First Vatican Council
[Album Monumentale del Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano anno 1869-70. Roma. 12.5" x 18". 1870 first edition.]
Extremely rare collection of 726 photographs. Every ranking officer, of the Catholic church, in attendance has a portrait in this work. Archbishop Blanchet presented this album to the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in Portland, OR in 1870, upon his return from the First Vatican Council. Sisters of Holy Names, later became Marylhurst University who closed their doors in the summer of 2018, and we were able to acquire some of their rare, and one of a kind books.
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Condition notes:
Very good condition. Wear commensurate with age. Cloth fraying on corners and outside edges. Cloth somewhat dingy, but remains in overall good shape for age with the gold lettering on cover still bright and legible. Sewn binding starting to loosen on between front cover and textblock. Glue on the Presentation page and the inventory of attendance is wrinkled. Pages have a light wave, most likely from when the portraits were glued in when first made. No other copies available worldwide, nor are there any records of sales online. Worldcat shows only 5 (worldcat.org searches every library in the world).
History from Wikipedia.org:
[Sorry the links will only work if you are on wikipedia.]
François Norbert Blanchet (September 30, 1795 – June 18, 1883) was a French Canadian-born missionary priest and prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who was instrumental in establishing the Catholic Church presence in the Pacific Northwest. He was one of the first Catholic priests to arrive in what was then known as the Oregon Country and subsequently became the first bishop and archbishop of the Archdiocese of Oregon City (now known as the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon).
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Early life and priesthood[edit]
François Norbert Blanchet was born near Saint-Pierre-de-la-Rivière-du-Sud in Lower Canada (present-day Quebec). Along with his younger brother Augustin-Magloire Blanchet, he entered the Seminary of Quebec and was ordained a priest in 1819.[1] Blanchet spent a year working at the cathedral in Quebec before being sent to do missionary work with the Micmac and Acadian people in present-day New Brunswick. To be able to preach to the local Irish, Blanchet became fluent in English.[2] In 1827 he was summoned back to Montreal and became a pastor.[1]
Missionary work and episcopal career[edit]
In the 1830s, John McLoughlin sent letters from French Canadian Catholic employees of the Hudson's Bay Company requesting from bishop Provencher of the Red River colony to send priests to what was then known as the Oregon Country.[3] Bishop Provencher originally suggested that priests be sent to the Willamette Valley but the Hudson's Bay Company pressed for the considered mission to be on the Cowlitz River, north of the Columbia River.[4] Blanchet was appointed the Vicar General of the Oregon Country, with fellow priest Modeste Demers to aid in the missionary efforts. The missionaries were instructed by Archbishop Joseph Signay of Quebec: "In order to make yourselves sooner useful to the natives... you will apply yourselves... to the study of the Indian languages... so as to be able to publish a grammar after some of your residence there."[3] The two priests along with nuns and lay people departed from Quebec on May 3, 1838, and traveled along the York Factory Express.
Arriving on 18 November at Fort Nez Percés, a Hudson's Bay Company fur trade outpost located in the present state of Washington, Blanchet celebrated Masses and baptized three Roman Catholic converts.[5] In November of that year, they arrived at Fort Vancouver in present-day Vancouver, Washington. A delegation composed of French-Canadians from the Willamette Valley composed of Pierre Belleque, Joseph Gervais and Étienne Lucier were present to greet them.[3] During their winter stay at the Fort, the priests held services in Chinook Jargon with Klickitats in attendance.[3] Blanchet and Demers held Masses in various buildings within the fort, and Catholics often had to share worship space with Protestants, an arrangement that did not please either group.[6]
Beginning on January 3, 1839, Blanchet, with Belleque and Lucier, went to the French Prairie farms maintained by the French-Canadians. The first Catholic Mass south of the Columbia river (in the Oregon Country) was celebrated at the St. Paul church on January 6, where Blanchet remained for five weeks.[3] During his second visit in March 1839 to Cowlitz to visually explain basic Catholic religious concepts, Blanchet created the "Sahale stick" or stick from God in Chinook Jargon.[7] This was latter made more complex with the use of cloth, to allow for additional representations. The use of the Sahale stick was later adopted by Methodists and Presbyterians like Daniel Lee and Henry H. Spalding.[7]
Blanchet was the first non-Native American to make an overnight stay on Whidbey Island in May 1840, where he offered Mass for several tribes at an outdoor altar; he had been invited by Chief Tslalakum.[8][9] The chief presented him with a huge wooden cross (24 feet long) and by 1841 the inhabitants were building a log church in the same area. Blanchet stayed on the island for nearly a year.[10][8]
In February 1841 several gatherings were convened to determine the fate of recently deceased Ewing Young's estate, the first of the Champoeg Meetings which two years later saw formation of the Provisional Government of Oregon. Jason Lee as chairman of the first meeting on the 17th proposed that a Willamette Valley-based settler government be formed. Included in the considered government was the position of governor, which led Blanchet to counter propose a political system with a judge as the highest authority.[11] During the subsequent meeting held at David Leslie’s home near Champoeg[5] on the next day Blanchet was selected to chair a committee to draft the laws of government.[12] Blanchet was still opposed to the contemplated political structure, and six months later asked for a reprieve of his duties.
On December 1, 1843, the Vatican under Pope Gregory XVI established the Vicariate Apostolic of the Oregon Territory, and named Blanchet its vicar apostolic. With no bishops out west to consecrate him, Blanchet had to journey home to Quebec to be consecrated a bishop. He began his journey for Canada in December 1844, boarded a steamer on the Columbia River, touched at Honolulu, Hawaii doubled Cape Horn, landed at Dover, England, went by rail to Liverpool, took a vessel to Boston, Massachusetts, and finally proceeded by rail to Montreal, a journey of 22,000 miles.[1] Blanchet was consecrated a bishop on July 25, 1845 by Archbishop Ignace Bourget at Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral in Montréal.
Then on July 24, 1846, the Vatican under Pope Pius IX divided the vicariate apostolic into three dioceses: Oregon City, Vancouver Island, and Walla Walla. Blanchet was named Bishop of Oregon City, while Demers was named Bishop of Vancouver Island and Augustin Blanchet Bishop of Walla Walla. The Diocese of Oregon City was elevated to an archdiocese on July 29, 1850, and François Blanchet was elevated to archbishop.
He retired in 1880; retaining the title of archbishop, he was named to a titular see, in the practice of that time. He died in 1883 and is interred at St. Paul Cemetery in St. Paul, Oregon.
François’s brother was Augustin-Magloire Blanchet, who was the Bishop of Walla Walla until 1850 and then the Bishop of the Diocese of Nesqually, which later became the Diocese of Seattle.[1][13][14]
Legacy[edit]
In 1995, the Archdiocese of Portland approved the plan to build a Catholic secondary school in Salem, Oregon, under the condition the school be named Blanchet. Blanchet Catholic School opened in 1995
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The First Vatican Council (Latin: Concilium Vaticanum Primum) was convoked by Pope Pius IX on 29 June 1868, after a period of planning and preparation that began on 6 December 1864.[1] This, the twentieth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, held three centuries after the Council of Trent, opened on 8 December 1869 and adjourned on 20 October 1870.[2] Unlike the five earlier general councils held in Rome, which met in the Lateran Basilica and are known as Lateran councils, it met in the Vatican Basilica, hence its name. Its best-known decision is its definition of papal infallibility.[3]
The council was convoked to deal with the contemporary problems of the rising influence of rationalism, liberalism, and materialism.[4] Its purpose was, besides this, to define the Catholic doctrine concerning the Church of Christ.[5] There was discussion and approval of only two constitutions: the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith (Dei Filius) and the First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ (Pastor aeternus), the latter dealing with the primacy and infallibility of the Bishop of Rome.[5] The first matter brought up for debate was the dogmatic draft of Catholic doctrine against the manifold errors due to rationalism. The Council condemned rationalism, liberalism, naturalism, materialism and pantheism. The Catholic Church was on the defensive against the main ideology of the 19th century.[6]
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Background[edit]
This council was summoned by Pope Pius IX by a bull on 29 June 1868.[1] The first session was held in St. Peter's Basilica on 8 December 1869.[7] Preliminary sessions dealt with general administrative matters and committee assignments. Bishop Bernard John McQuaid complained of rainy weather, inadequate heating facilities and boredom.[8] Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley of Newark, New Jersey, noted the high prices in Rome.[8] When Lord Houghton asked Cardinal Manning what had been going on, he answered:
Papal infallibility[edit]
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| Papal primacy and infallibility |
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The doctrine of papal infallibility was not new and had been used by Pope Pius in defining as dogma, in 1854, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus.[10][failed verification] However, the proposal to define papal infallibility itself as dogma met with resistance, not because of doubts about the substance of the proposed definition, but because some considered it inopportune to take that step at that time.[10] Richard McBrien divides the bishops attending Vatican I into three groups. The first group, which McBrien calls the "active infallibilists", was led by Henry Edward Manning and Ignatius von Senestréy. According to McBrien, the majority of the bishops were not so much interested in a formal definition of papal infallibility as they were in strengthening papal authority and, because of this, were willing to accept the agenda of the infallibilists. A minority, some 10 per cent of the bishops, McBrien says, opposed the proposed definition of papal infallibility on both ecclesiastical and pragmatic grounds, because, in their opinion, it departed from the ecclesiastical structure of the early Christian church.[11] From a pragmatic perspective, they feared that defining papal infallibility would alienate some Catholics, create new difficulties for union with non-Catholics, and provoke interference by governments in ecclesiastical affairs.[12] Those who held this view included most of the German and Austro-Hungarian bishops, nearly half of the Americans, one third of the French, most of the Chaldaeans and Melkites, and a few Armenians.[12] Only a few bishops appear to have had doubts about the dogma itself.[12]
Dei Filius[edit]
On 24 April 1870, the dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith Dei Filius was adopted unanimously. The draft presented to the council on 8 March drew no serious criticism, but a group of 35 English-speaking bishops, who feared that the opening phrase of the first chapter, "Sancta romana catholica Ecclesia" (the holy roman catholic Church), might be construed as favouring the Anglican branch theory, later succeeded in having an additional adjective inserted, so that the final text read: "Sancta catholica apostolica romana Ecclesia" (the holy catholic apostolic roman Church).[13] The constitution thus set forth the teaching of the "Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church" on God, revelation and faith.[14]
Pastor aeternus[edit]
There was stronger opposition to the draft constitution on the nature of the church, which at first did not include the question of papal infallibility,[4] but the majority party in the council, whose position on this matter was much stronger,[10] brought it forward. It was decided to postpone discussion of everything in the draft except infallibility.[10] The decree did not go forward without controversy; Cardinal Filippo Guidi, Archbishop of Bologna, proposed adding that the Pope is assisted by "the counsel of the bishops manifesting the tradition of the churches." The Pope rejected Guidi's view of the bishops as witnesses to the tradition, maintaining that "I am the tradition."[15]
On 13 July 1870, a preliminary vote on the section on infallibility was held in a general congregation: 451 voted simply in favour (placet), 88 against (non placet), and 62 in favour but on condition of some amendment (placet iuxta modum).[16] This made evident what the final outcome would be, and some 60 members of the opposition left Rome so as not to be associated with approval of the document. The final vote, with a choice only between placet and non placet, was taken on 18 July 1870, with 433 votes in favour and only 2 against defining as a dogma the infallibility of the pope when speaking ex cathedra.[4] The two votes in opposition were cast by Bishop Aloisio Riccio and Bishop Edward Fitzgerald.[17]
The dogmatic constitution states that the Pope has "full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church" (chapter 3:9); and that, when he
None of the bishops who had argued that proclaiming the definition was inopportune refused to accept it. Some Catholics, mainly of German language and largely inspired by the historian Ignaz von Döllinger, formed the separate Old Catholic Church in protest; von Döllinger did not formally join the new group.[18]
Suspension[edit]
Discussion of the rest of the document on the nature of the church was to continue when the bishops returned after a summer break. However, in the meanwhile the Franco-Prussian War broke out. With the swift German advance and the capture of Emperor Napoleon III, French troops protecting papal rule in Rome withdrew from the city.
Consequently, on 20 September 1870, one month after the Kingdom of Italy had occupied Rome, Pope Pius IX, who then considered himself a prisoner in the Vatican, issued the bull Postquam Dei munere, adjourning the council indefinitely.[citation needed] While some proposed to continue the council in the Belgian city of Mechlin, it was never reconvened.[19] The council was formally closed in 1960, prior to the formation of the Second Vatican Council.[20]