Kitabı oku: «Letters From Rome on the Council», sayfa 28

Fifty-Fifth Letter

Rome, June 10, 1870.– If we look at the many minor subdivisions of the two great parties and consider the individual differences even within that narrower circle, it is impossible to form any approximately sure conjecture about the immediate issue of the contest. All are agreed that the definition must be attempted or the Council prorogued within the next few weeks, and many Bishops are already preparing for departure. The majority, with Manning at its head, insists on the dogma being defined, however numerous and strong the minority may prove, as being the very way to exhibit most clearly the power and right of the Pope to make a new article of faith with only a fraction of the Council; and there can be no doubt that the Pope inclines decidedly to this view himself. He is so completely in the hands of the Jesuits that he will not listen to counsellors like, e. g., Antonelli, who makes no secret in his confidential intercourse of the fact that he has lost all influence in the matter and has no opinion to give. The Pope's feeling towards the Opposition, and especially towards its leaders, grows more bitter every day. Strossmayer he regards as the mere head of a sect (caposetta), and he termed another German Cardinal and Archbishop the other day “quell' asino.” The Jesuits make capital out of this disposition of Pius ix. for effecting the ruin of all the men of the old school who yet remain to him from his earlier and more liberal days, while he leaves no stone unturned to win over wavering Bishops to the infallibilist side. He tried to work on the Portuguese lately by a visit, on which a French prelate observed, “On n'a plus de scrupules, ce qu'on fait pour gagner les voix, c'est un horreur. Il n'y a jamais rieu eu de pareil dans l'Église.” The most urgent next to Manning is Deschamps. He has proposed canons anathematizing all those Bishops who claim a share for the Episcopate in the sovereign rights of the Church – a measure expressly aimed at the Opposition and the views professed by Maret both in his book and in the Council.

Meanwhile some differences have arisen among the majority, branching off at last into what may be called a middle party. Even Pie of Poitiers is no longer altogether in accord with Manning and Deschamps, and Fessler said lately that a definition could not be carried against 80 dissentient votes. This party disapproves Bilio's treatment of Maret, which is disowned by Cardinal de Luca, who in other respects often speaks openly against Manning. Others, including Cardinals, say plainly in reference to the minority Bishops that the Papacy is threatened with destruction. The definition must, if possible, be prevented by proroguing the Council, and, failing that, the difficulties must be evaded by an ambiguous formula. The prelates who speak thus are too sober-minded not to perceive the political dangers the new dogma would bring with it. They not only think the price too high, but they dread being themselves reduced by the definition under the intolerable dominion of the Jesuit party. They frequently confer with members of the Opposition with the view of devising a compromise.

The French Opposition Bishops have lately had another meeting and resolved to continue to take part in the debates. The little misunderstanding between them and the Hungarians has quite disappeared, and several of the latter —e. g., Simor – are said to be again disposed to speak. And it is thought that many speeches, suppressed by the violent closing of the general discussion, will be delivered at the supreme moment in the debate on the fourth chapter of the Schema, which deals with infallibility.

The debate on the separate chapters has reached as far as the third section “on the meaning and nature of the Roman primacy.” As twenty-six speakers are inscribed the discussion may last to the middle of next month, and then will immediately follow the debate on the fourth and most important chapter, which a great number are likely to take part in, and there will be no want of amendments. Conolly will propose the formula that the Pope is infallible “as head of the Church teaching with him” (tanquam caput Ecclesiæ secum docentis), while others, as Dupanloup and Rauscher, will reproduce the formula of St. Antoninus of Florence, declaring the Pope infallible when he follows the judgment of the Universal Church, “utens consilio,” or “accipiens consilium Universalis Ecclesiæ.” This amendment is said to have been seriously discussed in the sitting of the Deputation on Faith on June 8, though it amounts to pure Gallicanism, for Antoninus says plainly (about 1450), “In concernentibus fidem Concilium est supra Papam.” It is certain that the Deputation will labour to make some changes in the Schema in view of the Opposition. Lastly, men like Strossmayer press for an unambiguous denial of the personal infallibility of the Pope.

The more recklessly the Court party are resolved to advance, and the less they care for the destruction of the Church which must result from a decree irregularly enacted, the more are the Opposition disturbed at this prospect, and often made irresolute, but these are only passing moments of temptation. “Conscience before everything,” said a German Bishop to me the other day, who was weighed down by his gloomy views of the future of the Church. Even men who are infallibilists at heart speak of the terrible crisis in the Church, and think only God can save her. The most decided I meet are the Hungarians.

In the present debates from four to five speeches are delivered at each sitting. The most remarkable were those of Landriot and Dupanloup. The Presidents are very ready to interrupt, as Bilio did when Verot, Bishop of Savannah, was speaking on the preamble. Verot, who is a man of high character but very singular, submitted and left the tribune, saying, “Humiliter me subjicio.” This conduct might suggest to the Presidents that the definition would be hastened by a second grand interruption.

Fifty-Sixty Letter

Rome, June 11, 1870.– If the new article of faith is accepted and proclaimed throughout the Catholic world, what will be its retrospective force? On what decisions and doctrines of previous Popes will it set the seal of infallibility? What amplifications and corrections of Catholic theology will it involve? These questions are naturally raised here, not indeed by the Bishops of the majority but by many of the Opposition; only no one is in a position to give even an approximately accurate answer from want of the necessary books, and the Court party reckoned on this “penuria librorum,” which Cardinal Rauscher has already complained of. A German theologian who had previously examined and studied the subject, undertook to answer the anxious question of the Bishops, and I send you his collection, which makes no claim to completeness, as a not unimportant contribution to the history of the Council.

The Jesuit Schrader, who is the most considerable theologian of his Order since Passaglia's retirement, and who has been employed both before and during the Council for drawing up the Schemata, on account of the special confidence reposed in him by the Pope, has shown, in his great work on Roman Unity,¹⁰⁸ that, as soon as papal infallibility resting on divine guidance and inspiration is made into an article of faith, it must by logical necessity include all public ordinances, decrees and decisions of the Popes. For every one of these is indissolubly connected with their teaching office, and contains, whatever be its particular subject, a doctrina veritatis either moral or religious. Papal infallibility is not a robe of office which can be put on for certain occasions and then laid aside again. The Pope is infallible, because he is, in the fullest sense of the word, the representative of Christ on earth, and like Christ he teaches and proclaims the truth by his acts as well as his words; in short no public act or direction of his can be conceived of as not having a doctrinal significance. And thus Catholic theology and morality will be enriched by the new dogma with not a few fresh articles of faith, which will then possess the same authority and dignity as those already universally received as such.

There are indeed former papal decisions which, in becoming themselves infallible through the proclamation of infallibility, will in turn cover and guarantee the infallible character of the collective Constitutions of all Popes. The first of these decisions is the statement of Leo x. in his Bull of 1520 against Luther, “It is clear as the noonday sun that the Popes, my predecessors, have never erred in their canons or constitutions.” The second is the declaration of Pius ix. in his Syllabus, “The Popes have never exceeded the limits of their power.” This assertion too will become an infallible dogma, and history must succumb and adapt itself to the dogma. Let us however specify some of the new articles of faith thus declared to be infallible.

1. According to the teaching of the Church, the validity of the sacraments, and especially of ordination, depends on the use of the right form and matter. The whole Church for a thousand years regarded the imposition of the Bishop's hands as the divinely ordained matter of priestly ordination. But Eugenius iv., in his dogmatic decree, decided that the delivery of the Eucharistic vessels is the matter of the sacrament of Orders, and the words used in their delivery the form.¹⁰⁹ If the doctrine of this decree, solemnly issued by the Pope ex cathedrâ and in the name of the Council of Florence – which however was no longer in existence – was to be accepted as true and infallible, it would follow that the Western Church for a thousand years, and the Greek Church up to this day, had no validly ordained priests. Nay more, there would at this moment be no validly ordained priest or Bishop in the Church at all, for there would be no succession. And Eugenius gave an equally false definition of the form of the sacraments of Penance and Confirmation.

2. According to the teaching of Innocent iii., in the decretal Novit, and other Popes after him, the Pope is able and is bound, whenever he believes a question of sin to be involved, to interfere, first with admonition and then with punishments. He can on this ground reverse any judicial sentence, bring any cause before his own tribunal, summon any sovereign before him, simply to answer for a grave sin or what he considers such, annul his ordinances, and eventually excommunicate and depose him.¹¹⁰

3. God has given to the Pope supreme jurisdiction over all kings and princes, not only of Christendom but of the whole earth. The Pope has plenary jurisdiction over the nations and kingdoms, he judges all and can be judged by none in the world, according to Paul iv. in the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, and Sixtus v. in the Bull Inscrutabilis. It is also a doctrine of faith, to be received on pain of eternal damnation, that the whole world is subject to the Pope even in temporal and political matters, according to the Bull of Boniface viii., Unam Sanctam. Boniface adds that the Pope holds all rights “in scrinio pectoris sui.”

4. According to papal teaching, it is the will of God that the Popes should rule and “govern,” not only the Church, but all secular matters and literally the whole world. Thus Innocent iii. says; “Dominus Petro non solum universam Ecclesiam sed etiam sæculum reliquit gubernandum.”

5. According to papal teaching, as proclaimed by Gregory vii. at the Roman Council of 1080, the Popes with the Fathers assembled in Council under their presidency are not only able, by virtue of their power of binding and loosing, to take away and bestow empires, kingdoms and princedoms, but can take any man's property from him or adjudge it to any one.¹¹¹

6. According to papal teaching the Pope alone can remit all sins of all men. Thus Innocent iii. says in his letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople.¹¹²

7. According to papal teaching the Pope is ruler by divine right of Germany and Italy during the vacancy of the Imperial throne, because he has received from God both powers, the spiritual and the temporal, in their fulness (jura terreni simul et cœlestis imperii). So John xxii. has declared in his Bull of 1317.¹¹³ On account of this doctrine millions of German and Italian Christians, from 1318 to 1348, were placed under ban and interdict and deprived of the sacraments by the Popes.

8. The Pope by divine right can give whole nations into slavery on account of some measure of their sovereign. Thus Clement v. and Julius ii. dealt with the Venetians on account of territorial quarrels, Gregory xi. with the Florentines,¹¹⁴ and Paul iii. with the English on account of Henry viii.'s revolting from him.

9. The Pope can also give full authority to make slaves of a foreign nation merely because they are not Catholics. Thus Nicolas v. in 1454 authorized King Alfonso of Portugal to appropriate the property of all Mahometans and heathens of Western Africa, and to reduce them to perpetual slavery.¹¹⁵ Alexander vi. in 1493 gave similar rights to the Kings of Spain over all inhabitants of America, when bestowing on them that quarter of the world with all its peoples.¹¹⁶

10. According to papal teaching it is just and in consonance with the Gospel to rob innocent populations, cities, regions, or countries en masse, with the sole exception of the infants and the dying, of divine service and sacraments, by an interdict, merely because the Sovereign or Government of the country has violated a papal command or some right of the Church. Innocent iii., Innocent iv., Martin iv., Clement v., John xxiv., Clement vi., and others have done so.

11. The Popes as God's vicars on earth can make a present of whole countries inhabited by non-Christian peoples, and hand over all rights of sovereignty and property in them to any Christian prince they please. Alexander v. did this in his Bull addressed to Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, as he declares, “auctoritate omnipotentis Dei nobis in B. Petro concessâ ac Vicariatûs Jesu Christi, quâ fungimur in terris.”¹¹⁷ Historically it may be said with perfect truth, that the peoples of the southern and middle regions of America have been made the victims of the theory of papal infallibility. The Spanish Church and nation, as well as the sovereigns, have willingly received and maintained this doctrine, because their claim both to Navarre and America rested solely upon it, primarily on the Bulls of Alexander vi. and Julius ii. With the Gallican doctrine both claims would fall through. Alexander had empowered the Spaniards to make the Indians slaves. All Spanish theologians appeal with Las Casas to “el divino poder del Papa,” as he calls it, as the basis of the Spanish dominion in America, and no one dared to call in question the divine right of the infallible vicar of God, by virtue whereof he had given over millions of Indians to slavery, and thereby to extermination; within eighty years whole countries were depopulated.

12. It is just and consonant with the Gospel to burn to death as heretics those who appeal from the sentence of the Pope to a General Council. So Leo x. declares in his Bull of 1517, Pastor Æternus (issued in the fifth Lateran Synod).

13. Leo x. declared in another Bull, Supernæ Dispositionis, also published in the Lateran Synod, that all clerics are wholly exempt by divine right from all civil jurisdiction, and therefore not bound in conscience by the civil law.¹¹⁸

14. According to the teaching of the Church, every Christian is bound before God to do penance for his sins by ascetic exercises of abstinence, self-denial and almsgiving. On Church principles no one can dispense from this obligation, because it rests on divine ordinance. But the Popes teach that it may be relaxed or superseded by means of plenary or particular indulgences granted by themselves. They teach that to take part in a war against enemies of the Holy See and in the extermination of heretics is an effectual means for gaining pardon of sins, and a complete substitute for all works of penance. Thus did Paschal ii. instruct Count Robert of Flanders in 1102, that for him and his warriors the surest means of obtaining forgiveness of sins and heaven was to make war upon the clergy of Liége and all adherents of the German Emperor, Henry iv.¹¹⁹ Innocent iii. charged King Philip Augustus of France with the conquest of England, after he had deposed King John, as a means for obtaining remission of sin.¹²⁰ Martin iv. again impelled the French in 1283 to make war on the Aragonese by the promise of plenary remission of their sins.¹²¹ And whenever there was a war to be undertaken in the territorial interests of the Holy See, or for the extermination of heretics, the Popes urged men to take part in it as the surest and most effectual means for cleansing them from all their sins and attaining eternal happiness.

15. The Inquisition, both Spanish and Italian, is so pure a product of papal teaching on faith and morals, that there never was an Inquisitor who did not exercise his office by virtue of Papal authority and in the Pope's name, or whose power the Pope could not at any moment he chose have wholly or partially withdrawn. All essential laws and regulations of the Inquisition – the accused being deprived of any advocate to defend him, the admission of infamous and perjured witnesses, the frequent application of the torture, the obliging the civil magistrates to carry out capital sentences of the Inquisitors, the prohibition to spare the life of any lapsed heretic even on his conversion – all this emanates from the direct and personal legislation of the Popes, and has always been confirmed by their successors.

16. Gregory ix., Innocent iv., and Alexander iv. teach that it is in accordance with the principles of morality and the Gospel to condemn a heretic seized by the Inquisition, who has recanted, to lifelong imprisonment.¹²²

17. Alexander iv. teaches that it is lawful for the Pope to have the goods of those condemned for heresy sold by his inquisitors, and to take the proceeds for himself.¹²³

18. Innocent iii., Alexander iv., and Boniface viii. teach that it is just and consonant with the Gospel to deprive the sons and daughters of heretics, though themselves Catholics, of their hereditary property. But if the sons themselves accuse their parents and get them burnt, then their inherited property, according to papal doctrine, is exempt from confiscation.

19. According to papal teaching torture is an institution thoroughly in harmony with morality and the spirit of the Gospel, and should be employed particularly against those accused of heresy. Thus Innocent Iv. and many later Popes have directed, and Paul iv. ordered the rack to be very extensively used.

20. It is especially just and Christian, according to the teaching and regulation of Pius v. in 1569, to torture persons who have confessed or been convicted of heresy, in order to make them give up their accomplices.¹²⁴

21. This same canonized Pope has ordered in a Bull that even the sons of a man who has once offended an inquisitor should be punished with infamy and confiscation of their goods.

22. There is a whole string of papal decrees declaring it a duty of conscience for every Christian to denounce even his nearest relations to the Inquisition, and give them up to prison, torture and death, if he perceives any trace of heretical opinions or of anything forbidden by the Church in them.¹²⁵

23. The same Popes have declared it to be just and evangelical, and have ordered, that a relapsed heretic, even if he recants, should be put to death.¹²⁶ They have further declared it to be moral and Christian-like that in trials for heresy witnesses should be admitted to accuse or give evidence against the accused, whose testimony would not be admitted in any other court on account of their former crimes or their infamy.¹²⁷

24. According to papal teaching it is just and Christian forcibly to deprive heretics of their children, in order to bring them up Catholics. Thus Innocent xii., by a sentence of the Holy Office at Rome, pronounced null and void the edict of Duke Victor Amadeus of Savoy in 1694 ordering their children, who had been forcibly taken from them, to be restored to the unfortunate and cruelly persecuted Waldenses under his government.¹²⁸

25. The Popes teach that a sentence once pronounced for heresy can never be mitigated, nor pardon ever granted to any one sentenced to death or perpetual imprisonment for heresy. Thus Innocent iv. rules in his Bull Ad Exstirpanda.¹²⁹

26. Up to 1555 it was the teaching of the Popes that only those should be burnt who persisted obstinately in maintaining a doctrine condemned by the Church, and those who had relapsed after recanting into the same or some other heresy. But in that year Paul iv. established the new principle that certain doctrines, if only just put forward and at once retracted, should be punished with death. Thus whoever rejected any ecclesiastical definition on the Trinity, or denied the perpetual virginity of Mary and maintained that the scriptural language about “brothers of Jesus” was to be taken literally of children of Mary, was to be classed with the “relapsed” and to be executed, even though he recanted.

27. Up to 1751, theologians, especially Italians, who defended trials for witchcraft and the reality of an express compact with Satan, together with the various preternatural crimes wrought thereby and the carnal intercourse of men and demons (incubi et succubi), used to appeal to the infallible authority of the Popes, the Bulls of Innocent viii., Sixtus v., Gregory xv. and several more besides, in which these things are affirmed and assumed and the due penalties prescribed for them.¹³⁰

28. If an oath that has been taken is prejudicial to the interests of the Church (e. g., in money matters), it must be broken. So teaches Innocent iii.¹³¹

29. The Popes can dispense at their pleasure oaths of allegiance taken by a people to their King, as Gregory vii., Alexander iii., Innocent iii., and many others have done.

30. They can also absolve a sovereign from the treaties he has sworn to observe or from his oath to the Constitution of his country, or give full power to his confessor to absolve him from any oath he finds it inconvenient to keep. Such a plenary power Clement vi. gave to King John of France and his successors.¹³² Thus Clement vii. absolved the Emperor Charles v. from his oath restricting his absolutism over popular rights in Belgium, and again from his oath not to banish the Moriscos from their home. And Paul iv. announced to the Emperors Charles and Ferdinand that he dispensed their oath to observe the Augsburg religious peace.¹³³

31. In 1648 a prospect of toleration was held out to the sorely oppressed Catholics of England and Ireland, if they would sign a renunciation of the following principles, (α) The Pope can dispense any one from obedience to the existing Government; (β) The Pope can absolve from an oath taken to a heretic; (γ) Those who have been condemned as heretics by the Pope may at his command, or with his dispensation, be put to death or otherwise injured. This renunciation was signed by fifty-nine English noblemen and several ecclesiastics, but Pope Innocent x. declared that all who had signed it had incurred the penalties denounced against those who deny papal authority, i. e., excommunication, etc. And so the penal laws against Catholics remained in force for another century. Paul v. had previously condemned the oath of allegiance prescribed by James i. for the English Catholics, and the execution of a considerable number of them was the result.¹³⁴

32. The Popes teach that they can absolve men from any vow made to God or empower others to do so, and can even give them powers prospectively for dispensing vows to be made hereafter. And thus they have empowered royal confessors to absolve kings from any future vow they may find reason to repent of.¹³⁵

33. The Popes have declared, by granting indulgences, that their jurisdiction extends over Purgatory also, and that it depends on them to deliver the dead who are there and transfer them into heaven. Thus Julius ii. bestowed on the Order of Knights of St. George, restored by the Emperor Maximilian, the privilege that, on assuming the habit of the Order, the Knights “confessi et contriti, a pœnâ et a culpâ et a carcere Purgatorii et pœnis ejusdem mox et penitus absoluti et quittandi esse debeant, planè et liberè Paradisum et regnum intraturi.”¹³⁶ Then or shortly before (1500) the doctrine was first propounded in Rome, that the Popes could attach to certain altars by special privileges the power of delivering one or more souls from Purgatory.

34. The Pope can dissolve a marriage by placing one of the parties under the greater excommunication, and thus declaring him a heathen and infidel. Urban v. did this in 1363, when he excommunicated Bernabó Visconti, Duke of Milan, depriving him and all his children of all their rights and property and absolving his subjects from their allegiance to him, and at the same time pronouncing his wife free to marry again: “Uxorem ejus uti Christianam a vinculo matrimonii cum hæretico et infideli liberavit.”¹³⁷

35. Innocent iii. had paved the way for this by establishing the doctrine that the bond between a Bishop and his diocese is stronger than the marriage bond between man and wife, and therefore as indissoluble by man as the latter, and that God alone could dissolve it, and the Pope as God's vicegerent.¹³⁸ It followed that the Pope, and he alone, could also dissolve a validly contracted marriage.

36. According to papal teaching it is praiseworthy and Christian for a man, who has promised a woman with an oath to marry her, to deceive her by a sham marriage, and then break the bond and retire into a monastery. This recommendation (to commit an act of treachery at once and of sacrilege) was given by Alexander iii. in 1172, and it has been incorporated in the code of canon law drawn up by command of the Popes.¹³⁹

37. The Popes teach that anyone attending a service celebrated by a married priest commits sacrilege, because the blessing he gives turns to a curse. So Gregory vii. teaches, in direct contradiction to the doctrine of the ancient Church, and even to modern theology.¹⁴⁰ The notion has long since been exploded.¹⁴¹

38. The Popes teach that they have the power of rewarding services done to themselves with a higher degree of eternal beatitude. Thus Nicolas v. promised all who should take up arms against Amadeus of Savoy (the antipope Felix) and his adherents, not only remission of all their sins, but an increase of heavenly happiness, and gave his lands and property at the same time to the King of France.¹⁴²

39. The Popes teach that it is false and damnable to maintain that a Christian ought not to abstain from doing his duty from fear of an unjust excommunication. Clement xi. declares the contrary to be true in his Bull Unigenitus, prop. 91.

40. Those who die wearing the Carmelite scapular have papal assurance, resting on a revelation granted to John xxii., that they will be delivered on the next Saturday after their death by the Virgin Mary from Purgatory and conveyed straight to heaven. So says the Bull Sabbathina, confirmed by Alexander v., Clement vii., Pius v., Gregory xiii., and Paul v., by the last after long and careful examination, and with indulgences attached to it.¹⁴³

41. According to papal decisions it is an excess of extravagance and folly, and a detestable innovation, to translate the Roman missal into the vernacular. It is to violate and trample under foot the majesty of the ritual composed in Latin words, to expose the dignity of the holy mysteries to the gaze of the rabble, to produce disobedience, audacity, insolence, sedition and many other evils. The authors of such translations are “sons of perdition.” Alexander iii. says this totidem verbis in his Brief of Jan. 12, 1661.¹⁴⁴ Nevertheless the translated missal is in general circulation in France, England and Germany, and is daily used by all the most pious persons.

42. To receive interest on invested money is a grievous sin according to papal teaching, and any one who has done so is bound to make restitution. Papal legislation makes it, under the name of usury, an ecclesiastical offence to be judged by the spiritual tribunals. The principle established by the Popes was, that it is unlawful and sinful to ask for any compensation for the use of capital lent out. And under the head of usury, which was strictly forbidden, was included anything whatever received by the lender in compensation for his capital, every kind of interest, commercial business and the like. Thus Clement v. pronounced it heresy to defend taking interest, and liable to the penalties of the papal law against heresy.¹⁴⁵ His successors, Pius v., Sixtus v., and especially Benedict xiv., adhered to this condemnation of all taking of interest. The results were that real usury was greatly advanced thereby, that all sorts of evasions and illusory contracts came into actual use, that the wealth of whole countries was damaged, and commercial greatness, banished from Catholic countries, became the monopoly of Protestant countries.¹⁴⁶