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FOOTNOTES:

[104] Acta, p. 6.

[105] Archbishop Manning gave reasons for looking upon the motive here assigned as "a transparent error."

[106] Serie VII. vol iii. p. 264.

[107] Serie VII. vol. iii. pp. 259, 260.

[108] Friedberg Aktenstücke, pp. 250–53.

[109] Neue Folge, Erstes Heft, pp. 72, 73.

[110] These productions are published by Friedrich—Tagebuch, p. 453 ff.

[111] The Centenary of St. Peter, and the General Council, p. 90.

[112] Civiltá, Serie VII. vol. v. p. 234.

[113] Technically, Berchmans seems to be only a beatified, not a saint.

CHAPTER IV

Princes, Ministers, and their Confessors—Montalembert's part in the Revival—His Posthumous Work on Spain—Indignation against the New Assumptions—Debate of Clergy in Paris on the Lawfulness of Absolving a Liberal Prince or Minister—Wrath at Rome—True Doctrines taught to Darboy and his Clergy.

In proportion as this Popery of physical force came into view, did the mental stress of Catholics who had put their faith in finer forces increase.

Chateaubriand, who played a brilliant part in the Catholic reaction which followed the great French Revolution, especially in that phase of the movement which aimed at linking together, in the imagination, Rome and ideas and hopes now dear to mankind, left a work, at his death, which he called Memoirs from Beyond the Grave—Memoires d'outre Tombe. Montalembert, who played a still more brilliant part in the Catholic reaction which followed the Revolution of 1830, also left behind him a work, to appear after his death. In that work we can trace the pains of a representative mind, showing what must have been those of multitudes at the time of which we now write.

Montalembert saw, in "the absolutist politics, the retrospective fanaticism, the embittered hostility to all modern ideas and institutions, flaunted everywhere by the religious press,"[114] not only a blot on the cause, which had been his life-passion—a passion of feminine flame but of masculine vigour—but also a personal wound. It made his past look like a well-played hypocrisy. He had enthusiastically and victoriously argued for Catholicism under plea of liberty. "I neither can nor will," he cries, "keep silence, as to the monstrous articles published this very year (1868) by the Civiltá Cattolica against liberty in general, and precisely against those Liberal Catholics who, like me, have had the naïveté in the Parliamentary tribune to assert the rights of the Jesuits, and cause them to triumph in the name of liberty."[115]

On the second anniversary of that mysterious Thursday in February 1848, when King Louis Philippe, of the Tuileries, suddenly changed into Mr. Smith in a street cab on the way to exile, Montalembert and Thiers pleaded in the National Assembly for "freedom of instruction" on behalf of the Jesuits. "It was only," says our orator, "in the name of liberty, of modern constitutions, of modern liberty, of the liberty of conscience, of the Press, and of the tribune, that we made the claim." He adds that the victory was won only by Thiers brandishing the text of the Republican constitution in the face of the furious Mountain, a constitution proclaiming equal freedom of worship and association to all. The italics are his own—

"We were all wrong, it is clear. In sound theology M. Renan alone was right—he and the like of him who maintained that Catholicism, and above all, the Jesuits, were absolutely incompatible with liberty. Only—we ought to have been told it then. It was then, and not now, that they ought to have taught us that liberty was a plague, instead of taking advantage of it, and that by our help, in order, twenty years later, to come insulting and repudiating both it and us, at one and the same time.

I have long passed the age of disappointments and passionate emotions, but I declare on reading these bare-faced palinodes I have reddened to the white of my eyes, and shivered to the ends of my nails. I am no longer child enough to complain of the inconsistencies of men in general, or of Jesuits in particular, but I loudly say that this tone of the puppy and the pedant (ce ton de faquin et de pédagogue), employed towards old defenders, all of whom are not dead, and in respect of old struggles, which may be renewed to-morrow, does not become either monks or reputable men. It may be perfectly orthodox. In matters of theology I am no judge, but I think I am a judge in a matter of honour and decency; and I declare it is perfectly indecent."

We give but one more extract from this unconscious palinode of the high-souled Montalembert, who could not even then see that the Liberal Catholicism of his ideal was a generous phantasy, irreconcilable with the Popery of Rome, as much so as was his beloved parliamentary system in politics with the Second Empire. No more could he see that Pope and Jesuit were true to themselves in urging their old and fixed principles, and had been equally true to themselves in using instruments like him so long as they struck or stayed their hand at "the beck of the priest," and in disowning them so soon as they set up to keep a conscience for themselves, "as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up." He and his friend Lacordaire carried to Rome the large ideas of a great people, and bathed the quaint figures of the Curia, and the quaint objects of the city, in the tropical light of their own genius, just as Lamartine had done with the withered remnants of the East. After such pictures as Montalembert had drawn in his books, and his speeches, of his ideal Catholic Church, it must have been mortifying to have, in age and sickness, to write as follows—

"Certainly, a strange way has been invented of serving religion, of making the modern world accept, comprehend, and love it. One might say that they treat the Church like one of those wild beasts that are carried about in menageries. Look at her, they seem to say, and understand what she means, and what is her real nature! To-day, she is in a cage, tamed and broken in, by force of circumstances. She can do no harm for the present; but understand that she has paws and tusks, and if ever she is let loose you will be made to know it" (p. 641).

As he wrote this sad passage, in all probability there would rise before his imagination one of the most memorable scenes in the life of any orator. When glorifying the return of the Pope to Rome, restored by French force, and deprecating any attempt at a conflict with the Church, he said that from any such conflict only dishonour could result, as to a strong man would result dishonour from a combat with a woman. And then, turning upon his audience, he said, "The Church is more than a woman; the Church is a mother," with a gush and a power which produced such a scene as perhaps has hardly ever been witnessed in any parliamentary assembly. And both ideals were quite sincere. The Church of Montalembert's imagination was a mother; the Church of the Civiltá Cattolica is a dam, holding to her young while they continue in sheer dependence, treating them as strangers when they can take care of themselves. His Church is the dream of an exceptional few, the Church of the Civiltá is the strong reality.

The articles which called forth this protestation of Montalembert, were among the most curious even of the Civiltá. They dealt with France—Paris and Darboy. On February 5, 1868, the Archbishop of Paris held a conference of his clergy in the Church of Saint Rocque, and there argued the following case of conscience. By some exceptional feat of the worst of all evil genii, Publicity, the discussion, and its result, were reported in the Patrie; and this indiscretion caused the world for once to gain a real peep into the consultations in the judges' chambers, behind the internal tribunal.

"A man engaged in politics," says the case of conscience, "declares to his confessor that he has no intention of renouncing the doctrines which prevail among modern nations, the principal points of which are, liberty of worship, liberty of the Press, and the action of the State in mixed affairs. The confessor asks if he is to grant absolution to a penitent in this state of mind, or to deny it."—Civiltá, VII. ii. 151.

The reasoning ascribed to the supposed penitent is the following—

You, as my confessor, have not the right to lay on me as you would on a private man, the duty of devoting a certain day, and of adopting certain means for the conversion of this or that person. Doubtless, I ought, by word and example, to lay myself out for the conversion and edification of my neighbour; but it rests with me as a free agent to select the means and to discern the opportunity. In like manner, you cannot order me as politician, legislator, or prince, to take, this very day, this or that measure, against blasphemy for example, or Sunday labour, or the licence of the Press. Lay it upon me to attend to the propagation of righteousness and truth; but leave it to me to judge of the opportunity, and to choose the means. And, I pray you, consider the grounds of my opinions. In the first place, whenever we speak or act, we have on one side the truth and right, which certainly ought to be respected; but on the other side we have fitness and opportunity, of which also we must take account, if we would speak to good purpose. Now, in this respect, I know better than any other what I can do, and what I cannot, in my family, or in a political assembly, or in the nation. In the next place, perhaps you do not see the absurdity which would follow the opposite opinion. It would follow that you had the right to decide and regulate all my actions, because into every one of them morality may enter; and every one of them may be connected with religion. You would be able to dictate my will, to tell me what vote I ought to give, to determine whether I am to declare peace or war. Mere trifles, you say. But what, in that case, would temporal power be, but a passive instrument of the spiritual power, and a mere machine? These are the reasons why I stand to my old notions on this point, and have no thought of changing them for others.

In this case, as thus put, and in the ensuing discussion, we see the confessor of a king or minister preparing to meet his "penitent." In the language of Montalembert, we see the feeling of a politician in facing the "tribunal," under an Ultramontane confessor; and in the papers of the Civiltá we see the glaring eye of Rome searching out every movement of the one and the other.

The case being thus stated, both as to its substance and as to the reasoning of the supposed penitent, the discussion began. Abbé Michaud, of the Madeleine, maintained that the confessor ought to grant absolution. Abbé G——, a Dominican, maintained that he ought not to do so. Archbishop Darboy now and then interfered, to moderate the opposition of the latter. The Abbé Falcimagne interrupted the Archbishop, declaring that he would deny the absolution, for the supposed penitent was unworthy of it. Finally, the Abbé Hamon, Curé of Saint Sulpice, read out four conclusions, which were fully accepted by the Archbishop, and which allowed the confessor to grant the absolution. The Opinion Nationale and other journals said that this conclusion showed to how little the condemnations of the Syllabus amounted.

Both the conclusion and the grounds on which it was rested gave huge offence at Rome. The Civiltá was not content with less than five long articles, making ninety octavo pages. It is in these that the things are set forth which fired the embers of Montalembert's true love of liberty, and damped his dying hope of ever seeing his ideal Catholicism and actual Popery seated on the same throne. We need not quote the passages which are echoed in his indignant repudiation; but we give a few others, which show that, strongly as we have seen him put the case, he was not guilty of any injustice. The Abbé Michaud said that the liberty condemned was not moderate liberty, but unbounded liberty.[116] The Civiltá took it for granted that he could not have been sincere.

"Similar to liberty of worship, is that worst of liberties, never sufficiently execrated or abhorred—liberty of the Press, which some dare to invoke and promote with so much clamour." It continues—"In respect of religion and the Press, it is idle to distinguish between two sorts of liberty, one wise and the other unbridled, as the Abbé did. In such matters, all liberty is a delirium and a pestilence. There is no healthy man's delirium; all delirium is that of a sick man. There is no praiseworthy and harmless plague; every plague is deadly. … Hence, it is never a decent thing to introduce such liberty into a civil community. It is only permissible to tolerate it in certain cases, in the same way that a pest is tolerated" (p. 160).

The Abbé Michaud had said that, in mixed questions, the State interfered by the same right as the Church! Such an utterance savoured of our bad times. It was infected with the idea of the independence of the civil power in regard to the ecclesiastical. This idea was born with Protestantism; but it has been received by some Catholics, sincere, it is true, though not discerning.

It is true that the temporal prince is invested with supreme power and authority, in his order; but from this it follows only that he is not subject to any other earthly power. It does not follow that his authority, sovereign in its order, cannot be subject and is not subject to another authority of a more perfect order; that is, the spiritual. … It is necessary that whoever holds power, even sovereign, for temporal rule shall be regulated by the Roman Pontiff (pp. 161–63).

So far for the independence of the State. Now as to its right of intervention in mixed questions, and above all, as to the defining of limits between the two powers—

The State ought first to learn, from the Church, what are mixed questions, that it may not take spiritual matters for mixed ones, confounding both the one and the other with those which are called temporal ones. Each separate kind of corn must be tied up into a separate sheaf. The State ought to arrange with the Church every time it puts a hand to what is temporal in these mixed matters, in order that it may not violate what is spiritual.

The Civiltá quotes M. Renan, where he shows how the Syllabus has proved his assertion of 1848. "The Syllabus is a luminous demonstration of the proposition I maintained, that Catholicism and liberty are two things incompatible." The Civiltá adds that, in order to know this fact, M. Renan did not need to be a profound theologian, but only needed to read the works of any author sincerely Catholic. It points out that the Liberal Catholics fancy that the Popes, in condemning liberty of worship and of the Press, only spoke of part of the subject, that is, of some sorts of liberty; and that it was, therefore, some liberty, not all, that they called madness, poison, and pestilence. But the Popes, asserts the Civiltá, on the contrary, thought that all liberty of worship and of the Press bore those characters (p. 314).

The Abbé Falcimagne insisted (p. 316) that the supposed penitent should be at once treated as a sick man, and as being not of sound reason—

He comes to submit himself to my tribunal, and at the same time rejects my authority. To see how far I can yield to his spiritual infirmity I must see how far the authority of the confessor over the penitent extends. On this point, I shall cite the words of Domenico Soto, who, after hearing the confession of Charles V, said, "So far, you have confessed the sins of Charles; now confess those of the Emperor." Soto at least thought that the actions of his penitent, although they belonged to the political order, nevertheless came within the cognizance of his tribunal. Our patient is of a diametrically opposite opinion. He will not recognize in me the right of judging him in what touches doctrine and morals indirectly. But I hold that, as confessor, I have a right to judge my penitent, be he a legislator, or even a prelate of the Church, in things pertaining to dogmas and morals, and to prohibit what is contrary to either, whether directly or indirectly. So I can command him to cease from holding presumptuous tenets.

The Archbishop then asked the Abbé Falcimagne, requesting him to give a direct answer, if he had a right to order his penitent to leave a hundred thousand francs in his will to be distributed among the poor. To this the Abbé Falcimagne made no reply. He said the point now was to know whether the penitent, who would not renounce his modern ideas as to liberty, was or was not guilty of presumption, temerarius. "Guilty of presumption," replied the Archbishop, "is that confessor who lays his hands on temporal things, assessing what he has no right to assess." "But," retorted Falcimagne, "I have the right to judge my penitent as to his disposition; and if he comes to me, and says that he wishes to maintain his principles, and declares that I have not a right to judge him, I tell him that his pretensions are illegitimate; that his reason is disordered by modern principles; and that, if he will not renounce those principles, I cannot absolve him."

The Civiltá thinks that, at this point, they came to the heart of the matter. On one side they began to allege that the confessor could not require his penitent to renounce his opinions unless they were heretical, or were opinions condemned by the Church. A very false doctrine! exclaims the oracle; for, in addition to heretical opinions, a true Catholic must renounce many others—those, for instance, which are proximate to heresy; those which are presumptuous, scandalous, and all indeed that are offensive to pious ears. The teaching power of our Church is not merely infallible, and not only does it define with infallibility when defining articles of faith, but also when defining any truth, scientific or practical, political or historical, which is connected, in any manner whatever, with dogma and morals; and whoever would be a sincere Catholic must conform not only in respectful silence, but with interior assent of the intellect (p. 318).

The Civiltá proceeds to quote the opinions of the "good journals" of Italy, laying stress on the point that the opinions held by the supposed penitent could not be probable opinions—being in fact those which were already condemned in the Syllabus. It proceeds with great vigour to maintain that the Syllabus was the decree, not only of the Pope, but also of the five hundred bishops who had adhered to it last year (1867). Of these, the Civiltá correctly says that Darboy himself was one. It next contributes an important item of information, which completes the evidence of the perfect and formal ecclesiastical authority of all the condemnations of the Syllabus, on either theory of the constitution of the Church, the Papal or the Episcopal. After the address of the five hundred bishops present in Rome, all the absent ones, asserts the Civiltá, sent in their adhesion by letter, which they hastened to forward to this Roman chair, where, with the living Pontiff, resides the "spirit of truth" (p. 324). Hence it draws the inference, which is a just conclusion, if we may say so, in the face of a hundred English writers who, following an old tradition, when reviewing what Dr. Newman put upon paper on this subject, called it logical.

"This penitent (says the great organ of the Vatican), openly opposes the teaching power of the Church, whether that teaching power is considered as being exercised by the Bishop of Rome alone, or as being exercised by him in conjunction with all the bishops of Christendom. That teaching power has pronounced in the one mode and in the other, and has proscribed those opinions. In both ways has it condemned opinions, not imaginary or belonging to bygone times, but opinions which to-day, and under our eye, are pertinaciously maintained and reduced to practice" (p. 324).

Returning with intense earnestness to this point, it says (p. 543)—

The universal Bishop has spoken alone, and further, he has spoken conjointly with the bishops of the particular Churches. To contradict after this, is in effect to separate oneself from the whole of the pastors, and from him who is supreme among them all.

This is not enough. Some pages later, hesitation, on this question so vital to practical government, is again censured, in replying to the plea that the supposed penitent might be worthy of absolution on the ground of invincible ignorance—

We shall never tell him that ignorance consists in this, namely, that after he has read the Encyclical and the Syllabus, and re-read them, he could not understand that the modern opinions, which he retained, have been truly condemned, or that they have been condemned rightfully. This is not ignorance. It is an error and a pertinacity proper to a man not far removed from heresy. In this case, we once more repeat, confession is not the thing wanted. The first elements of the faith, and of the Catholic profession, have to be set straight in this man's head (p. 547).

It would almost seem as if Montalembert was personally pointed at in the two later articles. It is not a little curious to learn here that his bosom friend, Lacordaire, long the charm of the French pulpit, was called to Rome in 1850 to answer for his doctrine. The points on which he had to set himself right with Rome were anything but, in our sense, religious ones: (1) The coercive power of the Church; (2) The origin of sovereignty; and (3) The temporal power of the Pope. He did set himself right. Father Jandel, the General of the Dominicans, exulting over his answer on the question touching the coercive power, says, "It avenges his memory from the suspicion of complicity with certain opinions which some Catholics would fain shelter under the authority of his name."[117] Avenges his memory! It proves that whatever Lacordaire believed, he submitted to write as his own the doctrine of Rome, that the Church has power to "employ external force," and to inflict bodily pains. And so France sees the memory of her Bossuet held up to reproach, and the memory of her Lacordaire yoked by the Dominican General to his beloved Inquisition. She sees her Montalembert driven from public life, assailed, yea, reviled, while living, preparatory to being insulted when dead.

Any one acquainted with the high spirit and immense emotional force of Montalembert, can imagine his reddening and shivering at finding the following among the citations from Renan to prove that the sceptic understood the doctrine of "Catholicism" better than its professed friends in France—

The remedy applied by the Church of Rome to the liberty of worship and liberty of thought is the Inquisition. The Councils have established and approved the Inquisition, the Fathers and bishops have counselled and practised it. The Inquisition is the logical outgrowth of the whole orthodox system, and the quintessence of the spirit of the Church.[118]

Strongly as our sympathies are with Montalembert and Darboy, we feel that, so long as the Jesuits have to prove that persecution is the doctrine and has been the practice of the Church, they have it all their own way against the Liberal Catholics, till they creep up to the early ages.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] L'Espagne et la Liberté. Bibliothèque Universelle de Lausanne, 1876, p. 626.

[115] Ibid. p. 635.

[116] Civiltá Cattolica, VII, ii. p. 150 ff.

[117] Serie VII. vol. iii. p. 65.

[118] Serie VII. vol. iii. p. 56.

CHAPTER V

What is to be the Work of the Council—Fears caused by Grandiose Projects—Reform of the Church in Head and Members—Statesmen evince Concern.

Curiosity as to what the particular work of the Council was to be grew all the more rapidly, because no authoritative indication of it was given. Were the Jesuit tenets of Papal authority and Papal infallibility to be raised into dogmas? Was the Pope to make another offering to the Virgin by proclaiming as an article of faith, that her body had been carried to heaven? By the repetition of such questions, tens of millions partially awoke to the consciousness that they belonged to a religion which knew not what might be its standard of faith next year, much less did it know to what particular tenets it might be committed.

Then, as to the position of the bishops, were they to be only councillors, or also judges? If the latter, they would first hear the doctors, as did their predecessors at Trent; would next deliberate, and finally would formulate decrees, which decrees without alteration, would be confirmed by the Pontiff. But if the bishops were no longer judges of the faith, but simply councillors of the one judge, their place would be to argue points, as the doctors had done at Trent, while the decree should be that of the Pope, and they would merely assent.

Again, as to the composition of the Council, were the bishops in partibus to be members? Was Darboy, whose diocese counted two millions of souls, to be balanced by some Court creature with a title from Sardis or Ecbatana? or was Schwarzenberg, with Bohemia at his back, to be balanced by an instrument of the Curia, who, independently of his patrons, had not a month's bread to call his own? Were those who represented ancient and numerous churches, and who were as far free agents as men under Rome can be, to be voted against, man for man, by vicars apostolic, without churches, or with only new and ignorant ones—men depending on the Propaganda even for their travelling expenses and board?

Finally, as to the mode of procedure, were the bishops, as they did at Trent, to agree upon their own rules of procedure, to evolve by mutual consultation the questions demanding solution, and to discuss them till all were ready to vote? Or could there be truth in the suspicion that everything was being cut and dried beforehand, and that the Court would impose ready-made rules of procedure, and allow no one but itself to introduce any subject for discussion?

As to the burning question of moral unanimity, would projected formulae be passed from hand to hand, as was done at Trent, examined in meetings of groups, retouched, and, if need be, remoulded till a form was arrived at in which all but two or three acquiesced? Or was it possible that formulae for new articles in a creed prepared behind the backs of the bishops would be imposed on millions and for ever, by a majority made up with the help of the bishops in partibus?

All this time, the nine determined men forming the secret Directing Congregation, were coolly looking at the same questions, and, step by step, as we shall see, when events bring out the secret plans, were settling those questions in the sense most dreaded, and going to lengths not, we believe, suggested in any of the anticipatory expressions of fear.

Earnest theologians who had not been converted by the infallibilist propaganda of recent years, were thrown into consternation. Some bishops, able administrators, saw no essential difference between Papal infallibility as a doctrine taught in many of the schools, and believed by great numbers if rejected by others perhaps greater, and the same opinion as an article of faith. In such a view, the men of thought saw the superficial glance of "practical men," as they call themselves, who never discover anything but by feeling it, and who live by acting out to-day what others thought out in time gone by.

Little difference! thought the men of foresight. We are going to be compelled to alter our catechisms and creed in the face of the Protestants; going to be compelled to teach the opposite of what we have always taught; going to part with immemorial safeguards against altering the conditions of salvation, or further narrowing the terms of membership in the Church—to part with the necessity before every such change of the open and formal process of a General Council! The proposed dogma is unlike any now in the creed, in the all-important point of being self-multiplying. If it is adopted, we shall be liable to have eternal obligations laid upon our souls, without a week's warning.

Beside fears like these, others perhaps more general were those of quiet Catholics wishing to live in peace and serve their respective nations loyally, who being conscious that even now they were liable to suspicion of a divided allegiance, feared that if the Jesuit tenets became the creed, their political relations would be less comfortable, and their prospects of office not so good. "At the Vatican," says Ce qui se Passe au Concile, speaking of the mystery and the uneasiness of this moment; "At the Vatican they spoke in low tones of grandiose projects that were to transform the world, and by exalting Pius IX were to confound the enemies of the Church." It was those grandiose projects which made good citizens fear for their own future political standing.

Even feelings of this sort, as represented by Holtgreven, ought to touch us, being those of silent millions awaiting in the dark the sentence of their lords in Council. He says—

When we left the gymnasium, soon after the year 1860, there was no pupil who could say that, even by hint, he had been taught there that the Pope was infallible by himself, and without the consent of the Church. The answer 128 in Martin's Handbook of Religion is still too fresh in the memory of all; an answer which affirms that the grace of infallibility belongs only to the collective body of bishops, as successors of the Apostles. … Persons in office and out of it, clergy, laity, and exalted Church dignitaries, agreed that the pretensions of the Pope to power over kings and nations, in matters of allegiance and such like, were not part of their religion, but arose out of the state of the civil laws in the middle ages. … Thus does the Catholic teacher teach in his lectures on Church history, thus does the student learn; and this view, which captivates the youth, putting his German heart at rest, and rejoicing it, still gives him repose and removes every scruple when, as a man, he lifts up the hand to swear allegiance to the laws of the fatherland.[119]

Those of the French clergy whose education had been carried beyond the usual round of Latin, logic, and manners, began to manifest misgivings as to the effect of the impending change on men of enlarged culture. It was in March, 1869, that the Unitá published the Pope's famous letter to the Archbishop of Paris, described in a former chapter. The Paris correspondent of that journal, commenting upon it, calls the dignitary who, in the eye of the world, would be his metropolitan and ordinary, "a pretty fellow"—bel soggetto—whom no one would any longer look upon as a candidate for the rank of Cardinal. In the same letter he says that war against Prussia must break out, whether the occasion be the Belgian railways, or complaints that Prussia violates the treaty of Prague.

Fears as to coming changes, in their effect on men of culture, were felt still more deeply in Germany, where the general education of the clergy was higher than elsewhere. Both the German clergy and the nobler of the French were unprepared for what they began, in secret, to call Pius-cult, as it appeared in the language employed by the favoured organs. One word in the prayer for the Pope, recommended by the Unitá, on March 12, grated not on Protestant ears only. The Ave Maria was for a week to be followed by these petitions: "Eternal Father, defend Pius IX! Eternal Word, assist Pius IX! Holy Spirit, glorify Pius IX!"

Perhaps none of the publications now flowing from the Press excited greater attention than one which was announced as being from the pen of one of the best known of the Austrian clergy. It was entitled The Reform of the Romish Church in Head and Members. Not only does this author oppose the attempt to restore laws enforcing unity of creed, but he actually does so on principle, as well as on the ground of expediency. The longing of Rome for the subjection of the States of the world, and for power again to employ the arm of the State in her service, is, he contends, a delusion which will lead only to her overthrow. Moreover, he lays down the startling principle that the Church has nothing to ask but liberty to act in her own sphere like any private society. This last position is utterly irreconcilable with all the ordinary theories. He holds that anything granted to the Church by the State beyond what is given to any other private society is an evil, and also that every case, in the past, wherein Church and State have joined hands in order to help one another to gain their respective ends, has turned out ill for both of them. In modern times his ideal of the normal relation of Church and State is that existing in America, which he imagines works favourably for Romanism.

The author of Reform in Head and Members looks on the system of lower seminaries for boys and higher ones for young men, in which the future clergy pass their youth separated from all society, leading an unreal life, pursuing narrow studies and without knowledge of men, or the possibility of acquiring any breadth of mind, as producing only a race of priests unfit to lead an educated age. He declares that in France, Italy, and Spain the system of close seminaries has destroyed theological science among Catholics. He manifests the ordinary contempt of German scholars for the showy and wordy pupils of the Roman seminaries, and contends that Catholic theology does not bear any comparison, as to talent and learning, with Protestant theology in any country except Germany, where the priests have to study at the universities. He further believes that the lamentable moral condition of the Romish clergy is not a little to be ascribed to the seclusion and unreality in which their youth is passed (p. 161).

The young priests in whose hands the guidance of the people is to be placed, squander the fair and precious years of youth in enclosures shut off from the world, and out of them do they go forth into life without experience of men or of the world. Then does the world, with all its charms, allurements, delights, and seductions, rush in upon those narrow, inexperienced young clergymen; and alas! only too many of them sink in a sea which to them is new, strange, and untried.

He demands a thorough reform of this system, insisting that the contempt shown by all respectable Italians for the priesthood is not to be accounted for except on the ground of this wretched system and of its wretched moral and religious results.

Another demand boldly made by this Austrian priest is for the abolition of the vows of celibacy, so far as they are either perpetual or obligatory. He would admit of vows that were both voluntary and temporary. The corrupting effects of celibacy evidently leave him no hope that it is capable of being rendered consistent with tolerable morality. He treats this institution as purely local and Romish, regarding its imposition upon the Catholic Church as a great public evil, impossible to be justified. At page 117 he says, "Upon the law of the Romish Church fall back all those moral abominations, beyond measure and beyond number, which have arisen out of it, and which will stain the Church as long as that law remains in force." When the writer approaches the subject of bureaucratic centralization, the Catholic rises against the Romanism which has fastened itself on the Churches of other nations. This system of centralization as carried out by the Curia is much too narrow legitimately to claim the name of national. Our author wants to see an end of the system. He wonders what may be the annual revenue paid into Rome from all quarters of the globe for indults, dispensations, indulgencies, remissions of sins, and the fees gained by all the inventions for what he calls selling poor parchment and bad writing very dear. He does not, like many writers when they touch this subject, break out into a passion against the huckstering of their religion, but manifests a cold contempt, feeling that the system is low and hollow.

The modern contrivance for making a bishop a tenant on a short lease is calmly exposed. Formerly, as the author points out, a bishop used to rule his own diocese; now he is no more than a delegate. He is allowed to distribute such dispensations for the smaller sins against Church law as do not pay any money tax, but his power to do this, as also his power to perform several other of the acts essential to his office, is no longer conveyed to him with the office itself. On the contrary, for that power he is dependent upon a lease, never given for more than five years, called the Quinquennial Faculties. If at the expiration of one of these terms the Faculties are not renewed, he becomes a mere lay figure in his chair, and would be at once exposed to his clergy and people as under disgrace. By this means is he kept a perpetual pensioner on the favour of the Curia, and in addition to the periodical expiration of the ordinary lease, he is a tenant at will, liable any day to have his Faculties withdrawn by the Holy Father.

The centralizing of the government of the Church in the See of Rome, to effect which it was necessary to destroy the rights of metropolitans and to curtail the jurisdiction of bishops, is a state of things so unjustifiable and ruinous, that the well-being of the Church urgently demands its removal. This absorption of all the powers and rights of Church government is not to be justified either by pleading the necessity of preserving the unity of the Church, or by pleading the supreme hierarchical power, which belongs to the See of Rome. The very necessity of manifesting unity presupposes a number of persons entrusted with independent functions of government; and if the incumbent of the highest power of the Church strips the subordinate functionaries of all authority, he makes himself the sole seat of power in the Church.

This writer would restore worship in the mother tongue.

Statesmen began to feel concern, at least such as did not belong to the class finely laughed at by M. Veuillot, who do not think it necessary to inform themselves on "the small affairs of the Catholic Church," although speaking, legislating, and perhaps writing on matters of which those affairs form a considerable element.

Naturally such fears were sooner and more seriously felt by Roman Catholic statesmen than by Protestant ones. Though Von Lutz, Minister of Worship in Bavaria, spoke after the event, he tersely expressed the apprehensions felt at this time—

"The Church lays down the principle that the Pope is Prince of princes, and Lord Paramount (Oberherr) of all States. Do you think it possible that States will put up with that? That the State will quietly stand by while the bishop orders the parish priest to preach against the law of the land, and while he deposes him if he will not comply? Or must the State itself drive the parish priest out of his home for refusing to misuse the pulpit, against the State?"[120]

Bishop Fessler, of St. Pölten,[121] in a lengthy manifesto, gave a clear intimation that the infallibility of the Pope would probably be defined by the Council. This set many Catholics in Germany on preparing to combat the intention announced, and set still more on saying that as Fessler had been the first to face the German public with this intimation, his fortune was made at Rome.

Bishop Dupanloup, of Orleans, put forth his best literary power in what was called, by the Constitutionnel, an attempt to bring about a reconciliation between the Council and the principles of 1789.[122] He urged that they greatly erred who looked upon the approaching Council as a menace against modern society, or as a declaration of war with progress. On the contrary, freedom, fraternity and progress, so far as they were true and good, had nothing to fear from this "senate of humanity."

Bishop Von Ketteler, of Mainz, declared that the forthcoming Council was the greatest event of our age[123]—

At least (added this doughty pupil of the Jesuits), in the work of reconstruction; for as to destruction, certainly, there have been greater events. As God provided for the Church and the world in the century of the so-called Reformation, by means of the Council of Trent, so has He in our century, which, still sadder to say, is the century of Revolution, the century of demolition and universal destruction, inspired the High Pontiff with the supreme remedy, the convocation of the Vatican Council. The work of destruction is manifestly hasting to its end. It is time to commence the work of reconstruction, on the ancient foundation laid by Christ once for all. This is precisely the work to which the Council is called.

These words we quote from the Civiltá, to which the whole document seemed highly laudable.[124] But its translation is strong. Ketteler did not use the term "reconstruction" for his German audience, but "construction." He did not say that God had inspired the Pontiff, but that the Spirit of God again assembled the General Council, the highest Court of Judgment for the Truth on earth. This last form of words had the merit of which our English tongue has within the last few years presented some examples of all but incredible skill—the merit of suggesting to a Protestant an idea that would not awaken his political fears, and yet of representing to the Jesuits of the Civiltá the true doctrine. The Pope himself began to take part in the controversy now gradually rising. The Abbé Belet had translated into French the work of the Jesuit Father Weninger, published in New York. The Pope wrote a brief to thank him, taking occasion at the same time harshly to censure the great Bossuet, as a bishop who, in order to flatter the civil power, contradicted his own proper opinions, and contradicted the original doctrine of the Church.[125]

Pleasant to the military palate of Pius IX were the words of brave Colonel Allet, in a soldierly order of the day, issued in December, to his zouaves. After recounting in terse, strong terms, their services against the Garibaldians, he says—

Soldiers! all is not over. Great dangers still threaten the Church. Remember that in your regiment you stand, not merely as soldiers marching side by side; you also represent a principle before the world, the principle of the voluntary and disinterested defence of the Holy See. You are the nucleus around which will unite in the hour of danger the prayers, the succours, and the hopes of the Catholic world. Be, then, true soldiers of God. You have not merely duties, you have even a mission, and you will not fulfil it without union, discipline, moral conduct, and military instruction. A third battalion is formed. Your swelling ranks assure to you a larger part in future struggles. We shall march together to the cry of "Long Live Pius IX!"

Funereal solemnities on behalf of the fallen are proudly recorded as having been celebrated in France, England, Germany, etc.

To these military consolations were added such as a crown and a nation once great could now bestow. Queen Isabella strongly recommended from the throne, and her Cortes almost unanimously voted, that the forces of the nation, acting in alliance with the Emperor of the French, should be ready to defend the Holy See.[126] What was more important, the King of Prussia, in reply to Ledochowsky, spoke clearly in support of the temporal power. It was also told with satisfaction how, at banquets, both at Malines and Namur, the health of the Pope was drunk before that of the King of Belgium, and how pleasantly the Nuncio gave the health of the local and subordinate sovereign after that of his master, as the Lord Paramount, had received its meed.[127]

It is not easy for us, whose faith has always rested on the fixed standard of God's Word, to enter into all the feelings of suspense which are to be read between the lines of a lecture by Professor Menzel, then of Braunsberg, now of Bonn, printed for private circulation among his former pupils.[128] He is teaching them the doctrine of Church infallibility, but not, as he had hitherto done, in the twofold confidence of persuasion and personal security. Persuasion abides, reinforced by fresh study and animated by assault. But security is gone. The consciousness that he may never more be allowed to teach this doctrine weighs upon all he utters. Before another session, should his own faith not change, that of his chair probably will. The Church which he had served, as permitting the membership of those who denied the infallibility of the Pope, had been catholic enough for him. But now, after pausing since the Reformation, she had actively resumed the process of narrowing the terms of membership by dogmatizing new shibboleths. One had been already added in his own day. Another now hung overhead, still more momentous, because it not only altered the doctrine of the Church, but altered the standard of doctrine, and was moreover self-propagating—a seed bearing fruit after its kind.

"This complete subversion of the old Catholic principle, everywhere, always, and by all," cries the poor Professor, "has found its most doughty champions in the Jesuits of the Civiltá Cattolica, with their branch at Maria Laach, and in the Archbishops of Malines and Westminster, Deschamps and Manning."[129] In the struggling argument of the Teacher of this year, we cannot help hearing, by anticipation, the sighs of the excommunicated of next year; excommunicated for holding fast what he had always taught, with the sanction of the Church, and from one of her chairs! And as the iron enters into his soul, he evidently feels it hard that an English hand should be one of the foremost in driving it home.

Professors looked from the chair on their classes not knowing what they might have to teach a twelvemonth hence. Preachers looked from the pulpit on their congregations weighted with the same uncertainty. Editors wrote that the Catholic faith was thus and thus, feeling that, perhaps, soon they must write the reverse, or else drop the pen. Heads of families were perplexed as to what they should say to their children, if compelled to believe what they and their fathers had always resented as a false accusation against their religion. Jurists wondered if they must either break with their clergy or begin a campaign for reinstating canon law over civil. Kings whose forefathers had compelled nations, by the sword, to wear the yoke of Rome, chafed to think that their religion was to be "changed over their heads." But all this time the silent arbiters of the Catholic's destiny were patiently framing the decrees. Men moved and combined to prevent new fetters from being forged for their souls next year; but link was being already noiselessly added to link, by old, cool, and resolute masters. The Emperor set to defend the Gallican liberties for the millions of France, and the Emperor set to uphold the Josephine safeguards for the millions of Austria, had no access to the subterranean forge Antra Ætnaca where chains and thunderbolts were on the anvil, away from the ears of men. Turnus had not less power over the island cave where the arms by which he was to fall were being tempered. But, on the other hand, the Vulcan of the Syllabus had more than one Venus at the Court of each potentate, wooing in his interests, and pleading for his will. The truth, however, was to dawn upon their subjects from behind gorgeous clouds of their beloved pomps and ceremonies.