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THE INFALLIBILITY DOCTRINE
[CHAP.
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,[1] "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
- ↑ Idealism in Theology.
