And certainly the doctrine of Papal Infallibility presents to the reason a sufficiency of stumbling-blocks. In the fourteenth century for instance, the following case arose. John XXII asserted in his bull ‘Cum inter nonnullos’ that the doctrine of the poverty of Christ was heretical. Now, according to the light of reason, one of two things must follow from this – either John XXII was himself a heretic or he was no Pope. For his predecessor, Nicholas III, had asserted in his bull ‘Exiit qui seminat’ that the doctrine of the poverty of Christ was the true doctrine, the denial of which was heresy. Thus if John XXII was right Nicholas III was heretic, and in that case Nicholas’s nominations of Cardinals were void, and the conclave which elected John was illegal; so that John was no Pope, his nominations of Cardinals were void, and the whole Papal succession vitiated. On the other hand, if John was wrong – well, he was a heretic; and the same inconvenient results followed. And, in either case, what becomes of Papal Infallibility?
But such crude and fundamental questions as these were not likely to trouble the Council. The discordant minority took another line. Infallibility they admitted readily enough – the infallibility, that is to say, of the Church; what they shrank from was the pronouncement that this infallibility was concentrated in the Bishop of Rome. They would not actually deny that, as a matter of fact, it was so concentrated; but to declare that it was, to make the belief that it was an article of faith – what could be more – it was their favourite expression – more inopportune? In truth, the Gallican spirit still lingered among them. At heart, they hated the autocracy of Rome – the domination of the centralized Italian organization over the whole vast body of the Church. They secretly hankered, even at this late hour, after some form of constitutional government, and they knew that the last faint vestige of such a dream would vanish utterly with the declaration of the infallibility of the Pope. It did not occur to them, apparently, that a constitutional Catholicism might be a contradiction in terms, and that the Catholic Church without the absolute dominion of the Pope might resemble the play of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
Pius IX himself was troubled by no doubts. ‘Before I was Pope,’ he observed, ‘I believed in Papal Infallibility, now I feel it.’ As for Manning, his certainty was no less complete than his master’s. Apart from the Holy Ghost, his appointment to the See of Westminster had been due to Pio Nono’s shrewd appreciation of the fact that he was the one man in England upon whose fidelity the Roman Government could absolutely rely. The voice which kept repeating ‘Mettetelo li, mettetelo li’ in his Holiness’s ear, whether or not it was inspired by God, was certainly inspired by political sagacity. For now Manning was to show that he was not unworthy of the trust which had been reposed in him. He flew to Rome in a whirlwind of Papal enthusiasm. On the way, in Paris, he stopped for a moment to interview those two great props of French respectability, M. Guizot and M. Thiers. Both were careful not to commit themselves, but both were exceedingly polite. ‘I am awaiting your Council,’ said M. Guizot, ‘with great anxiety. It is the last great moral power and may restore the peace of Europe.’ M. Thiers delivered a brief harangue in favour of the principles of the Revolution, which, he declared, were the very marrow of all Frenchmen; yet, he added, he had always supported the Temporal Power of the Pope. ‘Mais, M. Thiêrs,’ said Manning, ‘vous êtes effectivement croyant.’ ‘En Dieu,’ replied M. Thiers.
The Rome which Manning reached towards the close of 1869 was still the Rome which, for so many centuries, had been the proud and visible apex, the palpitating heart, the sacred sanctuary, of the most extraordinary mingling of spiritual and earthly powers that the world has ever known. The Pope now, it is true, ruled over little more than the City itself – the Patrimony of St Peter – and he ruled there less by the Grace of God than by the goodwill of Napoleon III; yet he was still a sovereign Prince; and Rome was still the capital of the Papal State; she was not yet the capital of Italy. The last hour of this strange dominion had almost struck. As if she knew that her doom was upon her the Eternal City arrayed herself to meet it in all her glory. The whole world seemed to be gathered together within her walls. Her streets were filled with crowned heads and Princes of the Church, great ladies and great theologians, artists and friars, diplomats and newspaper reporters. Seven hundred bishops were there, from all the corners of Christendom, and in all the varieties of ecclesiastical magnificence – in falling lace and sweeping purple and flowing violet veils. Zouaves stood in the colonnade of St Peter’s, and Papal troops were on the Quirinal. Cardinals passed, hatted and robed, in their enormous carriage of state, like mysterious painted idols. Then there was a sudden hush: the crowd grew thicker and expectation filled the air. Yes! it was he! He was coming! The Holy Father! But first there appeared, mounted on a white mule and clothed in a magenta mantle, a grave dignitary bearing aloft a silver cross. The golden coach followed, drawn by six horses gorgeously caparisoned, and within, the smiling white-haired Pio Nono, scattering his benedictions, while the multitude fell upon its knees as one man. Such were the daily spectacles of coloured pomp and of antique solemnity, which – so long as the sun was shining, at any rate – dazzled the onlooker into a happy forgetfulness of the reverse side of the Papal dispensation – the nauseating filth of the highways, the cattle stabled in the palaces of the great, and the fever flitting through the ghastly tenements of the poor.
In St Peter’s, the North Transept had been screened off; rows of wooden seats had been erected, covered with Brussels carpet; and upon these seats sat, each crowned with a white mitre, the seven hundred Bishops in Council. Here all day long rolled forth, in sonorous Latin, the interminable periods of episcopal oratory; but it was not here that the issue of the Council was determined. The assembled Fathers might talk till the marbles of St Peter’s themselves grew weary of the reverberations; the fate of the Church was decided in a very different manner – by little knots of influential persons meeting quietly of a morning in the back room of some inconspicuous lodging-house, by a sunset rendezvous in the Borghese gardens between a Cardinal and a diplomat, by a whispered conference in an alcove at a princess’s evening party, with the gay world chattering all about. And, of course, on such momentous occasions as these, Manning was in his element. None knew those difficult ropes better than he; none used them with a more serviceable and yet discreet alacrity. In every juncture he had the right word, or the right silence; his influence ramified in all directions, from the Pope’s audience chamber to the English Cabinet. ‘Il Diavolo del Concilio’ his enemies called him; and he gloried in the name.
The real crux of the position was less ecclesiastical than diplomatic. The Papal Court, with its huge majority of Italian Bishops, could make sure enough, when it came to the point, of carrying its wishes through the Council; what was far more dubious was the attitude of the foreign Governments – especially those of France and England. The French Government dreaded a schism among its Catholic subjects; it disliked the prospect of an extension of the influence of the Pope over the mass of the population of France; and, since the very existence of the last remnant of the Pope’s Temporal Power depended upon the French army, it was able to apply considerable pressure upon the Vatican. The interests of England were less directly involved, but it happened that at this moment Mr Gladstone was Prime Minister, and Mr Gladstone entertained strong views upon the Infallibility of the Pope. His opinions upon the subject were in part the outcome of his friendship with Lord Acton, a historian to whom learning and judgement had not been granted in equal proportions, and who, after years of incredible and indeed well-nigh mythical research, had come to the conclusion that the Pope could err. In this Mr Gladstone entirely concurred, though he did not share the rest of his friend’s theological opinions; for Lord Acton, while straining at the gnat of Infallibility, had swallowed the camel of the Roman Catholic Faith. ‘Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?’ one cannot help asking, as one watched that laborious and scrupulous scholar, that lifelong enthusiast for liberty, t
hat almost hysterical reviler of priesthood and persecution, trailing his learning so discrepantly along the dusty Roman way. But there are some who know how to wear their Rome with a difference; and Lord Acton was one of these.
He was now engaged in fluttering like a moth round the Council, and in writing long letters to Mr Gladstone, impressing upon him the gravity of the situation, and urging him to bring his influence to bear. If the Dogma were carried, he declared, no man who accepted it could remain a loyal subject, and Catholics would everywhere become ‘irredeemable enemies of civil and religious liberty’. In these circumstances, was it not plainly incumbent upon the English Government, involved as it was with the powerful Roman Catholic forces in Ireland, to intervene? Mr Gladstone allowed himself to become convinced, and Lord Acton began to hope that his efforts would be successful. But he had forgotten one element in the situation; he had reckoned without the Archbishop of Westminster. The sharp nose of Manning sniffed out the whole intrigue. Though he despised Lord Acton almost as much as he disliked him – ‘such men,’ he said, ‘are all vanity: they have the inflation of German professors, and the ruthless talk of undergraduates’ – yet he realized clearly enough the danger of his correspondence with the Prime Minister, and immediately took steps to counteract it. There was a semi-official agent of the English Government in Rome, Mr Odo Russell, and round him Manning set to work to spin his spider’s web of delicate and clinging diplomacy. Preliminary politenesses were followed by long walks upon the Pincio, and the gradual interchange of more and more important and confidential communications. Soon poor Mr Russell was little better than a fly buzzing in gossamer. And Manning was careful to see that he buzzed on the right note. In his dispatches to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, Mr Russell explained in detail the true nature of the Council, that it was merely a meeting of a few Roman Catholic prelates to discuss some internal matters of Church discipline, that it had no political significance whatever, that the question of Infallibility, about which there had been so much random talk, was a purely theological question, and that, whatever decision might be come to on the subject, the position of Roman Catholics throughout the world would remain unchanged. Whether the effect of these affirmations upon Lord Clarendon was as great as Manning supposed, is somewhat doubtful; but it is at any rate certain that Mr Gladstone failed to carry the Cabinet with him; and when at last a proposal was definitely made that the English Government should invite the Powers of Europe to intervene at the Vatican, it was rejected. Manning always believed that this was the direct result of Mr Russell’s dispatches, which had acted as an antidote to the poison of Lord Acton’s letters, and thus carried the day. If that was so – the discretion of biographers has not yet entirely lifted the veil from these proceedings – Manning had assuredly performed no small service for his cause. Yet his modesty would not allow him to assume for himself a credit which, after all, was due elsewhere; and when he told the story of those days, he would add, with more than wonted seriousness, ‘It was by the Divine Will that the designs of His enemies were frustrated.’
Meanwhile in the North Transept of St Peter’s a certain amount of preliminary business had been carried through. Various miscellaneous points in Christian doctrine had been satisfactorily determined. Among others, the following Canons were laid down by the Fathers. ‘If any one do not accept for sacred and canonical the whole and every part of the Books of Holy Scripture, or deny that they are divinely inspired, let him be anathema.’ ‘If any one say that miracles cannot be, and therefore the accounts of them, even those in Holy Scriptures, must be assigned a place among fables and myths, or that the divine origin of the Christian religion cannot rightly be proved from them, let him be anathema.’ ‘If any one say that the doctrines of the Church can ever receive a sense in accordance with the progress of science, other than that sense which the Church has understood and still understands, let him be anathema.’ ‘If any one say that it is not possible, by the natural light of human reason, to acquire a certain knowledge of the One and True God, let him be anathema.’ In other words, it became an article of Faith that Faith was not necessary for a true knowledge of God. Having disposed of these minor matters, the Fathers found themselves at last approaching the great question of Infallibility. Two main issues, it soon appeared, were before them: the Pope’s Infallibility was admired, ostensibly at least, by all; what remained to be determined was, (1) whether the definition of the Pope’s Infallibility was opportune, and (2) what the definition of the Pope’s Infallibility was. (1) It soon became clear that the sense of the Council was overwhelmingly in favour of a definition. The Inopportunists were a small minority; they were outvoted, and they were obliged to give way. It only remained, therefore, to come to a decision upon the second question – what the definition should actually be. (2) It now became the object of the Inopportunists to limit the scope of the definition as much as possible, while the Infallibilists were no less eager to extend it. Now everyone – or nearly everyone – was ready to limit the Papal Infallibility to pronouncements ex cathedrâ – that is to say, to those made by the Pope in his capacity of Universal Doctor; but this only served to raise the ulterior, the portentous, and indeed the really crucial question – to which of the Papal pronouncements ex cathedrâ did Infallibility adhere? The discussions which followed were, naturally enough, numerous, complicated, and embittered, and in all of them Manning played a conspicuous part. For two months the Fathers deliberated; through fifty sessions they sought the guidance of the Holy Ghost. The wooden seats, covered though they were with Brussels carpet, grew harder and harder; and still the mitred Councillors sat on. The Pope himself began to grow impatient; for one thing, he declared, he was being ruined by the mere expense of lodging and keeping the multitude of his adherents. ‘Questi infallibilisti mi faranno fallire’, said his Holiness. At length it appeared that the Inopportunists were dragging out the proceedings in the hope of obtaining an indefinite postponement. Then the authorities began to act; a bishop was shouted down, and the closure was brought into operation. At this point the French Government, after long hesitation, finally decided to intervene, and Cardinal Antonelli was informed that if the Definition was proceeded with the French troops would be withdrawn from Rome. But the astute Cardinal judged that he could safely ignore the threat. He saw that Napoleon III was tottering to his fall and would never risk an open rupture with the Vatican. Accordingly it was determined to bring the proceedings to a close by a final vote. Already the Inopportunists, seeing that the game was up, had shaken the dust of Rome from their feet. On 18 July 1870 the Council met for the last time. As the first of the Fathers stepped forward to declare his vote, a storm of thunder and lightning suddenly burst over St Peter’s. All through the morning the voting continued, and every vote was accompanied by a flash and a roar from heaven. Both sides, with equal justice, claimed the portent as a manifestation of the Divine Opinion. When the votes were examined, it was found that five hundred and thirty three were in favour of the proposed definition and two against it. Next day war was declared between France and Germany, and a few weeks later the French troops were withdrawn from Rome. Almost in the same moment the successor of St Peter had lost his Temporal Power and gained Infallibility.
What the Council had done was merely to assent to a definition of the dogma of the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff which Pius IX had issued, proprio motu, a few days before. The definition itself was perhaps somewhat less extreme than might have been expected. The Pope, it declared, is possessed, when he speaks ex cathedrâ, of ‘that infallibility with which the Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals.’ Thus it became a dogma of faith that a Papal definition regarding faith or morals is infallible; but beyond that both the Holy Father and the Council maintained a judicious reserve. Over what other matters besides faith and morals the Papal infallibility might or might not extend still remained in doubt. And there were further questions, no less serious, to which no decis
ive answer was then, or ever has been since, provided. How was it to be determined, for instance, which particular Papal decisions did in fact come within the scope of the definition? Who was to decide what was or was not a matter of faith or morals? Or precisely when the Roman Pontiff was speaking ex cathedrâ? Was the famous Syllabus Errorum, for example, issued ex cathedrâ or not? Grave theologians have never been able to make up their minds. Yet to admit doubts in such matters as these is surely dangerous. ‘In duty to our supreme pastoral office,’ proclaimed the Sovereign Pontiff, ‘by the bowels of Christ we earnestly entreat all Christ’s faithful people, and we also command them by the authority of God and our Saviour, that they study and labour to expel and eliminate errors and display the light of the purest faith.’ Well might the faithful study and labour to such ends! For, while the offence remained ambiguous, there was no ambiguity about the penalty. One hair’s-breadth from the unknown path of truth, one shadow of impurity in the mysterious light of faith – and there shall be anathema! anathema! anathema! When the framers of such edicts called upon the bowels of Christ to justify them, might they not have done well to have paused a little, and to have called to mind the counsel of another sovereign ruler, though a heretic – Oliver Cromwell? ‘Bethink ye, bethink ye, in the bowels of Christ, that ye may be mistaken!’
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