Moreover, his dispossession adds to his prestige: it can no longer be claimed that territorial interests prevail with him over Catholic interests; therefore, according as his temporal power diminishes his spiritual power expands, to such an extent that, in the end, after three-quarters of a century, just at the moment when the former is to fall to the ground the latter is to rise above the clouds; through the effacement of his human character his superhuman character becomes declared; the more the sovereign prince disappears, the more does the sovereign pontiff assert himself. The clergy, despoiled like him of its hereditary patrimony and confined like him to its sacerdotal office, exposed to the same dangers, menaced by the same enemies, rallies around him the same as an army around its general; inferiors and superiors, they are all priests alike and are nothing else, with a clearer and clearer conscience of the solidarity which binds them together and subordinates the inferiors to the superiors. From one ecclesiastical generation to another,[12] the number of the refractory, of the intractable and of independents, rigorists or the lax, goes on decreasing, some, conscientious Jansenists, hardened and sectarians of the "Little Church," others, semi-philosophers, tolerant and liberal, both inheriting too narrow convictions or too broad opinions for maintaining themselves and spreading in the newly founded society (milieu).[13] They die out, one by one, while their doctrines fall into discredit and then into oblivion. A new spirit animates the new clergy, and, after 1808, Napoleon remarks of it, " It does not complain of the old one, and is even satisfied with it; but, he says, they are bringing up new priests in a sombre fanatical doctrine: there is nothing Gallican in the youthful clergy,"[14] no sympathy for the civil power. After Napoleon, and on getting out of his terrible hands, the Catholics have good reasons for their repugnance to his theology; it has put too many Catholics in jail, the most eminent in rank, in holiness, bishops and cardinals, including the Pope.
Gallican maxims are dishonored by the use Napoleon has made of them.
Canon law, in public instruction and in the seminaries (of the Catholics), ends insensibly in unlooked-for conclusions ; texts and arguments opposed to the Pope's authority seem weaker and weaker;texts and arguments favorable to the Pope's authority seem stronger and stronger;[15] the doctors most deferred to are no longer Gerson and Bossuet, but Bellarmin and Suarez; flaws are discovered in the decrees of the council of Constance; the Declaration of the clergy of France in 1682 is found to contain errors condemned and open to condemnation.[16] After 1819, M. de Maistre, a powerful logician, matchless herald and superb champion, in his book on "The Pope,"justifies, prepares and announces the coming constitution of the Church. - Step by step, the assent of Catholic community is won or mastered;[17] on approaching 1870, it is nearly universal; after 1870, it is wholly so and could not be otherwise; whoever refuses to submit is excluded from the community and excludes himself from it, for he denies a dogma which it professes, a revealed dogma, an article of faith which the Pope and the council have just decreed. Thenceforward, the Pope, in his magisterial pulpit, in the eyes of every man who is and wants to remain Catholic, is infallible; when he gives his decision on faith or on morals, Jesus Christ himself speaks by his mouth, and his definitions of doctrine are "irrefutable," "they are so of themselves, they alone, through their own virtue, and not by virtue of the Church's consent."[18] For the same reason, his authority is absolute, not only in matters which concern faith and morals, but again in matters which concern the discipline and government of the Church."[19] His judgment may be resorted to in every ecclesiastical case; nobody is allowed to question his verdict; "nobody is allowed to appeal to the future oecumenical council;"[20] He has not only "a priority by right, an office of inspection and of direction; he holds again priority of jurisdiction, a full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, . . . ", "the total plenitude of this supreme power," not indirectly and extraordinarily, but "directly and ordinarily, over all churches and over each one of them, over all pastors and all believers, over each believer and each of the pastors." - Read this in the Latin: each word, through its ancient root and through its historic vegetation, contributes to strengthening the despotic and Roman sense of the text; the language of the people which invented and practiced dictatorship had to be employed for the affirmation of dictatorship with that precision and that copiousness, with that excess of energy and of conviction.
II. The Bishops and their new Situation.
The bishop in his diocese. - Change of situation and r?le. -Depreciation of other local authorities. - Diminution of other ecclesiastical authorities. - Decline of the chapter and the jurisdiction. - The bishop alone dispenses rigors and favors. - Use of displacement. - Second-class clergy subject to military discipline. -Why it submits to this.