72 DR. DÖLLINGER AND THE DOGMA OF BY DR. HERGENKÖTHER PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND CANON 2. No LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF Würzburg. (Translated from the German.) IV.—THE VATICAN COUNCIL-continued. O one will deny that scientific research must hold an important place in the examination of the sources of revealed truth; for it is certain that neither Popes nor Councils can create new dogmas of faith. But who can maintain that, in a particular instance, the requisite investigation has not taken place? Who is to be the judge of this point? Obviously it has not been left to the caprice of individuals to decide whether an Ecumenical Council has employed all due diligence, or whether, in the examination of every question brought before it, all the rules have been observed which the tradition of the Church has shown to be necessary? It is plain that if the authority of the First General Council were now assailed, we could not succeed in proving that before the publication of its definition, all the writings of the anti-Nicene Fathers had been examined, that all the objections urged by the Arian party had been heard and satisfactorily solved, and that all the requirements of strict historical investigation had been complied with. If such questions were raised, how would it fare with the Third General Council, which, in its first session, pronounced the dogmatic condemnation of Nestorius? Indeed, from the short duration of many Councils at which Decrees of the utmost importance were published-as, for instance, the Twelfth General Council-it would be much more difficult to establish the employment of the necessary diligence in their proceedings than in the deliberations of the Council of the Vatican. It belongs undoubtedly to the supernatural providence and guidance of the Holy Ghost to provide that all human means which are necessary for avoiding error, will be employed, "that the diligent examination requisite for defining an article of 1 Continued from our October Number. 2 Dr. Döllinger cites, in support of this point, a pastoral of the Vicar of Freiburg, and assumes that the views expressed in it are held by the other German Bishops. No proof was needed; the point is evident. It is laid down by theologians (MELCHIOR CANUS. De Locis. Lib. xii., cap. iii.), and taught in express terms by the Vatican Council. faith will not be omitted. The human aids which are made use of may be different at different times and in different circumstances; but the unerring truth of the definition rests solely on the promised assistance of the Holy Ghost, and not on the scientific accuracy with which the preliminary investigations are conducted, or on the industry and care of those who are engaged in them. To question this is really to render nugatory the infallible authority of the Church."i "God," says Melchior Cano, "disposing all things sweetly,' when he provides for the attainment of any end, does not neglect the means which are necessary for its attainment. If he promise everlasting life to any of his creatures, he will not fail to provide that sanctity without which everlasting life cannot be attained. So, too, since he has promised to preserve the purity of the faith of His Church, he cannot refuse her that assistance which will ensure the application of all human means necessary to preserve her from error. . . . . If our Lord had said to St. Peter:-'I have prayed for thee that thy charity fail not,' no one would doubt that in praying for unfailing charity He had prayed also for the means by which it might be secured-purity of life, watchfulness in the hour of temptation, and perseverance in prayer. So, too, from the words :-'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not,' we ought to infer, without hesitation, that in securing Peter against the danger of error in matters of doctrine, He ensures that when Peter undertakes to decide a controversy regarding doctrine, nothing shall be wanting, whether on the part of God or of man, which is necessary to preserve him from error.. "If God were to promise an abundant harvest, how silly would it not be to doubt that men would till the soil and sow the seed. Surely if they sow not, neither shall they reap. But God's promise does not ensure merely the favouring influences of sun and sky, which cause the fruits of the earth to spring up abundantly; it is a guarantee, as well, of the industry and toil of those who till the ground. For the promised plenty will not come until the plough, and the seed, and the husbandman have done their work. "Since, then, our Lord has promised that the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, will always be with the Apostles and their successors in deciding controversies of faith, we cannot doubt that everything will be secured which is requisite to guard them from error in the discharge of their duty. And if the sufficiency of the means employed by the Pope or by a 1 See the periodical published at Ratisbon, Das Ecumenische Concil vom Jahre, 1869. Vol. i., p. 106. Council in examining a doctrine of faith, could be impugned, if the advocates of a condemned doctrine were at liberty to raise the question whether the Pastors of the Church had used all requisite diligence before publishing their definition, no one can fail to see that the authority of every decision of Popes and Councils would be undermined."1 From the divine assistance which has been promised by our Lord, it follows that when a definition has been published, we can have the fullest confidence that all necessary means have been employed, and that the limits of right and truth have not been overstepped.2 3. Those persons who, while they recognise in theory the prerogative of the Church to publish unerring decisions in questions of faith and morals, regard themselves in practice as bound to submit only to such decisions as, in their estimation, have been framed after due and mature deliberation, and in accordance with every legal requirement, plainly set up their own authority as superior to the authority of the Church, and constitute their own private judgment as the tribunal of appeal in the last resort. No supreme court can allow those who are subject to its jurisdiction to proclaim that they recognise its authority in the abstract, but that they reserve to themselves the right of examining in every particular instance whether its decisions have been framed with a due regard to all legal requirements, and of withholding obedience if upon examination they should not be satisfied upon this point. To sit thus in judgment on the validity of ecclesiastical definitions, is in reality to deny the teaching authority of the Church. But a writer, who had announced before the opening of the Council that it would not be truly free, and that it never could be recognised as such, must make good his case at any cost. The validity of a Council has never been regarded by any section of the members of the Church as depending either upon the length of the deliberations, or upon the examination of all the works written on the subject under discussion, a course which, at the present day, would make it simply impossible to define any doctrine whatever, or finally, upon the critical powers of the Bishops who take part in the 1 MELCHIOR CANUS. De Locis Theol., lib. v., cap. 5. Tournely, to whose authority Dr. Döllinger has sometimes appealed, takes the same view of this point as Melchior Cano. See Tournely, Prælect. Theol. De Ecclesia. See the Bishop of Ratisbon's Pastoral of the 22nd of September, 1870. 3 See the work on the Infallible Authority of the Pope, by Mgr. Ketteler, Bishop of Mayence. Das unfehlbare Lehramt des Papstes. Mainz, 1871. 4 Janus, p. 448. proceedings of the Council. Yet the course adopted by Dr. Döllinger is not without precedent. Almost every objection which he has urged against the authority of the Vatican Council, was urged by the Reformers against the authority of the Council of Trent.1 Arguments against the authority of the Council of Chalcedon were drawn from the personal character of the Bishops who were present, and from the pretended opposition between its Decrees on the one hand, and the teaching of the early Fathers and the Decrees of the Third General Council on the other. 2 So, too, the opponents of the Sixth General Council attacked its authority in various works composed for the purpose, obtained numerous signatures to hostile declarations, invoked the aid of the civil power, under Philip Bardanes, and, not without the assistance of unfaithful ecclesiastics, endeavoured by means of sophistry to misrepresent the dogma defined by the Church.3 The authority of every Ecumenical Council that has hitherto been held, would have been paralyzed if the Catholics of the time had held the views of those who protest against the Decrees of the Vatican Council: the authority and the unity of the Church would have been destroyed if every new Tertullian, every new advocate of a doctrine condemned by the Church, had been at liberty thus to combat her decisions. For Dr. Döllinger and his followers, the infallibility of the Church exists only in name: as far as the prerogative is vested in the Pope its existence is openly denied; as far as it is vested in the Ecumenical Councils of the Church it is indeed recognised to a certain extent, but its recognition is so fenced round with qualifications and restrictions, that without any sacrifice of principle they may deny the infallibility of any definition which is at variance with their views. 4. Unfortunately for Dr. Döllinger and his adherents, the principles laid down by theologians in discussing the question, Who is to be the final judge of the authority of a Council, and to have the power of setting aside the claims of such assemblies as those of Rimini and Seleucia, are anything but favourable to the views put forward in his Protest. Even Gallican writers, like Natalis Alexander, expressly teach that such an authority is necessary, and that the authority can be no other than that which is assigned by Ultramontane theologians-the authority of the Holy See. It is indeed 1 MART. CHEMNITII, Examen Conc. Trid. 1565. LEONT. BYZANT., De Sect. Act. vi. viii. 3 GERMAN. De Haeres. et Syn. n. 33. NAT. ALEXANDER. Hist. Eccles. Saec. xv., et xvi., art. i., sec. v., n. 46. [The passage to which Dr. Hergenröther refers, is as follows:-" Approbare unfortunate for our "liberal" theologians that for Catholics, in all matters of religion, "every road," in the words of our German proverb, "leads to Rome." The history of the Council brings before us the petitions, the remonstrances, and the threats which preceded its opening, and which continued until its progress was so prematurely checked of these many were conceived with vigour and executed with no lack of energy, and the existence of a vast conspiracy will one day be revealed, the ramifications of which extended throughout Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, France, England, and even more distant regions, and the object of which was to prevent, at any cost, a condemnation of the Gallican and Febronian systems. Before the opening of the Council, the leaders of this movement had declared that they would not accept its Decrees if it were to ratify by its authority, doctrines which they, from the fulness of their irrefragable science, declared to be at variance with Scripture and Tradition, with the teaching of human reason and with the facts of history. The promoters of the conspiracy succeeded in ensnaring many Bishops, and inspiring them with distrust of the Holy See; they endeavoured also to unite into one compact party those who merely denied the opportuneness of defining the dogma of Papal Infallibility and those who denied its truth. When the bonds of this alliance began to loosen, when several of the Bishops refused to play the part which was assigned to them, when at length those who, during the deliberations of the Council, had opposed the definition, publicly professed their submission to its authority, they were violently assailed through every agency at the disposal of the conspiracy. The purity of their motives was impugned, the sincerity of their submission questioned, and their want of spirit, their weakness, and their cowardice were loudly bewailed. The Archbishop of Munich is reminded, in Dr. Döllinger's Protest, that by his signature he took part in the petition presented by a number of Bishops, praying the Holy Father, on account of the difficulty of the question, as well as on other weighty grounds, to prohibit the discussion of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility by the Fathers of the Council. The majority of the Fathers did not desire that the deliberations should thus be checked; neither did the Holy Sce approve of the course proposed by the petitioners; and indeed, the violence of the opposition to the definition, the direct denial of the doctrine of the Church, the danger with which the faith of et confirmare Synodum quae in fidei causa perperam gesta est, et contra Scripturas Sacras, contra Patrum Traditionem, contra Regulas ecclesiasticas, non est in eorum potestate." NATALIS ALEXANDER Historia Ecclesiastica.—Loc. cit.] |