The Purpose of the Papacy

by John S. Vaughan

Now, this mark is nowhere found outside the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, whose centre is in Rome.

Other Churches not merely do not possess unity. They do not possess so much as the requisite machinery to produce it, nor even the means of preserving it, if produced.

With us, on the contrary, it flows as naturally and as directly from the recognised Supremacy and Infallibility of the Vicar of Christ as light flows from the sun. It is so manifest that it would seem only the blind can fail to see it: so that one is sometimes puzzled to know how to excuse educated Protestants from the damnable sin of vincible ignorance. Thus, the faithful throughout the entire world are in constant communication with their respective pastors; the pastors, in their turn, are in direct communication with their respective Bishops, and the Bishops, dispersed throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, are in close and direct communication with the one Supreme and Infallible Ruler, whom the Lord has placed over all His possessions; who has been promised immunity from error; and whose special duty and office is to "confirm his brethren" (Luke xxii. 32). By this most simple, yet most practical and effective expedient, the very least and humblest catechumen in China or Australia is as truly in touch with the central authority at the Vatican, and as completely under its direction in matters of faith and morals, as the crowned heads of Spain or Austria, or as the Archbishops of Paris or Malines. Certainly Digitus Dei est hic: the finger of God is here. The simple fact is, there is always something about the works of God which clearly differentiate them from the products of man, however close may be the mere external and surface resemblance. A thousand artists may carve a thousand acorns, so cunningly coloured, and so admirably contrived as to be practically indistinguishable from the genuine fruit of the oak. Each of these thousand artists may present me with his manufactured acorn, and may assure me of its genuineness. And, alas! I may be quite deceived and taken in; yes, but only for a time. When I plant them in the soil, together with the genuine acorn, and give them time to develop, the fraud is detected, and the truth revealed. For the real seed proves its worth. How? In the simplest way possible, that is to say, by actually doing what it was destined and created to do. That is, by growing and developing into a majestic oak, while the false and human imitations fall to pieces, belie all one's hopes, and are found to produce neither branch nor leaf nor fruit.

This is but an illustration of what may be observed equally in the spiritual order, although there it is attended by more disastrous consequences. Thus we find hundreds of Churches proclaiming themselves to be foundations of God, which Time, the old Justice who tries all such offenders, soon proves, most unmistakably, to be nothing but the contrivances of man. They may bear a certain external resemblance to the true Church, planted by the Divine Husbandman, but like the man-made acorns, they deceive all our expectations, and are wholly unable to redeem their promises, or to live up to their pretensions.

For, while one and all declare with their lips that they possess the truth as revealed by Christ, their glaring divisions, irreconcilable differences, and internal dissensions emphatically prove that the truth is not in them: and that they have been built, not on the rock, but on the shifting sand, and are the erections, not of God, but of feeble, fickle men.

On the other hand, the Catholic Church, amid a thousand sects, resembles the genuine acorn among the thousand imitations. Not only does she alone possess the whole truth; but she alone can stand up and actually prove this claim to the entire world, by pointing defiantly at her marvellous and miraculous unity—a unity so conspicuous, and so striking, and so absolutely unique, that even the hostile and bigoted Protestant press can sometimes scarcely refrain from bearing an unwilling testimony to it.

We might give many instances of this, and quote from many sources, but let the following extract from London's leading journal serve as an example. It is no other paper than the Times, which makes the following admission on occasion of the Vatican Council which opened in 1869: "Seven hundred Bishops, more or less, representing all Christendom, were seen gathered round one altar and one throne, partaking of the same Divine Mystery, and rendering homage, by turns, to the same spiritual authority and power. As they put on their mitres, or took them off, and as they came to the steps of the altar, or the foot of the common spiritual Father, it was impossible not to feel the unity and the power of the Church which they represented" (16th Dec., 1869). Here, then, is the most influential journal certainly of Great Britain, perhaps of the world, proclaiming to its readers far and wide, not simply that the Roman Catholic Church is one, but that her oneness is of such a sterling quality, and of so pronounced a character that it is impossible—mark the word, impossible!—not to feel it. Yet men ask where the Church of God is to be found. They ask for a sign, and lo! when God gives them one they cannot see it, nor interpret it, nor make anything out of it: and prefer to linger on in what Newman calls "the cities of confusion," than find peace and security in "the communion of Rome, which is that Church which the Apostles set up at Pentecost, which alone has 'the adoption of sons, and the glory and the covenants and the revealed law, and the service of God and the promises,' and in which the Anglican [or any other Protestant] communion, whatever it merits and demerits, whatever the great excellence of individuals in it, has, as such, no part". But this is a digression. Let us return to our subject.

The incontestable value and immense practical importance of the Papal prerogative of infallibility have been rendered abundantly manifest ever since its solemn definition nearly forty years ago. In fact, although the enormous increase of the population of the world has not rendered the position of the Sovereign Pontiff any easier, yet he is better fitted and equipped since the definition to cope promptly and effectually with errors and heresies as they arise than he was before. We do not mean that his prerogative of infallibility is invoked upon every trivial occasion—one does not call for a Nasmyth hammer to break a nut—but it is always there, in reserve, and may be used, on occasion, even without summoning an Ecumenical Council, and this is a matter of some consequence. For, though time may bring many changes into the life of man, and may improve his physical condition and surroundings, and add enormously to his comfort, health, and general corporal well-being, it is found to produce no corresponding effect upon his corrupt and fallen nature, which asserts itself as vigorously now, after nearly two thousand years of Christianity, as in the past. Pride and self still sway men's hearts. The spirit of independence and self-assertion and egotism, in spite of all efforts at repression, continue to stalk abroad. And human nature, even to-day, is almost as impatient of restraint, and as unwilling to bear the yoke of obedience, as in the time when Gregory resisted Henry of Germany, or when Pius VII. excommunicated Napoleon. If, even in the Apostolic age, when the number of the faithful was small and concentrated, there were, nevertheless, men of unsound views—"wolves in sheep's clothing"—amongst the flock of Christ, how much more likely is this to be the case now. If the Apostle St. Paul felt called upon to warn his own beloved disciples against those "who would not endure sound doctrine," and who "heaped to themselves teachers, having itching ears," and who even "closed their ears to the truth, in order to listen to fables" (2 Tim. iv. 1-5), surely we may reasonably expect to find, even in our own generation, many who have fallen, or who are in danger of falling under the pernicious influence of false teachers, and who are being seduced and led astray by the plausible, but utterly fallacious, reasoning of proud and worldly spirits. It would be easy to name several, but they are too well known already to need further advertising here.

Then, she has adversaries without, as well as within. For, though the Church is not of the world, she is in the world. Which is only another way of saying that she is surrounded continually and on all sides by powerful, subtle, and unscrupulous foes. "The world is the enemy of God," and therefore of His Church. If its votaries cannot destroy her, nor put an end to her charmed life, they hope, at least, to defame her character and to blacken her reputation. They seize every opportunity to misrepresent her doctrine, to travesty her history, and to denounce her as retrograde, old fashioned, and out of date. And, what makes matters worse, the falsest and most mischievous allegations are often accompanied by professions of friendship and consideration, and set forth in learned treatises, with an elegance of language and an elevation of style calculated to deceive the simple and to misguide the unwary. It is Father W. Faber who remarks that, "there is not a new philosophy nor a freshly named science but what deems, in the ignorance of its raw beginnings, that it will either explode the Church as false or set her aside as doting" (Bl. Sac. Prologue). Indeed the world is always striving to withdraw men and women from their allegiance to the Church, through appeals to its superior judgment and more enlightened experience; and philosophy and history and even theology are all pressed into the service, and falsified and misrepresented in such a manner as to give colour to its complaints and accusations against the Bride of Christ, who, it is seriously urged, "should make concessions and compromises with the modern world, in order to purchase the right to live and to dwell within it". What is the consequence? Let the late Cardinal Archbishop and the Bishops of England answer. "Many Catholics," they write in their joint pastoral, "are consequently in danger of forfeiting not only their faith, but even their independence, by taking for granted as venerable and true the halting and disputable judgment of some men of letters or of science which may represent no more than the wave of some popular feeling, or the views of some fashionable or dogmatising school. The bold assertions of men of science are received with awe and bated breath, the criticisms of an intellectual group of savants are quoted as though they were rules for a holy life, while the mind of the Church and her guidance are barely spoken of with ordinary patience."

In a world such as this, with the agents of evil ever active and threatening, with error strewn as thorns about our path at every step, and with polished and seductive voices whispering doubt and suggesting rebellion and disobedience to men, already too prone to disloyalty, and arguing as cunningly as Satan, of old, argued with Eve; in such a world, who, we may well ask, does not see the pressing need as well as the inestimable advantages and security afforded by a living, vigilant, responsible and supreme authority, where all who seek, may find an answer to their doubts, and a strength and a firm support in their weakness?