Two other links in this world-embracing chain are not visible, which are yet necessary for its coherence. The Interdict, which robbed whole populations of divine service and sacraments, must be restored in its ancient splendour, and the Pope's right to dispense from oaths must be distinctly asserted.
The Fathers of the Council have daily opportunities of feeling how useful the temporal power is for the plenary jurisdiction of the Papacy. Were they assembled anywhere else than in Rome, there would be the possibility of holding a real Synod in the sense and manner of the Ancient Church, while the so-called Synod in Rome is in fact the mere painted corpse of a Council laid out on a bed of state.
Soul and freedom are wanting. On any other soil than that of the States of the Church, the Bishops could assemble in a room where they could debate and understand one another, while they are now forcibly detained in the Council Hall. They could come to a mutual understanding by means of the press, by printed proposals or statements of opinion, weekly reports and the like. Anywhere else such treatment as the Patriarch of Babylon experienced would have been impossible; he has now taken refuge under the protection of the French Embassy. But here the King of Rome lends to the Pontiff the means of enforcing unreserved submission, and it is like the lion's den, "vestigia nulla retrorsum."
Many a French Bishop has shared the experiences of the famous Lamennais thirty-eight years ago, who came to the Eternal City full of ardent devotion to the Chair of Peter and firm faith in its infallibility, and on his departure, after a long stay there, wrote to a friend, "Restait Rome; j'y suis allé et j'ai vu là la plus infame cloaque qui ait jamais souillé les regards humains." I will not transcribe what follows, though it was lately read to me by a Bishop. It may be seen in his Letters.(54) But this I can testify: there are men in the French Episcopate who used to be zealous champions of the temporal power, but who would now bear its loss with great equanimity, if only the calamity of the decrees chartered for the Council could be thereby warded off.
Yesterday, February 14, the ice was broken at last. The Bishop of Belley for the first time mentioned the Infallibility doctrine in the General Congregation, observing that the Council should at once proclaim it and go home, as that was the only object they had been summoned to Rome for.