THE SITUATION IN ROME.—X.
[FROM OCR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] Rome, February 12, 1870. IT is probable that this will be the last letter I shall be able to address to you from Rome, as circumstances are likely to bring my stay to a speedy termination. I must thank you for having allowed me freely to express in your columns such observations as I have been enabled to make during my sojourn, and I assure you that I feel sensible of the liberal spirit in which you have admitted my communications, though I could see that you did not always agree with them. I can only affirm that I have tried to give im- partially a reflection of things as they really were, and not to make my letters the expression of mere party views.
I read that in the 311morial Diplontatique—a journal of some authority, from its reputed connection with parties of considerable political position—there has appeared a statement declaring apocryphal the canons and other extracts from the last scheme submitted to the Bishops, which have been published in the Augsburg Gazette and other journals. I have not by me the copies of this journal, so as to be able to compare word by word the text given there with that in the official volume. It is possible that copyists may have committed some verbal errors, which would just
bring it within literal truth to impugn the correctness of the ver- sion published. I must, however, say that having had the oppor- tunity of perusing the undoubted text in the volume itself, I afterwards read the extracts in the papers without recognizing anything that I had not seen before. If, therefore, any alteration has been made, it can only extend to some literal variations, the result of a slip of hand, which does not at all touch the substance of the document. It does, however, occur to me as something rather curious that such a deliberate contradiction should at this moment be put forth to a document the existence of which is nevertheless absolutely positive. I cannot dismiss the impression that in thus denying, through the medium of a much read and in- fluential paper, the authenticity of these canons as published, there was something more in view than simply to quash noise and con- troversy which might be unreasonable. I must confess that I have nothing to go upon but inference in my surmises. I merely try to put two and two together, and so find myself arrive at a quantity which I now present to you as the outcome of my cal- culation. The quantity I bring out is that an attempt is at work just now to dissolve by every conceivable application the still brittle mass of Episcopal opposition, and that every step taken and every move made just now are to be referred to operations to this end. Now, it is also an impression I have acquired during my stay here, that what has in great degree weighed with many Bishops to make them gradually commit themselves more and more to the Anti-Infallibilist party, was the knowledge that gradually dawned on them in Rome of all that was laid up in store for their acceptance iu the dogmatic factories of the Gesu. I am not considering now the prominent leaders of the Opposition. The prelates, like Darboy and Strossmayer, who came to Rome with their minds quite clear on all points, were very few indeed. They can be counted on the finger-ends, whereas at present there are not less than 137 Bishops who have proceeded to the length of actually affixing their names to the Anti- Infallibilist Address. It is the rank and tile I speak of, which gives a force in the Council to the Opposition, and a reality to what otherwise, if represented only by individual prelates of exceptional character, would be construed into the mere expression of individual idiosyncrasies. This rank and file has been mainly pushed on to its present stand-point by the unpleasant revelations which have burst on it as to what it would be asked to concur in by the promoters of the Infallibility dogma. It may seem incredible that so many Bishops should have been so long before they realized to themselves the true bearing of things. This is only a fresh proof of the general want of intellectual grasp which marks the Episcopate as constituted under the careful influence of Jesuit selection. I am perfectly convinced that there are a considerable number of Bishops who came to Rome entertaining no indisposi- tion against the idea of Infallibility in itself as metaphysical dognia, and who only in Rome became scared at what was prac- tically laid up for their acceptance in the provisions prepared by the doctors of the Vatican. Now what scared them was the antagonism presented in these articles to institutions and relations they had been in the habit of dealing with ; and secondly, the personal experience they now gained of the stringent subjection under the supremacy of an absolute superior to which it was intended to reduce the Episcopal order. These points touched practically to the quick men who were otherwise not capable of inferring the consequences of a doctrine from the premisses. The Bishops now saw themselves, however, face to face with propositions and articles the acceptance of which would bring them into most uncomfortable collisions in their dioceses with the State and with a large section of their flocks, and for the first time it dawned on them that these unpleasant and undesirable contingencies followed naturally and logically on the premise of the Pope's Infallibility. Also, I apprehend that for the first time there broke a light on many minds as to the dishonest manner in which the Jesuit theologians manipulated texts. An instance of this is afforded in the very scheme under question. In the eleventh chapter, treating of the Papal primacy, there is inserted a definition taken from the celebrated decree of the Council of Florence, but in the middle of which there occurs a most invidious interpolation. By the decree, Christ's Vicar was declared Head of the Unirersal Church, Father and Doctor of all Christians, whereas here are made to follow the words and Supreme Judge, the drift of which is unmistakable. Well, if I may presume to give the impression on my mind, I think that the cue of those who have been all along bent on getting Infallibility promulgated has been of late to bold out the offer of dropping those particular propositions and articles which have given umbrage, with the view of inducing the Bishops in the relief of their hearts to vote in return the
definition as something of merely abstract bearing. I have no doubt that the substance of the compromise carried without success to Paris by the Archbishop of Algiers was of this nature, and I am quite sure that the principal lever being put in motion at present to make half-hearted and timid Bishops hark back to a loyal proclamation of the Pope's superlativeness is the prospect of the withdrawal of propositions that would have unpleasant practical consequences for them in their dealings at home. This is the lure which is being spread out invitingly to induce fluttered prelates to fly back to their perches at the Gesu.
In reference to such a proceeding, two points strike me as deserving attention. One is, that the whole thing is a mere stratagem to entrap, there being no real intention whatever to waive any of the essential consequences which have been fore- shadowed. Momentary and delusive postponement alone, is con- templated. The other point I consider specially interesting is the flimsy texture of the tactics employed, as illustrative of the want of ability exhibited by the Jesuits to deal adequately with the cir- cumstances of the age they are pitted against. I am myself at a loss to understand how any one could be simple enough to believe that there can be any sincere disposition to rest content with the mere utterance of some unmeaning formula, such as the same Mimorial Diplomatique announces in incomprehensible terms as having a merely didactic import. Such an utterance, I take it, is meant to amount to no more than the expression of what are called pious thoughts, the vague state in which, for instance, the notion of the Immaculate Conception was left by the Council of Trent. It requires only a moment's reflection to become aware that for the theologians of the Jesuit school to put up with nothing more definite than such an unmeaning utterance, in regard to the pet doctrine of their teaching, and this from a Council so solemnly convened for the express purpose of stamp- ing on it the mark of authoritative confirmation, is to confess a tremendous collapse of their influence and position. Now, on taking up the latest number of the Civilta Cattolica, that is, one issued at the precise moment when Bishops are sought to be smoothed down by nebulous intimations that there is no intention of insisting on the special points they have been particularly disturbed at, I read an article not only reiterat- ing the tenets embodied in the most objectionable schedules, but affirming actually that the laws of a. State in antagonism to Pontifical utterances are ipso facto of no force. I am aware that even the very flower and pink of Infallibilist Bishops, one of the most ardent and indefatigable champions of the dogma, when challenged about the particular thesis of the Civilta, does not scruple to speak of it as a mere periodical, the organ of certain individual Jesuits. I do not care to inquire into the validity of this plea. I am content with the fact that whether the organ of an authoritative body, or only of certain individuals, throughout it has shown itself the organ of parties so marvellously in the confidence of what was thought desirable and was about to be done by the Pope, that all which has been laid before the Council, and all which has there happened under sanction of authority, has previously been heralded in its pages ; and I there- fore point to this particular article RS conclusive that these parties, whose personal influence over the Pope no one presumes to say has varied, are still set on the dissemination of the identical ideas they have been so strenuously advocating for years. Nor is it unworthy of notice that in Rome, where every literary production is under strictest censure, and where Monseigneur Maret's last treatise is at present not allowed to be sold, there should have appeared from the pen of L. Peoja, a Roman priest, a tract affirming the Pope's right to be supreme in civil matters. The second point I referred to is indeed less calculated to strike the eye, but contains within it the pith and substance of much which is cardinal in the controversy now being fought out. The more I look intently at the fight being made under the direction of the Jesuits, the more I feel forced on me the conviction that these men, reputed to be such masters of fence, are in truth pitted against a power they do not understand how to grapple with. The essence of Jesuit training is mechanical. It has turned out as by a superior machinery admirably complete creatures according to pattern, and equipped with a certain set of faculties ; but the whole method is strictly confined, and all the appurtenances of Jesuit culture are vigilantly restricted within a prescribed range. Hence the result has been to produce a set of men marvellously well fitted for specific purposes, but never able to seize accurately the shift- ing instincts of various ages, because their peculiar training is calculated to turn out ingenious rather than intelligent, and shifty rather than dexterous, spirits. The Jesuits are inoculated and even saturated with an intellectual fluid that can intensify but
not enlarge the mind ; and so, though indefatigable in plying all the arts it has been possible to acquire by devoted study in the service of that Roman Court to which they have devoted them- selves, it has ever happened that their insight, dimmed by pre- possessions and passionate ardour, has been at a loss to read correctly the signs of the times. The Jesuits have been a zealous and an admirable body-guard, doing incessant hard work, at one time with success, to win back apostates to the Pope ; but what the Jesuits never have shown themselves up to—and to have done so would have been indeed a contradiction to their whole mental constitution and the structure of their system—is the descrying with statesmanlike instinct the great forces of history. Now, I firmly believe that this shortcoming on their part has never been more signally evinced than on this occasion. 'They never took in the immense difference of the moral forces of a Council convened in the present century and those of Councils of other ages. The Jesuits knew and conceived only an antiquated world, and over- looked utterly facts that had been growing up. They went out to fight and put down modern forces with the same misappre- hension of actualities that a general would be now-a-days guilty of in going into the field with an equipment of crossbows, however perfect. They were utterly insensible of the peculiar nature of the forces that had been called into existence by the nineteenth century, and which they would needs have to deal with. For though I have no wish to represent the Bishops of the Opposition as individually men of an extraordinarily eminent type, —at least, with a few exceptions, I hold that the leaven working in them has been the leaven of nineteenth-century feeling, frag- mentary and imperfect and undeveloped, I grant, but for all that a splinter of the all-pervading, liberalizing energy which the Episcopal order has contracted in its exposure to practical intercourse with the world. Now, against this element the peculiar weapons of Jesuit manufacture have proved as inadequate as a copper blade is for cutting stone ; and so from the very beginning of the Council the doings of the party have resulted in nothing but a series of blunders. If this letter were not already so long, I would show this in detail, for I hold it to be one of the most in- teresting incidents to note how all through things have been turn- ing unexpectedly against the Jesuit calculations, and every time because the Fathers struck awkwardly upon an instinctively rebellious element, from sheer inability to recognize the suscepti- bility of the same, and from an incorrigible pertinacity always just to touch this needlessly to the quick. Moreover, in every instance the element so bunglingly irritated and stirred up will be found to be one in virtual affinity with the great broad current that runs against absolutism, the element of episcopal autonomy, of diocesan privileges, of synodal constitutions, of ancient local rights, in short, of every element in correlation with Chat principle of decentralization and organic independence which the grasping and stifling action of Roman absolutism has been for centuries sternly engaged in sweeping away from the face of the Church, mainly under the shield of Jesuit fervour and propagandism.
Just as I have written the above, I learn, on authority I cannot question, that the idea is entertained of suspending the existing re- gulations as far as they concern the Bishops' right of speech, and of communicating a Papal order to them henceforth only to hand in written observations on any proposition submitted. Some time ago I heard of a similar intention, but refrained from giving cir- culation to a mere rumour, but now I hear it on authority which
Previous page
