THE INFALLIBILITY DOCTRINE
It is essential to the completeness of our exposition that we should
analyse the doctrine itself which the Vatican Council decreed. The
Vatican affirmation is that, under certain circumstances, the Pope is
infallible, or divinely protected from error in his official utterances
on faith and morals to the whole Church. We will omit for the present
the limitations and confine our attention solely to the Council’s
statement that the Pope’s Infallibility is “that with which God was
pleased to endow His Church.” Thus Papal Infallibility is considered
co-extensive with the Church’s Infallibility.
But what is Infallibility? It does not imply the granting of a new
revelation. It is concerned with the exposition of a revelation already
given. It is not equivalent to Inspiration, such as the Apostles
possessed. It is merely “assistance by which its possessor is not
permitted to err whether in the use of the means for investigating
revealed truth or in proposing truth for human acceptance.”[441] It is,
according to Newman,[442] simply an external guardianship, keeping its
recipient off from error: “as a man’s guardian angel, without enabling
him to walk, might, on a night journey, keep him from pitfalls in his
way.” It is a guardianship saving its recipient “from the effects of
his inherent infirmities, from any chance of extravagance, or confusion
of thought.”
[441] Hurter, _Compendium Theol. Dogm._ i. p. 283.
[442] Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 117.
Any serious study of Infallibility must realise that the question is
only part of a vastly larger subject, namely, the relation of the human
will to the Divine. To describe Infallibility as “an assistance by
which the Church is not permitted to err, whether in the use of the
means for investigating revealed truth, or in proposing truth to man’s
acceptance”[443] is to assume a theory of divine coercion which awakens
some of the profoundest psychological and dogmatic problems. It has
well been said that “two conditions are required for an authoritative
decision: the use of natural means, and a special Providence directing
that use. If the former condition be absent, the latter is simply
impossible.”[444] But what is constantly forgotten in discussions on
Infallibility is this conditional nature of all divine assistance.
It is constantly assumed that the divine assistance will overrule,
even in the absence of compliance with what are acknowledged to be
duties on the part of the recipient. There is an obvious simplicity,
there seems an edifying piety, in saying that this endowment is an
assistance by which the recipient is “not permitted to err.” But this
deliverance from error cannot be independent of the recipient’s will,
and irrespective of his receptivity.
[443] Hurter, i. p. 283.
[444] _Nineteenth Century_ (May 1901), p. 742.
Suppose, for instance, Infallibility to be located in a Council. It
cannot act independently of certain conditions. It might be thwarted by
fear or external constraint. Nor are merely external conditions alone
essential. There must be inward freedom to preserve its own normal
course. Many Roman Catholics complained that the Vatican Council was
so seriously hampered, by regulations imposed upon it from without,
that conciliar freedom was thereby made impossible. The overruling
of a large minority by force of numbers simply shook the faith of
many devoted sons of the Roman Church. They experienced the greatest
difficulty, almost insuperable, in crediting its Infallibility. Yet,
from their point of view, the Council was legitimate in its inception,
and in its constitution ecumenical. Now, if a Council, with such
beginnings, can nevertheless suggest these misgivings to Roman minds,
may not similar misgivings arise over a papal utterance?
Suppose then Infallibility located in a single individual: he must
comply with certain conditions. Are those conditions purely external,
concerned alone with outward formalities? Or do they include moral
qualities and inward state? What is the authority in revelation for
the assertion that a divine assistance so completely overrules a
personality that he is “not permitted to err.” The illustration of
the guardian angel preventing a fall is an illustration of external
coercion, in which the will of the guided has no share. He is simply
upheld in spite of himself. Is this the case with the Pope in the
exercise of his Infallibility? Is the Pope’s capacity to discharge so
awful a function absolutely independent of his moral and spiritual
state? Is there a suspension of the liability to self-will? Does the
personal equation go for nothing? Is it really credible that any
other person placed where Pius was would have said the same? Do the
antecedents, the temperament, the mental furniture, in no way affect
the utterance? Grant as large a margin as we may to the action and
control of this “Divine Assistance,” yet still beyond that margin
must be a residuum where the human individuality comes into play,
and shares in producing the final result. Hence a possibility must
always exist, and it cannot be evaded, that, in a given instance,
notwithstanding compliance with external formalities, the inward
essential conditions were not fulfilled; and consequently the result
was not infallible. Do what you will, it is impossible in human affairs
to avoid this element of insecurity, unless the human instrument be
reduced to a mere mechanism upon which the Spirit plays as it pleases.
I
What then is the Infallibility of the Church? This is precisely what
the Council assumes as known, and does not explain. The Infallibility
of the Church has never been authoritatively defined. It has been
treated, of course, by theologians, but never formulated by the Church.
Hence the minority in the Vatican Council pleaded that this subject
should first be discussed: as indeed the logical order appeared to
demand.
All doctrine on the Church’s Infallibility will vary according as its
basis is purely _à priori_ and theoretical, or historical. These are
the two methods which distinguish all Christian thinking. We may start
from the ideal, and infer that this is what the Almighty must have
created, or we may begin with the actual, and draw our principles from
the facts.
Now the prevalent method in modern Roman theology is the theoretical
as contrasted with the critical and historical. This method is not
confined to certain extremists. It saturates the theological writings
through and through. Starting with an ideal of the divine purposes,
it is assumed that the Almighty must have constituted the Church in
a certain way; that He must have endowed it with certain prerogatives
and certain authorities and certain safeguards and certain supremacies;
because those prerogatives and so forth are, in the writer’s ideal
view, necessary to the Church’s achievement of certain ends. Then with
this ideal already in possession, controlling the imagination, and
determining the mind what it is to discover, advance is made to the
actual, to Scripture and to History; with the result that these are
found to confirm anticipations--not it is true without difficulties,
nor without feats of agility to the bystanders simply amazing, but yet
to the complete satisfaction of the writer’s mind. Nevertheless, the
result is blindness to historical reality. No one has expressed this
better than F. Ryder writing against an extremist in 1867, but in words
which accurately describes a conviction widely prevalent in the Roman
obedience.
“It is notorious that in some minds the craving for ideal
completeness is so strong as to overpower from time to time their
sense of truth, and under the influence of this craving, without any
conscious dishonesty, they are unable to read either in the past or
present world of experience anything but what, according to their
preconceived notions, should be. Such minds, as we might expect, have
a strong instinctive dislike for historical studies.”[445]
[445] Ryder, _Idealism in Theology_, p. 5.
If instead of theoretical inferences from an ideal, we take the
critical and historic way, very different conclusions may be reached
as to Infallibility. If the promises of Christ, “Lo, I am with you
always,” “He shall guide you into all truth,” are interpreted in the
absence of Roman preconceptions, it is evident that they do not
necessarily commit our Lord to the Ultramontane conclusions. They may
mean, they appear to mean, something quite other than that. Indeed
these Ultramontane conceptions appear to be not derived from but read
into them. At any rate what Infallibility exists in Christendom should
be ascertained from the facts of Christian history. An existence of
well-nigh two thousand years must certainly yield a safer basis for
inferences, as to the contents of the promises of Christ, than an _à
priori_ theory of things which seems to us ideal.
The Infallibility of the Church is commonly asserted by Roman writers
to be twofold. It is distinguished as active and passive: corresponding
to the familiar division between the Church as teacher, and the Church
as taught. Active Infallibility is the prerogative of teaching without
liability to mislead. Passive Infallibility is the advantage of being
taught without liability to be misled. Thus for all practical purposes
the Infallibility of the Church would mean the Infallibility of the
Episcopate. The laity being reduced to a position of mere receptivity,
having no active share in the maintenance and perpetuation of Tradition.
Whether this conception is philosophic or historical is alike open
to serious doubt. In the first place, the Church is an organism, a
totality, which cannot be, except in theory, severed into merely
active and merely passive parts. After all, there is such a thing
as the collective Christian consciousness--the mind of the Church,
which overrides all barriers of practical convenience, such as the
distinction between teacher and taught. If history be regarded, it is
impossible to doubt that the laity has been no mere passive recipient,
but largely a controller of forms of devotion; and forms of devotion
are, after all, expressions of the rule of faith. The control which
the laity had exercised over doctrines and creeds and formulas of truth
is historically indisputable. Instances are recorded when it is said
that the heart of the people was truer than the lips of the priests.
II
_The Infallibility of the Episcopate_ has been variously asserted and
denied by Roman theologians since the Vatican Decree. Schwane,[446] for
instance, asserts that the Episcopate assembled in Council possesses
no greater authority than when it is dispersed. Individually they are
not infallible, nor are they so collectively. Hurter,[447] on the
contrary, maintains the opposite view. The Episcopate is the recipient
of Infallibility. The Bishops are heirs to this Apostolic prerogative
because they are the Apostles’ legitimate successors. By the consent
of all antiquity, Bishops are successors of the Apostles. As St Jerome
says: “Bishops occupy among us the Apostles’ place.” Accordingly,
Hurter maintains that the Episcopate is infallible not only when
assembled in Council but also when dispersed; if it teach anything
unanimously as of faith.
[446] _Hist. Dogm._ v. p. 461.
[447] _Compendium_, i. p. 271ff.
This doctrine he bases first on the promises of Christ, which apply
equally to the Episcopate in either condition. Secondly, on the belief
of Antiquity, which regarded a doctrine as heretical if conflicting
with the unanimous consent of the dispersed Episcopate. Many heresies
were condemned, without assembling an Ecumenical Council, simply by
the unanimity of the Bishops. Thirdly, the doctrine is confirmed by
the improbabilities which would follow the other view. For unless the
dispersed Episcopate be infallible it would follow that it has hardly
ever exercised its prerogative, since Ecumenical Councils are very
rare. Moreover, were it only infallible when assembled, its prerogative
would depend for its exercise on permission from the secular powers;
which might, and actually did, prevent their assembling. Hurter,
therefore, teaches the Infallibility of the Episcopate whether
collected or dispersed.
It certainly must be allowed that Hurter’s view is far more helpful
to the papal doctrine than Schwane’s depreciation of the Episcopate.
For, if the Episcopate possesses no Infallibility what becomes of that
Infallibility wherewith, according to the Vatican statement, Christ
has endowed His Church, and with which the prerogative of the Pope
is compared and equalised? It is, of course, no function of ours to
adjust conflicting Roman estimates of episcopal power. But it is of
the greatest interest to all reflective Christian minds to compare the
teachings of to-day with the conceptions of antiquity.
The doctrine of the Infallibility of the Episcopate, when unanimous,
means, if strictly analysed, that each particular Church is summed
up and represented in its chief pastor, who voices the collective
consciousness of his people, and bears witness to the Tradition which
he has inherited and is transmitting. The testimony of the entire
Episcopate when unanimous would naturally represent the Church’s
mind. The Infallibility of the Episcopate could in the nature of the
case only exist on condition of their unanimity. It could not hold
in conflicting testimonies to contrary traditions. Hence the ancient
conviction that the dogmatic decisions of an Ecumenical Council must
of necessity be morally unanimous, otherwise they could not claim
ecumenicity. Few Roman writers of last century have enforced this more
strongly than Dr Newman. After the Vatican Decree he wrote:--
“First, till better advised, nothing shall make me say that a mere
majority in a Council, as opposed to a moral unanimity in itself,
creates an obligation to receive its dogmatic decrees.”[448]
[448] Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 98.
Newman, however, lived to be informed that the notion of moral
unanimity was a piece of Gallicanism.[449]
[449] Postscript, p. 151.
The prevalent Roman theory of to-day is that the decision in General
Councils does not depend on the majority of votes, but always on that
part which sides with the Pope. It has been considered possible that
all the Bishops united in Council without the Pope might be deceived,
and fall into erroneous doctrine. He would then exercise his function
of strengthening his brethren in the faith.
The Roman doctrine is that the Infallibility of Councils does not
depend upon the subsequent consent and acceptance by the Church. Now
many Councils and Assemblies of Bishops have been held in Christendom.
Some are infallible, and some are not. How can we distinguish the
Ecumenical Infallible Council from assemblies which do not possess
this great prerogative? Does it depend upon the presence of the entire
Episcopate? Manifestly not. Several of the Councils acknowledged as
Ecumenical or Universal consisted of a comparatively small proportion
of the entire Episcopate. To this and similar enquiries the modern
Ultramontane returns the answer that the character of a Council depends
neither on its numbers, nor its majorities, nor its acceptance by the
Church; but simply and solely on its endorsement by the Pope.
Now, given the existing condition of Roman developments, the absolutism
of their monarchical system, the practical utility of this answer is
undeniable. But its assumptions are obvious. It assumes the identity
of the Roman Communion and the Catholic Church. It excludes all the
Oriental Churches. Beyond all this is its absolutely unhistoric
character. It is impossible with regard for history to claim that
the ecumenical character of the first four Councils rest on papal
consent and approval. The ancient test of a Council’s ecumenical
and irreversible character was certainly acceptance by the entire
Episcopate. The fragment of the Episcopate which happened to
assemble in any particular place could not of itself give complete
representation to the consciousness of the Universal Church. The
endorsement or approval of the Roman Bishop unquestionably added
great weight; but was certainly not regarded as a substitute for
the authority which a Council acquired from universal endorsement
by the entire Episcopate. Until this acceptance was secured, the
ecumenical infallible character of a Council must, of necessity, remain
uncertain. For the Supreme Council is the Episcopate. And until the
entire Episcopate has given its assent, the Council has not become a
supreme expression of the mind of Christendom. This, of course, is
what the modern Ultramontanes would not admit. It would not agree with
the modern condensation and embodiment of all authority in a single
individual Bishop at Rome. But it is the doctrine of antiquity, and it
is that maintained by all the Oriental Churches.
The substitution of papal endorsement for episcopal unanimity as
the test of an Ecumenical Council can only be termed a tremendous
revolution in the constitution of the Catholic Church.
III
The Infallibility of the Pope is no mere isolated dogma, separable
from a system without detriment to the remainder: it is the final
conclusion and crown of a theory of absolute authority; the completion
of a whole process of centralisation of power in the hands and control
of a monarchy. It is significant to note that the three theories which
assign Infallibility to the Church, to the Episcopate, to the Pope,
are respectively democratic, aristocratic, monarchical. The Roman
instinct, the Imperial tendency, has shown itself in grasping, with an
undeniable tenacity and grandeur of conception, the monarchical view.
The whole drift of Roman development for centuries had been towards
centralisation. Power after power became gradually appropriated and
placed under the exclusive control of the central rule. Often this
was done with the full consent, even at the instigation of the ruled.
It was at times prompted by their loyalty and devotion. At other
times it was reluctantly yielded to an authority which men had not
the power to resist. Out of all this accumulation of prerogatives a
speculative theory of primacy naturally grew. Texts were quoted in
defence, but they are not really the basis: nor is it possible by any
rigorous interpretation to derive the theory out of them. No mind
which was a stranger to the historic Roman evolution could arrive at
the Ultramontane conclusions. We may take exposition of the giving of
the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven as an example. And we quote it more
especially because Hurter’s compendium is the seminarist’s guide _par
excellence_. In its theories thousands of the Roman priesthood have
been, and are being trained. The keys of the kingdom, says Hurter,
signify authority; full authority in the matter which the keys concern.
The keys of a city, consigned to a victor, symbolise absolute control
of what is therein. The keys of a house, entrusted to a servant by
the master, make him the dispenser to all within the house. The keys
bestowed on Peter signify the full power of jurisdiction over the
Universal Church. For He who bestows them possesses all power in heaven
and earth. And “whatsoever” signifies power supreme, independent,
universal, unlimited. Now mankind may be bound in three respects: law,
sin, and penalty. Consequently this “whatsoever” must be a promise of
plenary power of three kinds: legislative, power to bind; judicial,
power in regard to sin; coercive, power to punish. Now such a primacy
as this, urges Hurter,[450] not unnaturally, requires Infallibility.
If the Roman Pontiff possesses authority it is in order to secure
unity in the truth. If so, he ought to possess the means to that end.
He ought to have the power to require not only external deference but
internal assent to his teaching. Unless he has this authority he cannot
prevent disagreement. For where there is no obligation to assent there
is permission to disagree. Moreover, he must have authority universal
over every individual. Otherwise how can he maintain the Church in
unity? Now to do all this he ought to be infallible. He cannot require
internal assent to his teachings unless he is. He cannot discharge
the functions which Hurter assigns him without it. He must possess an
absolute final irreversible power to define and demand the submission
of conscience, and this entirely independently of the Church’s consent.
[450] Hurter, i. p. 348.
So the mighty fabric becomes theoretically complete. The actual
concentration of power at Rome requires to be justified. To justify
it there must be added the further endowment of Infallibility. He
ought to have it, therefore he has. Can anything better illustrate
the craving after systematic completeness than this the marvellous
construction of an ideal of absolute authority, for which the attribute
of Infallibility appears logically necessary, to make the stupendous
system quite complete?
The relation of the Pope’s Infallibility to that of the entire
Episcopate has been left by the Vatican Decision in great confusion.
It may, of course, be said that time has not yet elapsed sufficient
to allow a proper readjustment of various truths. It appears to be
still acknowledged that all antiquity is committed to belief in the
Infallibility of the entire Episcopate, whether assembled or dispersed.
It appears to be also affirmed that the Pope alone is infallible
whatever the Bishops may think. If the Pope’s authority can render the
minority infallible, what becomes of the Infallibility of the entire
Episcopate?
The question which Newman puts in the mouths of the Irish Bishops of
1826 is greatly to the point:--
“How,” they would ask, “can it ever come to pass that a majority
of our order should find it their duty to relinquish their prime
prerogative, and to make the Church take the shape of a pure
monarchy?”[451]
[451] Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 13.
The real effect of the Vatican Decree upon the entire Episcopate is to
deprive them of their prime prerogative. The Collective Episcopate is
not for the modern Roman the ultimate voice of the Church. But for the
ancients, for the contemporaries of St Vincent of Lerins, for instance,
this is exactly what it was. The fierceness of the struggle in the
Vatican was due to a consciousness that it was a struggle for existence
between two antagonistic conceptions of ecclesiastical authority--the
episcopal and the papal. The victory of absolute monarchy has reduced
the Episcopate to a shadow of its primitive self. The entire Episcopate
of the Roman obedience may indeed now be assembled as listeners to the
one infallible voice; but their prime prerogative has been transferred
to another, and lost to themselves. The Vatican Decree indeed
maintains the paradox that exclusive papal authority enhances that of
the Bishops; and, without conscious irony, appeals to the language
of Gregory the Great: “Then am I truly honoured when others are not
denied the honour due to them.” But Gregory said this when repudiating
a title which would have exalted him above his fellow Bishops. Pius
IX. repeated it precisely when asserting a prerogative which exalts
him to a height of unapproachable isolation. Henceforth the submissive
Episcopate will accept what the lonely voice affirms. They will add to
his Infallibility the lustre of their deference and obedience. But they
will add nothing whatever to the intrinsic character of his decision.
For, according to the new Decree, he is infallible independently of the
Bishops and in spite of them. They may add, as it has been admirably
said, a certain pomp and solemnity to the papal definitions, but they
can in no wise affect their validity. “They are but as the assistants
at High Mass, who contribute in no way to the essence of the sacrifice
or sacrament.”[452]
[452] Lord Halifax, _Nineteenth Century_ (May 1901), p. 741.
When Papal Infallibility is considered in relation to the Church at
large it is obvious that it presents a wholly different object for
their contemplation. Infallibility viewed as residing in an entire
Community, or as expressed by the entire Episcopate of the Catholic
Church, makes an utterly different impression on the believing mind.
There is a certain vagueness, an almost impersonal character, in a
distributed Infallibility, quite different from that embodied in a
single individual. This has been admirably expressed by Father Ryder
in a passage, which although published three years before the Vatican
Council, has not lost its force and applicability.
“Theologians,” wrote Father Ryder,[453] “would not be anxious to add
the same qualifications when speaking of the Church’s Infallibility”
[_i.e._, as when speaking of that of the Pope] “for the obvious
reason that though as Ultramontanes they might hold that as regards
pronouncements _de fide_, the Pope was on an equality with the Church
in Council, they had no idea of denying that the Church possesses
an Infallibility, not merely when she puts on her robes of prophecy
but inherent in her very vital action, which the Pope by himself
does not; that as Perrone says ... clearly speaking of the Church
dispersed, she is our infallible guide _viva voce et praxi_, which
the Pope is not; that the human authority of the Church, founded
on numbers, holiness, wisdom, etc., being infinitely greater than
the human authority of a Pope, who need be neither wise nor holy;
the Church might settle without provoking doubt, and still less
opposition, a number of border questions, which the Pope could
not. The Ultramontane theologians had narrowed the base, so to
speak, of ecclesiastical authority; they had made it centre in an
individual, subject to numberless accidents of individual temper and
circumstance; and therefore it was of vital importance that they
should distinguish sharply the Divine from the human element, the
objects as to which they claimed for the Pope certain Infallibility,
from those as to which they could not prove that he was not fallible.
They had to meet numberless historical objections, plausible at
least, grounded upon the apparent mispronouncements of Popes in
_materiâ fidei_, and they dared not undertake the defence of more
than it was necessary for their position to defend, or than they
could defend satisfactorily.”[454]
[453] _Idealism in Theology._
[454] _Idealism in Theology_, p. 31.
This passage draws out with remarkable force the distinction between
the Infallibility of an institution and that of an individual. It
raises the question whether the two can ever really be entirely
identical in scope. It therefore suggests that uncertainties attend
upon the Vatican statement of their equivalency. Can the Infallibility
of a world-wide Communion be the same as that embodied in a single
individual? Certainly in any case the impression created upon the
devout by the one cannot be the same as that created by the other. Men
will inevitably expect and demand from an individual Infallibility what
they will never dream of acquiring from a collective.