Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/24

12 separated from the Catholic Church might through the work of the Council find a way of return to the true mother of all the children of God.

II. After such full and careful deliberation, many might expect that Pius the Ninth would have proceeded to decide upon the convocation of the Council of the Vatican. Indeed, many have said that he was so strongly bent upon it, for the special purpose of his own "apotheosis," that he waited for no consultation, and endured no advice. History tells another tale. All that had hitherto been done was no more than a preliminary deliberation; and that only as to whether the subject of holding an Œcumenical Council should be so much as proposed for further deliberation.

In the first days of March 1865, Pius the Ninth directed certain of the cardinals to meet and confer together, by way of a preliminary discussion, on the very question whether an Œcumenical Council should be convoked or not. He ordered, likewise, that the written voti, or judgments of the Consultors, of which account has been already given, should be reduced to a compendium for the use of the new commission. This was done by the Procurator-General of the Dominican Order, in a brief form, under the title "Sketch of the Opinions expressed by the Cardinals invited by Pius the Ninth to advise on the Convocation of an Œcumenical Council." The compendium