Year: 1870

n,
meeting, held the day before yesterday, in the
hall which the fathers, for want of better, are
still forced to use. the council elected twenty
four members of the second grand "deputation'
a permanent committee, being the Committee
on Di. cpline. The names of the fathers chosen
will hardly be made public, or even be known
to the electors themselves for week to come
The names of those ten days ago chosen TO COM
pose the first and most important OF the COM
mites beng that upon matters of dogma,
were only made public yesterday though
] cent hhem to you on pretty good authority
three or four days since. None OF them can o9
considered fairly to represent that powerful
minority in the council by which 1t is now an
open secret that the proclamation of the dogma
OF Papal inialibility would be regarded as n
calamitous mistake. The English Arch
bishop of Westminster and the American
Archbishop of Baltimore, for example,
are understood to be quite of the con-
trary mind, and the Belgian Archbishop of
Mecbln published in July last letter expressly
maintaining that ''the primacy aud infallibility
iu the teaching of the faith are inseparable in
themselves as well as in Scripture aud tradition"
In this letter the Archbishop of Mechlin quotes
Benedict XIV, whom he calls "that great Pope"
as admitting that Clement XII had abstained
fromd mdenouncing Bossuet and the Gallican Church
for their insubordination on this point, partly
out of consideration for such man us Bossuet,
who had so well deserved of religion, and
partly from the too well-founded fear of ex-
citing new troubles" If the Archbishop of
Mechlin really admires this prudence of Clement
XII. itS must be hoped by those who wish
well to his Church that he may recon-
mend Plus TX to initiate 1t. For while
it is certain that any proclamation
of "infallibility in the teaching of
the faith" as an inseparable concomitant of the
primacy claimed for the See of Rome will now
provoke only the derision of all non-Roman
Christendom, it is hardly less clear that it will
excite within the bosom of the Roman Church
itself "new troubles quite as formidable, to say
the least of them, as those which Clement XII
shrank from


OF course, no one not a member OF the coun-
ell can presume to speak with certainty of its
sayings doings. But in Rome even, more
than elsewhere, bird of the air will carry mat
tiers not Mt all meant to be divulged out of
the most sacred recesses, and it is really
an open secret that the council has
from the very first been disturbed, and still
is disturbed by the obstinate indispositon
of some of the members to accept the
programme prepared for them and for the
Church by the Roman Court and its official
representatives. The kind and degree Of these
differences may have been-doubtless have
been misrepresented l doubt, for example,
the truth of story, which l have nevertheless
heard in many most respectable quarters, to the
effect that the Oriental bishops, in the course of
an interview with the, Holy Father accorded
them only few days ago, so FAR lost
their tempers as to turn their backs upon
the Pope, and march away out of the Vatican in
a body. Neither do believe that there is any
real ground for the impression prevalent here,
even among good Catholics, that the Gallican
bishops of the French Church chose to go out
of the council rather than submit to a ruling of
the Cardinal Presidents.


The Italian, or, to speak more correctly, the
Roman, advisers of the Pontiff may have little
overestmated the power of Rome, her
local organizations, and her local in
fluence upon the minds even of Catho-
lie visitors. Fifty or even twenty years
ago, convocation of Bishops from all parts of
theworld would have ebroughttoRome eoncourse
of men, tie vast majority of whom would have
missed here nothing of the signs of civilization
with which they were familiar at home, and
would have found here many things more
solemn and imposing than those with which they
were familiar at home. During the last twenty
years the rest of the world has made
SO much progress, and Rome SO little, that
this is no longer true. j have been greatly
struck in conversing with prelates Of different
nationalites and from different quarters ofSthe
globe, by the very general lack among them OF
an intense and profound admiration for Rome as
city, and for its ecclesiastical monuments as
monuments. Nor is the pomp of the Pontifcal
court by any means effective now
as it used to be. Its administrators
have failed to keep pace with the progress either
of opuence or of taste among mankind. All
this intelligent men, even though they be Cath
olic bishops, cannot fail and do not fail to see.
The ceremonies which might have struck an
? aveIage Catholic bishop with awe century ago,
fail to produce the same impression upon an
average Catholic bishop to-day.