the Pope thought God thought in him; that the Pope represented God on earth; that to the Pope applied the text, "This is my God and I will praise Him, my Father's God, and I will glorify Him." Veuillot further declared that God would stone the human race with the debris of the Vatican.
Whether one who perpetrated these eccentricities of doctrine and interpretation and prediction could be trusted as a qualified exponent of Catholic truth was to Dupanloup more than manifest. But nevertheless Veuillot was in France an accredited leader of the Ultramontanes, a fervid champion of Papal Infallibility.
Dupanloup's courageous attitude enlisted the devoted admiration of opponents of Papal Infallibility. No one testifies to this more forcibly than Montalembert. Montalembert—who curiously combined a profound belief in mediæval legend with the advanced opinions of the liberal politician, denying the Church's right to employ coercive measures, which Rome maintains, yet advocating vigorously the temporal claims of the Papacy—was a Catholic of the ancient type: the born antagonist of the modern Ultramontane, while yielding to none in devotion to the Roman See. But his admiration for Dupanloup's outspoken words was unbounded.
"No doubt," wrote Montalembert, "you greatly admire the Bishop of Orleans, but you would admire him vastly more if you could realise the depth into which the French clergy has sunk. It exceeds anything which would have been considered possible in the days when I was young. … Of all the strange events which the history of the Church presents, I know none which equals or surpasses this rapid and complete transformation of Catholic France into a vestibule of the antechambers of the Vatican."[1]
- ↑ Lord Acton, Vatican Council, p. 58.
