§ XXXII.-Infallibility of the Church and the Popes

compared.

A personal infallibility evidently extends far beyond the inerrancy of a great corporation, like the Catholic Church, or of a Council representing it. The Church in its totality is secured against false doctrine; it will not fall away from Christ and the Apostles, and will not repudiate the doctrine it has once received, and which has been handed down within it. When a Council passes sentence on doctrine, it thereby gives testimony to its truth. The bishops attest, each for his own portion of the Church, that a certain defined doctrine has hitherto been taught and believed there; or they bear witness that the doctrines hitherto believed involve, as their logical and necessary consequence, some truth which may not yet have been expressly formulized. As to whether this testimony has been rightly given, whether freedom and unbiassed truthfulness have prevailed among the assembled bishops,-on that point the Church herself is the ultimate judge, by her acceptance or rejection of the Council or its decision.

Here, therefore, the certainty and infallibility rest entirely on the solid ground of facts. The Church does

not go on to disclose new doctrines,—she does not want to create anything, but only to protect and keep the deposit she has inherited. The meaning of a judgment passed by the assembled bishops is simply this,—thus have our predecessors believed, thus do we believe, and thus will they that come after us believe. A great community, a whole Church, is not exposed to the danger of self-exaltation and presumptuous pretensions to special Divine illumination. It makes no attempt to establish some particular subjective view or opinion of its own. Being left to itself, it naturally keeps within the limits of the traditional faith which has been constantly and everywhere received. But matters assume a very different shape when a single individual is made the organ of infallibility. The whole Church, as long as its representatives at a Council preserve their apostolic independence, cannot be forced or cajoled into giving a wrong testimony, or proclaiming the view or doctrine of a particular school or party as the constant and universal belief of all Catholic Christendom; but an individual Pope is always exposed to the danger of falling under the influence of sycophants and intriguers, and thus being forced into giving dogmatic decisions. Advantage is taken of his

predilection for some theological opinion, or for some Religious Order and its favourite doctrines, or of his ignorance of the history of dogma, or of his vanity and ambition, for signalizing his pontificate by a memorable decision, and one supposed to be in the interest of the Roman See, and thus associating his name with a great dogmatic event which may constitute an epoch in the Church. Nor is anything easier for a Pope than to keep all contradiction at arm's length; as a rule, no one who is not expressly consulted ventures even to make any representation or suggest any doubts to him. The flattering conviction, so welcome to the old Adam, grows up easily within his soul, that his wishes and thoughts are Divine inspirations, that he is under the special grace and guidance of Heaven, and that by virtue of his office the fulness of truth and knowledge, as of power, is his, without effort of his own. He will the more believe, and the more quickly catch at this idea, the smaller is his information and the less suspicion or knowledge he has of the doubts and difficulties which restrain learned theologians from adopting a particular doctrinal opinion. And thus even a well-meaning Pope may come to imagine that he is far removed from all self-exaltation, and is simply the humble organ of the Holy Ghost, who speaks through him.

One of the Popes whose government is of most inauspicious memory, Innocent X., himself confessed that, having been all his life engaged in legal affairs and processes, he understood nothing of theology. But that did not hinder him from originating, by his condemnation of the Five Propositions on grace, a controversy which lasted above a century, and has never found a solution.1 He told the Bishop of Montpellier that he had received so great an enlightenment of soul from God, that the sense of Holy Writ had become clear to him, and he had suddenly attained a comprehension of the intricate subtleties of scholasticism. The presence of the Holy Ghost, as he expressed it to another clergyman (Aubigni), had become palpable to him. He needed no Synod, nor even any advice of the cardinals, but only the opinion of some regular clergy selected by himself. "All this depends on the inspiration of the Holy Ghost," he said to the theologians who had come to him from Paris.2

To speak of a Pope of very recent date, a statesman

1 [The Five Propositions, said to be extracted from Jansen's Augustinus, and condemned by Innocent x. in 1653. His successor, Alexander VII., pronounced further, that they were condemned "in sensu auctoris," which gave rise to a fresh dispute about infallibility extending to dogmatic facts." Clement IX. somewhat modified the sentence.-TR.]

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2 "Tutto questo dipende dall' inspirazione dello Spirito Santo.”— Arnauld, Euvres, xxii. p. 210.

resident in Rome related "that Gregory XVI., in his naïve manner, enjoyed his high position on the express ground that he believed by virtue of it he must always be in the right. When Capaccini discoursed with him on financial affairs, and neither the refined and ingenious statesman could convince his master, nor he with his home-baked arguments convince his minister, Gregory used to exclaim from time to time that he was Pope, and could not err, and must know everything best."1

To

All absolute power demoralizes its possessor. that all history bears witness. And if it be a spiritual power, which rules men's consciences, the danger of selfexaltation is only so much the greater, for the possession of such a power exercises a specially treacherous fascination, while it is peculiarly conducive to selfdeceit, because the lust of dominion, when it has become a passion, is only too easily in this case excused under the plea of zeal for the salvation of others. And if the man into whose hands this absolute power has fallen cherishes the further opinion that he is infallible, and an organ of the Holy Ghost,-if he knows that a decision of his on moral and religious questions will be

1 Politische Briefe und Charakt. (Berlin, 1849), p. 248.