declared the theory that the Blessed Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived to be a dogma of the Church. This theory rejected—by St Bernard and by St Thomas, "a thesis of a theological school of the Middle Ages" opposed by the Dominican order—was pronounced by Pius, on his sole authority, not with the concurrence of a Council of Christendom, to be of faith. And to this decree the entire Roman Communion submitted. No such act had occurred in the Church before. And although this act could bear constructions not involving Infallibility, for the Gallican might ascribe its validity to the tacit consent of the Church, yet it powerfully promoted the Infallibility view; and it was constantly appealed to as a practical exercise of infallible authority and a justification for the Vatican Decrees of 1870.
Thus, if the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Church as opposed to that of the Pope was formerly the prevalent belief in France, as the independence of the Church of France diminished, the authority of Rome increased. The pressure of episcopal authority over the priests led the latter to magnify the distant authority of the Pope as a balance to local control; and while the Bishops resented, the priests desired an increase of papal power. Meanwhile the Roman See, wherever practicable, filled places of influence with Ultramontanes. The whole weight of the Jesuit teaching was thrown unitedly, persistently, and with tremendous force, in all these schools into the scale of Infallibility.
