XVI

THE VATICAN COUNCIL

The True Story of the Vatican Council by Cardinal Manning (London 1877) .

I HAVE mentioned in the proper place the first public announcement of the intention of Pius IX to summon an ecumenical council. But the project had been for a long time under serious consideration. On the 6th of December, 1864, the Pope presided in the Vatican palace over a session of the Congregation of Rites, composed of cardinals and officials. After the opening prayer the officials were requested to retire, and the cardinals remained for some time in secret conference with the Pontiff. This unusual event caused great surprise and curiosity. It was not known until long afterward that the Holy Father had communicated to the Sacred College the thought, which had been for some years in his mind, of convoking a council "as an extraordinary remedy to the extraordinary needs of the Christian world", and had required from each of the cardinals then in Rome a written opinion on the subject. Twenty-one answers were submitted in due time to this command. All except two agreed that the disorders of the world—the tendency to exclude the Church and revelation from the sphere of civil society and science; the progress of "modern revolutionary liberalism", which consists in the assertion of the supremacy of the state over the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, over education, marriage, consecrated property, and the temporal power of the head of the Church; the spread of indifferentism; the infiltration of rationalistic principles into the philosophy of certain Catholic schools; and changes made necessary in Church discipline by changes in the general condition of society during the three hundred years since the Council of Trent—did call for correction by a general council. Four of the cardinals doubted whether the time was convenient for the assembling of a council, but they believed that all the preparations ought to be made for it. One declined to express a positive opinion, submitting himself to the judgment of the Pontiff. Only two opposed the project. The majority foresaw many difficulties, but they held that the need was greater than the danger. With regard to the subjects to be treated, the cardinals suggested the condemnation of modern errors, the exposition of Catholic doctrine, the observance and modification of discipline, the raising of the state of the clergy and the religious orders, the license of the press, secret societies, marriage, etc. Only two spoke of infallibility. Only two spoke of the temporal power. Only one spoke of the Syllabus.

The next step was the appointment in March, 1863, of a commission, composed of Cardinals Patrizi, Reisach, Panebianco, Bizzarri, and Caterini, to weigh all these written opinions, to consider still more carefully the reasons for and against the convocation, and to advise upon the proper mode of proceeding in case the decision should be in the affirmative. The commission judged that the assembling of a council was relatively necessary and opportune, and that a Congregation of Direction ought to be appointed to report upon the questions, whether of doctrine or discipline, proper to be treated. In accordance with this recommendation the congregation was accordingly constituted of the five cardinals already named and a number of theologians and canonists selected in Rome and from other nations; and the whole body was divided into four sections, each having its own class of subjects—namely, 1. Doctrine; 2. Political, Ecclesiastical, or Mixed Questions; 3. Missions and the Oriental Churches; 4. Discipline. In April confidential letters were addressed to thirty-six bishops in Europe, selected for their learning and experience, and also to certain bishops in the East, asking their opinions as to the proper matters to be treated. Nearly all replied that the prevalent evil of our time is a universal perversion and confusion of first truths and principles which assail the foundations of truth and the preambles of all belief. They spoke of the nature and existence of God; the divine institution, rights, independence, and authority of the Church; the temporal power; socialism, communism, indifferentism, naturalism; Christian marriage; the relations of Church and state, etc. Many proposed the Syllabus as an admirable outline of the work of a council. One and all expressed the greatest delight at the decision to call a council; but the chief object for which Protestant writers believe the fathers of the world were to be assembled—namely, the definition of papal infallibility—was hardly so much as mentioned. "The true motive of the Vatican Council", says Cardinal Manning, "is transparent to all calm and just minds. For three hundred years no general council had been held; for three hundred years the greatest change that has ever come upon the world since its conversion to Christianity had steadily passed upon it. The first period of the Church gradually brought about the union of the spiritual and civil powers of the world in amity and co-operation. The last three hundred years have parted and opposed them to each other ... The Church began not with kings but with the peoples of the world, and to the peoples, it may be, the Church will once more return. The princes and governments and legislatures of the world were everywhere against it at its outset; they are so again. But the hostility of the nineteenth century is keener than the hostility of the first. Then the world had never believed in Christianity; now it is falling from it. But the Church is the same, and can renew its relation with whatsoever forms of civil life the world is pleased to fashion for itself. If, as political foresight has predicted, all nations are on their way to democracy, the Church will know how to meet this new and strange aspect of the world. The high policy of wisdom by which the pontiffs held together the dynasties of the Middle Age will know how to hold together the peoples who still believe. Such was the world on which Pins IX was looking out when he conceived the thought of an ecumenical council. He saw the world which was once all Catholic tossed and harassed by the revolt of its intellect against the revelation of God, ad of its will against his law; by the revolt of civil society against the sovereignty of God; and by the anti-Christian spirit which is driving on princes and governments towards anti-Christian revolutions. He to whom, in the words of St. John Chrysostom, the whole world was committed, saw in the Council of the Vatican the only adequate remedy for the world-wide evils of the nineteenth century".

The question of calling a council being decided, it remained to determine whether in the existing condition of politics its speeds convocation would be prudent. In November, 1865, the Holy Father asked the advice on this head of the nuncios at Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Munich, and Brussels; and if the times had been favorable it was his intention to open the august assemblage on the centenary of St. Peter, in June, 1867. But the war between Austria and Prussia caused all the preparations to be suspended. No allusion was made to the council in the letters of invitation to the centenary; and when it was at last announced in the consistory of June 26, 1867, the date was still undetermined. A year later Pius consulted the cardinals as to the expediency of fixing the opening for the 8th of December, 1869, and by their unanimous advice the bull of indiction, convoking the council for that day, was issued on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, June 29, 1868.

It has already been remarked that the formal definition of the infallibility of the Pontiff followed logically from the tendencies of the past few years, and especially from the circumstances attending the three previous assemblies of bishops held in Rome during the pontificate of Pius I X. But if the desires of the believers in the doctrine had not been enough to ensure its promulgation, the opposition of its adversaries would certainly have sufficed for that result. In France the last remnant of the Gallican sentiment found expression in the publications of Bishop Maret, the Abbe Gratry, and some others, while Bishop Dupanloup led a small party which, without questioning the truth of the doctrine, remonstrated against the policy of defining it. The centre of opposition to the dogma was, however, in Munich, where Dr. Dollinger was the head of an unfaithful school which Pius had already marked with the censure of the supreme authority. The anonymous treatise by "Janus" on the Pope and the Council appeared from this source in 1868, and made a profound sensation all over the continent. It attacked the doctrine with historical arguments, and it first put forth the fiction, afterwards repeated by all the anti-Catholic press with its million tongues, that the sole purpose of the council was to declare papal infallibility by acclamation, and that the moving spirit behind it was a Jesuit conspiracy. Conferences were held in France, Belgium, and Germany to organize an opposition. The secular governments were drawn into the plot. In April, 1869, a circular despatch, prepared by Dr. Dollinger, but signed by the Bavarian minister, Prince Hohenlohe, invited the other European powers to combine with Bavaria in resistance to the definition. Italy, by its diplomatic agents, urged the governments to prevent the assembling of the council. Spain threatened the Pope with a hostil league composed of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Bavaria. Finally, Italy and Bavaria united in a request to the French Government to withdraw its troops from Rome, "in order to ensure the freedom of the council"—in other words, in order to let Victor Emanuel seize the city. An anonymous argument against the opportuneness of defining the papal infallibility appeared in five languages, and was distributed to the bishops by the civil authorities. The newspapers of every country and of every shade of belief, except the true one, began to assail the council in advance. The effect of this wide-spread conspiracy against the definition was to make its adoption certain. "It was seen at once", says Dr. Manning, "that not only the truth of a doctrine but the independence of the Church was at stake. If the Church should hesitate or give way before an opposition of newspapers and of governments, its office as witness and teacher of revelation would be shaken throughout the world".

The Commission of Direction consisted of five cardinal presidents, eight bishops, and an archbishop as secretary. To it were joined one hundred and two consultors, of whom sixty-nine were secular priests, eight Jesuits, four Dominicans, two Augustinians, and the rest members of other religious orders or congregations. This commission drew up the rules of proceeding, but they were published on the authority of the Pope, the consultors deciding that the regulation of the council belonged to the power which convened it. The commission then prepared schemata or drafts of such decrees as it proposed for discussion; it was provided that any bishop desiring to introduce other matter should submit it first to a special commission of twenty-six, whose judgment required the ratification of the Pontiff. The decrees drawn up in advance were six—namely, I. Schema on Catholic Doctrine against the manifold errors flowing from rationalism; 2. Schema on the Church of Christ; 3. Schema on the Office of Bishops; 4. Schema on the Vacancy of Sees; S. Schema on the Life and Manners of the Clergy; 6. Schema on the Little Catechism. The Pope was careful to explain to the bishops by his formal apostolic letter that he had abstained from giving these drafts or schemeta any sanction; they were submitted for unrestricted discussion, and might all be rejected if the fathers thought fit. Careful arrangements were made to secure the greatest freedom of debate, and the most minute examination both of the original schemata and of whatever amendments might be suggested, every point being fully considered both in the general congregation of the bishops and in the appropriate committees. The committees, or "deputations", as they were called, were six in number —namely, 1. On excuses for non-attendance and for leave of absence, 5 members; 2. Grievances and I complaints, 5 members; 3. Faith, 24 members; 4. Discipline, 24 members; 5. Regular orders, 2.1 members; 6. Oriental rites and missions, 24 members. Each of the last four had a cardinal for president, named by the Pope; the members were elected by ballot in the full council. The most important committee was that on Faith; Cardinal Bilio was chairman, and the members comprised 3 bishops from Italy, 2 from France, 2 from Spain, 2 from the United States (Baltimore and San Francisco), 2 from South America, one each from England, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Bavaria, Prussia, Switzerland, and India, and the Armenian patriarch.

On the 8th of December, 1869, the Council of the Vatican opened with magnificent ceremony.

The number of the fathers present was seven hundred and twenty-two—namely, 49 cardinals, 9 patriarchs, 4 primates, 123 archbishops, 480 bishops, 28 abbots, and 29 chiefs of religious orders. Rain fell in torrents, but from an early hour in the morning the church and square of St. Peter were filled with visitors from all parts of the earth, and several royal personages were among the privileged spectators. The sessions were held in the right-hand transept of St. Peter's, which had been divided from the body of the church by a massive partition. Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Patrizi, the Veni Creator was sung, and the Holy Father made a short address. Thus began the momentous deliberations which, prolonged for more than eight months, were to "mark this age, as the Council of Nicea and the Council of Trent now mark in history the fourth and the sixteenth centuries."

The business of the council was transacted in private, and the fathers were pledged to secrecy; but the newspaper press was soon filled with the most exciting reports of scenes within the sacred hail, quarrels among the bishops, and violent attempts of the partisans of infallibility to stifle free discussion. The Augsburg Gazelle in particular became the receptacle of torrents of mendacity, which were thence distributed all over the world. The most important of the innumerable falsehoods were exposed from time to time by certain of the bishops, and the world has now nearly forgotten them. Whatever vitality they may have retained has perhaps been destroyed by the True Story of Cardinal Manning, who was "enabled to attend, with the exception of about three or four days, every session of the council, eighty-nine in number, from the opening to the close", and who bears the most impressive testimony to the "calmness, self-respect, mutual forbearance, courtesy, and self-control" of the venerable assembly, the absolute freedom and great fullness of the debates, and the spirit of charity and devotion which filled the entire body. A fair idea of the thoroughness of the discussions given by Dr. Manning's detailed account of the passing of the first decree, on the Catholic Faith. The original schema was entirely remodeled, their amended six times in its new shape, referred again and again from general congregation to committee, and from committee back again to general congregation, and finally adopted unanimously after 364 separate amendments had been examined and voted on, and four months' time had been spent in the labor. The first dogmatic constitution, "Of the Catholic Faith," was thus formally adopted in the third "public session" of the council, April 24, 187o, when 667 votes were cast.

In preparing the second schema, on the Church of Christ, the Commission of Direction was obliged to consider the question of infallibility, and on the all of February, 1869, it reached the questions, first, "whether the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff can be defined as an article of faith"; and, secondly, "whether it ought to be defined". To the first the commission replied unanimously in the affirmative. Respecting the second they decided, with one dissenting voice, "that this subject ought not to be proposed by the Apostolic See except at the petition of the bishops". When the schema on the Church was introduced, therefore, it contained no definition of the doctrine of infallibility. But a large majority of the bishops believed that the definition was necessary in view of what had taken place outside the council, and they consequently resorted to the regular course of presenting a petition to the Commission of Postulates, asking that a chapter on the subject of infallibility should be added to the schema. The petition, drawn up by a few of the bishops in an informal meeting, received four hundred and fifty signatures. In the meantime the opposition circulated a petition against the introduction of the subject, and this received about one hundred names. Both sides gave a summary of their reasons. "Once for all," says Cardinal Manning, "let it be said that the question whether the infallibility of the head of the Church be a true doctrine or not was never discussed in the council, nor even proposed to it. The only question was whether it was expedient, prudent, seasonable, and timely, regard being had to the condition of the world, of the nations of Europe, of the Chris­tians in separation from the Church, to put this truth in the form of a definition". "A grave injustice has been done to the bishops who opposed the definition. The world outside the Church, not believing in infallibility, claimed them as its own. They were treated as if they denied the truth of the doctrine itself. Their opposition was not to the doctrine, but to the defining of it; and not even absolutely to the defining of it, but to the defining of it at this time. ... They who were in the council may be permitted to bear witness to what they heard and know. Not five bishops in the council could be justly thought to have opposed the truth of the doctrine. This is the testimony of one who heard the whole discussion, and never heard an explicit denial of its truth."

The petitions were duly presented to the Commission of Postulates on the 9th of February, 1870, and the commission decided, with hardly any dissent, that a new chapter on infallibility should be introduced. The petition of the four hundred and fifty had been immediately printed in the Augsburg Gazette, and a storm of opposition broke forth. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs on the 20th of February addressed to Rome a diplomatic protest against the declaration, alleging that it involved the extension of infallibility to facts of history, philosophy, and science external to revelation, as well as the absolute subordination to ecclesiastical authority of the constituent principles of civil society, the rights and duties of citizenship, and in general all the rights of the state; and he asked "how it could have been imagined that princes would lower their sovereignty before the supremacy of the court of Rome." Cardinal Antonelli, in answering this extraordinary communication, exposed its misrepresentations of the character and significance of the proposed definition, and pertinently reminded the count that the doctrines of which he complained were no more than the exposition of the maxims and fundamental principles of the Church, repeated over and over again in bulls, pontifical constitutions, and the acts of councils, taught in all Catholic schools and defended by a host of ecclesiastical writers.

One day, when the clamor against the council was at its height, the Holy Father said: "I have just been warned that if the council persist in making this definition the protection of the French army will be withdrawn". And then after a pause he added, with great calmness: "As if the unworthy Vicar of Jesus Christ could be swayed by such motives as these!"

The new chapter on infallibility was distributed to the council on the 7th of March, and eighteen days were allowed for the submission of amendments. The general discussion on the schema of the Primacy, whereof the question of infallibility formed the fourth chapter, did not begin until the 14th of May, and it lasted through fourteen sessions. By that time sixty-four had spoken; the argument was evidently exhausted, and the opposition began to appear factious. According to the regulations of the council, the presiding cardinal, on the petition of ten bishops, might take the sense of the whole body whether the discussion should close. A petition signed not by ten, but by ten or fifteen times ten, was made to this end, and the general debate was stopped by the vote of an immense majority. Then came the special discussions on the introduction to the schema and on each of its four chapters. The fourth chapter, on infallibility, was reached on the 15th of June, and occupied eleven sessions, during which fifty-seven bishops spoke and ninety-six amendments were offered. After all the chapters had been adopted singly the whole schema was put to the decisive vote on the 13th of July. There were 601 fathers present; 451 voted placet, or "ay"; 88 non placet, or "no"; and 62 placet juxta modum!, or "ay, with modifications." This involved the examination of more written amendments, to the number of one hundred and sixty-five, and on the 16th the schema was again put to the vote and passed.

It remained now to formally promulgate the decree in public session. There were many reasons why this last act in the great work should be hastened. A number of the bishops had been compelled by illness to return home; others were sick in Rome; the summer heats were severe and dangerous; more than all, the political situation was full of menace, the definitive rupture between France and Prussia having occurred on the 14th of July, when both Powers recalled their ambassadors. On the 15th the Archbishop of Bordeaux waited upon the Holy Father to beg, in the name of several of the French prelates, that he would complete the definition at once. On the stairs he met the Primate of Hungary, with the archbishops of Paris, Munich, and Milan, the Bishop of Dijon, and Bishop Ketteler of Mayence, who came to petition for a delay or a modification of the decree, which they still regarded as inopportune in the existing condition of society. This double demonstration must have convinced the Holy Father, if perchance he was in doubt, that the controversy ought to be promptly closed. He replied that the circumstances would not admit of delay, and that modifications were impossible. The 18th was accordingly appointed for the fourth public session of the council and the promulgation of the dogmatic constitution "Of the Church of Christ", including the infallibility of the Pontiff. On the previous evening fifty five bishops of the opposition, unwilling to assent to the prudence or usefulness of the definition, but still not attacking the doctrine, signed a paper announcing their intention not to appear at the public session. It was believed that they left Rome.

The fathers assembled at nine o'clock on the morning of the 18th in the hall of the council, whose wide doors on this occasion, as at the other public sessions, were thrown open. Mass being over, the Pope entered, attended by the officers of his court, and took his place on the throne. The customary prayers and the Litany of the Saints were chanted. The Veni Creator was sung by the fathers and people together. Then the dogmatic constitution was read aloud, closing with these words:

"We teach and define it to be a doctrine divinely revealed that when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra—that is, when in the exercise of his office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, and in virtue of his supreme apostolical authority, he defines that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held by the universal Church—he possesses, through the divine assistance promised to him in the Blessed Peter, that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished his Church to be endowed in defining a doctrine of faith or morals; and, therefore, that such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church."

The name of every bishop was called in turn; 535 were present; 533 voted placet; 2 only voted non placet. As the roll began, a furious storm burst over Rome, and peals of thunder mingled with the declarations of the fathers. The Pontiff confirmed the decree in the usual form, whereat there rose from the lips of the bishops within the hall and the multitude in the open church a murmur of approbation which swelled by degrees to a shout of "Viva Pio Nono, Papa infallibile!" In a short allocution the Holy Father prayed that the few who had been of another mind in the time of storm might, in a season of calm and "in the gentle air", be reunited to the great majority of their brethren. His prayer was granted. All the bishops of the opposition gave their adhesion to the decree, and the schism of the "Old Catholics," under Dr. Dollinger, was of too little consequence to be counted a misfortune, except for the handful of disaffected philosophers who took part in it. The session closed with the Te Deum, in which the chorus of the populace drowned the voices of the papal choir.

The work of the council was not complete; but the inconveniences of a longer stay in Rome were so serious to most of the bishops that the sessions were prorogued for the rest of the summer. Before the holiday came to an end the Pope ceased to be master of Rome, and the council, never dissolved, has never yet been able to reassemble.