Читать книгу Letters From Rome on the Council - Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger - Страница 3

We have received the following interesting information from a trustworthy person, who is returned to Germany after a long sojourn in Rome, where he was in a position, among other things, to get to know the projects for the Council. The relations of Pius ix. to the Civiltà may be fully understood from the fact – attested by the officials of the Chancery – that the editors are regularly admitted to an audience with the Holy Father, like the prime minister, usually once a week, never less often than every fortnight. At these audiences the manuscripts prepared for the next number are laid before the Pope, who reads them, and, according to his interest in the contents, comments on them or returns them unaltered to the Chancery. The ideas of the Civiltà are therefore not only not unknown to the Pope, but are published with his express and personal approval. The chosen model of Pius IX. is Gregory vii., and his favourite notion is to discharge that rôle in the present Church which Gregory did in the middle ages. He is therefore thoroughly given up to theocratic tendencies in the contest against the modern State, and the attacks of the Civiltà upon it and the whole system of modern civilisation express his innermost thoughts. Even the General of the Jesuits is said often to be uneasy about the language used by members of his Order in their journal, and unable to avoid the apprehension that it may seriously prejudice the Order hereafter.

In the Chancery, where Antonelli's confidant Mgr. Marini revises the Civiltà, it very seldom happens that any alterations are made in the articles, partly because the Cardinal Secretary of State would at no price get into bad odour with the Jesuits. Only the record of contemporary events (Cronaca Contemporanea) is submitted pro formâ to the Dominican Spada, the Master of the Palace, for inspection. But although there can be no shadow of doubt that in all its utterances about the approaching Council the Civiltà, is simply the organ of the Holy Father himself, Antonelli does not cease to give the most reassuring answers to questions addressed to him on the subject by the various diplomatic agents. Rome, he assures them, will not take the initiative in making either the propositions of the Syllabus or Papal Infallibility into dogmas. Many representatives of foreign Governments have been deceived by these declarations, and have written home in that sense, the immediate consequence of which was seen in the reception accorded in some Courts to the despatch of the Bavarian Government. But they will not allow at Rome that they mean themselves to give the first impulse for these solemn dogmatic decisions. That only proves the confidence felt in the Vatican that a considerable number of the Bishops will come forward to demand it. It is a secret already pretty well published in Rome, how the play is to be put on the stage, and who is to be the protagonist. Nor does any one there venture seriously to deny the fact that a version of the Syllabus, composed by Father Schrader, at the wish of the Pope himself, changing its negative theses into positive, is already drawn up.

Archbishop Manning and Cardinal Reisach are the leading persons in all these designs. Reisach,3 who is accounted in Rome a man of eminent learning and wisdom, and who always manifests the most unbounded devotion to the Pope, takes an unfavourable view of German affairs. It was through him that Dr. Mast, well known through what occurred at Rottenburg, was placed on two of the preparatory Commissions (Politico-Ecclesiastica and De Disciplinâ Ecclesiæ) as consultor. So again, he has sought out Moufang of Mayence and Molitor of Spires, for his own Congregation, because he presumes them to be like-minded with himself. The general rule in selecting persons for the preliminary work has been to consider their devotion to the cause, not their scientific capabilities. First among them, in the directing Congregation of Cardinals, must be named Bilio, who never loses an opportunity in conversation of eloquently extolling Papal Infallibility. To the same class belongs Panebianco, a zealous friend of the extremest claims of the Bourbons. Neither of them is known for learned labours of any note, as neither are Barnabo and the aged Patrizzi, who is named President of this Congregation merely on account of his name and age. Among the domestic consultors of the Commission on dogma, known in literature, and as its very soul, sits the Jesuit Perrone, who is become indispensable to the Pope; then comes Spada, the Dominican, Master of the Palace, who gained his theological reputation by a controversial treatise in defence of eternal punishment; Cardoni, who exhibited his strong views in a work advocating the obligation of religious when named to bishoprics still to live according to the rules of their Order; and finally, Bartolini, who has vindicated the identity of the Holy House of Loretto with the house of the Blessed Virgin at Nazareth – all simply men of the most rigid type. Among those employed in these preliminary labours, Professor Biondo, of St. Apollinare, excels all the rest, if in nothing else, in his conviction that true devotion to the Church can only be found in Italy. We may take as a significant illustration of the method of choosing foreign consultors, the appointment of Mgr. Talbot for England, who, when appointed, was out of his mind, and has now been for four months in a lunatic asylum. Among the French who are invited the Abbé Freppel appears to be the most moderate. But even in Rome there are many clergymen, and even Cardinals, who do not conceal their opinion that with such designs the Council will be an embarrassment for Rome, and a danger for the Church. But nothing of this comes to the ear of the supreme authority, nor would information of it directly conveyed to the Pope be likely to effect any change. Even the Curia measures the sentiment of the Catholic world by the homage paid to the Pope, and therefore the solemnity can only encourage them in their designs about the Council. It is sometimes feared that the French Bishops may give trouble; any opposition on the part of secular governments is not taken into account, for the Curia has completely broken with the modern State, and has systematically ignored it both in the project and the proclamation of the Council, while according to the precedent of nearly all former Œcumenical Synods, an understanding should have been come to with the Catholic States as to the time and place of holding it, and the subjects to be discussed. The separation of Church and State in this last procedure is the act of Rome, although the opposite theory is sanctioned in the Syllabus. Anything like a literary and scientific opposition, or a movement among the laity, such as has here and there begun to show itself, is regarded in the Vatican as a mere tempest in a tea-cup.