SYLLABUS 365
himself with and concur in progress, liberalism, and modern culture (cum recenti civiltiate) ." This defensive action gave the impression of being an offensive carried out by the sovereign, mediaeval Papacy against the totality of intellectual and social development based on the Reformation and the Revolution, against the secularization of existence, against the autonomy of man and his fields of activity, and against the prevailing apostasy from a world beyond the realm of the merely natural.
The response on all sides was tremendous excitement. Even Catholics were frightened and endeavoured, as they today still en- deavour, to minimize the validity of the Syllabus as a guide to con- science and to soften its harsh diction. The liberal world, which is the whole modern world, is dedicated on principle to a lack of prin- ciples, and so rose up against the Papal "heresy" which was essentially a summons to order in the midst of chaos. For the Pope's protest against basic characteristics of the time-spirit was meet and necessary in view of the meaning and the mission of the Church. The fact that the extremes of Individualism and Socialism were warring bitterly against each other in spite of, or because of, a common faith in natural- ism, gave a third party the right to condemn that belief in unbelief which he saw as the fundamental error of errors. There is no doubt that the Pope acted rightly; but his utterance lacked that insight into the depths and the inevitability of the ferment which Catholic thinkers of older and more recent times had possessed. Leo XIII would soon find for his great encyclicals and allocutions a calmer method like that in which Elias, after storm, earthquake and fire had passed, heard the voice of the Lord.
Two days after the publication of Quanta cura> Pope Pius informed the Cardinals that he wished to summon a General Council. Four years later he convoked it, and it met on December 8th, 1869. The meetings were held in the north transept of St. Peter's, where princes of the Church and prelates of all countries of the earth foregathered, though Italy had a representation totally out of proportion to the num- ber of 747 qualified voters. The preparations had been made in secret, and therefore the fear of those not initiated was (particularly in Ger- many) so much the greater lest a Papalism after the heart of Pius IX, the Jesuits, and the Neo-ultramontane extremists would prove victori-
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