Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger

“ Why must we believe his word? Because he is infallible. And why are the Bishops of the whole world summoned to Rome? To bear witness to this logic of the Jesuits and the Curia, much like the compurgators in German law. The Pope affirms, “I am infallible,” and the 700 Bishops affirm that he is a trustworthy witness, and because he says so it is certain. The infallibilist Bishops admit the new theory of the legal force of dogmatic decrees of a majority. They too say, “When the Pope adheres to the majority, the article of faith is already defined, and to reject it is heresy.” ”

“ But La Bruyere's saying, “A great assembly always becomes a rabble,” is verified even at Rome, and the Italians of 1870 have already begun to emulate the example of their ancestors in 1562. Just as the majority at Trent knew how to reduce a disagreeable speaker to silence by wild cries and coughing and scraping with their feet, so is it now at the Vatican Council. It is the humiliating feeling of intellectual impotence and of deficiency alike in knowledge, eloquence and mind, as compared with the minority, from whom almost everything emanates that can be called life or thought in the Council. ”

“ Perhaps they think it ludicrous to take any serious part in a debate which may be suddenly broken off, and speak, as it were, with a halter round their necks. And those who had thought the right plan was to keep silence henceforth were the best speakers of the Opposition; they do not therefore fall readily into a policy they disapproved. Their view is that, as the majority has done its worst and the minority has not the spirit to follow the counsel of its leaders, it is no longer worth while to fight against a result which cannot be permanent. ”

“ Rome, Dec. 18, 1869.—After the solemn receptions, and the formal opening of the Council, visits, audiences, and homages, the time for serious business has arrived, and the Fathers have emerged from the dim twilight of early synodical dawn into the clear daylight. People have begun to get mutually acquainted, and to question one another. The first chaotic condition of an exceedingly mixed assemblage, some of whose members scarcely understand one another, or not at all, has been succeeded by a sort of division, through the rapprochement and closer combination of men of similar views. ”

“ Once seat a monk on the Papal throne, as many have already sat there, unacquainted with the actual world, and in heart alienated from it, and arm him with the prerogative of infallibility,—his decrees in the present condition of society are sure to evoke the most deplorable conflicts.
The ultramontane press in Germany, which is itself beginning to find the decisions sketched out by the Civiltà intolerable, now adopts the tactics of denying the official character of the Jesuit journal, and clings to the straw of hope that neither Papal Infallibility nor the Syllabus will be made dogmas. ”

“ There is indeed a simple means of gratifying the desire of the Pope and curtailing the pains of the Bishops, who are now absolutely tortured by the heat: the majority can any day cut short the special debate, as they have already cut short the general discussion. It may of course be objected that this procedure, of depriving the Bishops of their right of speaking and violently imposing silence upon them, overthrows the nature of a Church Council, where every Bishop is meant to bear witness not only to his own belief, but to the tradition of his country and the faith of his diocese. ”

“ But we, and almost all Bishops of the Catholic world, teach another doctrine. We teach that the ecclesiastical power is indeed higher than the civil, but that each is independent of the other, and that while sovereigns are subject to the spiritual penalties of the Church, she has no power to depose them or absolve their subjects from their oaths of allegiance. And this is the ancient doctrine, taught by all the Fathers and by the Popes before Gregory vii. ”

“ Rome ought to be a name to lighten the heart at all times, and a Council's proper office is, when some great heresy or other evil impends, to inspire hope and confidence in the faithful; but now we have the greatest meeting which ever has been, and that at Rome, infusing into us by the accredited organs of Rome and of its partisans (such as the Civiltà [the Armonia] , the Univers, and the Tablet) little else than fear and dismay. ”

“ It is indeed disgusting to see the Court party compelling men, most of them aged, to remain here to the great injury of their health at a season when all who are able to do so leave Rome, although many of them are accustomed to a different climate and feel sick and exhausted. They are treated like prisoners, and not even allowed a holiday without special leave. No such egotistic and unscrupulous absolutism, as what now prevails here, has been seen in the Christian world since the days of the first Napoleon. ”

“ If they wished to act worthily and sincerely and in accordance with the gravity of the situation, they would have to declare, in union with the most influential Bishops, that the arbitrary and crooked way of managing the Council makes the establishment of any important decrees impossible; that the Vatican Council has lost all moral authority in the eyes of the world, and that the best thing would be to put an end to it with the least sacrifice of its dignity. ”

“ But the moment a question in any way affects the interests and rights of the Roman Curia, there is an end of their freedom. For every Bishop has sworn not only to maintain but constantly to increase all the rights of the Pope, and it is notorious that at Rome, and in regular intercourse with the Papal Congregations, one can take no step without being reminded, directly or indirectly—by courtly insinuation, or rudely and openly,—of this oath, and the enormous extent of the obligations incurred by it, which embrace the whole range of ecclesiastical life. ”

“ But everything will be settled by the Commission and by a simple majority of votes; the minority may talk, but only so long as the Commission and the majority choose to listen to them. Væ victis! The Council belongs to the Italians and the Spaniards, who are in close alliance with them: from henceforth to wish to reject any Schema or decree brought before it, is like wanting to stop water from flowing downwards. All the proposals of the minority for a change in the order of business have been left unnoticed. ”

“ For the first time the world, with a free press in full possession, is to accept a new dogma with all its extensive belongings—to accept it in faith, at a time when historical criticism has attained a power against which Rome is impotent, and when its conclusions [pg 348] pass into the literature and the common consciousness of all thinking men with a rapidity hitherto unprecedented. ”

“ There are, besides the Pope, who exercises immediate authority by virtue of his universal episcopate, papal commissaries in the separate dioceses, who call themselves Bishops, and are so named by the Roman Chancery. They exercise the powers delegated to them by the one true and universal Bishop, and carry out the particular orders they receive from Rome. According to this view the whole Church has, properly speaking, no other right or law or order but the pleasure of the reigning Pope. This is the most perfect form of absolutism ever yet excogitated in any man's brains. ”

“ Is an assembly free, when no speech can be made, no single decision come to, without the express permission of an external master? If this is freedom, there has never been an unfree Council. So I hear many saying, as well clergy as laity, and even Bishops. The Pope, of course, has not forgotten that, on the day of his election, sitting on the High Altar of that very church where the Council is now being held, he was adored by the Cardinals, and four days afterwards crowned with the triple tiara, with the words, “Scias te esse rectorem orbis.” ”

“ Were they assembled anywhere else than in Rome, there would be the possibility of holding a real Synod in the sense and manner of the Ancient Church, while the so-called Synod in Rome is in fact the mere painted corpse of a Council laid out on a bed of state.
Soul and freedom are wanting. On any other soil than that of the States of the Church, the Bishops could assemble in a room where they could debate and understand one another, while they are now forcibly detained in the Council Hall. ”

“ Every clergyman is to be reminded, and to remind others, in merely discharging a simple civil obligation, that he is dependent on the Pope in the matter, and may not properly speaking swear civil fealty and obedience to the laws without papal permission, not even in the conditional form which makes the oath itself illusory. This is quite after the mind of the Jesuits, who have always shown a special predilection for the doctrine that every cleric is not a subject and citizen with corresponding rights, but simply a subaltern and servant of the Pope. ”

“ But the great task to be achieved in the first months of the Council was the kneading and manipulating the Bishops in all possible ways, so as to make them feel the immeasurable gulf between the master and the servants, that they might be more ready at last to sacrifice their episcopal dignity and ancient rights on the altar of Roman supremacy. When once they have assented to the infallibilist dogma, they neither can nor ought to be or desire to be anything else but passive and unintelligent promulgators and executors of papal commands and decrees on faith. ”

“ By choosing the precise moment, when the minority declare that their conscience is troubled and in doubt about the legitimacy and result of the Council altogether, for bringing forward the very decree which has all along been the main cause of that doubt and trouble of conscience, they proclaim plainly and emphatically that they know the Opposition regards its own words as nothing but words, and that there is no earnest manly decision or religious conviction behind them. ”

“ If the Curia once becomes by this means the horny Siegfried, no vulnerable point even in the back will be left. The Jesuit Schrader, in his book on Roman unity, has proved that every act and every ordinance of the Pope is infallible. For, as he says, “all Papal measures, as regards their truth, belong to the order of faith, or morals, or law. All decrees, whatever their subject, always contain a true doctrine, whether speculative, moral, or juridical. But the Pope is infallible in the order of truth and doctrine, and therefore in all his decrees.” ”

“ All modern culture will separate itself in spirit from the Church, which has nothing but anathemas for the development of the human mind. And when an Œcumenical Council, which is the highest teaching authority in the Church, degenerates into the instrument of an extreme party, and sanctions doctrines in glaring contradiction to the teaching and history of the Church, the very foundation on which the confidence of faith has hitherto reposed is undermined and destroyed. ”

“ That the Pope uses it in good faith is certain, and that he has not gained his conviction by any study of his own is equally certain. He has been deluded by this monstrous lie, which no single even half-educated infallibilist will make himself responsible for, and thus has been driven into his perilous course. No one, who has but glanced at the official Roman historians, such as Baronius or Orsi or Saccarelli, can possibly maintain seriously that there has been no doubt for centuries about papal infallibility. ”

“ This is the attitude of Belgium, Italy and Spain towards the Council. Out of Belgium there is no country so remarkably indifferent about the Council and its decrees, whatever they may be, as Italy, i.e., the Italian Government and many millions of Italians. The statesmen there say, “We have no Concordats to defend, for they have fallen with the old Governments; the State has no longer any concern with religion and the Church, which are mere private affairs of the individual. And thus the separation of Church and State is already in principle accomplished.” ”