The chair" means authority, "Plenitude of power," to "Teach and to command." The Church of Rome bases her claims upon Matthew 23, verse 2: "The Scribes and Pharisees sit upon the chair of Moses." So they did, but did this authorise them to even claim infallibilty? Did they ever even attempt to claim it? Certainly Moses did not.

In order that a Decree should be invested with all the solemnity and sublimity of an ex cathedra pronouncement three conditions should be placed in order that all consciences should submit. So say the Roman theologians. The first condition is "The Holy Father must be free" to declare. The second is"That he 'usually' gives the matter 'mature and due examination.' " And the third condition is "That he consults his own Church of Rome, especially his Cardinals."

Now with the first and third of these conditions I had no quarrel, but I had with the second. The word "usually" always struck me with ever-increasing force. What did it imply here? Surely in a weighty matter of this kind a "Papal pronouncement" affecting the consciences of millions in this life and their happiness in the next, the word "usually" was out of place. The word "always" seemed to me to be absolutely necessary. So the wording of the second condition should read that he "always gives the matter mature and due examination," and so very materially changes the spirit of the condition.

I argued that "usually" implied such "mature and due examination" on his part to be not necessary; therefore he could define a doctrine straight off, so far as he was concerned, as infallible and binding on the consciences of the faithful without any examination whatsoever, or with very little.

I could not accept this method so lax in connection

with principles so vital. It struck me that right here our position was very weak. I could not help seeing that if ever there was need of "Mature and due examination" on the part of him, claiming "Infallibility," truly it was on questions the acceptance of which in their full entirety was binding upon millions of minds "until the consummation of the world," unless he possessed instantaneously inspired infallibility, and I do not think the Popes ever claimed this extra privilege. For, as already advanced, the second condition necessary to an ex cathedra definition is laid down explicitly as that he "usually" gives the matter mature and due examination, and yet "usually" would again imply that he possessed such instantaneously inspired infallibilty at those times when he did not fulfil this necessary condition, viz., "mature and due examination."

The Roman theologians unconsciously admit a weakness in their position here, for they teach "The assiste ance of the Holy Spirit is always present with the Church or the Pope" to preserve him from error in his definitions. If therefore in any particular case, the necessary diligence and examination be omitted, the person defining, i.e., the Pope, would sin through his negligence but he could not err in the definition of the decree. In other words, he would be assisted by the Divine Power to exercise a Divine prerogative whilst in a state of remissness or even positive sin against that same Divine Power.

That he could not err in decreeing so delicate, so intricate a matter as a "definition" is bound to be, which, too, had been investigated by his Cardinals, many of them differing in opinion on it from him and from each other (and many of them, too, of a wider range of experience than he could possibly lay claim. to, and probably possessed of a more profound depth

of intellectuality than his own), that these men after all their deliberation, could go astray (for Cardinals as such do not claim this gift), but not he, who had given the matter very little or no consideration, or at least not that "mature and due examination usually" necessary, was too much even for my old and prejudiced Catholic mind. I could not hold that the Almighty would lend Himself to so faulty a procedure in a work so ostensibly promulgated for His greater honour and glory and the good of souls. It was too much for my reason, which my old classical teacher in Tullow Monastery, Ireland, very placidly told me one day was "about the average.'

That a Pope so acting in the discharge of his Holy Office would be guilty of sin I conceded, but that God would invest him, so circumstanced, with the prerogative of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, "Infallibility," I could not concede.

But even granting the Pope to be a model Pope, a just man, a wise ruler, the Father of Christendom, etc., etc., all and everything that such a man should be, with aspirations so lofty and unusual, also granting that the three necessary conditions had been fulfilled, I still failed to be imbued, to be impressed with the right, the justice and the reasonableness of his claim to Infallibilty.

The occupants of the Papal Chair assert Divine Authority in support of their claim.

To my mind this Dogma was the least clear and most obscure of all their doctrines. Again and again, as I walked beneath the stately pines in the Goulburn Monastery grounds, the question would persistently recur-"Why would not, why did not Christ plainly speak His mind on so paramount a point as to whether the gift was bestowed on His Viceregents in His kingdom on earth or not?" Surely we would have it

recorded clear and strong and undeniable in the New Testament had He done so. Rome's theologians, full of the desire for this gift for their Church, boldly declare, but on what authority I do not know, that “if the Pope or Council should have the intention of defining that which is false, then God would, in His wisdom, save His Church in some way, according to His Providence, either by changing the mind of the Pontiff defining, or dissolving the Council, or by taking the Pontiff out of this world."

Now this is not proof, I thought. 'Tis all assumption. "Gratis asseritur; gratis negatur," i.e., "That which is stated so freely is as freely denied." I was looking for proofs, not assumptions. Those assumptions were too crude and unsupported by any authority whatsoever. They also added "This last, viz., 'taking the Pontiff out of this world,' is not necessary, as God can easily change the mind and heart, and we need not have recourse to the supposition of either a violent or a sudden death."

This seems to me to be a deplorably helpless argument, and could not prevail where men argue on logical lines. That God would do a drastic something to prevent the "Infallible" from defining that which is morally right to be infallibly wrong, or that which is morally wrong to be infallibly right, was simply beg ging the question in a pitiful way, confusing the issue in a deceitful way, and I could not hold with them. Nor could I agree with them in their last line of defence above quoted that "He would take the Pontiff out of the world."

This idea was always repugnant to me. The repugnance was by no means allayed even by the accompanying assurance that "we need not have recourse to the supposition of a violent or a sudden death." I considered it was rather autocratic beyond measure to

demand my belief in the infallibility of the man defining a doctrine to be held by "all the faithful" who declared that if I did not so believe I would be a heretic, whilst he himself may not have bestowed upon that doctrine that conditional and antecedent "deliberation and examination" so fundamentally necessary in the lesser affairs of State, of Art, Science and Literature. It is a weak defence, indeed, set up around so strong a citadel of Roman belief, that, though the Pope may sin by non-study of the subject, yet he cannot err in defining it to be a doctrine universally to be held by the faithful. Nor did the champions ease the strain by claiming that he, in such case, defines after consultation with his Cardinals; for neither are they "Infallible" oracles. Their opinions are still weighted with fallibility in teaching doctrine and morals. The fact of the Supreme Pastor's acting on their counsel does not clothe his decrees with the coveted distinction. Just here, it may be of interest to place before my readers a copy of the famous Decree of the Vatican Council (1870)

"Therefore, adhering faithfully to the traditions received from the beginning of the Christian Faith, to the glory of God, our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic Religion, and the salvation of the Christian people, the Sacred Council approving, we teach and define that it is a divinely revealed dogma that the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when performing the functions of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his Supreme and Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine of faith and morals to be held by the universal church, has, through that Divine assistance, promised to him in Blessed Peter, that infallibility with which our Divine Redeemer wished his Church to be endowed in defining a doctrine of faith and morals, and that therefore