The Bishop from Petricula

All night long the thunderstorm had roared over Rome, hurling lightning bolts into the city at three places. "Then on Monday morning, July 18, 1870, it abated briefly, allowing the 535 Fathers of the First Vatican Council to assemble in St. Peter's Basilica. Before them lay a historic document. In matters of faith and morals, it declared, when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra (from the chair of Peter, i.e., by virtue of his office) to the universal church, he is incapable of error.

The heavens broke open again as the roll call began. A window shattered almost directly over the pontifical throne. As the votes came in--an unbroken succession of placets (it pleases)--it became clear that the opposition, once strong, had melted before the papal presence. Rather than embarrass the Pope, many of the American bishops, who principally feared Protestant reaction in the U.S. to the doctrine of papal infallibility, had gone quietly home. But the Most Rev. Edward Fitzgerald, 36, episcopus petriculanus, bishop of Little Rock, Ark., had changed his mind and decided to stay. When his name was called, he answered with a firm non placet, thereby assuring himself a footnote in the history of the church.

Few Consequences. Today, one century later, the definition of papal infallibility remains the most memorable accomplishment of the First Vatican Council. Yet, as it turned out, it had less effect at the time than was expected. There were few immediate consequences: Great Britain's Prime Minister William Gladstone grumbled that the Pope was trying to revive "universal monarchy"; Germany's Otto von Bismarck used the dogma as a pretext for his anti-Catholic Kulturkampf (struggle for civilization); a group of Catholics in Central Europe formed the schismatic Old Catholic Church partly in rebellion against the doctrine.

Only once in the 100 years since Vatican I has a Pope explicitly invoked the power recognized on that stormy summer day. In 1950, Pope Pius XII defined ex cathedra the dogma of the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. Still, the doctrine of infallibility continues to trouble many Catholics. Among other things, its mere presence lends greater authority to other papal pronouncements not usually defined as infallible, such as Pope Paul VI's controversial encyclical Humanae vitae, which reaffirmed strictures against artificial birth control.

As for Arkansas's lonely dissenter, he came home to something of a hero's welcome. Several hundred Arkansans, unwilling to wait for his arrival at Little Rock, rode by wagon and horseback some 45 miles to De Valls Bluff to cheer his return. Later, the bishop received an unexpected dividend from the very declaration he had opposed.* Bismarck's Kulturkampf drove many persecuted German Catholics to the New World. Fitzgerald, a hearty, outgoing man who kept his home open to any traveler, managed to attract some of the refugees. There had been only 1,600 Catholics in his diocese when the bishop took office in 1867. At his death 40 years later, his flock numbered 20,000.

*Right after the vote was announced, 533-2, Fitzgerald and a Neapolitan bishop who also voted non placet went forward to Pope Pius IX and declared "Now I believe." Absent dissenters sent in their submissions.

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