THE VATICAN COUNCIL
545
that a dogma \vas promulgated in 1854 which had long been disputed and denied, confessed that he could not prove the Immaculate Conception to be really an article of faith. 1 An incident occurred in June which showed that the experience of the Council was \vorking a change in the fundamental convictions of the bishops. Döllinger had written in March that an article of faith required not only to be approved and accepted unanimously by the Council, but that the bishops united with the Pope are not infallible, and that the æcumenicity of their acts must be acknowledged and ratified by the \vhole Church. Father Hötzl, a Franciscan friar, having published a pamphlet in defence of this proposition, was summoned to Rome, and required to sign a paper declaring that the confirmation of a Council by the Pope alone makes it æcumenical. He put his case into the hands of German bishops who were eminent in the opposition, asking first their opinion on the proposed declaration, and, secondly, their advice on his own cond ucl. The bishops whom he consulted replied that they believed the declaration to be erroneous; but they added that they had only lately arrived at the conviction, and had been shocked at first by Döllinger's doctrine. They could not require him to suffer the consequences of being condemned at Rome as a rebellious friar and obstinate heretic for a view which they them- selves had doubted only three months before. He followed the advice, but he perceived that his advisers had considerately betrayed him. When the observations on infallibility which the bishops had sent in to the Commission appeared in print it seemed that the minority had burnt their ships. They affirmed that the dogma would put an end to the conversion of Protestants, that it \vould drive devout men out of the Church and make Catholicism indefensible in controversy,
1 Archbishop Kenrick's remarkable statement is not reproduced accurately in his pamphlet De Pontijicia infallibilitate. It is given in full in the last pagt.s of the Observationes, and is aundged in IllS Concio habenda sed non habita, where he conciudes: .. Earn fidei doctrinam esse neganti, non video quomodo responderi possit. cum objiceret Ecc1esiam errorem contra fidem divinitus revelatam diu tolerare non potuisse, quin, aut quod ad fidei depositum pertineret non scivisse, aut errorem manifestum tolerasse videretur,"
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