Consequently,
Napoleon's calculation, in relation to the bishop or in relation to
the Pope, proved erroneous. He wanted to unite in one person two
incompatible characters, to convert the dignitaries of the Church into
dignitaries of the State, to make functionaries out of potentates.
The functionary insensibly disappeared; the potentate alone subsisted
and still subsists.
At the present day, conformably to the statute of 1802, the cathedral
chapter,[33] except in case of one interim, is a lifeless and still-
born body, a vain simulachre; it is always, by title or on paper, the
Catholic "senate," the bishop's obligatory "council";[34] but he takes
his councillors where he pleases, outside of the chapter, if that
suits him, and he is free not to take any of them, " to govern alone,
to do all himself." It is he who appoints to all offices, to the five
or six hundred offices of his diocese; he is the universal collator of
these and, nine times out of ten, the sole collator; excepting eight
or nine canonships and the thirty or forty cantonal curacies, which
the government must approve, he alone makes appointments and without
any person's concurrence.
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