Yesterday week the Fathers of the Vatican Council, by a
requi- sition signed by 150 prelates, demanded the closing of the general debate on the preamble to the scheme on the primacy of the Pope. The vote was taken, and a great majority obtained for the progress to details, or, as we should say in Parliamentary phrase, for going into committee. Sixty names of prelates who have not been heard were inscribed to speak on the subject, —the Bishop of Orleans' amongst the last. Since then the first two chapters of the schema have been voted with very little discussion,—the great controversy being reserved for the discussion of Chapter 4. We observe that our Catholic contemporaries are somewhat shocked at the notion that there is any arriire pensdi to get the discussion finished in time for the promulgation of the dogma on St. Peter's Day. All these things, they say, are not in human keeping, they are the affair of the Holy Ghost. Be it so. But it was surely a human calculation that if the general discussion went on, the promulgation could not take place on St. Peter's Day. And if it does, will not that calculation have been serviceable to the Holy Ghost ?
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