If the present situation in regard to the Council is considered, the triumph of the Jesuit ultramontane party there appears highly probable. The demonstration of the Rhenish Catholics has as yet assumed no larger dimensions, and will evidently gain nothing by the projected Catholic meeting at Düsseldorf; for not only is red-hot ultramontanism a decisive obstacle, but the widely growing and deepening religious indifference hinders men from taking any part in movements based on a spirit of loyalty to the Church. In Rome, accordingly, little notice is taken of the movement, and satisfaction is felt at the prospect of expelling this mischievous liberal element from the Church, because then it is hoped the kernel which remains true may be more boldly dealt with. Our German ultramontane press, which lost no time in making a bitter and contemptuous attack on the address of the Rhenish Catholics, is therein only the exponent of the mind of the _Curia_. Meanwhile the German Bishops are preparing themselves to commit an act of doctrinal and ecclesiastical suicide, by renouncing for ever their long obscured but not as yet surrendered rank and authority as supreme judges of faith.(6) Two of them, Bishops Ketteler of Mayence and Fessler of St. Pölten, have already pronounced in separate works for the infallibility of the Pope. The diplomatic action of Prince Hohenlohe in regard to the Council has indeed created for the time a sensation, which still continues among the States interested in the matter, and which eventually culminated in the desire to obtain further information about the propositions to be submitted for the acceptance of the assembled Bishops, but even the representative of France has been baffled by the arts of the _Curia_. When, in June, M. Banneville put the decisive question whether they were not prepared to deny the alarming rumours as to the propositions to be laid before the Council, and to take immediate steps for facilitating the representation of Catholic States in the Council through ambassadors of their own, Antonelli replied that he had no knowledge of what was going on in the Commissions, but as to the second point, the Church in her present changed relations with Catholic States, which sometimes persecute her and sometimes put her on an equality with other religious bodies, could not take the initiative. M. Banneville, who had simply spoken of the presence of an ambassador at the Council, but had said nothing of his rights, stated that this conversation had “profoundly humiliated him.” Thenceforth the Court of Rome was the more confirmed in its resolve to keep out diplomatists from the Council. To an indirect question as to the admission of an ambassador from non-Catholic States, which have a large Catholic population, an instant negative was returned. The quarrel of the Austrian Government with the Bishop of Linz has given a further impulse in the same direction, for then Antonelli began to declare more openly that it was