XX

THE FIRST VATICAN COUNCIL

1869-1870 A.D.

IT is not easy to say when Pius IX first conceived the idea of calling together a General Council. In 1846 he is reported to have already spoken of such a thing. Certain it is, that on 6th December 1864 two days before the issue of the encyclical Quanta cura after the usual discussions were ended, he confided to the members of the Congregation of Rites, in the greatest secrecy that for a long time he had been thinking of meeting the great need of the Church by resorting to the unusual measure of holding an ecumenical council. In the course of two months twenty-one of the cardinals who formed the Congregation of Rites sent in writing their opinions regarding this important project. Only two of the twenty-one considered it unnecessary, the one because councils presumably ought only to be convoked when the faith was in imminent danger; the other because he thought that the subjects which were to be treated at such a council were of too delicate a nature, and because the outward means required for the council were wanting. The nineteen who affirmed the necessity did not agree that it was absolute; some of them thought that a council could only be said to be relatively necessary. As to subjects which ought to be laid before the assembly, the cardinals suggested the condemnation of the errors of modern times, various disciplinary questions, the freedom of the Press, civil marriage, and so forth. Only two mentioned the Infallibility of the Pope, but one or two suggested that the question whether the Pope's temporal power is a necessity should also be discussed.

At the beginning of January, 1865, Pius IX mentioned the matter to Plantier, the highly-trusted Bishop of Nimes, perhaps also to others; and in March a commission was appointed, consisting of the Cardinals Patrizi, Reisach, Panebianco, Bizzarri, and Caterini, with the Archbishop of Sardis, afterwards Cardinal Giannelli, as secretary. The commission was to discuss the necessity of the council, possible hindrances in the way of its meeting, its relation to the sovereigns, and so on. On 10th April enquiries were confidentially sent out to thirty-five bishops with regard to the contemplated council, amongst others to Archbishop Guibert of Tours, and to Bishop Dupanloup. The first considered that a Roman Council would be a “new occupation of Rome in the name of Catholicity”, and would serve to maintain the moral necessity of the Pope’s temporal power; the second, on the contrary, felt difficulties.  On 17th November similar enquiries were at length sent to the nuncios at Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Munich, and Brussels; Rome wished by all means to be sure that the scheme would find general support.

When the bishops were assembled at Rome in June 1867 for the eighteenth centenary of St Peter, Pius IX, as has been said before, mentioned in his allocution the great project he had in his mind, and it was received with enthusiasm; he had also the satisfaction of finding that Dupanloup had now changed his views. The assembled bishops, in answer to the allocution, composed an address in which some wished the word “infallible” inserted in reference to the Pope’s office and authority, because they did not like to return to their dioceses without having done something for the Infallibility. This, however, was warded off; the bishops contented themselves with saying that they were convinced that “Peter had spoken through the mouth of Pius”, and with quoting the decree of the Florentine Council, in which the Pope is called the Vicar of Christ, the Head of the whole Church, the Father and Teacher of all Christians. Pius IX answered them by announcing that the meeting should be opened on some feast of the Conceptio immaculata.

As soon as the festival of the centenary was ended, Dupanloup hastened home in order to be the first to announce the great news, and there were many of the admirers of the Bishop of Orleans who, to the annoyance of his antagonist Mgr. Pie, thought that he, who in truth had at first been an opponent of the idea, was really the author of the proud scheme which was attracting such attention. When his friends shortly afterwards assembled at a congress at Malines, Count de Falloux delivered a speech amidst great applause, in which he represented the Pope’s scheme, as though Pius IX meant to say to the nineteenth century: “Many mouths are closed, many voices stifled; but I will open the mouth of the Universal Church. Minds are tormented by doubt, hearts are afflicted by pain; well, then, I who am called an enemy of discussion, I will inaugurate the most comprehensive, the freest discussion concerning the most important interests of all mankind”.

AGITATION FOR INFALLIBILITY

But the enthusiasm was not everywhere equally great. Cardinal Manning relates that the Austrian ambassador at Rome, Baron Hübner, was anything but pleased with the Pope’s design, because he feared that the council would disclose the want of unity between the bishops, and weaken the authority of the Church. And within a short time even Count de Falloux and his friends took a far less optimistic view of the coming meeting and its freedom of speech. Men asked quite naturally what was the real aim of this “unusual measure”, and people’s thoughts were then immediately directed to two points: the turning of the Syllabus into dogma, which had so often been spoken of, and the definition of the dogma of the Pope’s Infallibility, which, as Dechamps, afterwards Archbishop of Malines, said, “was in the air and demanded a decision”.

Pius IX, in his youth, had been under the influence of the visionary Anna Maria Taigi (died 1837), who had predicted not only his elevation to the see of St Peter, but also his afflictions, and the great triumph he was to prepare for the Church. One victory he had already prepared for her: the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. But this demanded as its supplement the dogma of Infallibility. When Mgr. Segur returned from Lourdes in 1870, he wrote to Mgr. Pie: “Pius IX has said to Mary: Thou art immaculate. Mary will surely answer him: 'Thou art infallible”. Many thought thus. While Pius IX was occupied with the publication of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he said to a Dominican, who objected that the new dogma presupposed a proclamation of the Pope’s Infallibility: “That will come too”. It was indeed officially asserted that Pius IX did not care very much to have the infallibility ‘defined’, because nobody made any objection to it. But the Jesuits made every effort to procure the definition of this dogma, which, according to their theory of the history of doctrine, had long ago passed from the period of implicit belief into the time of testing, and now required to be decisively defined.

At the festival of the centenary in 1867, on St Peter’s and St Paul’s Day, Manning and Bishop Senestrey of Regensburg took a vow which was drawn up by the Jesuit Padre Liberatore. According to its terms they would do everything in their power to call forth a definition of the papal infallibility; they were to offer up stated prayers for it every day. And the two prelates kept their vow. Manning in particular agitated early and late for the Infallibility. Shortly after the centenary festival Pius IX received two addresses from England, one from the Chapter at Westminster, and one from the Fathers of the Oratory in London, both of which contained petitions for the definition of Infallibility; and in Manning’s and Senestrey’s circles it was said that Infallibility ought to be immediately proclaimed by acclamation. Mgr. Plantier, of Nimes, who had indeed been one of the initiated, declared in a pastoral letter of 26th March 1869, that a preliminary discussion was totally superfluous in this matter; it would not be more difficult for the Holy Ghost to preserve the Church from errors in the fire of acclamation than in the arguments of a debate. Against this Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, made an immediate protest in the name of commonsense and of history, and people’s minds began to be divided. The time before the Council was used for the skirmishes of outposts and for a preliminary trial of strength between the forces for and against Infallibility. It rained pastoral letters, pamphlets, and articles on the great question.

Bishop Dupanloup and his friends were waiting in the greatest suspense for the papal Bull that should summon the council; they were apprehensive lest its form should be of the nature of a challenge. None of them denied Infallibility themselves; they were only, as Montalembert expressed it, afraid of the abuse of the Infallibility, which minds without tact and responsibility might allow themselves to make. At the beginning of 1868 Dupanloup ventured to write to Pius IX to ask him to issue as soon as possible the Bull of invitation, which was so much longed for; and, as this letter was graciously received at Rome, he became bolder. On 16th March he sent the Pope a longer letter, the meaning of which was shortly, that the authorities at Rome ought to be most careful that the Bull should offend nobody.

INVITATIONS TO THE COUNCIL