bility which we have shown above to be necessary to and belong to the Church by divine institution."[1]
Thus what was formerly denounced as a Protestant invention is now affirmed as a Catholic truth.
The earlier revisers of Keenan's Catechism contented themselves with quiet substitution of the new doctrine for the old without further explanation. But the later revisers have felt that something more was necessary to justify the change. Accordingly they inserted the following:—
"(Q.) But some Catholics before the Vatican Council denied the Infallibility of the Pope, which was also formerly impugned in this very Catechism.
(A.) Yes; but they did so under the usual reservation—'in so far as they then could grasp the mind of the Church, and subject to her future definitions'—thus implicitly accepting the dogma; had they been prepared to maintain their own opinion contumaciously in such case they would have been Catholics only in name."
That is to say, that teaching endorsed by Catholic Bishops is delivered under the reservation that the opposite may be true; that this is the usual reservation, applicable therefore to all Episcopal teaching; that no certainty exists in the Roman Communion whether instruction now being given as Catholic may not be upset and reversed by some future definition; (in which case what is its authoritative value and its relation to truth?) and that the Roman Bishops who endorsed Keenan's first edition implicitly accepted the dogma which they explicitly denied. I am most anxious not to exaggerate. But this seems an intellectual and a moral confusion. There is something wrong with a cause which requires such a defence.
- ↑ Page 111.
