the point. Another rule gave the Presidents power, at the request of ten Fathers and with the approval of the majority, to closure the discussion. This second Regulation involved tremendous possibilities. It placed the minority entirely at the mercy of the majority. It thereby determined a principle more momentous still—namely, that Decrees of Faith could be imposed on the Church by mere majority of votes. Hitherto the minority had taken refuge in the principle that no opinion could be elevated into a dogma of faith without the Council's moral unanimity. The existence of an opposition so extensive as between one hundred and two hundred Bishops rendered the Church secure on that theory from the imposition of the Ultramontane conception of papal prerogatives. But the New Regulations swept that plea of moral unanimity entirely away. Whatever was the intention of its propounders, its effect is clear; and that effect was disastrous to the men who clung to what they regarded as the ancient truth. Naturally the depression of the minority was profound.
Döllinger wrote a very powerful criticism upon these New Regulations.[1] He characterised the existing Roman Synod as the first in history in which instructions as to procedure had been imposed upon the Bishops without their co-operation or approval. The New Regulations concentrated all real power in the hands of the presiding Cardinals and the Commission of Suggestions, so that the Council itself, as opposed to these, had neither power nor will. Equally momentous was the fact that doctrine was to be determined by majorities. This was an intrusion of parliamentary forms into synodical procedure—with this tremendous difference: that whereas laws passed by majorities are subject to subsequent revision and recall, dogmatic resolutions are, if the Council be
- ↑ Reusch, Declarations and Decrees.
