614 



ROMAN CATHOLIC CHUKCH. 



Be pleased to accept, monseigneur, the homage of 

 the respectful sentiments with which I remain, in 

 Jesus Christ and His Church, your very humble and 

 obedient servant, Brother HYACLNTHE. 



Father Hyacinthe soon after left for the 

 United States, where he was received with 

 marked attention. He declared, however, 

 that, though a decided opponent of ultramon- 

 tanism, lie was determined to remain within 

 the fold of the Roman Catholic Church. He 

 remained in the United States for a few weeks, 

 and then returned to France. He was subse- 

 quently reduced from the monastic state to 

 that of a secular by the Pope. 



Larger than in France was the number of 

 prominent opponents to papal infallibility 

 among the theological scholars of Germany. 

 A considerable number of the leading theolo- 

 gians and Catholic periodicals appeared to 

 consider an earnest and a vigorous combat 

 against the promulgation of this doctrine as 

 a duty they owed to the Church. Prominent 

 among the publications of this class was the 

 book published under the pseudonym of "Ja- 

 nus," and entitled " The Pope and the Council." 

 Men of all parties professed to be astonished 

 at an immense amount of scholarship dis- 

 played in it. It was a declared opinion that 

 only a life-long study of Church history would 

 enable a scholar to write such a book, and that 

 a Church historian of no ordinary ability 

 must either be its author or must have aided 

 in its compilation. As the senior of the 

 Church historians of Germany. Dr. Dollinger, of 

 Munich, had already publicly avowed himself 

 a determined opponent of the promulgation, he 

 was erroneously believed to be, if not the au- 

 thor, at least connected with the authorship. 



The work is a most violent attack on the au- 

 thority possessed in the Church by the Pope 

 on the one hand and the Council on the other, 

 and the relation of the two. "For thir- 

 teen centuries," says the author, " an incom- 

 prehensible silence on this fundamental article 

 reigned throughout the whole Church and her 

 literature. None of the ancient confessions of 

 faith, no catechism, none of the patristic 

 writings composed for the instruction of the 

 people, contain a syllable about the Pope, still 

 less any hint that all certainty of faith and 

 doctrine depends on him." The book then 

 endeavors to show that not a single question 

 of doctrine for the first thousand years was 

 finally decided by the Popes ; that in none of the 

 early controversies did they take any part at 

 all ; and that their interposition, when they 

 began to interpose, was often far from felici- 

 tous. Pope Zosimus, the book says, com- 

 mended the Pelagian teaching of Celestius ; 

 Pope Julian affirmed the orthodoxy of the Sa- 

 bellian Marcellus of Ancyra; Pope Liberius 

 subscribed an Arian creed ; Pope Yigilius con- 

 tradicted himself three times running on a 

 question of faith; Pope Honorius lent the 

 whole weight of his authority to the support 

 of the newly-introduced Monothelite heresy, 



and was solemnly anathematized by three 

 (Ecumenical Councils for doing so. Nor do 

 these " errors and contradictions of the Popes " 

 grow by any means fewer or less important as 

 time goes on. Neither, again, did the Roman 

 Pontiffs possess, in the ancient constitution of 

 the Church, any of those powers which are now 

 held to be inherent in their sovereign office, 

 and which must undoubtedly be reckoned 

 among the essential attributes of absolute sov- 

 ereignty. They convoked none of the General 

 Councils, and only presided, by their legates, 

 at three of them, nor were the canons enacted 

 there held to require their confirmation. They 

 had neither legislative, administrative, nor ju- 

 dicial power in the Church, nor was any fur- 

 ther efficacy attributed to their excommunica- 

 tion than to that of any other bishop. No 

 special prerogatives were held to have been 

 bequeathed to them by St. Peter, and the only 

 duty considered to devolve on them in virtue 

 of their primacy was that of watching over the 

 observance of the canons. The limited right 

 of hearing appeals, granted to them by the 

 Council of Sardica, in 347, was avowedly an 

 innovation, of purely ecclesiastical origin, and 

 moreover was never admitted or exercised in 

 Africa or the East. Many national Churches, 

 like the Armenian, the Syro-Persian, the Irish, 

 and the ancient British, were independent of 

 any influence of Rome. When first something 

 like the papal system was put into words by 

 an Eastern Patriarch, St. Gregory, the great- 

 est and best of all the early Popes, repudiated 

 the idea as a wicked blasphemy. Not one of 

 the Fathers explains the passages of the New 

 Testament about St. Peter in the ultramontane 

 sense ; and the Tridentine profession of faith 

 binds all the clergy to interpret Scripture in 

 accordance with their unanimous consent. 

 Hence, concludes the author, "To prove the 

 doctrine of papal infallibility, nothing less is 

 required than a complete falsification of Church 

 history." 



It was admitted on both sides that the book 

 was the most able work that the opponents of 

 the Council could make against the infallibility 

 question. To refute such a book would, of 

 course, require some time and space ; and the 

 most important replies did therefore not ap- 

 pear before the close of the year, and will be 

 referred to in the AMEEIOAN ANNUAL CYCLO- 

 PAEDIA for 1870. 



In view of the formidable opposition to 

 the promulgation, shown by the German theo- 

 logians, the National Council of the Bish- 

 ops of Germany, held at Fulda, in September, 

 became a subject of general interest! The 

 pastoral letters issued by the assembled bish- 

 ops aimed particularly at allaying the uneasi- 

 ness which the bishops were aware had spread 

 in large circles. They reminded the faithful 

 of their dioceses that "never and never shall 

 and can a General Council establish a dogma 

 not contained in Scripture or in the Apostoli- 

 cal traditions. * * * Never and never shall and 



