Page:True and False Infallibility of Popes.pdf/47

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The True and the False

myself the responsibility of the deed.' In such matters assuredly the responsibility which another person takes upon himself, will in no wise avail me before God. In this sense, then, the proposition is true. But if any one wishes to extend the application of this proposition, so as to say that I must not accept a Catholic doctrine on faith when the teaching Church declares it to be of faith, because I myself do not find the doctrine in Scripture, the Fathers, or other genuine ancient sources of Church doctrine, then this proposition is used in a false sense, by the substitution of the act of the individual's subjective belief for the objective truth declared by the Church, which truth is based upon the infallible teaching office of the holy Catholic Church. What an amazing difference, then, is there between these two propositions! In the one case, a man offers to bear for another the consequences of an act of everyday life, be it of belief or unbelief, be it of a good or bad action, and, in the other case, a Catholic Christian, relying on the authority of the teaching Church, on which God has Himself taught him to rely, 'he that heareth you heareth Me,' accepts a doctrine as a truth revealed by God, because the teaching Church, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit, has declared it to be so. If a man is not to be required to believe such a declaration as this, then all difference between an infallibly teaching Catholic Church and Protestantism in all its forms, with the unlimited right of private judgment, is at an end. Assuredly he says truly, 'God will some time call everyone to a reckoning for his conduct during life.' Certainly He will call our once-Catholic opponent, and will say to him, 'I gave