Kitabı oku: «Letters From Rome on the Council», sayfa 30

Fifty-Eighth Letter

Rome, June 21, 1870.– What I have to communicate in this letter is so important, that I find it desirable to take it out of the historical order of events and let it precede the detailed account of what occurred between June 8 and 17.

A circumstance occurred on Saturday, which has kept all who are interested about the Council in breathless suspense ever since. Nothing in fact could be more unexpected than that, at the moment when the Opposition, though still maintaining the contest from a sense of conscientious duty, almost despairs of success, a fresh ally should join its ranks in the person of a Roman Cardinal, whose accession is the more valuable because he does not only speak in his own name, but has concerted his speech with the fifteen Bishops of his Order. In fact I hear his speech spoken of in many quarters as the most important and unexpected event in the Council. It must not of course be supposed that Guidi's spirited speech represents adequately the tendencies of the Opposition, but still it must be affirmed that it involves a complete, and as we believe irreconcilable, breach with the majority. In order to enable people to appreciate the full weight of the speech it is of some importance to premise a brief account of the speaker.

Cardinal Guidi has belonged, almost ever since his entering the Dominican Order, to the convent of the Minerva. For a long time he belonged to the theological professoriate connected with the convent, and enjoyed, as such, the well-earned reputation of great learning and strict orthodoxy. When eleven years ago Pius ix. wished to send thoroughly trustworthy and learned Roman theologians to the University of Vienna, to inculcate genuine Roman science and views on the young clergy, his eye fell on Father Guidi. After working there for some years he returned to Rome, having been meanwhile appointed Cardinal, and was soon afterwards made Archbishop of Bologna; and as the Italian Government promised to place no impediment in the way of his residing there, he actually betook himself to his See. But he soon found that it was not the place for him. The Dominican Order had seriously compromised itself in the notorious Mortara affair, and accordingly the Bolognese rabble broke out repeatedly into the most deplorable demonstrations against the new Archbishop as a member of the hated Order. He therefore returned to Rome, and administered his diocese from hence. And here he was one of the Pope's favourites, only during the last year he has lost favour through his freedom of speech. Since then he has been prosecuting his theological studies in retirement, and it was pretty well known what he thought about the personal infallibility of the Pope. Several months ago he had assembled the Dominican Bishops at the Minerva about this affair. His view prevailed, and when Father Jandel, the General imposed on the Order by the Pope and reluctantly accepted, tried to put a pressure on them, they replied that they were Bishops, and were bound, as such, to consult their consciences when called to act as judges of faith. Then began a notable agitation in the Order, which was already divided into two camps. One arbitrary act followed another. A so-called academy of St. Thomas was opened, and hardly had the President taken his seat, when he made a long speech, expounding the doctrine of St. Thomas and the Order on papal infallibility in the most tactless and violent manner to his episcopal audience. A Dominican Bishop delighted the Pope by getting up an infallibilist address among his episcopal colleagues. Then followed a series of writings defending St. Thomas against Janus. A member of the Order was forbidden by the General, Jandel, “to speak either publicly or privately about infallibility,” and the Civiltà Cattolica of June 18 praised the General for prefixing to the infallibilist writing of a Dominican the approbation that in the Dominican Order papal infallibility has always been held as a Catholic truth.

Under these circumstances people were the less prepared to find Cardinal Guidi, in contrast with his numerous sympathizers in the College of Cardinals, venturing boldly on a step which must embitter his whole existence at Rome. The very first sentence of his momentous speech must have concentrated the anger of the majority on a Cardinal, as they thought, so confused and oblivious of his duty. Guidi began by affirming that the separate and personal infallibility of the Pope, as stated in the amended chapter of the Schema, was wholly unknown in the Church up to the fourteenth century inclusive. Proofs for it are vainly sought in Scripture and Tradition. The whole question, he added, reduces itself to the point whether the Pope has defined even one dogma alone and without the co-operation of the Church. No man could claim divine inspiration (doctrina infusa). An act might be infallible, a person never. But every infallible act had always proceeded from the Church herself only, either “per consilium Ecclesiæ sparsæ,” or “per Concilium.” To know “quid ubique credatur, si omnes Ecclesiæ cum Romanâ Ecclesiâ concordent,” information is indispensably required. After this examination the Pope sanctions doctrine “finaliter,” as St. Thomas says, and only so can it be rightly said “Omnes per Papam docent.” He then showed from the works of the Jesuits Bellarmine and Perrone, “in definendis dogmatibus Papas nunquam ex se solis egisse, nunquam hæresim per se solos condemnâsse.” As Guidi uttered these words the majority began to make a tumult under the lead of the Italian Spaccapietra, Bishop of Smyrna. The Cardinal saw he could not continue his speech. One bishop cried “birbante” (scoundrel) and another “brigantino.” But Guidi did not let himself be put out of countenance; he answered with astonishing firmness and calmness that he had a right to be heard, and that no one had given to the Bishops the right of the Presidents. “However, the time will come yet for saying your Placet or your Non placet, and then every one will be free to vote according to his conscience.” Here for the first time his speech was interrupted by loud applause, and the words “Optime, optime” resounded from every side among the Opposition Bishops. Manning was asked by one of them, who stood near him, “Etes-vous d'accord, Monsigneur?” He replied, “Le Cardinal est une tête confuse.” On this a high-spirited Bishop could not refrain from observing to the powerful Archbishop of Westminster, “C'est bien votre tête, Monseigneur, qui est confuse et plus qu'à moitié Protestante.”

After this pretty long interruption Guidi went on to require a change in the chapter on infallibility “ut clare appareat Papam agere consentientibus episcopis et illis occasione errorum qui sparguntur petentibus, factâ inquisitione in aliis Ecclesiis, præmisso maturo examine et judicio et consiliis fratrum aut collecto Concilio.” This was the true doctrine of St. Thomas; “finaliter” implied something to precede, and the words “supremus magister et judex” pre-suppose other “magistri” and “tribunalia.” He concluded by proposing these canons: —

(1.) “Si quis dixerit decreta seu constitutiones a Petri successore editas, continentes quandam fidei vel morum veritatem Ecclesiæ universæ ab ipso pro supremâ suâ et apostolicâ auctoritate propositas non esse extemplo omnimodo venerandas et toto corde credendas vel posse reformari – anathema sit.

(2.) “Si quis dixerit Pontificem, cum talia edit decreta, posse agere arbitrio et ex se solo non autem ex consilio episcoporum traditionem Ecclesiarum exhibentium – anathema sit.”

On sitting down he gave his manuscript to the Secretary, and was soon surrounded by the leaders of the Opposition, some of whom complimented him on his speech, while others expressed their admiration of his courage in resisting the attempts to interrupt him. When a learned Italian Bishop asked Valerga, Patriarch of Jerusalem, what he thought of this speech, he replied audibly with the pun, “Si e squidato,” and on his interrogator rejoining that anyhow the speech contained nothing but the truth, Valerga let slip an expression very characteristic of himself and his party, “Si, ma non convien sempre dir la verità.”

After this speech a large number of Bishops left the Council Hall, and excited groups of prelates might be seen standing about in all directions. Cardinals Bonnechose and Cullen addressed their very pointless speeches to empty benches. Both pleaded for the proclamation of the fourth chapter, as it stood. Bonnechose, from whom Ginoulhiac and others had expected a very moderate speech, proved that he had completely gone over into Manning's camp, which cannot surprise any one in the case of a man who himself made no secret of his having no clear views on the question. Cullen destroyed by his last speech the impression made by the first, which had been admired, not for its contents but for its strictly parliamentary form.

Cardinal Guidi's courageous speech was destined soon to bear its fruits. The Pope – the dearest object of whose heart is the perfect freedom of the Council, as the official journal stated the other day – sent for him at once, and next day boasted to several Cardinals of having energetically rebuked their undutiful colleague for his heresy and ingratitude, and threatened him with being called on to renew his profession of faith. But the Cardinal may consider himself indemnified for these hard words of the Pope by the homage he received the day after his speech from almost the whole body of the Opposition Bishops who came to visit him. And he knows that the best of them were even worse treated by his Holiness than himself, where it was possible.

Fifty-Ninth Letter

Rome, June 22, 1870.– On the 13th the votes were taken on the changes proposed in the preamble, and taken by rising and sitting down.¹⁴⁷ Instead of “Vis et salus Ecclesiæ ab eo (Papâ) dependet” was proposed “Vis et soliditas in eo (Papâ) consistit.” The majority seem to have thought that stronger. The debate began with the speech of the Irish Archbishop of Cashel, a member of the Commission. It is precisely in our days, he said, that it is so necessary for the Pope to have absolute and irresponsible authority, for therein lies the one safeguard, first, against the encroachments of Liberalism; secondly, against the Radical and anti-Church policy of the Governments; thirdly, against the poisonous and unbridled influence of journalism; and fourthly, the absolute Pope can alone meet the ecclesiastical and national enterprises of Russia or subdue the political sects and ward off the Revolution which is impending everywhere. In short, human society requires a deliverer, and this deliverer must be omnipotent and infallible. So it is said in the Commission, and the Irish prelate, who was specially alarmed by Fenianism, spoke in its name. As soon as the Pope with the assent of the Council – or indeed without it – has ruled his own omnipotence and infallibility, the deliverance of mankind is accomplished.

The French Benedictine, Cardinal Pitra, undertook to lift the assembly out of this cloudy region back to the firm ground of facts, viz., the facts disclosed by himself. He expatiated on the collection of canons in the Greek Church, saying that those relating to the Roman See had been falsified, and the Russian Church was above all implicated in this system of forgery, which had brought things to such a pass that there was no authentic collection of canons in the Oriental Church. This was probably intended to serve as a diversion, for the enormous fabrications in favour of papal omnipotence, which were carried on for centuries and are incorporated in the codes of canon law, had been frequently before referred to in a very suspicious manner in the Council. Even the Bishop of Saluzzo, who is almost a thorough-going Roman absolutist, had called the collection of canons (Gratian's, etc.) an Augean stable. Pitra went on to indulge in an uncommonly fervid philippic against the Machiavellian and persecuting Russia. But he forgot to say one thing, viz., that in no country would the impending decrees be received with such satisfaction as in Russia, nowhere would they give greater pleasure than in that great Northern State which considers itself the happy heir of Rome in the East. So much must be known even in Rome, that on the day the dogma is promulgated all the bells in Mohilew, Wilna, Minsk, etc., will resound to ring the knell of Rome. Pitra was followed by Ramirez y Vasquez, Bishop of Badajoz. He maintained in the style and tone of Don Gerundio de Canpazes, the doctrine that the Pope is Christ in the Church, the continuation of the Incarnation of the Son of God, whence to him belongs the same extent of power as to Christ Himself when visibly on earth. Maret had announced his intention of speaking, with the view of combating the four anathemas of Dechamps, which were so manifestly directed against his book. But Dechamps, on learning this, told the Bishop of Sura that, if he would keep silence, he would withdraw his anathemas, and excused himself by alleging his zeal for the new dogma, assuring Maret that he had a good heart and meant no harm. So Maret renounced his design of speaking.

On the 14th, Haynald, in spite of his bodily suffering, delivered a long polemical speech against the majority, and maintained his reputation of being the best Latin speaker after Strossmayer. Jussuf, the Melchite Patriarch of Antioch, came next with an apology for the Oriental Churches and their liberties. He pointed out in earnest words the danger of their defection, if the present design of taking away their ancient rights was carried out. He produced letters from his home telling him that he had better not return at all than bring back from Rome decrees curtailing their ecclesiastical liberties. And if the Pope chose to send back another Patriarch instead of him, they might be very sure he would not be received. Bishop Krementz of Ermeland observed that Holy Scripture made, not Peter, or as is here understood the Pope, the foundation of the Church, but Christ, and then as secondary foundation the Apostles and Prophets. Only after these and in dependence on them could this designation be applied to the See of Rome.

It had indeed been already observed among the minority how monstrous it was to make the Pope “the principle of unity in the Church,” as the Schema puts it, and that the ancient Fathers speak indeed of an “exordium unitatis” established in the person of Peter, but had never called him, and still less the Bishop of Rome, the principle of ecclesiastical unity, which would be logically inconceivable. In the voting, which was again taken by rising and sitting down, the little band of dissentients disappeared before the consentient mass, and the expression “principium unitatis,” opposed as it is both to logic and tradition, was accepted. Before the voting Bishop Gallo of Avellino had uttered in the name of the Commission some Neapolitan mysticism about Adam and Eve and the mysteries already revealed in Adam and Eve of the Church resting on the Pope.

Cardinal Mathieu was the first speaker on the fourth chapter on infallibility. His long and powerful speech was mainly directed against Valerga, who had outraged the French by his attack on the “Gallican errors.” It was a well-delivered panegyric on the French nation, which had shed the blood of her sons to restore Rome to the Pope, and without whose troops at Civita Vecchia the Council could not remain in Rome. The only doubt is whether this Valerga is worth as much notice as the French have accorded to him. After Mathieu Cardinal Rauscher spoke. His speech was very inaudible owing to the nature of the Council Hall, but was clear and well grounded, and showed how the acceptance of a personal infallibility, by virtue of which every utterance of a Pope must be believed by all Christians under pain of eternal damnation, is equally at issue with facts and with the former tradition of the Church, and must have a fatal effect in the future. He referred to Vigilius, Honorius, the reordinations of Sergius and Stephen, and the contradiction between Nicolas iii. and John xxii., and commended the formula of Antoninus requiring the consent of the Church as a condition. He could never assent to the Schema without mortal sin. “We knew all that from your pamphlet,” said Dechamps while he was speaking. “But you have never refuted it,” replied Rauscher.

Cardinal Pitra was to have followed, but he was unwell, and the sitting was broken off. The Presidents had issued an instruction that no one should speak out of his turn, and if prevented on the regular day should lose his right altogether. The rule in this case affected the zealous infallibilist Pitra, and accordingly the Bishops were dismissed before the usual hour.

The two next days, the 17th and 18th, were festivals, and there was no sitting held. As there are already 75 speakers enrolled for the fourth chapter, the promulgation obviously cannot take place on June 29, and the Council will last on into July. There is indeed a simple means of gratifying the desire of the Pope and curtailing the pains of the Bishops, who are now absolutely tortured by the heat: the majority can any day cut short the special debate, as they have already cut short the general discussion. It may of course be objected that this procedure, of depriving the Bishops of their right of speaking and violently imposing silence upon them, overthrows the nature of a Church Council, where every Bishop is meant to bear witness not only to his own belief, but to the tradition of his country and the faith of his diocese. If the Bishops are deprived of this right – and that too where so momentous a question is at issue and there is such diversity of opinion – the freedom essential to a Council is wanting.

The Pope becomes more lavish of his admonitions and instructions every day. In the last Papal Capella Patrizzi assured him the faithful were impatiently awaiting the proclamation of infallibility, whereon Pius, in presence of several Bishops of the minority, replied that there were three classes of opponents of the dogma, first, the gross ignoramuses, who did not know what it meant; secondly, the slaves of princes, he said “of Cæsar,” referring both to Vienna and Paris; thirdly, the cowards, who feared the judgment of this evil world. But he prayed for their enlightenment and conversion.¹⁴⁸ This was of course applied here universally to the Bishops of the Opposition. Moreover the Pope had just before had a letter written to certain canons of Besançon, saying that all the objections raised now had been triumphantly refuted a hundred times over, and that as to appealing to the results of historical criticism and the examination of texts, viz., to the huge mass of deliberate falsifications and forgeries, these were “des anciens sophismes ou mensonges contraires aux prérogatives du St. Siége.” The remark touches Rauscher, Schwarzenberg, Dupanloup, Hefele, Maret, Kenrick, Ketteler (in the pamphlet he circulated), and some thirty more. There is much dispute here as to the paternity of those views which Pius emits both orally and in writing. Has he got them from the Civiltà, or are the Jesuit writers of that journal only the pupils of the Pope, who has received this information “by infused science” from the Virgin Mary? On that point opinions differ. The majority, who are quite aware that every one would think it a joke to call Giovanni Maria Mastai a learned theologian, hold to the latter view, and to the well-known picture painted by the Pope's own order, where the “actus infusionis” is represented to the eye. Their favourite watchword is that every one who does not accept the decree is, or in a few days will be, a heretic and enemy of the Church; his non placet consummates his separation from her, and hence Manning has already proposed that each of these Bishops should have his excommunication handed him with his railway-ticket when he leaves Rome. Livy says, “Hæc natura multitudinis est, aut servit humiliter aut superbe dominatur;” the “multitude” in the Hall combines both characteristics.

On June 18 the Pope observed a German priest among those admitted to an audience, and asked who he was, when he replied that he was secretary to a Bishop, who is well known for his learning and his fallibilist views. Pius turned away with an exclamation of disgust. Of another very eminent dignitary of similar views he is wont to say in the bitterest terms, that his opinions are prompted solely by personal enmity to himself.

The majority are said to be very impatient, so that many anticipate the violent closing of the debate on Saturday, the 25th. And the greater number of the intending speakers on the fourth chapter, now increased to a hundred, belong to the Court party, who might say that they are only willingly renouncing the pleasure of hearing their own ideas put forward. But then the speeches of Darboy, Place (of Marseilles), Maret, Clifford, Schwarzenberg, Simor, Dupanloup, and Haynald would also be suppressed. Hefele was the first to put down his name, as he was not allowed at the time to answer the fierce attack of Cullen. On his inquiring after some days when his turn would come, he was told that he was the fifty-first in order, as all who came before him in age and rank must speak before he could be permitted to open his mouth. A little later he was told he came seventy-first, so that his hope of being able to vindicate himself in the Council is almost at an end. Meanwhile he has had a brief reply to the attack of a Frenchman, de la Margerie, printed at Naples.

The minority have resolved to send a deputation to the Pope to petition for the adjournment of the Council, since it is horrible to detain so many aged men, many of whom are sick, by violence in this unhealthy city. They will of course meet with a positive refusal, for the Jesuits and the holy Virgin, who is always appealed to, are for carrying out the compulsory system to the last. But you may judge how the heat and the moral and physical miasmas are working on the Bishops from the fact that there are now only five or six on a bench where thirty Bishops used to sit, though most of the others are in Rome or the neighbourhood. Indeed they are kept prisoners here, and Antonelli said recently to a diplomatist, “Si quelque Evêque veut faire une partie de campagne (like Förster) la police n'a rien à y voir, mais s'il voulait quitter le Concile, alors ce serait différent,” so that every foreign Bishop lives here under the inspection of the police, who are to take care that he does not escape. This statement seemed to the diplomat to whom it was made so seriously to affect the sovereign rights of his Government, that he at once reported it.

The Roman logic, as may be seen from the Civiltà, is simply this: the Council is what it is through the Pope alone; without him it can do nothing and is an empty shadow. Freedom of the Council therefore means freedom of the Pope: if he is free, it is free. You may infer what reception will be accorded in the Vatican to the petition just resolved upon for a secret voting on the Papal Schema. There could be no more eloquent testimony to the real state of things and the estimate formed of the freedom of the Council, for it is dictated by the knowledge that a secret ballot would give a very considerable number of negative votes, at least 200, if the private expressions of opinion of the Bishops may be relied upon, while no one here ventures to hope for more than 110 or 115 non placets in a public voting. There are certainly some hundred, even of the Papal boarders, who would say Non placet, if their votes were sheltered by secrecy. Neither the Catholic nor the non-Catholic public has any idea of the extent to which a Bishop in the present day is dependent on Rome, and how difficult or impossible the administration of his office would be made for him by the disfavour of Rome. The worst off of all are the Bishops under Propaganda, who have simply no rights. For them to speak of freedom, after the Pope has announced his wish, would be ludicrous, and to this category belong not only all the Oriental and Missionary Bishops, but the American and English also. And even for the Bishops of the older Sees, who are under the Congregatio Episcoporum et Regularium, and are protected by the common law or by Concordats, the practice of the Curia is a field full of man-traps, a belt studded with nails, which only needs to be drawn in by curialistic hands to make the nails pierce the body of the obnoxious Bishop. As things now are here, and after Pius has gone further than any Pope for centuries in glaring partisanship and open threats of enmity against all dissentients, secret voting must appear the only possible means of securing even a shadow of freedom for the decrees of the Council. If the voting is public, the word freedom, as used of the Council, could only be regarded as a mockery. And it is very well known here that the Pope's entourage do everything in their power to maintain him in his belief that the Opposition will melt away at last like snow before the sun, and hardly four negative votes will remain.

Last year the theologians summoned for the preliminary work were sent home at the beginning of June, and scarcely one or two even of the directing Commission of Cardinals stayed longer in Rome. Now the 15th or 20th of July is spoken of as the day for the promulgation, and if it should be a little earlier there will still be many of the prelates who will return from Rome ill and with their constitutions permanently shattered. The ancients found the word “amor” reversed in the name of the eternal city (Roma), and the Bishops are daily reminded of it. Meanwhile the brilliant recompense of Cardoni's services has rekindled the hopes of the majority; there are fifteen or sixteen vacant Hats, which will be given to those who have deserved best of the new dogma. The merits of the Italians are not conspicuous; they have most of them done moles' work, chiefly as spies, for that business is conducted here to an extent almost unheard of in Europe. Valerga is of course an exception, who has excelled all the Italians as a speaker. After him, Mgr. Nardi has so greatly distinguished himself by his active zeal that a red Hat would seem a fitting ornament of his head, but then there are very suspicious circumstances, only too notorious in Rome. The men who have done and will do the most important services, who are indeed the modern Atlases to carry the main weight of the new dogma on their lusty shoulders, are of course the Jesuits. Pius is penetrated with the feeling that their services are above all praise and recompense. A Jesuit cannot be rewarded with titles and colours and dresses, but he can receive a Cardinal's Hat. The names of Toletus, Bellarmine, Pallavicini, de Lugo, recall grand memories. Not long before its dissolution in 1736, three of the Order were in the Sacred College together – Tolomei, Eienfuegos and Salerno. That might happen again, and the College would gain in capacity and working power. As Kleutgen cannot be thought of, on account of his trial before the Inquisition, and Perrone is too old, the next candidates would be Curci, Schrader and Franzelin. Father Piccirillo, from his intimate relations to the highest personage, would possess the first reversionary claim, and his services have been rewarded in a manner greatly desired and long aimed at by his Order, for he has received the permission, unprecedented in the history of Rome, to go alone into the secret archives and there work. Such an event would at other times have been regarded at Rome as a downfall of the heavens or a sign of the last judgment, and even now it has produced perplexity and amazement in genuine Roman circles. For every one who passes the threshold of the chamber of archives incurs ipso facto excommunication. So the Order is firmly seated in this unapproachable sanctuary. There is no fear of indiscreet publications. Piccirillo, far from publishing anything, will excel in mere negative activity.

Among foreign candidates for the Cardinalate Manning stands out as a star of the first rank in the Roman firmament. He may claim some paternity of the great idea of at last treating the apotheosis of the Papacy seriously, and he long ago suggested to Darboy how nice it would be for the two chief capitals of Europe, London and Paris, each to have its Cardinal, which could be best brought about by furthering the infallibilist definition. But Darboy would hear nothing of it. Next to Manning comes Dechamps of Mechlin; but as the Pope has named him primate, which is indeed a mere title, he is thought here to have had his reward. Spalding, who has deserved so well of Rome, would of course create a great sensation in the United States by the red hat, which has never yet been seen there. Among the French, Dreux-Brézé of Moulins and Pie of Poitiers come first in order. There is great difficulty about Simor, the ill-advised and ungrateful son who had the Cardinalate, so to speak, in his pocket, and is now causing such distress to the lofty giver. How fortunate, say the Court party, that d'Andrea is no longer alive. Rauscher, Schwarzenburg, Guidi, d'Andrea, Simor – that would be too much. But now for the Germans! There it is difficult to select; all the faithful ones must be rewarded, who have literally sweated and are sweating daily in the interest of the good cause – Fessler, Martin, Senestrey, and then Stahl, Leonrod, Rudigier and the Tyrolese Gasser and Riccabona. The Tyrol has had no Cardinal since Nicolas of Cusa (Bishop of Brixen) and Madrucci (Bishop of Trent), and there most especially would the return of a countryman with a red hat be kept as a national festival.

Margotti has had a denial inserted in the Univers of the fact that a Sicilian Bishop related the story of St. Peter and the Virgin Mary in the Council Hall. On this I have merely to remark that it was told me the same evening by three Bishops, none of whom heard it from one of the others, and the speaker was Natoli, Archbishop of Messina. We know what Margotti's assertions and denials are worth.