Lately, for the first time, a local priest, Leonardo Proja, in a work published here, has openly expressed his confidence that the Council will at once condemn the shocking error of setting aside the supreme dominion of the Pope over the nations, even in civil matters ("vel in civilibus") as an invention of the Middle Ages.(40)
The Court of Rome and the Bishops are at present studying in a school of mutual instruction. The _Curia_ studies the Bishops individually, especially the more prominent among them, and watches for their weak points and the ways of getting at them and making them pliable, and, above all, of dissolving national ties. They don't always manage matters skilfully, for the want of all real freedom, the use of coercive measures, and this apparatus of bolts and bars, cords and man-traps, by which the Prelates are surrounded and threatened at every step in Council, by no means produce a _couleur de rose_ state of feeling, and the contrast between the title of Brother, which the Pope gives officially to every Bishop, and his way of treating them all, both individually and collectively, like so many schoolboys, is too glaring. Even the boasted freedom of speech does not extend very far, for every Prelate speaks under threat of interruption by the bell of the presiding Cardinal, directly he says anything displeasing to Roman ears. On the other hand, the Bishops, during their stay here of six or seven weeks, have learnt a good deal more than the curialists, and many of them have really made immense advances, before which the Romans would recoil with a shudder, if they could see how things stand. A great many of these Prelates came here full of absolute devotion to the Pope, and with great confidence in the integrity of the _Curia_ and the purity of its motives. When they found themselves oppressed and injured at home by its measures or decrees, they still thought it was so much the better in the other branches of ecclesiastical administration. But now, and here, scales have, as it were, fallen from their eyes, and they are daily getting to understand more clearly the two mighty levers of the gigantic machine. The dominant view in Roman clerical circles here is, that the Church in its present condition needs, above all things, greater centralization at Rome, the extension and deepening of Papal powers, the removal of any limitations still standing in the way in national Churches, and the increase of the revenues accruing from Papal innovations. This it is the business of the Council to accomplish. When, therefore, two Bishops lately attacked in their speeches the abuse of expensive marriage dispensations, it was at once said, "Well, then, if any change is made, what is to become of our Congregations and the revenues of their members?"