Ultramontane. Most instructive are the confidential utterances of the Cardinal to the statesman, lamenting the dominant influences on the eve of the Vatican Council.
"Perhaps the Holy Father is still deliberating," writes the Cardinal in September 1869, about two months before the Council opened, "but I doubt it. With all my respect for the Supreme Head of the Church, my obedience will be put to a severe test. I trust that God will help me. I often ask myself, What shall I do in these storms?"
He feels himself isolated, and deliberately ignored by the ruling authorities. He writes that Döllinger could come to live with him in Rome. He will receive into his own house any trustworthy theologian to assist him while the Council proceeds. The Jesuits, he says, have raised the question of Infallibility as a standard.
"The Pope is charmed with the idea, without the least notion what the Jesuit party is saying and doing. Touched by their devotion, he in his blindness embraces the whole Order as the saviour of his honour in the (quite unnecessarily raised) question of his Infallibility. … The Infallibility question has thrown Pius IX. so completely into the arms of the Jesuits, that of all his plans and ideas against them not a trace remains. The good fathers know that they can keep a firm hold on Pius IX. only if he is driven into a corner and must fly to them for help."
It was arranged that Friedrich should go to Rome as Cardinal Hohenlohe's theologian; but that he was to live at the Cardinal's was to be kept profoundly secret. "He should give some other reason, such as that he wants to see Rome, or the like. You will understand that better than I can tell you," says the Cardinal to
