documents concerned with the struggle, relates that Pius IX. used to distinguish three periods of the Council: the preparations; the assemblies; the conclusion. Of these, the first period was Satanic, the second Human, the third Divine.[1]
But before a minority Bishop could assent to the new Decree, there were questions to be faced and answered; questions which he must answer in his own behalf, and which also he was certain to find assailing him, whether from his Clergy or Laity, who like himself had hitherto deprecated the doctrine or disbelieved it. There was the question, perhaps, first of all, Is this Council ecumenical? Is it a true exponent of the Universal Church? There are Councils of many kinds, with varying degrees of authority, legitimately responded to with varying degrees of respect. Is this Council of the highest kind—that which possesses a real and absolute finality? This question was widely debated within the Roman body. It was said by high authorities in the Roman Communion that the Vatican Council did not fulfil the conditions of freedom essential to the creation of a dogma of the faith. Many writers of the period assert this; some in the most impassioned terms. Hefele emphatically declared it. Some affirmed that moral unanimity was essential to representation of the Universal Church. Such unanimity, it was notorious, the vote for Infallibility did not possess. Accordingly there was no rush of the defeated Bishops into immediate acquiescence. On the contrary, there was suspense, uncertainty, delay. Individual isolated Bishops took no decided steps. They waited to see what others would do, what time would produce, what thought and reflection might suggest.
Fessler, indeed, late Secretary of the Vatican
- ↑ Baunard, Histoire de Cardinal Pie, p. 353.
