Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, is, by the divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals; and that, therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, irreformable.[1]
But if anyone—which may God avert!—presume to contradict this our definition, let him be anathema.
Given at Rome in public session, solemnly held in the Vatican Basilica in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy, on the eighteenth day of July, in the twenty-fifth year of our Pontificate.
In conformity with the original.
JOSEPH, BISHOP OF ST POLTEN,
Secretary to the Vatican Council.
- ↑ In the words used by Pope Nicholas I, note 13, and in the Synod of Quedlinburg, A.D. 1085, "It is allowed to none to revise its judgement, and to sit in judgement upon what it has judged." —Labbe, vol. XII, p. 679.
