what combination of exalted personages in France for the same end. It is certain that these symptoms are not sporadic and disconnected, but in mutual understanding and with a common purpose. The anti-Catholic press has eagerly encouraged this school of thought. If a Catholic can be found out of tune with authority by half a note, he is at once extolled for unequalled learning and irrefragable logic. The anti-Catholic journals are at his service, and he vents his opposition to the common opinions of the Church by writing against them anonymously. Sad as this is, it is not formidable. It has effect almost alone upon those who are not Catholic. Upon Catholics its effect is hardly appreciable; on the Theological Schools of the Church it will have little influence; upon the Œcumenical Council it can have none.
I can hardly persuade myself to believe that the University of Munich does not know that the relations between the Pope, even supposed to be infallible, and the civil powers have been long since precisely defined in the same acts which defined the relations between the Church, known to be infallible, and the civil authority. Twelve Synods or Councils, two of them Œcumenical, have long ago laid down these relations of the spiritual and civil powers.[1] If the Pope were declared to be infallible to-morrow, it would in no way affect those relations.
We may be sure, reverend and dear brethren, that this intellectual disaffection, of which, in these last days, we have had in France a new and mournful example, will have no influence upon either the Œcumenical
- ↑ Bellarm. Opuscula. Adv. Barclaium, p. 845, ed. Col. 1617.
