# Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility/Chapter 20

CHAPTER XX
WHERE ARE THE INFALLIBLE DECISIONS?
Nearly forty years have elapsed since the recognition of the Infallibility of the head of that vast Communion. The dogma was pushed through admittedly to enable authority to meet by the rapidity of its decisions the speed of modern life. Authority, however, with admirable discretion, has not once availed itself of its newly decreed prerogative within the last fifty years. Since Pius IX. expired, authority has spoken many times; but never once on the levels of unalterable decree. Certainly this development of history is very different from the future, as the advocates of 1870 pictured it. The practical utility of the new Decree has been, if any, purely retrospective, historic. It applies, according to the Roman theologians, to utterances prior to that decision, not since. What the future may produce it is impossible to say. Whether a long series of supreme irreversible pronouncements are yet to issue, or whether the supreme prerogative will be kept in abeyance is a speculative enquiry of the greatest interest.
It has been the function of Roman writers, since the passing of the Vatican Decree, to apply the definition as a test to the papal utterances of nineteen hundred years, in order to ascertain which of those utterances comply with its requirements; which of those are ​infallible, and which are not. The prerogative must, of course, if true to-day be true of all the Christian centuries. Infallibility must be co-extensive with the existence of the Papacy. Consequently the papal utterances of all history must be sifted and classified in accordance with the Vatican Definition. It remains therefore for us to ascertain from Roman writers the outcome of their research, and to learn from them upon what precise occasions they consider that a Pope has complied with the conditions necessary to give his pronouncement this supreme unalterable authority.
I
The conditions required to make a papal utterance infallible are variously described. Bishop Fessler, who as Secretary of the Vatican Council, may be presumed, as being the Pope's selection, to have understood the papal mind, and whose position indisputably afforded him peculiar, if not unique, advantages, has laid it down that the tests of an infallible papal utterance are two. The first is that the subject-matter must be a doctrine of faith or morals; the second, that the Pope must express his intention, by virtue of his supreme teaching power, of declaring this particular doctrine a component part of the truth necessary to salvation revealed by God, and as such to be held by the whole Church. This was Secretary Fessler's declaration almost immediately after the Decision, and published expressly to reassure and conciliate the alarmed and offended.
More usually in recent Roman theological works the conditions are somewhat more elaborately analysed as being four in number.
​1. First, as concerns the utterer. He must speak as Pope, and not as a theologian. That is he must exercise his supreme authority over Christians.
2. Secondly, as to the substance of the utterance. It must be a doctrine of faith or morals.
3. Thirdly, concerning the form of the utterance. It must not be merely advice or warning, but dogmatic definition. It must definitely intend to terminate a controversy, and to pronounce a final sentence upon it.
4. Finally, as to the recipients. While it need not necessarily be addressed to all believers, and may indeed be directed to a single individual, yet it must be virtually intended for every member of the Universal Church; because it is defining something essential to be believed.
These four restrictions which appear to be generally acknowledged more or less by Roman writers, are obviously very powerful sifters of papal decrees. They exclude wholesale entire classes of papal utterances from possessing any sort of claim to the supreme authority.
Thus, for example, one theologian says:—
"Neither in conversation, nor in discussion, nor in interpreting Scripture or the Fathers, nor in consulting, nor in giving his reasons for the point which he has defined, nor in answering letters, nor in private deliberations, supposing he is setting forth his own opinion, is the Pope infallible."
Fessler himself excludes from the range of Infallibility: papal actions in general, for actions are not utterances; all that the Popes have said in daily life; books of which they may be the authors; ordinary letters; utterances of Popes either to individuals or to the whole Church, even in their solemn rescripts, made by virtue ​of their supreme power of jurisdiction in issuing disciplinary laws or judicial decrees. None of these, according to Bishop Fessler, are dogmatic papal definitions or utterances of infallible authority.
Newman appears to have thought that Fessler's tendency was to underrate the Vatican Decree.
"Theological language," wrote Newman, "like legal, is scientific, and cannot be understood without the knowledge of long precedent and tradition, nor without the comments of theologians. Such comments time alone can give us. Even now Bishop Fessler has toned down the newspaper interpretations (Catholic and Protestant) of the words of the Council, without any hint from the Council itself to sanction him in doing so."
Newman, however, did not apparently consider Fessler's statements just quoted as a case of under- estimation, for in the following year he himself gave a similar restriction of the range of Infallibility.
"Even when the Pope is in the Cathedra Petri, his words do not necessarily proceed from his Infallibility. He has no wider prerogative than a Council, and of a Council Perrone says: 'Councils are not infallible in the reasons by which they are led, or on which they rely in making their definition, nor in matters which relate to persons, nor to physical matters which have no necessary connection with dogma.'
"Supposing a Pope has quoted the so-called works of the Areopagite as if really genuine, there is no call on us to believe him; nor, again, when he condemned Galileo's Copernicanism, unless the earth's immobility has a 'necessary connection with some dogmatic truth,' which the present bearing of the Holy See towards that philosophy virtually denies."
​"And again his Infallibility is not called into exercise unless he speaks to the whole world; for if his precepts, in order to be dogmatic, must enjoin what is necessary to salvation, they must be necessary for all men. Accordingly … orders to particular countries or classes of men have no claim to be the utterances of his Infallibility."
This treatment of the Vatican Decree is an exercise of what Newman calls "the principle of minimising," which he considers "so necessary for a wise and cautious theology."
A still further condition is introduced by Newman to qualify the character of papal decisions. There is the doctrine of intention. The Pope, urges Newman,
"could not fulfil the above conditions of an ex cathedra utterance if he did not actually mean to fulfil them. … What is the worth of a signature if a man does not consider what he is signing? The Pope cannot address his people East and West, North and South, without meaning it; … nor can he exert his apostolical authority without knowing that he is doing so; nor can he draw up a form of words and use care, and make an effort in doing so accurately, without intention to do so."
Newman himself applied this principle of intention to the case of Honorius.
"And therefore no words of Honorius proceeded from his prerogative of infallible teaching, which were not accompanied with the intention of exercising that prerogative."
That, of course, must apply to every individual for whom the infallible prerogative is claimed. The ​classification of papal utterances is accordingly involved in the doctrine of intention. It will be necessary in every case to ascertain what the Pope's intentions were. Now of all intricate and desperately difficult problems none surpass the doctrine of intention. No wonder then if there will be discordant verdicts among the theologians, and a large element of insecurity.
II
Following upon this analysis of the theoretical conditions requisite for infallible utterances comes the practical enquiry, to what particular papal decrees do these conditions really apply? Upon what precise occasions did the Pope bestow upon the Church the advantages of his Infallibility? This is a question upon which theologians are much more reticent. They deal at considerable length with the necessary conditions which such an utterance would require, but many among them refrain from all practical application. They do not indicate which among the immense collections of papal documents really possesses this supreme distinction. Newman, indeed, says that the Pope "has for centuries upon centuries had and used that authority which the Definition now declares ever to have belonged to him." According to this assertion the Pope has not only possessed this power, but "used it." The implication appears to be that since he has possessed it for centuries upon centuries he has used it frequently. Newman, however, quotes with approval the statement that "the Papal Infallibility is comparatively seldom brought into action." Indeed, he himself observes:—
"Utterances which must be received as coming from an Infallible Voice are not made every day, indeed they are very rare; and those which are by some persons affirmed or assumed to be such, do not always turn out what they are said to be."
Fessler again speaks of "the form … which the Pope usually adopts when he delivers a solemn definition de fide." And yet the result of his application of the tests of an infallible utterance is that he "finds only a few."
To be still more precise. There is no unanimity as to occasions when an infallible decree was given. Many writers on Infallibility give no list at all. Those who attempt it differ widely, but agree in regarding them as excessively few. The Secretary of the Vatican Council tells us that he found only a few, but he did not tell us which they are. This is perfectly intelligible. He wrote in the same year in which the Decree was made, and certainly there had been no time to investigate or apply the tests with any assurance of accuracy; and it was most prudent and commendable not to attempt the dangerous task of committing himself to a definite list which might sooner or later have been overthrown. As Newman said: "Those which are by some persons affirmed or assumed to be such, do not always turn out what they are said to be." More recent writers have felt themselves justified by lapse of time in indicating which the infallible utterances are. Whether on Roman principles the time has really come for indicating them with any confidence may be open to question. The varieties in the lists would seem to suggest a negative. They appear to vary from eight ​instances down to one. Of course the compilers of the lists may contend that their researches are not yet completed. The investigation of utterances extending over well-nigh two thousand years may well require considerable time. The judgment may be regarded as still in suspense. But so far as lists are given us they vary within the limits already stated.
Cardinal Franzelin, writing in 1875, gives some examples of utterances whose Infallibility he regards as certain. They are four in number.
1. The Dogmatic Constitutions of the Council of Constance against Wiclif and Hus, confirmed by Martin V.
2. The Constitution exsurge of Leo X. against Luther.
3. The Constitution of Clement XI. against the Jansenists—the Bull Unigenitus.
4. The Constitution Auctorem Fidei of Pius VI. against the Synod of Pistoia; wherein many prepositions are condemned with various degrees of censure.
Franzelin by no means limits Infallibility to these four utterances. But these are all that he gives as illustrations of its exercise. And of these he says with perfect confidence: "It is not lawful for any Catholic to deny that these are infallible definitions."
A more recent writer, Lucien Choupin, repeats Franzelin's list, and gives four other utterances in addition:—
1. The Decree of the Immaculate Conception.
2. The Dogma of Papal Infallibility.
Pius IX. is affirmed to have infallibly decreed his own Infallibility.
​It is noteworthy that Choupin's two chief instances belong to the pontificate of Pius IX. Historical research enables the same writer to add two more.
3. The condemnation of the five propositions of Jansen by Innocent X. in 1653.
4. The Constitution of Benedict XII. in 1336.
This last affirms that departed saints who need no further cleansing possess an immediate intuitive vision of the divine nature.
To these many theologians, says Choupin, add the Encyclical Quanta Cura of Pius IX. in 1864.
On the other hand, Carson in his Reunion Essays says:—
"These four conditions so narrow the extent of the Petrine prerogative that it is difficult to point with certainty to more than one, or at most two, papal pronouncements, and declare them, with the consent of all, to be infallible.
"The Bull Ineffabilis Deus, defining the Immaculate Conception, may be considered, as we have seen, to be a definition of doctrine about whose Infallibility there cannot well be any question. The tome of Pope Leo the Great on the Incarnation, sent by him to the Council of Chalcedon, and accepted by the assembled fathers as the echo of Peter's voice, may perhaps be placed on the same footing. Beyond these two ecumenical utterances on points of doctrine, we cannot assert with any assurance that the prerogative of Papal Infallibility has been exercised from the day of Pentecost to the present time."
Certainly if the intrinsic value of a document be any witness to its Infallibility no papal utterance has better claim to be an instance of that stupendous prerogative than the famous letter of Leo the Great ​to Flavian. But yet some theologians omit it from their list of Infallibility, and here a writer who inserts it as one of two can only do so with a hesitating "perhaps." Remembering the theological defences of Leo's letter we can see the reason for this uncertainty. Theologians have felt themselves constrained by the historic facts to admit that the Council of Chalcedon examined the contents of Leo's letter, and, that having satisfied themselves of its character, they then proceeded to endorse it, and to declare that Peter spoke by Leo. But this procedure is not thinkable in the case of an infallible document. Accordingly it was supposed that Leo never meant to speak infallibly, but only to suggest the lines upon which the Council should proceed. But this defence removed the letter from the region of inerrable authority. Hence the most that could be said about it was a mere perhaps.
The question has to be faced, What authority do these lists of infallible utterances possess? They possess the authority of the various theologians who have compiled them. But they possess no more than that authority. No infallible list of infallible utterances has yet appeared. And surely whatever theories men may invent, it must still be true that the only final way to determine whether a papal utterance be infallible is whether it has secured the consent of the Church.
It is, of course, acknowledged by Roman writers, that after a careful application of the four tests it may still be disputed, and still remain uncertain whether the particular utterance is or is not a case of Infallibility. In this event the rule must be that, so long as any uncertainty exists, after serious enquiry, there is no infallible decision. Fessler, however, adds that where uncertainty remains, the subordinate authorities will ​ask the highest authority what his intention was in such an utterance. If the utterer expires before answering, Fessler does not inform us what the enquirer is to do. Is a subsequent Pope an infallible judge of his predecessor's intentions? This we are not told. Fessler's translator, however, adds a remark of considerable importance.
"Of course Bishop Fessler is here understood as meaning that this fresh explanation of the definition must be provided with all the marks which are necessary to prove the presence of a real definition."
III
Our study of the subject may be closed with a few reflections.
What impresses us perhaps chiefly is the meagreness of the result. Upon this point Newman observed:—
"It has been objected to the explanation I have given … of the nature and range of the Pope's Infallibility as now a dogma of the Church, that it was a lame and impotent conclusion of the Council, if so much effort was employed as is involved in the convocation and sitting of an Ecumenical Council in order to do so little. True if it were called to do what it did and no more; but that such was its aim is a mere assumption. In the first place it can hardly be doubted that there were those in the Council who were desirous of a stronger definition; and the definition actually made, as being moderate, is so far the victory of those many bishops who considered any definition on the subject inopportune. And it was no slight point of the proceedings in the Council, if a definition was to be, to have effected a moderate definition. But the true answer to the objection is that which is given by Bishop Ullathorne. The question of the Pope's Infallibility ​was not one of the objects professed in condemning the Council; and the Council is not yet ended."
The moderate character of the Definition which Newman notes is indeed conspicuous, when compared with the extravagant statements of Manning and Ward, of Veuillot and the Univers.
An Infallibility, whose range is possibly limited to one solitary utterance in nineteen hundred years, is very different from the ideal of perpetual irreversible decisions of almost daily occurrence as described by Ward. Very different also from rapid termination of controversies which Manning considered so necessary to our progressive age. And there is reason to believe that the decision, although at first accepted by the Extremists with the wildest joy, was on maturer reflection viewed with considerable disappointment.
But this moderation has recently been viewed as a sign of truth. Certainly Manning would never have argued that it was. A via media between two extremes, upheld as ideal, would have been, indeed it was, Manning's detestation.
And if the Vatican Decree is moderate relatively to a school of extravagance, it is no less stupendous relatively to a school of antiquity. Judged by the conceptions of St Vincent of Lerins the dogma is not moderate, it is most extreme. If some who anticipated and feared something much more pronounced acquiesced in the actual dogma with comparative relief, a very different estimate will be formed by those whose standard of moderation is the doctrine of antiquity.
If the total advantage hitherto reaped from Papal Infallibility be compared with that which the Church has gained from its Ecumenical Councils, the balance ​is heavily on the side of the more ancient method of ascertaining and formulating Christian tradition. Whatever the solitary Infallible Voice may pronounce in the future, it has done exceedingly little in the past, even on Roman estimates. Those who consider the Immaculate Conception the only instance of an irreversible papal decision can scarcely deny that no comparison exists between this and the work of the Council of Nicæa. This is, of course, no argument against its truth. It is not for a moment produced with that design. But it is an argument against the value of numerous pretexts which instigated many of the most influential personages who helped to push this doctrine through. It shows that they were controlled by totally erroneous conceptions. It shows much more than this. The familiar controversial statements that the early Popes could not have spoken as they did, had they not been conscious that they possessed Infallibility, and a right accordingly to demand unconditional interior submission, and intellectual assent, are shown by Roman interpretation of the Vatican Dogma to be absolutely valueless. And all this shows that a profound confusion has existed in Roman minds between Authority and Infallibility. If this distinction had been sharply realised, many of the arguments by which the doctrine was unsupported could never have been employed.
The meagreness of the issue is in curious contrast with the magnitude of the battle, and the tremendous character of the affirmation. The question can hardly be evaded, Was it really in the Church's interest to impose belief in a prerogative whose exercise is admittedly so uncertain? Is it permissible to be a Roman Catholic while affirming that Papal Infallibility has never yet been exercised? If it is, Where is the ​dogmatic gain? If it is not, Where are the indisputable decisions? And what is its practical utility? Its strongest advocates, as Manning, so Roman writers themselves affirm, viewed the subject rather as statesmen than as theologians. They upheld it, not so much for theoretic completeness, as because it would strengthen the Church's resources, and enable it the better to meet the age. And yet the prerogative has never since been utilised.
The practical effect so far has been to alienate more grievously than ever the separated Churches of the East. Was this in the real interests of Christendom? It may be that, somewhat exhausted by this terrific strife, authority is recruiting itself, and will some day utilise its new prerogative with tremendous results; that it is meanwhile treasuring up its new resources against a day of need. But so far as the historic development has hitherto advanced, it is a theoretic rather than a practical victory. It possesses all the intellectual problems of a new, precarious, and bewildering dogma, without the practical gains of a prerogative manifestly and constantly utilised in the service of mankind.
* ↑ Fessler, True and False Infallibility, p. 51.
* ↑ Billuart, ii. p. 110.
* ↑ Fessler, p. 65.
* ↑ Letter in 1874. Life of De Lisle, ii. p. 42.
* ↑ Letter to Duke of Norfolk, pp. 115, 116.
* ↑ Newman, Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 120.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 120.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 108.
* ↑ Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 128.
* ↑ Ibid. p. 125.
* ↑ Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 81.
* ↑ Fessler, p. 92.
* ↑ Ibid, p. 53.
* ↑ Franzelin, De Traditione, p. 123.
* ↑ Valeur des Decisions Doctrinales et Disciplinaires du Saint-Siège (1908).
* ↑ Denzinger, Encheiridior, § 456.
* ↑ Carson's Reunion Essays, p. 91.
* ↑ Hurter, i. p. 407.
* ↑ Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 154.