Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/249



Council of the Vatican was opened on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (8th December I869). There was significance in the selection of the day. That very day, fifteen years before, Pius IX. had proclaimed a new dogma on the Virgin; and, as a fervid prelate assured him, he who had declared the Virgin immaculate was now to be proclaimed by her infallible. The Council was held in the South Transept of St Peter's, and at the opening service seven hundred and two members were present. So large an Assembly had never been held before. The proportions of the two opinions were roughly between four and five hundred Infallibilists and between one and two hundred opponents of the doctrine.

Meetings of the Council were of two kinds: the ordinary Congregations, at which none but members and officials were permitted to be present, while the proceedings were secret; the Public Sessions, at which the public were admitted, and the Decrees proclaimed. Of the former kind there were in all eighty-nine, of the latter four. Only two, however, of the Public Sessions declared matters decreed: for the first was entirely occupied with ceremonial, and at the second