The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1869-09-19

ing the last twelve months this question has
often been asked. and it has often been
answered to but little purpose. 1t is evidently
the intention Of the promoters of the Council
to keep the programme as much a secret az
possible. Wisely or unwisely, we say not
which, the Catholic Church makes it a special
point at all times and everywhere to keep its
own counsel. In spite, however, OF all the
caution which has been manifested in this mat
ter, facts have oozed out and have so accumu-
lated that it cannot any longer be said that the
world is ignorant of the programme Of the
approaching assembly. What with the able
papers which have recently appeared in
the AAgemeins Zeitung, from the pen of
DIR. Dollinger, the counsellor of Prince
Hohenlohe of Bavaria, and one of the very first
Catholic divines in Germany, and from the
replies which have been made to those papers
in the Pope's acknowledged organ, the Ciosha
Cattolico, it is no longer doubtful that the
Syllabus which startled the world in 1864 by
its medieval sentiment and its wholesale
denunciations of modern progress is the real
and according to which its proceedings will be
regulated The bishops, in fact are already
compromised by their acceptance of the
Syllabus. They are still further compromised
by offering no objection to the letters converting
the Council. The Jesuits are clearly masters
of the situation. Plus the Ninth is their tool,
and the proceedings of the solemn farce will
be manipulated to suit their purposes To a
dead certainty the Council will be asked to
condemn whatever is not in or Of the Catholic
Church, and to pronounce solemn anathema
On all that which we call modern progress
and the spirit of the age. We have no right
to say that the members of the Council will
refuse to do either the one or the other 1t is
no longer doubted that the Council will
be asked to declare that the infalli-
bility which hitherto has been sup
posed to belong only to the Church
in Council is an attribute henceforward of the
Pope himself 1t is generally understood that
this motion is to be made by DR.. Manning, the
Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. 1t is
not expected that any opposition will be
offered. This point carried no future Council
of the Church will be necessary. The best
informed Catholics admit that the Bodily AS
sumption, as well as the Immaculate Concep-
ton of the Virgin, is to receive the sanction
of the Council, and that both are to be pro-
claimed doctrines Of the Holy Catholic
Church. 1t will not at all surprise US if all
this is done within the space Of three weeks.
Good care will be taken that the Council of the
Vatican will not, like the Council of Trent, sit
for eighteen years and divide its glory or its
shame between two successive Popes. If
these forecastings be justified by actual facts
the Catholic Church will have lost an oppor-
tunity the like of which may never again pre-
sent itself, and many of its warmest friends
and most devoted adherents will blush for
shame If it is not yet too late let us hope for
better things. On every Church, on every
form of religion which hinders, not helps,
human progress, which checks, not responds
to, the high aspirations of the human soul,
doom is written. With the wreck and ruiz
Of such institutions the past is thickly strewn
1t is well to be wise in time.