The Story of the First Vatican Council

THE First Vatican Council was announced by Pope Pius IX on 6 December 1864, just before the issuance of the Syllabus of Errors, which condemned all manner of Liberal ideas which were current at that time. To begin with, the Pope called on the Cardinals to suggest subjects and, in the following year, he set up a commission of five Cardinals to produce draft documents. This commission was added to over the next few years. The Council was officially convoked on 29 June 1868. All bishops, including auxiliaries, were invited, together with major religious superiors and certain abbots. Civil princes were not invited.

Infallibility was not on the agenda, but everyone knew it would come up, and the next two years produced a host of books against infallibility, with replies from those who supported a definition. The opposition was led in France by Bishop Maret of Paris and Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans. The chief protagonist on the side of the Pope was the English Cardinal Manning. In Germany the opposition party centered around Ignaz Dollinger, a professor of Church History with a world-wide reputation. (He was the Hans Küng of the day.) He wrote a famous anti-papal work under the pen name Janus which called forth a reply entitled Anti-Janus. The argument in Janus was that after the first Pope, St. Peter, the papacy "lost its early innocence." Janus alleged that it degenerated into a claim of absolute power, usurping the powers which belong to bishops and general councils and being eventually driven to the principles of the Inquisition to enforce its spurious claims. In the introduction Janus described the Papacy as found in the 19th century as a "disfiguring, sickly and choking excrescence on the organization of the Church."

The modern so-called theologians who attack the Papacy (like Küng), do not use that kind of language, but their attacks are all the more vicious because they are couched in bland but devious ways.

At the Council, the procedure was set down in advance. There were to be private sessions which could be general (everyone present) or merely committees set up to deal with each topic. Then there were public sessions always presided over by the Pope on a limited number of occasions, but always if there was anything to come to a final vote. Before the voting at public sessions, the drafts could be amended, and during the Council hundreds of amendments were sent off to committees. At the private sessions, bishops could vote placet (yes), non placet (no) or placet iuxta modum (yes, with amendments). At the public sessions only yes or no votes were counted.

The first session took place on 8 December 1969, with 698 Fathers present. Forty-eight out of the fifty-five American bishops attended, led by Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore. The Fathers met in the North Transept of St. Peter's. The Council Hall had been prepared there, complete with Brussels carpeting donated by the King of Prussia, and the Fathers' places covered in red, purple or green damask, according to rank.

The opening ceremonies started outside St. Peter's in a pouring rain with a long procession, followed by a High Mass at 10:00 a.m., after which each Father made his obedience to the Pope. A series of litanies followed and a brief talk from the Pope. A formal decree opening the Council was read out and the Te Deum was sung. By now, it was 4:00 p.m.

The real discussions quickly commenced and the Fathers tackled first a dogmatic draft, De Doctrina Catholica, together with a draft dealing with the morals of ecclesiastics, vacant sees, and the hope of a smaller universal catechism.

Even though this part of the Council in no way referred to infallibility, the Fathers were already forming sides, which became known as the "Majority" (in favor of infallibility) and the "Minority." The Minority had over 150 bishops to start with, including half of the American prelates.

Those wishing to speak at a general session had to hand in their names beforehand and speak in Latin. The president (always a cardinal) could and did call Fathers to order if they got off the subject. Bishop Verot of Savannah was often called to order.

Although the whole business was supposed to be private, there was of course an army of correspondents in Rome, and some of those, like the English Lord Acton, were very anti-Papal in feeling.

Acton was a Liberal Catholic, wealthy, with friends in high places in the English government. He was a close friend of Dollinger. During the Council he was largely responsible for a series of letters known as the "Quirinus Letters" which claimed to give the "low down" on what was really happening. Most of the accusations made by "Quirinus" were quite false. He alleged that debates were deliberately shortened, that, towards the end, all pretense of free discussion was abandoned and the final text was rushed through without any debate at all. To reduce the, number of the minority bishops there were "enticements of the well-stocked papal perserves ... titles, benedictions, and dispensations given or withheld at will by the Pope." There were 15 vacant cardinals' hats dangled over vacillating heads, while it was alleged that one bishop who spoke against infallibility was forced to resign his office and another imprisoned.

At the Second Vatican Council there were not lacking correspondents who tried their best to poison and defame those bishops who maintained Catholic orthodoxy, while the "Rhineland gang," who were responsbile for so many of the ambiguities which plague the final texts of that Council, were lauded to the skies.

Debates went rather slowly at first and it was not until 24 April 1870 that the decrees De Fide Catholica were unanimously approved by the bishops and confirmed by the Holy Father.

But before that happened the Majority Bishops, led by Cardinal Manning, had been working behind the scenes to insure that infallibility was to be included in the next draft schema for discussion, that on "The Church of Christ." A chapter was added entitled "The Roman Pontiff cannot err in defining matters of faith and morals."

On the 29th of April, during a debate on a minor matter, the President announced that discussion would start as soon as possible. So from the 13th of May to the 13th of June, there were sixty-four long and mainly boring speeches, one lasting seven hours, while in smaller groups meeting between the 6th of June and the 13th of July, a further 100 speakers were enabled to have their say.

The debate raged over a very few limited issues and all the points that could be raised had been taken up a hundred times over. At a general congregation held on 13 July 1870, the Fathers voted 451 placet, 62 placet iuxta modum and 88 non placet. Many Fathers had left Rome, as war was brewing between France and Germany. Before the final session, at which the Pope would make the confirmation of the decrees official, the leaders of the Minority asked for a statement that "the consent of the Church should be relied on by the Pope in making infallible pronouncements." Such an insertion of course would have weakened the text considerably, and the final draft makes it quite clear that the Pope does not require either, before or after, the "official consent" of anyone.

The Minority Bishops decided to withdraw from the final session to avoid embarrassing the Pope. They hoped that the consent of the Church would not in fact be forthcoming at all and that the whole matter might become a dead letter.

At the final session on Monday, July 18, 433 Bishops voted placet while two voted non placet. These were Bishop Riccio of Cajazzo and America's Bishop Fitzgerald of Little Rock. There is a rather spurious story that he actually voted nunc placet (now it pleases), and not non placet but the truth is that he was rather a loner and did not realize the other Minority Bishops would be absent. As soon as the result was announced he at once submitted. After the Council, all the Minority Bishops were rounded up and asked to submit in writing to the decrees of the Council. The American, Bishop Kenrick, took his time about doing so. He was a leader of the Minority and some writers say that his submission was far from total.

In fact, all made a submission, and the only man of note to leave the Church was Dollinger. A few other priests founded the so-called ''Old Catholic Church" obtaining orders from the Jansenist Bishop of Utrecht. In fact, this body continues to exist to this day.

The Council continued after the definition but in a very half-hearted mood with war threatening. On the 1st of September, the Piedmontese forces entered Rome and the Pope became a prisoner in the Vatican. The Council was prorogued in October.

WE CAN NOW turn our attention to what exactly the First Vatican Council pronounced upon: The first decree on the Faith deals with God as Creator, teaching that the world was created out of nothing, that there is a Divine Will for man, that the existence of God can be known from reason, that Scripture and Tradition are two sources of revelation, that miracles are a continuing possibility, and that there is a link, not an opposition, between faith and reason. It is interesting to note that all these points are constantly being denied by 20th century Modernists.

The second decree on the Church first dealt with the Primacy of the Pope, that this is not simply one of honor but of episcopal jurisdiction, and that princes have no veto over papal decisions. It is not permitted to appeal from the Pope to a General Council. The Pope is the final court of appeal in cases of difficulty due to the guidance promised from the Holy Spirit in preserving and interpreting revelation as delivered to the Apostles.

Finally comes the great text defining infallibility (quoted at the end of this article). This shows that the Papacy is the crown and center of the constitution of the Church.

Before looking at the text, it would be best to look further at the background to the definition. The opposition party (Minority) consisted mainly of bishops who thought any definition of infallibility was inopportune at the time, while a few (like Dollinger) considered that it was totally untheological. They argued, like Janus, that the Papacy had usurped powers, and from time to time made serious errors. However, in the matter of teaching, they confused the Pope as a private theologian with the Pope issuing decrees for the whole Church.

The inopportunists mainly argued that if the doctrine was defined, it would seriously hamper efforts at reconciliation with Protestants, and also affect in some countries the relationship with civil rulers. Also they thought there was no need for this sort of definition when everyone obeyed the Pope anyway, and that the Pope's infallibility was only part of the Church's general indefectibility. There was also the point that the Church, they considered, ought to show its consent to any infallible teaching.

Other members of the Minority were very worried about the extent of infallibility. On the other hand, people like the famous Englishman, W. G. Ward, grandfather of the late Maisie Sheed, stated that he would be happy to have an infallible pronouncement on his breakfast table every day with a copy of The Times.

Archbishop Spalding tried to mediate between the two sides. He came to Rome as a Minority Bishop but was soon converted to the Majority by Cardinal Manning. He thought the way round the problem was to put in a negative way everything about papal teaching that was false. He wanted to see condemned four propositions:


However, this compromise was rejected by the Minority, who considered it stronger even than the likely positive definition!

The actual wording of the final decree sets Papal Infallibility in a context of Papal primacy, and as a crucial part of the infallibility of the Church. Holding a primacy, not merely of honor but of jurisdiction and authority, the Pope is clearly the final arbiter in matters which might be under dispute, and can claim the guidance of the Holy Spirit as promised to St. Peter.

After the First Vatican Council, the clearest example of an infallible pronouncement is the solemn definition of the dogma of the Assumption of Our Lady in 1950. As this was not the result or culmination of any divisions in the Church, it is clear that prior arguments are not always needed before an infallible pronouncement is made. Some have argued that the only time a Pope could speak infallibly is to clear up a matter which has been under debate. The same people then of course refused to accept the most recent occasion on which the Pope explicitly spoke to clear up a debate . . . the debate over artificial birth control. The document Humanae Vitae is held by competent theologians (i.e., those not infected with Modernism) to be an example of infallibility of the ordinary magisterium of the Church. That is to say that the Holy Father is restating in firm terms the constant teaching of the Church which is quite unalterable.

Returning for a moment to Vatican I, the Council of course was never completed. Many drafts went completely undiscussed. Some of these drafts were produced and re-edited for use at Vatican II, but the Rhineland group of bishops made sure that all the drafts prepared for the first Council were thrown out or completely rewritten.

Council teaching itself can be infallible if the Pope confirms its teaching, which is in accord with the constant teaching of the Church. Thus the definition of Papal Infallibility is itself an infallible statement, but the same cannot be said of Vatican II which, in the first place, did not set out to be a dogmatic council, but which may contain infallible teaching where it restates traditional and constant teaching of the magisterium, but not where, as so often, it produces statements of the greatest possible ambiguity, which have been responsible for so much of the turmoil in the Church since Vatican II.

Finally I quote the wording of the original decree of Vatican I: