Vatican Council

“ THE Vatican Council, in its Decree on Faith has these words: "The Church itself, by its marvelous propagation, its eminent sanctity, its inexhaustible fruitfulness in all good things, its catholic unity and invincible stability, is a vast and perpetual motive of credibility, and an irrefragable witness of its own Divine legation."* Its Divine Founder said: "I am the light of the world;" and, to His Apostles, He said also, "Ye are the light of the world," and of His Church He added, "A city seated on a hill cannot be hid." The Vatican Council says, "The Church is its own witness." ”

“ Men say that the Council of the Vatican was inopportune, presumptuous, and imprudent; let the world's gracefully lapsing course be a living refutation to such words. Every outward stay is gone; every difficulty in the way of the reunion of pastors is trebled; every see is hedged about with physical bars that are insurmountable; nothing remains free but what cannot be fettered—the tongue. ”

“ Beust in Vienna, Hohenlohe in Munich, Ollivier in Paris, were not tranquil like the priest in Rome. Sooner or later they would all be engulfed in the stormy sea of revolution—all but the Church and the Pope. The Syllabus would abide for ever, and with it the Canons of the Vatican Council.... The Pope has proved by facts that he knows how to govern better than any other sovereign. We defy any emperor whatever to govern a country fourteen years as Pope Pius IX has governed Rome. ”

“ He is the supreme judge, as he is the supreme ruler. As such, his right to judge in matters of faith, without the aid of a general council, as well as to make laws and exercise all the plenitude of jurisdiction, has been acknowledged by all the œcumenical councils and by the whole church in every age. It is false to say that the dogmatic decree of the Council of the Vatican made any change in doctrine or law respecting the authority of the pope over the episcopate, whether assembled or dispersed, and over the universal church. ”

“ It is often the fate of great facts as of great truths to be praised or blamed for what is of least moment. In obedience to this law the Vatican Council has been welcomed or rejected for its decisions on the authority of the Holy See, though these decisions are hardly so momentous or fundamental as those on faith and reason. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That a Church should be a bishop is certainly new; and that a truly episcopal power should reside in a Church which is not a bishop, is one of the many mysteries created by the Vatican Council. But that the source of the Pontiff's authority should in this very Decree be sought in the Church, is a proof how hard a task is theirs who determine to make dogma conquer history. In the very language of the Decree, history conquers the dogma.
If the document contains this one taint of dualism as between Church and Pope, it is clear of all reproach of dualism as between the Pope and Princes. ”

“ Perhaps no General Council has been more naturally fitted than the Vatican Council to produce a masterpiece of religious thought and literature. No assembly of men since the time of Christ has ever been so representative of Christian and national thought. ”

“ There is no controversial tone in the exposition of the elements of his theme, but the divine inspiration and supernatural guidance granted to these assemblies is quietly assumed as undoubted and indubitable. The chief authority for such a conviction is the way in which these sacerdotal réunions were accustomed to speak of themselves. This sublime self-consciousness has never forsaken them, and has reached its highest expression in the Vatican Council, which, by its infallibility dogma, has, probably, constituted itself the last of the series. ”

“ As for the vain and feeble effort of two or three cabinets to prohibit the promulgation of the decrees of the Vatican Council, it is too absurd to argue about, and too harmless to excite any alarm or indignation. ”

“ I think I am not exaggerating when I say that the Council of the Vatican has been excelled by few, if any, deliberative assemblies, civil or ecclesiastical, that have ever met, whether we consider the maturity of years of its members, their learning, their experience and piety, or the widespread influence of the Decrees that they framed for the spiritual and moral welfare of the Christian Republic. ”

“ At present the pope is stripped of all temporal power, but his authority over the church in all matters spiritual and ecclesiastical is supreme and unquestioned, the Vatican Council which assembled at Rome in 1870 having proclaimed his infallibility on all questions of faith and morals. Whenever a vacancy occurs in the papal chair, it is filled by the cardinals choosing one of their number to occupy the place. ”

“ The whole spirit of the Jesuit Press at this period indicated that the Modern State had so wearied out the Vatican that the only chance for kings to make their peace with it would lie in separating their cause from that of parliaments and constitutions. If they meant to be tolerated long after the Council, they must not only reign but govern—govern Catholic States under the Syllabus. A ruler by divine right—which among the baptized means one instituted by the Pope and corrected by him—is the essence of the matter. ”

“ Our Parliament is never asked to discuss a Bill without first having the right to say whether it shall or shall not be brought in. It never finds a Bill before it which, if it pleases, it may not refer to a special committee. Any member can move the rejection or the postponement of the whole, can move the omission or amendment of any part, and can take the sense of the House. None of these things could be done at the Vatican Council. The bishops could make Latin speeches in a row, first on the Draft as a whole, and then, in a second row, on the parts. ”

“ He proceeds to observe that in matters of discipline and canon law a numerical majority is enough, as decisions of that kind may be altered afterwards, but for a dogma there must be moral unanimity of the Council and the Churches to whose faith it bears witness, or else Catholicism would be annihilated. But great theologians and theological schools of former ages opposed papal infallibility, and it is opposed now by a large number of Bishops at the Vatican Council representing great Churches and Catholic nations. ”

“ When the Pope or the council united to the Pope declares that a truth is contained in the deposit of revelation, they do not invent matter, they repeat and discern; they do not create a new truth, they confirm an old one, and cause new light to beam from it.
Infallibility is, then, not personal in the absurd sense in which the word [pg 495] is used; neither is it absolute and without limits; its domain, which is that of faith and morals, is clearly marked out by the constitution of the Vatican Council. ”

“ It is more than time that I should make an end; and to do so it will be well to sum up the heads of our argument. The Vatican Council declares that the world-wide Church is the irrefragable witness of its own legation or mission to mankind. ”

“ Of all miracles, they would look on this as the greatest, that, as the Vatican Council speaks, the passions and earthly interests and prejudices of men should at once die out or grow mute, and that no voice should be heard in opposition, no arm be raised to arrest or thwart, if it could, the work of God. ”

“ Inasmuch as, by ancient appointment of the Fathers, the sacred Councils of the Church have been wont to set the Confession of the Faith in the forefront of all their doings, as a buckler against every heresy, we, therefore, the Promoters of this Vatican Council, do humbly pray that profession of the Catholic faith in the form prescribed by thy predecessor of sacred memory, Pius IV, be made this day, in public session by all the Fathers of this Vatican Council. ”

“ They are in earnest. They look and talk like men fresh from the battle-field of the world, who have formidable enemies to contend with, and come before the council well stocked with experimental knowledge. They content themselves with a brief statement of the measure they propose, and a summary of the reasons best calculated to support it, without occupying the council with elaborate disquisitions.
The number of English, Irish, and American bishops up to the present, who have delivered oral discourses before the Vatican Council is comparatively small. ”

“ They can array their strongest arguments without ever descending to personalities. They are chary of indulging even in witticism calculated to relieve the solemnity of the debate by a smile. In all the discussion there is not only the highest gentlemanly courtesy, but also that true charity and union of hearts which must accompany that unity of faith which they solemnly professed to hold, and which must, if possible, be confirmed and strengthened in this Vatican Council.
To be fully impressed with this perfect unity, one must be privileged to mingle somewhat with the bishops. ”

“ The Roman logic, as may be seen from the Civiltà, is simply this: the Council is what it is through the Pope alone; without him it can do nothing and is an empty [pg 690] shadow. Freedom of the Council therefore means freedom of the Pope: if he is free, it is free. You may infer what reception will be accorded in the Vatican to the petition just resolved upon for a secret voting on the Papal Schema. ”

“ It is remarkable that no pope has done so much for the despised rights of human reason as Pope Pius IX.; that no council has done better service to science than that of the Vatican, none has better regulated its relations to the faith; that none has better defined in their fundamental principles the relations of the natural and the supernatural; and the work of the pontiff and of the council is not yet finished. ”

“ And so, even while the pagan revolution was preparing its last assault upon the pontifical throne, an astonished world witnessed this most majestic demonstration of the authority, the unity, and the power of the church, and the whole body of the faithful were filled with courage and fresh enthusiasm. Driven from his capital, robbed, and insulted, the captive of the Vatican, whose voice rings out clear and firm above the din of the century, whose strong arm sustains, whose saintly example inspires, is yet victor over the world in the council and the Syllabus. ”

“ A most promising reaction, mainly in Germany, led by men highly respected and eminent for their learning, set in against the Vatican Council and its decrees, in the so-called Old Catholic movement of the liberal circles of the Catholic people, which went the length, even in 1873, of establishing an independent and well organized episcopal church. ”

“ No council can create a dogma which is new, in the sense of being a new doctrine, or a new revelation. The new definitions of the Council of the Vatican are definitions of old truths, old doctrines, revealed by Jesus Christ and the apostles, and contained in Scripture and tradition. ”

“ At the time of the Vatican Council (1869–1870) he was known to be opposed to the definition of Papal infallibility, and in a private letter to his bishop (Ullathorne) , surreptitiously published, he denounced the “insolent and aggressive faction” that had pushed the matter forward. ”