"Almost every writer who really served Catholicism fell sooner or later under the disgrace or the suspicion of Rome." Also that "the division between the Roman and the Catholic elements in the Church made it hopeless to mediate between them."
Acton's description of the Vatican Assembly itself could only leave one conclusion as to its methods and impartiality, on the reader's mind. He records how the Bishops on arriving in Rome, were "received with the assurance that nobody had dreamt of defining Infallibility, or that, if the idea had been entertained at all, it had been abandoned." He records the Pope's assurance that "he would sanction no proposition that could sow dissension among the Bishops." He asserts that the freedom of the Bishops was taken away by the regulations of the Bull Multiplies inter imposed upon them without their consent, and with refusal even to allow their protests to be uttered. He says that many Bishops were "bewildered and dispirited," by the character of these Regulations. He says:—
"It was certain that any real attempt that might be made to prevent the definition could be overwhelmed by the preponderance of those Bishops whom the modern constitution of the Church places in dependence on Rome."
He reveals his sympathies in the strongest way by pouring out his moral indignation on the minority Bishops for their weakness.
"They showed no sense of their mission to renovate Catholicism. …
"They were content to leave things as they were, to gain nothing if they lost nothing, to renounce all premature striving for reform if they could succeed in avoiding a doctrine which they were as unwilling to discuss as to define."
