THE INFALLIBILITY QUESTION.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2699, 11 October 1871, Page 2

THE INFALLIBILITY QUESTION.

The speech of which the following is a resumb was delivered by Bishop Strossmayer at the late Vatican Council, and is one of the most remarkable that has ever been delivered by a Roman Catholic Bishop before a Council of the Roman Church. The speech has been widely published, aud has com- . manded great attention. At the present moment, when the question of the Papacy is coming so greatly to the front in European affairs, it will be read with increasing interest. The Bishop said that the first point to which his attention had been directed was to study the Scriptures to ascertain if these “venerable monuments of truth” would make him know if the Holy Pontiff was truly the successor of St. Peter, Vicar of Christ, and infallible doctor of the Church. “ To resolve this great question,” said he, I have been obliged to ignore the present state of things, and to transport myself in mind, with the evangelical torch in my hand, to the days when there was neither Ultramontanism nor Gallicanism, and in which the Church had for doctors St. Paul, St. Peter, St. James, and St. John—doctors to whom no one can deny the Divine authority without putting in doubt that which the Holy Bible, which is here before me, teaches us, aud which the Council of Trent has proclaimed the rule of faith and of morals. I have, then, opened these sacred pages. Well !—shall I dare to say it—l have found nothing < ither near or far which sanctions the opinion of the Ultramontanes. And still more, to my very great surprise, I find no question in the Apostolic days of a Pope successor to Peter, and Vicar of Jesus Christ, no more than of Mahomet who did not then exist. You, Monsignor Manning, will say that 1 blaspheme ; you, Mousignor Pie, that lam mad Now, having read the whole New Testament, I declare before God, with my hand raised to that great Crucifix, that 1 have found no trace of the Papacy as it exists .at this moment. Do not refuse me your attention, my venerable brethren, and with your murmurings and interruptions do not justify those who say, like Father Hyaointhe, that this Council is not free, but that our votes have been from the beginning ordered (hi p recede nza impoati), If such were the case, this august assembly, on which the eyes of the whole world are turned, would fall into the most shameful discredit. If we wish to make it great, we must be free. I thank his Excellency Mousignor Dupanloup for the sign of approbation which he makes with his head ; that gives me courage, aud I go on. ” Proceeding then to state the result of his examination 'of the Scriptures, the Bishop said he could not find cue single chapter, or one little verse, in which Christ gave to St, Peter the mastery over the apostles his fellow workers. And what led him k to this conclusion was thui stated If Simon |son of Jonah had been what we believe his Holiness Fio IX. to-day, it is wonderful that He had not said to him, “ When £ shall have ascended to my Father, you should all obey Simon Peter as you obey Me. I establish him My Vicar upon earth.” Not only is Christ silent on this point, but so little docs He think of giving a head to the Church that when He promises thrones to His Apostles, to judge the twelve tribes of Isratl (Matt. xix. 2S), He promises them twelve, one for each, without saying that among thrones one shall be higher than the others —which shall belong to Peter. Certainly if He had wished that it should be so, He would have said it. What do we conclude from His silence .' Logic tells us that Christ did not wish to make St. Peter the head of the apostolic college. When Christ sent the Apostles to conquer the world, to ail He gave equally the power to bind and to loose, and to all He gave the pronvse of the Holy Spirit. Permit me to - repeat it: if He had wished to constitute Peter His Vicar, He would have given him the chief command over His {Spiritual army. Christ, so says Holy Scripture, forbad Peter and hj s colleagues to reign or to exercise lordship, or to have authority over the faithful like the Kings of the Gentiles (St. Luke xxii. 25). If St. Peter had been elected Pope, Jesus would not have spoken thus, because, according to our tradition, the Papacy holds in its hands two swords, symbols of spiritual aud temporal power. One thing has surprised me very much. Turning it over in my mind* I said to myself, if Peter had been elected Pope, would his colleagues have been permitted to send him with St. John to Samaria to announce the Gospel of the Son of God ? (Acts viii. 14). What would you think, venerable brethren, if at this moment we permitted ourselves to send his Holiness Pius IX. and his Excellency Monsignor Plautier to go to the Patriarch of Constantinople to pledge him to put an end to the Eastern schism ? But here is another still more important fact. An (Ecumenical Counis assembled at Jerusalem to decide on the questions which divide the faithful. Who would have presided at it ? St Peter, or his Legates. Who would have formed or promulgated the canons ? St Peter, Well! nothing of all this occurred. The Apostle assisted at the Council, as all the others did, and it was pot he wko summed up, but St James ; and when the decrees were promulgated, it was in the name of the Apostles, the Elders, and the brethren (Acts xv.). Is it thus that we dq ip our Church? Ihp more I examine, 0 venerable brethren, the more I am convinced that in the Holy Scriptures the Son of Jonah does not appear to be First. Now, while we teach that the Church is built ppon St Peter, Sf Papl, whose authority cannot be dpubted, gays ip his Epistle to the Ephesians (ii. 20) that it ip built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone, And the same Apostle believes in the supremacy of St Peter, that he openly blames those who say, ‘ We are of Paul, we are of Audios’ (Corinthians i. 12), as those who would say, we are of Peter. If, therefore, this last Apostle bad been the Vicar of Christ, St Paul, would have taken great care not to censure so violently those who belonged to his own colleague. The same Apostle Paul, counting up the offices of the Church, mentions Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Doctors, and Pastors. Is it to be believed, my venerable brethren, that St Paul, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, would have forgotten the first of these offices, the Papacy, if the Papacy had been of divine institution ? This forgetfulness appeared to mo to be as impossible as if an historian of this Council were not to mention one word of his Holiness Pius IX. The Apostle Paul makes no mention iu any of his letters directed to the various Churches of the Primacy of Peter. If this Primacy had existed—if, in one word, the Church had had iu its body a supreme head, infallible io teaching—would toe great Apostle of

the Gentiles have forgotten to mention it ? What do I say ? He would have written a long letter on this all-iraportant subject. Then when, as ho has actually done, the edifice of the Christian doctrine is erected, would the foundation, the key of the arch, be forgotten ? Now unless you hold that the Church of the Apostles was heretic*!, Which none of US would either desire or dare to say, we are obliged to confess that the Church has never been more, beautiful, more pure, or more holy than in the days when there was no Pope. (Cries of It is not true ! it is not true ! ’) Let not Monsignor di Laval say ‘ No.’ Since if any of yon, ray venerable brethren, should dare to think that the Church which has to day a Pope for its head is more firm in the faith, more pure in its morals, than the Apostolic Churchy let him say it openly in the face of the universe, since this enclosure is the centre from which on- words fly from pole to pole.” The Bishop then went on to argue that the writings of St. Paul, St. John and St James showed no trace or germ of the Papal power, and that those of St. Paul were silent on this important point; so that the silence of these holy men appeared to him burdensome and impossible if Petar had been Pope. But what surprised him most, and which was capable of demonstration, was the silence of St. Peter; what we proclaim him to be—that is, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on the earth-he surely would have known it ; if he had known it, how is it that not once did he act as Pope? He might have done it-on the Day of Pentecost, when he pronounced his first sermon, and he did not do it; at the Council of Jerusalem he did not do it; at Antioch, he did not do it : neither in the two letters directed to the Church. Can you imagine such a Pope, my venerable brethren, if St. Peter had been the Pope ? Now, if you wish to maintain that ho was the Pope the natural eonsequ nee arises that you must maintain that he was ignorant of the fact. Now, I ask whoever has a head to think and a mind to reflect, are these two suppositions possible? To return. I say, while the Apostles lived, the Church never thought there could be a Pope : to maintain the contrary, all the sacred writings must have been thrown to the flames, or entirely ig Then followed an elaborate review of the leading writers of the Church as to whether St. Peter’s Episcopate and residence in Rome ever had existence, from which the Bishop established— , TT . . “1. That Jesus had given to His Apostles the same power that He gave to St. Peter. . , “2. That the Apostles never recognised St. Peter the Vicar of Jesus Christ and the infallible doctor of the Church. “3. That St. Peter never thought of being Pope, and never acted as if he were Pope. “4 That the Councils of the four first centuries, while they recognised the high position which the Bishop of Romo occupied in the Church on account of Rome, only accorded to him a pre-eminence of honor—never of power or of jurisdiction “ 5. That the holy fathers, in the famous passage, ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church,’ never understood that the Church u as built on Peter (mper Pntum) but on the rock (super petram), that is, on the confession of the faith of the Apostle. “And,” continued the Bbhop, “I conclude victoriously with history, with reason, with logic, with good sense, and with a Christian conscience, that Jesus Christ did not confer any supremacy on St. Peter, and that |the Bishops of Rome did net become sovereigns of the Church but only by confiscating. one by one all the rights of the Episcopate. (Voices—* Silence, impudent Protestsnt! silence !’) I am not an impudent Protestant ! No, a thousand times, no! History is neither Catholic, nor Angelican, nor Calvinistic, nor Lutheran, nor Armenian, nor schismatic Greek, nor Ultramontane. She is what she is—that is, something stronger than all Confessions of Faith of the Canons of the (Ecumenical Councils. Write against it if yon dare ! but you cannot destroy it. no more than taking a brick out of the Coliseum would make it fall. If I have said anything which history proves to be false, show it to me by history, and without a moment’s hesitation I will make an honorable apology ; but be patient, and you will see that 1 have not said all that I would or could ; and even were the funeral pile waiting for me in the Pl ice of St. Peter’s I should not be silent, and I am obliged to go on. Monsignor Dupanloup, in his celebrated Observations ou this Council of the Vatican, has said, and with reason, that if we declare Pius IX. infallible, we must necessarily, and from natural logic, be obliged to bold, that all his predecessors were also infallible.” And this was the Bishop’s peroration : “ Again Isay, if you decree the infallibility of the present Bishop of Rome, you must establish the infallibility of a'l the proceeding ones, without excluding any ; but can you do that when history is there establishing, with a clearness equal only to that of the sun, that the Popes have erred in their teaching? Could you do it and maintain avaricious, incesteous Popes have been Vicars of Jesus Christ ? Oh ! venerable brethren, to maintain such an enormity would be to betray Christ worse than Judas ; it would be to throw dirt in bis face. (Cries, ‘ ‘ Down from the pulpit, quick ; shut the mouth of the' heretic r) My venerable brethern you call out ; but would it not be more dignified to weigh my reasons and my proofs in the balance of the sanctuary ? Relieve me, histqry cannot 1)6 iqade over again ; it is there andwlU ’remain to all eternity, to protest energetically against the dogiqaof the Infallibility. Yqu may proclaim it unanimously j but one vote will be wanting, that is miue. The true faithful, Monaignori, have their eyes on us, expecting from us a remedy for the innumerable evils which dishonor the Church; will you deceive them in their hopes ? What will not our responsibility before God be if we let this solemn occasion pass which God has given us to heal the true faith ? Let us seize it, my brethren : let ns arm ourselves with a holy courage ; let us make a violent and generous effort; let us turn to the teaching of the Apostles, since without that we have only errors, darkness, and falso traditions. Let us avail ourselves of our reason and of our intelligence to take the Apostles and Prophets as our only infallible masters with reference io the question of questions, ‘ What must I do to be raved?’ When we have decided that, we shall have laid the foundation of our dogmatic system, Firm and immovable on the rock, lasting and incorruptible, of the divinely inspired Holy Scriptures, full of confidence, we will go before the world, and, like the Apostle Paul, in the presence of the freethinkers, we will ‘ know none other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’ We will conquer through the

preaching of “the folly of the Cross,” as Paul conquered the learned men of Greece and Rome, and the Roman Church will have its glorious ’B9. (Clamorous cries—“ Get down “ Out with the Protestant, the Calvinisl;, the trailer of the Church !’,) “ Your cries, Monsignori, do not frighten me. If my words are hot, my head is cool ; L am neither of Luther, nor of Calvin, nor of Paul, nor of Apollos, but of Christ. (Renewed erica— “ Anathema, anathema, to the apostate.”) “ Anathema ! Monsignori, anathema! you know well that you are not protesting against me, but against the Holy Apostles, under whose protection I should wish this Council to place the Church. Ah !if covered by the r wiuding-sbeets they came out of their tombs, would they speak a language different from mine ? What would you say to them, when by their writings they tell you that the Papacy has deviated from the Gospel of the Son of God, which they have preache I and confirmed in so generous a mmner by their 'blood ? Would you dare to say to them—We prefer the teaching of our own Popes, our Bellarmine, our Ignatius Loyola, to yours? No, no; a thousand times no; unless you have shut your ears that you may not hear, closed your eyes that you may not see, blunted your mind that ybu may not understand. Ah ! if He who reigns above wishes to punish us, make His hand fall heavy on us, as He did to Pharoah, he has no need to permit Garibaldi’s soldiers to drive us away from the eternal city. He has only to let them make Pius IX. a god, as we have made a goddess of the blessed Virgin. Stop, stop, venerable brethren, on the odious and ridiculous incline on which you have placed yourselves : save the Church from the shipwreck which threatens her, asking from the Holy Scriptures alone, for the rule of faith which we ought to believe and to profess. I have spoken : may God help me !” These last words wore received with signs of disapprobation like those of the pit of a theatre (con i pin platerli segi di disaprovagrosi). All the Fathers rose—many left the hall. A good many Italians, Americans, and Germans, and a little sprinkling of French and English, surrounded the speaker, and with a brotherly grasp of the hand, showed that they agreed in his way of thinking. ___