Letters From Rome on the CouncilDöllinger, Johann Joseph Ignaz von
History
Letters From Rome on the Council
Döllinger, Johann Joseph Ignaz von
Popes -- Infallibility; Vatican Council (1st : 1869-1870 : Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano)
If the general war required by the principles of the new _Schema_ against
modern systems and governments, which conflict in numberless cases with
the laws of the Church, is to be undertaken, the question arises, Where is
the army to carry it on, and what weapons are to be employed? No doubt the
trumpeters of the army are ready at hand, viz., the Jesuits of the
_Civiltà_ and the monastery of Laach, but it seems a doubtful look-out
about soldiers. The Jesuits, indeed, command at present a considerable
number of distinguished and wealthy females, but that will not go far in
the great contest against laws, parliaments and governments. The Pope
himself must principally supply the arms, which can only be the old ones
of excommunication, interdict and processes of the Inquisition.
Excommunication was formerly very effective, when the excommunicated could
be proceeded against as heretics after a twelve-month, but that is no
longer feasible. Interdict, too, is become a blunted instrument, which no
Pope has ventured to make use of since Paul V. succumbed in his battle
with Venice. The Inquisition only survives now for the 700,000 souls of
the present States of the Church. That drastic means of giving up
refractory populations _en masse_ to slavery and spoliation, as applied by
Clement V., Nicolas V., Julius II., and Paul III., cannot easily be
adopted now. So they will be content for the time with establishing the
principle, and must await more favourable circumstances for realizing it.
But the Bishops are between two fires: they are discredited with Rome,
because they must continue to acknowledge the civil laws, which are in
fact condemned; they are exposed with their Governments and people to the
constant suspicion of being on the watch for some political complication
to secure the triumph, at least in particular cases, of the ecclesiastical
principles recognised as valid at Rome—in other words, the Decretals—over
the laws of the State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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