that Dr. Schulte's very starting-point is unsound and misleading. He assumes, he says, that each individual Catholic Christian must be able, without the intervention of bishop or priest—i. e. without having recourse to any teaching authority in the Church—to recognise at once what is an ex cathedrâ utterance of the Pope; and this 'because each one has to work out his own salvation.'
Were Dr. Schulte to say that his meaning in these words is (even if he has not said so expressly) that every Catholic can by the assistance of the Church's teaching office (i. e. through her bishops and priests) learn what is a Papal utterance ex cathedrâ, and therefore infallible, even in the face of conflicting difficulties, then indeed he would explain and rectify his position; but were he to admit this, then indeed he would certainly arrive at a different result from that at which he has actually arrived.
For the bishops and the priests are quite aware that when there is no authentic explanation of a Papal ex cathedrâ utterance, the Theological Faculty, which has been for centuries engaged upon this question, has to be heard upon the marks of a real utterance; and that in reality the short de fide definition in the Vatican Council in its few words does but contain what the science of Theology has been this long time investigating at great length, with the full knowledge and admission of the difficult questions arising out of the history of ancient times. But we shall look in vain, as Dr. Schulte from his own experience admits, if we wish to find from History or Theology that such Papal utterances are to be recognised, sometimes from the words
