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Forty-Second Letter

Rome, April 29, 1870.– What I mentioned in my last letter as a pamphlet of Cardinal Rauscher's, is a printed memorial addressed to the Presidents of the Council, bearing the title of Petitio a pluribus Galliæ, Austriæ et Hungariæ, Italiæ, Angliæ et Hiberniæ et Americæ Septentrionalis Præsidibus exhibita, and dated April 20th. It states that papal infallibility is beset by many objections and difficulties, which require an examination such as is impossible in a General Congregation. Among them is one of supreme importance, bearing directly on the instruction to be given to the faithful on the divine commandments and the relation of the Catholic religion to civil society.

“The Popes have deposed Emperors and Kings, and Boniface viii. in the Bull Unam Sanctam has established the corresponding theory, which the Popes openly taught down to the seventeenth century under anathema, that God has committed to them power over temporal things. But we, and almost all Bishops of the Catholic world, teach another doctrine. We teach that the ecclesiastical power is indeed higher than the civil, but that each is independent of the other, and that while sovereigns are subject to the spiritual penalties of the Church, she has no power to depose them or absolve their subjects from their oaths of allegiance. And this is the ancient doctrine, taught by all the Fathers and by the Popes before Gregory vii. But if the Pope, according to the Bull Unam Sanctam, possessed both swords – if, according to Paul iv.'s Bull Cum ex Apostolatûs officio, he had absolute dominion by divine right over nations and kingdoms, – the Church could not conceal this from her people, nor is the subterfuge admissible,⁹⁴ that this power exists only in the abstract and has no bearing on public affairs, and that Pius has no intention of deposing rulers and princes; for the objectors would at once scornfully reply, ‘We have no fear of papal decrees, but after many and various dissimulations it has at last become evident that every Catholic, who acts according to his professed belief, is a born enemy of the State, for he holds himself bound in conscience to do all in his power to reduce all kingdoms and nations into subjection to the Pope.’ We need not define more precisely the manifold accusations the enemies of the Church might deduce from this.

“This difficulty then must be most carefully sifted before papal infallibility is dealt with. The Conference we demanded on March 11 may do much towards clearing it up. But the question, whether Christ really committed to Peter and his successors supreme power over kings and kingdoms is, especially in this day, one of such grave importance that it must be directly brought before the Council, and examined on all sides. It would be inexcusable for the Fathers to be seduced into deciding, without thorough knowledge and sifting, on a question which has such wide consequences and affects so deeply the relations of the Church to human society. This question therefore must necessarily be brought before them, before the eleventh chapter of the Schema de Ecclesiâ can be taken in hand. It might, if you please, be separately treated. But, as it cannot be adequately judged of without a thorough examination of the relations of the ecclesiastical to the civil power, it appears to us very desirable that the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of the Schema should be discussed before the eleventh.”

What first strikes one about this remarkable document is, that the German Bishops belonging to the minority – Martin, Stahl, Senestrey and the Tyrolese are of course out of the reckoning – are not represented here. Does this indicate a real divergence of view or only a difference of tactics? The former notion seems to me inconceivable. It is impossible that men like Hefele, Ketteler, Eberhard and the rest should have any doctrinal predilection for the system of papal absolutism extended over sovereigns and the whole political and civil domain. Certainly they too are so strongly opposed to the infallibilist dogma because it involves the mediatizing of all kings and governments. I can therefore at present discover no explanation of this phenomenon, and cannot allow any room for the suspicion that the persistently active curialistic influences have succeeded in dividing the German Bishops from the rest of the minority.

What will the Presidents do with a document so serious, so moderate and so incisive? What have they done already? So far as I know, nothing. It is a principle, and has now become an habitual practice with them, to leave all representations and petitions of the minority unnoticed and unanswered. The directing Deputation, which is intrusted with the entire control of the Council, feels quite justified in adopting this line by the papal ordinances.

The policy hitherto pursued by the Jesuits and the Curia was, first to extend to the utmost the comprehensive office of the Church, as legislator for the nations and guardian of faith and morals; and then, by making the Pope absolute master and dictator of the Church, to assign to him all that had been claimed for the Church, so that he – acting of course in the interests of religion and morality, but simply according to his own good pleasure – should have every office, person and institution subject to him, and that the final appeal in every cause should lie to his tribunal. Since all this can only be secured and guaranteed by the infallibilist dogma, the inferences on the relations of Church and State drawn by the opposing Bishops form precisely the chief recommendation of that dogma in the eyes of the Legates, the Italian Cardinals, the Spanish and Italian Bishops and those of the French who are ultramontanes. They all say among themselves, if not aloud before the world, “That is just what we want; our very object is to get the doctrine on the relations of Church and State changed, the independence of civil society and the civil power abolished, and the complete temporal supremacy of the Church —i. e., the Pope – at least gradually established.” It is not indeed advisable to say this as yet in such explicit and unreserved terms, but the reason why the infallibilist dogma is so opportune and indispensable is exactly because it implies jurisdiction over the temporal sphere, which the Pope can according to circumstances either leave unused and say nothing about it, or suddenly draw forth for use like a weapon concealed under a mantle. He has dealt thus with the Austrian Constitution; while he let alone other countries, whose constitutional systems must have been partly at least a scandal on Roman principles, he pronounced the Austrian Constitution abominable (nefanda). And any one, who wishes to examine the practical significance of this infallible judgment, need only go to the Tyrol and observe how it has been already explained there to the inhabitants by their enthusiastic clergy.

At the audience, when he presented the French note to the Pope, Banneville expressed the wish of his Government that the discussion of the Schema de Ecclesiâ (with the chapter on infallibility) might at least not be taken before its time – which was equivalent to saying, “At least give us time, for the matter is not yet ripe for discussion.” Hitherto delay has been for the interest of the Curia, for it was expected that the minority would wither away and finally be extinguished; they trusted to the power so often proved of the Roman solvents. The article of the Civiltà which told the prelates, “We care nothing for your talk about moral unanimity in matters of dogma, and shall make the new dogma in spite of your opposition,” was written in terrorem, and was meant to hold up before the refractory the terrible perspective of a contest emerging in the abortion of an impotent schism. The article has not in the main produced the desired effect, for the Bishops still hold together and bind themselves by writings and public declarations, and the number of those who can no longer with any decency desert to the majority threatens to increase. Now therefore it is the interest of the Curia to allow no further delay, but to bring forward the Schema at once.

The Bavarian ambassador has presented the note of his Government, which appeals emphatically to the attitude of the German Bishops who represent in the Council sound principles on the relations of Church and State.⁹⁵ It cannot indeed appeal to its own Bishops, for three of them are active and fiery supporters of infallibilism and the supremacy of the Pope over Kings and States. It was previously thought impossible for a German Bishop to desire to see the day when the Popes could again grasp the reins of temporal dominion which had dropped from their hands, depose monarchs, give away countries, abolish constitutions, annul laws and dispense oaths of allegiance. But this spectacle we now enjoy! For the pastors of souls must be assumed to intend to make dogmas, not for a mere pastime or for the enrichment of theological commentaries and text-books, but in order to reduce the theory to practice.

Pius did not say, when receiving the French memorandum, whether he would communicate it to the Council. But Antonelli has now stated that the Pope, though President of the Council, will not find it at all advisable to do so. That is only consistent, for every curialist regards the Council as under strict tutelage, and in fact only existing by the will of the Pope and living by the breath of his mouth. It is simply from care for their health that he withholds so unsound a document from his Bishops. Antonelli says he will not reply to it, as it contains nothing new, and merely repeats the note of Feb. 20, which is not strictly true. He adheres to his favourite distinction, “In theory we are inexorable, grasping, high-flying, as Gregory vii. or Innocent iii., but in practice full of forbearance and compassion. We take account of human weakness and blindness, and, if the Northern nations do not acknowledge the prerogatives of our priestly absolutism, and desire to retain their political and religious liberties in spite of our theoretical condemnation of them, we shall not force matters to an open breach and shall make no use of the old methods of compulsion.”

Now are the Governments agreed or not in reference to the Council? They are no doubt all agreed in their aversion to the new dogma and the renewal of the Syllabus, but there is a great difference in their practical attitude. The rulers in some States mean to utilize the occasion for bringing about the entire separation of Church and State, i. e., for gradually extruding the Church and the clergy from all the positions of public trust they still hold, and reducing the Church to the level of a sect tolerated and as far as possible ignored by the State, and secularizing education, marriage and family life. This is the attitude of Belgium, Italy and Spain towards the Council. Out of Belgium there is no country so remarkably indifferent about the Council and its decrees, whatever they may be, as Italy, i. e., the Italian Government and many millions of Italians. The statesmen there say, “We have no Concordats to defend, for they have fallen with the old Governments; the State has no longer any concern with religion and the Church, which are mere private affairs of the individual. And thus the separation of Church and State is already in principle accomplished.” I can vouch for the following saying of a high public official there: “There are hundreds of us who do not know whether we are among those excommunicated on political grounds or not. In a dangerous illness we may send for a confessor, and then we shall find out.”

The number of those who desire and aim at this complete divorce of Church and State is legion. Their view predominates in the French cabinet since Daru's retirement, and most of them view what is going on in Rome with satisfaction and hope. The more frantic and insolent is the conduct of the Papalists, so much the better in their opinion, for so much easier and more painless will the separation be for civil society. To make papal infallibility and the Syllabus into dogmas is in their eyes a step which, far from hindering, one should wish to see thoroughly effected. When the Church is caught in this net, she must assume the full responsibility of all doctrines and principles established by any of the Popes, and she has herself pronounced judgment on their utter incompatibility with the whole existing order of society. The State can then no longer go hand in hand with her anywhere, and will dismiss her. It is impossible to be ignorant that this view is widely prevalent, and is rapidly and powerfully increasing.

Forty-Third Letter

Rome, April 30, 1870.– Now that the matter has gone so far, those about the Pope no longer make any secret of the fact that for many years – indeed from the beginning of his pontificate – he has formed the design of making papal infallibility an article of faith. A work has lately been distributed here, Riflessioni d'un Teologo sopra la Riposta di Mgr. Dupanloup a Mgr. Arcivescovo di Malines, Torino 1870. The writer says, “Could the Bishop of Orleans be ignorant that Pius ix. has always intended to define this dogma and condemn Gallicanism? All the acts of his pontificate have been directed to this end. Nay, we affirm distinctly that he believed himself to have received a special mission to define the two dogmas of papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception.⁹⁶ And as he is under the special guidance of the Holy Ghost, his will sufficiently establishes the opportuneness of this definition.”

This was obviously written for the eyes of the Pontiff, whose whole life is surrounded as with a rose-garland of miraculous deliverances, illuminations and divine inspirations. And thus the veil is now dropped, and the time come for speaking openly. Up to the end of last summer, and even till December, the answer given from Rome to all inquiries and anxieties of Bishops or Governments was, that there was no intention of bringing infallibility before the Council and that the Civiltà was mistaken; the Court of Rome was not responsible for what an individual Jesuit might write. Antonelli gave the most quieting assurances on all sides. But meanwhile the Committee of Theologians employed in preparing the materials for the Council had already voted this new dogma, under direction of the highest authority, and Archbishop Cardoni had sent in his report upon it, which was received by all against the single vote of Alzog. The subjects to be brought before the Council were carefully concealed from the Bishops, and an oath of silence imposed on the theologians who were summoned, in order that they might come to Rome unprepared and without the necessary books, and might simply indorse the elaborations of the Jesuits as voting-machines in the prison-house of the Council.

It is merely repeating what is notorious in Rome to say that Pius ix. is beneath comparison with any one of his predecessors for the last 350 years in theological knowledge and intellectual cultivation generally. One must go back to Innocent viii. and Julius ii. to find Popes of similar theological and scientific attainments. It is known here that, small as are the intellectual requisites for ordination in the Roman States, it was only out of special regard to his family that Giovanni Maria Mastai could get ordained priest. His subsequent career offered no opportunity or means for supplying this neglect, and thus he became Pope with the feeling of his entire deficiency in the necessary acquirements. This unpleasant consciousness naturally produced the idea that the defect would be remedied without effort on his part by enlightenment from above, and divine inspiration would supply the absence of human knowledge. This illusion has been and will be so common, that we need not have troubled ourselves about it, did it not threaten now to become a destructive firebrand. The public letters which have passed of late between the assembled Fathers on the absorbing question of the day deserve attention. They show the deep gulf which divides the members of the Episcopate. There is Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore, who first wanted to help the Pope to get his infallibility acknowledged indirectly by his now famous postulatum, where the real point was kept in the background, when he proposed a decree that every papal decision was to be received with unconditional inward assent. But now, in his letter to Dupanloup, he has changed his mind, and wants infallibility to be openly and explicitly defined. So again in the postulatum he had declared moral unanimity to be necessary for a dogma, but now on the contrary he considers a mere majority of votes to be sufficient. Two other American Archbishops have come forward in opposition to him, Kenrick of St. Louis and Purcell of Cincinnati. They say that Spalding's letter has fallen among them like a bomb-shell; it has hitherto been their custom for such matters to be discussed in an assembly of the American Bishops, but that has not been done in the present case, and he has written his letter alone and without any communication with his colleagues. Indeed he had previously advised them to oppose the definition of infallibility, as sure to produce nothing but difficulties, but now he has taken up just the opposite view, on what grounds they know not. The two prelates add that American Catholics have very special reasons for disliking the definition, for the notion of the Pope having the right to depose monarchs, dispense oaths of allegiance, and give away countries and nations at his will, is equally strange to Protestants and Catholics in their country. They think that Archbishop Spalding will find himself greatly embarrassed in America with his infallibilist doctrine, as has already been the case for some years with regard to the condemnation of religious freedom by the Syllabus. The two Archbishops, as one sees, tread lightly and cautiously. They are in Rome, – “incedunt per ignes suppositos cineri doloso.” Still they assert with American freedom of speech, “We, and several more of us, believe that the dogma contradicts the history and tradition of the Church.”

The citizens of the United States, whether Protestant or Catholic, will certainly be astonished when the new dogma comes into full force among them and its consequences are brought to light, suddenly recalling a long series of papal decisions into active life; – when, for instance, the recent Bull (Apostolicæ Sedis), with its many and various excommunications reserved to the Pope alone becomes known, and again the decision of the infallible Urban ii. that it is no murder to kill an excommunicated man out of zeal for the Church, a decision which to this day stands on record in 200 copies of the canon law. And as a commentary on this the work of the present Jesuit theologian of the Court of Rome, Schrader (De Unitate Romanâ), will be put into their hands, from which they will learn that the contents of all papal decrees are infallible, for they always contain some “doctrina veritatis” – whether moral, juridical, or rational – and the Pope is always infallible “in ordine veritatis et doctrinæ.” Yet that is but one flower from the dogmatic garden, into which Archbishop Spalding will introduce the citizens of the United States after infallibility is happily proclaimed. They will then also hear, among other interesting truths, that according to the irrefragable decision of Leo x. every priest is absolutely free by divine and human law from all secular authority, and no layman has any right over him.⁹⁷ And they must be reminded, in order to make them more submissive, that in 1493 Pope Alexander vi. gave over their country with all its inhabitants, “in virtue of the plenitude of his apostolic power,” to the kings of Spain in the infallible Bull Inter cætera,⁹⁸ and then drew the famous line from the North to the South Pole, which included whole provinces of the present United States in his great and generous gift. By virtue of papal infallibility they are subjects of the Spanish Government, and who knows if right and fact may not some day again coincide? “Res clamat ad dominum.”