I have just learnt from the _Kölner Volkszeitung_ that the chaplain of a prelate here charges me with a gross falsehood in reference to the words of the Pope. He appeals to the Paris _Union_, which has the words used by the Pope, "Je suis la voie, la vérité, et la vie," with the passage inserted by the editor. I had cited the words from the _Observateur Catholique_ of 1866 (p. 357), where they are authenticated by the signature of an ear-witness, MacSheeby, and correspond entirely with the statement of the _Union_. But in the _Monde_, which was not in my reach, a totally different version is given, which has no similarity to that authenticated by Roman correspondents in the _Union_ and _Observateur_, and does not connect the words, "I am the way," etc., with the Pope at all. It must remain uncertain after this whether the version of the _Monde_ or of the two other journals is the genuine one.
_Rome, March 28, 1870._--The Bishops who have attacked the new order of business, because it brought into view the possibility of a dogmatic definition being carried without the _consensus moraliter unanimis_, received the desired answer in no doubtful form at the sitting of Tuesday, the 22d. The measures of the _Curia_ for a month past have been unmistakably contributing more and more to produce a worthy and loyal-hearted attitude among the minority. After long dallying, Rome has brought the secrets of her policy a little too boldly and conspicuously into view. Hardly was the domination of the majority in matters of faith fixed by the stricter _regolamento_, when the Pope had the proclamation of his own infallibility proposed in the most arrogant form. On this followed the attempt to press it to an immediate decision, and then the determination to admit no ambassadors of the Governments. If these proceedings were not enough to lay bare the perilous nature of the whole situation, the Pope and the zealots of his party supplied the remaining proof,--the former, by his conduct about Falloux, about Montalembert on the day the news of his death arrived, about the Munich theologians in secret consistory, and about the so-called Liberal or "half-Catholics" on every occasion; the latter by their growing impatience about the infallibility definition, and their assurances that there is no real opposition to this dogma, and that, if there was, it could not hold its ground after the promulgation had taken place. And so the opponents of the decree must know at last that they have to deal with a blind and unscrupulous zeal, not with a theological system carefully thought out and placed on an intellectual basis; that the contest has to be carried on against the whole power and influence of the Pope, and not, as had been maintained with transparent hypocrisy, only against the wishes of the noisy and independent party of the _Civiltà_ and its allied journalists. They begin to use more earnest and manlier language, the language of clear apprehension and conscientious conviction. If the comments handed in last week on the _Schema de Ecclesiâ_, and the protests against any hurrying of the discussion on it, were known to the world, the Catholic Episcopate and the strong reflux current here would appear in a very different light from what might be gathered from the previous course of things. Not a few of these opinions drawn up by the Bishops breathe a truly apostolic spirit, and deal with the Roman proposals in the tone of genuine theology. An influential theologian of a Religious Order has pronounced of one of them, that it exceeds in force and weight the treatise which appeared in Germany last year, _Reform of the Church in Her Head and Her Members_.(69) It has been urged by English prelates that it concerns their honour to resist the promulgation of a dogma, the explicit repudiation of which by the Irish Bishops was an efficacious condition of Catholic Emancipation. The American Protest contains a more threatening warning than the German, and the German is stronger than the French.