These implicit truths are deduced from the original revelation, very much as any other consequence from its premisses. For example. It is a truth directly revealed, that the Holy Ghost is God. But, since God is to be adored: the further proposition:—the Holy Ghost is to be adored; is also contained, though only implicitly, in revelation; and is therefore, equally, of faith. So again; that Christ is man, is a fact of revelation; but the further proposition—Christ has a true body—though not explicitly stated, is implicitly affirmed in the first proposition. All consequences, such as the above, which are seen immediately and evidently to be contained in the words of revelation, must be accepted as of faith. Other consequences, which are equally contained in the original deposit, but which are not so readily detected and deduced, must be explicitly accepted as of faith, only so soon as the Church has publicly and authoritatively declared them to be so contained; but not before. Thus, to take an illustration, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin is a fact contained from the beginning, implicitly locked up, as it were, in the deposit of faith, left by the Apostles. Were it not so it never could have been defined; for the Church does not invent doctrines. She only transmits them. Yet, this doctrine is not so clearly and so self-evidently included, and lies not so luminously and unmistakably on the very surface of revelation as to be at once perceptible to all. Hence, before its actual definition, a Catholic might deny it, or suspend his judgment, without censure; whereas, to do either the one or the other, after the Church has solemnly declared the doctrine to be contained in the teaching of Christ and the Apostles, would be nothing short of heresy.
"The Infallibility, whether of the Church or of the Pope," says Cardinal Newman, "acts principally or solely in two channels, (a) in direct statement of truth, and (b) in the condemnation of error. The former takes the shape of doctrinal definitions, the latter stigmatises propositions as 'heretical,' 'next to heresy,' 'erroneous,' and the like" (p. 136).
The gift of Infallibility, observes Cardinal Manning, "extends directly to the whole matter of divine truth, and indirectly to all truths which, though not revealed, are in such contact with revelation that the deposit of faith and morals cannot be guarded, expounded, and defended, without an infallible discernment of such unrevealed truths" (Vatican Decrees, p. 167).
8. To sum up: Persons who refuse to assent to doctrines which they know to be directly revealed and defined, or which are universally held by the Church as of Catholic Faith, become by that very act guilty of heresy, and cut themselves adrift from the mystical Body of Christ, and are no longer His members. If, on the other hand, their assent is refused only to doctrines closely connected with these dogmatic utterances, and which, as such, are proposed for their acceptance, they become guilty, if not of actual heresy, then of something perilously akin to it, and are, at all events, guilty of serious sin.
We may observe, in conclusion, that the Infallibility of Pontifical definitions, as Father Humphrey so pertinently reminds us, does not depend upon the reigning Pontiff's possession of any real knowledge of ancient Church history or theology, or philosophy or science, but simply and solely upon the assistance of God the Holy Ghost, guaranteed to him in his exercise of his function of Chief Pastor, in feeding with divine doctrine the entire flock of God. Our Anglican friends seem penetrated with the utterly false notion of justification by scholarship alone; which is as untrue as it is unscriptural. Indeed, their justification by scholarship is likely to lead to very undesirable and deplorable results.
In the foregoing chapter we have considered especially the Pope's Infallible authority, and the assent and obedience due to it. In our next it remains for us to consider the proper attitude of a loyal Catholic towards the Sovereign Pontiff as the supreme ruler and governor of the Church of God, even when not speaking ex cathedrâ.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The word soma, observes Mgr. Capel, is never used in Greek to express mere association or aggregation (Catholic, p. 13).
[8] From a Pastoral of the Swiss Bishops, which received the Pope's approbation.