Döllinger sent a frank but decided reply. Return was impossible. He said that his excommunication had been unjust, his treatment unexampled in the history of the Church. The mediæval theory of excommunication rendered the individual liable to bodily harm, It would appear that this theory was not obsolete; for the chief of the police had warned him to be on his guard, as they had knowledge that an act of violence was plotted against him. Friedrich says elsewhere that the house in which he and Döllinger lived, was specially protected by the police for a year after the excommunication. These dangers, said Döllinger, were long since past. But he could not enter again into relationship with the authors of these actions. He had long ago challenged his former colleagues to know how they reconciled acceptance of the Vatican expositions with their conscience and their knowledge of the facts:—
"The answer was always an evasive one, or an embarrassed shrug of the shoulder. They said that this was a question of detail, which the individual priest or layman did not need to enter into. Or they said that the very essence and merit of believing consisted precisely in giving oneself up blindly and implicitly to the powers that be, and in leaving it to them to settle any contradictions that might exist. I do not need to tell you what an impression deplorable subterfuges of this kind have made upon me."
This was Döllinger's final attitude toward the Roman Communion up to the last moment of consciousness on earth. He never by any act of will deviated from testimony to the Church's traditional Faith, in which the theory of Papal Infallibility was not included. To the end of his days he held that this theory could not possibly be reconciled with the broad facts of Christian history.
