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)
The Address of the forty-five German and Hungarian Bishops objects to the
boundaries, as they had been hitherto drawn by the Pope for the teaching
of the Church, being transgressed, and the Council being compelled to
enter on a discussion of the grounds _pro_ and _con_, which must
necessarily bring much suspicious matter into public debate. The
definition itself would be sure to excite hostility against the Church,
even with men of the better sort (_melioris notæ viros_) and lead to
attacks upon her rights. It may be said that the whole German episcopate,
and the immense majority of the German Catholic Church by their mouth, has
spoken out against the Infallibilist dogma.
Simor, Patriarch of Hungary, has not, or at least not yet, subscribed the
Address, but he spoke emphatically against the dogma in the meeting of
German Bishops on January 16. All the other Hungarian Bishops at Rome,
thirteen in number, have signed the Address; only the Greek Uniate Bishop
of Papp-Szilaghy has, like Simor, omitted to do so. The North Italian
Bishops too have determined on an address, substantially identical with
the German one.
The French Address, which thirty-three Bishops agreed to on January 15, at
a meeting at Cardinal Mathieu’s, differs somewhat in wording from the
German, but the contents are the same in the main, and it is hoped to get
forty signatures for this; twenty French Bishops wish to abstain from
signing anything, and something under twenty have signed Manning’s
address, so that there are still twice as many French on the side of the
Opposition as of the definition. We may add seventeen North Americans, who
have accepted the German Address, with the omission of the clauses omitted
in the French one, while the North Italians adopted it unaltered. The
opposition to the dogma has thus maintained an universal character,
including the most various nationalities. But it would be hardly feasible
to decide a new dogma by mere counting of heads, treating the Bishops,
like the privates of a regiment, as all equal, so that one vote is worth
just the same as another. An analysis of the component elements of this
majority, and a comparison of it with the Opposition in scientific culture
and representation of souls, would give sufficiently impressive results.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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