Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility/Chapter 19

by William John Sparrow Simpson

CHAPTER XIX

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."^[1] It is, according to Newman,^[2] 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."

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"^[3] 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."^[4] 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.

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."^[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,^[6] 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,^[7] 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.

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."^[8]

 

Newman, however, lived to be informed that the notion of moral unanimity was a piece of Gallicanism.^[9]

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,^[10] 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.

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?"^[11]

 

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."^[12]

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,^[13] "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."^[14]

 

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.

1. Hurter, Compendium Theol. Dogm. i. p. 283.
2. Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 117.
3. Hurter, i. p. 283.
4. Nineteenth Century (May 1901), p. 742.
5. Ryder, Idealism in Theology, p. 5.
6. Hist. Dogm. v. p. 461.
7. Compendium, i. p. 271ff.
8. Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 98.
9. Postscript, p. 151.
10. Hurter, i. p. 348.
11. Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 13.
12. Lord Halifax, Nineteenth Century (May 1901), p. 741.
13. Idealism in Theology.
14. Idealism in Theology, p. 31.