Page "Ignaz von Döllinger" Paragraph 16

Doellinger, however, was not to be silenced.

He headed a protest by forty-four professors in the University of Munich, and gathered together a congress at Munich, which met in August 1870 and issued a declaration adverse to the Vatican decrees.

An immense ferment took place.

In Bavaria, where Doellinger's influence was greatest, the strongest determination to resist the resolutions of the council prevailed.

But the authority of the council was held by the archbishop of Munich to be paramount, and he called upon Doellinger to submit.

Instead of submitting, Doellinger, on March 28, 1871, addressed a memorable letter to the archbishop, refusing to subscribe the decrees.

They were, he said, opposed to scripture, to the traditions of the Church for the first 1000 years, to historical evidence, to the decrees of the general councils, and to the existing relations of the Roman Catholic Church to the state in every country in the world.

" As a Christian, as a theologian, as an historian, and as a citizen ," he added, " I cannot accept this doctrine.

" From the Roman Catholic viewing point he thereby became an heretic as he clearly and publicly denied a doctrine proposed by the Church Magisterium to be divinely revealed ( de fide divina ).