Letters From Rome on the Council. Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger
his speech against any manifestation of applause.
There was the greatest excitement beforehand. His eloquence was already known from his former speech, which was rendered more significant from the Legates interrupting him. Had he been again interrupted this time, every one felt that the freedom of the Council would be in the greatest danger. Strossmayer's tact and moderation prevented it, although it was observed that Cardinal Bilio wished on one occasion to make the Presidents interfere. When Strossmayer mounted the tribune, somebody was heard to say, “That is the Bishop against whom the bell will be used.”
Thirteenth Letter
Rome, Jan. 30, 1870.– A great deal has happened since my letter of January 17. My last was exclusively devoted to the impression produced by Strossmayer's speech, and I must go back to several previous occurrences. I will therefore enter directly on the most important facts of the last few days. You have already heard from the telegrams that the Pope has returned the addresses of the Opposition, of which there were several, divided according to nationality. They will be at once handed over to the Commission de Fide, composed of twenty-four members. These counter addresses are subscribed by 137 Bishops, while 400 or 410 have signed the first address in favour of the dogma. This document, I can now inform you definitely, was the joint production of a committee consisting of Manning, Deschamps, Spalding, the German Bishops Martin and Senestrey, Bishop Canossa of Verona, Mermillod of Geneva, and perhaps one or two more. That none of these gentlemen, or of the 400 signataries, have observed the gross and palpable untruths and falsifications of which this composition is made up, is marvellous, and justifies the most unfavourable inferences as to the theological and historical cultivation of these Prelates. If the names of the Bishops on either side are, not counted simply, but weighed, and the fact is taken into account that the main strength of the Infallibilist legion consists of the 300 Papal boarders who go through thick and thin in singing to the tune of their entertainer – that all the host of titular Bishops, with very few exceptions, and of the Romance South Americans, who are even more ignorant than the Spaniards, are ranged on the same side – and if we then compare the countries and dioceses represented respectively by the 400 and the 137, we shall come to the conclusion that the overwhelming preponderance in number of souls, in intelligence, and in national importance, is wholly on the side of the 137 of the Opposition. It is besides affirmed now that the Address of the 400 was not really presented to the Pope at all, but withdrawn at the last moment. If that is true, it must have been in consequence of a command or hint from the Pope, either from his advisers even yet feeling ashamed of exposing him by the reception of a document bristling with falsehoods, or because they thought he could not in that case reject the hated counter address, as he has done, without too glaring an exhibition of partisanship. The Spaniards have drawn up an address of their own, which harmonizes so well with the address of the 400, that Manning declared himself quite ready to sign it.
The second important occurrence of the last few days is the treatment of the Chaldean Patriarch, an aged man of seventy-eight. He had commissioned another Bishop to deliver a speech he had composed, when translated into Latin, in the Council, expressing his desire to preserve the ancient consuetudines of his Church and to lay a new compendium of them before the assembly. He added, with indirect reference to the Infallibilist dogma, a warning against innovations, which might destroy the Eastern Church. The Pope at once ordered him to be summoned, he was to bring nobody with him; only Valerga, whom the Pope has named Patriarch of Jerusalem, one of the most devoted courtiers of the Vatican, was present as interpreter. He found the Pope in a state of violent excitement, trembling with passion, and after a great deal of vehement language he was commanded either to resign his office on the spot, or renounce all the prerogatives and privileges of his Church. His request for two days to consider the matter was instantly refused, as also the request for leave to consult his own suffragans then in Rome. Had he refused, he would certainly have been incarcerated in a Roman prison; for it is notorious that according to the Roman theory every cleric is the subject, not only spiritually but bodily, of his absolute lord the Pope. So nothing was left him but to subscribe one of the papers laid before him, and make his renunciation.
The third recent circumstance to be mentioned is the confidential mission of Lavigerie, Archbishop of Algiers, to Paris. I have spoken of this man before as Bishop of Nancy, and forgot to add that he had been translated to Algiers. He is to persuade the Emperor and the ministers Ollivier and Daru to make no opposition to the passing of the Infallibilist dogma, and to offer in return that the articles of the Syllabus on Church and State shall be either dropped, or modified in their application to France. He of course asserts that he has no mission of the kind, and is only going to Paris about an educational question, just as Cardinal Mathieu professed to have only gone to France to hold an ordination.39 In Paris the strangeness of the situation is remarked on, that the very State which used always most vigorously to assert its independence against the domineering pretensions of the Pope is now suffering, not only the infallibility but the supreme dominion of the Pope, and his right of interference in its political affairs, to be decreed under cover of its bayonets. And in Rome it is understood that, if the French troops were suddenly to disappear during the rejoicings and illuminations following on the Infallibilist triumph, the situation might become very uncomfortable. It is therefore thought that a couple of articles of the Syllabus might the more easily be surrendered, as the shield of Infallibility would cover the whole Syllabus, and no one could hinder an infallible Pope from taking the first opportunity, in spite of all secret promises, of again utilizing the principle now made into a dogma. The Roman clerics, whether high or low, are unable to comprehend that not only the German but the Latin nations feel so decided an antipathy to the domination of the priesthood over civil and social life, and on that account only must resist the Infallibilist theory, because it involves the doctrine that the Pope is to encroach on the secular and political domain with commands and punishments, the moment he can do so without too great prejudice to his office and fear of humiliation. It seems so natural and obvious to a Roman Monsignore or Abbate that the chief priest should rule also over monarchs and nations in worldly matters; from youth up he has seen clergymen acting as police-officers, criminal judges, and lottery collectors, and has no other experience than of the parish priest, the Bishop, and the Inquisition, interfering in the innermost concerns of family life, and the “paternal government” often taking the shape of a strait-waistcoat; he lives in a world where the confusion of the two powers is incarnated in every college, congregation, and administrative office. Nowhere but in Rome would it have been possible for Leo xii., with universal consent of all the clergy, high and low, to re-introduce the Latin language into the law courts after it had been abolished under the French occupation.
Lately, for the first time, a local priest, Leonardo Proja, in a work published here, has openly expressed his confidence that the Council will at once condemn the shocking error of setting aside the supreme dominion of the Pope over the nations, even in civil matters (“vel in civilibus”) as an invention of the Middle Ages.40
The Court of Rome and the Bishops are at present studying in a school of mutual instruction. The Curia studies the Bishops individually, especially the more prominent among them, and watches for their weak points and the ways of getting at them and making them pliable, and, above all, of dissolving national ties. They don't always manage matters skilfully, for the want of all real freedom, the use of coercive measures, and this apparatus of bolts and bars, cords and man-traps, by which the Prelates are surrounded and threatened at every step in Council, by no means produce a couleur de rose state of feeling, and the contrast between the title of Brother, which the Pope gives officially to every Bishop, and his way of treating them all, both individually and collectively, like so many schoolboys, is too glaring. Even the boasted freedom of speech does not extend very far, for every Prelate speaks under threat of interruption by the bell of the presiding Cardinal, directly he says anything displeasing to Roman ears. On the other hand, the Bishops, during their stay here of six or seven weeks, have learnt a good deal more than the curialists, and many of them have really made immense advances, before which the Romans would recoil with a shudder, if they could see how things stand. A great many of these Prelates came here full of absolute devotion to the Pope, and with great confidence in the integrity of the Curia and the purity of its motives. When they found themselves oppressed and injured at home by its measures or decrees, they
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