Читать книгу Letters From Rome on the Council - Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger - Страница 24

Rome, Feb. 5.– To supplement and partly to verify the news in my last letter, I will now tell you some facts that came to light yesterday and the day before.

The Opposition Addresses were presented to the Pope on January 26, subscribed by forty-six Germans and Hungarians, thirty French, and twenty Italian Bishops, together with some of the North American Bishops, the Portuguese, and certain others. Cardinal Barnabo had employed all available means of intimidation to prevent the Orientals from signing, and hence the number of signatures was somewhat below what had been expected. Of the Germans, Martin, Senestrey, Stahl and Leonrod had signed the Infallibilist Address, which, as was only afterwards discovered, has not been presented, because – it was countermanded. It is not, as I first informed you, composed by the Episcopal Committee, but by the Jesuits, and emanates from the bureau of the Civiltà; the abiding marvel is that 400 Bishops could be induced to sign such a document without even verifying a single one of the pretended facts cited in it. That an Infallibilist should subscribe in blind confidence, and without examination, a document coming from the Pope himself, is natural; but that 400 pastors of the Church, assembled for deciding and therefore for examining ecclesiastical questions, should endorse on faith the composition of a nameless Jesuit, is an occurrence the Order may pride itself on.