"Had I not been very ill and unable to write a letter I should have long since sent you my congratulations. I desire at least to-day, my lord, to say simply what it appears to me there was no necessity to say, namely that, like all my brethren in the priesthood, I accept the decrees of the Vatican Council. I cancel everything contrary to the decrees which I may have written on this subject before the decision."[1]
The Archbishop sent a kindly reply to the effect that he had never doubted Gratry's docility.
"By such noble and generous examples we harmonise our conduct with our convictions, and prove to the world that we are sincere in maintaining that the light of faith is superior to that of our feeble and vacillating reason."
But how about the facts of history? Gratry effaced his interpretation; but he could not cancel the facts. How abandon his former convictions? That is precisely what Gratry's colleagues required him to explain. An explanation, therefore, he attempted to give. To those who reproved him for accepting without reservation the Council's decrees, he explains that, before the Decision, he argued in accordance with his conscience and his right; since the Decision, he had not said a word.
