, since it is by such a judgment that Christianity itself is accepted, to bid a man disparage his own judgment of history, is to undermine the very basis of his religion.
Men found themselves, therefore, placed by the Decree in a very terrible dilemma. An ecumenical decision must be true. But history appears to refute it. To accept the decision is to contradict the fact of history. To accept history is to reject authority. That was the difficulty. But no man can without grievous loss abandon what appears to him the truth. Others ​endeavour to reconcile Catholics to the new Decree by extenuating the greatness of the change. Bishop Ullathorne informed his people that "the Pope always wielded this Infallibility, and all men knew this to be the fact. What practical change, then, has the definition made?" Yet the same writer could urge that the character of the age, and the opposition within the Church, "rendered it all the more important that the Pope should be armed with that full strength." It was then a great practical change. And this is what many Romans felt. There was something naïve in the simplicity with which Ullathorne wrote: "The Infallibility leaves all things as before, excepting that now it is a term of communion." Leaves all things as before! except that formerly men could disbelieve it and openly deny it, while now it is a term of communion, and to disbelieve is to be cast out. Ullathorne clearly found it beyond his power to give any satisfaction to the intelligence of his people. It amounted to a demand of blind assent to the hitherto discredited.
It remains to trace the attitude of the minority toward the new Decree. As a whole they give the impression of having been crushed, almost stunned. The dreamlike rapidity of the movements during these last six months; the sudden forcible erection of a hitherto controvertible and controverted opinion into an essential element of the Eternal Faith; the consequent intellectual and moral reversions demanded of them, left them in a state of complete disorganisation and confusion. Their collective inability in Rome to resist in the final Public Session; their opinion that such resistance would be incompatible with the respect due to the papal office, form conclusive evidence beforehand of their inability ​to continue a permanent resistance when isolated in their different dioceses. The individual Bishop was a lesser power than the Bishops assembled. He was separated in his diocese from the support of like minded prelates. And, if released from the immediate pressure of papal influence, he was incapacitated for anything like concerted action. As Bishop, he lived and spoke alone. Communication was difficult owing to war. International Meetings were impossible. Meanwhile the solitary Bishop was beset by all the local influences which the Nuncios, and Jesuits and other religious orders, knew so thoroughly well how to wield. Rome, it has been said, disbelieved in the capacity of the opposition to stand firm; and Rome had calculated with profound insight and accuracy.
Several fugitive Bishops took the precaution before they left Rome of sending a letter of submission to the coming Decree.
The Archbishop of Cologne explained to the Pope that having given a qualified vote on 13th July he cannot conscientiously vote Yes on 18th July. Accordingly, with great distress, and out of reverence for the Pope, he will avail himself of the permission to depart: adding that he submits himself to what the Council is about to decree.
The Archbishop of Maintz wrote a similar apology. To oppose, in the Public Session, was repugnant to his feelings: nothing, therefore, remained but to depart; except to add that he submitted himself to the Council's Decree, just as if he had remained to vote approval.
Before submission to the new dogma, the question was discussed, What constitutes promulgation of a Decree? Such discussion was quite in keeping with precedent. The Decrees of Trent had been discussed before they ​were admitted into the Church of France. Was any collective acceptance necessary, before the dogma could become obligatory upon the consciences of the faithful? True that Infallibility had been passed at Rome; but the Vatican Council was not closed—it was only adjourned. Did the decisions of a Council become obligations until the Council itself had finished its work? Questions of this character were argued at considerable length in the hope of some loophole or relief. They were, however, promptly crushed by a letter from the watchful Antonelli to the Brussel's Nuncio to the effect that the Decree was ipso facto binding on the Catholic world, and needed no further publication. This cut away the hope to which some Bishops clung, that they would not be required to take open action in cases where they knew acceptance of the doctrine to be morally impossible.
I. AMONG THE FRENCH ROMANISTS
1. The Archbishop of Paris voted, consistently with his entire attitude, against the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, on the critical day, 13th July. In the interview on Saturday 16th, he prefaced his expostulations with a promise to submit; but he also resolved to absent himself from the Public Session, and wrote to the Pope to say that he should not be present. On Sunday the 17th he saw the Pope again, and said farewell. No allusion was made to the events of the morrow, or to the Council's voting. Pius confined himself to benevolent generalities, on the devotion of the Archbishop and clergy of Paris to the interests of the Church and of the Holy See. The Pope and the Archbishop corresponded ​subsequently; but they never met again. Darboy left Rome when the Session was held, and returned home to his diocese. There he found everything in confusion, for the war against Prussia was declared. But he assembled his clergy at once, and commended them for refusing to be swayed by rumours which were necessarily unreliable, since those who spoke about the Council were not its members, while those who were its members had not the right to speak. If there had been diversities of opinion in the Council on certain questions, these diversities were concerned less with the intrinsic value of the questions than with the losses or gains which their discussion might involve. With these, and similar generalities, he dismissed them. Further discussion and conference was prevented by the Franco-Prussian War, but it is clear that Darboy took no steps whatever to coerce his priests into explicit confession of the new decree or to enquire into their individual convictions.
But it was evident that Rome was more than discontented with the Archbishop's indifference. It was desired that he should renew his assurances of personal belief, and exhibit some interest in the conversion of the reluctant. In February 1871 Bishop Maret wrote to the Archbishop of Paris to say that he had sent in his own submission in the previous November.
"I am glad to hear it," replied the Archbishop. "As for myself, separated from the world for five months by the siege of Paris, I have been unable to ascertain what was happening, or to correspond with my colleagues or with Rome. I have therefore done nothing; although I have given no one the right to doubt my opinions. Indeed the Pope knows them. He has my letter of ​18th July. It was not so much the basis of the Decree as the question of its opportuneness which made us hesitate. All the world knows this; and, for my own part, I said it in full Council. It seems, therefore, to me superfluous to affirm to-day that I accept the Decree. It would be even misleading; for it would give grounds to the suggestion that I withheld my adherence to the present time—which is false. Still, if the Holy Father wishes, for the sake of people in general, that such a declaration should be made, it is a formality to which I will unhesitatingly yield."
The Archbishop found it prudent to take this course. In March 1871, he sent to the Pope a statement of sincere assent to the Decree. He said that the War had prevented correspondence hitherto, and that his declaration might seem superfluous. But, as he hears that the Pope desires it, he hastens to gratify the wish. It was chiefly the question of opportuneness—he does not say entirely—which had prompted his opposition.
Pius IX. replied—but none too effusively. The Archbishop had been for years mistrusted and disliked in Rome, for the independence of his actions, his determination to govern his diocese himself, and his rejection of ultramontane convictions. It was scarcely to be expected that cordiality could exist in the very moment of his defeat. And his submission even now, was to say the least, somewhat curt. It stated the fact: no less, but no more. It is not the letter a man could write who believed himself to be the privileged recipient of a precious revelation of God's truth. It was the bare submission to a dictate which could not be avoided except by expulsion. The Pope replied that he was consoled by the Archbishop's sincere assent to the dogmatic definition of the Ecumenical Council of the ​Vatican. He trusts that the Archbishop will hasten to propound to his people what he professes himself to believe. With this, the Pope sends his apostolic benediction. Newman once accused Pusey of discharging an olive branch from a catapult; Pius IX. seems here to illustrate the art of conveying a rebuke through the instrumentality of a blessing. It is one of the ironies of this story that the letter was never received. These were the days of the Commune. The brave Archbishop, after exhibiting the most striking fortitude, was shot in prison. He never had the opportunity to read, or act upon, the Pope's advice. To his place, but not to his principles, succeeded Archbishop Guibert, who had so greatly assisted the aims of Pius IX. by recommending, in the Select Committee of Proposals, that the new doctrine should be introduced with the Council's deliberations. So the old order changed.
2. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, voted against the doctrine on the 13th of July, and left for his diocese rather than be present at the Public Session when the dogma was decreed. He wrote a letter of submission on 18th February 1871. He says that he has been prevented from writing by the Franco-Prussian War. Hearing that His Holiness desires to know his attitude to the constitution of 18th July, he wishes to say that he has no difficulty in the matter.
"I only wrote and spoke," he says, "against the opportuneness of the definition. As to the doctrine I always held it not only in my heart, but in public writings. … I have no difficulty in again declaring my adhesion; only too happy if I can thereby offer Your Holiness any comfort in the midst of his heavy trials."
These assertions of Dupanloup as to his unvarying faith may possibly explain why a distinguished fellow-countryman and head of the French Government could describe him in such terms as these: "everything about him indicates the irresistible dominion of impressions. So convinced is he of being in the right that he fails to be accurate to his demonstrations. He is a most imperious advocate of liberty, and always under the influence of preconceptions."
3. Gratry may be taken next: Gratry—whose famous four letters had focussed in brilliant light the difficulties, the contradictions, the adverse facts, the ignorant methods, the falsified documents. Men wondered what steps the former priest of the Oratory would now take; now that the thing that he feared had come to pass, and the incredible was decreed. Gratry had endured much mental agony. "His own peace would certainly have been better insured," says his biographer, "had he not been interrupted in that later contemplative study of Christian philosophy by which he hoped to do somewhat to make his fellowmen less unhappy, less unfit. But he was urged as a matter of conscience to enter the turmoil of polemical strife, a strife more cruel to one who retained his childlike simplicity, his love of truth, and his boundless charity, to the last hour of life."
Gratry was very ill of the malady which killed him; and it was not until November 1871, that he wrote (evidently questioned by Guibert, the new Archbishop of Paris):
"Had I not been very ill and unable to write a letter I should have long since sent you my congratulations. I desire at least to-day, my lord, to say simply what it appears to me there was no necessity to say, namely that, like all my brethren in the priesthood, I accept the decrees of the Vatican Council. I cancel everything contrary to the decrees which I may have written on this subject before the decision."
The Archbishop sent a kindly reply to the effect that he had never doubted Gratry's docility.
"By such noble and generous examples we harmonise our conduct with our convictions, and prove to the world that we are sincere in maintaining that the light of faith is superior to that of our feeble and vacillating reason."
But how about the facts of history? Gratry effaced his interpretation; but he could not cancel the facts. How abandon his former convictions? That is precisely what Gratry's colleagues required him to explain. An explanation, therefore, he attempted to give. To those who reproved him for accepting without reservation the Council's decrees, he explains that, before the Decision, he argued in accordance with his conscience and his right; since the Decision, he had not said a word.
"Since the Decision, and immediately after it, I had two interviews with my Archbishop, Mgr. Darboy. We were agreed both in words and in faith. He granted me my position in the Church of Paris, and my office of Professor of Theology at the Sorbonne. I was therefore at unity with my Bishop. That was obvious. It continued for nearly a year. Therefore, strictly speaking, no one has any right to question me; not even ​Mgr. Darboy's successor. To require of me a public declaration would seem like revising the acts of his glorious predecessor and martyr for the faith. It is for this last reason most of all that those among my friends who urged me most to publish some declaration surprised and saddened me. I have constantly answered them that I have nothing to say, and nothing to write upon this subject."
But, on reflecting that there was no necessity to cling tenaciously to strict rights, if an assurance would remove his brethren's anxiety, Gratry wrote to his new Archbishop a letter of submission. That, he says, was easy. What would not have been easy was to say:—
"I have been a member and a soldier of the Catholic Church for half a century, but now comes an Ecumenical Council which I do not acknowledge. I therefore separate from its Communion. To contradict, at a single stroke, all my life, and deny all my deepest convictions—do you blame me for not doing that?"
If they object that this was not an Ecumenical Council since it was not free, Gratry replies that he is unable to deny its validity, and therefore he must submit to its decisions. Then, Gratry asks himself, what the great historic luminaries of the Church of France, Fénelon and Bossuet, would have done under the circumstances. Had Montalembert survived, he would certainly have submitted, as his own words prove: resolved, come what may, and cost what it may, never to transgress the inviolable limits of unity. But what of Gratry's letters? Strongly worded remonstrances had reached him on this. How could he cancel his letters and their unanswerable demonstrations? how contradict himself? how overthrow truths which he has firmly established, and re-establish the falsehoods which he has overthrown? To this difficult enquiry Gratry's answer was:—
"I mean to overthrow none of the truths which I may have established in these letters. I mean to restore no falsehood therein denounced. But I admit that these letters may contain mistakes; and that it is those mistakes which I mean to efface."
A distinguished Bishop, strongly opposed to the contents of the letters, had been advising him that he could maintain a considerable portion of his letters. All that was necessary was to cancel what contradicted the Decree.
Is it too much to say that this explanation is shorn of all the reasoning force and historic cogency of the famous letters? If words have any meaning, Gratry's entire conception of Honorius, and the attitude of the Councils towards him, left no room for the Vatican Dogma. The explanation reveals nothing so plainly as profound intellectual perplexity.
Gratry also wrote an explanatory letter to M. Legouve, a colleague in the French Academy.
"I opposed inspired Infallibility; the Council's decree has rejected inspired Infallibility. I opposed personal Infallibility; the Decree affirms official Infallibility. Some writers of the School which I consider exaggerated did not wish for Infallibility ex cathedra, which seemed to them too narrow a restriction: the Decree affirms Infallibility ex cathedra. I almost feared a scientific Infallibility, a political and governmental Infallibility: but the Decree only affirms doctrinal Infallibility, in matters of faith and morals.
"All this does not mean that I made no mistakes in my opposition. Doubtless I have made mistakes, both on this subject and on others; but as soon as I recognise my error I cancel it, without feeling thereby humiliated."
This letter was not printed until 1907. And it appears that Gratry wrote still further explanations ​which have not been published yet. A recently printed letter of Charles Perraud contains the following important postscript:—
"Father Gratry bids me say that he has just finished a little work in which he explains his reasons and above all the limits of his submission to the Council's decree. He had already given a summary of these explanations in a letter to M. Legouve (who unhappily will not agree to publish it, I cannot imagine why). I was not with Father Gratry when he sent his letter to the Archbishop of Paris. I regret exceedingly that he began with that, whereas he ought to have begun by publishing the writing which I have recently been reading. It contains definitions and distinctions of very great significance, especially in a matter where every shade of meaning has its distinctive worth. They are altogether mistaken who suppose that Father Gratry has treated with contempt the historic evidence. God give him time to say on this matter all that I know he desires to say."
But this document, without which the complete story of Gratry's submission cannot be told, has never been permitted to see the light. For whatever reason, Adolphe Perraud, Gratry's literary executor and biographer, withheld it from history.
But Gratry did not long survive the passing of the new Decree. "And," says his biographer, "most assuredly the trials of this period shortened his days."
II. AMONG ENGLISH SPEAKING ROMANISTS
Archbishop Kenrick of St Louis represented opposition in the American Church. During the Council he had warmly supported Dupanloup against American Ultramontanes.
"Many among us," he wrote, "believe that Ecclesiastical history, the history of the Popes, the history of the Councils, and the Tradition of the Church, are not in harmony with the new doctrine. Therefore we think it most inopportune to define as a dogma of faith an opinion which seems to us a novelty in the Church, destitute of solid foundation in Scripture and Tradition, and contradicted by indisputable evidence."
In his speech which the closure of June prevented from being delivered, but which he printed and circulated, he was more emphatic still.
"I dare to affirm that the opinion as expressed in the Schema is not a doctrine of the faith, and never can become such by any definition even of a Council."
On the 13th of July Archbishop Kenrick voted in the negative, signed the protest of the 17th, and with the body of the opposition fled away. Having thus registered his informal and useless protest he accepted the new Decree. This surrender provoked a letter from Lord Acton asking the Archbishop for the grounds of his submission. History has preserved the pages of Kenrick's reply. He said that "sufficient time seems to have elapsed to allow the Catholic world to decide whether or not the decree of the Council was to be accepted." The greater number of the Bishops, some to the Archbishop's surprise, had already yielded assent. As for himself—
"I could not defend the Council or its action; but I always professed that the acceptance of either by the Church would supply its deficiency. I accordingly made up my mind to submit to what appeared inevitable, unless I were prepared to separate myself ​at least in the judgment of most Catholics from the Church."
His act of submission "was one of pure obedience, and was not grounded on the removal of my motives of opposition to the decrees, as referred to in my speech, and set forth in my pamphlets." He hears from Rome that the Pope requires him to retract his pamphlets. "This I shall not do, no matter what the consequences may be."
For intellectual justification in this submission Kenrick appealed to Newman's theory of Development. If it justified Newman in becoming a Catholic, "I thought that it might justify me in remaining one." To this the Archbishop added the following memorable sentence:—
"Notwithstanding my submission, I shall never teach the doctrine of Papal Infallibility so as to argue from Scripture or Tradition in its support, and shall leave to others to explain its compatibility with the facts of Ecclesiastical history to which I referred in my reply. As long as I may be permitted to remain in my present station I shall confine myself to administrative functions, which I can do the more easily without attracting attention, as for some few years past I have seldom preached."
His whole experience, he says, has taught him that there can be no liberty in any future sessions of the Council; and this is warning enough to Bishops that they must not handle roughly the delicate matters on which they have to decide.
The records of intellectual servitude present few more painful documents than this. Whether one regards the doctrine, the Archbishop, or the facts of history, such an attitude bristles with intellectual if not moral inconsistencies. He thinks acceptance by the Church will ​redeem the doctrine from conciliar defects: but the essence of the doctrine is Infallibility apart from the Church's consent. As Bishop he is a witness to the Faith: yet he observes in silence, and registers one by one the submission of other Bishops. He accepts what he will not proclaim, and cannot defend. Meanwhile, the facts of history continue, as before, demonstrably irreconcilable with the New Decree. The sole virtue by which everything else is supposed to be redeemed is the virtue of submission. Theories such as this can only exist as a dark background to enhance the moral and spiritual superiority of sincere unbelief and genuine schism; or to warn for ever against the disastrous consequences which follow such exercises of authority as that which produced the Vatican Decree.
III. AN ITALIAN INSTANCE
Cardinal Hohenlohe
The "Memoirs" of Prince Hohenlohe include numerous confidential letters from his brother, Cardinal Hohenlohe, who was resident in Rome during the Council of the Vatican. The Cardinal had no sympathy whatever with the attempt to elevate the theory into a dogma of the Faith.
His repugnance to the proceedings at the Vatican took also a practical shape. "I go as little as possible to the Meetings of the Council," he wrote; adding a private wish that the Jesuits might stick fast in the morass of their operations. Their activities, however, increased. On the eve of the great Decision, Cardinal Hohenlohe wrote the following remarkable words:—
"To-day is to take place the sitting in which the Pope will proclaim the doctrine of Infallibility. The Bishops of the minority are leaving; some of them went yesterday evening, among others the Archbishop of Munich; others go away to-night. They will not be present at the sitting, and have sent in a protest. I am not very well, and I, too, am not going to the sitting. This morning I wrote a few lines to Cardinal Schwarzenberg, which I here transcribe, of course in the strictest confidence, because they make clear my sentiments. … 'If on the question of Infallibility I declare myself entirely in agreement with Cardoni I would yet have voted non placet, since the question is not opportune, and was not treated conciliariter, and I will have neither part nor lot in the guilt of this unhappy measure, which has caused so many souls to stumble in the faith. But further, the Council is no longer a Council. We may admit that it was convened legaliter, but from the moment when the methodus was imposed upon us, the conciliar composition of this unhappy assembly was at an end.'
"So much for my letter to Cardinal Schwarzenberg. It is sad enough that one has to speak so, but I am pierced in the innermost depths of my soul with such intense pain, that I could hardly bear it if I had not the consolation of the Holy Mass."
Cardinal Hohenlohe says that he had been taught to believe that papal decisions ex cathedra were infallible. What is clear is that the Council contributed nothing to a belief which he held as a theological opinion, and not as a dogma of faith. A letter from the Pope's private secretary expressed regret at his absence from the Decision on 18th July. Hohenlohe replied that he had always believed in Infallibility.
Quoting this reply, in a letter to his brother, the Cardinal added, confidentially:—
"There is nothing here about the Council and dogmatic constitution, nor did I even write that to the Pope, but only to Mgr. Cenni (the private secretary), without in the least instructing him to communicate it to his Holiness. So long as I am unconvinced of the validity of the Council, so long can I do no more, since I shall yet have to give an account before God, and I would not get into an unpleasant situation there."
Prince Hohenlohe was not less discouraged than the Cardinal. What particularly grieved him was the lack of moral courage in the German Bishops. To others and to himself it seemed a
"disgraceful apostasy of the German Bishops, seeing that after they had pledged themselves, before their departure from Rome, to decide nothing about the Dogma of Infallibility without previously taking council together, they should nevertheless have submitted individually.
"When one views the moral ruin, the complete lack of honour among the Bishops, one shudders at the influence which the Jesuitical element in the Church can exert on human nature."
It is natural to enquire what overt action the advocates of these views and its sympathisers in the Roman body would adopt. The excommunication of Döllinger roused still further feeling; and an important meeting of political opponents of things ultramontane was held in Berlin. There was among them a strong desire for action of some kind, and for emphatic opposition. But Prince Hohenlohe disapproved.
"I demonstrated," he says, "that it was necessary above all things for us to remain in the Catholic Church. So long as we had no Bishops, no clergy, and no congregations, but only a number of cultured laymen, we could not talk of an old Catholic Church. It was a case of waiting till the Pope should die, and then there was ​hope of a better spirit in the Catholic Church. If we left the Church—and this might be the result of any serious step—the Catholic Church would lose so many reasonable men to no purpose." It was therefore decided to remain quiet, "I do not think," Prince Hohenlohe wrote, "that the agitation will produce any great results. Interest in the person and fate of Döllinger, for it is nothing more, does not make a reformation. Interest in dogmatic subtleties no longer exists."
The Prince recorded his personal convictions in the following memorandum:—
"I am of opinion that the Concilium Vaticanum of 1869–1870 is in no way ecumenical, and that the time will come when the Infallibility of the Pope proclaimed therein will be pronounced heresy. But as the Bishops collectively and almost all the clergy have accepted the doctrine set forth, he who denies the doctrine must secede from the Catholic Church. … I have, therefore, refrained from expressing my opinion openly, especially as I believe that the Old Catholic Community cannot remain where it now stands, but will be driven further. … So far as I am concerned, I wish the Catholic Church to reform herself. That can and will be done only with the co-operation of her Bishops. This co-operation will not take place until the moment has come for the assembling of a really Ecumenical Council. Even if this is an empty hope, it in no case alters my present opinion. In this case the Catholic Church is doomed to fall, and then other forms of religion will be constituted, which we need not now discuss. In the meantime I have this hope, and therefore am waiting. Hence I remain a member of the Church, without going over to the Ultramontanes."
IV. IN GERMANY
1. Hefele, Bishop of Rottenburg, formerly Professor of Theology in the University of Tübingen, and learned, ​perhaps above any man then living, in the Councils of the Church, was held in high reputation for his history of the Councils, which is still the best modern authority on the subject. He was well known as the reverse of ultramontane. Twelve years before the Vatican Council assembled he stated the facts about Pope Honorius in such a manner as to show that history absolutely forbade the ascription to a Pope of the attribute of Infallibility.
Being consecrated Bishop at the end of 1869 he had a place in the Vatican Assembly, where he was most active in opposition. Just in the critical hour of the Infallibility debate he published (in April, 1870) at Naples, since Papal regulations prevented its publication in Rome, a forcible pamphlet on the case of Pope Honorius, and his treatment by the Sixth General Council. Hefele now declared that Honorius "set aside the distinctively orthodox technical term for the two wills, human and Divine, in Christ; sanctioned the distinctively technical term of the Monothelite heresy; and commended this double error to the acceptance of the faithful." Further, he maintained that the sixth Ecumenical Council had claimed the right to pass judgment on this authoritative Papal decision, and to pass anathema upon the Pope as a teacher of heresy. Finally, he maintained that from the fifth to the eleventh century each Pope in his consecration oath had made a declaration which involved two things: first, that a Council can condemn a Pope for heresy, and secondly, that Honorius was rightly so condemned for having supported an error by his decree on faith.
This emphatic rejection of Infallibility was circulated among the members of the Council in Rome, with intention to prevent the doctrine from being decreed.
Hefele also wrote from Rome to Dllinger, com​plaining that the majority interfered with the minority's freedom of speech; that the Pope's personal interventions and criticisms on the minority made their independent action exceedingly difficult; that these experiences were diminishing the courage, if not the numbers, of the opposition; that it was difficult to know what movement to take when a halter was round your neck; that hardly anybody dared openly to say what their ultimate intentions were; that the majority meanwhile confidently assured them that the Pope would settle everything, and that then the alternative would be submission or excommunication.
On the 13th of July Hefele voted in the negative. On the 17th he signed the protest and then returned to his diocese without waiting for the Public Session. In a letter to Döllinger he attempted to justify this. He said that from the number of negative votes on the 13th of July he had hoped that many Bishops would remain for a final protest in the Public Session of the 18th. But in the general exodus this hope evaporated. He acknowledged that the written protest sent to the Pope was weak, because destitute of formal validity. It could not possibly avert the public definition of the Decree. As for himself he feels that his duty is clear. He has been in consultation with his Chapter and his Theological Faculty. He cannot accept the new dogma, as it stands, without the necessary limitations. He knows that Rome may suspend him, and excommunicate him. Meantime he has been urging upon another Bishop that disbelief in the Council's validity is not heretical. His own line consists in quiescence, so long as Rome does not actively intervene. What else to do he does not know in the least. At any rate to hold as Divinely revealed what is not true is for him simply impossible (September 1870). He can no more conceal ​from himself in Rottenburg, than he could in Rome, that the new dogma is destitute of any true rational, Scriptural, or traditional foundations. It is injurious to the Church in incalculable ways. The Church has suffered no severer and deadlier wound of modern times than that inflicted on the 18th of July. Yet he can see no way of escape. He writes repeatedly to Döllinger; complains that Dupanloup persists in asking questions, but will not say what he intends to do. Meanwhile, Hefele is being worried and baited on every side. Appeals pour in from France and America, urging submission. He is certain that a schism would have no chance. The world is too indifferent, and the opposition too dispersed. There is nothing for it but submission, or exclusion. On the other hand, it is to him indisputably clear that the final session of the Vatican Council had no ecumenical character. Romanism and Jesuitism have altered the nature of the Catholic Church. Hefele's letters become still more piteous. His troubles are increasing. His own diocese is turning against him. He had not believed it possible that the dogma could so pervade his diocese. Even his oldest friends are turning against him. Rome also is improving the occasion. He is refused the usual faculties, so that people in all parts of the diocese cannot get married, and the local clergy are utilising this to set the people against him. What on earth is he to do? He gives way to lamentations. The position of a deprived and excommunicated Bishop is to him abhorrent—one he could hardly tolerate. At an earlier stage it was open to him to resign, and gladly would he lay down an office which has made him such an oppressed and unhappy man. He must resign or yield.
Which of the two it will ultimately be it is not by ​this time difficult to predict. Hefele can see no glimmer of hope in any distant development. It is not to be expected that the Constitution Pastor Eternus will be revoked by a future Pope, or the fourth session of the Vatican Council pronounced invalid. The utmost that can be looked for is a further explanation. By this time he is the only German Bishop who has not published the Constitution. He cannot adequately express his grief that Döllinger should see no escape from suspension or excommunication. Is there no compromise with the Archbishop possible? He utters wild and useless laments over the Synod of German Bishops at Fulda. Oh, what might not have been done in Germany if only the Bishops at Fulda had stood firm! Yet he took no steps against them. Then he ends with deploring Döllinger's own impending fate. To think that Döllinger, so long the champion of the Catholic Church and its interests, the first of the German theologians, should be suspended or excommunicated; and that by an Archbishop who has not done a thousandth part of the service that Döllinger had done! That is terrible! The conclusion was now quite plain. Döllinger's replies were useless, and Hefele proceeded to publish the Vatican Decree.
It remained, and this was more difficult, to revise the case of Honorius in the light of the new dogma. In the second edition of his "History of the Councils," Hefele observes:
"We always were of the opinion that Honorius was quite orthodox in thought, but, especially in his first letter, he has unhappily expressed himself in a Monothelite fashion." This opinion he still retained, "even if … as a result of repeated new investigation of this subject, and having regard to what others have more recently written in defence of Pope Honorius, I now ​modify or abandon many details of my earlier statements, or in particular, form a milder judgment of the first letter of Honorius."
Still, even now, his historic sense constrains him to speak of the "the unhappy sentence, 'accordingly we acknowledge one will of our Lord Jesus Christ,' which taken literally is quite Monothelite." Still he is constrained to say, "Honorius ought to have answered." And as for the Monothelites themselves, "the fact that the Pope gave utterance to this their primary proposition must have given essential assistance to their cause."
2. Melchers, Archbishop of Cologne, professed himself in the Council ready to accept the dogma as a personal belief; but he accumulated many arguments to show the extreme unwisdom of enforcing it upon the Church, especially in the existing state of sharply-divided opinion. On the critical 13th of July he gave a conditional vote. His own subsequent compliance was, therefore, comparatively easy. It was entirely another matter to restore unity to his diocese. Back in his diocese he called the German Bishops together at Fulda. Only nine arrived, but they agreed to take measures to impose the doctrine upon the recalcitrant. It became the Archbishop's function to reduce to submission the Theological Faculty of Bonn, among others the distinguished professors, Langen and Reusch.
3. The interview between the Archbishop of Cologne and Professor Reusch has been recorded.
The Archbishop told the Professor that the highest authority had spoken, and submission was his duty. The Professor replied that his convictions would not allow it. The Archbishop retorted that he laid too much stress on his convictions. Reusch replied that he ​dared not go against them. The Archbishop restated the duty of submission to authority; the Professor said that he could only leave his convictions to the judgment of God.
But, persisted the Archbishop, the Council was free and ecumenical, and the definition unquestionably valid. He acknowledged that he had himself implored the Pope not to allow the discussion to begin; but the majority thought otherwise. And, added the Archbishop, with a happy inspiration, you know that the doctrine has been recently taught in the Catechism of this diocese. Until now, replied Reusch, the opposite doctrine has been taught in all the schools, in a book bearing the episcopal imprimatur. The Archbishop could only reply that the book would be altered now, and that its author had already conformed. But, objected the Professor, if the opposite has been taught up to the 18th of last July, it cannot be a heresy.
The Archbishop could only enquire whether the Professor would make any concession of any kind. He said he would avoid contradiction, and study further. The Archbishop pointed out that Rome would never be satisfied with that. Do you wish, he asked, to die without the Sacraments? The interview was adjourned, and then resumed, but fruitlessly. The Archbishop recommended him to go into retreat. The Professor doubted whether this could alter facts of history. His reward was excommunication.
Reusch's reflections on the interview with his Archbishop show what resistance cost him. "How painful it was, he wrote, although I continued calm and the Archbishop always friendly, you can well imagine. But I formed a gloomier opinion of his narrow-mindedness than ever before." Melcher's insistence on the duty of unlimited intellectual submission left, so far as Reusch ​could see, no room for reason. It provoked the criticism that the Archbishop would credit four Persons to the Trinity if a papal constitution demanded it. But for himself, Reusch wrote in terms almost of despair. That he might no longer pursue his mission as a teacher was hard enough. That he might no more discharge his priestly functions, nor obtain absolution and communion was terrible. But yet he would be more unhappy still if these had been obtained at the price of assenting to the dogma. And Reusch uttered his grief in the words of Ecclesiastes:—
"Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.'
There remained, however, a work for Reusch to do. He found within the old Catholic communion a freedom to retain unaltered the faith which, up to that year, he had taught within the communion of Rome.
4. The fate of Langen, Theological Professor of Bonn, was somewhat similar to that of Reusch. When asked for his assent to the new Decree, Langen contended that the University statutes secured him his office conditionally on assent to the decisions of Trent; and that no alteration of these conditions could be made without approval of the Government. The Archbishop overruled this contention, and Langen declined to submit. Like Reusch, he was excommunicated. Langen has left behind him a history of the Roman See, and an extremely learned and exhaustive history of interpretation of the Scripture-texts usually adduced in behalf of the papal claims. Both these works display that Langen could not accept the new definition without falsifying the facts of history.
​5. Another German rejection of the doctrine is that of Dr Hasenclever.
"With countless other companions in faith I find myself reduced by the Papal Decree of 18th July 1870 to the alternative of either denying against my conscience the ancient faith as I received it, and on the basis of which I have remained for five and twenty years in the Catholic Church, or of placing myself in hopeless antagonism to a justly revered authority through refusal to submit."
Undoubtedly the principle is true that when the Church has once spoken all uncertainty is taken away; but no less undoubted is the principle that where a contradiction exists, a manifest deviation from tradition, it is impossible that it is the Church which has spoken. It is impossible, he says, for him to bring into harmony the new teaching on the Pope's Infallibility with the Catholic Faith taught him by the Tridentine and Roman Catechism.
The constitution of the Church, he argued, differs from that of a State, for while the latter may assume at various periods a democratic, an aristocratic, a monarchical form—the former must maintain its self-identity. This principle of identity and continuity is, he acknowledges, recognised in the Anglican Church which, while uncertain of the validity of its claims, he admits, is thereby distinguished from the Protestant types. But his sympathies are with the principle that the constitution of the Church cannot change its form. He is as opposed to a spiritual dictatorship as to Protestantism itself. Is it possible that the conception of supreme authority in the Church which has held good for eighteen hundred years, is no longer decisive? So men enquired in amazement when the news of the ​schemes of the Roman Curia began to circulate. That some reforms should be necessary was natural enough; but that a radical change must be made in the constitution of the supreme teaching body—this was incredible even to many of the blindest followers of the Curia. The Church has never exhibited a trace of uncertainty on the method of securing finality in a question of faith. It has been through the Collective Episcopate united with its chief. In the Collective Episcopate as representative of Christendom at large, the Church has acknowledged the apostolic teaching office, the witness to its faith, the judge of error. The mission of a Universal Council is to give collective testimony to the faith of the Fathers. This collective testimony might be voiced through the Holy See, but it is impossible to discover in Revelation a basis for the theory that the collective testimony is not valid until the Holy See endorses it. The ancient principle is to rest in the testimony of all churches:—
"Ecumenical Councils," says Alzog, speaking of the early centuries, "the real representatives of the Catholic spirit, were in these ages of burning controversy the decisive authority, the supreme tribunal which ended all dogmatic disputes. And," adds Hasenclever, "it was exactly when this principle became challenged by another that the risk of schism appeared."
Moreover, a mathematical formula may illustrate the effect of the papal claim on the Episcopate. If a+b=a then b=0; or, at any rate, is a practically negligible quantity.
Hasenclever complains that he can nowhere obtain a direct reponse to the question, How is it that innumerable treatises and works of all kinds approved by the Church have hitherto affirmed that Papal Infallibility is no part of the Catholic Faith? What particularly ​scandalised him was the sudden condemnation, by placing on the Index, books which have been for a considerable period accepted authorities within the Church. He failed to see that to bestow sanction publicly upon a treatise, and afterwards to pronounce it heretical, was consistent with the maintenance of an unchanged faith. Moreover, if Papal Infallibility had been the traditional principle, the entire history of the Church must have presented a very different apearance from what it does. Where, he asks, is any faith in an infallible Pope exhibited in the Church during the Arian struggles? Certainly the Bishops of the Sixth Ecumenical Council conducted matters on somewhat different lines from those suggested to us by infallibilists to-day. They treated the Pope Honorius just as they would have treated any other heretic. And his successors did the same. The infallibilist falls into Scylla if he escapes Charybdis. When entreated to make a sacrifice of his intellect to this demand of the Vatican Decree, Hasenclever can only reply that such sacrifice paralyses the innermost depths of personal existence. To him it is nothing less than a suicidal suppression of that characteristic which raises us into resemblance to God. Those who cannot bring themselves to this abandonment of their human dignity will be constrained to say, in spite of all the seductions of superficial and sophistic reasonings, that the doctrine of the personal infallibility of the Pope stands in irreconcilable contradiction with the actual faith of the Catholic Church; and, accordingly, it is impossible that a real Ecumenical Council should have decreed it.
6. But these were minor incidents. The religious attention of Germany centred on Döllinger at Munich. On 17th July Archbishop Scherr of Munich left Rome with the minority. On the 18th the new dogma was pro​claimed. On the 19th Archbishop Scherr was back in Munich again. On the 21st the Theological Faculty, headed by Döllinger, met him. Scherr's criticisms of the Roman precedure, says Döllinger's German biographer, Friedrich, confirmed them in the views of the Council which they had already taken. But, said Scherr, Rome has spoken. There was nothing for it but submission. The Theological Faculty were totally unprepared for the Archbishop's surrender. Upon Döllinger it created the most painful impression. He knew that the Archbishop's convictions, better judgments, sympathies, were all on the other side; and that, like the other Bishops of the minority, he had abandoned the Council because he could neither bring himself to acquiesce silently in the proclamation of what he deprecated, nor summon courage to protest for what he had hitherto believed. The feebleness of the Archbishop's excuses, the frank condemnation pronounced by him on the methods by which the result had been secured, only set in stronger light the incongruity of his submission. Naturally they served to confirm Döllinger still more in his opinion of the absence of real freedom in the Council Chamber at St Peter's.
Dr Liddon, who was in Munich on 29th July, gave the following account of Döllinger some ten days after the passing of the Decree:—
"A large amount of our conversation, of course, turned on the Council and the Definition; and he speaks with the most entire unreserve. He says that the great danger now is lest the Bishops of the minority, being separated from each other, and exposed to the powerful influences which can be brought to bear on them, should gradually acquiesce. Nothing would be worse for the cause of the Church in Germany than the spectacle of such submission to a purely external and not really competent authority (he dwells much ​on the scheme de concilio, as completely destroying the freedom, and so the authority, of the Council), with a notorious absence of any internal assent. The Archbishop of Munich is very anxious. He told Dr Döllinger that the deputation which went to the Pope, begging him to spare the Church, nearly carried its point."
It is clear from this and other sources that the Archbishop of Munich, if left to himself, had no desire to proceed to extremities with the opponents of the Decree. But Döllinger fully realised, ever since the first mention of Infallibility as a subject for decision, that excommunication lay before him if the Decree was passed. Archbishop Scherr found himself reluctantly driven to the painful task of imposing on the theologians a reversal of belief similar to that which he had himself undergone. Rome was determined that the Munich stronghold of the minority should be brought into line with the new Decree. The Archbishop was made the instrument for effecting this. He wrote a letter to the Munich Faculty of Theology, in which he said that harassing doubts widely prevailed as to the attitude which the Theological Faculty meant to adopt toward the Vatican Council. It was his duty as Archbishop to set these doubts at rest. As for himself, he frankly owned that, during the deliberation at Rome, he gave utterance to his own opinion with all the positiveness of a conviction attained after mature consideration. " But," he added, "I never intended to retain this conviction of mine if the decision should turn out differently." Accordingly he invites the Theological Faculty to follow suit. The faculty, as a body, complied. But neither Friedrich nor Döllinger. The Archbishop waited two months. Then he wrote entreating Döllinger to conform. To this Döllinger replied that assent to the recent Decree would require him to refute his lifelong historical teaching. ​He would have to declare that his doctrine hitherto was false and perverted. In the face of his public declarations no one would believe in the sincerity of his submission. All the world would consider the transition a hypocritical instance of convictions denied from fear and personal interest. In the terribly painful situation into which recent events had brought him, Döllinger asked for further delay. This was granted, but, of course, to no purpose. Just in this hour of critical suspense, when the decisive step must be taken, came the piteous appeal from Hefele. Was no compromise with the Archbishop possible? That Döllinger, the first of German theologians, should be suspended or even excommunicated; and that by an Archbishop who had not done a thousandth part of the service Döllinger had rendered to the Church! This was terrible. Hefele's letter gave Döllinger what he calls the first completely sleepless night in his life. But it could not alter his convictions. Döllinger sent his answer in to the Archbishop. He took his definite and final stand on the ancient principles. He could do no other. Döllinger said, in his reply, that the Jesuits, in advancing their scheme of papal absolutism, assured their adherents and disciples, and convinced many, even Bishops, that the noblest Christian heroism consists in the sacrifice of the intellect, and in surrendering one's mental judgment and self-acquired knowledge and power of discernment to an infallible papal magisterium as the only sure source of religious knowledge. This, in his opinion, was to elevate mental sloth to the dignity of a meritorious sacrifice, and to renounce the rights and the claims of history.
The question of Papal Infallibility was an historical question, which must be tested by historical investigation; by the patient scrutiny of facts in the centuries ​past. If this doctrine were true, it would assuredly be not merely one truth among many, but the actual foundation of the rest. How could the basal principle have been obscured through centuries?
"We are still," wrote Döllinger to the Archbishop, "waiting the explanation how it is that, until 1,830 years had passed, the Church did not formulate into an article of faith a doctrine which the Pope, in a letter addressed to your Grace, calls the very foundation principle of Catholic faith and doctrine? How has it been possible that for centuries the Popes have overlooked the denial of this fundamental article of faith by whole countries and in whole theological schools? And was there a unity of the Church when there was a difference in the very fundamentals of belief? And—may I further add—how is it then that your Grace yourself resisted so long and so persistently the proclamation of this dogma? You answer, because it was not opportune. But can it ever be 'inopportune' to give believers the key to the whole building of faith, to proclaim the fundamental article on which all others depend? Are we not now all standing before a dizzy abyss which opened itself before our eyes on the 18th July?" Döllinger concluded with a deliberate and emphatic rejection of the new Decree: "As a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, as a citizen, I cannot accept this doctrine."
Döllinger's biographer assures us that this reply to the Archbishop of Munich brought Döllinger hundreds of letters, telegrams, addresses from Germany, Austria, and Italy, in congratulation for his firmness and strength. The Archbishop was in great perplexity. He sent a telegram to Rome asking what his next move should be. Antonelli replied promptly and curtly that the whole affair was exclusively within the Archbishop's jurisdiction. This cut off all delay and all retreat. ​Archbishop Scherr was thus driven forward from Rome, and reluctantly forced to take the final step. A protest signed by forty-three Catholic professors against episcopal tyranny was naturally without effect. So also was an appeal with many thousands of signatures. Theological students in Munich diocese were now forbidden to attend his lectures; and he was informed that although the Archbishop could not prevent his lecturing, yet he could only continue to do so in open opposition to his Bishop. This was followed a fortnight later by his formal excommunication, in which his biographer, Friedrich, was included.
The exasperation at Munich is shown in a strongly worded protest issued at Whitsuntide 1871, in which the signatories declare themselves confirmed in refusing the Vatican Decree by the duty, which neither Popes nor Bishops can dispute, of abiding in loyalty to the ancient faith even though an angel should teach them otherwise. It has been hitherto no doctrine of the Church, no part of Catholic faith, that every Christian possesses in the Pope an absolute overlord and master, to whom he is directly and immediately subjected, and whose decisions in faith and morals he is bound under penalty of eternal damnation to obey. It is notoriously no part of the teaching of the Church hitherto that the gift of Infallibility is entrusted to one individual. Peter speaks unmistakably to us in Scriptures through his deeds and his words and his letters; but all these breathe a totally different spirit from that of papal absolutism. The German minority Bishops show their bewilderment in their Pastoral letters. For none of them can induce themselves to follow Manning and the Jesuits in interpreting the Decrees in their natural obvious ​meaning. Moreover, the undersigned deplored that the Bishops are not ashamed to answer the conscientious outcry of their own dioceses with invectives against reason and learning. In previous centuries, when Bishops resorted to excluding a man from the Church, they did so on the ground of the novelty and untraditional character of his teaching. It was reserved for the present generation to see, what eighteen centuries have never beheld, a man condemned and excluded precisely because he clings to a doctrine which his fathers in the Church have taught him; refuses to change his faith as a cloak might be exchanged. That an unjust excommunication can only injure its inflicters—not the individual upon whom it is inflicted—is the universal teaching of the Fathers. Such excommunications are as invalid and ineffective as they are unjust. They cannot deprive the believer of the means of grace, nor a priest of his right to dispense them.
Such was the strain in which the Munich protest was written. Among the signatures which follow are those of Döllinger, Lord Acton, and Reinkens, afterwards Bishop of the Old Catholic Communion. The German Catholics, whom the Decree of Infallibility had excluded, gathered to form the Old Catholic Community.
Döllinger confesses that he had no hope whatever that under the next or one of the next Popes any important or essential change would be made for the better, since the order of the Jesuits formed the soul and sovereign of the whole Roman Church. Formerly there were counterbalancing influences: powerful religious orders, full of vitality, correcting the tendencies of the followers of Loyola. But these had become either powerless shadows, or satellites of the Jesuit dominating body.
"The tendency of events since 1870 was shown," said Döllinger, "in the solemn proclamation of Liguori as Doctor of the Church:—
"A man whose false morals, perverse worship of the Virgin, constant use of the grossest fables and forgeries, make his writings a storehouse of errors and falsehoods. In the whole range of Church history I do not know a single example of such a terrible and pernicious confusion."
The public papers repeatedly announced Dr Döllinger's reconciliation with the Roman Communion. On one occasion he replied:—
"This is now the fourteenth time that my submission has been announced by Ultramontane papers; and it will often occur again. Rest assured that I shall not dishonour my old age with a lie before God and man."
Ten years after the Vatican Decision, Döllinger received a pathetic, imploring appeal from a lady of high social position, entreating him to rescue himself from the everlasting destruction which his exclusion would entail, and to have mercy on his own unhappy soul.
Döllinger's answer is memorable:—
"I am now in my eighty-first year, and was a public teacher of theology for forty-seven years, during which long period no censure, nor even a challenge that I should defend myself, or make a better explanation, has ever reached me from ecclesiastical dignitaries, either at home or abroad. I had never taught the new Articles of Faith advanced by Pius IX. and his Council. … Then came the fatal year, 1870. … It was in vain that I begged them to let me remain by the faith and confession to which I had hitherto been faithful without blame and without contradiction. Yesterday still orthodox, I was to-day a heretic worthy of excommunication; not because I had changed my ​teaching, but because others had considered it advisable to undertake the alteration, and to make opinions into Articles of Faith."
But why not make a sacrifice of his intellect:—
"Because," says Döllinger, "if I did so in a question which is for the historical eye perfectly clear and unambiguous, there would then be no longer for me any such thing as historical truth and certainty; I should then have to suppose that my whole life long I had been in a world of dizzy illusion, and that in historical matters I am altogether incapable of distinguishing truth from fable and falsehood."
But this would undermine his whole confidence in historic fact, and thereby shatter the foundation of his religion. For it is on historic facts that Christianity itself reposes. Prior to the historic problem of the Papacy is the historic problem of the Apostolic times. "I must first be convinced that the principal events narrated in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are essentially true and inviolable." And to destroy confidence in historic judgment in one case is to ruin its validity in all others.
Archbishop Scherr was succeeded in the diocese of Munich in 1878 by Von Steichele, a former pupil of Döllinger, and attached to him by feelings of the deepest veneration. Von Steichele made overtures for Dóllinger's reconciliation with the Papacy. He wrote in 1879 a delightful letter:—
"With the thankfulness of a pupil to a venerable teacher; with the respect of a disciple for the honoured bearer of the richest knowledge; with the love of an anxious Bishop for the brother who unhappily is not yet at one with him in things of highest moment."
"The answer was always an evasive one, or an embarrassed shrug of the shoulder. They said that this was a question of detail, which the individual priest or layman did not need to enter into. Or they said that the very essence and merit of believing consisted precisely in giving oneself up blindly and implicitly to the powers that be, and in leaving it to them to settle any contradictions that might exist. I do not need to tell you what an impression deplorable subterfuges of this kind have made upon me."
This was Döllinger's final attitude toward the Roman Communion up to the last moment of consciousness on earth. He never by any act of will deviated from testimony to the Church's traditional Faith, in which the theory of Papal Infallibility was not included. To the end of his days he held that this theory could not possibly be reconciled with the broad facts of Christian history.
V
The new decree was profoundly uncongenial to the mind of Lord Acton. He had already expressed his sense that recent developments of papal authority were inconsistent with the earlier principles of Christendom, and disastrous alike to freedom of investigation, and to the real interests of the Church. Manning's theories on papal sovereignty were a trial to Lord Acton's historical intellect. Manning simply reproduced the mediæval exaggerations of temporal power which had done incalculable mischief ever since Boniface VIII. endorsed them in his struggle with France.
"You are certainly not too severe on Manning's elaborate absurdities," wrote Lord Acton; "I had no idea he had gone so far. … It is impossible to exaggerate the danger of such doctrines as his. I wish you would take the line of Catholic indignation a little."
While the Council sat, Lord Acton was in Rome, where popular opinion ascribed the Articles in the Augsburg Gazette to his instrumentality. "People do not venture to proceed against Acton," wrote Gregorovius; "but it is known that he writes, and that he pays highly for the materials that are supplied him."
Archbishop Manning had positive knowledge that Lord Acton was in constant communication with Mr Gladstone, supplying him with information hostile to the Council; "poisoning his mind," as Archbishop Manning phrases it, against Papal Infallibility and the Pope's friends and supporters. Lord Acton, as a friend and disciple of Dr Döllinger, had great influence with ​the German Bishops, who, for the most part belonged to the Opposition; and was also on confidential terms with Mgr. Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, and with the Bishop of Orleans, and had not a little to do with bringing into closer union the Bishops of France and Germany. He was also active in furnishing the Opposition with Dr Döllinger and Professor Friedrich's historical criticisms of the Papacy. Lord Acton, as Manning knew well, did more than any other man, except the Bishop of Orleans, in exciting public feeling, especially in Germany and England, against the Vatican Council.
When, therefore, the Vatican Decree was passed and the process of reducing objectors to uniformity began, it was scarcely probable that Lord Acton would be left unchallenged. Nor did he continue silent. He published a sketch of the history of the Vatican Council which, while confined strictly to facts, must have been supremely distasteful to the victorious side. When he said that Pius was bound up with the Jesuits; made them a channel for his influence and became himself an instrument of their designs; when he gave illustrations of authority overriding history, and the unscrupulous suppression of uncongenial facts; when he quoted at length Montalembert's emphatic letter on the transformation of Catholic France into an anti-chamber of the Vatican—he was recording what was calculated to advance the other side. Yet, of course, the registration of adverse facts is a different province from personal belief.
But Acton went so far as to describe the Infallibility doctrine as independent of reason or history.
"The sentiment," he wrote, "on which Infallibility is founded could not be reached by argument, the weapon of human reason; but resided in conclusions transcending evidence, and was the inaccessible postulate rather than the demonstrable consequence of a system of religious faith." The opponents were, according to Acton, "baffled and perplexed by the serene vitality of a view which was impervious to proof. …
"No appeal to revelation or tradition, to reason or conscience, appeared to have any bearing whatever on the issue."
This persistent attempt to render authority independent of evidence was, if especially prominent in the Infallibility disputes, a deeply seated and long existing disease. It pervaded the theological school then dominant in Rome, but it had, according to Acton, exerted its baneful influence over the Roman Church for centuries. The Jesuit theologian, Petavius, in the seventeenth century supported existing authority at the expense of the past.
"According to Petavius, the general belief of Catholics at a given time is the word of God, and of higher authority than all antiquity and all the Fathers. Scripture may be silent, and tradition contradictory, but the Church is independent of both. Any doctrine which Catholic divines commonly assert, without proof, to be revealed, must be taken as revealed. … In this way, after Scripture had been subjugated, tradition itself was deposed; and the constant belief of the past yielded to the general conviction of the present. And as antiquity had given way to universality, universality made way for authority."
Thus in Acton's view the dominant school in the Roman Church were resolved that "authority must conquer history." He went so far as to say that:—
"Almost every writer who really served Catholicism fell sooner or later under the disgrace or the suspicion of Rome." Also that "the division between the Roman and the Catholic elements in the Church made it hopeless to mediate between them."
Acton's description of the Vatican Assembly itself could only leave one conclusion as to its methods and impartiality, on the reader's mind. He records how the Bishops on arriving in Rome, were "received with the assurance that nobody had dreamt of defining Infallibility, or that, if the idea had been entertained at all, it had been abandoned." He records the Pope's assurance that "he would sanction no proposition that could sow dissension among the Bishops." He asserts that the freedom of the Bishops was taken away by the regulations of the Bull Multiplies inter imposed upon them without their consent, and with refusal even to allow their protests to be uttered. He says that many Bishops were "bewildered and dispirited," by the character of these Regulations. He says:—
"It was certain that any real attempt that might be made to prevent the definition could be overwhelmed by the preponderance of those Bishops whom the modern constitution of the Church places in dependence on Rome."
He reveals his sympathies in the strongest way by pouring out his moral indignation on the minority Bishops for their weakness.
"They showed no sense of their mission to renovate Catholicism. …
"They were content to leave things as they were, to gain nothing if they lost nothing, to renounce all premature striving for reform if they could succeed in avoiding a doctrine which they were as unwilling to discuss as to define."
"The Church had less to fear from the violence of the majority than from the inertness of their opponents. No proclamation of false doctrines could be so great a disaster as the weakness of faith which would prove that the power of recovering the vital force of Catholicism was extinct in the Episcopate."
And then Acton traces the gradual tightening of the cords as the feeble and unhappy minority are more and more overcome. The new Regulations determined that decrees should be carried by majority. They could not be accepted by the minority without virtual admission that the Pope must be infallible. For
"If the act of a majority of Bishops in the Council, possibly not representing a majority in the Church, is infallible, it derives its Infallibility from the Pope."
"But it was a point which Rome could not surrender without giving up its whole position. To wait for unanimity was to wait for ever, and to admit that a minority could prevent or nullify the dogmatic action of the Papacy was to renounce Infallibility. No alternative remained to the opposing Bishops but to break up the Council."
This was exactly where their courage failed them They protested, but submitted. And here comes Acton's judgment on their submission:—
"They might conceivably contrive to bind and limit dogmatic Infallibility with conditions so stringent as to evade many of the objections taken from the examples of history; but in requiring submission to Papal Decrees on matters not Articles of Faith, they were approving that of which they knew the character, they were confirming without let or question a power they saw in daily exercise, they were investing with new authority the existing Bulls, and giving unqualified ​sanction to the Inquisition and the Index, to the murder of heretics and the deposing of kings. They approved what they were called on to reform, and solemnly blessed with their lips what their hearts knew to be accursed."
The effect of this moral feebleness on the Roman authorities was, says Acton, that
"the Court of Rome became thenceforth reckless in its scorn of the opposition, and proceeded in the belief that there was no protest they would not forget, no principle they would not betray, rather than defy the Pope in his wrath. It was at once determined to bring on the discussion of Infallibility."
Lord Acton's objections to the Infallibility school were clearly of a triple character. In relation to History: it betrayed a resolve to instate Authority independently of proof. It was the product of indifference to fact. "The serene vitality of a view impervious to proof," could only shock and distress a profound veneration for the actual. To those who build on facts such disregard for evidence must appear as building without foundation. In relation to method: if the origin of the doctrine was insecure, no less unsatisfactory was the method by which it was decreed. Acton's description makes the Decree the product of cowardly weakness on the one side, and unscrupulous coercion on the other. The spiritual value of the result obtained might be measured by the immorality of the means employed. It could not, it did not, enlist his loyalty or command his reverence. In relation to results: plainly Acton did not believe that the limitless exaltation of Authority was beneficial, or that it could lead to anything but results disastrous to the real interests of the Church. The severity of his ​judgment on the minority, for investing with new Authority the Papal Decree, was born of a deep conviction that already, on countless occasions, that Authority had proved excessive, injurious to the advance of truth, and the freedom of the individual. It is probably quite correct that Acton's objections were more on the moral and political or social side than on the strictly theological. But his sharp distinction between the Catholic and the Roman elements within the Church is really a distinction in dogmatic principles. And nothing can exceed his loathing for principles commonly known as Ultramontane. Acton and Manning stand at the opposite poles in their anticipations of the results of the dogma of Infallibility.
But Lord Acton went far beyond all this. He wrote a letter to a German Bishop reproaching the minority with inconsistency in discontinuing their opposition after the Infallibility Decree was published. In this letter he gives the actual language of the leaders of the minority, and concludes—
"The Council is thus judged by the lips of its most able members. They describe it as a conspiracy against truth and rights. They declare that the new dogmas were neither taught by the Apostles nor believed of the Fathers."
This letter was described by the Dublin Review as "an open and decisive revolt against the Church."
Yet it does not appear that the writer was challenged to express his adhesion to the new Decree. But Lord Acton's letters during this period are yet to be published. Abbot Gasquet omits all the critical years from ​1869–1874. Lord Acton, however, did not ultimately escape unchallenged. He was not in Manning's Diocese or we may feel fairly certain that the Archbishop of Westminster would have pounced upon him.
Meantime Mr Gladstone argued that the Vatican Decrees involved political consequences adverse to modern freedom. The Church's power to employ coercion was asserted by the Syllabus, and acknowledged by Newman. Now that such consequences could be drawn from the Vatican Decrees Lord Acton did not dream of denying. Gladstone's argument could not be met by denial. And, of course, the whole sympathies of Acton's mind were with Gladstone so far as repudiation of the use of coercive force in religion is concerned. Nothing in the world roused Acton's moral indignation more than Inquisition and Liguori's ethics. He admitted with characteristic sincerity that "Gladstone had not darkened the dark side of the question." All he could answer was that it does not follow that inferences which can be drawn will actually be made. He held that "the Council did not so directly deal with these matters as to exclude a Catholic explanation." The Council had not so acted "that no authentic gloss or explanation could ever put those perilous consequences definitely out of the way." This was certainly a curious defence of an Ecumenical Decree. It does not exclude a Catholic explanation. But this was all he could say. He could not even say what that true explanation was; for on that ground his own authorities might reject him. "I could not take my stand, for good or evil, as an interpreter of the Decrees, without risk of authoritative contradiction." This attitude, says Acton, "was ​no attack on the Council, although it was an attack on Ultramontanism."
But Lord Acton proceeded to defend the Council in the Times newspaper from Mr Gladstone's inferences.
"I affirmed that the apprehension of civil danger from the Vatican Council overlooks the infinite subtlety and inconsistency with which men practically elude the yoke of official uniformity in matters of opinion."
And, as an illustration of this infinite subtlety in eluding authority, he quoted the example of Archbishop Fénelon, who "while earning admiration for his humility under censure [by the Pope] had retained his former views unchanged." Fénelon wrote:—
"I accept this Brief … simply absolutely and without shadow of reserve. God forbid that I should ever be remembered except as a pastor who believed it his duty to be more docile than the humblest of his sheep, and who placed no limit to his submission."
Three weeks later Fénelon wrote to a friend:—
"I acknowledge no uncertainty either as to the correctness of my opinions throughout or as to the orthodoxy of the doctrine which I have maintained. … Unless competent persons rouse themselves in Rome the faith is in great danger."
It was no more than natural, after such public letters, that Lord Acton should be called in question by the authorities of his Communion. It was asserted in the Roman Church that he did not believe the Vatican Decrees. Manning wrote to enquire what construction ​he placed upon them in order that the minds of the multitude might be reassured. A curious and very instructive correspondence ensued. Lord Acton took advice as to the answer he should give.
"The great question is," he wrote privately to a friend, "whether I ought to say that I submit to the acts of this as of other Councils, without difficulty or examination (meaning that I feel no need of harmonising and reconciling what the Church herself has not yet had time to reconcile and to harmonise), or ought not the word submit to be avoided, as easily misunderstood."
After further reflection Lord Acton proposed to say:—
"I do not reject—which is all the Council requires under its extreme sanctions. As the Bishops who are my guides have accepted the decrees, so have I. They are a law to me as much as those at Trent, not from any private interpretation, but from the authority from which they come. The difficulties about reconciling them with tradition, which seem so strong to others, do not disturb me a layman, whose business it is not to explain theological questions, and who leaves that to his betters.
"Manning … says he must leave the thing in the hands of the Pope, as everybody tells him I don't believe the Vatican Council. He means, it seems to me, that he simply asks Rome to excommunicate me—a thing really almost without example and incredible in the case of a man who has not attacked the Council, who declares that he has not, and that the Council is his law, though private interpretations are not, whose Diocesan has, after enquiry, pronounced him exempt from all anathema."
Against Lord Acton no further action was taken. ​The disastrous effect of the excommunication of Döllinger may have made Authority cautious in the exercise of this deadly weapon. Acton indeed submitted; but Manning's misgivings seem more than justified. It is difficult to define the sense in which Acton became a believer in the new Decree. "He remained all his life," says Bryce, "a faithful member of the Roman Communion, while adhering to the views which he advocated in 1870."
It is quite true that Acton was not an Anglican; he was still less a Protestant. He never joined the old Catholic movement, and is said to have dissuaded his friends from taking that course. But it is certain that he was never an Ultramontane. The distinction he drew between Catholic and Roman elements in the Church helps to explain his own position. He was a Catholic as opposed to the modern Roman type.
If, as Pius IX. asserted, Catholic and Ultramontane are synonymous, then Acton's position was precarious. But their identity is what he persistently and firmly denied. He considered Ultramontanism as an unhappy and mischievous influence perverting truths and ignoring history, speculative in its origin, and injurious in its results. He was well aware, his historic insight made it clearer to him than to many, that the school he resented was a long-standing disease; that its presence could be traced for centuries, if in a less pronounced and virulent form than to-day. But the long-standing nature of the disease did not shake his faith in the certainty of a remedy, and a removal sooner or later. He did not, it has been well said, identify the long-lived with the eternal.
Sooner or later then, Ultramontanism, according to ​Acton's views, was destined to pass away. It was no more than a temporary, if protracted, disease from which the Church must at length recover. Meanwhile, therefore, he held to his post, accepting the present discomfiture in the hope of better days; waiting until this tyranny be overpast. He had no thought of departure. The Roman Communion was the Church of his birth and of his devotional affinities. He spoke of it reverentially as "the Church whose communion is dearer to me than life." He would never have left it of his own accord. But, while wholly identified with the ancient Catholic conceptions, he absolutely repudiated the principles of the Ultramontane. By what process he retained his place while Döllinger was exiled seems not altogether clear. Acton felt acutely the possibility that, like Döllinger, he also might be cast out.
Whether wisdom or prudence or diplomacy refrained from him and let him alone, there at any rate he lived and died. But the legitimacy or consistency of his position was the theme of a fierce and bitter controversy in the Roman journals after he was dead.
So the great struggle in the Roman Communion between the episcopal and the papal conceptions of Authority, the collective and the individual, came to an end. Every Bishop of the minority submitted. This is a magnificent tribute to the power of Rome. It held its defeated Episcopate in unbroken unity. Only the old Catholic movement created an independent community. But when the motives are considered which induced the minority to yield, the strongest principle appears to be the maintenance of external unity. The abler minds resisted, after the Decree ​was known, so long as resistance was possible. Only when the presence of threatened excommunication drew them to an ultimate decision, the Bishops submitted, with what grace they could, to a Decree which they dared no longer resist. But the submission is, even then, cautious, reluctant, and reserved. In some instances it is yielded in a tone of curtness or asperity. In other instances, with comments and explanations, in private letters, wholly inconsistent with genuine faith. It is difficult to find in a single minority submission the joyous devotion which is surely due to a heaven-sent revelation of eternal truth. They do not accept the doctrine as a blessed enlightenment, but rather as a heavy burden to which they are unwillingly obliged to coerce their priests. They do not appear like men whose intensity of conviction enables them to say:—"It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." They would infinitely sooner ask no questions, if Rome would only let them. They are driven to excommunicate others, much against their will, for, continuing to hold what they themselves had taught them, and were, until recently, inwardly persuaded was true. It is a painful and unattractive sight. In the frankness of confidential utterances after the event they owned with manifest sincerity that they did not believe the Decision valid, nor the Doctrine part of the Historic Faith. But, being forced by Authority to choose between submission and excommunication, they mostly preferred submission. The choice is intelligible. They loved the Church. Taught to regard its limits as practically identical with those of the Kingdom of Heaven—yet certain that history contradicted what they were now required to believe, they were placed in the terrible dilemma of loyalty to reason against religious interest, or to religious ​interest against their reason. The issue was solemn whichever side they chose. But the prior question which the alternative raises is this: "What is the spiritual value of an Absolute Authority which inflicted such an awful dilemma upon its own devoted sons?"
* ↑ Baunard, Histoire de Cardinal Pie, p. 353.
* ↑ Fessler, True and False Infallibility, p. 21.
* ↑ See Letter to Duke of Norfolk, pp. 96, 97, 98, 99.
* ↑ See Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 98.
* ↑ Thureau Dangin, Letter to Ward, iii. p. 119.
* ↑ Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 99.
* ↑ Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 17.
* ↑ Life of De Lisle, ii. p. 48.
* ↑ Life of De Lisle, ii. p. 48.
* ↑ History of Freedom, p. 408.
* ↑ Fessler, p. 24.
* ↑ Döllingerites, p. 14.
* ↑ Expostulation, p. 50.
* ↑ Döllingerites, p. 15.
* ↑ Acta, p. 993.
* ↑ 11th August. Ollivier, ii. p. 375; Schulte, p. 108.
* ↑ Acton, p. 997.
* ↑ Guillermin, p. 254.
* ↑ Foulon, p. 469; Guillermin, p. 257.
* ↑ Guillermin, p. 259.
* ↑ Guillermin, p. 259.
* ↑ Acta, p. 997.
* ↑ Foulon, p. 505.
* ↑ Acton, p. 999.
* ↑ Ollivier, i. p. 443.
* ↑ Adolphe Perraud, Le P. Gratry ses Derniers jours, son Testament Spirituel (1872), p. 43.
* ↑ Acta, p. 1405.
* ↑ Acta, p. 1405.
* ↑ Guillermin, Vie. de Mgr. Darboy, p. 261.
* ↑ Perraud, p. 44.
* ↑ Acta, p. 1375, 2nd May 1870.
* ↑ Friedrich's Documenta, p. 210.
* ↑ Schulte, Der Altkathliusmus, p. 267.
* ↑ An advocate of the infallibilist theory.
* ↑ See pp. 241, 242.
* ↑ 1872.
* ↑ 17th April 1871. See Declarations, p. 113.
* ↑ Von Schulte, Der Altkatholicismus, pp. 16–22.
* ↑ Lord Acton and his Circle, pp. 211, 212, 215.
* ↑ Roman Journals, p. 356.
* ↑ Purcell's Manning, ii. p. 434.
* ↑ Acton, Vatican Council. München (1871).
* ↑ History of Freedom, pp. 512, 513.
* ↑ Sendschreiben an einen Deutschen Bishof (September 1870).
* ↑ N.S. vol. xvi. (1871), p. 212.
* ↑ Lord Acton and his Circle.
* ↑ Vaticanism, p. 77.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 77.
* ↑ Gasquet, Lord Acton and his Circle, p. 366.
* ↑ Gasquet, Lord Acton and his Circle, p. 366.
* ↑ 24th November 1874.
* ↑ Pastoral (1699).
* ↑ Lord Acton and his Circle, pp. 359, 360, 364.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 364.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 368.
* ↑ Biographical Studies, pp. 385, 386.
* ↑ Letter to the Times.