Accordingly, as we have already mentioned, in the following year (June 29, 1868), a bull was issued convoking that Council.  Misunderstandings, however, had now sprung up with Austria.  The Austrian Reichsrath had adopted laws introducing equality of civil rights for all the inhabitants of the empire, and restricting the influence of the Church.  This produced on the part of the papal government an expostulation.  Acting as Russia had done, the Austrian Government found it necessary to abrogate the Concordat of 1855.

In France, as above stated, the publication of the entire Syllabus was not permitted; but Prussia, desirous of keeping on good terms with the papacy, did not disallow it.  The exacting disposition of the papacy increased.  It was openly declared that the faithful must now sacrifice to the Church, property, life, and even their intellectual convictions.  The Protestants and the Greeks were invited to tender their submission.

The Vatican council.  On the appointed day, the Council opened.  Its objects were, to translate the Syllabus into practice, to establish the dogma of papal infallibility, and define the relations of religion to science.  Every preparation had been made that the points determined on should be carried.  The bishops were informed that they were coming to Rome not to deliberate, but to sanction decrees previously made by an infallible pope.  No idea was entertained of any such thing as free discussion.  The minutes of the meetings were not permitted to be inspected; the prelates of the opposition were hardly allowed to speak.  On January 22, 1870, a petition, requesting that the infallibility of the pope should be defined, was presented; an opposition petition of the minority was offered.  Hereupon, the deliberations of the minority were forbidden, and their publications prohibited.  And, though the Curia had provided a compact majority, it was found expedient to issue an order that to carry any proposition it was not necessary that the vote should be near unanimity, a simple majority sufficed.  The remonstrances of the minority were altogether unheeded.

As the Council pressed forward to its object, foreign authorities became alarmed at its reckless determination.  A petition drawn up by the Archbishop of Vienna, and signed by several cardinals and archbishops, entreated his Holiness not to submit the dogma of infallibility for consideration, “because the Church has to sustain at present a struggle unknown in former times, against men who oppose religion itself as an institution baneful to human nature, and that it is inopportune to impose upon Catholic nations, led into temptation by so many machinations, more dogmas than the Council of Trent proclaimed.”  It added that “the definition demanded would furnish fresh arms to the enemies of religion, to excite against the Catholic Church the resentment of men avowedly the best.”  The Austrian prime-minister addressed a protest to