Two new works have arrived here, each of which, in its own way, touches on the great question of the day. The one is a book of Dr. Pusey's, on the relations of the English Church to the Catholic, where he declares that making Papal Infallibility a dogma would destroy all hope of a reunion of the Churches, or of the adhesion of any considerable section of the English Church.(37) Manning has assured them in Rome of precisely the reverse. The other work is the first Letter of the famous Oratorian, Father Gratry, to the Archbishop of Mechlin, a pungent criticism on that Prelate's brochure in favour of Infallibility, and on his gross misrepresentations of the history of Pope Honorius.(38) Gratry also exposes the Roman falsifications introduced into the Breviary. It may alarm the curialists, when they discover how all the most intellectually conspicuous among the French clergy pronounce against their favourite doctrine, and their design of imposing it on the whole Church, and how the disreputable means employed for building up this system, by trickery and forgeries, are more and more being brought to light.
The Pope's attempt to reduce 740 members of the Council to complete silence on all that goes on there has proved a failure, as might have been foreseen. A great deal has come out, and the Pope manifests great displeasure at it. In a conversation with a diplomatist, who asked him how, with this rule, trustworthy reports could be sent to the different Governments, he accused the French Bishops of violating the secrets of the Council, and called them "chatterboxes" (_chiacceroni_). Accordingly, in the Session of January 14, a more rigorous version of the order of business was read, to the effect that the Pope had made it a mortal sin to communicate anything that took place in the Council; so that any Bishop who should, for instance, show a theologian, whose advice he wanted, a passage from the _Schema_ under discussion, or repeat an expression used in one of the speeches, incurs everlasting damnation! If your readers think this incredible, I can only assure them that it is literally true, and must refer them to the moral theology of the Jesuits on the foundation of the Pope's right to brand human actions, forbidden by no law of God, with the guilt of mortal sin, at his good pleasure. A Papal theologian, whom I questioned on the subject, appealed simply to the statement of Boniface VIII., that the Pope holds all rights in the shrine of his breast.