Karl Wilhelm von Döllinger

“ It is true that Döllinger has nothing in common with those men in his views of his relations to God; but then we must remember these gentlemen are only drawing their own consequences, and Döllinger has lost all right to find fault with the consequences they draw. ”

“ The reader, to understand the full bearing of the history which we give below entire on Döllinger himself, must bear in mind the peculiar characteristics of a man who has lived more among his books than among men. It would be hard for any one to be more subject to external influences than Döllinger is, and, at the same time, to be less conscious of their presence or effect. ”

“ Döllinger himself holds a princely rank in the European republic of letters. With skilful hand he is rearing the immense edifice of a universal Church history. The corner-stone is already laid and the foundation completed. May God give life and vigor to the architect, that he may finish his vast undertaking. Since his famous lectures at the Odeon at Munich, delivered before a mixed audience in April, 1861, Döllinger has fixed the attention of men holding the most contrary opinions both in and out of the Church. Of late, many have been disappointed in Döllinger, though without any reason ”

“ He added that one of his colleagues, a divine whose learning filled him with unwonted awe, held the same opinion. Döllinger's growing belief that an approximation of part of Germany to sentiments of conciliation was only a question of time, had much to do with his attitude in Church questions after the year 1860. If history cannot confer faith or virtue, it can clear away the misconceptions and misunderstandings that turn men against one another. With the progress of incessant study and meditation his judgment on many points underwent revision ”

“ His refusal lost Bavaria to the movement; and the number of Bavarian sympathizers was still further reduced when the seceders, in 1878, allowed their priests to marry, a decision which Döllinger, as was known, sincerely regretted. The Old Catholic Communion, however, was formally constituted, with Reinkens at its head as bishop, and it still continues to exist (see Old Catholics) .
Döllinger’s attitude to the new community was not very clearly defined. It may be difficult to reconcile the two declarations made by him at different times: “I do not wish to join a schismatic society ”

“ The archbishop replied by excommunicating the disobedient professor. This aroused fresh opposition. Döllinger was almost unanimously elected rector-magnificus of the university of Munich, and Oxford, Edinburgh and Marburg universities conferred upon him the honorary degree of doctor of laws and Vienna that of philosophy. The Bavarian clergy invited Bishop Loos of the Jansenist Church in Holland, which for more than 150 years had existed independent of the Papacy and had adopted the name of “Old Catholic,” to hold confirmations in Bavaria. ”

“ He is austere in judging the past, imputing not error and ignorance only, but guilt and crime, to those who, in the dark succession of ages, have resisted and retarded the growth of liberty, which he identifies with the cause of morality, and the condition of the reign of conscience. Döllinger never subjected his mighty vision of the stream of time to correction according to the principles of this unsympathising philosophy, never reconstituted the providential economy in agreement with the Whig Théodicée. ”

“ Every practical man is careful to ascertain the competency, in any particular subject, of those who give him their advice upon it. A sick man would not consult a lawyer for his cure, nor an aggrieved man seek legal advice of his baker or shoemaker. The distinguished magistrates who signed the German Declaration must be supposed to have done so, not in consequence of a clear and detailed knowledge of the grounds of the assertions it contained, but in consequence of their confidence in Dr. von Döllinger, which led them to adopt his views. ”

“ The men to whom Döllinger owed his historic insight and who mainly helped to develop and strengthen and direct his special faculty, were not all of his own cast, or remarkable in the common description of literary talent. The assistants were countless, but the masters were few, and he looked up with extraordinary gratitude to men like Sigonius, Antonius Augustinus, Blondel, Petavius, Leibniz, Burke, and Niebuhr, who had opened the passes for him as he struggled and groped in the illimitable forest. ”

“ It was supposed here that a very considerable number of people beyond the Alps must be inspired with zeal for Papal Infallibility. When the impulse given by Döllinger evoked so many and such weighty expressions of opinion on the other side, it was confidently expected in Rome that a strong popular demonstration in favour of the dogma would burst out, like a mighty hurricane, from every district in Germany, as the 800 Jesuits at work there would easily be able to bring that to pass. ”

“ In this immense world of patient, accurate, devoted research, Döllinger laid the deep foundations of his historical knowledge. Beginning like everybody with Baronius and Muratori, he gave a large portion of his life to Noris, and to the solid and enlightened scholarship that surrounded Benedict XIV., down to the compilers, Borgia, Fantuzzi, Marini, with whom, in the evil days of regeneration by the French, the grand tradition died away. ”

“ In Switzerland, Professor Edward Herzog, who became Old (or, as it is sometimes called, Christ-) Catholic bishop in Switzerland, and other learned men supported the movement. Early in 1869 the famous Letters of Janus (which were at once translated into English; 2nd ed. Das Papsttum, 1891) began to appear. They were written by Döllinger in conjunction with Huber and Friedrich, afterwards professor at Munich. In these the tendency of the Syllabus towards obscurantism and papal despotism, and its incompatibility with modern thought, were clearly pointed out ”

“ The theological principles of Ignatius von Döllinger could scarcely be in the year 1868 unknown in Rome. For five-and-forty years he had been a teacher in Ecclesiastical History, and his reputation was European. But he was not invited to take any part in the theological preparations for the Vatican Council. An Italian writer [5] indeed assures us that
"in the number of those whom the Pope intended to invite was, contrary to the advice of some, the celebrated historian Dóllinger. ”

“ We now approach the critical period of Döllinger’s life. It was about this time that some of the leading theologians of the Roman Catholic Church, conceiving that the best way of meeting present perils was to emphasize, as well as to define more clearly, the authority of the pope, advised him to make his personal infallibility a dogma of the Church, and urged strenuously on him the necessity of calling a council for that purpose. ”

“ He impressed upon his earnest listener the importance of the books on the pope and on the Gallican church, and assured him that the spirit which animates them is the genuine Catholicism. These conversations were the origin of Döllinger's specific ultramontanism. It governed one half of his life, and his interest in De Maistre outlasted the assent which he once gave to some of his opinions. Questions arising from the Savoyard's indictment against Bacon, which he proposed to Liebig, formed the connection between the two laboured attacks on the founder of English philosophy. ”

“ The same influences which deprive Döllinger of the open support of these natural allies will impede the success of his work, until events have outstripped ideas, and until men awake to the discovery that what they refused to anticipate or to prepare for, is already accomplished. ”

“ If he is rightly informed, it is but the first link in a chain of decrees embodying the retrospective force of the anticipated dogma, for the saying will hold good then, “Quod fuimus erimus, quod fecimus faciemus.” Every claim once advanced must be maintained, every doctrinal proposition renewed, and so the living body will be chained to a corpse.
Desertions from the ranks of the Opposition to the majority of 500, must, no doubt, be reckoned on, and the renegades will say, like Talleyrand, that they are not deserting, but only coming in earlier than others. ”

“ Döllinger must be very far gone indeed in pride to fancy that the Archbishop of Munich or the German prelates could think for an instant of making themselves his docile disciples, or entertain the thought of following him into schism and heresy. It is an act of parting defiance, the impotent gesture of a desperate man, whose last stronghold is crumbling under his feet, but who prefers to be buried under its ruins rather than to repent and return to his allegiance. ”

“ Pius may for a moment have shared the scruples suggested to him by two of the Legates, and the Deputation may have believed that the dogma could be established without any violent precipitation, and regretted the indecent zeal of the French, but the ardent infallibilists—French, English, Belgian, Swiss, etc.—have never slackened in their confidence or their [pg 517] assiduity. They still affirm, as they ever have done, that infallibility has no real opponents or hardly any, and that the leading members of the Opposition privately hold the view or at least have never openly rejected it ”

“ They use the infallible Pope to depose the monarchs who do not suit them, to absolve subjects from their oath of fealty, to overthrow constitutions, to annihilate every right. Dr. Döllinger endeavors by the most unqualified denunciation to tell the new German Empire—elsewhere he always says that the doctrine was never known in Germany: “I cannot dissemble that this doctrine, in consequence of which the former German empire perished, in case it should obtain sway among the Catholic portion of the German nations, would sow the seeds of an incurable disease in the newly founded German empire.” ”

“ In the meantime, learned bodies in Germany had hastened to support Döllinger. Public addresses came to him from the universities of Bonn, Prague, and Breslau, and from colleges in other places, bearing the best names of German Catholics in letters and science. ”

“ That a poor Bishop, and one too who is maintained by the Pope, should yet have a conscience and dare to follow it, is thought out of the question here; and this view comes out with a certain naïveté. [pg 571] The anxiety of the German Bishops about the new dogma perplexing so many Christians and shaking or destroying the faith and adherence to the Church of many thousands can hardly be mentioned here, so impatient are the Monsignori and Cardinals at hearing of it. People here say, “That does not trouble us the least ”

“ The uncompromising attitude of the Clericals greatly promotes the Döllinger movement, and helps to win sympathy for it in circles which previously held aloof from it, where the course taken is regarded as confirmation of the assertion of Döllinger and his friends respecting the incompatibility of Clerical and Ultramontane tendencies with the demands of a national commonweal. ”

“ Döllinger is supposed to sympathize with the least always speak of him in the most respectful terms, even when criticising some of his statements very unsparingly. Some of our Catholic friends in England are not quite so charitable and moderate as the more thoroughly ripened theologians of Europe. They seem disposed to erect theological doctrines never defined or imposed by the authority of the holy see into a standard of orthodoxy, and to question the thorough loyalty of those who do not fully agree with themselves. ”

“ Döllinger is a sound, orthodox divine, and sincerely loyal to the holy see. The Roman theologians have controverted some of his opinions very strongly, but they have never called in question his orthodoxy, and we have good reason to believe that the Holy Father regards him with esteem and paternal affection as a true son of the church, who is doing her good service. ”

“ In the Munich Faculty there was a divine who affirmed that the Church would never get over it. Döllinger undertook to vindicate the insulted See of Rome; and he was glad of the opportunity to strike a blow at three conspicuous men of whom he thought ill in point both of science and religion. He spoke of Gieseler as the flattest and most leathern of historians; he accused Baur of frivolity and want of theological conviction; and he wished that he knew as many circumlocutions for untruth as there are Arabian synonyms for a camel, that he might do justice to Bunsen without violation of courtesy. ”

“ The former view was supported principally by the Hungarians, North Americans, the leading French Bishops, and men like Strossmayer, Simor, Haynald, Darboy, [pg 611] Dupanloup, Clifford, Conolly (represented by proxy) , and others. They insisted that words were of no further avail, and they should show their sense of the want of freedom by acts, so that, as far as in them lay, no decree should be carried which had not been thoroughly discussed. In this way the œcumenicity of the Council would be denied without coming as yet to a breach in Council or a disturbance in the Church ”

“ Ammantar la pigrizia di superiorità, sottrarsi alla noja d'esaminar le quistioni col disprezarle, sono vezzi troppo communi in Italia, e il beffarsi di questi pesanti Tedeschi, che vanno a cercare la fin dei fini. ”

“ The Popes themselves, Rome, and the whole West had let themselves be fooled by the cunning Greeks into condemning [pg 457] an innocent and orthodox Pope as a heretic, and the letters of Pope Leo ii. must also be forgeries. In short these reasoners were caught in the meshes of their own net, and when in 1660 Lucas Holstein got the Roman Liber Diurnus printed—an excellent edition of which Rozière lately brought out in Paris—the whole impression was suppressed, for it contained the old form of oath which expressly attested the condemnation of Honorius. ”

“ It is exceedingly convenient to have to deal with a majority of 600 Prelates, who are simply your creatures, obedient to every hint, and admirably disciplined. Three hundred of them are still further bound to Pius ix. by a special tie, for they are indebted to him, as the Civiltà of January 1 reminded them, for both food and lodging, “sono da lui alloggiati e sostentati e assistiti in tutto il bisognevole alla vita.” Nor does that journal fail to point to the extreme poverty of many of the Bishops or Vicars-Apostolic, drawn hither from Asia, Africa, and Australia ”