First Vatican Council - Leaving Rome and Reopening The Council Considered

Leaving Rome and Reopening The Council Considered

Moritz Busch recounts that Otto von Bismarck confided that, after the capture of Rome, Pius IX considered leaving Rome and reopening the Council elsewhere:

As a matter of fact, he has already asked whether we could grant him asylum. I have no objection to it—Cologne or Fulda. It would be passing strange, but after all not so inexplicable, and it would be very useful to us to be recognised by Catholics as what we really are, that is to say, the sole power now existing that is capable of protecting the head of their Church. But the King will not consent. He is terribly afraid. He thinks all Prussia would be perverted and he himself would be obliged to become a Catholic. I told him, however, that if the Pope begged for asylum he could not refuse it. He would have to grant it as ruler of ten million Catholic subjects who would desire to see the head of their Church protected.

He also reports:

Bucher brings me from upstairs instructions and material for a Rome despatch for the Kölnische Zeitung. It runs as follows: "Rumours have already been circulated on various occasions to the effect that the Pope intends to leave Rome. According to the latest of these the Council, which was adjourned in the summer, will be reopened at another place, some persons mentioning Malta and others Trient. Doubtless the main object of this gathering will be to elicit from the assembled fathers a strong declaration in favour of the necessity of the Temporal Power. Obviously a secondary object of this Parliament of Bishops, convoked away from Rome, would be to demonstrate to Europe that the Vatican does not enjoy the necessary liberty, although the Act of Guarantee proves that the Italian Government, in its desire for reconciliation and its readiness to meet the wishes of the Curia, has actually done everything that lies in its power."

Read more about this topic:  First Vatican Council

Famous quotes containing the words leaving, rome, council and/or considered:

    The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover?—Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    Daughter to that good Earl, once President
    Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
    Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
    And left them both, more in himself content.

    Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
    Broke him, as that dishonest victory
    At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
    Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—
    John Milton (1608–1674)

    One is always considered mad, when one discovers something that others cannot grasp.
    Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1922–1978)