Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/89

Rh before this commission, in the form of a written petition to the Pontiff, any subject he might desire to see proposed to the Council. The Commission of Postulates, as it was called, after examination reported its judgment to the Pontiff, who gave orders as he might see fit. Anybody who will, with a just and sincere mind, weigh the reasonableness and the sufficiency of this provision cannot fail to acknowledge that without such a limit the discussions of an Œcumenical Council might be prolonged to any duration; any subject, howsoever needless and injurious, might be forced into discussion: the treatment of the most vital matters delayed, indefinitely obstructed, and even defeated altogether; the bishops detained for months or years from their dioceses, or the Council so thinned by their departure as to reduce it to a minority, and that, it may be, of the most pertinacious and the least pastoral bishops of the Church. Such, indeed, would be the way to expose the Council to the imputation of intrigues, cabals, and cliques. So much for its reasonableness. And as for its sufficiency, no petition which had in it reason enough to approve itself to a representative commission of five-and-twenty bishops chosen for their prudence and experience would be rejected; and certainly no petition which could not stand that ordeal ought to be proposed. The limitation of the right of proposition and the Commission