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)
And thus, if Papal Infallibility is defined at Rome, it will
be almost equivalent for us to a sentence of death on the Catholic Church
in Russia, for everything will be done to undermine a Church regarded as
an enemy and standing menace to the State.”
Two new works have arrived here, each of which, in its own way, touches on
the great question of the day. The one is a book of Dr. Pusey’s, on the
relations of the English Church to the Catholic, where he declares that
making Papal Infallibility a dogma would destroy all hope of a reunion of
the Churches, or of the adhesion of any considerable section of the
English Church.(37) Manning has assured them in Rome of precisely the
reverse. The other work is the first Letter of the famous Oratorian,
Father Gratry, to the Archbishop of Mechlin, a pungent criticism on that
Prelate’s brochure in favour of Infallibility, and on his gross
misrepresentations of the history of Pope Honorius.(38) Gratry also
exposes the Roman falsifications introduced into the Breviary. It may
alarm the curialists, when they discover how all the most intellectually
conspicuous among the French clergy pronounce against their favourite
doctrine, and their design of imposing it on the whole Church, and how the
disreputable means employed for building up this system, by trickery and
forgeries, are more and more being brought to light.
The Pope’s attempt to reduce 740 members of the Council to complete
silence on all that goes on there has proved a failure, as might have been
foreseen. A great deal has come out, and the Pope manifests great
displeasure at it. In a conversation with a diplomatist, who asked him
how, with this rule, trustworthy reports could be sent to the different
Governments, he accused the French Bishops of violating the secrets of the
Council, and called them “chatterboxes” (_chiacceroni_). Accordingly, in
the Session of January 14, a more rigorous version of the order of
business was read, to the effect that the Pope had made it a mortal sin to
communicate anything that took place in the Council; so that any Bishop
who should, for instance, show a theologian, whose advice he wanted, a
passage from the _Schema_ under discussion, or repeat an expression used
in one of the speeches, incurs everlasting damnation! If your readers
think this incredible, I can only assure them that it is literally true,
and must refer them to the moral theology of the Jesuits on the foundation
of the Pope’s right to brand human actions, forbidden by no law of God,
with the guilt of mortal sin, at his good pleasure. A Papal theologian,
whom I questioned on the subject, appealed simply to the statement of
Boniface VIII., that the Pope holds all rights in the shrine of his
breast.
TWELFTH LETTER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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