Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/281

 ] urgency, are unbecoming in a problem demanding above all things the calm gravity, deliberateness, freedom, which alone befit representatives of an eternal Church. The probability of an interruption of the Council before anything is decreed is a miserable subterfuge. Is it really believed that the majority is accidental and could not be counted upon again?

"What appears to us most serious in this coup d'etat is not so much the disordering of the Council's regular work, as the proof thereby displayed of an arbitrary and absolute will, determined to override everything in order to secure an end long since designed although long concealed.

"Certainly those who urge the Holy Father to such extremes take upon themselves a most tremendous responsibility. Considering the circumstances (especially the doubts already raised as to the Council's freedom), under which they have demanded and secured an exercise of supreme authority, placing so many venerable Bishops in the dilemma of a struggle with the Pope or with their own consciences, we cannot refrain from the enquiry, What future do they expect will await this assembly of the Vatican?

"The Council has now resumed its labours under new Regulations. Undoubtedly these will facilitate rapidity. But the aim of a Council is not rapidity, but truth. If the speed is increased, it is at the price of the freedom of the Bishops; at the price of real deliberation; of the dignity and security of the Church. The new Regulations on Procedure had provoked a protest from one hundred Bishops of the minority: they feel themselves burdened by intolerable restrictions. They find themselves completely under the control of the Presidents, of the Commissions, of the majority. And behind all these there is the perpetual intervention of the Pope himself. The Presidents control absolutely the order of the day, the length of the Sessions, the regularity of meetings, the intervals for the study of documents. The Council, under such dominion, has no life of its own, and no power of initiative. It has