Cardinal Fesch

“ Then Cardinal Fesch in a loud voice read the oath as prescribed by a bull of Pius IV.: “I acknowledge the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church to be the mother and mistress of all other churches; I promise and swear perfect obedience to the Roman pontiff, the successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth.” One by one the bishops bound themselves irrevocably to the cause of Pius VII. Napoleon was furious and berated his uncle for “getting up one of his scenes.” Two laymen were appointed to be present in his name at all future meetings of the bishops. ”

“ He set aside all earthly influences, and refused to take counsel from human motives. He convoked the Sacred College, and laid before it the letters of the Cardinal Legate and of Cardinal Fesch, who, as French Ambassador at Rome, had been charged by his government with the negotiation. The Cardinals gave their opinion in writing, and by a majority declared that the invitation should be accepted. The Emperor had formally pledged his word that the journey would be productive of much good to religion, and it was thought the Pope could not refuse an invitation so expressed. ”

“ In 1806 he did return; in 1807 he was again received into the Academy; and in 1810, on the refusal of Cardinal Fesch, was made archbishop of Paris. He was presently ordered by the pope to surrender his functions as archbishop of Paris. This he refused to do. On the restoration of the Bourbons he was summarily expelled from the Academy and from the archiepiscopal palace. He retired to Rome, where he was imprisoned in the castle of St Angelo for six months for his disobedience to the papal orders, and died in 1817, a year or two after his release, of disease contracted in prison and of chagrin. ”

“ Nearly all the cardinals were at this time living in Paris. Fourteen of them gave it as their opinion that the divorce had been rightly granted; thirteen others asserted that the tribunal was incompetent, and that the case should have been submitted to the pope. In consequence they determined not to assist at the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise. When Cardinal Fesch reported this to the emperor, he got into a fit of rage. “Bah! they will not dare,” he exclaimed ”

“ By this means he deceived a worthy priest, who was steward to Cardinal Fesch; and as the Cardinal was acquainted with the family of Tolosant, he introduced the soi-disant captain to him. The Cardinal at once insisted on Collet taking up his abode with him, and he even presented him to the Pope, who gave the rascal his apostolic benediction. As a friend of Cardinal Fesch, Napoleon’s kinsman, and an inmate of his house, Collet made the round of the bankers of Rome, discussed with them schemes for making money, and drew loans from them to the amount of 60,000 francs. ”

“ If a layman rebels against the Pope or against the Bishops, because, as he says, the good of the Church is of a higher order of good than the momentary pleasure of the Hierarchy, and that he has no fear if his conscience is not alarmed, then I am compelled to make the remark that we Bishops too, and the Pope have a conscience, and that this doctrinal definition respecting the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff has been long and maturely weighed before God in prayer, and after long and earnest study has been declared with a quiet conscience ”

“ On December 15th, 1839, in his eighty-fourth year, died Ignatius Fessler, Lutheran Bishop, at St. Petersburg, a man who had gone through several phases of religious belief and unbelief, a Hungarian by birth, a Roman Catholic by education, a Capuchin friar, then a deist, almost, if not quite, an atheist, professor of Oriental languages in the university of Lemberg, finally Lutheran Bishop in Finland. ”

“ Thus has he been able to show to men of good-will, but hitherto imperfectly instructed in the matter, that the doctrine against which their understanding rebelled is not the true Infallibility defined by the Council of the Vatican, but the creation of ignorance and of passion—in fact, "a false Infallibility."'
With these concluding words of the distinguished editor of the Français the work of Bishop Fessler is presented to the reader, in the hope that he will derive the same comfort and edification which it has afforded to many others. ”

“ Whereupon it is easy to be understood and known that John Huss was falsely accused for that matter. Howbeit a certain man, one Naso, [2] rising up, said: "The clergy do not abstain from the divine service, because they will not swear to consent unto the king, but because that they are spoiled and robbed of their goods and substance." And the cardinal of Cambray, who was one of the judges said: "Here I may say somewhat which is come into my mind. When I came from Rome, the same year that these things were done, by chance I met on the way certain prelates of Bohemia ”

“ The priest Michael Feichter, at his death in 1832 the head of the clerical seminary at Brixen, became for a time, through his extreme goodness and grace, the unseen regenerator of the Church in the Tyrol. A simple, guileless man, with intense love and cheerfulness, he acted as if God his friend were ever by his side. ”

“ Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first who should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles." Strange indeed did these things sound in the ears of the heathen governor; and without pausing to consider whether they might not indeed be true, "Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad." ”

“ Fessler, and approved, as is known, by Pius IX., the Swiss Bishops cite the following passage of the Constitution of the Vatican Council:
"The Holy Spirit has not been promised to the successors of St. Peter that they might publish according to His revelations a new doctrine, but in order that with His assistance they may holily guard and faith fully set forth the revelation transmitted by the Apostles—that is to say, the deposit of the Faith." ”

“ Such a declaration makes it clear enough what position he assumes, and a very deplorable position it is. He refuses to accept the definition de fide of an Ecumenical Council; he cares nothing for the authority of the living teaching Church; only for what he thinks he finds in Scripture, in the Fathers, and in other genuine ancient sources. This is the way to forsake the Catholic Church altogether. Every one is to follow his own guidance, his own private judgment; one finds one thing, another finds another ”

“ If a man is not to be required to believe such a declaration as this, then all difference between an infallibly teaching Catholic Church and Protestantism in all its forms, with the unlimited right of private judgment, is at an end. Assuredly he says truly, 'God will some time call everyone to a reckoning for his conduct during life.' Certainly He will call our once-Catholic opponent, and will say to him, 'I gave you the grace to be born and bred up in the Catholic Church ”

“ SHEPHERD OF MANKIND 383
men, and whose Popes speak in the name of the Shepherd of human- ity. It is one side of the alternative with which Europe has long since been confronted. "There are only two ways between which we have to choose the road to Rome and the road to atheism" wrote Cardinal Newman. The same discovery had previously been made in the opposite camp. "There is," said Fichte, "no third possibility: one must either cast oneself into the lap of the Roman Church which alone can save, or one must become a determined Freethinker." ”

“ Speculatively Fechner is thus a monist in his theology; but there is room in his universe for every grade of spiritual being between man and the final all-inclusive God; and in suggesting what the positive content of all this super-humanity may be, he hardly lets his imagination fly beyond simple spirits of the planetary order. The earth-soul he passionately believes in; he treats the earth as our special human guardian angel; we can pray to the earth as men pray to their saints ”

“ It is not an empty saying that Christ lives on in his followers; every true Christian holds him not only relatively but absolutely within his heart. Every one is a partaker in him who acts and thinks in obedience to his law, for it is the Christ that prompts this thinking and acting in each. ”

“ A magnificent pluralist ill-famed for his unclerical living, and a Cardinal who did not shrink from proposing to buy the papal tiara, he had always been the friend of learning since he completed Magdalen Tower at Oxford in his bursar's days. With a revival of monastic discipline he intended to combine large schemes of study founded on the classics. Bishops as severe as Foxe of Winchester welcomed his clerical reform, which could not imply designs on the Catholic Faith. The nation did not repulse an English Legate. ”

“ When this same opponent of the Vatican definition further says, 'Bishop Fessler himself does not venture to deny that the Bull concerns doctrine de moribus,' I answer, 'The contents of this Bull concern morals certainly, if you reckon all penal enactments as doctrine de moribus.' Whether my opponent does so or not, I do not know. ”

“ Of my own self God will, in the next world, require a reckoning of my life. To the doctrine of the Apostle (Rom. xiv. 12, 2 Cor. v. 10 [3] ) I hold fast, and will never shield myself under the responsibility of any one but myself.'
When then Dr. Schulte says, 'Neither Pope, nor bishop, nor parish priest, can bring me to heaven by his prayers, if I live not as a Christian and believe in Christ,' no doubt he states perfectly correctly that no one goes to heaven by another's prayers, if he does not believe in Christ and live according to his faith. ”

“ Answer of John Huss to the pope and the cardinals.Unto whom John Huss answered in few words: "Reverend fathers! you shall understand that I am thus minded and affectioned, the I should rather choose to die, than I should be found culpable of one only error, much less of many and great errors. For this cause I am the more willingly come unto the general council which is here appointed, to show myself ready, even with all my heart, to receive correction, if any man can prove any errors in me." The cardinals answered him again, that his sayings pleased them very well ”

“ But if this assertion is made to represent as a fact that it is not the will of God, in the foundation of His Church, that the Pope and the Bishops should instruct and govern His Holy Church, and that the laity should listen to them in the Church, then is this a great misrepresentation of the truth. When, however, I say it is the will of God that the Pope and the Bishops should instruct and govern the Church, of course I mean to say this in that ordinary sense in which the words have ever been understood, and the thing practised in the Church. ”

“ They were the model preachers of the Middle Ages and the keenest theologians of the day, producing such men as Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. Among their numbers were found popes, cardinals, and famous doctors. The first Dominican to wear the papal tiara was Innocent V. in 1276, and he was succeeded by three others. The first cardinal to be chosen from their ranks was Hugh of Vienne in 1243, and he was followed by fifty-nine more. Among the famous doctors of the order were Albertus Magnus, Meister Echart, Johan Tauler, Henry Suso, Savonarola, Las Casas, and Vincent Ferrier. ”

“ A Vienna reviewer, amidst some cavils which have no great point in them, thus expresses himself: 'The sum and substance of the matter on which, according to Schulte, all depends is the question "Whether the dogma of Papal Infallibility really reaches to that extent which he assigns to it?" The principle here involved Fessler does not contest with his opponent; he admits that not only all future but all earlier utterances of Popes, if they have been made ex cathedrâ in the sense already explained, have a claim to the privilege of Infallibility.'
This is true, of course ”

“ The spirit will then communicate with others without language and all the dead live in us as Christ did in His followers. The earth will return its soul to the sun. Visible phantoms may be degenerate souls. In his Zendavesta (Living Word) he gives us a philosophy that he deems Christian and that really sums up his final view of things. The childish view is nearest right and the philosopher only reverts to it. Fechner died November 18, 1887, at the age of eighty-six, and after his crisis was really more poet than scientist. ”

“ If he does not do this—if he represents Papal rescripts which belong to the province of reversible legislation, or are mere acts of government, as definitions of Popes upon faith and morals, or if from the records of real dogmatic definitions of Popes he extracts mere incidental remarks, obiter dicta, and alleges these to be ex cathedrâ—then assuredly he is leading his readers into error; he is disturbing their consciences without reason; he is arousing the suspicions of governments unnecessarily, and setting them against that Catholic doctrine which has been declared by the Vatican Council ”

“ If the doctrines of Catholicism are correct then we have no use for a God any longer, as we already have a Pope; and should Pope Pius X die to-day the cardinals to-morrow, or some day in the near future, would elect another Pope, who would take the place of Jesus Christ Himself, according to their doctrine; and if such doctrines are true, then the human family in the future and the unborn millions could be saved as easily without God as they could with Him, as the Pope would perform that mission himself. ”