Consilium Interrumpitur: Understanding the Interrupted Work of the First Vatican Council (1869–1870)

Abstract

Consilium Interrumpitur:Understanding the Interrupted Work of the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) Kenneth L. Parker (bio) Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church. By John W. O'Malley. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018. 320 pages. Hardcover, $24.95. ISBN 9780674979987. Revered and Reviled: A Re-Examination of Vatican Council I. By John R. Quinn. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2017. vi + 117 pages. Hardcover, $49.10. ISBN: 0824523296. Australian Catholic Bishops and the First Vatican Council 1869–1870: An Historical Reflection. By Peter Price. Northcote, Victoria, Australia: Morning Star Publishing, 2017. 208 pages. Paperback, $35.66 AUD. ISBN: 0995416176. Vatican I and Vatican II: Councils in the Living Tradition. By Kristen M. Colberg. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2016. xiv + 162 pages. Paperback, $19.95. ISBN: 9780814683149. The impact of the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) permeates contemporary Roman Catholic life and culture, though few know the historical context of the Council or appreciate its perduring influence. Though disrupted by war after only eight months, never to reconvene, its definition of papal sovereignty and infallibility has shaped Roman Catholic understandings of ecclesiology and has been a point of contention inside and outside the Church ever since. As the sesquicentenary remembrance of the Council approaches, four books have been published, between 2016 and 2018, offering opportunities to inform gaps [End Page 72] in our knowledge and correct impressions that have circulated for 150 years. This review article opens with an overview of how the Council came to be and the impact of its reception. Attention then turns to the four texts under review, with consideration given to whether they represent continuity or change from prior approaches to the subject. The concluding portion of this essay reflects on the way these works reinforce John Henry Newman's enduring relevance in the study of the First Vatican Council and our reception of it in the twenty-first century. historical overview An impressive pontifical ceremony opened the First Vatican Council on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (8 December 1869), and the final conciliar vote on, and papal promulgation of, Pastor Æternus marked the last act of the Council (18 July 1870). The following day, 19 July 1870, the Franco-Prussian War erupted, French troops withdrew from Rome, and Italian nationalists gained control of the city two months later. Bishops fled Rome, and Pius IX prorogued the Council. It never reassembled. The pope declared himself a prisoner of the Vatican as the last territorial vestiges of his temporal power were annexed by the unified Italian nation, and Rome became its capital. Historians have noted the irony of the pope's supreme spiritual authority being defined in the Council as his temporal power ended.1 Yet this watershed moment in Roman Catholic history had been more than two centuries in the making. The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries proved a period of defensive retrenchment for the papacy in the North Atlantic region. Nation after nation in western Europe negotiated, and received, concordats from the papacy that limited the authority of popes and gave governments discretion in shaping the ecclesial life of their subjects, particularly in the selection of bishops.2 These centuries witnessed the rise of ideologies that reflected evolving conciliar principles with roots in the fifteenth century. Gallicanism, Febronianism, cisalpinism, and Josephinism, as well as a striking form of Irish gallicanism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,3 all asserted the integrity of local, national churches and the authority of their local ordinary or bishop, and favored [End Page 73] limitations on the universal jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome. While these various forms of conciliar ecclesiology honored the pope as the center of unity and the arbiter of disputes, they affirmed the collective apostolic authority of bishops when gathered in council. Even when scattered throughout the world, episcopal consensus carried weight that popes must not ignore.4 As temporal rulers, popes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries struggled with circumstances that forced them to choose alliances with religious foes against Catholic rulers in order to ensure the preservation of the papacy's temporal interests. These conflicts of interest eroded trust in...