THE FIRST COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN:

THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

CHAPTER VI
Papal Primacy and Infallibility

ON April 2, 1870, the New York Tribune rhapsodized that the bishops opposed to a definition of papal infallibility represented "the Teutonic race, the contemplative and profound German--the acute, however versatile French--and the practical, hard-thinking, resolute men of England and America." 1 The Tribune's analysis of the situation was an oversimplification prompted by wishful thinking. The fact was that Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Americans were to be found on both sides of the question, and it was those who belonged to the majority who were the most active in displaying their national characteristics during the month of April. Members of the minority party were, if anything, disheartened. In a letter to Father Early dated April 25, Bishop McQuaid wrote that Archbishop Purcell, who had shared with Kenrick titular leadership of the American opposition group, was leaving for home, "worried almost to death by the trouble of the Infallibility question." James Roosevelt Bayley was also supposed to be returning to the United States, and McQuaid reported that the Bishop of Newark was "only too glad to get away from the fight." "In fact," he added, "some of the strongest opponents of the Infallibility are leaving. The Americans, of course, cannot return should the question come up, whilst the Europeans will be back in time." ²

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1 New York Tribune, April 2, 1870, in Beiser, p. 93.
2 McQuaid to Early, Rome, April 25, 1870, in Browne, pp. 425-6.
Neither Purcell nor Bayley actually returned to the United States at this time.

While McQuaid was sending out his gloomy news, a German and an Englishman were busy setting in motion the forces that would eventually bring about the definition of the pope's primacy and infallibility. They were Ignaz von Senestréy, Bishop of Regensburg, and Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, both of whom had taken a vow two years previously to do their utmost to secure the definition of papal infallibility. 3 We have already seen that the observations of the fathers on the schema of March 6 had been given to an editing committee composed of Senestréy and the theologians Maier and Schrader. The committee had been appointed by Cardinal Bilio, president of the deputation on faith, and should normally have reported back to him. However, the more vigorous proponents of a definition were not completely satisfied with the cardinal's enthusiasm for the project, and the initial report of the committee was actually made to a rump session of the deputation which was held in Manning's apartments during Holy Week (April 10-16). ⁴

Nine of the twenty-four members of the deputation on faith attended the Holy Week meetings. Besides Manning and Senestréy, they were Mieczislaw von Ledóchowski, Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland; Patrick Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel; Archbishop Walter Steins, S.J., Vicar Apostolic of Calcutta; Bartolomeo d'Avanzo, Bishop of Calvi and Teano in southern Italy; Bishop Conrad Martin of Paderborn; Pierre de Preux, Bishop of Sion in Switzerland; and Bishop Federico Zinelli of Treviso. Neither of the two American members of the deputation, Archbishops Alemany and Spalding, were present. The self-appointed, nine-man commission heard a report from Maier and Schrader in which it was suggested that the

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3 Purcell, II, 420. Manning declared that he and Senestréy had made this vow while assisting at the Papal throne on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, 1868.
4 Details of the meetings in Manning's apartments and of the subsequent activity of the Manning-Senestréy group are from the diary of Senestréy, which has been published in Mansi, LIII, 276-86 and in Collectio Lacensis, VII, 1695- 1703. See also Granderath, III, 1, 14-8.

chapter on the primacy and the caput addendum on infallibility of the schema on the Church should be divided into four chapters, which would form a separate constitution on the Roman pontiff. This proposal was accepted, and it was further decided to call for an opening of debate on the new constitution on Easter Monday or Tuesday.

Toward the end of Holy Week, Senestréy presented the demands of his group to Bilio. The cardinal was reluctant to press matters with such haste, and he told the German bishop that he was so worried about the possibility of provoking a schism that he was unable to sleep. He wanted the council to finish its consideration of the second part of the constitution on faith first, and then go on to that on the Church. Infallibility and primacy, he thought, should be discussed in their proper place within the framework of the latter constitution. Having failed to persuade Bilio, the committee's next step was an appeal to Cardinal de Angelis, the first president of the council. A delegation called on de Angelis on Easter Monday, April 18, but the results of the interview were not entirely satisfactory. Senestréy noted in his diary that the first president had "lost courage." Of the other four presidents, Bilio and Cardinal Antonio de Luca were opposed to immediate consideration of the new constitution, while Cardinals Annibale Capalti and Giuseppe Bizzarri were favorable to its introduction. There was but one further court of appeal, and Senestréy determined to take his case to it. After his failure to convince de Angelis of the need for quick action, he sent the Vicars-General of Quimper and Nîmes, who had accompanied him to the meeting with the first president, to invite four French prelates and Auxiliary Bishop Gaspard Mermillod of Geneva to go with him the next morning to the Vatican and seek an audience with the pope. Pius IX received the six bishops before nine o'clock, the hour at which the council was scheduled to convene, and promised that he would take whatever action seemed appropriate. He gave the impression that he would send orders to the cardinal presi- dents that same day for introduction of the constitution on the Roman pontiff.

When three days had passed since the papal audience and there was still no sign of action, the Manning-Senestréy group met again, this time at the residence of Bishop François Roullet de la Bouillerie of Carcassonne, and decided to send a formal petition to the pope, requesting that he order the discussion of primacy and infallibility to be begun. The petition was circulated among the fathers on Saturday, April 23, and by the time that it was presented to the Holy Father on the evening of that same day 150 bishops had signed it. Four bishops from the United States were represented: Miége, de Goesbriand, Dubuis, and Rappe. This démarche was finally successful, and on Wednesday, April 27, at the thirty-fourth meeting of the deputation on faith, Bilio submitted for consideration the four-chapter constitution which had been prepared by Maier and Schrader.

Archbishop Manning and Bishop Senestréy had achieved the first part of their purpose in getting the questions of primacy and infallibility brought before the deputation on faith, but this was only the beginning of the struggle. According to Senestréy's diary, the one objector to the introduction of the new constitution was Archbishop Janos Simor, the Primate of Hungary, who was also the one minority member of the deputation. But in spite of this practical unanimity on basic issues, the course of the debate did not run smoothly. The first few days were taken up with reports by Maier and Schrader, who analyzed the observations which had been submitted by the fathers of the council on the pertinent passages in the original constitution on the Church. These reports, and a discussion on the formulation of the text, occupied three sessions, from April 27 to May 1. 5 The text of the constitution, called Pastor Aeternus, was distributed on the morning of May 2, and at the thirty-seventh meeting of the deputation, which was held on that day, Archbishops Spalding and Alemany were among those who sug-

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5 Mansi, LIII, 238-9.

gested several changes in wording, none of which were accepted. 6 On the following day, both American prelates had substantial contributions to make. Alemany suggested use of the citation from the Council of Ephesus which in the finished text of the constitution formed the heart of the argument for the perpetuity of the primacy in Peter's successors. He also asked that the universal nature of papal authority in the Church be made explicit. Spalding and Alemany were among the members of the deputation who supported a proposal by Archbishop Dechamps of Malines and Bishop Pie of Poitiers, who felt that it was superfluous to state that the pope's universal jurisdiction was episcopal in nature, and therefore asked for omission of the phrase as a concession to the sensibilities of the minority. Thirteen of those present, including Manning, voted for omission of the phrase, while only five, among them Senestréy, favored its retention, but the chair refused to entertain the motion, and the statement that the Roman pontiff's power of jurisdiction was "truly episcopal" remained in the text. The problem was an important one, since many feared that affirmation of universal papal episcopal jurisdiction implied that other residential bishops were mere vicars of the pope. To resolve the dilemma, Spalding proposed adding a statement to the effect that the papal jurisdiction which was being defined in no way conflicted with the ordinary and immediate jurisdiction of each residential bishop in his own diocese. This declaration, and the quotation from St. Gregory the Great as authority for it, were incorporated substantially in the final version of Pastor Aeternus. ⁷

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6 Mansi, LIII, 244-5.
7 Mansi, LIII, 245-7. The seeming conflict between the jurisdiction of Pope and bishops, both of which were declared to be ordinary and immediate in Pastor Aeternus, is something which must be explained in the course of the development of a theology of the episcopate. It is also of capital importance in the matter of Christian reunion. Many non-Catholics, especially in the Eastern Churches and among episcopally minded Protestants, find that the primacy, as defined in the first three chapters of Pastor Aeternus, is a more serious stumbling block for them than is the infallibility defined in Chapter IV. See Betti, p. 164; Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., La Théologie de l'épiscopat au premier concile du Vatican ( Paris: 1961),

The disagreement over the word "episcopal" was the first major problem which proponents of the new definition had to face. The second objection of a really serious nature was raised by Cardinal Bilio on the morning of May 5. He contended that the proposed schema allowed too wide an ambit to the exercise of papal infallibility. The cardinal protested that he did not deny that the pope was infallible in pronouncing on dogmatic facts, in canonizations, and in like matters, but he pointed out that it would scarcely be proper to attribute to the pontiff an infallibility wider than that which had been defined of the Church itself. With a delicate thrust at those who had forced the issue, he remarked that the difficulty had arisen because the schema on the Roman pontiff had been taken from its natural context in the integral constitution on the Church.

All that had ever been defined of the Church was that its infallibility extended to definitions of dogma strictly so-called. Bilio could not see how more than this could be defined of the pope until a proper foundation had been laid by determining exactly the extent and object of the Church's infallibility. In the debate which followed upon this speech, Spalding was one of those who urged that great care be taken to make it clear that the infallibility of pope and Church were one and that they embraced the same object. Partisans of the new schema protested that Bilio had set up a false problem, and that the infallibility of the Church was so fundamental that it did not need formal definition, but the cardinal was adamant and refused to retreat from his position. He adjourned the meeting and announced that an extraordinary session of the deputation would take place that same evening. ⁸

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pp. 91-2, and Wilfrid F. Dewan, C.S.P., "Preparation of the Vatican Council's Schema on the Power and Nature of the Primacy," Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, XXXVI ( 1960), 55. Dewan comments that Spalding stated, but did not explain the compatibility of the two jurisdictions. It is nevertheless due to the archbishop's foresight that the theological groundwork his been laid for further fruitful discussion of the problem.
8 Mansi, LIII, 247-50, and, from the Senestréy diary, ibid., 281-2.

At the special meeting on the evening of May 5, Cardinal Bilio reiterated his stand and claimed for it the support of all the great theologians of the past. He was seconded by Dechamps, Spalding, Steins, and Martin. Alemany had already submitted an amendment which would have restricted papal infallible pronouncements to instances where the pope condemned errors in faith and morals as heretical. Senestréy commented that all these prelates were motivated by their desire to conciliate the opposition. Manning's memories of the session were a bit more tart. Speaking of Bilio, he wrote: "In the deputatio de fide he was overborne by Malines and Paderborn, and had a fear of French Bishops, who beset him in private." 9 The supporters of the schema countered Bilio's argument from theological tradition by a distinction. It was true, they conceded, that theologians had generally assigned the note de fide only to the assertion that the pope was infallible when he defined a dogma, but they declared that the same theologians had always considered it theologically certain that papal infallibility extended also to dogmatic facts and to censures less than heresy. It was precisely this discrepancy that the proponents of the definition wanted to clear up with their new formula. They wanted, in other words, to raise the qualification "theologically certain," as applied to papal declarations on dogmatic facts and lesser censures, to the level of de fide, so that there would be no difference in force and authority between this latter class of statements and papal definitions of dogmas strictly so-called. 10

The May 5 evening session served to clarify the positions of the opposing schools of thought within the deputation, but it did nothing to achieve agreement. Another meeting was called for the morning of May 6, at which Bilio proposed a new formula for the definition of infallibility which had been drawn up by Martin of Paderborn. The Jesuit theologians Franzelin and Schrader were on hand to explain its import to the members.

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10 Mansi, LIII, 250-51, and, from the Senestréy diary, ibid., 282.
9 Purcell, II, 454.

The Martin formula as finally accepted by the deputation incorporated notions which had been suggested previously by Alemany and Spalding. It restricted the exercise of papal infallibility to those occasions when the pope "defines with his apostolic authority what in faith and morals is to be held by the universal Church as of faith, or is to be rejected as contrary to faith," and it identified the pope's infallibility with that of the Church. When a vote was taken, only two negative ballots were cast, although some of those who voted for the new formula did so with reservations. 11 Further modifications in the text to take care of these last objections were made on May 7 and 8. The only American contribution was an unsuccessful request by Alemany that a monitum be added to the definition which would call for obedience to all commands of the Roman pontiff, even if they were not phrased as infallible pronouncements. ¹²

The constitution on the Roman Pontiff was distributed to the fathers on May 9, and debate began on May 13. Subsequent discussions in the deputation belong properly to the history of that debate. However, it may be noted here that the advocates of the original formula did not give up the fight easily, and they continued to hold private meetings at the apartments of Archbishop Charles de La Tour d'Auvergne-Lauraguais of Bourges and of Bishop Roullet de la Bouillerie of Carcassonne until the beginning of June. 13 Their persistence was rewarded when, on May 22, Bilio summoned the members of the deputation to their first meeting since May 8. He had been the target of considerable criticism on the score of the Martin formula and he now wanted to know if it should be redrafted. Whereas all but two of the members had approved the formula before its submission to the fathers on May 9, only Martin himself, Dechamps,

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11 Mansi, LIII, 251-2, and, from the Senestréy diary, ibid., 282. Three successive texts of the definition are presented by Butler ( II, 134) in parallel columns.
12 Mansi, LIII, 252.
13 Mansi, LIII, 283.

Spalding, and Steins held out for it on May 22. 14 As Manning later reminisced, he and Senestréy had been rebuked for their obstinacy and obstructionism, but they had gradually been able to win the support of an increasing number of the fathers for their position. 15 No immediate action to revise the definition was taken at the May 22 meeting, but the Martin formula was not the definitive redaction of the text on infallibility, as will be seen in the history of the debates in the council. For now, we may take leave of the deputation on faith with a quotation from a letter of Archbishop Alemany which tells something of the pressure to which its members had been subjected. On May 9 he wrote to Father William Fortune of All Hallows College that he hoped to be able to return to San Francisco in June, and he commented: "Since Feb. we have been exceedingly engaged, at least those bishops who compose our committee. We had one or two sittings a day (Sundays included), each of 4 or 5 hours, and much study was required to prepare the lesson." 16

While Manning, Senestréy, and their colleagues were taking steps to bring the question of papal infallibility before the fathers, the bishops of the opposition were doing their best to organize a countercampaign. Lord Acton reported to Döllinger that when word was first received that infallibility would be placed at the head of the council's calendar, the international committee of the minority hastily formed a delegation of nine prelates headed by Archbishop Purcell which was to make an appeal "in the most direct fashion" to the pope. However, to the distress of the English lord, they allowed themselves to be distracted from their purpose by the distribution of the Synopsis Animadversionum which had been prepared by Senestréy and the two German theologians. Acton felt that this had been a tactical blunder, and he remarked that the minority had, "as so

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14 Ibid.
15 Purcell, II, 417.
16 AAHC, San Francisco Papers, Alemany to Fortune, Rome, May 9, 1870.

often before," let itself be outmaneuvered by the infallibilist party. ¹⁷

Bernard McQuaid wrote to Father Early about the Synopsis on May 1:

I have now on my desk 106 pages quarto of printed remarks on the schema on the Primacy and 242 pages on that of the Infallibility. The discussion in the Council will bring out the most learned and able men in the body on both sides. It will be a great discussion and a long one, I fear, unless it should be brought to a close arbitrarily. I cannot leave until this matter is settled, and I cannot tell when that happy moment will come although I hope that it will be over by the end of June.

In another portion of the same letter, the Bishop of Rochester declared: "Some one will have a terrible account to render for having stirred up this question for many a soul will be lost no matter how it is disposed of, even if put to one side which is now impossible." He was, however, not entirely pessimistic in his estimate of the situation. "I believe," he said, "that the extreme men like Manning and some of the French Bishops and the Jesuits will not carry their point, but whether the dogma will be so defined as to prevent a schism in Germany and Hungary is more than I know." 18

Acton told Döllinger in this letter that the project of the constitution on the Roman pontiff was known in the city on May 1, and this knowledge prompted still one more futile protest on the part of the minority. On May 8, a petition was addressed to the presidents of the council by a long list of signatories headed by Cardinal Schwarzenberg. Archbishops Kenrick and Purcell and Bishops Domenec, Mrak, and Vérot represented the United States in the list. The first argument which the petitioners employed was that which had been urged in the deputation meetings by Cardinal Bilio. They declared that primacy and infallibility had been taken out of context by forming them into

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17 Conzemius Transcripts, Acton to Döllinger, Rome, May 13, 1870.
18 McQuaid to Early, Rome, May 1, 1870, in Browne, pp. 428-9.

a separate constitution, and they asked how they could be expected to decide upon the papal prerogatives before they had had an opportunity to study the nature of the Church. They further inquired how the object of papal infallibility could be said to be the same as that of the Church when no definition about this last had been made. Shifting their ground to apologetic arguments, they asserted that a complete tract on the Church would provide solid food for instruction, but they feared that a restricted declaration on just the prerogatives of the pope would alienate rather than attract non-Catholics. Finally they protested that it was their loyalty to the Holy Father which prompted them to present the petition. They had, they declared, defended Pius IX against the calumnious charge that he had summoned the council simply to increase his own power, but they were afraid that such charges would be renewed if the council, after six or seven months work, had to show for its efforts only a brief decree of four chapters on faith and a still briefer one on papal primacy and infallibility. The petitioners concluded by assuring the presidents that they were confident that, if questions which were liable to stir up discord were excluded from their deliberations, the fathers would be able to complete the entire constitution on the Church by Pentecost Sunday. The protest was received by Bilio, who gave it to Cardinal de Angelis. It was read to the other presidents, but no answer was given. ¹⁹

Another letter from Bishop McQuaid portrayed the state of mind of the minority when they realized that their best efforts had been unavailing and that they would, after all, have to face up to the debate on infallibility. Once more, his correspondent was Father James Early. The bishop wrote to the latter sometime in May:

The damage to the Church will be immense. In some countries there will be large schisms, and great losses to the Church in all countries except Italy, Spain and Ireland and among our poor people at home. I find that some Bishops who were unwilling to join in trying

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19 Mansi, LI, 727-32.

to avert the discussion are now frightened when they see it impending over them. My head is fairly splitting with pain and anxiety. I have just come from seeing a friend who has been prostrated by the news, only received today, of a determination to force the matter through the Council in spite of all remonstrances. God help the Church is my constant prayer. If some decrees are passed as they have been presented to us, we can look out for hard times in all countries in which Catholics and protestants are expected to live together. In fact we furnish them with good reasons to drive us out of the country. 20

Even if they were discouraged, the bishops of the minority had not given up all hope of averting the definition, and efforts were made on the eve of the debate to organize the opposition for maximum effectiveness. Thus, Domenec was named to represent the United States in a set scheme of speeches against the proposed dogma. 21 Lists were also gathered which categorized the fathers according to nationality and then according to the attitude when they were presumed to have toward the program of the minority. Bishop Dupanloup's copies of the American list counted ten United States bishops as definitely "for us." They were Kenrick, Purcell, Domenec, Whelan, Vérot, Mrak, Bayley, McQuaid, Fitzgerald, and Amat. Another nine were called doubtful. The first of these was McCloskey of New York, who was termed "a man of great authority, uncertain about the truth of the question." Archbishop Alemany's stand was also in doubt. He was classed as an independent, and it was suggested that the former Coadjutor Archbishop of Westminster, George Errington, might be able to influence him. Nothing was known of the position of McCloskey of Louisville who had arrived in Rome only in early April. Bishops Henni and O'Hara were listed as doubtful without further comment. Eugene O'Connell of Grass Valley was another whom it was hoped Errington might influence, but he had to be classified as doubtful, as did Loughlin of Brooklyn, who was called "uncertain" in one redaction of the list and "timid" in another. Hennessy of Dubuque was

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20 "McQuaid to Early, Rome, [May, 1870]", in Browne, pp. 430-31.
21 ASS, Dupanloup Papers, Minority--Notes and Letters.

considered doubtful, but it was noted that he was a suffragan of Archbishop Kenrick. The final question mark was Patrick Lynch, but he was reported to be returning to America.

Eight Americans were listed in the minority calculations as "against us," and another six were termed "vehement against us." Spalding was the only one whose name was put into the first category without further remark. Williams, Conroy, and Ryan were all called "moderates," while Shanahan of Harrisburg was "moderate and independent." One of Dupanloup's informants reported that Bishop Rappe of Cleveland was a friend of the infallibilist Bishop of Marseilles, Charles Place, but this information was crossed out in a second list. Two of the eight more or less moderate opponents of the minority view were thought to be borderline cases. James Gibbons was variously listed as "for us" and "against us," and was in any event considered to be "moderate and independent," while Maurice de St.Palais was classified as hesitant. No qualifications were appended to the judgment "vehement against us" which was applied to Archbishop Blanchet and to Bishops Dubuis, Elder, de Goesbriand, Heiss, and Augustus Martin.

A final section of the Dupanloup lists categorized eleven prelates who were said to have already left Rome. Three of them, McFarland, Melcher, and Feehan, were believed to favor the minority, while three others were for the definition. These were McGill, Quinlan, and Lootens. Miége was also recorded as having gone home, and he was listed as a strong infallibilist. Actually, Miége and Lootens were present at the council at least until the final vote on infallibility, and they both supported the definition. Nothing was known of the views of Archbishop Odin or of those of Bishops Bacon, Mullen, or O'Gorman, although the last three had signed the minority petition of January 15. Four bishops and Abbot Wimmer were not mentioned at all in any of the lists found among Dupanloup's papers. Of the five, Wimmer and Persico should have been classed as infallibilists, and they remained to vote for the definition in July. Lamy,

Hogan, and Wood, the remaining three, had in fact returned to the United States. Lamy had never committed himself one way or the other. Hogan signed the minority petition in January, but later retracted his signature, and Wood, who was an ally of Spalding, would probably have fallen into the "moderate" category. ²²

These estimates of relative strength revealed that the minority was losing ground. Acton confirmed this when he wrote to Döllinger on May 20 that Kenrick and Connolly could marshal only twenty-three Anglo-American prelates for the opposition. Even this count was optimistic, since Acton included in his totals fifteen unnamed bishops from the United States. 23 Dupanloup's reporter was more accurate in placing the size of the hard-core United States opposition at about ten. One reason for the decline in the fortunes of the minority was obvious: The question of infallibility had actually been brought to the floor of the council. Once this had been done, the most compelling arguments for a resistance that was based solely on the inexpediency of defining the doctrine lost their force. A given bishop might still feel that it would have been better for the Church if the question had never been raised. He had now to ask himself if the effects of a negative vote might not be worse still, since such a vote would seem to many observers to be tantamount to a rebuke delivered to the pope by the council. After May 9 the only genuine opposition in the council would come from fathers who had what they felt were serious intellectual and historical difficulties about the doctrine of papal infallibility itself. They might still urge the old inopportunist arguments, but, among the Americans at least, those who continued their opposition to the end were all men who had real, conscientious scruples about some aspect of the dogma, and who, for this fundamental reason, did not want to see it defined.

The first prelate from the United States to address the council

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22 ASS, Dupanloup Papers.
23 Conzemius Transcripts, Acton to Döllinger, Rome, May 20, 1870.

on the subject of the new constitution on the Roman pontiff was Archbishop Alemany, who spoke at the fifty-first general congregation on May 14, the second day of debate. He indicated that he favored the definition, although with certain reservations as to its extension and terminology, and he scouted the fears of the minority that it would be inopportune. The only question before the fathers, the archbishop continued, was to determine whether in fact Christ had given His Church an infallible pope. Their discussion, he said, should be carried on with moderation, kindness, and charity. It should be an interchange of questions, arguments, and answers, all with the sole object of finding truth and all carried on in a spirit that was signalized by a unity of mind and heart among the participants. 24

Not until two weeks after Alemany's speech did the next American, Bishop Vérot, mount the pulpit, but in the interim the name of Peter Richard Kenrick came twice to the notice of the fathers. On May 19, Cardinal Cullen of Dublin challenged from the rostrum the textual criticism of the "Feed my sheep, feed my lambs" text from John 21: 16-17 which the St. Louis archbishop had offered in his observations on the schema on the Church, and on the following day Kenrick himself made it a point to congratulate publicly Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam after the latter had delivered an attack on the proposed definition. 25 When word of this latter action reached James A. McMaster, he managed to make a comment on it which condemned both archbishops in one sentence: "That clammy grip given him [MacHale], as he came down from the steps of the ambon or pulpit, in the Council, and the flattering hail: 'bene vindicasti Hiberniam,' were thrown away on him." ²⁶

Two other bishops left letters that told something of the opposing mentalities as the council ended its second week of general discussion on the schema. On May 25, O'Connell wrote

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24 Mansi, LI, 42-5; Betti, pp. 222-3.
25 Mansi, LI, 122. MacHale speech is ibid., 144-51.
26 Freeman's Journal, August 27, 1870.

to Fortune the suggestion that the All Hallows faculty of theology imitate the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Louvain faculty by petitioning for the definition. "The Gallicans," he went on, "are doing their utmost to prevent the definition and are insisting upon the moral unanimity necessary to define this long disputed question; they say that the witnesses are not so much numerandi quam ponderandi, and that the very few may be the most learned. This is Archbishop Kenrick's theory put forth in an anonymous pamphlet." ²⁷ The day before O'Connell's letter, McQuaid had brought Early up to date on developments. His sincerity of purpose and intelligent approach to the problems of the council appear clearly in his letter. Beyond that it serves as its own commentary. He wrote:

We have entered upon the discussion of the great question, and when that discussion may end no man can say. Already we have listened to 38 discourses on that schema in genere, and there remain about 70 more to be heard not to speak of the fresh crop brought forth at each meeting. Then comes the discussion in particular, which will not fall behind the first. If there be not a greater number of speeches, they will make up for the deficiency in number by greater length. In fact, unless a short cut is found for ending the discussion in some way, we cannot get through in less than six months. Some of the discourses thus far delivered have been master pieces of oratory. Such were the speeches of Schwartzenbergh [sic], Paris, Cashel, Prague, Mayence and Grenoble. The Archbishop of Cashel threw Cardinal Cullen into the shade. Tuam did well considering his age. There has been nothing from the Italians or Spaniards thus far worth listening to. The Italians put me in mind of professors of Theology who have never left their class-room, or had met opponents able and disposed to contend seriously with them. The Spaniards look to me like men who want to put everyone who differs with them in the Inquisition.

After this analysis of the early stages of the debate, McQuaid set down his predictions as to the probable future course of the discussion. The letter continued:

Neither extreme in the Council is likely to carry their point. It is already evident that the definition that will be presented to the faithful

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27 O'Connell to Fortune, Rome, May 25, 1870, in Walsh, p. 426.

for their belief will be such a definition as they will have no difficulty in accepting. The Jesuits who are responsible for forcing this question on the Church are sure to be defeated. To use commercial language, 'their stock is below par.' The definition that will pass will state that this Infallibility is not personal, not absolute, not separate or independent, not inspired, not miraculous, does not means impeccability. Furthermore all those bulls of Popes in the past open to so much fault-finding will be recognized as not infallible. Such a definition will be a heavy blow to some who have been working heaven and earth to bring about one almost the opposite of this. The schema now before [us] does not contain all this, but the real leaders say it means this. We want to compel them to put its equivalent in the schema. In the end we shall succeed. We could succeed in quick time but for the Holy Father himself who is the strongest on his own side. God, however, rules the Church, and the truth will come out in the end. Ten thousand times would I rather be one of those who have quietly to await the promulgation of the truth, rather than where I am to be at the bringing out of it.

With his doctrinal position set in perspective, the bishop then proceeded to defend his right to hold that position by commenting on a suggestion that he had just received:

I have been quite annoyed today at receiving a letter from a Priest, not of our Diocese, urging me to sacrifice my convictions, and yielding to the judgment of others, vote for the Infallibility, unconditional and absolute, as he understands it. Just as though I could dare to do such a criminal act. Thank God so far every vote of mine has been according to my judgment and not according to the judgment of anyone else. My convictions on the Infallibility question are very clear and decided; I bought Perrone and Bellarmine and Guerin's history of the Councils, all good Infallibilist authorities; I offer my objections and doubts right and left; I am open to a change of mind, but it must be upon proofs and facts, and not upon what someone else may happen to think or vote, that my vote shall be given. Besides of my way of thinking are some of the holiest, most clear-headed, learned and disinterested Bishops in the Council; Bishops of whose loyalty and devotion to the Holy See, no one would presume to raise a doubt. 28

Augustin Vérot, speaking during the general discussion of the schema on primacy and infallibility, developed the biblical and

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28 "McQuaid to Early", Rome, May 24, 1870, in Browne, pp. 432-4.

patristic evidence which he thought militated against acceptance of the latter as a dogma of the Church, and he treated the fathers to a lengthy discourse which covered the whole of church history from the Council of Jerusalem down to modern times. He prefaced his remarks by declaring that he had made a thorough study of the problem from learned sources, not from the newspapers. His conclusion from this study was that there was lacking the element which was essential to any doctrine which was proposed for solemn definition, namely a constant tradition of the Church in its favor.

The Bishop of St. Augustine was not very far into his speech, when he was interrupted by murmuring from the floor. The first time this happened was when he referred to the "personal, separate infallibility" which he claimed was the deputation's interpretation of the doctrine contained in the schema. A more understandable protest was registered when the bishop announced that he intended to prove that infallibility had no foundation in tradition by means of a survey that would take in all church history, beginning with the first century, but it is a little difficult to see what was so humorous in Vérot's citation of Acts 2:2 that it provoked laughter in the hall. The passage tells of the way in which the first Christians disputed with Peter, and the speaker proposed it as evidence that infallibility was an unknown concept in the early Church. Similar laughter greeted a quotation which the bishop offered from Galatians 2:1. In the first incident, he had dismissed the interruption with the remark that it was "easier to laugh than to find an answer," but on the second occasion he reminded his hearers that he was citing Scripture and said that this gave him confidence despite the obvious opposition of many of the fathers.

As a preface to his promised survey of the history of the Church, Vérot delivered a little eulogy of the Gallican Church and some of its leading figures. He warned the fathers that they should not be hasty in taking an action that would brand as heretics men like Bossuet, and he suggested that they consider the possible consequences to the missionary work of the Church if a definition of papal infallibility should cause France to denounce its concordat with the Holy See. Without the French Society for the Propagation of the Faith, he said, the foreign missions would be hard put to find means for subsistence. There was nothing new in the historical difficulties of which Vérot then gave a long catalogue, and, in fact, he had used the works of the infallibilist Cardinal Bellarmine as a source, but his speech did have the merit of bringing the problems forcefully to the attention of the council. His own conclusion from the evidence was that infallibility resided in the teaching Church, that is, in the pope and bishops united. He had, he declared, always preached on the necessity of communion with Rome, but he could not see how such communion demanded an infallible pope.

The bishop then turned to the arguments which had been advanced by the majority up until that time. Archbishop Leahy of Cashel had spoken, he recalled, about the faith of the Irish in the pope's infallibility. The French-born Sulpician said that he found nothing strange in this, since the Irish also believed that their parish priests were infallible and were always ready to strike anyone who contradicted them. He suggested, however, that the Irish be quizzed on the infallible nature of Adrian IV's gift of their island to the King of England, and he remarked that all the armed might of Britain had not been able to force the Fenians to accept that gift as an accomplished fact.

In a more serious vein, Vérot asserted that none of the arguments thus far alleged had done more than prove the necessity of communion with Rome. As for the moral homilies which some speakers had delivered about the need for embracing the truth, he dismissed them with the comment that they begged the question. He then loosed a final shaft at the ultramontane journalists who had been promoting the definition. An editor, he said, had once criticized the Roman practice of blessing animals on the feast of St. Anthony. Vérot told the critic that he would be sure to let him know the date of the blessing, so that he could be on hand, "for the greatest beasts I know are the editors of religious newspapers, especially the laymen." ²⁹

Until this point, Vérot's speech had dealt with generalities. He intended to go on with a discussion of particular points in the constitution, but was interrupted and forced to leave the pulpit by Cardinal Capalti. The occasion for this dismissal was the final sentence in his summation of his initial remarks. After declaring that he did not find papal infallibility in the apostolic tradition, the bishop stated that it had been introduced into the council "by a piety which does not seem to be sufficiently understood, by a zeal which is not according to knowledge." "Therefore," he declared, "I cannot in conscience give my vote for this opinion, because that would seem to me to be a sacrilege; it would be a sacrilege." Capalti broke in and rebuked him for this statement, and told him that if he had nothing but jokes to add, he should leave the rostrum. Many of the fathers began to shout, "Come down." Vérot tried to answer above the tumult that he had meant that it would be a sacrilege for him to vote for infallibility, and that he was not passing judgment on the opinions of others, but Capalti ordered him peremptorily from the pulpit, and he bowed to the command. 30

As in so many of Vérot's other appearances at the council, the strong points in his argument were obscured by the humorous touches he was unable to resist. This caused many of the fathers to discount what he had to say. Bishop James Goold of Melbourne, for example, dismissed the May 28 performance with the following notation in his diary: "Another French prelate from the United States spoke absurdly on the same (Gallican) side. He had to quit the pulpit. He had outraged the patience of

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29 A pun is involved here. In Latin Vérot used the word 'bestiae' of the editors. He would seem to have been thinking of the French bęte, which means both "beast" and "fool." George G. Coulton, Papal Infallibility ( London: 1932), p. 163, points this out.
30 Mansi, LII, 289-302. Coulton, p. 164, rightly points out that neither Capalti, nor Butler, in his treatment of this episode ( II, 53), acknowledged Vérot's disclaimer that he was not reproaching others, but was only expressing his personal conscientious conviction.

all." ³¹ Archbishop Giulio Arrigoni of Lucca was not quite as severe as Goold, but he expressed similar sentiments when he wrote of Vérot that he had made "one of his accustomed seriocomic discourses which held the attention of the fathers for an hour and a half." 32 Criticism was not limited to majority sources, as we learn from the memoirs of Albert du Bo˙s, a French layman and confidant of Dupanloup, who remarked that Vérot was "full of boldness . . ., but of a boldness that was not always happy and which sometimes went beyond bounds." ³³

A reply to Bishop Vérot and others of the minority was made by Archbishop Spalding on May 30. Speaking without a manuscript, 34 and in the name of the deputation on faith, the Archbishop of Baltimore denied that anyone intended to declare the pope infallible except when he exercised his apostolic authority as head of the Church. He then proceeded to rebut Vérot's historical arguments and, in an aside, commented that he was surprised to hear "even holy bishops" using the same weapons against infallibility that Protestants used against the primacy. In a more positive vein, the archbishop traced a pattern of deference to the finality of Rome's judgment beginning with the time of Augustine and Cyprian, but he was unable to resist another jibe at the opposition and added that he hoped the "Gallicans" would not follow the Protestant exegesis of Cyprian's text on the primacy. He argued that it was impractical to demand the consent of the Church before a pope could make an infallible pronouncement, and declared that the Gallican articles which proposed this theory had long since been condemned. Spalding referred to a pamphlet which had recently been circulated in Rome, which asked bishops to consider whether they could with safe conscience vote for infallibility and stated that his own conscience would not permit him to vote against the dogma, in

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31 Patrick Francis Moran, History of the Catholic Church in Australasia ( Sydney and Wellington, n.d.), p. 806.
32 Betti, p. 200.
33 ASMP, Du Bo˙s Papers, Memoirs of the Council.
34 Gibbons, I, 156.

favor of the absurd Gallican theories. He concluded: "Either the Roman pontiff, when he teaches the whole Church as pontiff in a solemn judgment, is infallible; or Christ's Church itself is not infallible. They stand and fall together; they will stand because the gates of hell will not prevail." ³⁵

Bishop Goold of Melbourne continued to be unimpressed by the performance of the Americans. Of Spalding's effort he wrote: "The speaker on behalf of the deputation de fide was the Archbishop of Baltimore, Monsignor Spalding. He did not impress me favorably." The next United States prelate to ascend the rostrum fared no better in Goold's estimation, and his diary for May 31 contained the comment: "Dr. Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati, addressed the Council feebly and incoherently against, but concluded in favor." 36 Purcell's actual words were not quite so contradictory. He began by protesting the comparison which had been drawn by the titular Patriarch of Jerusalem Giuseppe Valerga between the opposition at the Vatican Council and the Monothelite heretics of an earlier age--a comparison that had gone unrebuked by the chair. He went on to tell the fathers of his fifty-one years as a priest and bishop in the United States and declared that he had always upheld the rights and prerogatives of the Holy See, sometimes disputing with Protestant ministers five times a day and seven days a week. No one, he asserted, could challenge his record of loyalty to the pope.

Having established his orthodoxy, Purcell declared that he could vote neither for the expediency of the present discussion, nor for the definition itself. His reason was a simple one, namely, that no clear explanation had been given of the meaning of the term ex cathedra. Some partisans of the definition said that every papal utterance was to be taken as infallible. If this were true, asked Purcell, what was to be said of the thirty or forty popes whose errors were recorded by Bellarmine? Another problem which he felt particularly vexing was the onetime papal

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35 Mansi, LII, 313-9; Betti, p. 230.
36 Moran, p. 807.

claim to supreme dominion over kings and peoples. He was afraid of the consequences in the United States if a pope were to make an infallible pronouncement against democratic government. As for himself, the archbishop declared, "I believe that kings are nothing but representatives of the people; I believe that the king is established for the people, and not the people for the king."

Murmurs in the hall greeted this last republican affirmation, but Purcell continued and finally summed up this portion of his speech by asking for information on two points. One was the meaning of the phrase ex cathedra. The second was an explanation--or preferably a renunciation--of papal claims to temporal dominion. He then stated his own position on papal infallibility: He was willing to acknowledge it provided that it was understood as a prerogative of the Church which belonged to the bishops dispersed throughout the world and acting in union with the Roman pontiff, or to the same bishops and pope joined in general council, or, finally, to the pope acting as head and teacher of the whole Church, and in union with it, as the interpreter and custodian of doctrine in matters of faith and morals. ³⁷

Purcell's speech indicated the extent of the confusion that reigned in many minds as to the exact import of the proposed definition. The explanation which had been given by Spalding on the previous day should have helped to allay some of the fears expressed by the Archbishop of Cincinnati, but unfortunately the highly charged atmosphere of the debate was not conducive to the best communication of ideas between the opposing groups. Another feature of Purcell's speech which attracted attention was his defense of popular sovereignty. Writing to Döllinger on June 2, Acton reported that he found the archbishop's point of view "interesting," and suggested that there was in it a parallel which could be applied to the Church. If kings were for the people, and not vice versa, he commented,

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37 Mansi, LII, 365-70; Betti, pp. 200-201.

perhaps the same could be said of the Church, so that popes were for the Church, and not the other way around. 38 The Toledo Blade drew another conclusion which was scarcely flattering to Purcell when it editorialized that if the pope were to live in the United States, the Church would probably soon be "in the hands of men like Döllinger, Hyacinthe and Purcell." ³⁹

Before the next American contribution to the debate, Bishop O'Connell summed up the situation at the end of May in a letter to Father Fortune. His attitude revealed that the minority were making little headway with their arguments. The letter read as follows:

The Vatican Council is progressing slowly, altho' we have Congregations on every available day. So many have ask'd and obtain'd leave to speak & as many more no doubt mean to apply for leave, that there is no telling how long the 'torrens dicendi copia' will continue to flow. Really: I'm pretty much of Professor Neville's way of thinking that the Pope ought to walk into the Council Hall & discharge us in globo. I believe that the great majority of us would be serving the interests of religion as effectually; & a small minority far more effectually dispersed throughout their respective Dioceses than here in Concilio coadunati & a reliquiis Gallicanorum provocati: really Gallicanism is more provoking than the Judaism which was forc'd on Xians in the first Century, because the latter deserv'd and obtain'd a decent burial, but we owe nothing to the former save our reprobation. The old Synagogue was a stately tree and no fungus like the offspring of Louis the 14th & the precious Harlay yclept Archbishop of Paris. Quales patres talis proles. Atqui Patres Gallicanorum &c. Ergo. 40

On the same day that O'Connell wrote to Fortune, it was announced to the council that Archbishop Odin of New Orleans had died in France on Ascension Thursday, May 25. 41 He was the only prelate from the United States to die during the course of the council.

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38 Conzemius Transcripts, Acton to Döllinger, Rome, June 2, 1870.
39 Toledo Blade, June 23, 1870, in Beiser, p. 243. Hyacinthe Loyson was a French Carmelite who had left the Church shortly before the council began.
40 AAHC, Marysville Papers, O'Connell to Fortune, Rome, May 31, 1870. 41 Mansi, LII, 379.

The next American speaker was Michael Domenec, who addressed the fathers on June 3. He restricted himself to the argument that the definition was inopportune and spoke only as an interpreter of the religious situation in the United States. He was not, he said, sufficiently well versed in the circumstances of other countries to pass judgment for them, but he was sure that the proposed dogma would spell nothing but disaster in the land where he had labored for over thirty years. Bishops like John England, John Hughes, and Francis Patrick Kenrick had always silenced Protestant attacks by declaring that the Roman pontiff, as a man, could both sin and make mistakes. They had stressed the fact that papal infallibility was not a Catholic dogma, and that no Catholic was bound to hold it. Now, continued Domenec, if infallibility is proclaimed to be a dogma, the bishops would have to return to their pulpits and retract the charge of calumny that they had made against the Protestants. The definition, he said, would make liars out of them.

Domenec claimed that nearly all the bishops of the United States agreed with him when he said that there would be no hope of progress for the Catholic religion in their country if the definition were made. He therefore begged the fathers to give serious consideration to the question, especially since there was good hope that within the space of thirty or forty years there would be more Catholics in North America than in the whole of Italy, and, he added, "with this consolation, however, that our Catholics are Catholics not only in name, but in fact, I mean in the practice of their religion." The speaker had already been interrupted several times by murmuring among the fathers, but this last sally was too much for the presidents, and de Angelis called the bishop to order with the admonition that he should speak more reverently of the faithful of Italy. Domenec made no reply, but finished his summation and ended with a plea that the council remove the definition from its agenda. ⁴²

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42 Mansi, LII, 425-9. Purcell later remarked of Domenec's evaluation of the Italian Catholics that the Bishop of Pittsburgh had been called to order "after he had uttered a great truth." ( Catholic Telegraph, August 25, 1870).

Domenec's speech was the last but one in the general discussion of the schema. The titular Bishop of Sura, Henri Maret, attempted to speak after him, but was interrupted frequently by disturbances on the floor and by adverse rulings from the chair. When Maret had sat down, the subsecretary of the council announced that a motion for cloture had been made by more than 150 fathers. A vote was taken, and an end put to the general discussion. The great majority of those present voted for the cloture resolution, although some manifested audible signs of displeasure. The Americans who signed the petition for an end to the debate were Spalding, Dubuis, Rappe, and de Goesbriand. 43 On the next day, June 4, a protest against the action was registered by the international committee of the minority. The signers of this counterpetition from the United States were Kenrick, Purcell, Domenec, Fitzgerald, McQuaid, Mrak, Vérot, and Whelan. 44 According to Acton, this protest was the outcome of the largest meeting of the opposition that had yet taken place. He told Döllinger that eighty bishops had met on June 4 at Cardinal Rauscher's apartments. The Anglo-American, most of the Hungarians, and the leaders of the French opposition had wanted to abstain from further participation in the council on the ground that they were no longer free to speak, and to appear again only at the end, to vote against the definition. However, the majority of the Germans and many of the French argued that a single protest should be made, and that the minority should then continue to participate in the debate. 45 It was the latter strategy which prevailed. Four days

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43 Mansi, LII, 440.
44 Mansi, LII, 444-6.
45 Conzemius Transcripts, Acton to Döllinger, Rome, June 4, 1870. According to Odo Russell, Strossmayer, Dupanloup, Darboy, Clifford, Kenrick, Connolly, Haynald, and others wanted to make a protest against the rules of procedure and the cloture and to follow this with a mass withdrawal of the opposition bishops from Rome. Hefele and Ketteler opposed them and persuaded the majority of those present that they should not take this drastic step. The Hungarians then suggested that the opposition continue to attend the sessions, but not speak at them. Cardinal Rauscher disapproved

later, Acton reported that Kenrick had decided that he would not speak again in the council, so as to indicate that he did not recognize it. The Englishman also told Döllinger that he had delivered a parcel to the railroad station for the archbishop, a thick manuscript which Kenrick was sending to be printed at Naples. ⁴⁶

This manuscript was a brochure which Archbishop Kenrick entitled Concio in Concilio Vaticano habenda at non habita. It was the speech which he had intended for the general discussion and had been prevented from making because of the imposition of cloture. Dupanloup's friend, Albert du Bo˙s, gave the following somber estimate of its effect: "What also perhaps stood in the way of conciliation {between the opposing parties at the council} was a Latin brochure of Monsignor Kenrick, Archbishop of St. Louis, wherein that prelate said his piece to the majority with a crudeness that was quite American." ⁴⁷ Bernard McQuaid also reported on the pamphlet when he wrote to James Early:

The latest sensation here is a pamphlet of 100 pages by the Archbp. of St. Louis. In it he makes some very bold assertions and pays his respects to the Archbps. of Dublin, Westminster and Baltimore who had attacked him in the Council. As Dr. Kenrick had been cut off (from) his right of reply in the Council by the abrupt closing of the discussion in which he was attacked, and had been refused five minutes of personal explanation, he has published his pamphlet in which he goes over many things likely to make a stir. ⁴⁸

A less sympathetic commentator was Bishop Modeste Demers of Vancouver, who told James A. McMaster:

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45 this on the ground that a bishop had the obligation to express the truth according to his conscience. A further proposal of Bishop Dupanloup that the minority address pastoral letters explaining their stand to their respective dioceses was also rejected. The meeting than decided on the protest mentioned by Acton. ( Russell to Clarendon, Rome, June 8, 1870, in Blakiston, p. 440.)
46 Conzemius Transcripts, Acton to Döllinger, Rome, June 8, 1870.
47 ASMP, Du Bo˙s Papers, Memoirs of the Council.
48 McQuaid to Early, Rome, June 30, 1870, in Browne, p. 439.

The discussion was put a stop to, by which he { Kenrick} was prevented from delivering his discourse; he was very much vexed at that, but determined the world should know his mind and thoughts on the subject, he had it published at Naples, and, for the sake of the Irish name and the cause of the American Church, would to God he had not. I forbear to say more about it; it will reach you sooner or later, and you will judge for yourself.

Demers also had some general remarks to make on Kenrick and others of the American opposition. His letter continued:

And his financial difficulties! They are known here in all their details, even among a certain class of people! And the unfortunate Chicago affair! For a whole month he kept away from the sessions of the Council, living alone by himself in part of the city; he came the other day to give his vote! We thought he had left for Paris some time ago . . . now, between us, the question is among ourselves, what shall become of him? You could see in his very countenance, in his face, the trouble, the agony of his mind! We pray hard for him. . . . Bps. Purcell and Whelan will soon be home. I should like to know the reception they are going to meet with . . . the Bps. of Pittsburg, Harrisburg, Little-Rock will soon be going too, both {sic} against. Bp. McCloskey of Louisville is also against--a poor augur at the beginning of their episcopal career!49

Archbishop Kenrick was not nearly as distraught over his situation as was the Canadian bishop, but he was quite annoyed at statements by Cullen, Spalding, and Manning, and the first section of his concio was an attempt to refute their arguments and to vindicate his own honor. Against Cullen he argued that the most that could be established from the standard Petrine texts was that St. Peter had a primacy of jurisdiction and honor, although he confessed that if the norm of unanimous consent of the fathers were to be applied to those texts, it was difficult to establish even this. In any event, he found nothing in Scripture which proved papal infallibility. The archbishop laid great stress on the opinions of the fathers of the Church and concluded from his study of them that the pope could indeed be said to be infallible, but only on the condition that he use the

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49 UND, McMaster Papers, Demers to McMaster, n.d. {June, 1870.}

counsel of his brethren, the bishops, and speak in their name. He was very concerned at what he saw as a growing tendency to absolute rule in the Church, a tendency that would be fostered by the definitions of primacy and infallibility under discussion, and he wondered if the next logical step would not be to declare the pope impeccable. In the final section addressed to Cullen, Kenrick took exception to the Irish prelate's interpretation of the thought of his late brother, Francis Patrick Kenrick. The Archbishop of St. Louis was aware that his brother, a graduate of the Urban College of the Propaganda, was far more ultramontane than he was himself, but he repeated his claim that he had, nevertheless, not held the doctrine proposed in the schema. As for his own opinion, it was simple and straightforward: "I believe that for this (the definition of a new dogma of Catholic faith) a council which truly represents the universal Church is demanded." 50

Kenrick's remarks on Spalding were much shorter. He attempted to refute him out of his own mouth. It was being claimed, he declared, that the letter which was sent to the Holy Father by the bishops assembled at the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866 constituted an affirmation of their belief in the dogma of papal infallibility. The archbishop recalled that the letter had been composed by Spalding, and, as evidence of what was then the view of the Archbishop of Baltimore on the infallibility of the pope, he quoted at length from the fifth edition of Spalding History of the Reformation, which had appeared in the year of the Baltimore council. Commenting on some remarks made by the Protestant historian D'Aubigné, the Archbishop of Baltimore had written:

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50 Peter Richard Kenrick, Concio in Concilio Vaticano habenda at non habita ( Naples: 1870). The preceding section occupies pp. 1 - 37. The whole Concio is also in Mansi, LII, 453-81, and, in English translation, in Leonard W. Bacon (ed.), At Inside View of the Vatican Council in the Speech of the Most Reverend Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis ( New York, n.d.), and in Clancy, pp. 93-131.

We learn for the first time that the Roman Chancery decided on articles of faith: We had always thought that this was the exclusive province of General Councils, and when they were not in session, of the Roman Pontiffs with the consent or acquiescence of the body of bishops dispersed over the world. We had also in our simplicity believed, that even these did not always decide on controverted points, but only in cases where the teaching of revelation was clear and explicit; and that in other matters, they wisely allowed a reasonable latitude of opinion.

Kenrick felt that the quotation proved his thesis sufficiently, and he went on to make a few comments on Archbishop Manning before taking up the arguments which the latter had advanced. 51

The archbishop told of the great thrill which Manning's eloquence had given him. He did not know, he said, which to admire more--the eloquence of the man or his perfervid zeal in promoting, or rather commanding, the new definition. The many fine qualities of the Archbishop of Westminster's presentation had made him wish that he could have been recruited for the opposition. And yet, Kenrick continued, it all put him in mind of what used to be said of the English settlers in Ireland, that they were more Irish than the Irish. "The Most Reverend Archbishop" he found to be "certainly more Catholic than any Catholic whom I have ever known." Manning, he declared, had no doubt about the personal, separate, and absolute infallibility of the pope, and he did not intend to allow anyone else to have any doubts about it. Rather he was like a prophet who took care to see to it that his predictions came true. His own views, based on nearly sixty years of education in the faith and on some forty years in the clerical life, were quite different from those put forth by the English prelate. He set down his credo in these words:

I boldly declare that the opinion, as set down in the schema, is not a doctrine of faith, and that it cannot become such by any definition whatsoever, even of a council We are custodians of the deposit of

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51 Kenrick ( Naples edition), pp. 37-9.

faith, not its masters. We are teachers of the faithful entrusted to our care just insofar as we are witnesses. 52

The next part of the Concio distinguished the science of theology from its object, the deposit of faith. It was in confusion of the two that Kenrick found the root of discord in the council. Theology's function was to systematize the truths of faith and to deduce theological conclusions from explicitly or implicitly revealed data, but theological conclusions, the archbishop insisted, could never be elevated to the status of dogmas of faith. Everyone, he declared, admitted that the pope, united with the bishops was infallible. This he took to be the doctrine of faith. All the rest was theological speculation, which might be fight or wrong, but which in any event could not be proposed to the faithful as part of the revealed deposit. ⁵³

Archbishop Kenrick concluded his argumentation with a survey of the ecclesiastical tradition of the English-speaking world. He pointed out that for some two centuries a book called Roman Catholic Principles in Reference to God and King had been a standard authority, and he quoted the following passage from it:

It is no matter of faith to believe that the Pope is in himself infallible, separated from the Church, even in expounding the faith: by consequence Papal definitions or decrees, in whatever form pronounced, taken exclusively from a General Council, or universal acceptance of the Church, oblige none, under pain of heresy, to an interior assent. ⁵⁴

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52 Kenrick ( Naples edition), p. 40. In his reminiscences of the council, Manning quoted Kenrick's passage of appreciation for his abilities and added the laconic comment: "No doubt." ( Purcell, II, 456-7.)
53 Ibid., pp. 41-3.
54 Ibid., p. 46. The work is attributed to James Maurus Corker, O.S.B. ( 1639- 1715) and is supposed to have been written while Corker was in Newgate after the Titus Oates plot. There were numerous subsequent editions, and Roman Catholic Principles seems to have been the basis of Stephen Badin The Real Principles of Roman Catholics in Reference to God and Country ( Bardstown: 1805), the first Catholic book published in the western United States. ( Robert Gorman, Catholic Apologetical Literature in the United States, 1784-1858 {Washington: 1939}), pp. 17-8.

Kenrick's next authority was the incumbent Archbishop of Baltimore, who, as Bishop of Louisville, had delivered a sermon in which he stated that the notion of the pope's infallibility was no more than an opinion and warned his hearers that it would be rash to impugn the orthodoxy of men like Bossuet who held a contrary view. 55 Finally, Kenrick launched into a lengthy treatment of the tradition of the Irish Church. It was true, he admitted, that the majority of the Irish bishops now seemed to favor the schema, but this had not always been the opinion of either the hierarchy or clergy in Ireland, and it had not been the doctrine taught at Maynooth until Father John O'Hanlon proposed it on a tentative basis in 1831. Kenrick had been in O'Hanlon's class at the time, and he was ready to admit that the thesis appealed to him as a theological opinion. ⁵⁶

By way of apparent afterthought, the archbishop next challenged Manning on three points. One was the case of conscience, which had already been mentioned in the council by Spalding. Kenrick was satisfied that no evidence had yet been alleged which would justify a bishop voting for the definition, and, with regard to the Gallican Assembly of 1682 which had been attacked in the general congregations, he claimed that its records had been deliberately falsified. He could not agree with the Archbishop of Westminster that a bishop would be without serious fault if he voted for the schema without having made a careful examination of the evidence. ⁵⁷ Kenrick's next point of disagreement with Manning was on the latter's insistence that infallibility was a charism. The Archbishop of St. Louis preferred to drop the word altogether, and to speak of the divinely guaranteed inerrancy of the Church, and he was particularly disturbed by the English prelate's refusal to discuss possible limitations on the exercise of the charismatic gift which he claimed for the Pope. ⁵⁸ Finally he professed himself astounded

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55 Kenrick, pp. 47-8.
56 Ibid., pp. 49-56.
57 Ibid., pp. 56-63.
58 Ibid., pp. 63-5.

by Manning's claim that the final clause of the constitution on faith amounted to an implicit acceptance of papal infallibility. The representative of the deputation had stated the exact opposite when queried on the point. Either he was wrong, if Manning were right, or else he had deliberately led the council into error, which could scarcely be believed. ⁵⁹

The peroration of the Concio consisted in an enumeration of the grievances of the minority--beginning with the deputation elections in December--and an appeal to drop the whole question of infallibility. The last sentence read: "The salvation of the world is more important than that of the city." There were six appendices, including complete documentation on statements of the Irish bishops to the British Parliament on the eve of Catholic Emancipation, and a record of Kenrick's own protest at Spalding's management of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. The whole brochure, in Latin with occasional English footnotes, came to 100 pages. ⁶⁰

We have already seen something of the episcopal reaction to the Concio. Other commentators were not far behind the bishops. On June 11, the Freeman's Journal printed a letter from the Roman correspondent of the Vatican which characterized Kenrick as having "imbibed the Gallican principles of Delahogue in his "youth" at Maynooth, and said of the pamphlet itself that it contained "propositions which are accounted scandalous, proximate to heresy and absolutely heretical." 61 The New York Herald took the opposite side, and reported on June 19: "It caused a great deal of excitement here. His brother bishops from America are anxious to hear what he has to say in opposition. He is considered the most intense of the bishops in his opposition to the dogma and will enter a solemn protest against it that will cause many Italians to pause before the vote." ⁶²

Three Americans addressed the council on June 6, when

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59 Ibid., pp. 65-6.
60 The main text ends with p. 68. The appendices take up the rest of the pages.
61 Freeman's Journal, June 11, 1870.
62 New York Herald, June 19, 1870, in Beiser, p. 96.

the debate resumed. This time the subject was the proëmium, or introduction, to the constitution. The speakers from the United States were Bishops Amat, Vérot, and Whelan, all of the minority. Of Amat, Bishop Bernard Ullathorne later wrote:

In my estimation the shrewdest man in the Council is a young Bishop from California, a native of Spain, but brought up in America, a little man, with broad shoulders, and a broad compact head, like that of the first Napoleon, and he never speaks above a few minutes, but he hits the nail on the head invariably. He neither argues, nor talks, but simply proposes amendments on the text and comes down again. 63

The June 6 speech of the Bishop of Monterey-Los Angeles was a good example of what Ullathorne meant. He proposed three amendments. In the first instance, the priestly prayer of Christ ( John 17:20 ff.) had been cited so as to make its object seem to be the unity of the faithful. Amat asked that the true sense of the passage be brought out, that is, that Christ had prayed for the apostles and for those who would believe because of their preaching. This emendation was accepted by the deputation and incorporated in the final text of Pastor Aeternus. Secondly, Amat objected to the phrase which styled Peter the "principle" of the Church's unity. He proposed that the word "center" be substituted as more expressive of the real role of the apostle. This change was rejected on the ground that, while Christ was the primary principle of unity, He had placed in the Church a secondary principle, namely, Peter. The bishop's third amendment was more successful and it was included almost verbatim in the final text. He suggested that it be made clear that the principal target of the Church's enemies was the Church itself, and not the primacy, and also that the primacy be referred to as a bulwark of the Church, but not, as the text had it, as its "salvation." Having said this, he left the pulpit. ⁶⁴

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63 Buder, II, 113.
64 Mansi, LII, 496-7; Betti, pp. 244-5; 252-4; Georges Dejaifve, S.J., "Etudes sur le premier Condle du Vatican," Nouvelle Revue Théologique, LXXXIV ( February, 1962), 565-6. The replies on behalf of the deputation were made by Archbishop Leahy of Cashel. ( Mansi, LII, 637-9.)

Augustin Vérot's June 6 appearance on the rostrum was a comparatively brief one. He began by remarking that after the cloture resolution of June 4 some opponents of the schema had decided to abstain from further participation in the debate, but he declared that he himself thought it more worthy of a Christian and a bishop to defend the truth as he saw it whenever the occasion arose. This was apparently the first publicity given to the discussion of the international committee which had taken place at Rauscher's apartments on June 4, and Acton reported to Döllinger that Vérot had broken the veil of secrecy that had been cast over those proceedings. 65 León Dehon, one of the French stenographers at the council, entered a less sympathetic notation in his diary when he wrote: "Playing the role of enfant terrible, he betrayed the little plots of his friends." ⁶⁶

After this introduction, Vérot turned his attention to the schema at hand. His first objection was to the statement that the age was marked by increasing hatred of the Holy See. On the contrary he had found the religious climate in the United States appreciably better in recent years. It was true that there had been troubles in the past, but the odium was principally directed at the temporal dominion of the pope and not at his spiritual prerogatives. In fact, the bishop asserted, he had had great hopes of a rapprochement with Protestants when the council was announced, because he thought that it might produce a moderate and mild exposition of certain controverted points which would open the door to many conversions in America. As for Catholics, Vérot stated that there had never been a time when they were more devoted to the Roman pontiff. It was true that certain Catholics--who were also Freemasons or Carbonari--had invaded the temporal domain of the pope, but even this the bishop thought was inspired more by political motives than by a desire to attack the primacy on theological or moral grounds.

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65 Conzemius Transcripts, Acton to Döllinger, Rome, June 8, 1870.
66 Dehon, p. 159.

The speaker's second point was that it was not in accord with the facts to say that the doctrine of the schema represented the "ancient and constant tradition of the universal Church." Rather it explained papal prerogatives as they were understood by ultramontanes. The use of this last word set off a chorus of "noes" from the floor. Vérot was not deterred, and asked leave to use the term. He said that he had heard the opposite epithet, "Gallicanism," employed often enough from the rostrum. All knew what he meant by an ultramontane, and he knew no better word to express the idea. He then attempted to continue by saying: "Everyone knows that there are two Catholic theological systems . . .," but he was interrupted by Cardinal Bilio, who told him that what he was about to say had no pertinence to the proëmium, and that he should reserve his comments for the appropriate chapters. Vérot yielded to the order from the chair and left the pulpit. 67 His comments had no effect on the wording of the constitution. ⁶⁸ Acton could only remark to Döllinger of his performance: "He is a very remarkable but strange man." ⁶⁹

The third American bishop to speak on June 6 was Richard Whelan. He apologized for his unfamiliarity with Latin because, as he said, he had been laboring for thirty years in "a vast and wild region," but he felt compelled to speak since others had decided not to do so. His first appeal was for a complete revision of the proëmium. It should be replaced, he felt, by an exposition of the nature of the Church, making use of rich Scriptural images like that of the Mystical Body. As matters stood, the fathers were laying themselves open to the charge that they had written a constitution on the Church without explaining what the Church was. This procedure, he declared, was not consonant with the dignity of the Holy Father, who would surely not want himself mentioned before the Church of Christ.

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67 Mansi, LII, 497-9.
68 Mansi, LIII, 263; LII, 639.
69 Conzemius Transcripts, Acton to Döllinge, Rome, June 8, 1870.

The deputation, Whelan charged, had arranged the schema so as to reflect the preoccupations of a certain school, and in doing so they had neglected all that might have been said about the Church which Christ had founded.

Of course Bishop Whelan did not expect that his suggested radical revision would be accepted, and he also had a number of minor amendments to propose. Like Amat he was concerned with what he thought was a misuse of Christ's priestly prayer, and he asked that the text be revised to indicate that its principal object was a petition that men might believe and be saved, while the unity for which Christ prayed was contributory to this primary intention. He also denied the assertion of the schema that it was on the "fortitude of Peter" that the indefectibility of the Church depended. What Christ was stressing in the "Thou art Peter" text, declared Whelen, was His own omnipotent power. He also concurred with Vérot's statement that it was untrue that hatred of the Church was increasing everywhere. He was ready to grant the existence of a constant opposition, but he saw no signs that it was worse than usual in the mid-nineteenth century. Another Whelan amendment attacked the notion that "the whole salvation and strength of the Church" depended upon the Holy Father. Lastly, the Bishop of Wheeling pointed out that the final clause of the introduction was ambiguous and should be written more clearly. ⁷⁰

This last proposal was the only one of Whelan's suggestions to win acceptance, but he was made the target for two particularly strong rebukes when Leahy of Cashel reported to the council the views of the deputation on suggested amendments. Whelan's sweeping request that the proëmium be revised was dismissed as "a censure, not an emendation," and it was not even submitted to a vote. The second item which irritated Leahy was the claim of Whelan (and of Vérot) that the age was not an era of special hostility to the Holy See. The Archbishop of Cashel delivered an emotional oration on this point, detailing the

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70 Mansi, LII, 514-7.

nefarious activities of contemporary heretics, schismatics, enemies of the temporal power--who he said were also necessarily enemies of the pope's spiritual power--and, finally, of "liberal Catholics, who are a real calamity to our holy religion . . . who would oppress the pontiff and the Church if they could, and as much as they could by denying and limiting the rights of both." ⁷¹

The next topic for discussion was the first chapter on the primacy, and it drew no speakers from the United States. On June 7, Bishop Amat was the third and last orator on the second chapter, which dealt with the perpetuity of the primacy in the successors of Peter. He had two omissions and two changes to suggest: first, that the words which claimed that there had been a constant and universal conviction in the Church with regard to Peter's primacy be dropped, and also, the attribution to the apostle of the phrase columna fidei. Both statements were taken from the speech of Pope Celestine I's legate to the Council of Ephesus, and Amat felt that their rhetorical form was out of place in a dogmatic decree. He also warned against taking Scriptural phrases out of context and said that this would weaken the position of the Church in the eyes of non-Catholics. Secondly, he proposed that the word "legitimately" be included in the description of the succession of the Roman pontiffs to Peter and that the final sentences of the chapter be rearranged to achieve greater clarity. 72 None of Amat's emendations were accepted. ⁷³

The first and second chapters of the constitution had been dispatched in a single day of debate, but on June 9 twenty-one names were read out as having been put down on the list of speakers who wished to comment on Chapter III. Among them

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71 For discussion of the amendments in the deputation, see Mansi, LIII, 262-3. Leahy speech is ibid., LII, 637-641.
72 Mansi, LII, 538-9.
73 Mansi, LIII, 263-4 (for the deputation meeting); LII, 720-21 (for the report of the deputation's representative to the council).

were Amat and Vérot. The basic point made by the former was that the chapter should deal explicitly only with the pope's primacy and jurisdiction. His primacy as teacher belonged, Amat thought, to the chapter on infallibility. He proposed three separate amendments which would make this distinction clear, but all of them were rejected by the deputation. Two other emendations were received favorably. In one of these, the bishop recommended that a phrase which seemed to indicate that the Church was divided into many "churches" be dropped, and in another he requested explicit affirmation of the fact that bishops were successors of the apostles and real pastors. 74

Something of a contretemps developed over a further suggestion which Amat made in his June 9 speech. In line with his desire to exclude the notion of doctrinal primacy from the treatment in Chapter III, he had asked that the canon which concluded the chapter be revised so as to omit any mention of faith and morals. Amat's reformulation of the canon was turned down in favor of a similar effort by Bishop Louis Regnault of Chartres, and the representative of the deputation, Federico Zinelli of Treviso, declared that he was accepting the Regnault version conditionally. As the text finally came out, it developed that the "condition" was the reintroduction of faith and morals, which defeated the purpose of both Amat and Regnault. On July 9, sixty-two fathers protested this maneuver, but on the same day Cardinal Patrizi informed Bilio that Pius IX wanted the change to stand in the text submitted to the general congregation. It was approved as submitted. Americans who signed the protest of July 9 were Kenrick, Vérot, and Domenec. 75

The Bishop of St. Augustine's tenure of the rostrum on June

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74 Mansi, LII, 567-70; LIII, 266-7 (the deputation); LII, 1101-11 (report of Bishop Zinelli to the council).
75 Zinelli's original statement accepting Regnault's canon juxta modum is in Mansi, LII, 1116. The events of July 9 are documented ibid., LIII, 267-8. The final vote was taken on July 11. (Ibid., LII, 1200-203.)

10 was a typically stormy one. He begged the fathers to give him a patient hearing, but he soon had them murmuring. The initial occasion was provided by his opening remarks, which went as follows:

I know the position in which I and others are placed. Until the present, certain opinions have been freely discussed among theologians without censure. Now, however, you say to me and to many others, that is, to more than 100 bishops from every nation under heaven, at least equivalently: 'You must abandon your own opinion and embrace ours or you must leave the Church, that is, you must leave the bosom of the Church unless you embrace our opinion.'

Vérot answered the rumblings of disapproval which greeted this declaration by a plea for a fair hearing motivated by justice, charity, and religion, and he called upon his opponents to provide him with solid responses to his difficulties, responses which would convince the minority bishops of the error of their ways.

The Florida bishop had a half-dozen amendments to propose. The first of these charged misuse in the schema of a citation from the Council of Florence about the plenitude of papal power. Vérot's research had been thorough. He had consulted the Greek text of the Florentine decrees, the only text which had been signed by the Eastern bishops, and he had studied the explanation of its meaning given by the contemporary Cardinal Bessarion. It was clear to him that when Florence said that plenary papal power was to be understood according to the acts of ecumenical councils and the sacred canons, it intended this clause to be a restrictive one. Vérot therefore suggested that it be stated that supreme papal authority was always to be exercised "according to the sacred canons." 76

Bishop Vérot's next complaint was one that had been raised before, and had been only partially satisfied through a com-

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76 Mansi, LII, 585-91. José Rincón, La plenitud y rupremacia del primado jorisdiccional del Romano Pontifice on el Concilio Vaticano ( Rome: 1943), pp. 53-75, passim, discusses Vérot's contribution at this point, and studies the speeches of fathers who agreed with or disputed his interpretation.

promise suggested to the deputation by Spalding. The bishop asked for deletion of the word "episcopal" from the description of papal jurisdiction, and the addition of the word "supreme." He remarked that unless this change were made the pope would be defined to be universal bishop, a dignity to which St. Gregory the Great had said no pope should aspire. Along this same line, Vérot also wanted an explanation of how papal jurisdiction could be called ordinary and immediate. He granted that it was ridiculous to think that the Holy Father would need authorization from the local ordinary before he could preach and administer the sacraments in any given part of the world, but he did not understand clearly why universal papal jurisdiction did not submerge local episcopal authority. With a flourish of humor that was typical, but diverting, he concluded his argument with an invitation: "However, the field in America is vast, and if anyone from Rome wishes to come to us, he will be most welcome." In a more constructive vein he then suggested that matters would be helped if a declaration were subjoined that all bishops derived their power directly from Christ, and that, as St. Paul had said, they, as well as the pope, were the foundation on which the Church was built. 77

A final series of suggestions concerned the freedom of papal communication with the faithful and the relation of the pope to ecumenical councils. Vérot admitted the general right of the Roman pontiff to communicate freely with the Church, but he felt that there were times when prudence counseled delay in promulgating Roman documents. As an instance of this he mentioned the Syllabus of 1864. To the accompaniment of a now-familiar chorus of "noes" from the floor, he declared that

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77 Gustave Thils, Primauté pontificale et Prérogatives épiscopales: "Potestas ordinaria" au Concile du Vatican ( Louvain, 1961), pp. 64-5, is one of those who feels that Vérot missed the point of the debate. In pages 63 ff., Thils discusses other contributions to the discussion and stresses the importance attached to it by many bishops who felt that the divinely founded rights of the episcopacy were being challenged. See also Betti, pp. 284; 293-5.

publication of that particular document in the United States would have resulted in a "universal conflagration," in which every Catholic church in the country would have been burned to the ground. With regard to the relation of pope and council, the bishop asked for omission of the clause which implied papal supremacy. He suggested this, he said, out of reverence for the Third Council of Constantinople and that of Constance, both of which had passed judgment on holders of the papal chair. In the written emendations which he handed in, Vérot further recommended that the prohibition of appeal from the decision of a pope to a council be restricted to future councils, but that appeal to a council already in session be allowed.

The only one of these many proposals to find its way into the text of Pastor Aeternus was the addition of the adjective "supreme" to describe universal papal jurisdiction. 78 But the final sentence of Vérot's speech was one of his more memorable contributions to the history of the council. On June 9, Archbishop Dechamps, without interruption from the presidents, had called for condemnation of the doctrines of Bossuet, Cardinal Lorraine, and Cardinal de la Luzerne, all luminaries of the Gallican Church. The Bishop of St. Augustine felt obliged to rise to this challenge, and did so with the following canon, which he proposed as a conclusion to the chapters on the primacy: "If anyone say that the authority of the Roman pontiff in the Church is so complete that he may dispose of all things according to his whim, let him be anathema." There was laughter and murmuring in the hall, and Cardinal Capalti broke in with a stern admonition:

We are not in a theatre to listen to buffooneries, but in the church of the living God to transact the serious business of the Church. While we are doing this, nothing contumelious, absurd or erroneous ought to be said. The most reverend father will pardon me if my zeal has

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78 Mansi, LIII, 267-8 (deputation); LII, 1102-14 (report of Zinelli to the council).

led me to say these things; for whenever he goes into the pulpit he detains the fathers of the council to listen to his pleasantries. 79

To which Butler comments: "A not undeserved rebuke." 80 This is true, but it would have been an even stronger rebuke had the chair been more impartial in restraining the attacks to which the minority had been regularly subjected since the beginning of the debate.

Debate on the fourth chapter of Pastor Aeternus, the subject of which was papal infallibility, began on June 14. There was a certain amount of irony in the fact that Archbishop Purcell, one of the most outspoken opponents of the definition, celebrated the Mass which opened the session that day. 81 No Americans spoke until June 20, but before that date several interesting letters had been mailed from Rome which told something of American hopes and fears as the long-anticipated discussion commenced.

On the same day that Vérot addressed the council on the primacy, Lord Acton was preparing to leave the city. One of the farewell visits which he paid was to Kenrick, and his final report to Döllinger contained the following evaluation of the Archbishop of St. Louis:

Kenrick is a rock of bronze. . . . He considers the council null and void. The dogmatic decrees will take effect when the council has ended and been confirmed. This day will never come. Nor will he recommend this dogma to his flock or defend it against Protestants, since he considers it quite false and impossible. He and the opposition say: . . .'Time will work for us.' He is indignant at the lack of sincerity and good will; he thinks it is to be explained by confusion of ideas. People confuse theology with faith, more or less correct conclusions with the deposit of faith. . . . I still stick to my earlier judgment: Strossmayer, Kenrick, Darboy, Hefele are the best men. 82

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79 Mansi, LII, 591.
80 Butler, II, 80-81.
81 Mansi, LII, 709.
82 Conzemius Transcripts, Acton to Döllinger, Rome, June 10, 1870.

A somewhat different estimate of Kenrick and his colleagues was given by Bishop Demers to McMaster on June 13. After stating that prudence had prevented him from writing about certain matters previously, he continued:

But now the veil is removed and I am at liberty to write to a friend, to one, I knew it before, who believes with me, to thank him [who] has had the courage, for the sake of truth, to sacrifice noble feelings towards persons, to expose their wrongs. These wrongs, I call them so, are very great indeed and may cost very dear to their authors; they have already borne very sad and bitter fruits by destroying the prestige attached to the American Episcopacy all over Europe, principally from the time of the last Council of Baltimore. . . .

I could not believe that not (sic) one single American Bishop would go against the Pontifical Infallibility, not even against the opportunity of proclaiming it as an article of Faith, but how sadly I have been mistaken! Nothing could equal my astonishment at this but the shocking instance of a brother and a brother Bishop trying to prove a brother Bishop, long cold in the grave, guilty of what there is no doubt he would willingly subscribe to as a revealed truth if he had lived to be better informed on this important question, had he only listened to the learned and convincing arguments of our orators in favor of it; at least it is my conviction he would: why did not his own brother entertain the same charitable intention? But [what] shall I say of the man who has been for the last two years moving heaven and earth to create prejudice all over the world in the mind of his brother Bishops and of the Faithful by means of the Press; and who this man is you know but too well. Ipse viderit! . . .

Time will reveal things that will astonish the world and show how deep the evil was, and that the convoking of this council was an inspiration from above, and the only remedy that can cure it, at any cost or loss, you understand me. ⁸³

Both McQuaid and Bayley wrote to the United States in midJune. The Bishop of Rochester commented: "I am glad to hear that minds at home are more quiet on the Infallibility question. The loss will be in the East and in Hungary, Bohemia, Germany and France. The amount of Infidelity here in Italy is fearful. The revolution that is coming will make great changes." How-

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83 UND, McMaster Papers, Demers to McMaster, Rome, June 13, 1870.

ever, he had not lost his peace of soul, and he concluded: "Whatever happens in the Council will be God's will, and though great calamities may follow at first, good will eventually come out of it all." 84 Bayley, who had canceled his plans to return home in order to be on hand "for the discussion of 'the great question,'" was cautiously optimistic as he summed up the situation for Father Corrigan: "The question," he wrote, "is in reality one of form rather than of fact. With the exception of a very few we all believe in the Infallibility of the Pope teaching ex Cathedra--and lately there has been a disposition manifested to push the Decree into such a shape as will gain for it a nearly unanimous vote--so that before long I trust you will have good news from us." 85

The first United States prelate to speak in the debate on infallibility was Archbishop Alemany, at the seventy-fourth general congregation on June 20. He had only one modification to suggest, namely, that an explanation of the nature of the prerogative be included in the constitution to distinguish it clearly from impeccability and inspiration. The main burden of his speech was to quiet fears about a possible hostile reaction to the dogma in the United States. He recalled the affirmation of universal papal jurisdiction and doctrinal authority which had been subscribed by the bishops of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, among whom he named specifically Whelan, Domenec, and Vérot. Mention of the Bishop of St. Augustine drew laughter from the fathers. The archbishop pointed out that the president of the United States had been in attendance at the final session of the Baltimore council, and that Catholics, including those in "the regions of Florida and Savannah," had accepted the council's declaration with joy, while Protestant opposition had been minimal. He concluded that the apprehensions expressed by Domenec were unfounded. Alemany then

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84 McQuaid to Early, Rome, [Mid-June, 1870], in Browne, p. 436.
85 AANY, C-2, Bayley to Corrigan, Rome, June 20, 1870.

finished his speech by citing St. Antoninus of Florence, Francis Patrick Kenrick, and Martin J. Spalding in favor of the dogma, and he added a last argument from reason. There was, he said, need of a supreme authority in the Church. Without it the Church could not be one, as the multiplicity of Protestant sects demonstrated. ⁸⁶

The Roman summer was beginning, but still the debate went on. McQuaid wrote to Early on June 25 that his greatest regret was that he was not home in Rochester, "instead of being boiled to death in this sweltering atmosphere of Rome." "The perspiration flows from me day and night," he continued, "and if I were to remain here all Summer, my dried bones might be gathered up as all that would be remaining of me." But progress was slow, and the bishop predicted that from three to six months would be needed to do justice to the subject. "We are still at the Infallibility," he told Early "and no more likely to get through by the 29th. than we are of going on an overland trip to the moon." 87

Three minority bishops from the United States spoke on the chapter on infallibility during the final week of June. First to mount the pulpit was Whelan, on June 25. He began by disputing the contention that a universal belief in papal infallibility existed in the Church. Such, he declared, was not the case in the English-speaking world. On the contrary, educated Catholics in that area were under the impression that it was only the opinion of the ultramontane school, and they believed--wrongly, Whelan conceded-- that only Italians were ultramontanes. He reminded the fathers again that bishops in the United States and elsewhere had preached that infallibility was not a dogma, and that in 1825 the Irish hierarchy had confirmed this preaching under oath. While Archbishop Manning was undoubtedly specially qualified to interpret the probable reaction of Protestants, he went on, still in this instance he found that the English prel-

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86 Mansi, LII, 790-97.
87 McQuaid to Early, Rome, June 25, 1870, in Browne, pp. 436-7.

ate's predictions contradicted the opinion of everyone else he knew who had ever engaged in controversial work. Finally, he asked if the attitude of the English-speaking countries was not echoed in France, in Germany, and in central Europe. His conclusion was that the "universal belief" about which some had been speaking was confined within rather restricted limits, and he suggested that the affirmation of it be accepted only with great care.

There was, however, a formulation of papal infallibility which Whelan thought that everyone could accept, since it represented the traditional belief of the Church. It would be a formulation which stated that the pope's definitions were in fact expressions or declarations of the faith of the Church, which was the guardian and teacher of the revealed word of God. If this nexus were established, and if the pope made his pronouncements as the head and the spokesman of the Church, the Bishop of Wheeling felt that infallibility would be saved without at the same time destroying the rights and office of other bishops. He was convinced that the constant and immutable consent of the episcopal college was needed, at least ordinarily, when there was question of resolving obscure and doubtful points or of promulgating new definitions. Should an extraordinary case arise, where it was necessary for the pontiff to speak out before he had had the opportunity to consult the bishops, Whelan was ready to admit that divine assistance would enable him to do so infallibly. He did not feel that this compromised his basic principle, which was that in every case the pope spoke precisely as "head of the mystical body of Christ and mouth of the Church." ⁸⁸

In the written observations he submitted, Whelan asked that all reference to the teaching authority of the pope be stricken from the chapter on infallibility, since he did not believe that infallibility had its source there, but rather in the papal position as head of the Church. He also asked for deletion

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88 Mansi, LII, 870-76.

of the citations from the Councils of Florence and Lyons because he did not think them pertinent. Instead he proposed that infallibility be deduced from the promises made by Christ to Peter and to the other apostles. Finally, he suggested an explicit declaration that the pope was infallible because he was the head of the Church. None of these recommendations was accepted by the deputation on faith, and only the last was even proposed to the fathers, after Bishop Vincenz Gasser of Brixen had characterized it as ambiguous and seeming to demand the consent of the bishops for promulgation of dogmatic decrees. 89

Bishop Amat was the next American speaker. He did not object to the connection which had been made between the teaching authority of the pope and his infallibility; instead he thought that the title of the chapter should be changed so as to indicate that it was because of his primacy of magisterium that the pope could be inerrant. The word "infallibility" he wanted dropped, out of charity and Christian prudence, since it was the occasion of so much disagreement. He distinguished three cases. The first was beyond controversy: The teaching authority of the Church, that is the bishops in union with their head, the pope, was infallible. Secondly, Amat declared that there was no question but that the Roman pontiff, as head of the Church and principal member of the body of Christ, was also infallible, since it was through him that the body was ruled and the unity of faith preserved. However--and the third case was that of the doctrine proposed in the schema--the Bishop of Monterey-Los Angeles did not think that it was certain that the pope was infallible when he spoke without any consent, prior, concomitant or subsequent, of the bishops, nor did he believe that papal infallibility extended as far as that of the Church. He did not think that the arguments from Scripture or from ecclesiastical practice which had been presented proved the doctrine of the schema, and he associated himself with the opinion of Bishop Ketteler, who had laid that doctrine to a

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89 Mansi, LIII, 270-72 (deputation); LII, 1219-24 ( Gasser report). confusion between what pertained to the total teaching body of the Church and what pertained to the pope.

Amat was willing to grant that there were occasions on which the Roman pontiff had to resolve controverted questions of faith or morals. This was a function of his primacy in doctrinal matters. Here the pope was infallible, but even so he did not act alone, but in concert with the bishops who had brought the case before his tribunal and with all the other bishops of the world who wanted to see the controversy ended by that bishop whose divinely given task it was to confirm his brethren.

A corollary followed from the preceding argumentation. It was that there was a distinction to be made between the object of the Church's infallibility and that of the pope. The latter was restricted to specific controversies in faith and morals which the pontiff had to settle, in virtue of his magisterial primacy, for the preservation of the unity of the Church. The former had a wider scope. It was, Amat asserted, as wide as the deposit of faith and the preservation of that deposit demanded, and it extended, therefore, not only to what had been directly revealed, but also to those doctrines which, while not revealed, were necessarily connected with divine revelation and necessary for its safekeeping. The bishop ended his speech with a request that Chapter IV of the constitution be rewritten according to a formula which he had prepared. He omitted the word "infallibility," and placed emphasis on the role of the pope as head of the mystical body of Christ, whose task it was to resolve controversies among the members of that body. These conclusions he thought warranted by the evidence and calculated to conciliate divergent views in the council. As he left the pulpit, the shouts of "No, no" from the floor indicated the fallacy of his assumption. 90 All Amat's suggestions were rejected by the deputation and an adverse report on them was later made to the council by Gasser, so that none of them was adopted. 91

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90 Mansi, LII, 915-20. Betti, pp. 325-6; 336 ; 357.
91 Mansi, LIII, 270-72 (deputation); LII, 1220, 1224 ( Gasser).

The last orator from the United States to address the council was, fittingly enough, Augustin Vérot, who had been its most prolix representative on the rostrum. He spoke at the seventyninth general congregation on June 30. Léon Dehon commented in his diary: " Monsignor Vérot, long discourse: for an hour and a half the speaker repeated all the objections, especially the historical ones." 92 Vérot started out with a promise: he would speak with all due gravity. This provoked laughter in the hall. But the laughter was good-humored, especially when he made the further promise that he would read his speech so that he would not indulge in extemporaneous amplifications or less cautious phraseology. He then explained his position. He was opposed only to the personal and separate infallibility of the Roman pontiff, which he had heard defended from the pulpit, and which he was convinced was intended by the schema, despite the disclaimers advanced by speakers for the deputation.

After these introductory remarks, the bishop commented on the June 20 speech of Archbishop Alemany. He denied that there was any contradiction between his present stand and his signature to the letter sent to Pius IX by the Second Council of Baltimore. That council had been rushed through in two weeks, he complained, and there had been no time for study of anything but disciplinary matters. All the documentation was then sent off to theologians in Rome, and, therefore, Vérot concluded: "With them is the whole merit and the whole praise of a definition of papal infallibility if it is to be found there." But it was not, as both he and Spalding well knew. In fact, he told the fathers, Spalding had not long since invited and encouraged him to make a special study of the question of infallibility, and he had done so, using the ultramontane books which were all that were available in the library of the American College. Parenthetically, he added that he was happy to have heard in the council that his opinions and those of Bossuet coincided. He had been unable to find the latter's defense of the Gallican clergy, but it was

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92 Dehon, p. 175.

obvious that their agreement could have come only from the fact that both had found the truth. When this was greeted with renewed laughter, he suggested that the deputation owed it both to truth and to Bossuet to refute him in the council.

Bishop Vérot's catalogue of the scriptural and patristic evidence, and that from church history, was a long one. He began with the Peter and Paul controversy as narrated in Acts and carried the argument down through a whole litany of fathers of the Church. His best argument, he felt, was that Pope Liberius had been deposed for heresy and that a Roman synod under Pope Symmachus had declared that a pope could not be deposed except for heresy. He gave other examples and concluded that the Roman Church at least conceived the possibility that a pontiff might become a heretic, which was scarcely compatible with personal and separate infallibility. The case of Pope Honorius still bothered him, too, and he said that only his desire not to be as offensive as Patriarch Valerga, who had compared the Gallicans to the Monothelites, prevented him from suggesting the parallel between the Jansenists and the efforts of the ultramontanes to evade the problem of Honorius' condemnation by three general councils and two popes.

With regard to the doctrine of the schema, Vérot was willing to assign it the theological qualification of "most probable," but he stressed that this still left it in the category of opinion, and he reiterated his complaint that no advance warning of its introduction had been given in the bull which convoked the council. Only after he had got to Rome did he--and more than 100 other fathers--find that they had been living in material heresy and were on the verge of being proclaimed formal heretics, and this after they had lived within the Church peacefully for years and had labored most fruitfully in its interests. The so-called "universal and constant faith" was not the faith of France, Germany, Ireland, the United States, or even of part of Italy, to judge from the sources of opposition to the definition, and Vérot could not see how this limited witness could form the basis for a dogma of faith.

The Bishop of St. Augustine concluded his final appearance before the council by proposing an amended form of the definition. He would give the pope, by reason of his primacy, the power to define what must be held in matters of faith or morals, and even in other areas. This supreme papal authority would be exercised as the expression of the collective authority of the episcopal college. It would apply only to the condemnation of heresies. Alternatively, Vérot suggested that his purpose could be achieved by adding a declaration to the effect that the pope made his definitions "after he had in his wisdom ascertained the faith of his brethren in the episcopate." In explaining these amendments, Vérot enunciated an interesting theory of the development of dogma. He asserted that he intended them--and the entire definition--to be prospective only, and not to apply to the past. This he thought would avoid the difficulties which arose from the history of the Church. He then apologized for having kept the fathers so long and left the rostrum for the last time. His apologies were unnecessary. Many of the prelates had already left the hall. Both Vérot's suggestions were turned down by the deputation. One of them would have eliminated the whole concept of a specifically papal infallibility, while the second would have made the pope simply the spokesman of the bishops. 94

The debate continued for four more days and was then brought to a halt. McQuaid explained the chief reason for this: "The climate is fearful, hot, sultry and enervating. . . . The only way to get along is to exclude outside air, by closing windows and doors." 95 Given this situation, chiefs of both the majority and minority parties agreed to terminate the discussion, and on July 4 this was done. The constitution Pastor Aeternus was

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93 Mansi, LII, 955-66. Betti, pp. 325; 351-2.
94 Mansi, LIII, 270-72 (deputation); LII, 1222-3 ( Gasser report).
95 McQuaid to Early, Rome, July 8, 1870, in Browne, p. 439.

returned to the deputation for final revision. In the July 8 meeting of the deputation Alemany suggested that a monitum be added to the definition of infallibility, asking that pastors of souls explain the doctrine carefully to the faithful. This suggestion was disallowed. A similar proposal by Spalding, Dechamps, and Martin was also rejected. 96

A document which belongs to this period of the council, but which was not submitted to the secretary until July 17, was the undelivered speech of Archbishop Blanchet, who had been one of those who renounced his turn in order to shorten the proceedings. His purpose was to counter the efforts of Whelan, Domenec, and Vérot who had predicted dire results, if the definition were adopted, in the United States. The Archbishop of Oregon City declared that, on the contrary, belief in papal infallibility was general in America, and he believed that a solemn definition would only increase devotion to the Holy Father, whereas if the dogma were not proclaimed, "a huge and unheard of sorrow will pervade the whole new continent, from the North Pole even to the Southern." 97

Progress in the deputation was slow. McQuaid had already explained something of the situation to Early on June 30 and on July 8 he offered further reasons for the delay. The first of these letters is valuable for the insight it gives into the mind of a bishop who stayed with the opposition until the end. He wrote as follows:

Efforts are being made to draw up a form of definition that will meet with the placet of nearly all. Two extremes oppose this: Manning leads those who would put the Bishops to one side, and make the Pope infallible, without a condition of any kind. Unfortunately the Pope himself sides with that party, and has made his influence felt very markedly. Another extreme is made up of Gallicans, or of Bishops whose ideas run towards Gallicanism. Between the two it is to be hoped that a definition will be found that will not give the lie to

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96 Mansi, LIII, 272-3.
97 Mansi, LII, 1047-50. An English translation is in Clancy, pp. 89-92.

all the past history of the Church. I have been much amused at some things here. For example a Bishop from our side of the water [ Alemany] has passed as a strong infallibilist and has received favors, etc. because he was so sound on the test question; the other day he made a speech on the Infallibility, professing his belief in it, etc. winding up with a definition to which I would be only too happy to say placet at any time. He was only one of that large number who claim that the Pope, speaking ex cathedra is infallible, without really understanding the meaning of the words. I have met many who wished to convert me, but when I cross-questioned them a bit, found that they were as unsound as myself in the exaggerated sense of the question. An Irish Bishop who is a red hot Infallibilist, in a conversation the other day turned out to hold the same views as myself, with this difference that I insisted on the explanation of the doctrine being put in black & white and he did not. The formula that does not contain full explanations and the proper conditions, such as are conceded in the Council by many of the strongest adherents of the doctrine will never meet with my approval, for without those conditions being expressed we should keep alive controversies and wranglings on the subject worse than anything in the past. ⁹⁸

A week later, McQuaid had more news, or rather he reported that there was a dearth of any real information:

Rumor has it that we shall not have the public session until the 24th. There is no reason for this long delay that I can see except the fondness of every one in Rome for taking things easy. The definition, it seems to me, might have been got ready for the 17th. The only explanation offered is that the members of the Deputasio de Fide, with whom the question now rests, are debating among themselves about the terms of the definition. It is easy to say, the Pope is infallible; it is not so easy to say how, when, under what circumstances, and about what matters he is infallible.

As the majority have assumed the responsibility of the definition, all the others now ask is to get that definition and leave Rome. ⁹⁹

As the events of the final week would show, the minority did not give up quite as easily as McQuaid predicted. That last week of the session began on Monday, July 11, with a long report

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98 "McQuaid to Early, Rome, June 30, 1870", in Browne, pp. 438-9. 99 "McQuaid to Early, Rome, July 8, 1870", ibid., p. 439.

from Bishop Gasser, who explained the text of the decree as finally decided upon by the deputation. Votes were then taken on the emendations which had been suggested in the course of the debate, and in every instance the recommendation of the deputation was followed. ¹⁰⁰ The stage was set for the final balloting on the constitution, which took place in two phases, the first of which was scheduled for Wednesday, July 13.

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100 Butler, II, 134-48.

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