coming Council already exerts an influence which is ever increasing in strength and in significance.
So true is this, that the question, who have or have not been invited, or who have or have not a right to sit in the Council, has been raised by many who are not of the unity of the Catholic Church. We should have thought that this question would solve itself. The convocation of Parliament is addressed only to its members, and its members are those only who are subjects of the Crown and are duly invested with the right to sit. The indiction of the Council is addressed to the Bishops of the Catholic Unity, who are subject to the authority of the Church, and members of its world-wide empire. By the Bull of Indiction all Bishops are, not invited, but obliged to attend. It is not an invitation, but a citation. They can be released from the obligation to appear only by the Supreme Authority which imposes it. It has been erroneously imagined that the two Apostolic Letters addressed, the first, to the Schismatical Bishops of the East, and the second, to all Protestants and others not Catholic, were issued to give an Œcumenical character to the Council. But this is a transparent error. The Council, by containing either numerically or morally the Pastors of the whole Flock throughout the world, subject to the Apostolic See, is thereby, ipso facto, Œcumenical. These two letters, therefore, were addressed in paternal charity to those who once were, and now unhappily are no longer, of the Catholic Unity. Their presence is not needed to make the Council Œcumenical. They are exhorted to avail
