Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/294

274 VATICAN (COUNCIL OF THE) the work of the latter, was addressed by Ba- varia, April 9, 1869, to the Koman Catholic courts, calling their attention to the projects entertained by the promoters of the council. " The only dogmatic thesis," the circular af- firmed, " which Rome wishes to have decided by the council, and which the Jesuits are now agitating throughout Italy and Germany, is the question of pontifical infallibility. This pretension, once become a dogma, will evi- dently have a wider scope than the purely spiritual sphere, and will become eminently a political question ; for it will raise the power of the sovereign pontiff, even in temporal mat- ters, above all the princes and peoples of Chris- tendom." In June a second circular from Prince Hohenlohe invited the governments to unite in preventing the meeting of the council. This was seconded by the Italian prime minis- ter, Menabrea; and a joint note from Italy and Bavaria urged Napoleon III. to withdraw his troops from Rome during the sitting of the council. The Bavarian ministry addressed a series of questions to the theological faculty of the university, regarding the embarrassments likely to ensue between church and state if the teaching of the syllabus were made a doe- trine of faith. These questions were discussed throughout Germany. The answer of the faculty, though guarded on the main doctrinal points, was unfavorable to the infallibilist view, and arraigned the Jesuits for revolutionizing the public and private teaching of the church. The publication of this answer increased the opposition to the council, and Bavaria sent to the courts of southern Germany a circular urg- ing them to address a similar series of ques- tions to their respective universities. Simul- taneously with this an address embodying the most formidable objections to the ultramontane doctrines in general, and in particular against the syllabus, as well as the opportuneness of any new dogmatic definitions, was printed in the principal European languages, and sent to all the members of the Roman Catholic hier- archy. This was the work of a committee of laymen, who had their centre of action at Coblentz. Another document, known as the " Coblentz Address," was at the same time published in that city, purporting to be a lay remonstrance to the archbishop of Treves on the proposed action of the council, and sub- mitting a large plan of church reform, the chief points of which were afterward em- braced in the changes advocated by the Old Catholics. They demanded that the coming council should decree the. separation of the church from the state, the government of par- ishes by local boards, that of dioceses by dioce- san synods, that of national churches by na- tional councils, the nomination of bishops by the people, the suppression of the Index Ex- purgatorius, &c. An identical address signed principally by laymen, which obtained the as- sent and support of the faculties of the leading German universities, was presented to other bishops. Count Montalembert from his death- bed adhered by letter to the Coblentz address. The Vienna Neuefreie Presse of June 16 de- nounced the agitation as a conspiracy having its centre in Munich, and Dr. Dollinger for its promoter. In France the periodical Corres- pondant advocated the views of the German opposition, but was combated by Louis Vruil- lot in the Univers, by Laurentie in the Union, by the Tijd of Amsterdam, and by the Catho- lique of Brussels. As the time for the meet- ing of the council approached and the discus- sions of the public journals increased in vehe- mence, MM. Baroche, Rouher, Daru, and others, by their speeches in the senate and their pub- lished correspondence, reechoed the fears ex- pressed by the statesmen, journalists, and the- ologians of Germany. The series of letters on papal prerogatives that appeared in the Autrs- tmrg Allgemeine Zeitung in March, reappean <! in a more elaborate form at Leipsio in the anonymous book Der Papst und da Condi, by " Janus," and this was supplemented by Die Reform der ri'imischen Eirche in Haupt und Glwiern. The bishops of Germany met at Fulda in September, and signed a joint pas- toral letter, in which they pronounced ground- less the fears about the supposed dangers to the constitution of the church, to her legiti- mate relations with the civil power, to tho happiness and liberty of peoples, nnd to the just rights of science and civilization. They repelled the motive attributed to Pius IX. of wishing to make himself an absolute monarch, the infallible arbiter of doctrines as well as of temporal interests, and of laboring to be the head of a controlling and tyrannical party in the church. Bishop Maret, dean of the theo- logical faculty of the Sorbonne, published in September Du concile general et de la paix reli- gieuse (2 vols.), which was dedicated to the pope, but advocated the purest Gallicanism, and was heralded by the praise of the liberal press, and by a violent controversy between tho bishop and the Univers, the leading ultramontane jour- nal. This work was either repudiated or conr demned by all but three of four of the French bishops. Between Bishop Dupanloup of Or- leans, on tho one hand, and Archbishops (after- ward Cardinals) Dechamp of Mechlin and Man- ning of Westminster, a public correspondence took place just as the prelates of all countries were taking their departure for Rome. In November Archbishop Darboy of Paris, who had publicly taught as professor the doctrine of papal infallibility, but was opposed to the opportuneness of a conciliary definition, re- produced the main points of the circular issued from Fulda, in a pastoral letter, which pro- duced a deep impression. On Nov. 27, 1809, the pope published the official letter, Mult4- plices inter, establishing the order to be fol- lowed in the celebration and deliberations of the council. In this he repeats the chief rea- sons for holding it: the extirpation of error, providing a remedy for the ills of tho church,