Infallibility

INFALLIBILITY

The quality of not being able to be deceived or mistaken. The infallibility of the church of Rome has been one of the great controversies between the Protestants and Papists. By this infallibility it is understood, that she cannot at any time cease to be orthodox in her doctrine, or fall into any pernicious errors; but that she is constituted, by divine authority, the judge of all controversies of religion, and that all Christians are obliged to acquiesce in her decisions. This is the chain which keeps its members fast bound to its communion; the charm which retains them within its magic circle; the opiate which lays asleep all their doubts and difficulties: it is likewise the magnet which attracts the desultory and unstable in other persuasions within the sphere of popery, the foundation of its whole superstructure, the cement of all its parts, and its fence and fortress against all inroads and attacks.

Under the idea of this infallibility, the church of Rome claims,

1. To determine what books are and what are not canonical, and to oblige all Christians to receive or reject them accordingly.

2. To communicate authority to the Scripture; or, in other words, that the Scripture (quoad nos, ) as to us, receives its authority from her.

3. To assign and fix the sense of Scripture, which all Christians are submissively to receive.

4. To decree as necessary to salvation whatever she judges so, although not contained in Scripture.

5. To decide all controversies respecting matters of faith. These are the claims to which the church of Rome pretends, but which we shall not here attempt to refute, because any man with the Bible in his hand, and a little common sense, will easily see that they are all founded upon ignorance, superstition, and error. It is not a little remarkable, however, that the Roman Catholics themselves are much divided as to the seat of this infallibility, and which, indeed, may be considered as a satisfactory proof that no such privilege exists in the church. For is it consistent with reason to think that God would have imparted so extraordinary a gift to prevent errors and dissensions in the church, and yet have left an additional cause or error and dissension, viz, the uncertainty of the place of its abode? No, surely

Some place this infallibility in the pope or bishop of Rome; some in a general council; others in neither pope nor council separately, but in both conjointly; whilst others are said to place it in the church diffusive, or in all churches throughout the world. But that it could not be deposited in the pope is evident, for many popes have been heretics, and on that account censured and deposed, and therefore could not have been infallible. That it could not be placed in a general council is as evident; for general councils have actually erred. Neither could it be placed in the pope and council conjointly; for two fallibles could not make on infallible any more than two ciphers could make an integer. To say that it is lodged in the church universal or diffusive, is equally as erroneous; for this would be useless and insignificant, because it could never be exercised. The whole church could not meet to make decrees, or to choose representatives, or to deliver their sentiments on any question started; and, less than all would not be the whole church, and so could not claim that privilege.

The most general opinion, however, it is said, is that of its being seated in a pope and general council. The advocates for this opinion consider the pope as the vicar of Christ, head of the church, and centre of unity; and therefore conclude that his concurrence with and approbation of the decrees of a general council are necessary, and sufficient to afford it an indispensable sanction and plenary authority. A general council they regard as the church representative, and suppose that nothing can be wanting to ascertain the truth of any controversial point, when the pretended head of the church and its members, assembled in their supposed representatives, mutually concur and coincide in judicial definitions and decrees, but that infallibility attends their coalition and conjunction in all their determinations. Every impartial person, who considers this subject with the least degree of attention, must clearly perceive that neither any individual nor body of Christians have any ground from reason or Scripture for pretending to infallibility. It is evidently the attribute of the Supreme Being alone, which we have all the foundation imaginable to conclude he has not communicated to any mortal, or associations of mortals. The human being who challenges infallibility seems to imitate the pride and presumption of Lucifer, when he said,

I will ascend, and will be like the Most High. A claim to it was unheard of in the primitive and purest ages of the church; but became, after that period, the arrogant pretension of papal ambition. History plainly informs us, that the bishops of Rome, on the declension of the western Roman empire, began to put in their claim of being the supreme and infallible heads of the Christian church; which they at length established by their deep policy and unremitting efforts; by the concurrence of fortunate circumstances; by the advantages which they reaped from the necessities of some princes, and the superstition of others; and by the general and excessive credulity of the people. However, when they had grossly abused this absurd pretension, and committed various acts of injustice, tyranny, and cruelty; when the blind veneration for the papal dignity had been greatly diminished by the long and scandalous schism occasioned by contending popes; when these had been for a considerable time roaming about Europe, fawning on princes, squeezing their adherents, and cursing their rivals; and when the councils of Constance and Basil had challenged and exercised the right of deposing and electing the bishops of Rome, then their pretensions to infallibility were called in question, and the world discovered that councils were a jurisdiction superior to that of the towering pontiffs.

Then it was that this infallibility was transferred by many divines from popes to general authority of a council above that of a pope spread vastly, especially under the profligate pontificate of Alexander VI. and the martial one of Julius II. The popes were thought by numbers to be too unworthy possessors of so rich a jewel; at the same time it appeared to be of too great a value, and of too extensive consequence, to be parted with entirely. It was, therefore, by the major part of the Roman church, deposited with, or made the property of general councils, either solely or conjointly with the pope.

See Smith’s Errors of the Church of Rome detected; and a list of writers under article POPERY.

Fuente: Theological Dictionary

infallibility

(Latin: in, not; fallere, to deceive)

The preservation of the head of the Church of Christ from teaching error in matters of faith or morals. This preservation is due to the special assistance of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, and is given in order that the faithful may be assured of the truth of their belief. In order to exercise this prerogative the pope must teach as doctor and pastor of all Christians in virtue of his supreme authority, not merely as a private theologian; he must teach a matter of faith or morals; he must define, with the manifest intention of obligating to consent; the definition must obligate the universal Church. The efficient cause of this infallibility is the Divine assistance. The object of papal infallibility is those truths contained explicitly or implicitly in the public deposit of Revelation, comprehended in Scripture and tradition. The ex cathedra definitions of the Roman pontiffs are irreformable of their very nature, independently of the antecedent, concomitant, or subsequent consent or concurrence of the Church, ie., the bishops and the faithful.

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Infallibility

In general, exemption or immunity from liability to error or failure; in particular in theological usage, the supernatural prerogative by which the Church of Christ is, by a special Divine assistance, preserved from liability to error in her definitive dogmatic teaching regarding matters of faith and morals. In this article the subject will be treated under the following heads:

I. True Meaning of Infallibility II. Proof of the Church’s Infallibility III. Organs of Infallibility Ecumenical Councils The Pope Their Mutual Relations IV. Scope and Object of Infallibility V. What Teaching is Infallible?

I. TRUE MEANING OF INFALLIBILITY

It is well to begin by stating the ecclesiological truths that are assumed to be established before the question of infallibility arises. It is assumed:

that Christ founded His Church as a visible and perfect society; that He intended it to be absolutely universal and imposed upon all men a solemn obligation actually to belong to it, unless inculpable ignorance should excuse them; that He wished this Church to be one, with a visible corporate unity of faith, government, and worship; and that in order to secure this threefold unity, He bestowed on the Apostles and their legitimate successors in the hierarchy — and on them exclusively — the plenitude of teaching, governing, and liturgical powers with which He wished this Church to be endowed.

And this being assumed, the question that concerns us is whether, and in what way, and to what extent, Christ has made His Church to be infallible in the exercise of her doctrinal authority.

It is only in connection with doctrinal authority as such that, practically speaking, this question of infallibility arises; that is to say, when we speak of the Church’s infallibility we mean, at least primarily and principally, what is sometimes called active as distinguished from passive infallibility. We mean in other words that the Church is infallible in her objective definitive teaching regarding faith and morals, not that believers are infallible in their subjective interpretation of her teaching. This is obvious in the case of individuals, any one of whom may err in his understanding of the Church’s teaching; nor is the general or even unanimous consent of the faithful in believing a distinct and independent organ of infallibility. Such consent indeed, when it can be verified as apart, is of the highest value as a proof of what has been, or may be, defined by the teaching authority, but, except in so far as it is thus the subjective counterpart and complement of objective authoritative teaching, it cannot be said to possess an absolutely decisive dogmatic value. It will be best therefore to confine our attention to active infallibility as such, as by so doing we shall avoid the confusion which is the sole basis of many of the objections that are most persistently and most plausibly urged against the doctrine of ecclesiastical infallibility.

Infallibility must be carefully distinguished both from Inspiration and from Revelation.

Inspiration signifies a special positive Divine influence and assistance by reason of which the human agent is not merely preserved from liability to error but is so guided and controlled that what he says or writes is truly the word of God, that God Himself is the principal author of the inspired utterance; but infallibility merely implies exemption from liability to error. God is not the author of a merely infallible, as He is of an inspired, utterance; the former remains a merely human document.

Revelation, on the other hand, means the making known by God, supernaturally of some truth hitherto unknown, or at least not vouched for by Divine authority; whereas infallibility is concerned with the interpretation and effective safeguarding of truths already revealed. Hence when we say, for example, that some doctrine defined by the pope or by an ecumenical council is infallible, we mean merely that its inerrancy is Divinely guaranteed according to the terms of Christ’s promise to His Church, not that either the pope or the Fathers of the Council are inspired as were the writers of the Bible or that any new revelation is embodied in their teaching.

It is well further to explain:

that infallibility means more than exemption from actual error; it means exemption from the possibility of error; that it does not require holiness of life, much less imply impeccability in its organs; sinful and wicked men may be God’s agents in defining infallibly; and finally that the validity of the Divine guarantee is independent of the fallible arguments upon which a definitive decision may be based, and of the possibly unworthy human motives that in cases of strife may appear to have influenced the result. It is the definitive result itself, and it alone, that is guaranteed to be infallible, not the preliminary stages by which it is reached.

If God bestowed the gift of prophecy on Caiphas who condemned Christ (John 11:49-52; 18:14), surely He may bestow the lesser gift of infallibility even on unworthy human agents. It is, therefore, a mere waste of time for opponents of infallibility to try to create a prejudice against the Catholic claim by pointing out the moral or intellectual shortcomings of popes or councils that have pronounced definitive doctrinal decisions, or to try to show historically that such decisions in certain cases were the seemingly natural and inevitable outcome of existing conditions, moral, intellectual, and political. All that history may be fairly claimed as witnessing to under either of these heads may freely be granted without the substance of the Catholic claim being affected.

II. PROOF OF THE CHURCH’S INFALLIBILITY

That the Church is infallible in her definitions on faith and morals is itself a Catholic dogma, which, although it was formulated ecumenically for the first time in the Vatican Council, had been explicitly taught long before and had been assumed from the very beginning without question down to the time of the Protestant Reformation. The teaching of the Vatican Council is to be found in Session III, cap. 4, where it is declared that “the doctrine of faith, which God has revealed, has not been proposed as a philosophical discovery to be improved upon by human talent, but has been committed as a Divine deposit to the spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted by her”; and in Session IV, cap. 4, where it is defined that the Roman pontiff when he teaches ex cathedra “enjoys, by reason of the Divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith and morals”. Even the Vatican Council, it will be seen, only introduces the general dogma of the Church’s infallibility as distinct from that of the pope obliquely and indirectly, following in this respect the traditional usage according to which the dogma is assumed as an implicate of ecumenical magisterial authority. Instances of this will be given below and from these it will appear that, though the word infallibility as a technical term hardly occurs at all in the early councils or in the Fathers, the thing signified by it was understood and believed in and acted upon from the beginning. We shall confine our attention in this section to the general question, reserving the doctrine of papal infallibility for special treatment. This arrangement is adopted not because it is the best or most logical, but because it enables us to travel a certain distance in the friendly company of those who cling to the general doctrine of ecclesiastical infallibility while rejecting the papal claims. Taking the evidence both scriptural and traditional as it actually stands, one may fairly maintain that it proves papal infallibility in a simpler, more direct, and more cogent way than it proves the general doctrine independently; and there can be no doubt but that this is so if we accept as the alternative to papal infallibility the vague and unworkable theory of ecumenical infallibility which most High-Church Anglicans would substitute for Catholic teaching. Nor are the Eastern schismatical Churches much better off than the Anglican in this respect, except that each has retained a sort of virtual belief in its own infallibility, and that in practice they have been more faithful in guarding the doctrines infallibly defined by the early ecumenical councils. Yet certain Anglicans and all the Eastern Orthodox agree with Catholics in maintaining that Christ promised infallibility to the true Church, and we welcome their support as against the general Protestant denial of this truth.

PROOF FROM SCRIPTURE

1. In order to prevent misconception and thereby to anticipate a common popular objection which is wholly based on a misconception it should be premised that when we appeal to the Scriptures for proof of the Church’s infallible authority we appeal to them merely as reliable historical sources, and abstract altogether from their inspiration. Even considered as purely human documents they furnish us, we maintain, with a trustworthy report of Christ’s sayings and promises; and, taking it to be a fact that Christ said what is attributed to Him in the Gospels, we further maintain that Christ’s promises to the Apostles and their successors in the teaching office include the promise of such guidance and assistance as clearly implies infallibility. Having thus used the Scriptures as mere historical sources to prove that Christ endowed the Church with infallible teaching authority it is no vicious circle, but a perfectly legitimate iogical procedure, to rely on the Church’s authority for proof of what writings are inspired.

2. Merely remarking for the present that the texts in which Christ promised infallible guidance especially to Peter and his successors in the primacy might be appealed to here as possessing an a fortiori value, it will suffice to consider the classical texts usually employed in the general proof of the Church’s infallibility; and of these the principal are:

Matthew 28:18-20; Matthew 16:18; John 14, 15, and 16; I Timothy 3:14-15; and Acts 15:28 sq.

Matthew 28:18-20. In Matthew 28:18-20, we have Christ’s solemn commission to the Apostles delivered shortly before His Ascension: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” In Mark 16:15-16, the same commission is given more briefly with the added promise of salvation to believers and the threat of damnation for unbelievers; “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned.”

Now it cannot be denied by anyone who admits that Christ established a visible Church at all, and endowed it with any kind of effective teaching authority, that this commission, with all it implies, was given not only to the Apostles personally for their own lifetime, but to their successors to the end of time, “even to the consummation of the world”. And assuming that it was the omniscient Son of God Who spoke these words, with a full and clear realization of the import which, in conjunction with His other promises, they were calculated to convey to the Apostles and to all simple and sincere believers to the end of time, the only reasonable interpretation to put upon them is that they contain the promise of infallible guidance in doctrinal teaching made to the Apostolic College in the first instance and then to the hierarchical college that was to succeed it.

In the first place it was not without reason that Christ prefaced His commission by appealing to the fullness of power He Himself had received: “All power is given to me”, etc. This is evidently intended to emphasize the extraordinary character and extent of the authority He is communicating to His Church — an authority, it is implied, which He could not personally communicate were not He Himself omnipotent. Hence the promise that follows cannot reasonably be understood of ordinary natural providential guidance, but must refer to a very special supernatural assistance.

In the next place there is question particularly in this passage of doctrinal authority — of authority to teach the Gospel to all men — if Christ’s promise to be with the Apostles and their successors to the end of time in carrying out this commission means that those whom they are to teach in His name and according to the plenitude of the power He has given them are bound to receive that teaching as if it were His own; in other words they are bound to accept it as infallible. Otherwise the perennial assistance promised would not really be efficacious for its purpose, and efficacious Divine assistance is what the expression used is clearly intended to signify. Supposing, as we do, that Christ actually delivered a definite body of revealed truth, to be taught to all men in all ages, and to be guarded from change or corruption by the living voice of His visible Church, it is idle to contend that this result could be accomplished effectively — in other words that His promise could be effectively fulfilled unless that living voice can speak infallibly to every generation on any question that may arise affecting the substance of Christ’s teaching.

Without infallibility there could be no finality regarding any one of the great truths which have been identified historically with the very essence of Christianity; and it is only with those who believe in historical Christianity that the question need be discussed. Take, for instance, the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation. If the early Church was not infallible in her definitions regarding these truths, what compelling reason can be alleged today against the right to revive the Sabellian, or the Arian, or the Macedonian, or the Apollinarian, or the Nestorian, or the Eutychian controversies, and to defend some interpretation of these mysteries which the Church has condemned as heretical?

One may not appeal to the inspired authority of the Scriptures, since for the fact of their inspiration the authority of the Church must be invoked, and unless she be infallible in deciding this one would be free to question the inspiration of any of the New Testament writings. Nor, abstracting from the question of inspiration, can it be fairly maintained, in face of the facts of history, that the work of interpreting scriptural teaching regarding these mysteries and several other points of doctrine that have been identified with the substance of historical Christianity is so easy as to do away with the need of a living voice to which, as to the voice of Christ Himself, all are bound to submit.

Unity of Faith was intended by Christ to be one of the distinctive notes of His Church, and the doctrinal authority He set up was intended by His Divine guidance and assistance to be really effective in maintaining this unity; but the history of the early heresies and of the Protestant sects proves clearly, what might indeed have been anticipated a priori, that nothing less than an infallible public authority capable of acting decisively whenever the need should rise and pronouncing an absolutely final and irreformable judgment, is really efficient for this purpose. Practically speaking the only alternative to infallibility is private judgment, and this after some centuries of trial has been found to lead inevitably to utter rationalism. If the early definitions of the Church were fallible, and therefore reformable, perhaps those are right who say today that they ought to be discarded as being actually erroneous or even pernicious, or at least that they ought to be re-interpreted in a way that substantially changes their original meaning; perhaps, indeed, there is no such thing as absolute truth in matters religious! How, for example, is a Modernist who takes up this position to be met except by insisting that definitive teaching is irreversible and unchangeable; that it remains true in its original sense for all time; in other words that it is infallible? For no one can reasonably hold that fallible doctrinal teaching is irreformable or deny the right of later generations to question the correctness of earlier fallible definitions and call for their revision or correction, or even for their total abandonment.

From these considerations we are justified in concluding that if Christ really intended His promise to be with His Church to be taken seriously, and if He was truly the Son of God, omniscient and omnipotent, knowing history in advance and able to control its course, then the Church is entitled to claim infallible doctrinal authority. This conclusion is confirmed by considering the awful sanction by which the Church’s authority is supported: all who refuse to assent to her teaching are threatened with eternal damnation. This proves the value Christ Himself set upon His own teaching and upon the teaching of the Church commissioned to teach in His name; religious indifferentism is here reprobated in unmistakable terms.

Nor does such a sanction lose its significance in this connection because the same penalty is threatened for disobedience to fallible disciplinary laws, or even in some cases for refusing to assent to doctrinal teaching that is admittedly fallible. Indeed, every mortal sin, according to Christ’s teaching, is punishable with eternal damnation. But if one believes in the objectivity of eternal and immutable truth, he will find it difficult to reconcile with a worthy conception of the Divine attributes a command under penalty of damnation to give unqualified and irrevocable internal assent to a large body of professedly Divine doctrine the whole of which is possibly false. Nor is this difficulty satisfactorily met, as some have attempted to meet it, by calling attention to the fact that in the Catholic system internal assent is sometimes demanded, under pain of grievous sin, to doctrinal decisions that do not profess to be infallible. For, in the first place, the assent to be given in such cases is recognized as being not irrevocable and irreversible, like the assent required in the case of definitive and infallible teaching, but merely provisional; and in the next place, internal assent is obligatory only on those who can give it consistently with the claims of objective truth on their conscience — this conscience, it is assumed, being directed by a spirit of generous loyalty to genuine Catholic principles.

To take a particular example, if Galileo who happened to be right while the ecclesiastical tribunal which condemned him was wrong, had really possessed convincing scientific evidence in favour of the heliocentric theory, he would have been justified in refusing his internal assent to the opposite theory, provided that in doing so he observed with thorough loyalty all the conditions involved in the duty of external obedience. Finally it should be observed that fallible provisional teaching, as such, derives its binding force principally from the fact that it emanates from an authority which is competent, if need be, to convert it into infallible definitive teaching. Without infallibility in the background it would be difficult to establish theoretically the obligation of yielding internal assent to the Church’s provisional decisions.

Matthew 16:18. In Matthew 16:18, we have the promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against the Church that is to be built on the rock; and this also, we maintain, implies the assurance of the Church’s infallibility in the exercise of her teaching office. Such a promise, of course, must be understood with limitations according to the nature of the matter to which it is applied. As applied to sanctity, for example, which is essentially a personal and individual affair, it does not mean that every member of the Church or of her hierarchy is necessarily a saint, but merely that the Church, as whole, will be conspicuous among other things for the holiness of life of her members. As applied to doctrine, however — always assuming, as we do, that Christ delivered a body of doctrine the preservation of which in its literal truth was to be one of the chief duties of the Church — it would be a mockery to contend that such a promise is compatible with the supposition that the Church has possibly erred in perhaps the bulk of her dogmatic definitions, and that throughout the whole of her history she has been threatening men with eternal damnation in Christ’s name for refusing to believe doctrines that are probably false and were never taught by Christ Himself. Could this be the case, would it not be clear that the gates of hell can prevail and probably have prevailed most signally against the Church?

John 14-16. In Christ’s discourse to the Apostles at the Last Supper several passages occur which clearly imply the promise of infallibility: “I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever. The spirit of truth . . . he shall abide with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:16, 17). “But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you” (ibid. 26). “But when he, the spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth (John 16:13). And the same promise is renewed immediately before the Ascension (Acts 1:8). Now what does the promise of this perennial and efficacious presence and assistance of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, mean in connection with doctrinal authority, except that the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is made responsible for what the Apostles and their successors may define to be part of Christ’s teaching? But insofar as the Holy Ghost is responsible for Church teaching, that teaching is necessarily infallible: what the Spirit of truth guarantees cannot be false.

I Timothy 3:15. In I Timothy 3:15, St. Paul speaks of “the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth”; and this description would be something worse than mere exaggeration if it had been intended to apply to a fallible Church; it would be a false and misleading description. That St. Paul, however, meant it to be taken for sober and literal truth is abundantly proved by what he insists upon so strongly elsewhere, namely, the strictly Divine authority of the Gospel which he and the other Apostles preached, and which it was the mission of their successors to go on preaching without change or corruption to the end of time. “When you had received of us”, he writes to the Thessalonians, “the word of the hearing of God, you received it not as the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the word of God, who worketh in you that have believed” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). The Gospel, he tells the Corinthians, is intended to bring “into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Indeed, so fixed and irreformable is the doctrine that has been taught that the Galatians (1:8) are warned to anathematize any one, even an angel from heaven, who should preach to them a Gospel other than that which St. Paul had preached. Nor was this attitude — which is intelligible only on the supposition that the Apostolic College was infallible — peculiar to St. Paul. The other Apostles and apostolic writers were equally strong in anathematizing those who preached another Christianity than that which the Apostles had preached (cf. 2 Peter 2:1 sqq.; 1 John 4:1 sqq.; 2 John 7 sqq.; Jude 4); and St. Paul makes it clear that it was not to any personal or private views of his own that he claimed to make every understanding captive, but to the Gospel which Christ had delivered to the Apostolic body. When his own authority as an Apostle was challenged, his defense was that he had seen the risen Saviour and received his mission directly from Him, and that his Gospel was in complete agreement with that of the other Apostles (see, v.g., Galatians 2:2-9).

Acts 15:28. Finally, the consciousness of corporate infallibility is clearly signified in the expression used by the assembled Apostles in the decree of the Council of Jerusalem: “It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay no further burden upon you”, etc. (Acts 15:28). It is true that the specific points here dealt with are chiefly disciplinary rather than dogmatic, and that no claim to infallibility is made in regard to purely disciplinary questions as such; but behind, and independent of, disciplinary details there was the broad and most important dogmatic question to be decided, whether Christians, according to Christ’s teaching, were bound to observe the Old Law in its integrity, as orthodox Jews of the time observed it. This was the main issue at stake, and in deciding it the Apostles claimed to speak in the name and with the authority of the Holy Ghost. Would men who did not believe that Christ’s promises assured them of an infallible Divine guidance have presumed to speak in this way? And could they, in so believing, have misunderstood the Master’s meaning?

PROOF FROM TRADITION

If, during the early centuries, there was no explicit and formal discussion regarding ecclesiastical infallibility as such, yet the Church, in her corporate capacity, after the example of the Apostles at Jerusalem, always acted on the assumption that she was infallible in doctrinal matters and all the great orthodox teachers believed that she was so. Those who presumed, on whatever grounds, to contradict the Church’s teaching were treated as representatives of Antichrist (cf. 1 John 2:18 sq.), and were excommunicated and anathematized.

It is clear from the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch how intolerant he was of error, and how firmly convinced that the episcopal body was the Divinely ordained and Divinely guided organ of truth; nor can any student of early Christian literature deny that, where Divine guidance is claimed in doctrinal matters, infallibility is implied. So intolerant of error was St. Polycarp that, as the story goes, when he met Marcion on the street in Rome, he did not hesitate to denounce the heretic to his face as “the firstborn of Satan”. This incident, whether it be true or not, is at any rate thoroughly in keeping with the spirit of the age and such a spirit is incompatible with belief in a fallible Church. St. Irenaeus, who in the disciplinary Paschal question favoured compromise for the sake of peace, took an altogether different attitude in the doctrinal controversy with the Gnostics; and the great principle on which he mainly relies in refuting the heretics is the principle of a living ecclesiastical authority for which he virtually claims infallibility. For example he says: “Where the Church is, there also is the Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of God is there is the Church, and every grace: for the Spirit is truth” (Adv. Haer. III, xxiv, 1); and again, Where the charismata of the Lord are given, there must we seek the truth, i.e. with those to whom belongs the ecclesiastical succession from the Apostles, and the unadulterated and incorruptible word. It is they who . . . are the guardians of our faith . . . and securely [sine periculo] expound the Scriptures to us” (op. cit., IV xxvi, 5). Tertullian, writing from the Catholic standpoint, ridicules the suggestion that the universal teaching of the Church can be wrong: “Suppose now that all [the Churches] have erred . . . [This would mean that] the Holy Spirit has not watched over any of them so as to guide it into the truth, although He was sent by Christ, and asked from the Father for this very purpose — that He might be the teacher of truth” (doctor veritatis — “De Praescript”, xxxvi, in P.L., II, 49). St. Cyprian compares the Church to an incorruptible virgin: Adulterari non potest sponsa Christi, incorrupta est et pudica (De unitate eccl.).

It is needless to go on multiplying citations, since the broad fact is indisputable that in the ante-Nicene, no less than in the post-Nicene, period all orthodox Christians attributed to the corporate voice of the Church, speaking through the body of bishops in union with their head and centre, all the fullness of doctrinal authority which the Apostles themselves had possessed; and to question the infallibility of that authority would have been considered equivalent to questioning God’s veracity and fidelity. It was for this reason that during the first three centuries the concurrent action of the bishops dispersed throughout the world proved to be effective in securing the condemnation and exclusion of certain heresies and maintaining Gospel truth in its purity; and when from the fourth century onwards it was found expedient to assemble ecumenical councils, after the example of the Apostles at Jerusalem, it was for the same reason that the doctrinal decision of these councils were held to be absolutely final and irreformable. Even the heretics, for the most part recognized this principle in theory; and if in fact they often refused to submit, they did so as a rule on the ground that this or that council was not really ecumenical, that it did not truly express the corporate voice of the Church, and was not, therefore, infallible. This will not be denied by anyone who is familiar with the history of the doctrinal controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, and within the limits of this article we cannot do more than call attention to the broad conclusion in proof of which it would be easy to cite a great number of particular facts and testimonies.

OBJECTIONS ALLEGED

Several of the objections usually urged against ecclesiastical infallibility have been anticipated in the preceding sections; but some others deserve a passing notice here.

1. It has been urged that neither a fallible individual nor a collection of fallible individuals can constitute an infallible organ. This is quite true in reference to natural knowledge and would be also true as applied to Church authority if Christianity were assumed to be a mere product of natural reason. But we set out from an entirely different standpoint. We assume as antecedently and independently established that God can supernaturally guide and enlighten men, individually or collectively, in such a way that, notwithstanding the natural fallibility of human intelligence, they may speak and may be known with certainty to speak in His name and with His authority, so that their utterance may be not merely infallible but inspired. And it is only with those who accept this standpoint that the question of the Church’s infallibility can be profitably discussed.

2. Again, it is said that even those who accept the supernatural viewpoint must ultimately fall back on fallible human reasoning in attempting to prove infallibility; that behind any conclusion that is proposed on so-called infallible authority there always lurks a premise which cannot claim for itself more than a merely human and fallible certainty; and that, since the strength of a conclusion is no greater than that of its weaker premise, the principle of infallibility is a useless as well as an illogical importation into Christian theology. In reply it is to be observed that this argument, if valid, would prove very much more than it is here introduced to prove; that it would indeed undermine the very foundations of Christian faith. For example, on purely rational grounds I have only moral certainty that God Himself is infallible or that Christ was the infallible mediator of a Divine Revelation; yet if I am to give a rational defense of my faith, even in mysteries which I do not comprehend, I must do so by appealing to the infallibility of God and of Christ. But according to the logic of the objection this appeal would be futile and the assent of faith considered as a rational act would be no firmer or more secure than natural human knowledge. The truth is that the inferential process here and in the case of ecclesiastical infallibility transcends the rule of formal logic that is alleged. Assent is given not to the logical force of the syllogism, but directly to the authority which the inference serves to introduce; and this holds good in a measure even when there is question of mere fallible authority. Once we come to believe in and rely upon authority we can afford to overlook the means by which we were brought to accept it, just as a man who has reached a solid standing place where he wishes to remain no longer relies on the frail ladder by which he mounted. It cannot be said that there is any essential difference in this respect between Divine and ecclesiastical infallibility. The latter of course is only a means by which we are put under subjection to the former in regard to a body of truth once revealed and to be believed by all men to the end of time, and no one can fairly deny that it is useful, not to say necessary, for that purpose. Its alternative is private judgment, and history has shown to what results this alternative inevitably leads.

3. Again, it is urged that the kind of submission demanded by infallible authority is incompatible with the rights of reason and of legitimate inquiry and speculation, and tends to give to one’s faith in his Creed a dry, formal, proud, and intolerant character which contrasts unfavourably with the warmhearted, humble, and tolerant faith of the man who believes on conviction after free personal inquiry. In reply it is sufficient to say that submission to infallible authority implies no abdication of reason, nor does it impose any undue check on the believer’s freedom to pursue inquiry and speculation. Were it so, how could one believe in revealed doctrine at all without being accused, as unbelievers do accuse Christians, of committing intellectual suicide? If one believes in revelation at all one does so in deference to God’s authority an authority that is surely infallible; and so far as the principle of the objection is concerned there is no difference between ecclesiastical and Divine infallibility. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that professing Christians should recur to such an argument, which, if consistently urged, would be fatal to their own position. And as regards freedom of inquiry and speculation in reference to revealed doctrines themselves, it should be observed that true freedom in this as in other matters does not mean unbridled licence. Really effective authoritative control is always necessary to prevent liberty from degenerating into anarchy, and in the sphere of Christian doctrine — we are arguing only with those who admit that Christ delivered a body of doctrine that was to be held as eternally true — from the very nature of the case, the only effective barrier against Rationalism — the equivalent of political anarchy — is an infallible ecclesiastical authority. This authority therefore, by its decisions merely curtails personal freedom of inquiry in religious matters in the same way, and by an equally valid title, as the supreme authority in the State, restricts the liberty of private citizens.

Moreover, as in a well ordered state there remains within the law a large margin for the exercise of personal freedom, so in the Church there is a very extensive domain which is given over to theological speculation; and even in regard to doctrines that have been infallibly defined there is always room for further inquiry so as the better to understand, explain, defend, and expand them. The only thing one may not do is to deny or change them. Then, in reply to the charge of intolerance, it may be said that if this be taken to mean an honest and sincere repudiation of Liberalism and Rationalism, infallibilists must plead guilty to the charge; but in doing so they are in good company. Christ Himself was intolerant in this sense; so were His Apostles; and so were all the great champions of historical Christianity in every age. Finally it is altogether untrue, as every Catholic knows and feels, that faith which allows itself to be guided by infallible ecclesiastical authority is less intimately personal or less genuine in any way than faith based on private judgment. If this docile loyalty to Divine authority which true faith implies means anything, it means that one must listen to the voice of those whom God has expressly appointed to teach in His name, rather than to one’s own private judgment deciding what God’s teaching ought to be. For to this, in final analysis, the issue is reduced; and he who chooses to make himself, instead of the authority which God has instituted, the final arbiter in matters of faith is far from possessing the true spirit of faith, which is the foundation of charity and of the whole supernatural life.

4. Again it is urged by our opponents that infallibility as exercised by the Catholic Church has shown itself to be a failure, since, in the first place, it has not prevented schisms and heresies in the Christian body, and, in the second place, has not attempted to settle for Catholics themselves many important questions, the final settlement of which would be a great relief to believers by freeing them from anxious and distressing doubts. In reply to the first point it is enough to say that the purpose for which Christ endowed the Church with infallibility was not to prevent the occurrence of schisms and heresies, which He foresaw and foretold, but to take away all justification for their occurrence; men were left free to disrupt the unity of Faith inculcated by Christ in the same way as they were left free to disobey any other commandment, but heresy was intended to be no more justifiable objectively than homicide or adultery. To reply to the second point we would observe that it seems highly inconsistent for the same objector to blame Catholics in one breath for having too much defined doctrine in their Creed and, in the next breath, to find fault with them for having too little. Either part of the accusation, in so far as it is founded, is a sufficient answer to the other. Catholics as a matter of fact do not feel in any way distressed either by the restrictions, on the one hand, which infallible definitions impose or, on the other hand, by the liberty as to non-defined matters which they enjoy, and they can afford to decline the services of an opponent who is determined at all costs to invent a grievance for them. The objection is based on a mechanical conception of the function of infallible authority, as if this were fairly comparable, for example, to a clock which is supposed to tell us unerringly not only the large divisions of time such as the hours, but also, if it is to be useful as a timekeeper, the minutes and even the seconds. Even if we admit the propriety of the illustration, it is obvious that a clock which records the hours correctly, without indicating the smaller fractions of time, is a very useful instrument, and that it would be foolish to refuse to follow it because it is not provided with a minute or a second hand on the dial. But it is perhaps best to avoid such mechanical illustrations altogether. The Catholic believer who has real faith in the efficiency of Christ’s promises will not doubt but that the Holy Ghost Who abides in the Church, and Whose assistance guarantees the infallibility of her definitions, will also provide that any definition that may be necessary or expedient for the safeguarding of Christ’s teaching will be given at the opportune moment, and that such definable questions as are left undefined may, for the time being at least, be allowed to remain so without detriment to the faith or morals of the faithful.

5. Finally, it is objected that the acceptance of ecclesiastical infallibility is incompatible with the theory of doctrinal development which Catholics commonly admit. But so far is this from being true that it is impossible to frame any theory of development, consistent with Catholic principles, in which authority is not recognized as a guiding and controlling factor. For development in the Catholic sense does not mean that the Church ever changes her definitive teaching, but merely that as time goes on and human science advances, her teaching is more deeply analyzed, more fully comprehended, and more perfectly coordinated and explained in itself and in its bearings on other departments of knowledge. It is only on the false supposition that development means change in definitive teaching that the objection has any real force. We have confined our attention to what we may describe as the rational objections against the Catholic doctrine of infallibility, omitting all mention of the interminable exegetical difficulties which Protestant theologians have raised against the Catholic interpretation of Christ’s promises to His Church. The necessity for noticing these latter has been done away with by the growth of Rationalism, the logical successor of old-time Protestantism. If the infallible Divine authority of Christ, and the historicity of His promises to which we have appealed be admitted, there is no reasonable escape from the conclusion which the Catholic Church has drawn from those promises.

III. ORGANS OF INFALLIBILITY

Having established the general doctrine of the Church’s infallibility, we naturally proceed to ask what are the organs through which the voice of infallible authority makes itself heard. We have already seen that it is only in the episcopal body which has succeeded to the college of Apostles that infallible authority resides, and that it is possible for the authority to be effectively exercised by this body, dispersed throughout the world, but united in bonds of communion with Peter’s successor, who is its visible head and centre. During the interval from the council of the Apostles at Jerusalem to that of their successors at Nicaea this ordinary everyday exercise of episcopal authority was found to be sufficiently effective for the needs of the time, but when a crisis like the Arian heresy arose, its effectiveness was discovered to be inadequate, as was indeed inevitable by reason of the practical difficulty of verifying that fact of moral unanimity, once any considerable volume of dissent had to be faced. And while for subsequent ages down to our own day it continues to be theoretically true that the Church may, by the exercise of this ordinary teaching authority arrive at a final and infallible decision regarding doctrinal questions, it is true at the same time that in practice it may be impossible to prove conclusively that such unanimity as may exist has a strictly definitive value in any particular case, unless it has been embodied in a decree of an ecumenical council, or in the ex cathedra teaching of the pope, or, at least, in some definite formula such as the Athanasian Creed. Hence, for practical purposes and in so far as the special question of infallibility is concerned, we may neglect the so called magisterium ordinarium (“ordinary magisterium”) and confine our attention to ecumenical councils and the pope.

A. Ecumenical Councils

1. An ecumenical or general, as distinguished from a particular or provincial council, is an assembly of bishops which juridically represents the universal Church as hierarchically constituted by Christ; and, since the primacy of Peter and of his successor, the pope, is an essential feature in the hierarchical constitution of the Church, it follows that there can be no such thing as an ecumenical council independent of, or in opposition to, the pope. No body can perform a strictly corporate function validly without the consent and co-operation of its head. Hence:

the right to summon an ecumenical council belongs properly to the pope alone, though by his express or presumed consent given ante or post factum, the summons may be issued, as in the case of most of the early councils, in the name of the civil authority. For ecumenicity in the adequate sense all the bishops of the world in communion with the Holy See should be summoned, but it is not required that all or even a majority should be present. As regards the conduct of the deliberations, the right of presidency, of course, belongs to the pope or his representative; while as regards the decisions arrived at unanimity is not required. Finally, papal approbation is required to give ecumenical value and authority to conciliar decrees, and this must be subsequent to conciliar action, unless the pope, by his personal presence and conscience, has already given his official ratification (for details see GENERAL COUNCILS).

2. That an ecumenical council which satisfies the conditions above stated is an organ of infallibility will not be denied by anyone who admits that the Church is endowed with infallible doctrinal authority. How, if not through such an organ, could infallible authority effectively express itself, unless indeed through the pope? If Christ promised to be present with even two or three of His disciples gathered together in His name (Matthew 18:20), a fortiori He will be present efficaciously in a representative assembly of His authorized teachers; and the Paraclete whom He promised will be present, so that whatever the council defines may be prefaced with the Apostolic formula, “it has seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.” And this is the view which the councils held regarding their own authority and upon which the defender of orthodoxy insisted. The councils insisted on their definitions being accepted under pain of anathema, while St. Athanasius, for example, says that “the word of the Lord pronounced by the ecumenical synod of Nicaea stands for ever” (Ep. ad Afros, n. 2) and St. Leo the Great proves the unchangeable character of definitive conciliar teaching on the ground that God has irrevocably confirmed its truth “universae fraternitatis irretractabili firmavit assensu” (Ep. 120, 1).

3. It remains to be observed, in opposition to the theory of conciliar infallibility usually defended by High Church Anglicans that once the requisite papal confirmation has been given the doctrinal decisions of an ecumenical council become infallible and irreformable; there is no need to wait perhaps hundreds of years for the unanimous acceptance and approbation of the whole Christian world. Such a theory really amounts to a denial of conciliar infallibility, and sets up in the final court of appeal an altogether vague and ineffective tribunal. If the theory be true, were not the Arians perfectly justified in their prolonged struggle to reverse Nicaea, and has not the persistent refusal of the Nestorians down to our own day to accept Ephesus and of the Monophysites to accept Chalcedon been sufficient to defeat the ratification of those councils? No workable rule can be given for deciding when such subsequent ratification as this theory requires becomes effective and even if this could be done in the case of some of the earlier councils whose definitions are received by the Anglicans, it would still be true that since the Photian schism it has been practically impossible to secure any such consensus as is required — in other words that the working of infallible authority, the purpose of which is to teach every generation, has been suspended since the ninth century, and that Christ’s promises to His Church have been falsified. It is consoling, no doubt, to cling to the abstract doctrine of an infallible authority but if one adopts a theory which represents that authority as unable to fulfil its appointed task during the greater part of the Church’s life, it is not easy to see how this consolatory belief is anything more than a delusion.

B. The Pope

EXPLANATION OF PAPAL INFALLIBILITY

The Vatican Council has defined as “a divinely revealed dogma” that “the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra — that is, when in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians he defines, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole Church — is, by reason of the Divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished His Church to be endowed in defining doctrines of faith and morals; and consequently that such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of their own nature (ex sese) and not by reason of the Church’s consent” (Densinger no. 1839 — old no. 1680). For the correct understanding of this definition it is to be noted that:

what is claimed for the pope is infallibility merely, not impeccability or inspiration (see above under I). the infallibility claimed for the pope is the same in its nature, scope, and extent as that which the Church as a whole possesses; his ex cathedra teaching does not have to be ratified by the Church’s in order to be infallible. infallibility is not attributed to every doctrinal act of the pope, but only to his ex cathedra teaching; and the conditions required for ex cathedra teaching are mentioned in the Vatican decree:

The pontiff must teach in his public and official capacity as pastor and doctor of all Christians, not merely in his private capacity as a theologian, preacher or allocutionist, nor in his capacity as a temporal prince or as a mere ordinary of the Diocese of Rome. It must be clear that he speaks as spiritual head of the Church universal. Then it is only when, in this capacity, he teaches some doctrine of faith or morals that he is infallible (see below, IV). Further it must be sufficiently evident that he intends to teach with all the fullness and finality of his supreme Apostolic authority, in other words that he wishes to determine some point of doctrine in an absolutely final and irrevocable way, or to define it in the technical sense (see DEFINITION). These are well-recognized formulas by means of which the defining intention may be manifested. Finally for an ex cathedra decision it must be clear that the pope intends to bind the whole Church. To demand internal assent from all the faithful to his teaching under pain of incurring spiritual shipwreck (naufragium fidei) according to the expression used by Pius IX in defining the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. Theoretically, this intention might be made sufficiently clear in a papal decision which is addressed only to a particular Church; but in present day conditions, when it is so easy to communicate with the most distant parts of the earth and to secure a literally universal promulgation of papal acts, the presumption is that unless the pope formally addresses the whole Church in the recognized official way, he does not intend his doctrinal teaching to be held by all the faithful as ex cathedra and infallible.

It should be observed in conclusion that papal infallibility is a personal and incommunicable charisma, which is not shared by any pontifical tribunal. It was promised directly to Peter, and to each of Peter’s successors in the primacy, but not as a prerogative the exercise of which could be delegated to others. Hence doctrinal decisions or instructions issued by the Roman congregations, even when approved by the pope in the ordinary way, have no claim to be considered infallible. To be infallible they must be issued by the pope himself in his own name according to the conditions already mentioned as requisite for ex cathedra teaching.

PROOF OF PAPAL INFALLIBILITY FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE

From Holy Scripture, as already stated, the special proof of the pope’s infallibility is, if anything, stronger and clearer than the general proof of the infallibility of the Church as a whole, just as the proof of his primacy is stronger and clearer than any proof that can be advanced independently for the Apostolic authority of the episcopate.

Matthew 16:18. “Thou art Peter (Kepha)”, said Christ, “and upon this rock (kepha) I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Various attempts have been made by opponents of the papal claims to get rid of the only obvious and natural meaning of these words, according to which Peter is to be the rock-foundation of the Church, and the source of its indefectibility against the gates of hell. It has been suggested, for example, that “this rock” is Christ Himself or that it is Peter’s faith (typifying the faith of future believers), not his person and office, on which the Church is to be built. But these and similar interpretations simply destroy the logical coherency of Christ’s statement and are excluded by the Greek and Latin texts, in which a kind of play upon the words Petros (Petrus) and petra is clearly intended, and still more forcibly by the original Aramaic which Christ spoke, and in which the same word Kêpha must have been used in both clauses. And granting, as the best modern non-Catholic commentators grant, that this text of St. Matthew contains the promise that St. Peter was to be the rock-foundation of the Church, it is impossible to deny that Peter’s successors in the primacy are heirs to this promise — unless, indeed, one is willing to admit the principle, which would be altogether subversive of the hierarchial system, that the authority bestowed by Christ on the Apostles was not intended to be transmitted to their successors, and to abide in the Church permanently. Peter’s headship was as much emphasized by Christ Himself, and was as clearly recognized in the infant Church, as was the enduring authority of the episcopal body; and it is a puzzle which the Catholic finds it hard to solve, how those who deny that the supreme authority of Peter’s successor is an essential factor in the constitution of the Church can consistently maintain the Divine authority of the episcopate. Now, as we have already seen, doctrinal indefectibility is certainly implied in Christ’s promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church, and cannot be effectively secured without doctrinal infallibility; so that if Christ’s promise means anything — if Peter’s successor is in any true sense the foundation and source of the Church’s indefectibility — he must by virtue of this office be also an organ of ecclesiastical infallibility. The metaphor used clearly implies that it was the rock-foundation which was to give stability to the superstructure, not the superstructure to the rock.

Nor can it be said that this argument fails by proving too much — by proving, that is, that the pope should be impeccable, or at least that he should be a saint, since, if the Church must be holy in order to overcome the gates of hell, the example and inspiration of holiness ought to be given by him who is the visible foundation of the Church’s indefectibility. From the very nature of the case a distinction must be made between sanctity or impeccability, and infallible doctrinal authority. Personal sanctity is essentially incommunicable as between men, and cannot affect others except in fallible and indirect ways, as by prayer or example; but doctrinal teaching which is accepted as infallible is capable of securing that certainty and consequent unity of Faith by which, as well as by other bonds, the members of Christ’s visible Church were to be “compacted and fitly joined together” (Ephesians 4:16). It is true, of course, that infallible teaching, especially on moral questions, helps to promote sanctity among those who accept, but no one will seriously suggest that, if Christ had made the pope impeccable as well as infallible, He would thereby have provided for the personal sanctity of individual believers any more efficiently than, on Catholic principles, He has actually done.

Luke 22:31-32. Here Christ says to St. Peter and to his successors in the primacy: “Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.” This special prayer of Christ was for Peter alone in his capacity as head of the Church, as is clear from the text and context; and since we cannot doubt the efficacy of Christ’s prayer, it followed that to St. Peter and his successors the office was personally committed of authoritatively confirming the brethren — other bishops, and believers generally — in the faith; and this implies infallibility.

John 21:15-17. Here we have the record of Christ’s thrice-repeated demand for a confession of Peter’s love and the thrice-repeated commission to feed the lambs and the sheep:

When therefore they had dined, Jesus said to Simon Peter: Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him: Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him: Feed my lambs. He said to him again: Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him: Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him: Feed my lambs. He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved, because he had said to him the third time: Do you love me? And he said to him: Lord, you know all things: you know that I love you. He said to him: Feed my sheep.

Here the complete and supreme pastoral charge of the whole of Christ’s flock — sheep as well as lambs — is given to St. Peter and his successors, and in this is undoubtedly comprised supreme doctrinal authority. But, as we have already seen, doctrinal authority in tbe Church cannot be really effective in securing the unity of faith intended by Christ, unless in the last resort it is infallible. It is futile to contend, as non Catholics have often done, that this passage is merely a record of Peter’s restoration to his personal share in the collective Apostolic authority, which he had forfeited by his triple denial. It is quite probable that the reason why Christ demanded the triple confession of love was as a set-off to the triple denial; but if Christ’s words in this and in the other passages quoted mean anything, and if they are to be understood in the same obvious and natural way in which defenders of the Divine authority of the episcopate understand the words elsewhere addressed to the Apostles collectively, there is no denying that the Petrine and papal claims are more clearly supported by the Gospels than are those of a monarchical episcopate. It is equally futile to contend that these promises were made, and this power given, to Peter merely as the representative of the Apostolic college: in the texts of the Gospel, Peter is individually singled out and addressed with particular emphasis, so that, unless by denying with the rationalist the genuineness of Christ’s words, there is no logical escape from the Catholic position. Furthermore, it is clear from such evidence as the Acts of the Apostles supply, that Peter’s supremacy was recognized in the infant Church (see PRIMACY) and if this supremacy was intended to be efficacious for the purpose for which it was instituted, it must have included the prerogative of doctrinal infallibility.

PROOF OF PAPAL INFALLIBILITY FROM TRADITION

One need not expect to find in the early centuries a formal and explicit recognition throughout the Church either of the primacy or of the infallibility of the pope in the terms in which these doctrines are defined by the Vatican Council. But the fact cannot be denied that from the beginning there was a widespread acknowledgment by other churches of some kind of supreme authority in the Roman pontiff in regard not only to disciplinary but also to doctrinal affairs. This is clear for example, from:

Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians at the end of the first century, the way in which, shortly afterwards, Ignatius of Antioch addresses the Roman Church; the conduct of Pope Victor in the latter half of the second century, in connection with the paschal controversy; the teaching of St. Irenaeus, who lays it down as a practical rule that conformity with Rome is a sufficient proof of Apostolicity of doctrine against the heretics (Adv. Haer., III, iii); the correspondence between Pope Dionysius and his namesake at Alexandria in the second half of the third century; and from many other facts that might be mentioned (see PRIMACY).

Even heretics recognized something special in the doctrinal authority of the pope, and some of them, like Marcion in the second century and Pelagius and Caelestius in the first quarter of the fifth, appealed to Rome in the hope of obtaining a reversal of their condemnation by provincial bishops or synods. And in the age of the councils, from Nicaea onwards, there is a sufficiently explicit and formal acknowledgment of the doctrinal supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.

St. Augustine, for example, voices the prevailing Catholic sentiment when in reference to the Pelagian affair he declares, in a sermon delivered at Carthage after the receipt of Pope Innocent’s letter, confirming the decrees of the Council of Carthage: “Rome’s reply has come: the case is closed” (Inde etiam rescripta venerunt: causa finita est. Serm. 131, c.x); and again when in reference to the same subject he insists that “all doubt bas been removed by the letter of Pope Innocent of blessed memory” (C. Duas Epp. Pelag., II, iii, 5).

And what is still more important, is the explicit recognition in formal terms, by councils which are admitted to be ecumenical, of the finality, and by implication the infallibility of papal teaching.

Thus the Fathers of Ephesus (431) declare that they “are compelled” to condemn the heresy of Nestorius “by the sacred canons and by the letter of our holy father and co-minister, Celestine the Bishop of Rome.” Twenty years later (451) the Fathers of Chalcedon, after hearing Leo’s letter read, make themselves responsible for the statement: “so do we all believe . . . Peter has spoken through Leo.” More than two centuries later, at the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681), the same formula is repeated: “Peter has spoken through Agatho.” After the lapse of still two other centuries, and shortly before the Photian schism, the profession of faith drawn up by Pope Hormisdas was accepted by the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869-870), and in this profession, it is stated that, by virtue of Christ’s promise: “Thou art Peter, etc.”; “the Catholic religion is preserved inviolable in the Apostolic See.” Finally the reunion Council of Florence (1438-1445), repeating what had been substantially contained in the profession of faith of Michael Palaeologus approved by the Second Council of Lyons (1274), defined “that the holy Apostolic see and the Roman pontiff holds the primacy over the whole world; and that the Roman pontiff himself is the successor of the blessed Peter Prince of the Apostles and the true Vicar of Christ, and the head of the whole Church, and the father and teacher of all Christians, and that to him in blessed Peter the full power of feeding, ruling and governing the universal Church was given by our Lord Jesus Christ, and this is also recognized in the acts of the ecumenical council and in the sacred canons (quemadmodum etiam . . . continetur.

Thus it is clear that the Vatican Council introduced no new doctrine when it defined the infallibility of the pope, but merely re-asserted what had been implicitly admitted and acted upon from the beginning and had even been explicitly proclaimed and in equivalent terms by more than one of the early ecumenical councils. Until the Photian Schism in the East and the Gallican movement in the West there was no formal denial of papal supremacy, or of papal infallibility as an adjunct of supreme doctrinal authority, while the instances of their formal acknowledgment that have been referred to in the early centuries are but a few out of the multitude that might be quoted.

OBJECTIONS ALLEGED

The only noteworthy objections against papal infallibility, as distinct from the infallibility of the Church at large, are based on certain historical instances in which it is alleged that certain popes in the ex cathedra exercise of their office have actually taught heresy and condemned as heretical what has afterwards turned out to be true. The chief instances usually appealed to are those of Popes Liberius, Honorius, and Vigilius in the early centuries, and the Galileo affair at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Pope Liberius. Liberius, it is alleged, subscribed an Arian or Semi-Arian creed drawn up by the Council of Sirmium and anathematized St. Athanasius, the great champion of Nicaea, as a heretic. But even if this were an accurate statement of historical fact, it is a very inadequate statement. The all-important circumstance should be added that the pope so acted under pressure of a very cruel coercion, which at once deprives his action of any claim to be considered ex cathedra, and that he himself, as soon as he had recovered his liberty, made amends for the moral weakness he had been guilty of. This is a quite satisfactory answer to the objection, but it ought to be added that there is no evidence whatever that Liberius ever anathematized St. Athanasius expressly as a heretic, and that it remains a moot point which of three or four Sirmian creeds he subscribed, two of which contained no positive assertion of heretical doctrine and were defective merely for the negative reason that they failed to insist on the full definition of Nicaea.

Pope Honorius. The charge against Pope Honorius is a double one: that, when appealed to in the Monothelite controversy, he actually taught the Monothelite heresy in his two letters to Sergius; and that he was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the decrees of which were approved by Leo II. But in the first place it is quite clear from the tone and terms of these letters that, so far from intending to give any final, or ex cathedra, decision on the doctrinal question at issue, Honorius merely tried to allay the rising bitterness of the controversy by securing silence. In the next place, taking the letters as they stand, the very most that can be clearly and incontrovertibly deduced from them is, that Honorius was not a profound or acute theologian, and that he allowed himself to be confused and misled by the wily Sergius as to what the issue really was and too readily accepted the latter’s misrepresentation of his opponents’ position, to the effect that the assertion of two wills in Christ meant two contrary or discordant wills. Finally, in reference to the condemnation of Honorius as a heretic, it is to be remembered that there is no ecumenical sentence affirming the fact either that Honorius’s letters to Sergius contain heresy, or that they were intended to define the question with which they deal. The sentence passed by the fathers of the council has ecumenical value only in so far as it was approved by Leo II; but, in approving the condemnation of Honorius, his successor adds the very important qualification that he is condemned, not for the doctrinal reason that he taught heresy, but on the moral ground that he was wanting in the vigilance expected from him in his Apostolic office and thereby allowed a heresy to make headway which he should have crushed in its beginnings.

Pope Vigilius. There is still less reason for trying to found an objection to papal infallibility on the wavering conduct of Pope Vigilius in connection with the controversy of the Three Chapters; and it is all the more needless to delay upon this instance as most modern opponents of the papal claims no longer appeal to it.

Galileo. As to the Galileo affair, it is quite enough to point out the fact that the condemnation of the heliocentric theory was the work of a fallible tribunal. The pope cannot delegate the exercise of his infallible authority to the Roman Congregations, and whatever issues formally in the name of any of these, even when approved and confirmed in the ordinary official way by the pope, does not pretend to be ex cathedra and infallible. The pope, of course, can convert doctrinal decisions of the Holy Office, which are not in themselves infallible, into ex cathedra papal pronouncements, but in doing so he must comply with the conditions already explained — which neither Paul V nor Urban VIII did in the Galileo case.

Conclusion. The broad fact, therefore, remains certain that no ex cathedra definition of any pope has ever been shown to be erroneous.

Mutual Relations of the Organs of Infallibility

A few brief remarks under this head will serve to make the Catholic conception of ecclesiastical infallibility still clearer. Three organs have been mentioned:

the bishops dispersed throughout the world in union with the Holy See; ecumenical councils under the headship of the pope; and the pope himself separately. Through the first of these is exercised what theologians describe as the ordinarium magisterium, i. e. the common or everyday teaching authority of the Church; through the second and third the magisterium solemne, or undeniably definitive authority. Practically speaking, at the present day, and for many centuries in the past, only the decisions of ecumenical councils and the ex cathedra teaching of the pope have been treated as strictly definitive in the canonical sense, and the function of the magisterium ordinarium has been concerned with the effective promulgation and maintenance of what has been formally defined by the magisterium solemne or may be legitimately deduced from its definitions.

Even the ordinarium magisterium is not independent of the pope. In other words, it is only bishops who are in corporate union with the pope, the Divinely constituted head and centre of Christ’s mystical body, the one true Church, who have any claim to share in the charisma by which the infallibility of their morally unanimous teaching is divinely guaranteed according to the terms of Christ’s promises. And as the pope’s supremacy is also an essential factor in the constitution of an ecumenical council — and has in fact been the formal and determining factor in deciding the ecumenicity of those very councils whose authority is recognized by Eastern schismatics and Anglicans — it naturally occurs to enquire how conciliar infallibility is related to papal. Now this relation, in the Catholic view, may be explained briefly as follows:

Theories of conciliar and of papal infallibility do not logically stand or fall together, since in the Catholic view the co-operation and confirmation of the pope in his purely primatial capacity are necessary, according to the Divine constitution of the Church, for the ecumenicity and infallibility of a council. This has, de facto, been the formal test of ecumenicity; and it would be necessary even in the hypothesis that the pope himself were fallible. An infallible organ may be constituted by the head and members of a corporate body acting jointly although neither taken separately is infallible. Hence the pope teaching ex cathedra and an ecumenical council subject to the approbation of the pope as its head are distinct organs of infallibility. Hence, also, the Gallican contention is excluded, that an ecumenical council is superior, either in jurisdiction or in doctrinal authority, to a certainly legitimate pope, and that one may appeal from the latter to the former. Nor is this conclusion contradicted by the fact that, for the purpose of putting an end to the Great Western Schism and securing a certainly legitimate pope, the Council of Constance deposed John XXIII, whose election was considered doubtful, the other probably legitimate claimant, Gregory XII, having resigned. This was what might be described as an extra-constitutional crisis; and, as the Church has a right in such circumstances to remove reasonable doubt and provide a pope whose claims would be indisputable, even an acephalous council, supported by the body of bishops throughout the world, was competent to meet this altogether exceptional emergency without thereby setting up a precedent that could be erected into a regular constitutional rule, as the Gallicans wrongly imagined. A similar exceptional situation might arise were a pope to become a public heretic, i.e., were he publicly and officially to teach some doctrine clearly opposed to what has been defined as de fide catholicâ. But in this case many theologians hoId that no formal sentence of deposition would be required, as, by becoming a public heretic, the pope would ipso facto cease to be pope. This, however, is a hypothetical case which has never actually occurred; even the case of Honorius, were it proved that he taught the Monothelite heresy, would not be a case in point.

IV. SCOPE AND OBJECT OF INFALLIBILITY

1. In the Vatican definition infallibility (whether of fhe Church at large or of the pope) is affirmed only in regard to doctrines of faith or morals; but within the province of faith and morals its scope is not limited to doctrines that have been formally revealed. This, however, is clearly understood to be what theologians call the direct and primary object of infallible authority: it was for the maintenance and interpretation and legitimate development of Christ’s teaching that the Church was endowed with this charisma. But if this primary function is to be adequately and effectively discharged, it is clear that there must also be indirect and secondary objects to which infallibility extends, namely, doctrines and facts which, although they cannot strictly speaking be said to be revealed, are nevertheless so intimately connected with revealed truths that, were one free to deny the former, he would logically deny the latter and thus defeat the primary purpose for which infallibility was promised by Christ to His Church. This principle is expressly affrmed by the Vatican Council when it says that “the Church, which, together with the Apostolic office of teaching received the command to guard the deposit of faith, possesses also by Divine authority (divinitus) the right to condemn science falsely so called, lest anyone should be cheated by philosophy and vain conceit (cf. Colossians 2:8)” (Denz., 1798, old no. 1845).

2. Catholic theologians are agreed in recognising the general principle that has just been stated, but it cannot be said that they are equally unanimous in regard to the concrete applications of this principle. Yet it is generally held, and may be said to be theologically certain, (a) that what are technically described as “theological conclusions,” i. e. inferences deduced from two premises, one of which is revealed and the other verified by reason, fall under the scope of the Church’s infallible authority. (b) It is also generally held, and rightly, that questions of dogmatic fact, in regard to which definite certainty is required for the safe custody and interpretation of revealed truth, may be determined infallibly by the Church. Such questions, for example, would be: whether a certain pope is legitimate, or a certain council ecumenical, or whether objective heresy or error is taught in a certain book or other published document. This last point in particular figured prominently in the Jansenist controversy, the heretics contending that, while the famous five propositions attributed to Jansenius were rightly condemned, they did not truly express the doctrine contained in his book “Augustinus”. Clement XI, in condemning this subterfuge (see Denz., 1350, old no. 1317) merely reasserted the principle which had been followed by the fathers of Nicaea in condemning the “Thalia” of Arius, by the fathers of Ephesus in condemning the writings of Nestorius, and by the Second Council of Constantinople in condemning the Three Chapters. (c) It is also commonly and rightly held that the Church is infallible in the canonization of saints, that is to say, when canonization takes place according to the solemn process that has been followed since the ninth century. Mere beatification, however, as distinguished from canonization, is not held to be infallible, and in canonization itself the only fact that is infallibly determined is that the soul of the canonized saint departed in the state of grace and already enjoys the beatific vision. (d) As to moral precepts or laws, as distinct from moral doctrine, infallibility goes no farther than to protect the Church against passing universal laws which in principle would be immoral. It would be out of place to speak of infallibility in connection the opportuneness or the administration of necessarily changing disciplinary laws, although, of course, Catholics believe that the Church receives appropriate Divine guidance in this and in similar matters where practical spiritual wisdom is required.

V. WHAT TEACHING IS INFALLIBLE?

A word or two under this head, summarizing what has been already explained in this and in other articles will suffice.

As regards matter, only doctrines of faith and morals, and facts so intimately connected with these as to require infallible determination, fall under tbe scope of infallible ecclesiastical teaching. These doctrines or facts need not necessarily be revealed; it is enough if the revealed deposit cannot be adequately and effectively guarded and explained, unless they are infallibly determined.

As to the organ of authority by which such doctrines or facts are determined, three possible organs exist. One of these, the magisterium ordinarium, is liable to be somewhat indefinite in its pronouncements and, as a consequence, practically ineffective as an organ. The other two, however, are adequately efficient organs, and when they definitively decide any question of faith or morals that may arise, no believer who pays due attention to Christ’s promises can consistently refuse to assent with absolute and irrevocable certainty to their teaching.

But before being bound to give such an assent, the believer has a right to be certain that the teaching in question is definitive (since only definitive teaching is infallible); and the means by which the definitive intention, whether of a council or of the pope, may be recognized have been stated above. It need only be added here that not everything in a conciliar or papal pronouncement, in which some doctrine is defined, is to be treated as definitive and infallible. For example, in the lengthy Bull of Pius IX defining the Immaculate Conception the strictly definitive and infallible portion is comprised in a sentence or two; and the same is true in many cases in regard to conciliar decisions. The merely argumentative and justificatory statements embodied in definitive judgments, however true and authoritative they may be, are not covered by the guarantee of infallibility which attaches to the strictly definitive sentences — unless, indeed, their infallibility has been previously or subsequently established by an independent decision.

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P.J. TONER

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Infallibility

is the quality of being incapable either of being deceived, or of leading others astray. Romanists, while acknowledging that God alone is naturally infallible, maintain that he has been pleased to transmit this quality, to some undefined extent, to the Church and to the popes, so that they are infallible in their decisions on all points of doctrine.

1. INFALLIBILITY OF THE CHURCH. The following is a condensed view of the infallibility of the Church of Rome, as collected from her own authors. Dens affirms. That the Church, in matters of faith and manners, can by no means err, is an article of belief. Moreover, infallibility in the Church may be considered in a twofold point of view: the one active and authoritative, which is called infallibility in teaching and defining; the other passive or submissive (obedientialis), which is called infallibility in learning and believing. Infallibility, considered in the first sense, refers to the Church with respect to the head or chief pontiff, and the prelates of the Church; although this infallibility would not regard the laity or inferior pastors; for, as a man is said to see, although his vision does not apply to all his members, but to his eyes only, so the Church, in like manner, is said to be infallible, although this infallibility refers only to the prelates. But if the Church is not considered with regard to its head, but as it embraces all the faithful, or laics, under the obedience of the pope, it is not proper to say it is infallible in teaching and defining, because its gift in this respect is not to teach, but to learn and believe; wherefore the Church, in this view, is said to be passably infallible,’ or infallible in learning, believing, practicing, etc. Therefore it is impossible that the whole Church, obedient to the pope, should believe any thing as revealed, or practice any thing as good which is not such; hence it can be said that the sense of the universal Church is always true, and its practice or usage always good (Dens, Theol., tom. 2, De Ecclesia, No.80, De Infallibilitate Ecclesia). The same author affirms also that the Church is an infallible judge of controversies of faith; that this authority is vested in the bishops only, especially in the pope, and that lay persons, priests, doctors, or others, have no part in making infallible decisions in the Church. He says the government of the Church is a monarchy with regard to its head, but, at the same time, tempered with an aristocracy. A unanimous consent is not necessary to make a decision infallible; a majority is sufficient for this purpose. He also. says that a tacit consent is sufficient to make a decision infallible; for to be silent is to consent. Hence he concludes that when the pope defines anything, and the majority of bishops do not object, it is impossible that this definition should embrace error (Dens, Theol. tom. 2, No. 82, Qualis esse debeat Consensus Episcoporum). From the above we collect four principal systems which concern the seat of infallibility, and these contain a considerable number of subdivisions; the chief of which are expressed in the following analysis.

First System: This embraces the infallibility of the whole Church, and includes two cases:

(1.) The Church diffusive, that is, all her clergy as a body, inasmuch as the people, whenever infallibility is concerned, compose no part of the Church.

(2.) The bishops, as the representatives of the Church, though not assembled in council.

Second System: A council composed of all the bishops; and this also is divided into two cases:

(1.) The decision of a council when approved by the whole Church.

(2.) The decision of a council when not approved by the whole Church.

Third System: A council and pope united. There are four cases of this:

(1.) A council convened by the pope.

(2.) A council confirmed by the pope.

(3.) A council convened by the pope, and whose decisions are received by the whole Church, or the body of her pastors.

(4.) A council confirmed by the pope, and received subsequently by the Church.

Fourth System: Respects the infallibility of the pope himself. This has the four following cases:

(1.) The pope himself deciding officially.

(2.) The pope and a few bishops.

(3.) The pope, when his decisions are received by the whole Church.

(4.) The pope and a few bishops, whose decisions are received by the whole Church.

Any person who will examine the quotations given from Roman Catholic authors will perceive these four distinct systems, together with the several cases under each. If we also consider their differences in regard to the extent of infallibility (some confining it to articles of faith and precepts of morality, and others making distinctions between matters of right and facts, and then of facts connected with faith; and also that their Church has not precisely defined where this infallibility is to be found), then we may safely say that the bare recital of their endless divisions respecting the seat of infallibility will prove that the thing is not in existence (Elliott, On Romanism, p. 66).

This infallibility of the Church Romanists attempt to prove

(1.) from a supposed unanimity of the bishops, which, they argue, would, if considered as mere human testimony, carry with it an amount of moral certainty admitting of no doubt, and therefore equivalent to infallibility;

(2.) from the divinely appointed mission of a clergy regularly descended from the apostles, who themselves had the most positive promises of Christ (Joh 20:21; Joh 15:15; Mat 28:19-20; Joh 14:16-17; Luk 10:16).

They also quote 2Ti 1:14; 2Ti 2:2; and Act 20:28, to show that the apostles claimed this privilege for themselves, as well as the power of transmitting it to those they appointed over the churches.

The same privilege has also been ascribed to the pope as successor of St. Peter, and God’s only vicegerent. The ultramontanes, such as Bellarmine, Baronius, etc., maintain that whatever dogmatic judgment or decision on a doctrinal point the pope addressed to the whole church, is necessarily correct. But as it has repeatedly occurred that the Church, as represented in councils, has disagreed with the pope on points of doctrine, it follows that, if both are equally infallible, the people are bound to believe equally two opposite doctrines. The French Church settled the difficulty by proclaiming general councils superior to the pope (or more infallible); the assembly of the clergy, in 1682, asserted that in controversies of faith the office of the pope is the chief, and that his decrees pertain to all churches; nevertheless, that his judgment is not irreformable unless it is confirmed by the consent of the Church, Bossuet sustained this principle with great talent and eloquence in his Defensio Declarat. Cleri Gallic. 2, pt. 1, 12 sq.

He proves by the decrees of councils, by the testimony of fathers, doctors, and schoolmen, by the declarations of popes themselves, and especially of Adrian VI, that the infallibility of the pope was a new doctrine, altogether unknown in the early ages of the Church. He disproves the infallibility of the pope not merely by negative, but by a long and strong chain of positive evidence; by adducing a number of instances, as well as direct assertions of his infallibility from generation after generation; by showing, from a large induction of facts, that during a series of centuries he was regarded and treated as fallible, and never as otherwise than fallible; and that, when another opinion began to gain ground, it arose mainly from the exercise of that authority which belongs to a supreme, power (Hare, Contest with Rome, p. 213). Bossuet’s views were held by Fleury, Dupin, cardinal Bausset, etc. They were attacked by De Maistre in his work Du Pape. A work of great interest on this subject is the recently discovered Refutation of all Heresies of Hippolytus, which gives us a clear idea of the manner in which the Roman bishops were considered in his times. In Germany, where truth is held the most precious of all possessions, even by members of the Catholic Church the conviction of the mischief produced by the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope is so strongly felt by many, that one of the greatest philosophers of the last generation, Baader, who was a zealous champion of the Christian truth, and himself an earnest Roman Catholic, used perpetually to repeat the pregnant words of St. Martin, Le Papisme est la faiblesse du Catholicisme; et le Catholicisme est la force du Papisme’ (Hare, Contest with Rome, p. 218).

As regards the infallibility of the Church, Dr. Newman himself, in his Lectures on Romanism, p. 61, said: In the creed of pope Pius not a word is said expressly about the Church’s infallibility: it forms no article of faith there. Her interpretation indeed of Scripture is recognized as authoritative; but so also is the unanimous consent of the fathers, whether as primitive or concordant; they believe the existing Church to be infallible; and, if ancient belief is at variance with it, which of course they do not allow, but if it is, then antiquity must be mistaken-that is all.’

That general councils are infallible is generally believed by Romanists. Some, however; maintain that the confirmation of the pope is necessary to constitute infallibility; and others, that the decisions of councils are infallible, whether confirmed by the pope or not. We quote-the sentiments of some who contend that the decrees of a general council, with the confirmation of the pope, are infallible. Ferraris says, The definitions of a general council legitimately assembled, issued in the absence of the pope, are not infallible without his confirmation (Ferraris, Biblioth. Prompt. in Concilium, art. 1, sect. 66). Cardinal Cusanus, as quoted by the former writer, declares that the pope gives authority to the council (Cusanus, lib. 3, cap. 15, De Concord Cathol.). Dens teaches that general councils, without the approbation of the pope, are fallible, and often err; that the confirmation of the pope to any particular decrees of a council impart to these decrees plenary authority; it is an article of faith that general councils approved by the pope cannot err in defining matters of faith and morals: hence they are to be considered as manifest heretics who presume to call in question what is decreed by such councils. He also believes that the decisions of particular councils, confirmed by the pope, are likewise infallible, and that this is founded on the infallibility of the pope. But Benedict XIV., to whom Dens refers, thinks that the decisions of such councils are binding only in their own provinces or dioceses. Many Romanist writers, however, maintain strongly that the decisions of general councils are infallible without the pope’s confirmation. It would be an endless task to quote the authorities on both sides. They are, for the most part, however, agreed that what they call general councils are infallible: some believe them infallible because they are general councils, while others, believing the same, consider the confirmation of the pope as necessary to the authoritative character of the assembly.

The discordant sentiments of Romanists respecting those characteristics which are necessary to constitute infallibility form a strong argument against the inerrancy of councils. The four following opinions have been strongly held by the Church of Rome:

(1.) Some have asserted that the diffusive, and not the representative body of the Church possessed infallibility. Occam, Petrus de Aliaco, Cusanus, Antoninus of Florence, Panormitan, Nicholas de Clemangis, Franciscus Mirandula and others, were of this opinion.

(2.) Some say that councils are no farther infallible than as they adhere to Scripture and universal tradition.

(3.) Others, that councils are of themselves infallible, whether the pope confirm them or not. This was the common opinion before the Council of Lateran, under Leo X, as appears from the Councils of Basil and Constance.

(4.) Many make the confirmation of the pope necessary to the infallibility of a general council. There is an irreconcilable difference between the last two opinions; for those who suppose councils to be infallible without the confirmation of the pope believe them to be above him, and that he is fallible; while those who are of opinion that the confirmation of his holiness is absolutely necessary to the infallibility of the council believe him to be infallible, and superior to a council.

See Elliott, On Romanisn, book 3, chap. 3; and book 1, chap. 4; Bull, Reply to the Bishop of Meaux (Works, vol. 2; Faber, Difficulties of Romanism;. Ouseley, On Papal Novelties; Hook, Eccles. Dict. s.v.; Cramp, Textbook of Popery, p. 66; Hare, Contest with Rones, p. 16, 210, 223; Kitto, Journal of Sacred Literature, Oct. 1854.

II. INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. For many centuries the popes have demanded, and, so far as lay in them, enforced an absolute submission to all their doctrinal decisions. They forbade appeal from their tribunal to the General Council, and even disallowed the plea of the Jansenists, Hermesians, and other schools whose views were censured, that the popes censuring them had erred, not in what they stated to be the Catholic doctrine, but in understanding the right sense of the censured books. Thus the popes for many centuries have acted as though they were infallible; and yet it was distinctly taught within the Church that the infallibility of the pope was not a recognized doctrine, and even many catechisms and manuals of doctrine explicitly stated, with the consent of many bishops, that the infallibility of the pope was not a doctrine of the Church. One of the chief objects for which the Vatican Council was called in 1869 was to make an end of this uncertainty and enrol the doctrine of papal infallibility among the formal Church doctrines.

As soon as it became generally known that it was intended to bring this subject before the council, a number of works appeared, discussing the proposed innovation in every aspect. By far the most important of these is the one published in Germany under the title Der Papst und das Concil (Mentz, 1869; Engl. transl. The Pope and the Council), which gives an exhaustive history of the views of the Church concerning infallibility. The author of the work, who on the title page calls himself Janus, was subsequently found to be professor Huber, of the University of Munich. The book is a storehouse of immense learning, for the author quotes thousands of individual cases to show that no one can for a moment believe in this doctrine without falsifying the whole history of the Church. For thirteen centuries, says our author, an incomprehensible silence on this fundamental article reigned throughout the whole Church and her literature. None of the ancient confessions of faith, no catechism, none of the patristic writings composed for the instruction of the people, contain a syllable about the pope, still less any hint that all certainty of faith and doctrine depends on him. Not a single question of doctrine for the first thousand years was finally decided by the popes; in none of the early controversies did they take any part at all; and their interposition, when they began to interpose, was often far from felicitous.

Pope Zosimus commended the Pelagian teaching of Celestius, pope Julian affirmed the orthodoxy of the Sabellian Marcellus of Ancyra, pope Liberius subscribed an Arian creed, pope Vigilius contradicted himself three times running on a question of faith, pope Honorius lent the whole weight of his authority to the support of the newly-introduced Monothelite heresy, and was solemnly anathematized by three ecumenical councils for doing so. Nor do these errors and contradictions of the popes grow by any means fewer or less important as time goes on. The blundering of successive popes about the conditions of valid ordination-on which, according to Catholic theology, the whole sacramental system, and therefore the means of salvation, depend–are alone sufficient to dispose forever of their claim to infallibility. Neither, again, did the Roman pontiffs possess, in the ancient constitution of the Church, any of those powers which are now held to be inherent in their sovereign office, and which must undoubtedly be reckoned among the essential attributes of absolute sovereignty. They convoked none of the general councils, and only presided, by their legates, at three of them; nor were the canons enacted there held to require their confirmation. They had neither legislative, administrative, nor judicial power in the Church, nor was any further efficacy attributed to their excommunication than to that of any other bishop.

No special prerogatives were held to have been bequeathed to them by St. Peter, and the only duty considered to devolve on them in virtue of their primacy was that of watching over the observance of the canons. The limited right of hearing appeals, granted to them by the Council of Sardica in 347, was avowedly an innovation, of purely ecclesiastical origin, and, moreover, was never admitted or exercised in Africa or the East. Many national churches, like the Armenian, the Syro-Persian, the Irish, and the ancient British, were independent of any influence of Rome. When first something like the papal system was put into words by an Eastern patriarch, St. Gregory, the greatest and best of all the early popes, repudiated the idea as a wicked blasphemy. Not one of the fathers explains the passages of the New Testament about St. Peter in the ultramontane sense; and the Tridentine profession of faith binds all the clergy to interpret Scripture in accordance with their unanimous consent. To prove the doctrine of papal infallibility, nothing less is required than a complete falsification of Church history.

The following are interesting specimens of cases in which the popes expressly contradicted other popes, or the doctrine of the Church as it is now recognized:

Innocent I and Gelasius I, the former writing to the Council of Milevis, the latter in his epistle to the bishops of Picenum, declared it to be so indispensable for infants to receive communion, that those who die without it go straight to hell (St. August. Opp. 2, 640; Council Coil. [ed. Labbe], 4:1178). A thousand years later the Council of Trent anathematized this doctrine.

It is the constant teaching of the Church that ordination received from a bishop, quite irrespectively of his personal worthiness or unworthiness, is valid and indelible. Putting aside baptism, the whole security of the sacraments rests on this principle of faith, and reordination has always been opposed in the Church as s crime and a profanation of the sacrament. Only in Rome, during the devastation which the endless wars of Goths and Lombards inflicted on Central Italy, there was a collapse of all learning and theology, which disturbed and distorted the dogmatic tradition. Since the 8th century, the ordinations of certain popes began to be annulled, and the bishops and priests ordained by them were compelled to be reordained. This occurred first in 769, when Constantine II, who had got possession of the papal chair by force of arms, and kept it for thirteen months, was blinded, and deposed at a synod, and all his ordinations pronounced invalid.

But the strongest case occurred at the end of the 9th century, after the death of pope Formosus, when the repeated rejections of his ordinations threw the whole Italian Church into the greatest confusion, and produced a general uncertainty as to whether there were any valid sacraments in Italy. Auxilius, who was a contemporary, said that through this universal rejection and repetition of orders (ordinatio, exordinatio, et superordinatio’), matters had come to such a pass in Rome that for twenty years the Christian religion had been interrupted and extinguished in Italy. Popes and synods decided in glaring contradiction to one another, now for, now against the validity of the ordinations, and it was self-evident that in Rome all sure knowledge on the doctrine of ordination was lost. At the end of his second work, Auxilius, speaking in the name of those numerous priests and bishops whose ecclesiastical status was called in question by the decisions of Stephen VII and Sergius III, demanded the strict investigation of a General Council, as the only authority capable of solving the complication introduced by the popes (Mabillon, Analecta [Paris, 1723], p. 39).

But the council never met, and the dogmatic uncertainty and confusion in Rome continued. In the middle of the 11th century the great contest against simony, which was then thought equivalent to heresy, broke’ out, and the ordinations of a simoniacal bishop were pronounced invalid. Leo IX reordained a number of persons on this ground, as Peter Damiani relates (Petri Damaini Opusc. p. 419). Gregory VII, at his fifth Roman synod, made the invalidity of all simoniacal ordinations a rule, and the principle, confirmed by Urban II, that a simoniacal bishop can give nothing in ordination, because he has nothing, passed into the Decretun of Gratian (Cans. 1, qu. 7, c. 24).

In these cases it is obvious that doctrine and practice were most intimately connected. It was only from their holding a false, and, in its consequences, most injurious notion of the force and nature of this sacrament, that the popes acted as they did, and if they had then been generally considered infallible, a hopeless confusion must have been introduced, not only into Italy, but the whole Church.

In contrast to pope Pelagius, who had declared, with the whole Eastern and Western Church, the indispensable necessity of the invocation of the Trinity in baptism, Nicolas I assured the Bulgarians that baptism in the name of Christ alone was quite sufficient, and thus exposed the Christians there to the danger of an invalid baptism. The same pope declared confirmation administered by priests, according to the Greek usage from remote antiquity, invalid, and ordered those so confirmed to be confirmed anew by a bishop, thereby denying to the whole Eastern Church the possession of a sacrament, and laying the foundation of the bitter estrangement which led to a permanent division (Council Coll. [ed. Labbd], 6:548).

Stephen II (III) allowed marriage with a slave girl to be dissolved, and a new one contracted, whereas all previous popes had pronounced such marriages indissoluble (ib. 6, 1650). He also declared baptism, in cases of necessity, valid when administered with wine (ib. 6, 1652).

Celestine III tried to loosen the marriage tie by declaring it dissolved if either party became heretical. Innocent III annulled this decision, and Hadrian VI called Celestine a heretic for giving it. This decision was afterwards expunged from the MS. collections of papal decrees, but the Spanish theologian Alphonsus de Castro had seen it there (Adv. Hor. [ed. Paris], 1565; comp. Melch. Canus, p. 240).

The Capernaite doctrine, that Christ’s body is sensibly (sensualiter) touched by the hands and broken by the teeth in the Eucharist–an error rejected by the whole Church, and contradicting the impassibility of his body-was affirmed by Nicolas II at the Synod of Rome in 1059, and Berengar was compelled to acknowledge it. Lanfranc reproaches Berengar with afterwards wishing to make cardinal Humbert, instead of the pope, responsible for this doctrine (Lanfranc, De Euch. c. 3 [ed. Migne], p. 412).

Innocent III, in order to exhibit the papal power in the fullest splendor of its divine omnipotence, invented the new doctrine that the spiritual bond which unites a bishop to his diocese is firmer and more indissoluble than the carnal’ bond, as he called it, between man and wife, and that God alone can loose it, viz. translate a bishop from one see to another. But as the pope is the representative of the true God on earth, he, and he alone, can dissolve this holy and indissoluble bond, not by human, but divine authority, and it is God, not man, who looses it. (Decretal De Transl. Episc.’ c. 2, 3, 4. This was to introduce a new article of faith. The Church had not known for centuries that resignations, depositions, and translations of bishops belonged by divine right to the pope.) The obvious and direct corollary, that the pope can also dissolve the less firm and holy bond of marriage, Innocent, as we have seen, overlooked, for he solemnly condemned Celestine III’s decision on that point, and thus he unwittingly involved himself in a contradiction. Many canonists have accepted this as the legitimate consequence of his teaching.

Innocent betrayed his utter ignorance of theology when he declared that the Fifth Book of Moses, being called Deuteronomy, or the Second Book of the Law, must bind the Christian Church, which is the second Church (Decretal Qui filii sint legitimi,’ c. 13). This great pope seems never to have read Deuteronomy, or he could hardly have fallen into the blunder of supposing, e.g., that the Old-Testament prohibitions of particular kinds of food, the burnt-offerings, the harsh papal code and bloody laws of war, the prohibitions of woolen and linen garments, etc., were to be again made obligatory on Christians. As the Jews were allowed in Deuteronomy to put away a wife who displeased them and take another, Innocent ran the risk of falling himself into a greater error about marriage than Celestine III.

Notable contradictions as to temporal privileges occur in the history of the alternate approbations and persecutions of the Franciscan order by the popes.

One of the most comprehensive, dogmatic documents ever issued by a pope is the decree of Eugenius IV to the Armenians,’ dated November 22, 1439, three months after the Council of Florence was brought to an end by the departure of the Greeks. It is a confession of faith of the Roman Church, intended to serve as a rule of doctrine and practice for the Armenians on those points they had previously differed about. The dogmas of the Unity of the Divine Nature, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Seven Sacraments, are expounded and the pope, moreover, asserts that the decree thus solemnly issued has received the sanction of the council, that is, of the Italian bishops whom he had detained in Florence.

If this decree of the pope were really a rule of faith, the Eastern Church would have only four sacraments instead of seven; the Western Church would for at least eight centuries have been deprived of three sacraments, and of one, the want of which would make all the rest, with one exception, invalid. Eugenius IV determines in this decree the form and matter, the substance of the sacraments, or of those things on the presence or absence of which the existence of the sacrament itself depends, according to the universal doctrine of the Church. He gives a form of confirmation which never existed in one half of the Church, and first came into use in the other after the 10th century. So, again, with penance. What is given as the essential form of the sacrament was unknown in the Western Church for eleven hundred years, and never known in the Greek. And when the touching of the sacred vessels, and the words accompanying the rite, are given as the form and matter of ordination, it follows that the Latin Church for a thousand years had neither priests nor bishops–nay, like the Greek Church, which never adopted this usage, possesses to this hour neither priests nor bishops, and consequently no sacraments except baptism, and perhaps marriage. (Comp. Denzinger, Enchirid. Symbol. et Definit., Wirceb. 1854, p. 200 sq. But Denzinger, in order to conceal the purely dogmatic character of this famous decree, has omitted the first part, on the Trinity and Incarnation, which is given in Raynaldus’s Annals, 1439. [The same conspicuously untenable explanation was adopted in the Dublin Review for January, 1866. Ti.])

It is noteworthy that this decree-with which papal infallibility or the whole hierarchy and the sacraments of the Church stand or fall-is cited, refuted, and appealed to by all dogmatic writers, but that the adherents of papal infallibility have never meddled with it. Neither Bellarmine, nor Charles, nor Aguirre, nor Orsi, nor the other apologists of the Roman court, troubled themselves with it.

Into dogmatic theology the doctrine of papal infallibility was introduced by Thomas Aquinas. On the basis of fabrications invented by a Dominican monk, including a canon of the Council of Chalcedon, giving all bishops an unlimited right of appeal to the pope, and on the forgeries found in Gratian, Thomas built up his papal system, with its two leading principles, that the pope is the first infallible teacher of the world, and the absolute ruler of the Church. The popes were so well pleased with the teachings of Thomas that John XXII affirmed Thomas had not written without a special inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and Innocent VI said that whoever assailed his teaching incurred suspicion of heresy. The powerful mendicant orders of Dominicans and Franciscans found the papal system, with its theory of infallibility, indispensable for the success of their own claims against the bishops and universities, and they became the violent champions of the new doctrine. The boldest champions of papal absolutism admitted, however, that the popes could err, and that their decisions were no certain criterion. But they also held that in such cases a heretical pope ipso facto ceased to be pope, without or before any judicial sentence, so that councils, which are the Church’s judicature, only attested the vacancy of the papal throne as an accomplished fact. The contest between the Council of Basel and pope Eugenius IV evoked the work of cardinal Torquemada, whose argument, which was held, up to the time of Bellarmine, to be the most conclusive apology of the papal system, rests entirely on fabrications later than the pseudo-Isidore, and chiefly on the spurious passages of St. Cyril. Torquernada also holds that a pope can lapse into heresy and propound false doctrine, but then he is ipso facto deposed by God himself before any sentence of the Church has been passed, so that the Church or council cannot judge him, but can only announce the judgment of God, and thus one cannot properly say that a pope can become heretical, since he ceases to be pope at the moment of passing from orthodoxy to heterodoxy. The doctrine entered on a fresh phase of development from the time of Leo X. Its foremost defender at that time was Thomas of Vic or Cajetan, yet the doctrine was so far from becoming dominant at Rome that the successor of Leo X, Adrian VI, who, as professor of Louvain, had maintained in his principal work that several popes had been heretical, and that it was certainly possible for a pope to establish a heresy by his decision or decretals, caused, as pope, his work denying infallibility to be reprinted in Rome.

Another patron of the infallibility theory, who labored hard to naturalize it in Belgium, the Louvain theologian, Ruard Tapper, returned in 1552 from Trent cruelly disillusionized, and thought the deep-seated corruption of the Church a matter not to be disputed, but to be deplored. The third of the theological fathers of papal infallibility in the 16th century was Tapper’s contemporary, the Spaniard Melchior Canus, whose work on theological principles and evidences was, up to Bellarmine’s time, the great authority used by all infallibilists. Like Tapper, he became in later years disgusted with the effect of the papal system on the popes and the Curia, and in a report to the king of Spain expressed the opinion that the whole administration of the Church at Rome was converted into a great trading business, a traffic forbidden by all laws, human, natural, and divine. Out of Italy the hypothesis of infallibility had but few adherents, even in the 16th century, till the Jesuits began to exercise a powerful influence.

The bishops and prominent scholars of France, Spain, Germany, and other countries were almost unanimous in advocating the superiority of ecumenical councils over the pope. The turning of the tide was chiefly due to the influence of the Jesuits, who were naturally inclined to favor the extremist absolutism in the Church. As their representative, cardinal Bellamrine further developed the ideas of Cajetan, in which he generally concurs; but he rejects decisively Cajetan’s hypothesis of a heretical pope being deposed ipso facto by the judgment of God. A heretical pope is legitimate so long as the Church has not deposed him. If Cajetan said the Church was the handmaid of the pope, Bellamrine adds that whatever doctrine it pleases the pope to prescribe the Church must receive; there can be no question raised about proving it; she must blindly renounce all judgment of her own, and firmly believe that all the pope teaches is absolutely true, all he commands absolutely good, and all he forbids simply evil and noxious. For the pope can as little err in moral as in dogmatic questions. Nay, he goes so far as to maintain that if the pope were to err by prescribing sins and forbidding virtues, the Church would be bound to consider sins good and virtues evil, unless she chose to sin against conscience; so that if the pope absolve the subjects of a prince from their oath of allegiance, which, according to Bellamrine, he has a full right to do, the Church must believe that what he has done is good, and every Christian must hold it a sin to remain any longer loyal and obedient to his sovereign. Through the influence of Bellamrine and other writers of his order, the infallibility hypothesis now made immense strides. One great stumbling block had, however, to be removed. Every theologian, on closer inspection, found papal decisions which contradicted other doctrines, laid down by popes or generally received in the Church, or which appeared to him doubtful, and it seemed impossible to declare all these products of an infallible authority.

It became necessary, therefore, to specify some distinctive marks by which a really infallible decision of a pope might be recognized, or to fix certain conditions, in. the absence of which the pronouncement is not to be regarded as infallible. And thus, since the 16th century, there grew up the famous distinction of papal decisions promulgated ex cathedra, and therefore dogmatically, and without any possibility of error. By means of this ingenious distinction, some of the most inconvenient decisions of popes, which it was desirable to except from the privilege of infallibility generally asserted in other cases could be explained away. Thus pope Honorius, in the dogmatic letter which was condemned as heretical by the sixth ecumenical council, and the decision addressed by Nicolas I to the Bulgarian Church that baptism administered simply in the name of Jesus is valid, were declared to be judgments given by the popes as private persons. A number of other limitations were proposed by the theologians advocating infallibility, but only two were. commonly received, viz. Bellarmine’s, that the papal decree must be addressed to the whole Church; and Cellot’s, that he must anathematize all who dissent from his teaching. According to this doctrine, which is taught by the most prominent dogmatic writer of the order in the present century, Perrone (Proelect. Theolog. 8, 497, Louvain, 1843), and received by pretty nearly the whole order; the pope is liable to err when he addresses an instruction to the French or German Church only; and, moreover, his infallibility becomes very questionable whenever he omits to denounce an anathema on all dissentients. Since the time of Bellarmine, the infallibility hypothesis has been one of the chief distinctions of the Jesuits and the most radical portion of the Ultramontane party on the one hand, and all other schools within the Catholic Church on the other. A number of synods, bishops, and prominent theologians, and in some instances the whole Catholic Church of several countries, put themselves on record against the doctrine, for which, on the other hand, the Jesuits and other Ultramontane writers incessantly strove to gain friends among bishops, clergy, and laity, and, in particular, among the sovereigns.

When pope Pius IX intimated his intention to convoke a council for the definition of the doctrine, a number of bishops, especially in France and Germany, declared themselves to be decidedly opposed to the doctrine, and at least one of them, the French bishop Maret (bishop of Sura in partibus infid., and dean of the theological faculty of Paris), published an elaborate work (On the General Council and the public Peace) to refute it, and to prove that it would subvert the very foundation of the Church. The substance of his argument against papal infallibility is as follows: According to the holy Scriptures the Church is a limited monarchy, which stands under the common rule of the pope and the bishops. The history of the councils is at least as much in favor of the divine right of the bishops as of the supremacy of the holy chair. Freedom of discussion, vote by majority, a juridical examination of the apostolic decrees, and in certain cases a right to condemn the doctrines and the person of the pope these are rights which prove beyond all doubt the participation of the bishops in the sovereign powers of the holy father. But these rights do not extend far enough to give the episcopal body a supremacy over the pope, and the latter therefore exercises, in general, all the privileges of supremacy. He summons the council, presides over it, dissolves it, and sanctions its decrees. In a word, he always remains the head of the Church. If, however, the changes desired by a certain school are made, the Church will cease to be a limited, and become an absolute monarchy. This would be a complete revolution; but what is truly divine is unchangeable, and, consequently, if the constitution of the Church is changed, it ceases to be divine. Pius IX, in his bull Ineffabilis Deus, has himself, said of doctrine, Crescat in eodem sensu, in eadem sententia; but the new dogma would lead to a development of doctrine in alio sensu, in alia sententia. It would therefore amount to a denial of the divinity of the Church. If it were realized, exclaims the bishop, what a triumph would it be to the enemies of the Church! They would call the asseverations of centuries, and history itself, as witnesses against Catholicism: she would be crushed by the weight of opposing testimony; the holy Scriptures, the fathers, and the councils would rise in judgment against her. They would bury us in our shame, and from the desert atheism would rise more powerful and threatening than ever (2, 378).

When the council met (Dec. 8. 1869) it was soon found that there were, with regard to this question, three parties among the bishops: one, which regarded the promulgation of this new doctrine as the best and most urgent work the council should attend to; the second, which petitioned the pope against this doctrine, which they believed would be at least a great stumbling block for all non-Catholics, and even for a great many members of the Catholic Church; the third, which was in favor of a compromise, would have some regard for the arguments adduced by the second class, and therefore, instead of promulgating in unmistakable and bold clearness the doctrine of papal infallibility, would attain the same end in a less offensive way, by inculcating the duty of an absolute submission to every decision of the pope in matters of faith. The majority of the bishops signed a petition for the promulgation of infallibility, which had been drawn up by the German bishop of Paderborn, and received 410 signatures. The counter address (or, rather, counter addresses) against the infallibility was signed by 162 bishops, among whom were 20 Americans, 46 Frenchmen, 37 Germans and Austrians, 19 Orientals, 2 Portuguese, 14 Hungarians, 3 Englishmen, and 15 Italians.

The address of the middle party, which desired to effect a compromise, was drawn up by the archbishop of Baltimore. The address against the proclamation of the doctrine of infallibility, drawn up by the cardinal archbishop Rauscher, of Vienna, is couched in the most submissive expressions, assures the holy father of the devotedness of all the bishops to the apostolical see, and continues: It would not be right to ignore that many difficulties, arising from expressions or actions of the Church fathers from the documents of history, and even from the Catholic doctrine, remain, which must be thoroughly explained before it would be admissible to lay this doctrine before the Christian people as one revealed by God. But our minds revolt against a controversial discussion of this question, and confidently implore thy kindness not to lay upon us the duty of such a transaction. As we, moreover, exercise the episcopal functions among great Catholic nations, we know their condition from daily intercourse; hence we are satisfied that the asked-for doctrinal decision will offer weapons to the enemies of religion, in order to excite aversion to the Catholic religion, even of men of good character, and we are certain that this decision would offer, at least in Europe, an opportunity or a pretext to the governments of our countries to make encroachments upon the rights which have remained to the Church. We have concluded to lay this before thy holiness, with the sincerity which we owe to the father of the faithful, and we ask thee that the doctrinal opinion, the sanction of which is demanded by the address, be not submitted to the council for consideration. Among the signers are, besides the cardinal archbishop of Vienna, nearly all the archbishops of Germany and Austria; in particular, the cardinal archbishop of Prague, the archbishops of Cologne, Munich, Bamberg, and others. The bishops who signed this remonstrance against the promulgation of papal infallibility as a doctrine confined themselves to urging the inopportuneness. Only a few plainly expressed themselves against the dogma itself. But what the bishops failed to do, the catholic scholars, especially those of Germany, did so emphatically that their protests against the ultra papal theories, and against the whole spirit prevailing in Rome, made a profound sensation throughout the Christian world.

One of the most learned Church historians of the Roman Catholic Church, professor Dllinger, of the University of Munich, in a letter addressed to the Augsburger Zeitung, and since published as a pamphlet in an enlarged form (Erwagungen fur die Bischiof des Concils, Ratisbon, 1869), subjected the address of the bishops who asked for the promulgation of infallibility to the most crushing criticism, Dr. Dllinger says of this petition of the champions of papal infallibility that henceforth one hundred and eighty millions of human beings are to be forced, on pain of excommunication, refusal of the sacraments, and everlasting damnation, to believe and to profess that which hitherto the Church has not believed, not taught. The proclamation of this dogma, he says, would be an alteration in the faith and doctrine of the Church such as has never been heard of since Christianity was first founded. The whole foundation of the Church would thereby be affected. Dr. Dllinger shows conclusively that until the 16th century the doctrine of papal infallibility was entirely unknown, and that, when it was taken up by cardinal Bellarmine, it could only be supported by the testimony of Isidorian decretals, which are forged, and those of Cyril, which are a fiction.

The views of Dllinger and Gratry received the emphatic assent of the large majority of the Catholic scholars of Germany and France. The governments of France, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Bavaria, and other Catholic countries instructed their ministers in Rome to enter an earnest protest against a doctrine which would compel all members of the Roman Catholic Church to believe in the right of the pope to choose kings and release their subjects from the oath of allegiance. Even some of the members of the council, in particular the cardinal archbishop Rauscher of Vienna, and bishop Hefele of Rottenburg, who was regarded as the most learned bishop of the council, published pamphlets against the dogmatization of infallibility while it was discussed by the council. But all this opposition failed to make the least impression upon the majority of the bishops.

From the opening of the council, the infallibilists showed themselves so uncompromising that they refused to give to the minority even one single representative in the important commission on dogmatical questions, which, on the other hand embraced the name of every bishop who, by writings, influence, or otherwise, had gained a prominent position as a defender of infallibility: in particular, archbishop Manning, of Westminster; archbishop Dechamps, of Malines; archbishop Spalding, of Baltimore; bishop Martin, of Paderborn; bishop Pie, of Poitiers; the Armenian patriarch Hassun, of Constantinople. The discussion of the question commenced on the 13th of May. The schema was comprised in a preamble and four chapters, and was known to form the first part of the dogmatic constitution De Ecclesia Christi. The debate is known to have been long and animated, many bishops entering a very earnest protest against the promulgation of such an innovation. Bishop Strossmayer, of Bosnia and Sirmium, in Croatia; bishop Dupanloup, of Orleans, in France; archbishop Darboy, of Paris; bishop Hefele, of Rottenburg, in Wurtemberg; cardinal archbishop Rauscher, of Vienna; cardinal archbishop prince Schwarzenberg, of Prague, are mentioned as those bishops who spoke with the greatest effect against the proposed doctrine. The regulations of the council made it lawful for ten prelates to petition for the closing of a discussion; the proposal being then put to the vote of all the fathers, and the majority deciding. When fifty-five speeches had been made on the schema in general, one hundred and fifty bishops sent a petition for closing the general discussion, which was accordingly done, to the great dissatisfaction of the opponents of infallibility, a number of whom addressed to the pope a protest against the closing of the general discussion, as it had deprived the council of the opportunity to hear all the arguments against the new doctrine.

The discussion of the schema as regards the whole and the several parts having been completed, a vote was taken according to the regulations in a general congregation on the 13th of July, on the whole schema by name, with placet, or placet juxta modum, or non-placet. The result was as follows: 451 placets, 62 placets juxta modum, and 88 non-placets. Some of the placets juxta modum recommended the insertion of words that would make the decree clearer and stronger. The schema was accordingly altered, and the amendments were retained in the general congregation, held Saturday, July 16. The final step was then taken, in the fourth public session of the council, on the 18th of July. The roll of the members was again called, when 534 answered placet, 2 replied non-placet, and 106 were absent, some because sick, the far greater number not willing to vote favorably. As soon as the result was made known officially to Pius IX, he announced the fact of all with the exception of two having given a favorable vote, Wherefore, he continued, by virtue of our apostolic authority, with the approval of the sacred council, we define, confirm, and approve the decree and canons just read. The following is a faithful translation of chapter iv of the schema, which treats of papal infallibility:

Of the infallible Authority of the Roman Pontiff in Teaching. This holy see hath ever held-the unbroken custom of the Church doth prove and the ecumenical councils, those especially in which the East joined with the West in union of faith and of charity, have declared, that in this apostolic primacy, which the Roman pontiff holds over the universal Church as successor of Peter, the prince of the apostles, there is also contained the supreme power of authoritative teaching. Thus the fathers of the fourth Council of Constantinople, following in the footsteps of their predecessors, put forth this solemn profession:

The first law of salvation is to keep the rule of true faith. And whereas the words of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be passed by, who said, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church (Mat 16:18), these words, which he spake, art proved true by facts; for in the apostolic see the Catholic religion has ever been preserved unspotted, and the holy doctrine has been announced. Therefore, wishing never to be separated from the faith and teaching of this see, we hope to be worthy to abide in that one communion which the apostolic-see preaches, in which is the fill and true firmness of the Christian religion. [Formula of St. Hormisdas, pope as proposed by Hadrian II to the fathers of the eighth General Council (Constantinople, IV), and subscribed by them.]

So, too, the Greeks, with the approval of the second Council of Lyons, professed that the holy Roman Church holds over the universal Catholic Church a supreme and full primacy and headship, which she truthfully and humbly acknowledges that she received, with fullness of power, from the Lord himself in blessed Peter, the prince or head of the apostles, of whom the Roman pontiff is the successor; and as she, beyond the others, is bound to defend the truth of the faith, so, if any questions arise concerning faith, they should be decided by her judgment. And, finally, the Council of Florence defined that the Roman pontiff is the true vicar of Christ, and the head of the whole Church, and the father and teacher of all Christians and that to him, in the blessed Peter, was given by our Lord Jesus Christ full power of feeding, and ruling, and governing the universal Church (Joh 21:15-17).

In order to fulfill this pastoral charge, our predecessors have ever labored unweariedly to spread the saving doctrine of Christ among all the nations of the earth, and with equal care have watched to preserve it pure and unchanged where it had been received. Wherefore the bishops of the whole world, sometimes singly, sometimes assembled in synods, following the long-established custom of the churches (St. Cyril, Alexand., and St. Caelest. Pap.), and the form of ancient rule (St. Innocent I to Councils of Carthage and Milevi), referred to this apostolic see those dangers especially which arose in matters of faith, in order that injuries to faith might best be healed there where the faith could never fail (St. Bernard, epistle 190). And the Roman pontiffs, weighing the condition of times and circumstances, sometimes calling together general councils, or asking the judgment of the Church scattered through the world, sometimes consulting particular synods, sometimes using such other aids as divine Providence supplied, defined that those doctrines should be held which, by the aid of God, they knew to be conformable to the holy Scriptures and the apostolic traditions. For the Holy Ghost is not promised to the successors of Peter that they may make known new doctrine revealed by him, but that, through his assistance, they may sacredly guard and faithfully set-forth the revelation delivered by the apostles, that is, the deposit of faith. And this their apostolic teaching all the venerable fathers have embraced, and the holy orthodox doctors have revered and followed, knowing most certainly that this see of St. Peter ever remains free from all error, according to the divine promise of our Lord and Savior made to the prince of the apostles: I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren (Conf. St. Agatho, Ep. ad Imp. a Conc. AEcum. VI approb.)

Therefore this gift of truth, and of faith which fails not, was divinely bestowed on Peter and his successors in this chair, that they should exercise their high office for the salvation of all, that through them the universal flock of Christ should be turned away from the poisonous food of error and should be nourished with the food of heavenly doctrine, and that, the occasion of schism being removed, the entire Church should be preserved one, and, planted on her foundation, should stand firm against the gates of hell.

Nevertheless, since in this present age, when the saving efficacy of the apostolic office is exceedingly needed, there are not a few who carp at its authority, we judge it altogether necessary to solemnly declare the prerogative which the only-begotten Son of God has designed to unite to the supreme pastoral office.

Wherefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition handed down from the commencement of the Christian faith, for the glory of God our Savior, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of Christian peoples, with the approbation of the sacred council, we teach and define it to be a doctrine divinely revealed, that, when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in the exercise of his office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, and in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority; he defines that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held by the universal Church, he possesses, through the divine assistance promised to him in the blessed Peter, that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to be endowed, in defining a doctrine of faith and morals; and therefore that such definitions of the Roman pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not by force of the consent of the Church thereto. And if any one shall presume, which God forbid, to contradict this our definition, let him be anathema.

Given in Rome, in the public session, solemnly celebrated in the Vatican Basilica, in the year of the incarnation of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy, on the eighteenth day of July, in the twenty-fifth year of our pontificate. Ita est.

Joseph, Bishop of St. Polten, Secretary of the Council of the Vatican.

The expectation that some of the bishops who opposed infallibility at the council would persist in their opposition, and decline to promulgate the new doctrine in their dioceses, was not fulfilled. The bishops not only submitted themselves, but forced also their dioceses to submit. In Germany a number of the most prominent theological scholars were removed from their chairs, and suspended from their priestly functions, for refusing to comply with the demands of Rome. Thus the creed of the Roman Catholic Church received a new doctrine which, in the opinion of many theologians who up to that time had been regarded throughout the Church as her ablest scholars, radically changes the character of the Church.

According to the opinion of Dr. Dllinger, more has been written on this subject during the last one hundred and thirty years than on any other point of Church history during fifteen hundred years. The most important work on the subject, that of Janus (The Pope and the Council), as well as the works of Maret, Dllinger, Maistre, and several works of former centuries, have already been noticed. Other important works treating on the subject are Ballerini, De Vi ac Ratione Primatus; Schrader (Jesuit), De Unitate Romana (vol. 1, Freiburg, 1862; vol. 2, Vienna, 1866); Philipp, Kirchenrecht (vol. 5); Rudis, Petra Romana (Mentz, 1869); Deschamps (archbishop of Malines), L’Infallibilite du Pape (Malines, 1869); Gratry, Lettres stur L’Infallibilite du Pape (Paris, 1869, 1870); Weninger (Jesuit), The Infallibility of the Pope (Cincinnati, 1869); Hergenrdther Anti-Janus (Wurzburg, 1870); Frohshammer. Zur Wurdigung der Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes und d. kirchle (Munich, 1869); Bickell, Grnde fur die Unfehlbarkeit des Kirchenoberhaluptes (Miinster, 1870); Rauscher (carlinal archbishop of Vienna), Observationes quaedum de infailibilitatis ecclesice subjecto (Naples, 1870, against the dogmatization of infallibility); Kleutgen (Jesuit), De Romani Pontifis Suprema potestate docendi (Naples, 1870); Schmitz, 1st der Papst perssnlich unfehlbar (Munich, 1870). The fullest account of the proceedings of the council relative to the dogmatization of infallibility is given in Quirinus, Rinzische Briefe vom Concil (Munich, 1870). (A.J. S.)

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature