A.D. 1870.] CONSIDERATION OF THE VARIOUS SCHEMATA. Zeitung a short but weighty essay, "Against the Infallibility of the Pope." But of all writings of this class none attracted so much attention as an able work named "The Pope and the Council," and appearing under the pseudonym of "Janus." The object of the writer was to establish by reference to history the untenable nature of the claims now made on behalf of the Roman Pontiffs. The Governments of the Roman Catholic Powers became uneasy, and sought information from Cardinal Antonelli as to the probable course that the deliberations would take; some of them also spoke of asserting a claim to send ambassadors to the Council, as in former times, for the protection of lay interests. But Cardinal Antonelli replied in smooth and conciliatory terms; he would not admit that the definition of the dogma of infallibility was probable; and with regard to the non-admission into the Council of ambassadors from Roman Catholic Powers, he justified it by the changed circumstances of modern times. The Council assembled for the first time on the appointed day, the 8th December, 1869. Out of 1,044 bishops, mitred abbots, or generals of orders, who were qualified to sit in the Council, 767 actually attended. The bishops of Poland alone, among European countries, were absent, having been forbidden to attend by the arbitrary mandate of the Czar. England and Scotland were represented by twelve or thirteen bishops, the most prominent of whom were Archbishop Manning and Dr. Ullathorne. Ireland sent twenty-three representatives, including Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop MacHale, and the learned and enlightened Bishop of Kerry, Dr. Moriarty. The French bishops were about eighty in number; those of North Germany only fourteen. The total number of bishops from all European countries-except Italy amounted to 265. The Italian bishops, together with the hundred and nineteen bishops whose sees were in partibus infidelium, formed a total of 276. The missionary bishops congregating to Rome from all parts of the known world, the expenses of their journey and residence in Rome being borne by the Papal treasury-formed nearly three hundred. It was objected that the representative character of the Council was impaired by the inequality of the relations existing between the bishops and the faithful who composed their flocks. The North German bishops, it was said, were only as one to 810,000 lay Catholics in North Germany; while the bishops from the Pontifical state numbered one for every 12,000 of the laity. Again, it was urged that, whereas in the primitive times one of the most distinctive characteristics of a bishop sitting in a council was that he bore testimony concerning the faith of his flock, this could not be the case with the numerous bishops in partibus now assembled at the Vatican, whose few and ignorant converts, for the most part just reclaimed from barbarism, had no traditional Christianity to put in plea. To all such objections it was replied, on the other side, that a bishop sat in council in virtue of his consecration only, and that the doctrine of equal numerical representation had never been received in the Church. The place of meeting was the north transept of St. Peter's, which had been partitioned off from the body of 435 the church, and converted into a magnificent hall of audience. But the acoustics of the place were unsatisfactory; what mortal voice but must be lost in the aerial spaces which intervened between the benches and that soaring and majestic vault? A huge curtain hung from wall to wall remedied, though not entirely, this defect. For the regulation of the order of business the Bull Multiplices inter was prepared, and communicated to the Council at the commencement of its proceedings. It was said that under this bull the liberty of the Council was abridged to an extent never known in former councils. It lodged in the hands of the Pope the nomination of the presidents of all congregations and commissions, and enjoined that any proposition which a bishop desired to bring before the Council should first be laid before a special commission, which should decide on its admissibility and report accordingly to the Pope, without whose permission in the last resort it could not be brought forward. It need hardly be said that Latin was prescribed as the only language to be used in the public deliberations. The first public session (December 8th, 1869) was devoted to the formalities of opening. The proceedings of the Council being suddenly suspended in October, there were but four public sessions altogether. The second was held on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, 1870; when, no decree being at that time ready for discussion, every bishop attending the Council, with the Pope at their head, made the formal profession of his faith by publicly declaring his adhesion to the creed of Pope Pius IV., in which were summed up the principal dogmatic definitions and decrees of the Council of Trent. In the course of January several Schemata, or rough drafts of decrees, were introduced into the Council, and referred to the several examining commissions. The first was the Schema De Fide; it was headed, in its original form, by a preamble containing language of a very disparaging nature respecting Protestantism, to the influence of which it ascribed those baneful errors— Rationalism, Pantheism, Atheism, Socialism, &c., which it proceeded to condemn and anathematise. The second Schema related to Church discipline, and was brought in on the 14th January; it dealt chiefly with the duties of bishops. The third Schema, De Ecclesia, on the Church and the Papal primacy, was brought in on the 21st January; it originally contained three chapters, but a fourth was added under the circumstances presently to be related. -or, The repugnance to the doctrine of Papal infallibility at any rate, to the opportuneness of its definition at the present juncture-had been now so loudly expressed by a number of bishops (chiefly French and German, but with a sprinkling of English and Americans) that the majority in the Council began to fear that the advisers of the Pope would recommend the postponement of the subject to a future occasion. Wherefore a petition, or postulatum, was prepared, soon after the session of the 6th January, praying the Pope that the doctrine of the infallibility of the Chair of Peter might be defined; this was signed by five hundred bishops. The Govern ments of France and Austria, alarmed at this intelligence, thought that the time was come for exercising a pressure in a contrary direction on the Papal Court. Count Daru, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, instructed the Marquis de Banneville, the French Ambassador at Rome, to inform Cardinal Antonelli of the desire of the French Cabinet to be informed beforehand of all proceedings of a political nature which were taken by the Council, and of the decidedly adverse opinion of the said Cabinet against any definition of Papal infallibility. The Austrian Minister held similar language. Cardinal Antonelli replied to Count Daru in a long despatch written in March, when the prospect of the adoption of the dogma was increasingly favourable, denying that the Concordat existing between France and Rome gave the French Government any right to demand the special information required, and claiming it as the privilege and the duty of the Council to proceed to the doctrinal definition deprecated by the French Cabinet, which he hoped would be greeted by the faithful everywhere as "the rainbow of peace and the dawn of a brighter future." It has been stated that the French Government replied to this letter from Cardinal Antonelli, stating that, as he determined to pursue a course which could only end in its ruin, France would for the future abstain from interference; but that on the day of the declaration of Papal infallibility the Concordat would cease to be valid, the State would separate itself from the Church, and the French troops would be withdrawn from the Papal territory. It is certain that the resolution to withdraw the French troops, which was officially communicated by the Marquis de Banneville to the Holy See on the 27th July, was arrived at before France had sustained any military reverses, and may therefore have been prompted, or at least accelerated, by the proclamation of the dogma; but it does not appear that the menace of treating the Concordat as invalid was ever acted upon in the smallest degree; it seems probable, therefore, that the terms of the despatch were not in reality quite so stringent. In reply to the petition of the five hundred bishops, a counter-petition was prepared by the opposition, and received a hundred and thirty-seven signatures, chiefly those of French, German, and Hungarian bishops. But the signers of this document-which was drawn up by Cardinal Rauscher-were careful not to commit themselves to an unconditional hostility to the dogma. They were content with pointing out the stumbling-blocks and dangers by which the question was surrounded, the thorny controversies, supposed to be long since buried, which it would disinter and quicken into a disastrous activity, and the as yet unresolved difficulties which passages in the history of the Papacy opposed to the belief in its infallibility. The controversy, both in and out of the Council, waxed hotter and hotter, especially when the Infallibilists, emboldened it would seem by the hesitating and qualified character of the opposition, as expressed in the counterpetition, brought in, in March, and annexed to the three "Annual Register" for 1870, p. 266. chapters of the Schema De Ecclesia already submitted, the celebrated fourth chapter, containing the dogma itself, fully formulated. But for the moment discussion ran upon the Constitution De Fide, which was rapidly approaching maturity. The opposition required, and finally with success, material alterations in that portion of the preamble which said so many hard things of Protestantism. The eloquent Bishop Strossmayer, in the course of a memorable speech which he delivered on the 22nd March, said: "With regard to Rationalism, I conceive the venerable Commission to have been in error, when, in drawing up the genealogy of Naturalism, Materialism, Pantheism, Atheism, &c., &c., they asserted that all these errors were the offspring of Protestantism. .. The errors above named are, not to ourselves only, but to the Protestants as well, objects of horror and abomination, so that they are of service and assistance to the Church and to us Catholics in opposing and refuting them. Thus Leibnitz, certainly, was a learned and in every respect eminent man,—a man just in his judgment of the institutions of the Catholic Church,—a man of excellent intentions and deserts in restoring concord among Christian communities. These men, of whom there are many in Germany, in England, and in North America, are followed by a multitude among the Protestants, to whom may be applied those words of the great Augustine: They err, but they err in good faith; they are heretics, but they hold us for heretics.' They did not themselves invent their error, but they inherited it from perverse parents who had been led into error; and they are prepared to lay down their error so soon as they shall be convinced of it. If these men do not belong to the body of the Church, they belong to its soul, and in a certain measure they participate in the benefits of redemption. In the love they bear to our Lord Jesus Christ, and in those positive truths which they have saved from the shipwreck of their faith, they possess so many particles of divine grace, which the mercy of God will make use of to bring them back to their first faith and to the Church, if we do not by our exaggerations and our short-sighted breaches of charity towards them retard the time of the divine mercy." The speaker met with frequent interruptions and cries of disapproval from the majority during the utterance of these bold and generous sentiments. In the end, the offensive preamble was withdrawn, and a new one drawn up which the minority could agree to. The Constitution De Fide was adopted unanimously in the public session of the 24th April, all the bishops present voting placet, but eightythree adding the words "juxta modum," by which was meant that the signer adhered to the constitution in a particular sense attached by himself to its terms, and not in any other sense. Strossmayer alone absented himself from the voting. The Constitution De Fide being now out of the way, that De Ecclesia, with its new fourth chapter, was pushed forward with the greatest ardour. The opposition resorted to the press, and several remarkable pamphlets by men of note appeared. One of these was by the learned Hefele, lately appointed Bishop of Rottenburg; it was a A.D. 1870.] THE VOTING ON THE DEFINITION OF INFALLIBILITY. 437 The turmoil caused by the approach of war led to the anticipation of the date which had been fixed for the public session. On the 18th July, the Pope himself presiding, the Constitution De Ecclesia, which included the definition of infallibility, was put to the vote and received 533 placets, and two non placets. The negative votes were given by Riccio, Bishop of Cajazzo, and Fitzgerald, Bishop of Little Rock, in the state of Arkansas in the United States. The Pope then read out the constitution to the assembled fathers, and confirmed it. During the discussion of the well-known case of Pope Honorius, nevertheless, out of respect and affection for his Holiness, condemned for heresy by Pope Agatho and a council in they had determined not to stay and vote openly, and the year 680. Other brochures on the same side were" in facie patris," in a question so nearly concerning the written by Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, the Cardinals person of the Pope. The bishops of the minority, Rauscher and Schwarzenberg, and Archbishop Kenrick accordingly, took their departure from Rome. of St. Louis. The first meeting for the discussion of the Constitution De Ecclesia was held on the 14th May, and the debate was continued during three weeks. The principal speakers in support of the dogma were, Cardinal Patrizi, Cardinal Cullen, the Archbishop of Malines, and Moreno, the Cardinal Archbishop of Valladolid. One of the most able and effective speeches was that of Dr. Cullen, who endeavoured to convict Hefele of self-contradiction, by contrasting the conclusions of his late pamphlet with the account given of Pope Honorius in his Church History. Darboy, the Arch-reading a violent storm of thunder and lightning burst bishop of Paris, made an earnest and powerful speech against the decree; and Simor, the Primate of Hungary, Jussuf, the Patriarch of Antioch, and Dr. MacHale, of Tuam, spoke on the same side. The discussion dragged on wearily. June arrived, and with it the burning heat and the unwholesome air of a Roman summer, and still the names of forty-nine bishops were inscribed, as desiring to take part in the discussion. At this point the majority exercised their right of closing the debate what is called in France la clôture-and the general discussion was brought abruptly to an end on the 3rd June. Several weeks were then consumed in the consideration of the chapters, paragraph by paragraph. The voting on the fourth chapter, that enunciating the dogma, came on on the 13th July. As finally settled, the definition was expressed in the following terms: "We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed; that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, through the divine assistance promised to him in St. Peter, is strong [pollere] with that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed His Church to be furnished in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals, and that, therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church." On this definition the Council voted in the general congregation of the 13th July, and with the following result: 400 placet, 88 non placet, and 61 placet juxta modum. About seventy others, though in Rome, abstained from voting. It was now a question with the minority what course they should take. Cardinal Rauscher proposed that they should all wait for the public session, which had been fixed for the 25th July, and then vote non placet in the presence of the Pope. But more pacific counsels prevailed. A letter was prepared on the 17th inst., and signed by 110 bishops, in which, after adverting to the particulars of the voting on the 13th, they declared to the Pope that their hostility to the definition of the dogma remained unchanged, and that by the present writing they confirmed their previous suffrages, but that, over St. Peter's, and the darkness became so great that the Pope was obliged to send for a candle. Little or no excitement was visible among the Romans; the Ambassadors of France, Prussia, and Austria pointedly stayed away. An analysis of the eighty-eight negative votes in the general congregation of the 13th July, shows that thirtytwo of them were given by German, Austrian, or Hungarian prelates, twenty-four by French, and seven by Oriental bishops. Two were Irish (Drs. MacHale and Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry); two English (Vaughan, Bishop of Plymouth, and Clifford, Bishop of Clifton); one Colonial (Conolly, Archbishop of Halifax), and five North Americans. Six Italian bishops, six bishops in partibus, and three whose names could not be ascertained, complete the list. The importance of the definition of infallibility was considered by politicians and lay society in general to consist, not so much in the assertion and claim which the mere words of the decree contain, as in the retrospective force which it might be used to impart to Papal decisions dating from the Middle Ages, at a time when the power and pretensions of the Holy See were almost unbounded. If such a dogmatic utterance, for instance, as the Bull Unam sanctam of Boniface VIII., by which it was declared that "if the temporal power errs, it is judged by the spiritual," and that "there are two swords the spiritual and the temporal; . . . both are in the power of the Church; . . . the former that of priests, the latter that of kings and soldiers, to be wielded at the good pleasure and by the allowance of the priest,"-if such a Papal declaration, and others of a similar kind to be found in the Roman Bullarium, were held to be ex cathedrâ, and therefore infallibly true, what a prospect was opened for the non-Roman Catholic sovereigns of Roman Catholic subjects should the new definition come to be generally accepted by the human conscience throughout the Roman Catholic world! It is this alarming prospect which explains the subsequent conduct of the North German Government, and also of the Federal Government of Switzerland. The Roman Catholic population in North Germany amounts to twelve or fourteen millions; in Switzerland it forms nearly one half of the total population of the Republic; it is, therefore, of the utmost importance to the Protestant Governments of both countries that the doctrine supported by the majority at the Vatican Council, involving possible practical applications of the gravest character, should be discountenanced and repressed wherever the influence of the State extends. So far as it was connected with temporal power, the supremacy asserted for the Pope by the Constitution De Ecclesia was about to receive a notable check and diminution. The Lanzi Ministry, which was at this time in power in Italy, was disquieted all through the spring and early summer by the seditious threats and speeches of tion of France afforded, of extending a kingdom which was itself in so large a measure the child of revolution, by a further application of those revolutionary means, of which the violence of the democrats and the weakness of the Pope alike suggested the application. Already, on the 6th September, the Chevalier Nigra sounded Jules Favre on the possibility of obtaining the approval and sanction of the new French Government to the King of Italy taking possession of Rome. M. Favre, though not personally opposed to the measure, was too well acquainted with the feeling which prevailed in France on the subject the Republicans and Garibaldians. In August, Mazzini, who was known to be the brain and soul of the Republican movement, was arrested at Palermo while wearing a disguise, and placed in confinement at Gaeta. The declaration of war between France and Prussia had been speedily followed by an announcement (July 27), on the part of the Ollivier Government, that France would withdraw all her troops from Rome, and this was soon after effected. The Opposition in the Italian Parliament immediately began to attack the September Convention, and to urge the occupation of Rome; but Signor Lanzi replied that the Convention was still binding, and must be adhered to. But in September, after the fall of the Empire and the Regency, the Italian Government could not afford to overlook the opportunity which the prostra to give the slightest official countenance to the act, of the imminence of which Nigra informed him. On the 8th September, the King addressed a letter to Pins IX., fulsome in its expressions of affection to the person and reverence for the office of the Pontiff, in which, grounding his determination on the critical condition of Italy, and also on the presence of foreigners among the troops composing the Papal army, he announced his intention to send Italian troops into the Roman territory, who should occupy those positions which should be "indispensable for the security of your Holiness," and for the maintenance of order. Count Ponza di San Martino waited on the Pope, on the 10th September, with the King's letter, and, according to his instructions, offered the following terms: That the |