# Petri Privilegium/II/Postscript

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POSTSCRIPT.
When the foregoing Pastoral was already printed, I received from Paris Mgr. Maret's volumes, 'Du Concile Général et de la Paix Religieuse.' I am sorry that I did not see them in time to weigh certain points raised in them before publishing what I have here written.
The Bishop has, however, re-stated so clearly the opinion he maintains, in the preface to his work, that I am at no loss to compare it precisely with the doctrine maintained in this Pastoral.
In making that comparison, I trust I shall use no word at variance with the fraternal charity and respect due from me to Mgr. Maret, both in person and as a brother. He says of his own opinion, which shall be stated in his own words, 'As truth cannot be contrary to itself, this doctrine is easily reconcilable with the doctrines which are the most moderate of the School which bears the name of Ultramontane. What Divine right, what certain right of the Sovereign Pontificate is there, which is not enunciated and defended in our book? The Pontifical infallibility itself is not therein denied, but brought back to its true nature. We acknowledge and prove that the Pope, by his right to consult or to convoke the ​episcopal body, by the possibility in which he is of acting always in concert with it, possesses in virtue of the Divine order the assured means to give infallibility to his dogmatic judgments.'
From this I gather:—
1. That the Pontiff possesses a means of giving infallibility to his judgments.
2. That this means is the right of consulting the episcopal body.
From this it would seem to follow—
1. That, apart from the episcopal body, the Pontiff is not infallible.
2. That consultation with the episcopal body is a necessary condition of giving infallibility to his judgments.
3. That the Pontiff gives infallibility to his judgments by receiving it from the episcopal body, or by his union with it.
If I understand this statement, it denies the infallibility of the Pontiff altogether; for it affirms it only when the Pontiff has given to his judgment what he has received from the episcopal body, or what he cannot have without it.
In this process the words of our Lord seem to be inverted. It is his brethren who confirm him, not he who confirms his brethren.
The endowment of infallibility residing in the body flows to the Head when in consultation with the Episcopate. It is influxus corporis in Caput, not Capitis in corpus.
The doctrine I have maintained in these pages is as follows:—
​1. That the endowment of stability or infallibility in Faith was given to Peter, and from him, according to our Lord's words, confirma fratres tuos, was derived to his brethren.
2. That this endowment, which is again and again called by the Fathers and Councils the 'Privilegium Petri,' or the 'Prærogativa Sedis Petri,' was given in him to his Successors.
3. That the Successor of Peter still 'confirms his brethren' by the possession and exercise of a divine right and endowment, not only of consulting them or of convoking them, but of witnessing, teaching, and judging by a special divine assistance which preserves him, as Universal Teacher in faith and morals, from error.
The office of Peter was not to be confirmed by, but to confirm, his brethren; the same is the office of his Successor, even when apart from convocation or consultation with the Episcopate as a body, whether congregated or dispersed.
In the testimonies I have quoted it is evident that, in virtue of a divine assistance, the dogmatic judgments of the Pontiff ex cathedrâ do not receive from the episcopal body, but give to the Universal Church, an infallible declaration of truth.
I must ask you to review the evidence I have given, in all of which the promise of our Lord, 'I have prayed for thee,' &c., is either expressed or understood; and Peter's privilege of stability in faith is ascribed to his Successor as the inheritance of his See.
Mgr. Maret proceeds to ask, 'Do we contend against ​the authority of judgments ex cathedrâ when we affirm, with the great masters in theology, that there are certainly judgments of that kind only when the Pope employs the most certain means which God gives him to avoid error; that is to say, the concurrence of the bishops?'
If I understand these words, they mean:—
1. That no judgments are certainly ex cathedrâ except when the Pontiff acts with the concurrence of the bishops.
2. That the Pontiff is bound to employ the means which is the most certain to avoid error; namely, the concurrence of the bishops.
The doctrine maintained by me, under the guidance of every great master of theology of all Schools, Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, so far as I know, excepting only theologians of the Gallican school, is, that judgments ex cathedrâ are, in their essence, judgments of the Pontiff, apart from the episcopal body, whether congregated or dispersed. This concurrence of the episcopal body may or may not be united to the act of the Pontiff, which is perfect and complete in itself. It is to the Cathedra Petri, apart from the Episcopate, that the faithful and pastors of all the world throughout Christian history have had recourse. For instance, the condemnation of Pelagianism by Innocent the First, and of Jansenius ​by Innocent the Tenth, were appeals to the Cathedra Petri, and judgments ex cathedrâ, to which the consultation of the African or of the French bishops respectively contributed no influx of infallibility. And those two judgments were regarded as infallible, from the moment of their promulgation, by the whole Church.
If there be no certain judgments ex cathedrâ apart from the episcopal body, what are the judgments of Alexander VIII., Innocent XL, and Pius VI.?
What are the condemnations in the 'Theses Damnatæ?' The episcopal body was not united with the Pontiff in their publication. When did it become so? Till this concurrence was verified, these Pontifical Acts, according to Mgr. Maret's opinion, were not ex cathedrâ, and therefore were not certainly infallible. How long were they in this tentative state of suspended or conditional infallibility? Who has ever discerned and declared the epoch and the crisis after which they became judgments ex cathedrâ? Silence is not enough. Even strong terms of adhesion are not enough. The bishops of France received the condemnation of Jansenius by Innocent X. as infallible in 1653, but in 1682 published the Four Articles.
All this, if I rightly understand it, seems to present an inverted theory, at variance with the tradition, praxis, faith, and theology of the Church.
But further, if the Pontiffs are bound to employ 'the most certain means' to avoid error—namely, the concurrence of the episcopal body—they must either convoke a General Council or interrogate numerically the Episcopate throughout the world. Is ​this an obligation of the divine order? If so, where is it to be read? In Scripture it cannot be looked for. In tradition it is not to be found. In history we have the direct reverse. We find the Pontiffs witnessing, teaching, deciding by the authority of Peter. We find the Episcopate appealing to their judgments as final. We find the faith of Peter, taken not only by the faithful, but also by the bishops, as the rule of faith, and the text of what is to be believed by all the world.
If the concurrence of the Episcopate with its Head be 'the most certain means' of avoiding error, because it is the full, ultimate, and, so to speak, exhaustive act of infallible judgment, nevertheless the privilege of stability in faith divinely granted to the See and Successor of Peter is a certain means of avoiding error; and that certainty, though extensivè it be not adequate to the certainty of the whole Church, which included always the See and Successor of Peter, is nevertheless intrinsically and by divine ordination certain, to the exclusion of the possibility of error.
Why, then, is the Pontiff bound to take 'the most certain means,' when a means divinely certain also exists? And why is he bound to take a means which demands an Œcumenical Council or a worldwide and protracted interrogation, with all the delays and uncertainties of correspondence, when, by the divine order, a certain means in the Apostolic See is always at hand? For instance, was Innocent X. bound to consult the whole episcopal body before he condemned Jansenius? or Alexander VIII., when he condemned the 'Peccatum Philosophicum'? or Sixtus ​IV., when he condemned as heretical the proposition that c the Church of the City of Rome may err'?
It would seem to me that if any such obligation exists, or if declarations ex cathedrâ are only certain when the episcopal body has been consulted, then the action of the Pontiffs, from Innocent I. to Pius IX., has been out of course; and their doctrinal judgments fallible always, except when the Episcopate concurred in them; and for that reason almost always uncertain, because, except in a few cases, we cannot be certain, by explicit proof, whether the episcopal body has concurred in those judgments or no.
I know of no Ultramontane opinion with which this theory can be reconciled. The Ultramontane opinion is simply this, that the Pontiff speaking ex cathedrâ, in faith or morals, is infallible. In this there are no shades or moderations. It is simply aye or no. But the opinion we have been examining affirms the Pontiff to be infallible, only when the episcopal body concurs in his judgments. But if the episcopal body have not pronounced or even examined the subject-matter, as, for instance, in the question of the 'Peccatum Philosophicum,' or in the Jansenistic propositions, or in the questions 'De Auxiliis;' I would ask, are then the judgments of the Pontiff either not ex cathedrâ, or if ex cathedrâ, are they not infallible? But if they are not infallible they may be erroneous, and if the Pontiff in such judgments may err once, he might err always, and therefore cannot ever be infallible. I see no means of reconciling this opinion with that of any Ultramontanes, however moderate. They are frontibus adversis pugnantia. With all my heart, I desire to find a mode ​of conciliation: not a via media, which is the essential method of falsehood, but any intellectual analysis and precise mental conception which might satisfy the mind of Mgr. Maret as to the infallibility of the See and of the Successor of Peter. I cannot but add in passing that much confusion seems to me to arise from this whole notion of 'moderate opinions.'
The Pontifical judgments ex cathedrâ must be either fallible or infallible. If it be immoderate or exaggerated to affirm them to be infallible, how is it not equally immoderate or exaggerated to deny their infallibility? Either way the affirmation and the denial are equally absolute, trenchant, and peremptory. I see just as much, and just as little, moderation in the one as in the other. Either both are moderate or neither. And yet those who affirm the Pontifical infallibility are held up as warnings, and they who deny it as examples; the latter as patterns of mode ration, the former as exaggerated and extreme. But they are both in extremes. Aye and no are equally exclusive, and admit of no degrees.
Is it not the truth that moderation is a quality, not of the intellect but of the moral nature? Certainty admits of no degrees. Doubt may; but certainty excludes doubt and all its gradations. To be moderate, cautious, forbearing, self-mistrusting, and considerate of opponents in all doubtful matters, is a virtue; but in matters that are certain, to fail in saying that they are so, is to betray the truth. To treat certainties as uncertainties in mathematics is not intellectual, in revelation is unbelief. The only moderation possible in matters of theological certainty ​is to speak the truth in charity, ἀλεηθεύειν ἐν ἀγάπῃ; to diminish the precision of truths which are certain, or to suffer them to be treated as dubious, or to veil them by economies, or to modify them to meet the prejudices of men or the traditions of public opinion, is not moderation, but an infidelity to truth, and an immoderate fear, or an immoderate respect for some human authority.
Mgr. Maret further declares: 'We do not combat the Pontifical authority, except so far as it is identified with the system of the pure, indivisible, and absolute monarchy of the Roman Pontiff, and so far as his absolute monarchy and his personal infallibility are made one exclusive whole.'
Once more I am afraid of doing injustice to the Bishop of Sura. If I understand the doctrine which I suppose I must now call Ultramontane, but would rather call, as all the schools of Christendom do, Catholic, it is this—that the supreme and ultimate power, both in jurisdiction and in faith, or the clavis jurisdictionis and the clavis scientiæ, was committed first and for ever to Peter, and in him, as the Council of Florence says, to his Successors. The Episcopate succeeding to the Apostolate received, servatâ proportione, a participation of the pastoral care and of the endowments of the Church. What Peter was to the Apostles, the Pontiffs are to the bishops. What they have in part, he has in plenitude. I am unable to see that the primacy and infallibility of Peter in any way lessened or detracted from the authority and endowments of the Apostles; nor does it appear how the authority and endowment of his ​Successor shall lessen or detract from those of the Episcopate. Bishops are not less authoritative because their Head is more so. Bishops are not less judges of doctrine in an Œcumenical Council because their Head, in the intervals between Council and Council, is, by Divine assistance, guided and sustained so that he shall not err in interpreting the faith and expounding the law of God. It is in behalf of the whole Church, pastors and people, that the Spirit of God preserves from error the Head, on whom all so depend, that an error in his guidance would mislead the whole flock, or break the Divine unity of the Church, or undermine the witness and the magisterium of the universal Church. Bishops are not elevated by the depression of their chief. The least bishop in the world feels himself elevated and strengthened by the belief that the words 'Ego rogavi pro te' were spoken to his Chief and Head, and that, in union with him, and through him, he is confirmed in the infallible faith of Peter. I know of no monarchy pure and absolute beyond this.
To sum up the comparison of these two opinions. The opinion of Mgr. Maret would seem to place the infallibility of the Church in the whole body as its proper residence, and by result in its Head.
The doctrine here maintained is that infallibility was communicated by the Divine Head of the Church to Peter as His visible representative and Vicar upon earth, and through him to his Successors and to the Church for ever.
In virtue of this order the Church is always infallible, both actively in teaching and passively in believing.
​In its active infallibility it is secured from error, whether dispersed, as it is always, throughout the world, or congregated, as it rarely is, in Council. Only eighteen times in eighteen hundred years has it met in Council; but through all those eighteen centuries its active infallibility has been, not intermittent but continuous, both in its Episcopate with its Head, and in its Head as Universal Pastor and Teacher, both of pastors and flock.
The stability, indefectibility, or infallibility of the faith of Peter are three modes of expressing the same Divine fact.
If this be monarchy pure, indivisible, and absolute, then I fear I must come under the author's censure, though I cannot admit its justice or understand its terms. If Mgr. Maret does not intend to condemn this, then, I think, I will even hope that his learned mind has suffered some illusion, perhaps arising from a want of precision in some who are opponents, and from a want of chastened language in those who are about him. I most sincerely and ardently share in his desire to see all divergences corrected in the enunciation of truth, pure, clear, and lucid as the river of the water of life. I have consciously no thought in my heart but to promote this unity of mind and will; and in what I have written, if there be a word to wound save where truth compels it, I hereby record my desire to blot it out.
Stability signifies the immovable firmness of the Faith in standing against all assaults of power and force: indefectibility, the imperishable vitality and light of faith, which can never fail: infallibility, ​the unerring discernment of truth in detecting and destroying falsehood in the midst of the intellectual aberrations of the Christian world. These three endowments are various in their operations, but identical in their nature and their source. It is the perpetual Divine assistance, derived from the perpetual presence of the Spirit of Truth in the Church, which sustains the Faith of the See and of the Successor of Peter, stable, indefectible, and infallible; that is, in one word, 'Yesterday and to-day and the same for ever.'
I do not know how other minds may be affected by the history of Christianity, in which, as I have very briefly shown, the eyes of men and of nations in all lands were always turned to the See and the Successor of Peter as the centre and source of this stable, indefectible, and infallible faith. To me this manifests the 'Privilegium Petri' with the evidence of light. Two hundred and fifty-seven Pontiffs in unbroken line have witnessed, taught, and judged in causes of faith. Against three only do the modern adversaries of the Pontifical infallibility bring charge of heterodoxy. Two hundred and fifty-four stand unchallenged in their immutable stability of faith. Of those three, two, Liberius and Vigilius, are not charged with heresy. Whatever be the fault of Honorius, supineness or hesitation, heterodox he was not; heretical he could not be, for his own letters remain to prove the orthodoxy of his teaching. But these three are all that the most relentless adversaries of the 'Privilegium Petri' have ever been able to adduce. To my mind, these threads of mist upon the ​world-wide splendour of two hundred and fifty-seven Successors of Peter, in no way affect the confidence with which we say of them in S. Leo's words: 'Soliditas enim ilia, quam de Petra Christo etiam ipse Petra factus accepit, in suos quoque se transfudit hæredes;' and of his See in the words of prophecy: 'Thronus ejus sicut sol in conspectu meo et sicut luna perfecta in æternum; et testis in cœlo fidelis.'
* ↑ Du Concile Général et de la Paix Religieuse. Preface, xxvi. vii.
* ↑ Of this I think sufficient proof was given in the Pastoral of 1867. But I may refer to Aguirre, Defensio Cathedræ Petri; Gonzalez, De Infallib. Rom. Pontificis; Schrader, De Unitate Romana; Theoph. Raynaud, Αὐτὸς ἔφα; who expressly prove this point by ample quotations. The words of Peter de Marca, p. 106 supra, are alone enough.
* ↑ Bellarm. De Summo Pontif. lib. iv. cc. viii. to xiv. In die Assumpt. Serm. v. cap. 4.
* ↑ Psalm lxxxviii.