Kitabı oku: «Letters From Rome on the Council», sayfa 9

Fifteenth Letter

Rome, Feb. 4.– There is a good deal of interesting matter to report of the Sessions of the last few weeks. And, first, as to the Council Hall: notwithstanding the great curtain, it remains a wretched apology for a Council-chamber, and I must repeat emphatically that such a discussion as, e. g., was possible in St. Paul's Church, at Frankfort, in 1848, would be hardly practicable here. Bishops whose voices are feeble and not penetrating enough, must give up the idea of speaking, and even strong men among them feel thoroughly exhausted after they have spoken. A French Bishop, whose speech had produced a great effect, said afterwards of the hall, “Elle est sourde, muette, et aveugle.” But the Pope persists, on account of the neighbourhood of the so-called “Confession of St. Peter,” from which he thinks a force issues to bind the Bishops closer to him, and fill them with contempt of the world. This influence, however, has been very little manifested as yet – rather the reverse. There have been many Opposition speeches, and the bell of the presiding Legate not unfrequently interrupts them with its shrill dissonance; in the latter Sessions a new method has been practised of reducing unpleasant speakers to silence – by scraping with the feet. It is a striking fact that talent, eloquence, and force of thought are observed to be almost entirely on the side of the Opposition; very few men of mark or able speakers can be mentioned on the Infallibilist side. Manning and Mermillod would be good and versatile speakers, only they are not sufficiently masters of Latin. Deschamps alone on that side has won great applause as an eloquent speaker, though with sufficient poverty of thought.

Among the Cardinals, de Angelis, de Luca, Bilio, and Capalti are considered the four Papal pillars of the Council. Bilio, a Barnabite, and still a young man, passes in Rome for an eminent theologian, and while the other Cardinals and Monsignori would hold it a sin to understand German, he knows two German words, which he constantly repeats, but always with a shudder, “deutsche Wissenschaft.” He thinks German science something like the witches' caldron in Macbeth – full of horrible ingredients.

The first dogmatic Schema has gone back to the Commission on Faith after a long, many-sided, and severe criticism, and is to be revised and again laid before the Council as little altered as possible. The revision is intrusted to three of the most zealous Infallibilists, Martin, Deschamps, and Pie, with the indispensable Jesuits, Schrader and Franzelin. The Bishops are then simply to accept it without discussion. It is not to be discussed, first, because there can be no discussion in the Hall; secondly, because this wretched patchwork does not bear discussion; thirdly, because there would be no coming to an end this way; fourthly, and chiefly, because an excellent precedent will be created, which may be made a rule for the forthcoming Schemata, and will open the prospect of carrying through matters far more important and more valuable for the Curia.

If once the first Schema were voted without discussion, by the help of the devoted majority of 400, though against the opposition of many Bishops, the same method might be pursued with subsequent Schemata, and thus the most important of all, on the Church and the Pope, could be carried, which contains the most exorbitant assertions of Papal omnipotence, and implies Papal Infallibility, which is introduced by a side-wind. By this means the maxim observed at former Councils, and even at Trent, that decisions can only be settled by a unanimous vote, would be happily got rid of, and the resistance of the Opposition broken or rendered useless. Such a victory of the curialistic party would exceed all other successes in importance and practical value. The Council is accordingly come to a momentous crisis. Father Theiner, the Prefect of the Papal Archives, has had a part of the first volume of his Acts of the Council of Trent printed. We find there a modus procedendi, which secures to the Fathers of the Council much more freedom and action than the present regulations, of which Italian Prelates say themselves that they leave no freedom, and only allow a sham Council. Theiner has been altogether forbidden, by the management of the Jesuits, to publish his work, and has received the most strict commands not to show the part already printed to any Bishop.

The introduction of the second Schema, on Discipline, gave occasion to many earnest and important speeches. The Germans at first had to blush for one of their number, Martin of Paderborn, who made a speech overflowing with the most unqualified devotion to the will of the supreme master, the authorship of which was attributed to his Jesuit domestic chaplain, Father Roh. But the speech of Archbishop Melchers of Cologne made all the more favourable impression. He spoke, with quiet dignity and freedom, of the perversity and shamefulness of the meddling Roman domination, the system of dispensations, and the unmeasured centralization. Great was the astonishment of the assembly; Cardinal Capalti went on urging, with impatient look and sign, on de Luca, the President for the day, to stop the German Archbishop. At last, when he had nearly finished, de Luca interrupted him, and said he must hand in his proposals to the Commission. Melchers did not let himself be put down; he replied that he had done that long ago, and had received no answer, and observed that he spoke in the name of more than a million German Catholics. And then he quietly went on with his speech. The words of Archbishop Haynald cut deeper still; he is the best speaker in the Council after Strossmayer, and is also subtle and circumspect, so that the Legate, who was visibly anxious to interrupt him, could not discover the right moment for putting his bell in motion.

As little did they dare to interrupt Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, when he ascended the tribune and began as follows: – “We are told we are not to make long speeches, but I have a great deal to say. We are told again not to repeat what has been said by others, but at the same time we are kept shut up in this Hall, where for the most part we cannot understand one another; we are not allowed to examine the stenographic reports of our speeches, and the only answer made to our representations is always the same – ‘The Pope wills it.’ I don't know therefore what has been said by the speakers who have preceded me.” He then went on to speak of the rights of the Bishops, their degradation by the Roman centralizing system, “the caves, wherein the Roman doctors have buried themselves from the light of day,” etc. He spoke in admirable style, and was listened to with rapt attention, though at every word his auditors expected an interruption from the Legate; but it never came. Darboy himself said afterwards that he had done like Condé, and flung his marshal's staff into the ranks of the enemy.

On January 22, Dupanloup made a speech in the same sense, which has already been reported to you, and took occasion to mention those courtiers who have learnt never to tell the truth to the Pope. Courtiers of this sort from various nations sat and stood in crowds around him. He might have added what was said to the Pope – vainly, of course – 300 years ago, in a work composed by his order, and is just as true now as then: that the dream of omnipotence and infallibility, so studiously produced and cherished in his soul by flatterers, is the main cause, next to the avarice of the Curia, of the decline and corruptions of the Church. Meanwhile it is truly wonderful that so much could be said at all; it was felt to be a moral discomfiture or capitulation of the Curia in its state of siege. Cardinal Schwarzenberg, and after him the Primate of Hungary, had certainly struck the note which still rang on, but the Legates had not dared to silence them with the bell, and so missed the opportunity of principiis obsta. Schwarzenberg had already created a great sensation by recommending the periodical recurrence of Councils, afterwards taken up by Strossmayer, and then falling back on the decree of Constance (for decennial Councils), which is an abomination at Rome. No doubt they would have no objection in Rome to Councils every ten or twenty years, suitably modernized, manipulated, and obedient to every wink, like the present majority; but the fatal Opposition embitters this enjoyment, and when once the great work is accomplished, and Infallibility proclaimed, it will be found at Rome that all this machinery is not worth its pay, “que le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle;” for it costs too much money to entertain 300 Placet-saying Bishops, to make it worth while often to reproduce the drama, or rather the pantomine.

Other Prelates, whom the Curia reckons among the Dî minores gentium, have no indulgence shown them. When an American Bishop spoke of the corruptions and gross falsehoods in the Roman Breviary, and of the fabulous interpolations in the works of some Fathers, e. g., St. Augustine, inserted there, Capalti rang his bell violently – the Fathers were not to be so spoken of. But the American did not let himself be disturbed, and proceeded at once to quote the Breviary lections from St. Gregory. He was again called to order, and told he must change the subject or leave the tribune.

In this second Schema, compiled by Jacobini, the second Secretary of the Council, the gross ignorance of the author is glaringly exposed. With the usual self-sufficiency of Rome, and with the aim of making the Bishops still more dependent on the Curia than before, the special conditions of whole countries had been ignored. Thus every Bishop, who wished to leave his diocese, was first to get the Pope's permission from Rome, and the Archbishops were to delate all who acted otherwise at Rome. Simor observed sharply on that, “This then is the position Rome assigns to Metropolitans, after robbing them of all their ancient rights: to be the accusers of their conprovincial Bishops.” Another declared roundly that, if his physician sent him to a watering-place, he should not think of asking leave from Rome. Jacobini would not even recognise the right of Bishops to attend the political assemblies of their countries, of which they are members by the Constitution, because, as the Schema words it, “assembleæ generales” no longer exist in the sense allowed by Urban viii. The Pope was further to have the right henceforth of giving away the benefices in the Bishop's gift during the vacancy of the See, which would bring in a large increase of taxes for the Curia, and draw a number of candidates to Rome again, as in the palmy days before the Reformation. In Germany we should get back the class of so-called Curtisanen,⁴² who notoriously did so much to promote the Protestant division. The Bishops inflicted many a blow on the abuse of expensive dispensations to be elaborated at Rome from artificially derived impediments of marriage (as of cousins, godfathers, and the like) before the Legate's bell could stop them. Then a Hungarian Bishop related, how it often happens that a poor woman comes weeping to the Bishop, to beg him to save her marriage and her very existence by a dispensation. But the Bishop must let the poor woman be ruined, for not he but the Pope only can dispense, and “mulier non habet pecunias – pecunias.” The Court Prelates said afterwards that this Hungarian had made himself very disagreeable with his “mulier non habet pecunias.”

The following occurrence was comic: – You know in what repute the supple and complaisant Fessler, Bishop of St. Pölten, is held here, the first herald for retailing the new dogma to the world. Not long ago, Charbonnel, the Capuchin Bishop of Sozopolis, placed himself near him, and began to speak of clerical place-hunting, the eagerness for distinctions and promotions among Bishops, and the crooked ways they often take to obtain them, and pointed so unmistakeably by look and gesticulation at his neighbour, the Secretary, that on going out Fessler said it was high time to put an end to the Council, which was every day getting more disagreeable. The question was then started by German and Hungarian Bishops whether it would not be better, as Martin thought, to substitute lay-brothers for clergymen's housekeepers, or whether the restoration of “the common life” – the Chrodogang institute – of course in a very modified form, should be attempted. They overlooked the fact that such matters cannot be regulated by a Council, but must be arranged according to the disposition and circumstances of the clergy in the various dioceses. Haynald, Meignan, Bishop of Châlons, and the Chaldean Patriarch, insisted that mere school questions should not be decided by the Council without any necessity, and that some freedom of movement must be left to Science. But the word freedom has nowhere so ill a sound as at Rome. Only one kind of freedom can be spoken of here – the freedom of the Church; and, in their favourite and accustomed manner of speech, by the Church is intended the Pope, and by freedom domination over the State, according to the Decretals. And to talk of freedom of Science! The Council, if it entertained such views, would be forgetting altogether that it was only called together for two purposes – to increase the plenary power of the Pope, and to aggrandize the Jesuits. But the Order has, like the Paris labourer of 1848, “le droit du travail;” it is not content to exist only, but must work – of course in its own way, – and for this it requires two things: first, new dogmas; and secondly, plenty of condemnations and anathemas. The business of the Council is to provide both.

The Cardinals, with the exception of Rauscher, Schwarzenberg, and Mathieu, have taken no part in the speaking, nor have the Generals of Orders and Abbots. Only when the need for a reform of the Cardinals themselves was spoken of, Cardinal di Pietro rose, who is regarded as the most liberal-minded of the Italians in the Sacred College, to show that such a reform could only be a financial one, i. e., that the Cardinals required larger incomes. What the Bishops meant was something very different, viz., a better and fuller representation of different nations in the Curia, and a limitation of the Italian monopoly. But scattered observations of that kind could elicit no sort of real apprehension in the minds of the Italians, who are firmly seated in the saddle; so secure do they feel in their possession of a dominion many centuries old, and so very odd do the claims of other nations appear to them. In this point the present Romans or Latins are of the same mind as the old Romans of the sinking Republic, who sacrificed 600,000 men in the Confederate war rather than allow equal political rights to their Italian allies.

The great blow, which brings matters near a decision, has now been just struck, and all that the Jesuit and anti-German party longed for, and the French and Germans feared, is now before our eyes, the third Schema, “on the Church and the Pope,” has been distributed, and leaves hardly anything to be desired in point of clearness and plain speaking. These transparent decrees and anathemas may be thus summed up: “The Christian world consists simply of masters and slaves; the masters are the Italians, the Pope and his Court, and the slaves are all Bishops (including the Italians themselves), all priests, and all the laity.”

This third Schema, which was distributed to the Bishops on January 21, is a lengthy document of 213 pages, entitled De Ecclesiâ, and it is the one the Curia is chiefly bent on getting received. It is said to be the work of a red-hot Infallibilist, Gay, Vicar-General of the Infallibilist Bishop Pie of Poitiers, and is so drawn up that by a slight addition the Infallibility of the Pope, which it already leads up to and implies, can be inserted in express form very easily, and as the necessary logical supplement; and thus the internal harmony of this important document, with its appended anathemas, would be completely secured. Three main ideas run through the Schema, and are formulated into dogmatic decrees guarded with anathemas: First, to the Pope belongs absolute dominion over the whole Church, whether dispersed or assembled in Council; secondly, the Pope's temporal sovereignty over a portion of the Peninsula must be maintained as pertaining to dogma; thirdly, Church and State are immutably connected, but in the sense that the Church's laws always hold good before and against the civil law; and therefore every Papal ordinance that is opposed to the Constitution and law of the land binds the faithful, under mortal sin, to disobedience to the Constitution and law of their country.

Sixteenth Letter

Rome, Feb. 5.– On reviewing the situation, I believe I may venture to say that it has become better, far better, than it was a few weeks ago. For this the Christian world is mainly indebted to the noble, dignified and united attitude of the German and Hungarian Bishops. These men, – I speak of course only of the majority of the forty-six – while taking frequent and most conscientious consultation with one another, and knowing the three German Cardinals to be in substantial agreement with them, have gained almost daily in clearness of view, confidence and decision; and their example, again, has encouraged the Bishops of other nations. If, as many fear, Ketteler should, at the critical moment, go over to the Papal side, and let his sympathy for the convenient Infallibilist doctrine get the better of his love for the German Church and nation, his loss will be more than made up by forces newly gained. Hefele, who is the first living authority about Councils, has signed the Opposition address, and would, I believe, have still more gladly signed a stronger one. Three Cardinals of one nation who don't want to have anything to do with Papal Infallibility! “It is an unheard-of, an abominable thing,” say the Romans. “O that we still had Reisach! his loss is bitter at so critical a moment, and that we should have to console ourselves for his death by the living voices of Martin, Senestrey, Leonrod and Stahl, is still bitterer!”

The Hungarians are greatly influenced by knowing that they would find themselves isolated in their own country, if they, the representatives of ecclesiastical reform, were to return from Rome conquered, and as forced believers in Papal Infallibility and the complete system of ecclesiastical despotism. Their position is one of close union, and by its union is imposing; whereas the fifteen or sixteen Bishops of Austrian Germany are somewhat weakened by the desertion of Martin and the three Bavarians and the approaching apostasy of Ketteler, who is already preparing the way for it in the Mainzer Journal. From thence, as I perceive, has the falsehood gained currency, that the Opposition are ready to accept Spalding's (professedly) modified proposals, and thus to acknowledge Infallibility in its grossest form and vote the whole third Schema– that Magna Charta of ecclesiastical absolutism – absolutely and without any change. That would indeed be a catastrophe almost without precedent in Church history. We should have to assume that the Opposition Bishops had resolved to verify in their own case Mazarin's saying about Parliaments, that their policy is always to say “No,” and act “Yes.” Ketteler, moreover, has special grounds of his own for gaining or preserving the particular favour of the Pope; for remembering his retirement from the candidature for the Archbishopric of Cologne, he might effect the abolition of the compact of Rome with the Governments, which secures a veto to the latter, and the introduction of either entirely free elections with Papal confirmation, or, still better, of simple nomination of Bishops by the Pope. He has spoken in Congregation in this sense, and was of course cheered by the Infallibilists.

No less strong and dignified is the attitude of half the French Bishops, who have attached themselves to men like Darboy, Dupanloup, Landriot of Rheims, Meignan of Châlons and Ginoulhiac of Grenoble. On the other side, there are about twenty decided Infallibilists, while the rest of the French Bishops wait or avoid speaking out. The party of Darboy and Dupanloup have the double advantage of being supported by their Government – while the Austrian ministry assumes a wholly apathetic and indifferent position, – and of belonging to the nation whose troops make the Council and the civil Government of the Pope possible, and whose Bishops therefore the Curia is obliged to treat with respect. A French Bishop can say a good deal without, as a rule, having to fear being called to order by the Legate's bell.

The North American Bishops too are being gradually educated to ecclesiastical maturity in the school of Rome and the Council, and have already grown out of that naïve belief in the disinterested generosity and superhuman wisdom of the Curia which most of them brought here. To-day the Pope paid them a visit at the American College, conversed in a friendly way with the Bishops individually, said obliging things, and, in a word, displayed those well-known powers of fascination he has such a command of. “A month ago this would have taken effect,” said an American priest who was present, “but now it comes too late.” He also assured me that not five of the forty-five American Bishops would sign the Infallibilist Petition or vote for the dogma.

I have heard many, and especially French, Prelates say, during the last few days, sometimes in obscure hints, sometimes clearly, that the Council will soon – in a few weeks – be closed or dissolved; an opinion all the more surprising, because nothing as yet has been done. In that case the Bull with the many Excommunications will have to be treated as issuing from the Council.⁴³ But the only relation of the Bishops to that Bull is as the suffering and punished party.

The third Solemn Session was to have been held on February 2, but had again to fall through from the want of any materials. And there are still mountains of work and numbers of elaborate Schemata awaiting the Council; for the decrees it is summoned to make, or rather which Pius ix. intends to proclaim to the world, “with the approbation of the Council,” are to be veritable pandects embracing the entire doctrine and constitution of the Church, regulating all relations between Church and State, and restoring the Papal supremacy over the bodies and souls of all men. The domain of morals, properly so called, is alone excluded; for there the Jesuits have good reasons for wishing to keep their hands free. In short, the projected work that still remains to be done would occupy at least a year and a half. And for this end everything has been chosen and sharpened into the form of canons, which can only introduce complications, provoke conflicts with the civil Governments, embitter the relations of rival Confessions, prejudice the position of the Bishops, and foster the hatred of the lay world against the clergy. And accordingly, with many Bishops, the wish to escape taking any part in these discussions may be father to the thought, and a speedy end of the Council may appear to them a sort of conciliar euthanasia. To many a Bishop has the old proverb already occurred, in reference to the Council, that the best thing would be not to have been born and the next best to die early. It is not the Swiss only who have a home-sickness. And then there is the treatment; I heard a French Count here say to-day, “On les traite d'une manière brutale.”

I have just received the last number of the Paris Correspondant, with its article by the Viscount of Meaux, Montalembert's son-in-law, who is here. His account of how the Council is treated is so much to the point, and so thoroughly confirms my own statements, that I will quote it for you.

“The Schemata,” he says, at p. 347, “are prepared beforehand, the order of business is imposed by authority (imposée), the Commissions are elected before any consultation, from official lists, by a disciplined majority which votes as one man. On these Commissions the minority is not represented, and there are no other deliberations except in Congregation. Before these Congregations the subjects are brought in all their novelty and laid before the 700 members, without any previous explanations. It is difficult to understand the speeches, and there are no reports which the Fathers can inspect, so that no Bishops have the opportunity of submitting their thoughts to the deliberate examination of their colleagues. Moreover, they are forbidden to have anything printed here for the Council. All these characteristics indicate an assembly summoned to approve, not to discuss, intended to exalt, not to moderate, the power which has summoned it. And with what haste does it push on in this direction! How impatiently does the majority press for a declaration of Papal Infallibility!” So far the Viscount. Matters must indeed have come to a pass when so cautious and strictly Catholic a journal as the Correspondant presents its readers with this picture of the Council.

There are two serious dangers to which we are always exposed. The first I have already spoken of, which is introducing the plan of passing the Schemata by majorities, so that the desired dogma would be carried as it were by assault. The second danger – and it seems to me far more threatening – is that one of those involved and disguised formulas which the Infallibilists vie with one another in devising, in order to deceive and catch the votes of the less sharp-sighted Prelates and thus incorporate it into the third Schema, may really succeed with the greater number of the hitherto opposing and protesting Bishops. This notion is in fact implied in the phrase one has heard so often, that a middle party must be formed among the Bishops; for the programme or shibboleth of this middle party is to be an elastic formula, or one only expressing the thing metaphorically, or, again, one not sharply dogmatic but rather pious and edifying in sound. By the help of this middle party the formula might be made acceptable to the rest of the Prelates, and the desired end be happily attained. Thus Mermillod and two others have to-day invented a phrase, which seems to them suited to square the circle and to satisfy and unite all. They say they wish to declare that the Pope, whenever he speaks on doctrine, speaks tanquam os et organum Ecclesiæ. And by this they understand that the Church has no other mouth than him and without him is dumb, from which it obviously follows that he is infallible. I doubt if many Bishops will be detained in the meshes of a net so coarsely spun. No better is the formula invented by Spalding, which might be called a pretty downright one, – that everybody must inwardly assent to every doctrinal decision of the Pope on pain of everlasting damnation.⁴⁴ That goes far beyond even the Manning-Deschamps Address, which limits his infallibility to decrees addressed to the whole Church, while this formula of Spalding's declares every conceivable Papal utterance (judicium) infallible; for a Christian can only give the assent of inward belief, when there is no possibility of error and when there is a really divine authority and revelation. Every theologian must declare this invention of the Archbishop of Baltimore's to be the most monstrous demand ever made on the conscience and understanding of the Catholic world. It is as if a courtier at Teheran were to say, “I will not indeed affirm that our Shah is almighty, but I do assert confidently that he can create out of nothing whatever he will and that his will is always accomplished.” The reverend Fathers who torment themselves with inventing such devices would perhaps do best if they were to make a collection among themselves, and offer a prize of 100 ducats for that form of circumlocution or involution most securely adapted for entrapping the innocent souls of Bishops. Then the most ingenious heads from all Europe would compete in sending in their suggestions, and the right bait might be discovered among them.