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Page 10
The incontestable value and immense practical importance of the Papal
prerogative of infallibility have been rendered abundantly manifest
ever since its solemn definition nearly forty years ago. In fact,
although the enormous increase of the population of the world has not
rendered the position of the Sovereign Pontiff any easier, yet he is
better fitted and equipped since the definition to cope promptly and
effectually with errors and heresies as they arise than he was before.
We do not mean that his prerogative of infallibility is invoked upon
every trivial occasion--one does not call for a Nasmyth hammer to
break a nut--but it is always there, in reserve, and may be used, on
occasion, even without summoning an Ecumenical Council, and this is a
matter of some consequence. For, though time may bring many changes
into the life of man, and may improve his physical condition and
surroundings, and add enormously to his comfort, health, and general
corporal well-being, it is found to produce no corresponding effect
upon his corrupt and fallen nature, which asserts itself as vigorously
now, after nearly two thousand years of Christianity, as in the past.
Pride and self still sway men's hearts. The spirit of independence and
self-assertion and egotism, in spite of all efforts at repression,
continue to stalk abroad. And human nature, even to-day, is almost as
impatient of restraint, and as unwilling to bear the yoke of
obedience, as in the time when Gregory resisted Henry of Germany, or
when Pius VII. excommunicated Napoleon. If, even in the Apostolic age,
when the number of the faithful was small and concentrated, there
were, nevertheless, men of unsound views--"wolves in sheep's
clothing"--amongst the flock of Christ, how much more likely is this
to be the case now. If the Apostle St. Paul felt called upon to warn
his own beloved disciples against those "who would not endure sound
doctrine," and who "heaped to themselves teachers, having itching
ears," and who even "closed their ears to the truth, in order to
listen to fables" (2 Tim. iv. 1-5), surely we may reasonably expect to
find, even in our own generation, many who have fallen, or who are in
danger of falling under the pernicious influence of false teachers,
and who are being seduced and led astray by the plausible, but utterly
fallacious, reasoning of proud and worldly spirits. It would be easy
to name several, but they are too well known already to need further
advertising here.
Then, she has adversaries without, as well as within. For, though the
Church is not _of_ the world, she is _in_ the world. Which is only
another way of saying that she is surrounded continually and on all
sides by powerful, subtle, and unscrupulous foes. "The world is the
enemy of God," and therefore of His Church. If its votaries cannot
destroy her, nor put an end to her charmed life, they hope, at least,
to defame her character and to blacken her reputation. They seize
every opportunity to misrepresent her doctrine, to travesty her
history, and to denounce her as retrograde, old fashioned, and out of
date. And, what makes matters worse, the falsest and most mischievous
allegations are often accompanied by professions of friendship and
consideration, and set forth in learned treatises, with an elegance of
language and an elevation of style calculated to deceive the simple
and to misguide the unwary. It is Father W. Faber who remarks that,
"there is not a new philosophy nor a freshly named science but what
deems, in the ignorance of its raw beginnings, that it will either
explode the Church as false or set her aside as doting" (Bl. Sac.
Prologue). Indeed the world is always striving to withdraw men and
women from their allegiance to the Church, through appeals to its
superior judgment and more enlightened experience; and philosophy and
history and even theology are all pressed into the service, and
falsified and misrepresented in such a manner as to give colour to its
complaints and accusations against the Bride of Christ, who, it is
seriously urged, "should make concessions and compromises with the
modern world, in order to purchase the right to live and to dwell
within it". What is the consequence? Let the late Cardinal Archbishop
and the Bishops of England answer. "Many Catholics," they write in
their joint pastoral, "are consequently in danger of forfeiting not
only their faith, but even their independence, by taking for granted
as venerable and true the halting and disputable judgment of some men
of letters or of science which may represent no more than the wave of
some popular feeling, or the views of some fashionable or dogmatising
school. The bold assertions of men of science are received with awe
and bated breath, the criticisms of an intellectual group of _savants_
are quoted as though they were rules for a holy life, while the mind
of the Church and her guidance are barely spoken of with ordinary
patience."
In a world such as this, with the agents of evil ever active and
threatening, with error strewn as thorns about our path at every step,
and with polished and seductive voices whispering doubt and suggesting
rebellion and disobedience to men, already too prone to disloyalty,
and arguing as cunningly as Satan, of old, argued with Eve; in such a
world, who, we may well ask, does not see the pressing need as well as
the inestimable advantages and security afforded by a living,
vigilant, responsible and supreme authority, where all who seek, may
find an answer to their doubts, and a strength and a firm support in
their weakness?
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