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)
Another proof was given on this occasion of the very different measure
dealt to the two parties. The Infallibilist Address was at once printed,
though everything else here has first to undergo the most rigorous
censorship. The Roman censors would, of course, have refused their
_imprimatur_ to the counter address, and there was some scruple felt about
printing it out of the country, as though by an evasion of the Papal laws,
and so it cannot be printed at all. Even Bishop Dupanloup has been refused
permission to print his answer to Deschamps. The address will probably be
subscribed by the Bishops of each nation in separate batches, so that
there will be five addresses, coinciding in substance. Forty-seven Germans
and Hungarians are reckoned on—so many have subscribed already—and
thirty-five French. The Anglo-Americans have somewhat altered the wording
of the address, and say they can command twenty-five signatures. But what
is most remarkable is, that a considerable section of the North-Italian
Bishops from Piedmont and Lombardy now come out as opponents of
Infallibilism, and give promise of twenty-five signatures for the counter
address. The decisive point with them is their relation to the Italian
nation and government, for the Infallibilist dogma must inevitably lead to
a hopelessly incurable rupture between it and the Church. To these must be
added six Irish and four Portuguese, making in all an Opposition of from
140 to 150 votes.
The great question daily mooted in the Vatican is now, how Infallibility
can be erected into a dogma in spite of the resistance of the Opposition
minority, for there is no longer any illusion as to an obstinate residue
of anti-Infallibilist protesters being sure to be left, after allowing for
the fullest effects of all the alluring seductions used. Precedents are
sought for in the history of Councils where the majority has passed
decrees according to its own will, without regard to the opposite
representations and negative votes of the minority. But no such precedents
are to be found. At all Councils from Nice downwards the dogmatic decrees
have always been passed only with entire or approximate unanimity. Even at
Trent, where the Italians, commanded from Rome through the legates,
dominated everything, many very important decrees were abandoned after
being drawn up, as soon as a few Bishops only had pronounced against them.
If only this fatal precedent of the Tridentine Synod could be got rid of!
The Jesuits investigate and refine, but, unluckily for them, one of their
own body, Father Matignon, in 1868, when an Opposition was still believed
to be impossible, himself established the fact, and justified it on
doctrinal grounds;(36) and that is made use of now. So there is nothing
left but to labour indefatigably for the conversion of opponents. But
people in Rome seem not to know “qu’on ne prend pas les mouches avec du
vinaigre;” and that methods of coercion, intimidation, and discrediting
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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