Infallibility as an article of faith. For the same object the institution of Provincial Synods has been revived during the last ten years, under stringent and repeated exhortations from Rome. And it may be seen from the published acts of those held both in and out of Germany, that the question of Papal Infallibility and of the theses of the Syllabus has been laid before them. The Jesuit Schneemann reports that the Provincial Synods of Cologne, Colocsa, Utrecht, and those held in North America, have accepted Papal Infallibility. He observes that "these Synodal affirmations of Papal Infallibility, revised at Rome, are important as showing that, though as yet no formal article of faith, it is in the eyes of Rome, and of the Bishops, an indubitable truth. For Provincial Synods are strictly forbidden to decide controverted points of belief." We may safely assume, on such good authority, that these decisions were not waited for at Rome, but were sent from Rome to the Provincial Synods for approval. The answers could have been known beforehand in the present state of things in the Church; they will be produced in the Council as proofs of the belief of the majority of Catholic Bishops, and to give the ap

1 Literarischer Handweiser, 1867, pp. 439 seq.

pearance of the definition of Papal Infallibility not being so exclusively the work of the Jesuits, an appearance Pius IX. was anxious to avoid in the case of the Immaculate Conception. It appears, by a letter of Flir's from Rome, that he yielded quite unexpectedly in that case to Cardinal Rauscher's demand for striking out of the Bull some of the irrelevant proofs alleged, because, as he said, this must be endured, though a humiliation for Rome, that people might not say everything depended on the Jesuits.1

We know on good authority that the whole plan of the campaign for fixing the Infallibility dogma is already mapped out. An English Prelate-we could name himhas undertaken at the commencement of proceedings to direct a humble prayer to the Holy Father to raise the opinion of his infallibility to the dignity of a dogma. The Jesuits and their Roman allies hope that the majority of the Bishops present, who have been already primed for the occasion, will accede by acclamation to this petition, and the Holy Father will gladly yield to

1 Briefe aus Rom (Innsbruck, 1864), p. 25:-"The Holy Father has found this criticism of a stranger (viz. Rauscher) very unpleasant, and said-Questo è una mortificazione per Roma, ma è bisogno di soffrirla, affinchè non si dica, che tutto sia dipendente dai Gesuiti." [Flir was Rector of the German Church at Rome, and Auditor of the Rota. His Letters are reviewed in the Saturday Review for May 28, 1864.-TR.]

the pressure coming on him spontaneously, and, as it were, through a sudden and irresistible inspiration from on high, and so the new dogma will be settled at one sitting, without further examination, as by the stroke of a magician's wand. As the Roman people are told after a Conclave, Habemus Papam, on the evening of this memorable sitting the news will go forth to the whole Catholic world, Habemus Papam infallibilem. And before this newly risen and bright sun of divine truth, all the ghosts of false science and forms of modern civilisation will be scared away for ever.

Meanwhile, to keep to the articles of the Civiltà already quoted, it is clear from them that the Council is summoned chiefly for the purpose of satisfying the darling wishes of the Jesuits and that part of the Curia which is led by them.

We propose to examine these theories in the following order :-first we shall take the Syllabus and what concerns it; then we shall briefly discuss the new dogma about Mary; and lastly we shall set the dogma of Papal Infallibility in the light of history.

CHAPTER I.

MAKING THE SYLLABUS DOGMATIC.

HE articles of the Syllabus-such, we are told, is

THE

one of the urgent wishes of true Catholics-are to be defined by the Council in the form of positive dogmas. The Church will thus be enriched with a considerable number of new articles of faith, hitherto unheard of or abundantly contradicted; but when once Papal Infallibility has become matter of faith, this will be only the first fruits of a far wider harvest in the future. The extent of the Catholic Church will thereby be gradually narrowed, perhaps till it presents the spectacle once offered to the world by a Pope, Peter de Luna, Benedict XIII., who from his castle of Peniscola condemned the whole of Christendom which refused to acknowledge him, and finally, when the Council of Constance had solemnly deposed him (1417), and the number of his adherents was reduced to a few individuals, declared-"The whole Church is assembled in

Peniscola, not in Constance, as once the whole human race was collected in Noah's ark." But this will give them little concern; nay, the more the educated classes are forced out of the Church, the easier will it be for Loyola's steersmen to guide the ship, and reduce the true flock that still remains in it to more complete subjection. Catholicism, hitherto regarded as a universal religion, would, by a notable irony of its fate, be transformed into the precise opposite of what its name and notion imports. As the assembled Bishops are to exercise their power of formulating dogmas on the contents of the Syllabus, they have only to set their conciliar seal on a work already prepared to their hand by the Vienna Jesuit, Schrader.1 He has already turned the negative statements of the Syllabus into affirmatives, and so we can, without trouble, anticipate the decisions of the Council on this matter. And, as it is to last only three weeks, from and after 29th December 1869 the Roman Catholic world will be enriched by the following truths, and will have to accept, on peril of salvation, the following principles :(1.) The Church has the right of employing external

1 Der Pabst und die modernen Ideen. Heft II. Die Encyclica. Wien, 1865.