Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/205

Rh said that many were ill; many more were only able by an effort to bear the strain of the Council. The rumours of impending war were continually becoming louder and nearer. It was therefore decided, at the petition of a large number of the bishops, which number might without trouble have been doubled, to bring into immediate discussion the subject by which for centuries the Church had been disquieted. We have seen how the minds of the bishops since the Centenary of St. Peter had been fixed upon it. From the outset of the Council it had been the motive of an open, legitimate, and honourable contention of two opposing sides. It was evident that the subject of the infallibility was always on the horizon. Every discussion was troubled by its shadow; time was wasted; discussions were prolonged beyond need or reason. A general secret uneasiness, such as is sometimes seen to prevail in legislatures where everybody is thinking of the same subject, which some hope for and others fear, and nobody dares to utter first, but of which everybody betrays a consciousness, kept the two sides in the Council in a state of mutual suspicion and needless antagonism. For the sake of truth and peace and charity, it was therefore determined to bring the subject into the light of day, and to sift and bolt it to the bran. If those who thought the defining of the infallibility to be inopportune could justify Rh