They soon found out
the spitefulness of M. de Lamennais, and would have nothing to do with
him. The theological romanticism of Lacordaire and of Montalembert was
not much more appreciated by them, the dogmatic ignorance and the very
weak reasoning powers of this school indisposing them against it. They
were fully alive to the danger of Catholic journalism. Ultramontanism
they at first looked upon as merely a convenient method of appealing
to a distant and often ill-informed authority from one nearer at hand,
and less easy to inveigle. The older members, who had gone
through their studies at the Sorbonne before the Revolution, were
uncompromising partisans of the four propositions of 1682. Bossuet
was their oracle on every point. One of the most respected of the
directors, M. Boyer, had, while at Rome, a long argument with Pope
Gregory XVI. upon the Gallican propositions. He asserted that the Pope
could not answer his arguments. He detracted, it is true, from the
significance of his success by admitting that no one in Rome took him
_au serieux_, and the residents in the Vatican made sport of him as
being "an antediluvian." It is a pity-that they did not pay more heed
to what he said. A complete change took place about 1840. The older
members whose training dated from before the Revolution were dead,
and the younger ones nearly all rallied to the doctrine of papal
infallibility; but there was, despite of that, a great gulf between
these Ultramontanes of the eleventh hour and the impetuous deriders
of Scholasticism and the Gallican Church who were enrolled under the
banner of Lamennais.
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