A world addicted to democratic ideals is easily horrified at the idea of an “infallible” human being.
“It must be easy,” so the popular argument runs, “to administer this big institution when it is enough for one man to say that a thing is so to have all the others fall upon their knees and shout amen and obey him.”
It is extremely difficult for one brought up in Protestant countries to get a correct and fair view of this rather intricate subject. But if I am not mistaken, the “infallible” utterances of the supreme pontiff are as rare as constitutional amendments in the United States.
Furthermore, such important decisions are never reached until the subject has been thoroughly discussed and the debates which precede the final verdict often rock the very body of the Church. Such pronunciamentos are therefore “infallible” in the sense that our own constitutional amendments are infallible, because they are “final” and because all further argument is supposed to come to an end as soon as they have been definitely incorporated into the highest law of the land.
If any one were to proclaim that it is an easy job to govern these United States because in case of an emergency all the people are found to stand firmly behind the Constitution, he would be just as much in error as if he were to state that all Catholics who in supreme matters of faith recognize the absolute authority of their pope are docile sheep and have surrendered every right to an opinion of their own.
If this were true, the occupants of the Lateran and the Vatican palaces would have had an easy life. But even the most superficial study of the last fifteen hundred years will show the exact opposite. And those champions of the reformed faith who sometimes write as if the Roman authorities had been ignorant of the many evils which Luther and Calvin and Zwingli denounced with such great vehemence are either ignorant of the facts or are not quite fair in their zeal for the good cause.
Such men as Adrian VI and Clement VII knew perfectly well that something very serious was wrong with their Church. But it is one thing to express the opinion that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. It is quite a different matter to correct the evil, as even poor Hamlet was to learn.
Nor was that unfortunate prince the last victim of the pleasant delusion that hundreds of years of misgovernment can be undone overnight by the unselfish efforts of an honest man.
Many intelligent Russians knew that the old official structure which dominated their empire was corrupt, inefficient and a menace to the safety of the nation.
They made Herculean efforts to bring about reforms and they failed.