every catechism, public school, and country pulpit, that Papal decrees and decisions, not only in the domain of faith but of morals, the relations of Church and State, and the whole life of society, are absolutely infallible,of its being made the first and crucial question for Catholics in all cases, What has the infallible Pope, either the reigning pontiff or one of his predecessors, decided on this point, or what will he decide if asked ?

1

A Bull appeared yesterday, which, if read and understood, would create great excitement. It professes to abolish a part of the numerous excommunications latæ sententiæ, which the Popes have gradually accumulated; but virtually it is intended as a renewal or confirmation of the Bull In Caná Domini, which Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) first dropped the custom of publishing annually, and which, from his time, had been regarded, everywhere out of Rome, as abrogated, though the Curia always maintained that it was binding in principle, as Crétineau-Joli shows in his Memoirs of Consalvi. I am only giving here the judgment of a

1 Excommunications latæ sententiæ, as distinguished from excommunication ferendæ sententiæ, are those which immediately take effect on the commission of the forbidden act, without requiring any sentence of Pope or Bishop to be pronounced.

friend who has read the Bull. If he is rightly informed, it is but the first link in a chain of decrees embodying the retrospective force of the anticipated dogma, for the saying will hold good then, "Quod fuimus erimus, quod fecimus faciemus." Every claim once advanced must be maintained, every doctrinal proposition renewed, and so the living body will be chained to a

corpse.

Desertions from the ranks of the Opposition to the majority of 500, must, no doubt, be reckoned on, and the renegades will say, like Talleyrand, that they are not deserting, but only coming in earlier than others. Whether these desertions will be numerous enough to reduce the minority to 40 or 50, as the authorities hope, will be determined when the question of opportuneness gets disentangled from the question of principle. For it requires more than common courage to make open profession of disbelief in the Infallibilist dogma at Rome, since the Pope, in his letters to Manning and Deschamps, has indulged in severe censures of those who question his infallibility; and every Cardinal and Monsignore is accustomed to express himself in the same sense.

Can this Council, then, which can move neither hand

nor foot, be called free? Is an assembly free, when no speech can be made, no single decision come to, without the express permission of an external master? If this is freedom, there has never been an unfree Council. So I hear many saying, as well clergy as laity, and even Bishops. The Pope, of course, has not forgotten that, on the day of his election, sitting on the High Altar of that very church where the Council is now being held, he was adored by the Cardinals, and four days afterwards crowned with the triple tiara, with the words, "Scias te esse rectorem orbis." It has been summoned to arrange and negotiate the transition from the previous condition of the Church to a new one. Till now, at least in theory, Councils were, or were supposed to be, assemblies deliberating and deciding freely. But, in the new condition of the Church, under the rule of Papal Infallibility, assemblies of Bishops are purely superfluous, or only useful as machines for acclamation. The present assembly stands midway between the old Church and the new, and participates in both. The vital breath of freedom and independence it is deprived of, but it is not yet a mere acclamationmachine it can still dissent and say, Non placet. On the day when the new dogma is proclaimed, and the

eternal city again, as in 1517,1 declares its joy by illuminations, the Synod will have killed itself with its own hand, and marched into the grave as the last of its generation. And just as when a knight died the last of his race, his shield was broken and his arms obliterated, so will the usual chapter De Conciliis be obliterated from the dogmatic manuals.

1 When the news arrived from Paris of the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction, i.e., of the reforms of Basle.

FIFTH LETTER.

Rome, Dec. 23, 1869.-The Council is suspended for a while, for want of an available place of meeting, or is occupied only in studying the Schemata that have been distributed at home, and deliberating in different sections. The German Bishops have resolved to address a memorial to the Pope, protesting against being put into a strait-waistcoat by the regulations for the order of business, and claiming the right of proposing motions freely. They think it intolerable that every proposal, wish, or motion should have first to be examined, revised, and mutilated or changed at their pleasure by two Commissions, before it can even come on for discussion. And how are these two Commissions composed? Of course, the eight German Bishops who have already separated themselves from their countrymen, and prefer to associate with Spaniards and South Americans, hold aloof from this proceeding too. If I am correctly in