the approaching Council invade the province of political affairs, it will then be time for the Governments to take such measures as the case may need. This chilling response made Prince Hohenlohe extremely indignant. He declared that he had never proposed preventive or restrictive measures, but asked what attitude the Governments proposed to adopt toward the Council. To delay until a decree was passed would leave the Government no power except to protest.
"We believe," he wrote,[1] "that we are not mistaken when we maintain that not one of the Austrian Bishops will attempt to oppose the proclamation of the dogma of Infallibility. In this dogma lies the future of Ultramontanism; in it lies the kernel of the absolutist organisation of the hierarchy. It is the crowning of the work for which the Ultramontane party has been striving for years; and no Bishop will dare to move a step in opposition to this aim. The hierarchy will come out of the Council stronger and more powerful, and begin the battle against modern civilization with renewed strength."
Unsupported, however, by the Austrian and other Governments, the Bavarian could, of course, do nothing.
"The Bavarian Government," wrote Hohenlohe,[2] "has thereby, indeed, forfeited the sympathy of the Society of Jesus, if indeed it ever had it; but it has won the approval of all good Catholics who are not under the influence of that Society."
Bismarck declared that the movement in Bavaria had resulted in increasing caution and conciliatoriness in Rome. Prince Hohenlohe was in intimate contact with Rome and its affairs through his brother the Cardinal, who fully concurred with his antipathy to things
