others have reached me which will afford me the opportunity I desire, both of illustrating and of defending the position I have taken in my pamphlet. A Vienna reviewer, amidst some cavils which have no great point in them, thus expresses himself: 'The sum and substance of the matter on which, according to Schulte, all depends is the question "Whether the dogma of Papal Infallibility really reaches to that extent which he assigns to it?" The principle here involved Fessler does not contest with his opponent; he admits that not only all future but all earlier utterances of Popes, if they have been made ex cathedrâ in the sense already explained, have a claim to the privilege of Infallibility.'
This is true, of course; but then what this reviewer designates as the bone of contention between myself and Dr. Schulte, and wherein he says I admit Dr. Schulte's 'principle,' is really no question or bone of contention at all between us. On this point the supporters as well as the adversaries of Papal Infallibility are agreed, viz., that the definition upon the Infallible teaching office of the Roman Pontiff comprehends all former as well as all future Popes. No one whatever in the Vatican Council has been guilty of the theological absurdity of wishing to define that only Pius IX. and his successors were infallible, to the exclusion of all former Popes. The question at issue is quite of a different kind. It is whether the definition de fide of the Vatican Council upon the Infallible teaching office of the Roman Pontiff extends to all the different expressions which a Pope may ever casually have uttered, either as Briefs or
