anything favourable to the personal and separate Infallibility of the Pope such as men seek to impose upon us."[1]
"How was it possible," wrote Montalembert,"to foresee in 1847 that the Liberalism of Pius IX., welcomed as it was by Liberals everywhere, would ever become the pontificate represented and embodied in such journals as the Univers and the Civilta? Who could possibly anticipate the triumph of the theologian-advocates of absolute power; the novel Ultramontanism, which, began by destroying our liberties and traditional ideas, and closes by sacrificing justice and truth, reason and history, wholesale before the idol which they have enstated in the Vatican?"[2]
If this word "idol" appears too strong, Montalembert would appeal to a letter written to him by Mgr. Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, in 1853.
"The new Ultramontane School," wrote Archbishop Sibour, "involves us in a double idolatry—an idolatry of the temporal power, and an idolatry of the spiritual. When, like myself, you made strong profession of Ultramontanism, you did not understand things so. We maintained the independence of the spiritual power against the exaggerated claims of the temporal. But we respected the constitution of the State and of the Church. We did not abolish all grades of power, all ranks, all reasonable discussion, all lawful resistance, all individuality, all freedom. The Pope and the Emperor were not respectively the Church and the State.
"Undoubtedly there are occasions when the Pope can act independently of all regulations designed for ordinary procedure; occasions when his power is as extensive as the needs of the Church. … The older Ultramontanes were aware of this, but they did not convert an exception into a rule. The new Ultra-