POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO PAPAL INFALLIBILITY.
I have read carefully, my dear Philo, your very welcome letter, and cordially reciprocate the kind feelings it expresses. It has recalled our early friendship, which, with me, at least, has never been forgotten or diminished. I see, from your observations on the recent definition of the Papal Infallibility by the Council of the Vatican, that you still think as we both thought in our school-boy days, when we wondered what sort of people Catholics must be to believe that a man could be infallible, to take their faith from a man called the Pope, and to obey and even worship him, as we were told, as God. We were then in some measure excusable for supposing that they must be exceedingly stupid and destitute of reason and of every grain of common sense; for neither of us had then ever seen a Catholic, and knew nothing of their faith or worship except what our Protestant masters, who held them to be no better than the heathen, told us; but are you, my dear Philo, equally excusable for thinking now as you did then? Have you had no opportunity of correcting the error into which we were both led?
You say, “The Council, by its decree defining the Pope when teaching the universal church to be infallible or exempt from error in all matters pertaining to faith and morals, makes the Pope God, clothes him with the incommunicable attributes of the Divinity, and consequently requires us to reverence and worship him as God.” Are you not a little hasty in this conclusion? You tell me that you
believe in the plenary inspiration and consequent infallible authority of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; you then, of course, believe in God and the supernatural order, or that Christian faith is supernaturally revealed to man, and recorded in a book called the Bible. But through what medium was the revelation made and recorded? Certainly through men who spoke or wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, or what they were taught by our Lord himself, and enabled by the Spirit to commit truthfully and without error to writing. All this, you tell me, you believe and hold.
Now, were these inspired penmen, prophets, apostles, and evangelists each God, or clothed with the incommunicable attributes of the Divinity? You do not believe it. Why, then, does the declaration of the Pope’s infallibility declare him to be God? The sacred penmen, you believe, were infallible in what they wrote, and yet without becoming God, or ceasing to be men; why may not the Pope, then, be infallible without being God, or ceasing to be a man like you and me? Do you say the sacred writers were infallible by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, not by nature? Well, do Catholics pretend that the Pope is infallible by nature, or otherwise than through the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost protecting him from error in teaching the faith taught by the prophets and apostles? I am not aware that they do.
Catholics, I am told, make a distinction between divine inspiration
and divine assistance. The prophets and apostles were divinely inspired to reveal truth; the Pope, according to Catholics, is divinely assisted to teach infallibly the truth revealed through the prophets and apostles, or as taught to the apostles by our Lord himself while he was yet with them. Now, if the inspiration which rendered the prophets and apostles infallible in revealing the truth which was hitherto hidden did not clothe them with the incommunicable attributes of God, how can you pretend that the assistance of the Spirit to teach infallibly what God revealed through them, which is far less, makes the Pope God, or clothes his nature with the attributes of God? If more did not do it in their case, how can less do it in his?
You say, “All men are fallible, and no man can teach infallibly.” All men are fallible, it is true, in their own nature; but that no man by supernatural inspiration and assistance can teach infallibly, neither you nor I believe. We both hold, for instance, that St. Peter was a man, and yet that he was an infallible teacher of the word of God. We hold the same of St. Paul, of St. John, of St. Matthew, of St. Mark, and of St. Luke. Say you they were infallible not by their natural endowments, but only through the supernatural external assistance of the Holy Ghost? But Catholics, if I understand them, hold the Pope to be infallible not by nature or by his own natural powers, but only by the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost. Grant the supernatural assistance of the Holy Ghost, and there is no more difficulty in believing the Pope is infallible in his teachings than in believing, as you and I do, that St. Peter and St. Paul were infallible in teaching the revelation of God, whether by word or letter.
Do you not, my dear Philo, confound, in the case of the Popes, infallibility with omniscience, and assume that the Vatican Council, in declaring the Pope infallible in matters pertaining to faith and morals, has actually declared him to be omniscient, and therefore God? This is a mistake: first, because the infallibility declared is not universal; and, second, because the infallibility declared is supernatural and by divine assistance and protection. The Pope is declared to be infallible only when he is teaching the universal church faith and morals, and in condemning the errors repugnant thereto, and even then only by supernatural assistance and protection of the Holy Ghost. The Pope, as a man, is no more infallible than other men: he is infallible only in exercising his function of universal doctor, or teacher of the whole church, and, as this is by the Holy Ghost, the infallibility, like omniscience itself, pertains to God, not to him as a man, and is attached to his function, not to his person. If our Lord, who is perfect God as well as perfect man, has appointed him to the office of universal teacher, and promised him the assistance and protection of the Spirit, there is no difficulty in believing him infallible, even if his personal knowledge should turn out to be no greater than yours or mine. The Pope is simply guided by the Spirit to the truth already revealed and deposited with the church, and, for the most part, at least, contained in the Holy Scriptures, and is simply protected from error in declaring it.
Indeed, my dear Philo, Catholics claim no more for the Pope than our old Presbyterian parson claimed for himself and for each and every individual of the regenerate or true people of God. He taught us, as you well know, that the regenerate