The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-02
SPIRIT OF THE PRHss.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current 7 Topios-CompiIed Every
DAY for the Evening Telegraph.
THE PAPACY AND THE COUNCIL.

FROM TIE " j. HOTtd
The monthupon which we have Just entered
will pretty surely close in Rome upon a
solemn proclamation of the dogma of Papal
infsllibity. The festival of the Prince of
the Apostles falls upon the Doth of June. 1t
is always celebrated in the Eternal City with
an extraordinary pomp and splendor, and it
cannot be esteemed otherwise than natural
that those who long for the promulgation of
a doctrine the effect of which will be to
invest the successor of st. Peter with new
and practically unlimited claims upon the
reverence and the obedience of the faithful
should desire also to see those claims pro-
mulgated to an expectant Church upon st.
Peters Day.
1t is true that the fathers of the G,umeni-
cal Council have but just begun seriously to
discuss the opportuneness we'll as the
soundness of this most grave and weighty
promulgation. While nothing can be more
absurd than the majority of the kilograms
which are daily given to the public as records
of the debates passing in the Council Hall of
the Vatican, no secret is made or attempted
to be made in official quarters at Rome of the
general subiect-matters brought up in those
debates. The questions to be successively
introduced into the council were settled upon
long ago as we'll as the order in which they
should be presented to the fathers. And it
is perfectly we'll known that the question of
Papal infallibility, while it has occupied the
thoughts of all who are interested in the great
ecclesiastical parliament of Catholic Chris
tendon now sitting from the very outset of
the proceedings of that parliament, has only
now come up formally for deliberate con-
sideration and decisive action in the august
body. But if any one imagine that space
of three or four weeks is too short time in
which to exhaust the arguments possible to
be presented for and against the assertion of
q dogma as startling in its form as in its pro-
bable consequences, he should be reminded
that the Ucumenical Council of 1869, though
it consist indeed of fathers assembled to the
number of many hundreds from all parts of
the inhabited earth, was yet organized ere it
came into being, under the careful and un-
fettered supervision of the Court of Rome.
By the Court of Rome the definition of the
doctrine of Papal infallibility has long been
regarded as q necessary outcome of the as
sembling of this great council. In the month
of January of the current year, while as yet
no suggestion of the definition had been Off
cally laid before or dwelt upon by the coun-
Gil itself, his Holiness the Pope hesitated
not to treat the subject as already con-
cluded. In that month Plus TX approved
and enriched with indulgences a prayer for
the Greek schismatics, in the course of which
he caused the following words to be used:--
go Mary, Immaculate Virgin, we beseech
thee to be pleased to entreat the Divine
Spirit in favor of our erring brethren, that
enlightened by His quickening grace they
may return to the Catholic Church under the
infalliblo authority of its chief pastor, the
Roman Pontiff." Remembering this, and
bearing in mind also that according to the
belief of devout Catholics all the opinions
and decisions of such a body as an oecume-
nical council must be held to be eventually
the expression of the supreme will of the
Divine Spirit of Truth, it need excite no sur
prise that the most solemn and important
publications of doctrine should be expected
to be made after no matter how brief a sea-
son of incubation.
matter of much more moment to the
world at large it is to consider how far the
definition of Papal infallibility, if made
indeed on the next st. Peters Day in Rome,
is likely to command assent throughout the
Catholic Church 1t has been somewhat has
tily assumed that it can make no great prac-
tical difference in the ruling conditions of
the Catholic Church whether this definition
be or be not adopted. An infallible Church
the Church of Rome already claims to be,
and the bishops of that Church have long
attributed so much doctrinal authority to
their head in the Vatican that Protestants
and nor Catholics may be excused perhaps,
for Understanding the effect whether for
good or for evil, of the new step now pro-
posed to be taken.
But it is as proceeding from the head of
the Church that Catholic bishops have here
tofore accepted and reverenced those utter
ances of the elected sovereign of Rome,
which, under the new definition, they will be
called upon to bow down before, as emana-
ting from the personal successor of st. Peter
and the personal incarnation of Him by whom
St. Peter was commissioned. However subtly
and ingeniously the new definition may be
construed by theologians into an apparent
harmony with the existing institutions of
the Catholic Church as we'll as with the actual
tendencies of the most enlightened portions
of the world of believers, it is certain that
the effect of this definition will be to in
tensify the strictly personal influence of the
Roman Pontiff, and to create towards him
more and more of the sort of pers onal idola-
try paid by the Russian peasants to their
Gar. This, it seems to be clear, cannot be
done without setting in motion quite other
currents in quite another direction within
the bosom of the Church itself.
The Catholic Church of the present CEN
tury is Church catholicl by nature as we'll as
name. Its general administration may be
vested in the official court which surrounds
at Rome the chosen head of its hierarchy
But in each one of the many countries ol
Europe and America in which the Church has
either preserved its ancient prestige Ol
secured for itself within recent times new
tenure of life and of activity, it exists unde
conditions peculiar to that country, anC
those who are charged with its conservation
and extension find themselves forced to tax,
. constant and careful account of these vary
ing conditions. 1t is already found to bt
sufficiently troublesome to harmonize thes
necessities of local management and polic
with the irterferences and the requirement