The great blow, which brings matters near a decision, has now been just struck, and all that the Jesuit and anti-German party longed for, and the French and Germans feared, is now before our eyes, the third _Schema_, "on the Church and the Pope," has been distributed, and leaves hardly anything to be desired in point of clearness and plain speaking. These transparent decrees and anathemas may be thus summed up: "The Christian world consists simply of masters and slaves; the masters are the Italians, the Pope and his Court, and the slaves are all Bishops (including the Italians themselves), all priests, and all the laity."
This third _Schema_, which was distributed to the Bishops on January 21, is a lengthy document of 213 pages, entitled _De Ecclesiâ_, and it is the one the _Curia_ is chiefly bent on getting received. It is said to be the work of a red-hot Infallibilist, Gay, Vicar-General of the Infallibilist Bishop Pie of Poitiers, and is so drawn up that by a slight addition the Infallibility of the Pope, which it already leads up to and implies, can be inserted in express form very easily, and as the necessary logical supplement; and thus the internal harmony of this important document, with its appended anathemas, would be completely secured. Three main ideas run through the _Schema_, and are formulated into dogmatic decrees guarded with anathemas: _First_, to the Pope belongs absolute dominion over the whole Church, whether dispersed or assembled in Council; _secondly_, the Pope's temporal sovereignty over a portion of the Peninsula must be maintained as pertaining to dogma; _thirdly_, Church and State are immutably connected, but in the sense that the Church's laws always hold good before and against the civil law; and therefore every Papal ordinance that is opposed to the Constitution and law of the land binds the faithful, under mortal sin, to disobedience to the Constitution and law of their country.
_Rome, Feb. 5._--On reviewing the situation, I believe I may venture to say that it has become better, far better, than it was a few weeks ago. For this the Christian world is mainly indebted to the noble, dignified and united attitude of the German and Hungarian Bishops. These men,--I speak of course only of the majority of the forty-six--while taking frequent and most conscientious consultation with one another, and knowing the three German Cardinals to be in substantial agreement with them, have gained almost daily in clearness of view, confidence and decision; and their example, again, has encouraged the Bishops of other nations. If, as many fear, Ketteler should, at the critical moment, go over to the Papal side, and let his sympathy for the convenient Infallibilist doctrine get the better of his love for the German Church and nation, his loss will be more than made up by forces newly gained. Hefele, who is the first living authority about Councils, has signed the Opposition address, and would, I believe, have still more gladly signed a stronger one. Three Cardinals of one nation who don't want to have anything to do with Papal Infallibility! "It is an unheard-of, an abominable thing," say the Romans. "O that we still had Reisach! his loss is bitter at so critical a moment, and that we should have to console ourselves for his death by the living voices of Martin, Senestrey, Leonrod and Stahl, is still bitterer!"