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Page 5
How has this been possible? Simply and solely because God, Who
promised that "the Spirit of Truth" (_i.e._, the Holy Ghost) "should
abide with her for ever; and should guide her in all truth" (John xiv.
16, xvi. 12), keeps His promise. When our Lord promised to "_be with_"
the teaching Church, in the execution of the divine commission
assigned to it, "_always_" and "_to the end of the world_," that
promise clearly implied, and was a guarantee, first, that the teaching
authority should exist indefectibly to the end of the world; and
secondly, that throughout the whole course of its existence it should
be divinely guarded and assisted in fulfilling the commission given to
it, _viz._, in instructing the nations in "all things whatsoever
Christ has commanded," in other words, that it should be their
infallible Guide and Teacher.
Venerable Bede, speaking of the conversion of our own country by
Augustine and his monks, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, says: "And
whereas he [Pope Gregory] bore the Pontifical power _over all the
world_, and was placed over the Churches already reduced to the faith
of truth, he made our nation, till then given up to idols, the Church
of Christ" (_Hist. Eccl._ lib. ii. c. 1). If we will but listen to the
Pope now, he will make it once again "the Church of Christ," instead
of the Church of the "Reformation," and a true living branch, drawing
its life from the one vine, instead of a detached and fallen branch,
with heresy, like some deadly decay, eating into its very vitals.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: No Pope, no matter what may have been his _private_
conduct, ever promulgated a decree against the purity of faith and
morals.]
CHAPTER II.
THE POPE'S GREAT PREROGATIVE.
The clear and certain recognition of a great truth is seldom the work
of a day. We often possess it in a confused and hidden way, before we
can detect, to a nicety, its exact nature and limitations. It takes
time to declare itself with precision, and, like a plant in its
rudimentary stages, it may sometimes be mistaken for what it is
not--though, once it has reached maturity, we can mistake it no
longer. As Cardinal Newman observes: "An idea grows in the mind by
remaining there; it becomes familiar and distinct, and is viewed in
its relations; it leads to other aspects, and these again to
others.... Such intellectual processes as are carried on silently and
spontaneously in the mind of a party or school, of necessity come to
light at a later date, and are recognised, and their issues are
scientifically arranged." Consequently, though dogma is unchangeable
as truth is unchangeable, this immutability does not exclude progress.
In the Church, such progress is nothing else than the development of
the principles laid down in the beginning by Jesus Christ Himself.
Thus--to take a simple illustration--in three different councils, the
Church has declared and proposed three different articles of Faith,
_viz._, that in Jesus Christ there are (1) two natures, (2) two wills,
and (3) one only Person. These may seem to some, who cannot look
beneath the surface, to be three entirely new doctrines; to be, in
fact, "additions to the creed". In sober truth, they are but
expansions of the original doctrine which, in its primitive and
revealed form, has been known and taught at all times, that is to say,
the doctrine that Christ is, at once, true God and true Man. That one
statement really contains the other three; the other three merely give
us a fuller and a completer grasp of the original one, but tell us
nothing absolutely new.
In a similar manner, and by a similar process, we arrive at a clearer
and more explicit knowledge of other important truths, which were not
at first universally recognised as being contained in the original
deposit. The dogma of Papal infallibility is an instance in point. For
though no Catholic ever doubted the genuine infallibility of the
_Church_, yet in the early centuries, there existed some difference of
opinion, as to _where_ precisely the infallible authority resided.
Most Catholics, even then, believed it to be a gift conferred by
Christ upon Peter himself [who alone is the _rock_], and upon each
Pope who succeeded him in his office, personally and individually, but
some were of opinion that, not the Pope by himself, but only "the
Pope-in-Council," that is to say, the Pope supported by a majority of
Bishops, was to be considered infallible. So that, while _all_
admitted the _Pope with a majority of the Bishops_, taken together, to
be divinely safeguarded from teaching error, yet the prevailing and
dominant opinion, from the very first, went much further, and ascribed
this protection to the Sovereign Pontiff likewise when acting alone
and unsupported. This is so well known, that even the late Mr.
Gladstone, speaking as an outside observer, and as a mere student of
history, positively brings it as a charge against the Catholic Church
that "the Popes, for well-nigh a thousand years, have kept up, with
comparatively little intermission, their claim to dogmatic
infallibility" (_Vat._ p. 28). Still, the point remained unsettled by
any dogmatic definition, so that, as late as in 1793, Archbishop Troy
of Dublin did but express the true Catholic view of his own day when
he wrote: "Many Catholics contend that the Pope, when teaching the
Universal Church, as their supreme visible head and pastor, as
successor to St. Peter, and heir to the promises of special assistance
made to him by Jesus Christ, is infallible; and that his decrees and
decisions in that capacity are to be respected as rules of faith, when
they are dogmatical, or confined to doctrinal points of faith and
morals. Others," the Archbishop goes on to explain, "deny this, and
require the expressed or tacit acquiescence of the Church assembled or
dispersed, to stamp infallibility on his dogmatic decrees." Then he
concludes:--"_Until the Church shall decide_ upon this question of the
Schools, either opinion may be adopted by individual Catholics,
without any breach of Catholic communion or peace."
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