TOPICS OF THF, DAY.
THE PAPAL CLAIM AND PROTESTANT SYMPATHIES.
TFFERE is something not entirely intelligible about the heat with which our Protestant journals take side with the Bishop of Orleans and his party in relation to the great con- troversy which is now raging at Rome. Every correspondence to the English papers with which we are acquainted reports with manifest eagerness and favour every sign of the weakness of the Vatican, and with manifest displeasure every sign of its power and every omen of its success. We are told of the Pope's certainly very remarkable and arrogant assumption of a right to veto not merely every decree, but every discussion in the infallible Council which he does not himself approve, with all the passion of partizans of the Council's infallibility as against the Pope's. We are told of the Pope's decision that in case of his death during the sitting of the Council, the selection of the new Pope shall be left to the body of Cardinals, and not to the infallible Council,—which is to be immediately adjourned till a new Pope is elected,—in precisely the same spirit, as if we as Protestants were bound to sympathize with the Council's claim to infallibility, and bound to dispute and resist the Pope's like claim. We are told that these Bulls will be questioned and disputed at the next formal sitting of the Council in the tone of writers who are anxious above everything to keep up the hearts of the Pope's antagonists, and to make the most of any good opportunity for disputing them which the best tacticians see. Our own able special correspondent himself adopts this line,—descanting on the false step made by the Pope in piquing the pride of the Bishops, and on the sure tactical instinct with which Monseigneur Dupanloup will avail himself of the error. Yet we can hardly see the justification of all this party feeling with relation to a discussion entirely external to ourselves,—unless it be a sort of tradition of political jealousy of the Pope's claims as distinct altogether from any theological disagreement with him. In some sense, we suppose, the Council may be regarded as a sort of representative body,— though a representative body claiming infallibility as a represen- tative body is avery bizarre conception,—and thePope as a sort of king, and no doubt it is the tradition of England to sympathize with all representative bodies which repel the assaults of the royal prerogative. Yet, look at the matter from another point of view, and we think it will be seen that Protestant sympathies may very well turn the other way. Unques- tionably, so long as the Catholic Church can assign no real centre of infallibility, and is compelled to fall back on the very vague and intangible definition of quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus as its criterion of theological truth, so long there will be a want of clearness and sharpness about the position of the Church, and a sort of mystery, and shadow, and charm over the nature of its authority, which will pro- bably disappear so soon as you concentrate the whole light of the Church in the focus of the Papal oracles. Certainly, if Pro- testants have the utmost confidence in their own position, and wish to bring their Romanist opponents to book, it will be a far easier task to do so, when they are able to assume that the long line of Papal definitions carries with it all the theological authority which an infallible Church is able to confer, than it is now, when they are only permitted to assume that, though a certain number of Councils, —the ex- ceptions being a very moot point,—have been infallible, all theological decisions not announced by these Councils are only more or less probably divine in proportion to their more or less general acceptance by the Church at large. It is quite clear that for all purposes, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, except that of keeping the truth as much as possible in a certain haze, any decision which makes the issue clear and keen is a great gain. Infallibility in a mist is not a very coherent concep- tion. Anything which removes the mist and brings out the outline clear and sharp must, by necessity, be a gain for it, if it be genuine, and a loss for it, if it be a sham. We can understand those Roman Catholics who think that whatever the a priori improbability of an obscurely defined, doubt- fully distributed, and inarticulately expressed infallibility, there is such an infallibility and no other, and that those are in error who imagine that the Infallibility of the Church is really well defined, concentrated, and clearly expounded to the world. But it is not so easy to under- stand Protestants who hold Rome to be the root of all that is most erroneous and most dangerous in religious doctrine, and who yet feel as if the centralization of the dogmatic
authority of Rome were a new blow to themselves, and one to be vehemently deprecated and, if possible, resisted.
Yet this is how the news has certainly been received of the Pope's calm claim to stop all discussion even of any proposi- tion which he does not himself approve,—in other words, of his assumption of the right to render it simply impossible for the Council to declare anything true which he does not think- true,—that is, to ensure its infallibility by his own still more certain infallibility (of the negative kind). That this has done, even our officially Papal contemporary, the Vatican, admits, when it states that " The Commission appointed by- the Holy Father to examine the propositions presented by- members of the Council includes the following names :- Cardinals Antonelli, Bonnechose, Pitra, and Cullen ; the- Archbishops of Tours, Westminster, Valentia, Baltimore, Malines, Santiago, and Paderborn, and the Patriarch of the Melchite Greeks ;" yet, oddly enough, the Vatican appears to. assert that the Holy Father, instead of restricting the liberty of the Council by appointing to the various Commissions and Congregations only prelates devoted to himself, has spon- taneously abandoned his right to appoint any of them, leaving the choice to the Fathers alone. Surely by far the most important of all is that which, on our contemporary's own. showing, he has filled up with dignitaries almost entirely of his way of thinking ? We may, therefore, fairly assume that the Pope has really claimed to protect the infal- libility of the Council by his own clearer infallibility, and we proceed to remark that Protestants treat this claim_ precisely as Liberals treat the right of the French Emperor to veto all discussions of constitutional reform which are not approved by himself. But why ? Liberals oppose this claim on the part of the Emperor because they hold that whatever power the Emperor loses the Parliament will gain,. and that Parliament is only another name for free self-govern- ment. But in the case of the Roman controversy, whatever the possibly infallible Pope should lose, the certainly infallible Council would gain, and what does that involve ? Certainly not greater freedom for the Church on matters of dogma, for freedom is entirely inconsistent with the conception of a divinely-infallible judgment enforced upon all consciences. What would be gained, would be that the Roman Catholics would in future be in all probability introduced to fewer of what they regarded as infallible truths, and would be in greater doubt about moot points which no Council had met to deter- mine, than they would if the Pope were decided to be infallible- But is that a thing that we ought to desire for them ? Looking at the matter from their own point of view, it cannot be better to know fewer truths, and to be in more doubt, than is needful. We never dream that a new discovery in spectrum analysis is a new chain for our intellects ; and so Roman Catholics, if they be genuine, can never dream that a newinfallible theological deci- sion is a new chain for them. But then, it may be said that we cannot look at the matter from their point of view, but only from our own, and that from our own point of view the new decisions would be errors, and, therefore, really weights and manacles on Catholic intelligence, though Catholics them- selves might deem them new powers and blessings. Certainly but is it not the very worst thing we can do for a system of error, to try to get its pressure artificially lightened and ren- dered more or less imperceptible ? Suppose we were talking of a false system of nautical astronomy which leads to wrecks every week, but is carried out with so much prudence and so. little logic that it only leads to one or two needless wrecks a week, whereas, if pursued consistently, it would explode itself by showing every man who used it that he was carefully calcu- lating his way on to rocks and quicksands,—would it not be the wish of every sincere philanthropist that the system should be consistently interpreted, and for a brief space at least im- plicitly followed ? The Protestant dare not assume that the Pope's defeat would be the gain of liberty of conscience and individual liberty of thought. He ought to assume the very reverse of that.
We cannot but hold, therefore, that the Pope, in assuming at once,—most logically on his theological ground,—that he has already an infallible veto on the discussions of the infallible Council, that, indeed, it is one of the chief securities of its infallibility that he can prevent even the utterance of a pro- posal which he deems unsound, and so arrest heresy at its very source, has not encroached upon the liberties of the Church, but solely on the privileges of an oligarchy which at present assumes to rule it as despotically, but less definitely and clearly, than he would himself do. No doubt, the Bishops who think the whole olaim of the Pope unjust, must, if they
are wise, resist him at this point, and not wait for the dis- cussion of the dogma itself. If they are right, and the primacy of the Pope carries with it no special dogmatic weight, then for him to stop the mouths of the Council,—the separate organs of that collective voice whose sound alone is infal- libility,--is almost blasphemy, and like the arrogance of a man who should claim to forbid a miracle. It is clear, then, that they must fight on this issue, if they fight at all. If they concede the Pope's position, they admit his right to determine absolutely what is not Catholic truth. But can anyone be willing to believe for a moment that a power to determine absolutely what is not Catholic truth can be possessed by any man who has not the power to determine absolutely what is? Is not the knowledge of truth and error strictly correlative ? Grant the Pope what he contends for, and how would he use it ? Of course (to take one example), to veto the discussion of any proposal to declare that a Pope, defining ex cathedra', but without the aid of a general council, may err. But why should he veto this,— what possible motive could justify him in vetoing this, except an absolute knowledge, or at least an opinion believed by him- self to be absolute knowledge, that that proposition is false ? If, then, the dissentient Bishops concede him this power, they virtually concede to him that he has a claim to it ; and if they concede that he has a claim to it, they must concede that he has that knowledge on which alone he could rightly exercise it, and has it in a higher degree than the Council itself, whose right of discretion in the matter this privilege would supersede. And if this be so, we cannot but think that they have conceded absolutely the point in dispute, and that the Pope will have so far won, that he will have induced the anti-Papal party to cut away the standing-ground on which they really stand, and to put themselves in an utterly false position. The bull regulating the procedure of the Council cannot be accepted by the Galilean party without acquiescing in a sure omen of defeat,—the admission of the Pope's separate infallibility as organ of the Church ; and though it is absurd to talk of degrees of infallibility, yet the admission even of the greater and clearer evidence of his infallibility than of that of the Council itself, will have been virtually granted before it is actually announced.
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