The days of the two most important public sessions of the Vatican Council, namely the first and the last, were the darkest and stormiest which Rome saw from Dec. 8, 1869, to the 18th of July, 1870. The Episcopal votes and the Papal proclamation of the new dogma were accompanied by flashes of lightning and claps of thunder from the skies, and so great was the darkness which spread over the Church of St. Peter, that the Pope could not read the decree of his own Infallibility without the artificial light of a candle. [319] This voice of nature was variously interpreted, either as a condemnation of Gallicanism and liberal Catholicism, or as a divine attestation of the dogma like that which accompanied the promulgation of the law from Mount Sinai, or as an evil omen of impending calamities to the Papacy.
And behold, the day after the proclamation of the dogma, Napoleon III., the political ally and supporter of Pius IX., unchained the furies of war, which in a few weeks swept away the Empire of France and the temporal throne of the infallible Pope. His own subjects forsook him, and almost unanimously voted for a new sovereign, whom he had excommunicated as the worst enemy of the Church. A German Empire arose from victorious battle-fields, and Protestantism sprung to the political and military leadership of Europe. About half a dozen Protestant Churches have since been organized in Rome, where none was tolerated before, except outside of the walls or in the house of some foreign embassador; a branch of the Bible Society was established, which the Pope in his Syllabus denounces as a pest; and a public debate was held in which even the presence of Peter at Rome was called in question. History records no more striking example of swift retribution of criminal ambition. Once before the Papacy was shaken to its base at the very moment when it felt itself most secure: Leo X. had hardly concluded the fifth and last Lateran Council in March, 1517, with a celebration of victory, when an humble monk in the North of Europe sounded the key-note of the great Reformation.
What did the Bishops of the minority do? They all submitted, even those who had been most vigorous in opposing, not only the opportunity of the definition, but the dogma itself. Some hesitated long, but yielded at last to the heavy pressure. Cardinal Rauscher, of Vienna, published the decree already in August, and afterwards withdrew his powerful 'Observations on the Infallibility of the Church' from the market; regarding this as an act of glorious self-denial for the welfare of the Church. Cardinal Schwarzenberg, of Prague, waited with the publication till Jan. 11, 1871, and shifted the responsibility upon his theological advisers. Bishop Hefele, of Rottenburg, who has forgotten more about the history of Councils than the infallible Pope ever knew, after delaying till April 10, 1871, submitted, not because he had changed his conviction, but, as he says, because 'the peace and unity of the Church is so great a good that great and heavy personal sacrifices may be made for it;' i.e., truth must be sacrificed to peace. Bishop Maret, who wrote two learned volumes against Papal Infallibility and in defense of Gallicanism, declared in his retractation that he 'wholly rejects every thing in his work which is opposed to the dogma of the Council,' and 'withdraws it from sale.' Archbishop Kenrick yielded, but has not refuted his Concio habenda at non habita, which remains an irrefragable argument against the new dogma. Even Strossmayer, the boldest of the bold in the minority, lost his courage, and keeps his peace. Darboy died a martyr in the revolt of the communists of Paris, in April, 1871. In a conversation with Dr. Michaud, Vicar of St. Madeleine, who since seceded from Rome, he counseled external and official submission, with a mental reservation, and in the hope of better times. His successor, Msgr. Guibert, published the decrees a year later (April, 1872), without asking the permission of the head of the French Republic. Of those opponents who, though not members of the Council, carried as great weight as any Prelate, Montalembert died during the Council; Newman kept silence; Père Gratry, who had declared and proved that the question of Honorius 'is totally gangrened by fraud,' wrote from his death-bed at Montreux, in Switzerland (Feb. 1872), to the new Archbishop of Paris, that he submitted to the Vatican Council, and effaced 'every thing to the contrary he may have written.' [320]
It is said that the adhesion of the minority Bishops was extorted by the threat of the Pope not to renew their 'quinquennial faculties' (facultates quinquennales), that is, the Papal licenses renewed every five years, permitting them to exercise extraordinary episcopal functions which ordinarily belong to the Pope, as the power of absolving from heresy, schism, apostasy, secret crime (except murder), from vows, duties of fasting, the power of permitting the reading of prohibited books (for the purpose of refutation), marrying within prohibited degrees, etc. [321]
But, aside from this pressure, the following considerations sufficiently explain the fact of submission.
1. Many of the dissenting Bishops were professedly anti-Infallibilists, not from principle, but only from subordinate considerations of expediency, because they apprehended that the definition would provoke the hostility of secular governments, and inflict great injury on Catholic interests, especially in Protestant countries. Events have since proved that their apprehension was well founded.
2. All Roman Bishops are under an oath of allegiance to the Pope, which binds them 'to preserve, defend, increase, and advance the rights, honors, privileges, and authority of the holy Roman Church, of our lord the Pope, and his successors.'
3. The minority Bishops defended Episcopal infallibility against Papal infallibility. They claimed for themselves what they denied to the Pope. Admitting the infallibility of an oecumenical Council, and forfeiting by their voluntary absence on the day of voting the right of their protest, they must either on their own theory accept the decision of the Council, or give up their theory, cease to be Roman Catholics, and run the risk of a new schism.
At the same time this submission is an instructive lesson of the fearful spiritual despotism of the Papacy, which overrules the stubborn facts of history and the sacred claims of individual conscience. For the facts so clearly and forcibly brought out before and during the Council by such men as Kenrick, Hefele, Rauscher, Maret, Schwarzenberg, and Dupanloup, have not changed, and can never be undone. On the one hand we find the results of a life-long, conscientious, and thorough study of the most learned divines of the Roman Church, on the other ignorance, prejudice, perversion, and defiance of Scripture and tradition; on the one hand we have history shaping theology, on the other theology ignoring or changing history; on the one hand the just exercise of reason, on the other blind submission, which destroys reason and conscience. But truth must and will prevail at last.
[299] After quoting, in a mutilated form, the definition of the Council of Florence, whose genuineness is disputed (compare p. 97, note 1), the third chapter goes on: 'Docemus et declaramus, Ecclesiam Romanam, disponente Domino, super omnes alias ordinariæ potestatis obtinere principatum, et hanc Romani Pontificis jurisdictionis potestatem, quæ vere episcopalis est, immediatam esse, erga quam cujuscunque ritus et dignitatis pastores atque fideles, tam seorsum singuli quam simul omnes, officio hierarchicæ subordinationis veræque obedientiæ obstringuntur, non solum in rebus, quæ ad fidem et mores, sed etiam in iis, quæ ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ per totum orbem diffusæ pertinent; ita ut, custodita cum Romano Pontifice tam communionis quam ejusdem fidei professionis unitate, Ecclesiæ Christi sit unus grex sub uno summo pastore. Hæc est catholicæ veritatis doctrina, a qua deviare salva fide atque salute nemo potest. . . . Si quis itaque dixerit, Romanum Pontificem habere tantummodo officium inspectionis vel directionis, non autem plenam et supremam potestatem jurisdictionis in universam Ecclesiam, non solum in rebus, quæ ad fidem et mores, sed etiam in iis, quæ ad disciplinam et regimem Ecclesiæ per totum orbem diffusæ pertinent; aut eum habere tantum potiores partes, non vero totam plenitudinem hujus supremæ potestatis; aut hanc ejus potestatem non esse ordinariam et immediatam sive in omnes ac singulas ecclesias, sive in omnes et singulos pastores et fideles; anathema sit.'
[300] ' Itaque Nos traditioni a fidei Christianæ exordio perceptæ fideliter inhoerendo, ad Dei Salvatoris nostri gloriam, religionis Catholicæ exaltationem et Christianorum populorum salutem, sacro approbante Concilia, docemus et divinitus revelatum dogma esse declaramus: Romanum Pontificem, cum ex Cathedra loquitur, id est, cum omnium Christianorum Pastoris et Doctoris munere fungens pro suprema sua Apostolica auctoritate doctrinam de fide vel moribus ab universa Ecclesia tenendam definit, per assistentiam divinam, ipsi in beato Petro promissam, ea infallibilitate pollere, qua divinus Redemptor Ecclesiam suam in definienda doctrina de fide vel moribus instructam esse voluit; ideoque ejusmodi Romani Pontificis definitiones ex sese, non autem ex consensu Ecclesiæ, irreformabiles esse. 'Si quis autem huic Nostræ definitioni contradicere, quod Deus avertat, præsumpserit; anathema sit.'
[301] Friedberg, pp. 465-470. Comp. Frommann, p. 59 sq.
[302] Friedberg, pp. 470 sqq.; Frommann, pp. 61-63.
[303] Friedberg, pp. 472-478. The American petition against Infallibility was signed by Purcell, of Cincinnati; Kenrick, of St. Louis; McCloskey, of New York; Connolly, of Halifax; Bayley, of Newark (now Archbishop of Baltimore), and several others.
[304] Ce qui se passe au Concile, p. 130. The writer adds that some of the predecessors of Pius have held his doctrines, but none has been so ardently convinced, none has professed them 'avec ce mysticisme enthousiaste, ce dédain pour les remontrances des savants et des sages, cette confiance impassible. Quel que soit le jugement de l'histoire, personne ne pourra nier que cette foi profonde ne lui ait créé dans le dix-neuvième siècle une personnalité d'une puissance et d'une majesté incomparables, dont l'éclat grandit encore un pontificat déjà si remarquable par une durée, des vertus et des malheurs vraiment exceptionnels.' Comp. the Discourses of Pius IX., in 2 vols., Rome, 1873, and the review of Gladstone in the Quarterly Review for Jan. 1875.
[305] So Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, characterized him in his Concio habenda at non habita. Quirinus (Appendix I. p. 832) quotes from a sermon of Manning, preached at Kensington, 1869, in the Pope's name, the following passage: 'I claim to be the Supreme Judge and director of the consciences of men--of the peasant that tills the field, and the prince that sits on the throne; of the household that lives in the shade of privacy, and the Legislature that makes laws for kingdoms. I am the sole last Supreme Judge of what is right and wrong.'
[306] Only the address of the German Bishops took openly the ground that it would be difficult from internal reasons (viz., the contradiction of history and tradition) to proclaim Infallibility as a dogma of revelation. See Friedrich, Tagebuch, p. 126; and Frommann, Geschichte, p. 62.
[307] On being asked whether he considered the definition of the dogma opportune, Pius IX. resolutely answered, 'No! but necessary.' He complained of the opposing Bishops, that, living among Protestants, they were infected by their freedom of thought, and had lost the true traditional feeling. Hase, p. 180.
[308] See the literature in the next section, and in Friedberg, pp. 33-44. Comp. Frommann, pp. 66 sqq.
[309] Dr. John Henry Newman has, after long silence, retracted in 1875 his letter of 1870, which, though confidential, found its way into public 'by permission,' and has given in his adherence to the Vatican decrees, yet with minimizing qualifications, and in a tone of sadness and complaint against those ultra-zealous infallibilists who 'have stated truths in the most paradoxical forms and stretched principles till they were close upon snapping, and who at length, having done their best to set the house on fire, leave to others the task of putting out the flame.' (See his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, on occasion of Gladstone's Expostulation, Lond. 1875, p. 4.) Nevertheless that document deserves to be remembered for its psychological interest, and as a part of the inner history of the infallibility dogma a few months before its birth. 'Rome,' he wrote to Bishop Ullathorne, 'ought to be a name to lighten the heart at all times, and a Council's proper office is, when some great heresy or other evil impends, to inspire hope and confidence in the faithful; but now we have the greatest meeting which ever has been, and that at Rome, infusing into us by the accredited organs of Rome and of its partisans, such as the Civiltà (the Armonia), the Univers, and the Tablet, little else than fear and dismay. When we are all at rest, and have no doubts, and--at least practically, not to say doctrinally--hold the Holy Father to be infallible, suddenly there is thunder in the clearest sky, and we are told to prepare for something, we know not what, to try our faith, we know not how. No impending danger is to be averted, but a great difficulty is to be created. Is this the proper work for an oecumenical Council? As to myself personally, please God, I do not expect any trial at all; but I can not help suffering with the many souls who are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to defend decisions which may not be difficult to my own private judgment, but may be most difficult to maintain logically in the face of historical facts. What have we done to be treated as the faithful never were treated before? When has a definition de fide been a luxury of devotion, and not a stern, painful necessity? Why should an aggressive, insolent faction be allowed to "make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful?" Why can not we be let alone when we have pursued peace and thought no evil? I assure you, my lord, some of the truest minds are driven one way and another, and do not know where to rest their feet--one day determining "to give up all theology as a bad job," and recklessly to believe henceforth almost that the Pope is impeccable, at another tempted to "believe all the worst which a book like Janus says;" others doubting about "the capacity possessed by Bishops drawn from all corners of the earth to judge what is fitting for European society," and then, again, angry with the Holy See for listening to "the flattery of a clique of Jesuits, Redemptorists, and converts." Then, again, think of the store of Pontifical scandals in the history of eighteen centuries, which have partly been poured forth, and partly are still to come. What Murphy [a Protestant traveling preacher] inflicted upon us in one way, Mr.Veuillot is indirectly bringing on us in another. And then, again, the blight which is falling upon the multitude of Anglican Ritualists, etc., who themselves, perhaps--at least their leaders--may never become Catholics, but who are leavening the various English denominations and parties (far beyond their own range) with principles and sentiments tending towards their ultimate absorption into the Catholic Church. With these thoughts ever before me, I am continually asking myself whether I ought not to make my feelings public; but all I do is to pray those early doctors of the Church, whose intercession would decide the matter (Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Basil), to avert this great calamity. If it is God's will that the Pope's infallibility be defined, then is it God's will to throw back "the times and moments" of that triumph which he has destined for his kingdom, and I shall feel I have but to bow my head to his adorable, inscrutable Providence. You have not touched upon the subject yourself, but I think you will allow me to express to you feelings which, for the most part, I keep to myself. . . .' See an excellent German translation of this letter in Quirinus (p. 274, Germ. ed.) and in Friedberg (p. 131). The English translator of Quirinus has substituted the English original as given here from the Standard, April 7, 1870.