Letters From Rome on the Council. Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger
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.
Prince Hohenlohe and the Council. (Allg. Zeit., June 20 and 21, 1869.)
In former times, the assembling of an Œcumenical Council was caused by a general sense throughout the Catholic world of some religious need, whether the definition of an article of faith or the abolition of grave evils and abuses – in short, a reformation – was felt to be necessary. It was universally known what questions the Council was to treat of. The sovereigns communicated, for this end, with the heads of the Church and the Pope, and brought forward their own wishes and requirements, as at the last Œcumenical Council of Trent, which had at least to be taken into consideration. But how entirely different is this Council under Pius ix.! Already, in 1854, an episcopal assembly, at Rome, raised to the dignity of a dogma the thesis of a theological school of the middle ages, combated even by Thomas Aquinas, but which happens to have become a favourite opinion of the Pope, although no ground had been discovered for this new article of faith in any want of the religious life which the Church has to cultivate. And this was done against the judgment of a considerable number of the prelates who were consulted, without any basis for the doctrine being able to be found in Scripture and Tradition, by the acclamations of the assembled bishops – after a fashion, that is, in which no dogma had ever been defined before. The Abbé Laborde, who craved permission to lay his objections before the assembly, received for answer his banishment from Rome, and the name of another priest was subscribed to the Bull proclaiming the dogma without his knowledge or consent, so that he found himself compelled to protest publicly against it. In view of these facts, and under the just anticipation that at the approaching Council the dominant party in Rome will be equally tyrannical in their treatment of dissentients, – it is already reported that three members of the present Commission, who are opposed to Jesuit tendencies and practices, have been suffered to retire – several distinguished heads of the Church have renounced the idea of delivering their testimony there. And how is this Council the outcome of any urgent requirements of the Church's life, and does Catholic Christendom know what end it is designed to serve, and what is to be expected of it? Nothing of the sort. The necessity of the Council, if it will not put its hand to a reformation of the Church, in accordance with the needs of modern civilisation, is not everywhere understood by the clergy themselves. Only this winter wishes were loudly expressed by some of them that its assembling might be dispensed with, considering the position of the Church in Austria and Spain; but in the Holy Father's state of exaltation on the subject these wishes could have no effect. Then again, – what is perhaps without precedent in all Church history – the the matters to be treated of in the Council have been carefully kept secret; the Bull of Indiction confines itself to vague generalities, and the theologians employed in the preliminary labours were bound to silence by the oath of the Holy Office, —i. e., the Inquisition – imposed under pain of excommunication to be incurred ipso facto. It seems not to be necessary, therefore, at least for the present, that Christendom should have even any inkling of the doctrines on the acceptance or rejection of which salvation or damnation is to be made dependent.
It is not the satisfaction of real religious needs that is contemplated – there would be no need to shun publicity in that case – but chartering dogmas which have no root in the common convictions of the Catholic world. Leibnitz used to call even the Council of Trent a “concile de contrabande;” the way in which this last Council is to be brought on the stage would make the designation for the first time fully applicable.
If these circumstances alone are enough to make Governments that have Catholic subjects suspicious of the designs of the Curia, there are also further proofs that their designs are not confined to strictly ecclesiastical affairs, but involve direct encroachment on the life of the modern State. Not to dwell here on the
[Cardinal Reisach was absent at the opening of the Council, and died soon afterwards, Dec. 26, 1869, in Savoy. – Tr.]