The True Story of the Vatican Council/Chapter 1
The True Story of the Vatican Council.
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGIN AND MOTIVE OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL.
Few centuries since the Christian era have seen events of greater magnitude or more far-reaching in consequence, than the age in which we live. It has seen the extinction in 1806 of the Holy Roman Empire, the heir and representative of the Cæsars; The rise and fall of two Empires in France; the setting up of two French republics; the overthrow of more dynasties, and the abdication of more kings, than any former age. It is, characteristically, the century of revolution. It has seen great wars which shook the whole of Europe from Madrid to Moscow; and lately two great empires overthrown in a few weeks or in fewer months. It sees now a German Emperor and a king of Italy. Once it has seen the head of the Christian Church carried away prisoner into France, once driven by bloodshed out of Rome, and now we see him stripped of all the world can clutch; twice it has seen Rome seized and held. These are not common events. Finally, after a lapse of three hundred years, it has seen an Œcumenical Council, and it has occupied itself profusely and perpetually about its acts, its liberty, and its decrees. Few events of the nineteenth century stand out in bolder relief, and many will be forgotten when the Vatican Council will be remembered. It will mark this age as the Council of Nicæa and the Council of Trent now mark in history the fourth and the sixteenth centuries. Therefore it will not perhaps be without use, nor, it may be, without interest, if we review its history.
The title prefixed to these pages implies that many stories of the Vatican Council have been published which are not true. It is not my intention to enumerate them. As far as I am able I shall avoid reference to them. My purpose is to narrate the history of the Council, simply and without controversy, from authentic sources. In the present chapter I shall narrate only the origin of the intention to convoke the Council. Hereafter I hope to show what were the antecedents of the Council and their effect upon it; then I will endeavour to explain its acts, and lastly to trace out the effects which have followed from it.
I. In the year 1873 Pius the Ninth gave commission to Eugenio Cecconi, then canon of the Metropolitan Church of Florence, and now archbishop of the same see, to write the history of the Vatican Council. All authentic documents relating to it were put into his hands. The first volume, entitled Storia del Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano scritta sui Documenti Originali, has been published. It extends over the period from the first conception of convoking an Œcumenical Synod to the close of the preparations for its work. I propose to give a condensed account of this first period, following closely the text of the Archbishop of Florence, and of the documents printed in the appendix to his work. I cannot omit to commend this volume to all who appreciate the purity of the lingua Toscana, of which it is a rare example. Its simplicity and transparent purity belong to the classical period of the Italian language.
It was on the 6th of December 1864, that Pius the Ninth for the first time manifested his thoughts on the convoking of an Œcumenical Council. He was presiding in the Vatican Palace over a session of the Congregation of Rites, consisting of cardinals and officials. After the usual prayer by which all such sessions are opened, the officials were bid to go out. For some time the Pope and the cardinals remained alone. The officials were then re-admitted, and the business of the congregation was despatched. This unusual event caused both surprise and curiosity.
Pius the Ninth, in that short interval, had made known to the cardinals that for a long time the thought of convoking an Œcumenical Council as an extraordinary remedy to the extraordinary needs of the Christian world had been before his mind. He bade the cardinals to weigh the matter each one by himself, and to communicate to him in writing, and separately, what before God they judged to be right. But he imposed rigorous silence upon them all.
This was the first conception of the Vatican Council.
The duty of weighing and delivering a written and separate opinion on the subject of convoking an Œcumenical Council was thus imposed on all cardinals then in Rome.
In the course of two months fifteen written opinions were delivered in. Others soon followed, until the number reached twenty-one.
The Archbishop of Florence, after a careful study of all these documents, has analysed and distributed the matter of them into the following heads. They treat of—
1. The present state of the world.
2. The question whether the state of the world requires the supreme remedy of an Œcumenical Council.
3. The difficulties of holding an Œcumenical Council, and how to overcome them.
4. The subjects which ought to be treated by such a Council.
(1.) In describing the present state of the world no reference was made by the Cardinals to its material progress in science, arts, or wealth, but to subjects strictly in relation to the eternal end of our existence. Under this aspect it is affirmed in these answers that the special character of this age is the tendency of a dominant party of men to destroy all the ancient Christian institutions, the life of which consists in a supernatural principle, and to erect upon their ruins and with their remains a new order, founded on natural reason alone. This tendency springs from two errors—the one that society, as such, has no duties towards God, religion being an affair of the individual conscience only; the other that the human reason is sufficient to itself, and that a supernatural order, by which man is elevated to a higher knowledge and destiny, either does not exist, or is at least beyond the cognisance and care of civil society. From these principles follows, by direct consequence, the exclusion of the Church and of revelation from the sphere of civil society and of science; and, further, out of this withdrawal of civil society and of science from the authority of revelation spring the Naturalism, Rationalism, Pantheism, Socialism, Communism of these times. From these speculative errors flows in practice the modern revolutionary Liberalism, which consists in the assertion of the supremacy of the State over the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, over education, marriage, consecrated property, and the temporal power of the head of the Church. This Liberalism, again, results in the indifferentism which equalises all religions, and gives equal rights to truth and error. The Consultors also treat of freemasonry, which substitutes for the Church of God a Universal Church of Humanity.
They then go on to speak of the infiltration of rationalistic principles into the philosophy of certain Catholic schools, and of their attitude of opposition to the divine authority of the Church. From this they pass to the internal state of the Church; to its discipline, which, since the Council of Trent, has become in many things inapplicable to the changed conditions of the world. Finally, they treat of the education of the clergy, the discipline of the monastic orders, and the disregard of the ecclesiastical laws by the laity in many countries.
(2.) For these and the like reasons almost all the cardinals were of opinion that the remedy of an Œcumenical Council was necessary—that is, to use the language of the schools, by a relative, not an absolute necessity. They say that though Luther was condemned by the pontiffs, the Council of Trent was thought to be necessary to give greater weight and solemnity to the condemnation. So also, though Pius the Ninth had condemned a long series of errors, it was expedient that the condemnation should be reported and published with the united voice of the whole episcopate joined to its head. They expressed the hope that if the whole Catholic episcopate in Council assembled should point out to the peoples and sovereigns of the Christian world the true relations of the natural and supernatural orders, the rights and the duties of the governors and the governed, it might serve to guide them in the confusion and obscurity which reign over the political order in this age of revolutions.
Only two cardinals out of twenty-one thought an Œcumenical Council not to be required—the one being of opinion that Councils are to be called only when some grave peril to the faith exists; the other that the subjects to be treated were of too delicate a nature, and that the external helps needed for the celebration of a Council did not now exist.
One also declined to give an opinion, referring himself to the judgment of the Supreme Pontiff.
Four, who thought a Council to be the remedy required by the evils of these times, nevertheless doubted if the moment were opportune, but still they admitted that, at least, all necessary preparations should be made for its convocation.
(3.) The Consultors then enumerated the obstacles in the way of holding a Council:—the confusions and disorders of the times; the animosity of the unbelieving and the profane, who would neither respect the authority of the Council nor fail to make pretexts out of its acts for attacking it more bitterly; the attitude of all civil governments, which are either hostile or indifferent; the probability of European wars which would disperse or endanger the Council. Then again they suggest the difficulties internal to the Church; the absence of bishops from their dioceses; the danger that dissensions and parties might arise in the Council itself, and thereby divide the unity of the Catholic episcopate—a danger common to all times, but especially to these in which the subjects of possible divergence are so delicate and so wide-spread in their consequences. These reasons made some hesitate, and some pronounce against the holding of the Council. And even the majority who advised its convocation were fully aware of these opposing reasons, and did not deny their great weight.
Nevertheless they were of opinion that the need that a Council should be held was greater than the dangers of holding it. They believed that, grave as are the political and religious confusions, higher and nobler aspirations are not extinct; that a tendency to return towards the order of divine and supernatural truth is to be seen not only in individuals, but in the masses; that among the Catholic peoples a new life has sprung up, a great return of fervour, and an outspoken resistance to erroneous doctrines. They thought, therefore, that a Council would encourage and consolidate the faithful and fervent members of the Church, and, by its witness for truth, weaken the pretensions of those who oppose it; that the world could not do more against the Church after the Council than before it; that the Council of Nicæa was held in the face of the Arian contentions, and the Council of Trent when the north of Europe was on the verge of schism; that difficulties and dangers and the opposition of civil powers since the fourth century have threatened all Councils, but that Councils have always done their work which remains to this day. They said, too, that the great and lasting good gained by the Council for the whole Church would more than outweigh any harm from the temporary absence of bishops from their dioceses; and, finally, that if there should be dissensions and parties, so there were at Trent, but that when the Council had made its final decrees all returned to submission and concord. So it would be in the future Council.
One of the cardinals wrote as follows:
In these great affairs of the Church, they who have to treat them ought to rise high above those who are busied in politics. Men of the world trust in subtleties, astuteness, duplicities, and in means and views purely human. They who rule the Church trust in the prudence of the Gospel, in the truth, in the discharge of their own duties, and in the special assistance promised to the Church by its Divine Founder. Therefore it is that oftentimes what appears to be imprudent in the eye of those who go by human prudence alone is an act of evangelical prudence, and is both good and a duty, as well as an act of Divine Providence.
Another writes:
I see that whensoever the Church has deliberated about holding an Œcumenical Council, there were difficulties to surmount not less than those of to-day, and that if Divine Providence not only overcame them, but made them to turn to the greater good of the Church, so assuredly this assistance of the Holy Spirit, who sweetly and mightily orders all things, will not be wanting in a time when so many reasons concur to show the opportuneness of the same remedy, which, in all times whensoever it has been applied, has always produced the happiest and most imposing effects.
A third said:
God, who has suggested to your Holiness the thought of an Œcumenical Council to raise a strong defence against the vast evils of our time, will make the. way plain, overcome all the difficulties, and give to your Holiness and to the bishops a moment of truce; peace, and time enough to fulfil so great a work.
(4.) The last point of consultation was of the matters to be treated. The Consultors first suggest the condemnation of modern errors, the exposition of Catholic doctrine, the observance of discipline, its adaptation to the needs of the present time, and the raising of the state of the clergy and of the religious orders. Some of the cardinals touched upon special points, such as the licence of the press, the secret societies, civil marriage, the impediments to marriage, mixed marriages, ecclesiastical possessions, the observance of the feasts, abstinence, fasting, and the like. Two only spoke of the infallibility of the Pontiff: one of these spoke in general of Gallicanism. A third spoke also of Gallicanism, and of the present necessity of the temporal power of the Roman Pontiff in order to a free exercise of his ecclesiastical office. But this Consultor was one who opposed the holding of the Council. A fourth mentioned the temporal power. One only spoke of the syllabus, and he also was opposed to the holding of the Council. The Archbishop of Florence then goes on as follows:
Certainly we must say that if the course of history does not prove that a pretended Jesuitical conspiracy controlled the programme of the Council, the cause of those who tell us, usque ad nauseam, that "Rome, by hidden schemes of that celebrated society, conceived the design of concentrating all power, ecclesiastical and civil, in the hands of the Supreme Pontiff, and setting up in the Church a new and exorbitant authority by the servility of the bishops," will be irreparably lost.[1]
Other points were touched upon by the cardinals. Many expressed their ardent desire that our brethren separated from the Catholic Church might through the work of the Council find a way of return to the true mother of all the children of God.
II. After such full and careful deliberation, many might expect that Pius the Ninth would have proceeded to decide upon the convocation of the Council of the Vatican. Indeed, many have said that he was so strongly bent upon it, for the special purpose of his own "apotheosis," that he waited for no consultation, and endured no advice. History tells another tale. All that had hitherto been done was no more than a preliminary deliberation; and that only as to whether the subject of holding an Œcumenical Council should be so much as proposed for further deliberation.
In the first days of March 1865, Pius the Ninth directed certain of the cardinals to meet and confer together, by way of a preliminary discussion, on the very question whether an Œcumenical Council should be convoked or not. He ordered, likewise, that the written voti, or judgments of the Consultors, of which account has been already given, should be reduced to a compendium for the use of the new commission. This was done by the Procurator-General of the Dominican Order, in a brief form, under the title "Sketch of the Opinions expressed by the Cardinals invited by Pius the Ninth to advise on the Convocation of an Œcumenical Council." The compendium begins as follows: "The cardinals, to the number of thirteen, advised affirmatively for the convoking of a Council; one answered negatively, submitting his judgment to that of the Holy Father; one other concluded that a Council ought not to be convoked." The new commission then was composed of the Cardinals Patrizi, Reisach, Panebianco, Bizzarri, and Caterini.
The secretary of the commission was the Archbishop of Sardis, now Cardinal Giannelli, then Secretary of the Congregation of the Council, that is, for the interpretation of the Council of Trent and of all similar questions.
The first session was held on the 9th of March 1865, and the Consultors proceeded to re-examine the four heads, of which a hasty sketch has been already given.
The compendium was then subjected to a new and rigorous examination; and under the first head came the question of the necessity of Councils. It has been already said that the holding of Councils is not of absolute but only of relative necessity for the government of the Church. The meaning of this judgment is as follows. There is no divine commandment, no divine obligation, requiring that the bishops of the Universal Church should meet in one place. The government of the Church is adequately provided for in the divine institution of the Primacy and of the Episcopate. Nevertheless, for a multitude of reasons, both of natural and supernatural prudence, the Church, following the example of the Apostles, has always held not only diocesan and provincial synods, but also Œcumenical Councils.
For the first three hundred years no General Council was convened; for the last three hundred years no General Council has been summoned. For eighteen centuries, before 1869, only eighteen Councils had been held. General Councils, therefore, though useful and sometimes necessary, relatively to particular errors or particular times, are not absolutely necessary to the office of the Church. The Church is not infallible by reason of General Councils, but General Councils are infallible by reason of the Church. The Church does not depend on General Councils for the knowledge of the truth. Councils meet to give to truth, already known by divine tradition, a more precise expression for common and universal use. The whole Church, both the Ecclesia docens and the Ecclesia discens—that is, pastors in teaching, and the flock in believing—diffused throughout the world, is guided and kept in the way of truth at all times. The Church discharges its office as witness, judge and teacher, always and in all places. The Primacy in Rome and the Episcopate throughout the world, by the assistance of the Spirit of Truth abiding with it for ever, can never err in guarding and declaring the divine tradition. of revelation. In the three hundred years before the Council of Nicæa, the living voice of the Church sufficed for the promulgation and diffusion of the faith; in the intervals between Council and Council the voice of the Church was sufficient in its declarations of truth and its condemnation of error. In the three hundred years since the Council of Trent, the Church has taught with the same divine and unerring authority. If it be asked, then, what need there can be for an Œcumenical Council, the answer is, that in applying remedies to the evils of the whole world, a knowledge of these wide-spread evils is necessary. More is seen by a multitude of eyes, and heard by a multitude of ears. The collective intelligence, culture, experience, instincts, and discernment, natural and supernatural, of the Episcopate, is the highest light of council upon earth. Such is the meaning of the words that the holding of Councils is not absolutely but relatively necessary.[2]
As to the obstacles in the way of holding the Council, the first was a doubt as to the disposition of the civil powers to permit the bishops of their respective jurisdictions to attend. Fear was especially entertained on this point in respect to the governments of France, Italy, and Portugal. It was remembered that in 1862 the government of Italy hindered the Italian bishops from coming to Rome for the canonisation of the martyrs of Japan. But if the governments of Germany, Spain, Belgium, Holland, England, and America should put no hindrance, it was certain that a sufficient number of bishops would obey the call of the Supreme Pontiff.
As to the course to be pursued towards the sovereigns and civil powers, it was known that in all times, in convening Œcumenical Councils, the Church has endeavoured to act in accordance with Catholic sovereigns. This procedure was always held to be both fitting and useful, though not of necessity. Paul the Third, in convoking the Council of Trent, sought to obtain not only the assent of sovereigns, but their presence. In the bull of convocation he says:—"We asked the opinion of the princes, as it seemed to us that their assent to such an undertaking was above all expedient and opportune." And afterwards he adds:—"We urgently invited the Catholic sovereigns to come to the Council, and to bring with them the prelates of their respective countries." But he found the sovereigns undecided; and therefore, after many ineffectual attempts, he resolved to convoke the Council.
We desired (he said) to effect this object in accordance with and by the good-will of the princes of Christendom. But while we were waiting on their will, and looking for the time appointed by Thy will, O God, we felt ourselves at last impelled to declare that all times are surely acceptable to God, in which deliberation is taken in respect to things that are sacred and pertaining to Christian piety. Wherefore seeing, to our immeasurable sorrow, the Christian world daily growing worse, Hungary trodden down by the Turks, the Germans in peril, all other peoples afflicted with fear and grief, we had decided to wait no longer for the assent of any prince, nor to look to anything but to the will of Almighty God, and to the welfare of the Christian commonwealth.[3]
It was therefore thought fit that the Catholic sovereigns should be invited to appear by their legates at the Council of the Vatican, "according to the usage of the Church and the precedent of the Council of Trent."
Next it was proposed to call certain ecclesiastical persons from all parts of the world for previous consultation, inasmuch as "the benefit of the Council consists for the most part in knowing the state of the various regions and the remedies which there exist."
Finally, the Consultors recommended that all matters to be treated should be fully prepared and set in order before the assembling of the bishops, not only to avoid loss of time, but above all to preclude wandering discussions, and uncertainties of procedure, and the multiplication of innumerable questions.
When the commission came to deliberate upon the likelihood of the Council being interrupted, dispersed, or suspended by reason of the state of Europe, they carefully reviewed the history of the Council of Trent, which was convoked in 1536 to meet at Mantua in May of the following year. It was then, by reason of opposition, prorogued till November 1537. Then it was deferred till May 1538, to meet at Vicenza. So few bishops came, by reason of war and of the disturbed state of Europe and of Italy, that the Pope, weary of proroguing, suspended the Council indefinitely. The Turks were still victorious, and Germany was every day losing its faith. Paul the Third, therefore, without asking the assent of princes, convoked the Council to meet in November 1542 in the city of Trent. Three legates went to Trent, and waited many months for the bishops, who were still unable to assemble by reason of war and the dangers of travel. The Council was again suspended till a more favourable time. After three years it was again fixed for March 1545. After this came another delay; and the Council opened in April following. After fifteen months it was transferred to Bologna, where the bishops were so few that no decree was made; and after five months it was again indefinitely prorogued.
It then remained suspended for four years. Under Julius the Third it began once more in Trent in May 1551. It sat for a year; then in April 1552 it was suspended for two years, but the tumults of the world were such that it remained suspended for ten. In January 1562 it was opened again. In December 1563 the First Legate dismissed the bishops to their homes; and in January 1564 Pius the Fourth, by the bull Benedictus Deus, confirmed the work of the Council of Trent.
Such were the fortunes of the Council of Trent, without doubt the most momentous and fruitful Council of the Church in modern history. For three hundred years it has governed the Church throughout the world. And yet it could not meet till ten years after its convocation; twice it was suspended for two and for ten years in eighteen years it was at work only five, in the midst of universal conflict. Its enemies might well deride its delays, prorogations, suspensions, and wanderings from city to city. But it did its work. All these facts were weighed in the first deliberation whether, in the uncertainties of our times, an Œcumenical Council could be held.
The commission then took, in order, the following questions:—
1. Whether the convoking of an Œcumenical Council was relatively necessary and opportune.
2. Whether a previous communication should be made to the Catholic princes.
3. Whether, before publishing the bull for convoking the Council, the Sacred College ought to be consulted, and how it should be done.
4. Whether it was opportune to form an extraordinary congregation, which should occupy itself with the direction of matters concerning the Council.
5. Whether the aforenamed congregation, which should take the name of Congregation of Direction, ought, after the publication of the bull, at once to consult certain bishops of various nations, that they might point out in a summary way the matters, whether of doctrine or of discipline, which they might think it opportune for the Council to treat, regard being had to the needs of their respective countries.
To these questions the five cardinals answered in the following way:—
To the first, the fourth, and the fifth affirmatively.
To the second negatively. But they added that it was nevertheless good and convenient that, at the time of publishing the bull, such steps as were opportune should be taken by the Holy See in respect to the Catholic princes.
To the third they answered affirmatively, but they added that it belonged to the Pope to decide in what way the Sacred College should be consulted.
As to the reference to the Catholic sovereigns, it is to be remembered that if certain sovereigns at this day continue to be Catholic, it is as individuals, not as sovereigns. The governments are not Catholic. The concordats which bound them to the Holy See have been abolished, not by the Holy See, but by their own revolutions, or by their legislatures, or by their liberal parties. Catholic sovereigns, therefore, no longer represent Catholic kingdoms; they have declared their states as such to have no religion, and have withdrawn their public laws from the unity of the Church and faith, and from obedience to the Holy See. To invite them to sit in an Œcumenical Council would be like inviting the public authorities of the United States to sit in the British Parliament.
The Consultors then requested one of their number to draw up an outline of the organisation whereby the matters to be treated would be subdivided and prepared with the greatest precision. These resolutions of the commission were reported by the secretary to Pius the Ninth, who approved them with one modification in the fifth question. He ordered that the reference to the bishops should be made before the publication of the bull of indiction.
The Commission of Direction was then formally instituted, comprising the five cardinals already named and certain others. Afterwards were added theologians and canonists selected in Rome and from other nations.
The following distribution was made of the subjects to be prepared:—1. Doctrine; 2. Politico-Ecclesiastical or Mixed Questions; 3. Missions and the Oriental Churches; 4. Discipline.
The affairs of the Holy See are committed to various "Congregations," or, as we should say, Departments of government, namely: The Holy Office, which deals with matters of faith; the Congregation of Propaganda, which directs the Church in all countries of which the sovereigns or governments are not Catholic; the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, which deals with all mixed questions in the relations of the spiritual and civil powers; the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, which treats all questions of external jurisdiction; the Congregation of the Council, instituted by Pius the Fourth at the instance of St Charles Borromeo for the interpretation of the decrees of the Council of Trent.
Now it was wisely determined, in accordance with the judgment of the commission, that the sections of the Congregation of Direction should each be, as it were, engrafted on the departments with which they had affinity.
The Congregation of Direction was therefore divided into four Sections. The section of Doctrine had for its centre the Holy Office; that of the Mixed Questions, political and ecclesiastical, the Congregation of Ecclesiastical Affairs; that of Missions, the Congregation of Propaganda; and that of Discipline was attached to the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, with the Congregation of the Council described before.
The object of this was to engraft these new consultative sections upon the departments in which the traditions of the Holy See and the maturest learning and experience in each separate matter are incorporated by immemorial usage. The special labours of these sections were to be afterwards laid before the entire Congregation of Direction. These minute details are given in order to show with what extreme and vigilant care the work of the Council was provided for. Nothing that human diligence could devise was omitted.
III. Thus far we have seen with what deliberation Pius the Ninth called to his Council the cardinals, theologians, and canonists of the Church in Rome. To these he proceeded also to add theologians and canonists from other nations to elaborate with prolonged examination, as we shall hereafter see, every part of the subject-matter to be proposed in the Council of the Vatican.
But even this was not deemed to be sufficient. The Pope then gave a further order that a circular letter should be sent to a number of the bishops of all nations, selected for their knowledge in theology and canon law and for their experience in the government of the Church. In this Pius the Ninth called to his aid those who were set as doctors by Christ Himself to teach the Church of God. Every bishop is, in virtue of his office, a doctor or teacher of the faith. It matters not how large or how small his diocese may be, whether it be in the Catholic unity or in partibus infidelium, whether he have a flock under his jurisdiction or not. The bishop of the least see in this is equal to the bishop of the greatest. He has been constituted a guardian of the faith by a divine commission, and his testimony as a witness is not greater or less in weight because the city over which he rules is greater or less in magnitude. It is the same in all. St Jerome says that in this all bishops are equal, and that the episcopate of the Bishop of Rome is no greater than that of the Bishop of Eugubium. We shall hereafter see the value and application of this principle.
This order was made in the audience given by Pius the Ninth to the secretary of the Congregation of Direction on the 27th of March 1865. Letters, under strict secret, were at once written to bishops selected from various parts of Europe, enjoining them to send in writing an enumeration of the subjects which they thought the Council ought to treat. These letters were addressed on the 10th of April to thirty-six bishops. Letters of like tenor were then despatched to certain bishops of the Oriental Churches. The answers were all returned to Rome by the month of August.
Although the injunction contained in the letters regarded only the matters to be treated, yet the bishops, in their replies, could not refrain from expressing their joy that the Pope had decided to hold an Œcumenical Council. The letters exhibit a wonderful harmony of judgment. They differ, indeed, in the degree of conciseness or diffuseness with which the several subjects are treated; but in the matters suggested for treatment they manifest the unanimity which springs from the unity of the Catholic episcopate.
The bishops note that in our time there exists no new or special heresy in matters of faith, but rather a universal perversion and confusion of first truths and principles which assail the foundations of truth and the preambles of all belief. That is to say, as doubt attacked faith, unbelief has avenged faith by destroying doubt Men cease to doubt when they disbelieve outright. They have come to deny that the light of nature and the evidences of creation prove the existence of God. They deny, therefore, the existence of God, the existence of the soul, the dictates of conscience, of right and wrong, and of the moral law. If there, be no God, there is no legislator, and their morality is independent of any lawgiver, and exists in and by itself, or rather has no existence except subjectively in individuals, by customs inherited from the conventional use and the mental habits of society. They note the wide-spread denial of any supernatural order, and therefore of the existence of faith. They refer to the assertion that science is the only truth which is positive, and to the alleged sufficiency of the human reason for the life and destinies of man, or, in other words, deism, independent morality, secularism, and rationalism, which have invaded every country of the west of Europe. The bishops suggest that the Council should declare that the existence of God may be certainly known by the light of nature, and define the natural and supernatural condition of man, redemption, grace, and the Church. They specially desired the treatment of the nature and personality of God distinct from the world, creation, and providence, the possibility and the fact of a divine revelation. These points may seem strange to many readers, but those who know the philosophies current in Germany and France will at once perceive the wisdom of these suggestions.
They then more explicitly propose for treatment the elevation of man by grace at creation to a superior natural order, the fall of man, his restoration in Christ, the divine institution of' the Church, the mission entrusted to it by its Divine Founder, its organization, its endowments and rights, the primacy, and the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff; its independence of civil powers, and its relation to them; its authority over education, and the present necessity of the temporal power of the Holy See. These points have been here recited in full in order to show that the one subject for which, we are told, the Council was assembled, was hardly so much as mentioned. Out of thirty-six bishops a few only suggested the infallibility of the head of the Church, though his primacy could not be treated without it.
They are very few (writes one of the bishops) who at this day impugn this prerogative of the Roman Pontiff; and this they do, not in virtue of theological reasons, but with the intention of affirming the liberty of science with greater safety. It seems that with this view a school of theologians has sprung up in Bavaria, at Munich, who in all their writings have principally before them, by the help of historical dissertations, to lower the Apostolic see, its authority, and its mode of government, by throwing contempt upon it, and by attacking, above all, the infallibility of Peter teaching ex cathedrâ.
With these few exceptions the bishops occupied themselves with Pantheism, Rationalism, Naturalism, Socialism, Communism, indifference in matters of religion, Regalism, the licence of conscience and of the press, civil marriage, spiritism, magnetism, the false theories on inspiration, on the authority of Scripture, and on interpretation. Many of them refer to the syllabus as giving the best outline of matters to be treated, and express the desire that the errors therein condemned should be condemned in the Council, "non ut majori firmitate, sed ut majori solemnitate proscribantur." These points have been here recounted in order to show that what some persons would expect alone to find was hardly so much as named in the midst of an interminable list of subjects. It is needless to say that the doctrine of infallibility is not to be found in the syllabus, which consists of the condemnation of eighty errors classed under ten heads, namely: 1. Those that relate to the existence of God; 2. To revelation; 3. To indifferentism; 4. To Socialism; 5. To errors as to the Church and its rights; 6. To errors in respect to politics and the State; 7. To errors as to natural .and Christian morality; 8. To errors respecting Christian marriage; 9. To errors respecting the temporal power of the Roman Pontiff; 10. To the errors of modern liberalism. Once more, this outline of the syllabus is given because it may well be believed that of the thousands who denounce it few have read it. If they would read it, they would be not a little astonished to find that, with few exceptions, any sincere believer in Christian revelation would condemn as erroneous what is condemned in the syllabus.
"The theories of Naturalism," said one of the bishops, "have introduced into modern society habits altogether sensual and material, far removed from the Christian life." He hoped that the Council would go into details of practice, and condemn the excess of luxury, the indecent amusements, the haste to get rich by speculations of questionable honesty, the abandonment of domestic life, the profanation of marriage, the disregard of the days consecrated to God's service, the neglect of divine worship, the practices of usury. They further asked for a catechismus ad populum, as the Council of Trent ordered a catechismus ad parochos. They desired, further, a new code or digest of the canon law, from which should be excluded all that is obsolete and, by reason of the transformation of modern society, no longer expedient or of possible observance.
They desired also that the relations between the Church and State, or the spiritual and civil powers, might be clearly defined. They asked that broad and intelligible principles might be laid down from which they could never depart in judging of these mixed questions; that the Council would define in what way they ought to comport themselves in the presence of such facts as the civil liberty of the press and of worship, and of the protection which governments afford to error. They desired especially that the Council should make some declaration on the imminent danger of Christian governments lapsing into the tyranny of a pagan Cæsarism, by which the state is deified, and all that is called God or worshipped is included in the sphere of its arbitrary power.
Lastly, they desired that the Council should declare that the temporal power of the Pontiff is no obstacle to any progress founded upon the laws of the Christian world; that the unhappy conflict between the spiritual and civil powers which now convulses the world arose not from any aggression on the part of the Church, but from the departure of modern civilisation from the basis of Christian society. The last error condemned in the syllabus is that "the Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilisation." The Christian civilisation represented by the Roman Pontiff consists in the unity of faith, the unity of worship, of Christian marriage and Christian education. No reasonable man can wonder, therefore, if Pius the Ninth declines to reconcile himself with indifferentism in faith and worship, divorce courts, and secular schools.
We may now sum up this part of our subject which carries us down to the first public announcement of the intention to convoke the Council of the Vatican.
It will be seen that the initiative was altogether by the act of Pius the Ninth. He was the first to conceive and to lay open this thought to his legitimate counsellors. Moreover, we have the declared motive of his thought. It was "to find an extraordinary remedy for the extraordinary evils of the Christian world." We have seen also that in the deliberate answers of the cardinals and of the bishops the same is the governing thought. The evils of the modern world, its theological, philosophical, religious, social, domestic, and moral confusions, these so filled the mind of the Pontiff and his counsellors that what the world has been taught to believe was the chief if not the only motive for holding the Council hardly appears; and when it appears it is either enumerated in a series of doctrines of which each demands the other, or it is suggested by one of the cardinals who opposed the holding of a Council altogether.
The true motive of the Vatican Council is transparent to all calm and just minds. For three hundred years no General Council had been held, for three hundred years the greatest change that has ever come upon the world since its conversion to Christianity had steadily passed upon it. The first period of the Church gradually brought about the union of the spiritual and civil powers of the world in amity and co-operation. The last three hundred years have parted and opposed them to each other. The mission of the Apostles in the beginning united men of all nations, and therefore, in prelude, all nations, in one spiritual society. The events of these last times have withdrawn the nations as political bodies from the unity of the faith. In the second period, or the middle age of the Christian world, how frequent and great soever the conflicts between the spiritual and civil powers might be, nevertheless the public life, and laws, and living organisation of Christendom were Christian. Princes and legislatures and society professed the Catholic faith, and were subject to the head of the Catholic Church. Christendom was one in faith, one in worship, under one supreme pastor; its marriage law and its education were alike Christian.
A writer of much authority in English literature has said that the first French Revolution was the last act of the Lutheran reformation. What his own interpretation of these words may be it is not for others to say. Perhaps it may be that the individuality of private judgment in religion passed in 1789 into the domain of politics, and that the critical spirit which has dissolved positive faith has disintegrated also the authority of governments. Political writers have been telling us that the governments of the west of Europe are visibly weak indeed, that they seem to have lost the skill or the power of government and that they have become simply the index of the changes of the popular will, which veers and travels throughout the whole cycle of the compass with the rapidity of wind. Another obvious interpretation of this dictum is that the first national separation from the unity of Christendom was effected by Luther. The conflicts of nations during what was called the Great Western Schism, the separate and antagonistic obediences which for a time divided the nations, all based and defended themselves on the principle of unity which they claimed each one for their own section. But all these separations were once more reunited in the Council of Constance. The separations of the sixteenth century were not of this sort. They were the formal going out of nations from the world-wide family of Christendom, based and defended upon the principle that participation in the unity of the Catholic Church was not necessary, and that every nation contained within itself the fountain of faith and of jurisdiction, and being independent of all authority external to itself, was therefore self-sufficing. From this followed legitimately the attempt to transfer to the crown the jurisdiction of the spiritual head of the Christian Church. It has been truly said that the royal supremacy is pregnant with negation. It denies and excludes the action of the Catholic Church throughout the world from any nation in which the sovereign is over all causes, ecclesiastical and civil, supreme. In Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, the Lutheran supremacy of the crown was fully established, with what results the state of those countries at this day attests. But it was not on them that Pius the Ninth primarily and chiefly fixed his eyes. His chief care was for the Catholic kingdoms of Europe, in which the Lutheran Reformation has never established itself. Nevertheless, in them regalism, which is a royal supremacy pushed to the very verge of schism, has universally prevailed. In France from Louis the Fourteenth to the other day, in Austria from Joseph the Second, in Tuscany from Leopold the First, in Spain from Charles the Third, in Naples from the beginning of the Sicilian monarchy, the royal power has oppressed and enslaved the Church with its fatal fostering protection. Constantine called himself only ἐπίσκοπος τῶν ἔξω. But the Catholic sovereigns of the last three centuries have meddled internally in everything, from the nomination of bishops to the number of candles to be lighted upon the altar. Frederick of Prussia used to call Joseph of Austria "mon frère le sacristan." The consequences of this disastrous patronage were manifold, and ramified throughout the whole organisation of the Church. It will be enough to name three: first, the lowering and secularising of the episcopate and priesthood by contact with courts and their ambitions; secondly, the suspension of the spiritual liberty of the Church in its discipline, synods, and tribunals; and, thirdly, the protection given by kings to unsound teachers, as Van Espen, de Hontheim in canon law, and in theology to the authors of the Four Articles, by Louis the Fourteenth. In this sense it is most true that the Lutheran movement has steadily penetrated into Catholic countries. This excessive regalism produced its inevitable reaction, and the revolutions of this century have paralysed all royal supremacies by establishing the doctrine that the State, as such, has no religion.
It may therefore be said that the second period of the Christian world has closed. Of thirty-six crowned heads ten are still Catholic, two are of the Greek separation, twenty-four are nominally Protestant. The people of many and great nations are faithful and fervent children of the Catholic Church, but the Revolution either openly or secretly, in its substance or in its spirit, is behind every throne and in almost every government and legislature of the Christian world. The public laws even of the nations in which the people are Catholic are Catholic no longer. The unity of the nations in faith and worship, as the Apostles founded it, seems now to be dissolved. The unity of the Church is more compact and solid than ever, but the Christendom of Christian kingdoms is of the past. We have entered into a third period. The Church began not with kings, but with the peoples of the world, and to the peoples, it may be, the Church will once more return. The princes and governments and legislatures of the world were everywhere against it at its outset: they are so again. But the hostility of the nineteenth century is keener than the hostility of the first. Then the world had never believed in Christianity; now it is falling from it. But the Church is the same, and can renew its relations with whatsoever forms of civil life the world is pleased to fashion for itself. If, as political foresight has predicted, all nations are on their way to democracy, the Church will know how to meet this new and strange aspect of the world. The high policy of wisdom by which the Pontiffs held together the dynasties of the Middle Age will know how to hold together the peoples who still believe. Such was the world on which Pius the Ninth was looking out when he conceived the thought of an Œcumenical Council. He saw the world which was once all Catholic tossed and harassed by the revolt of its intellect against the revelation of God, and of its will against his law; by the revolt of civil society against the sovereignty of God; and by the anti-christian spirit which is driving on princes and governments towards anti-christian revolutions. He to whom, in the words of St John Chrysostom, the whole world was committed, saw in the Council of the Vatican the only adequate remedy for the world-wide evils of the nineteenth century.
It will be remembered that the Consultors, in giving their opinion that the holding of a Council was expedient, gave no opinion as to the time when it could safely be convoked. The threatening aspect of the times was enough to make them hesitate.
On the 17th of November 1865, letters were written to the nuncios at Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Munich, and Brussels, announcing the intention of Pius the Ninth to hold an Œcumenical Council, and desiring them to give their opinion whether the circumstances of the times were such as to make its convocation prudent. They were also directed to send the names of two theologians or canonists of special reputation in the respective countries to which they were accredited. Their answers came at the close of the year 1865.
The Commission of Direction held its third session on the 24th of May 1866, but from that date till the middle of 1867 it did not meet again. This suspension in its preparations was caused by events which it may be well to enumerate. All Europe was anxiously awaiting the conflict between Prussia and Austria, which soon broke out and soon ended on the field of Sadowa. On the 17th of June, the King of Prussia declared war against the Emperor; and three days after Baron Ricasoli announced to the Chambers and the Senate that King Victor Emanuel had also declared war against Austria. Lombardy and Venice were ceded to Italy; and on the 4th of November Victor Emanuel, at Turin, announced that "Italy was made but not completed." On the 15th of September 1864, the Emperor of the French and the King of Italy had entered into a convention by which Italy bound itself not to attack the Pontifical States, and to defend them by force against any assailant, and France bound itself gradually to withdraw its troops within two years from Rome and the States of the Church. On the 11th of December 1866, the French flag was lowered on the Castle of St Angelo. Three days before, the French general in command had taken his leave of Pius the Ninth. In reply to his words of farewell, the Pope answered, "We must not deceive ourselves; the revolution will come here. It has proclaimed its intention, and you have heard it." On the following Christmas Day, in reply to the congratulations of the Sacred College, the Pope said: "Difficult and sorrowful are the days in which we live, but we ought, therefore, all the more to strengthen ourselves in the hope of greater help from the Almighty; and, whatsoever happens, we ought not to be afraid."[4] The condition of Europe at that time was thus described, on the 12th of November 1866, by an English hand:—
The immediate consequence of the last war (between Prussia and Austria), and of the peace which followed it, was to break the old alliances, and to trouble every European State. The invasion of Denmark gave the first shock to public morality, and the subsequent quarrel between Prussia and Austria annihilated the barriers of international law. From henceforth there no longer exists a principle of general policy in Europe, and ambition has no limit to the extension of its own power. Every man's hand is against his brother, and only the necessity of defence hinders the desire of attack. All nations are on the watch, and order is maintained because everybody is afraid of his neighbour. The Continental press shows us one-half of Europe in array against the other. … The whole of Europe is arming. France does not disarm, but, on the contrary, increases its armies; Russia is raising three hundred thousand recruits; Prussia is reorganising four new army corps; Austria is remodelling and reforming its army; everywhere the armaments are in training, and new systems of warfare are being elaborated. The art of slaying threatens to become the sole industry of Europe.[5]
It is, therefore, no wonder that Pius the Ninth and his counsellors hesitated to fix the day for the opening of the Council. The Pope had at one time thought of fixing the 29th of June in 1867, on which the eighteenth centenary of St Peter's martyrdom would fall; but the aspect of Europe, and the clouds which were visibly rolling towards the walls of Rome, caused him to pause. Therefore, on the 8th of December 1866, a circular letter was written to all the bishops of the Catholic Church, inviting them to Rome in the following year for the solemnities of the centenary alone, the importance of which no one at that time foresaw. But this must be narrated hereafter.