Page:The Decrees of the Vatican Council.djvu/11

 Rh Constitution on the Church of. These committee meetings lasted on an average four hours; and they were attended by the whole body of voters. The private work accompanying this formal activity may be left to the imagination. Yet the net result of this almost endless discussion is a document no larger than a page or two of a daily newspaper.

Catholic students of the Acta will not need reminding how great is the difference between the first Constitution and the second; for they are not of those who see in the Vatican Council merely a Roman cabal gathered together for the apotheosis of Ultramontanism. Such an unhistorical view of the Council is not consistent with an unbiased reading of the magnificent definitions which spring from the inter-relations of faith and reason. It is often the fate of great facts as of great truths to be praised or blamed for what is of least moment. In obedience to this law the Vatican Council has been welcomed or rejected for its decisions on the authority of the Holy See, though these decisions are hardly so momentous or fundamental as those on faith and reason.

Another law of history and of heresy is that Conciliar decisions instead of closing discussion often open, or at least precede, it. Arianism was at its height after the Nicene ; the disputes on Grace followed the Council of Trent; Biblical criticism has reached its climax after the Vatican definition on Inspiration and Revelation. To such as find their lot cast amidst the intellectual unsettlement of the twentieth century it is consoling to realize that our