Pope ex cathedrâ; and when he asserts that such definitions must be recognisable as such by objective practical marks, this also is, in a certain sense, true. But when he draws his two conclusions—first, there is an utterance ex cathedrâ whenever the Roman Pontiff utters definitions on faith or morals, and requires that they should be regarded as the teaching of the Church; and secondly, this is made known sometimes directly by the words used, sometimes by attendant circumstances, and sometimes by the very definition itself—then of these two statements of his, the first is true, and the second is false, and the source of many errors.
For it is in this second proposition that Dr. Schulte has set those objective practical marks, as he calls them, whereby a Papal definition has to be recognised as an ex cathedrâ utterance. He gives three such objective marks, of which sometimes the first, sometimes the second, sometimes the third, will tell us the will of the Pope as to what we should regard as the teaching of the Church; that is, it is sometimes the words used by the Pope, sometimes the circumstances, sometimes the very definition itself; that is, the subject-matter or objectum of the definition, his meaning being, when the definition refers to faith or morals in the widest sense of the words.
Here, then, it is, in these so-called objective marks, whereby Papal ex cathedrâ utterances are supposed to be recognisable, that the dangerous error commences, error which our opponent proceeds to develop further throughout the whole course of his pamphlet.
It will hardly surprise any one who has perused Dr. Schulte's explanatory Preface to his work to be told
