And thus among the German Bishops in Rome Hefele’s view has triumphed over Ketteler’s, the logical and decided over the half-and-half policy, and the difficult turning-point has been passed without loss or breach in the party. And not a day too soon! Next week a new _Schema_ and a new order of business will bring the disunion and irritation in the Council to a point. TWENTY-SECOND LETTER. _Rome, Feb. 15, 1870._—If I wrote a fortnight ago that the situation was essentially improved since the first weeks, this must be taken with important reservations. The most keen-sighted of the North American Bishops then said, “We have done nothing at all, and that is a great deal.” He thought it an important gain that of the proposals laid before the Council, the two _Schemata_, nothing had passed, and none of the objects for which it had been convoked had, up to that point, been attained. But this has only been the damming up of a stream which eventually bursts through the more violently, and carries away the dam with it. For the majority of 500, who are resolved to indorse everything and vote every measure proposed, holds firmly together, before and behind; while the minority, on the other hand, is in danger of being shivered to pieces on the rock of opportuneness. The _Schema_ now under discussion, of a common Catechism for the whole Catholic world, is clearly connected with the general programme cut out for the Council; for if the new dogmas are fabricated, they will at once be inserted into this universal Catechism, and thereby inculcated in the simplest and most convenient manner on the youth and the whole body of the faithful. The Jesuits have found the experiment very successful in Germany with their own Catechism, and have thereby naturalized the doctrine of Infallibility gradually, with a precision rendered more explicit in each successive edition in the boys’ and girls’ schools, especially those conducted by nuns. The Catechism has also proved a great financial success, and thus whole countries have become tributary to the Order. In the same way the new Catechism of the Council will be a source of manifold profit to both the _Curia_ and the Jesuits. The _Curia_ treats the Council with scientific skill, like a patient who has first to be gently physicked, and then has stronger doses given him by degrees. First came the _Schema_ of philosophical and theological doctrine, then of discipline, and now the question of a common Catechism. Behind this looms the deeply-cutting _Schema_ on the Church; and when that is triumphantly passed, the _Schema_ on the Pope appears as the crown of the grand legislative work. While the former tractate propounds the _supremum magisterium_ of the Church, as holding sovereign power over lands and seas, souls and bodies, in the last _Schema_ this supreme _magisterium_ crops out in the person of Pius IX., who now enters into the possession of the supreme dominion and powers marked out for him in the dogmatic chart,