PIUS IX. AND MR. GLADSTONE’S MISREPRESENTATIONS.
The recent conduct of the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone has filled his former friends and admirers with anger and sorrow, and the nobler among his enemies with astonishment and pity. He has done much to convert the defeat of the liberal party in Great Britain, which might have been but temporary, into absolute rout and lasting confusion; for its return to power is impossible as long as the alienation of the Irish Catholic members of Parliament continues. The more generous of Mr. Gladstone’s political foes cannot but deplore that the once mighty opponent, whom they succeeded in driving from office, has, by his own behavior, fallen into something very like contempt. His strictures on the Vatican decrees and the Speeches of Pius IX. possess little merit in a literary point of view, being written in the bad style common to Exeter Hall controversialists, and being full of inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and oversights. They have accordingly received from the leading critical journals in Great Britain either open censure or that faint praise which is equally damning. The Pall Mall Gazette observes that, if Mr. Gladstone goes on writing in a similar strain, no one will heed what he writes. The wild assault made by him upon Catholics is not only perceived by others to be causeless and gratuitous, but is freely confessed by himself to be uncalled for and unwarranted. Speaking of the questions, whether the Pope claimed temporal jurisdiction or deposing power, or whether the church still teaches the doctrine of persecution, he says in his Expostulation (page 26): “Now, to no one of these questions could the answer really be of the smallest immediate moment to this powerful and solidly-compacted kingdom.” Again, in the Quarterly Review article (page 300), he asserts that the “burning” question of the deposing power, “with reference to the possibilities of life and action, remains the shadow of a shade!” Why, then, does Mr. Gladstone apply the torch to quicken the flame of the burning controversy, which he affirms to be beyond the range of practical politics? Why does he summon the “shadow of a shade” to trouble, terrify, or distress his fellow-countrymen? Has he forgotten the history of his country, which teaches him that these very questions were among those which brought innocent men to the block, and caused multitudes to suffer the tortures of the rack and the pains of ignominious death? We read in Hallam (Constitutional Hist. of England) that one of the earliest novelties of legislation introduced by Henry VIII. was the act of Parliament of 1534, by which “it was made high treason to deny that ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown which, till about two years before, no one had ever ventured to assert. Bishop Fisher, almost the only inflexibly honest churchman of that age, was beheaded for this denial.” Sir Thomas More met the same fate. Burleigh, in a state paper in which he apologizes for the illegal employment of torture in Elizabeth’s reign, includes among the questions “asked during their torture” of those “put to the rack,” the question, “What was their own opinion as to the pope’s right to deprive the queen of her crown?” In those days, then, the mere opinions of Catholics concerning papal supremacy were torturing and beheading questions—questions of the rack, the block, and the stake. Now they are “burning” questions, in a metaphorical sense, and lead to wordy strife, polemical bitterness, and to widening the breach between two sections of Queen Victoria’s subjects, which all wise men during late years have deplored and striven to lessen, but which Mr. Gladstone deliberately sets himself to widen.
Into the causes which have provoked Mr. Gladstone to attack Catholics and the Pope it is not necessary to enter. Corrupt or impure motives are not imputed to him. Nor is it here intended to discuss the theological part of the subject, which has already been exhaustively dealt with by Dr. John Henry Newman, Archbishop Manning, Bishops Ullathorne, Vaughan, and Clifford, Monsignor Capel, and others. The aim of the present writer is to point out the inaccuracies of Mr. Gladstone in his Expostulation and his Quarterly Review article on the Speeches of Pius IX., to exhibit his general untrustworthiness in his references and quotations, and to bring forward the real instead of the travestied sentiments of the Pope.
Now, to honest and fair examination of documents which concern their faith Catholics have no objection. On the contrary, they desire sincerely that Protestants should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them. Nothing but good to the Catholic Church can result from impartial study of such documents as the Vatican decrees, the Encyclical and Syllabus of Pius IX., to which, in his Expostulation, Mr. Gladstone made such extensive reference. Catholics give him a cordial assent when he says: “It is impossible for persons accepting those decrees justly to complain when such documents are subjected in good faith to a strict examination as respects their compatibility with civil right and the obedience of subjects.” But Catholics and all upright Protestants must join in condemning as unjust and unfair that bad habit common to controversialists of a certain class, who aim at temporary victory for themselves and their party, careless of the interests of eternal verity. There are partisan writers who cite portions of a document, in the belief that the mass of readers will have no knowledge of the entire, and who take extracts hap-hazard from secondary sources, without troubling themselves to search the authentic or original documents. Wilful inaccuracy and purposed misquotations are not, as has already been stated, to be imputed to Mr. Gladstone. But it often occurs that carelessness and prejudice lead distinguished writers into errors similar to those produced by malice, and equally or more detrimental. It so happens that Mr. Gladstone, in describing and quoting the Vatican decrees, the words of Pius IX., the Syllabus and Encyclical, has published statements so incorrect and so misleading as to subject the author, were he less eminent for honor and scrupulous veracity, to the charge either of criminal ignorance or of wilful intention to mislead. For example, he cites, at pages 32-34 of his Expostulation, the form of the present Vatican decrees as proof of the wonderful “change now consummated in the constitution of the Latin Church” and of “the present degradation of its episcopal order.” He says the present Vatican decrees, being promulgated in a strain different from that adopted by the Council of Trent, are scarcely worthy to be termed “the decrees of the Council of the Vatican.” The Trent canons were, he says, real canons of a real council, beginning thus: “Hæc Sacrosancta,” etc., “Synodus,” etc., “docet” or “statuit” or “decernit,” and the like; and its canons, “as published in Rome, are Canones et Decreta Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Tridentini, and so forth. But what we have now to do with is the Constitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesiâ Christi edita in Sessione tertia of the Vatican Council. It is not a constitution made by the council, but one promulgated in the council. And who is it that legislates and decrees? It is Pius Episcopus, servus servorum Dei; and the seductive plural of his docemus et declaramus is simply the dignified and ceremonious ‘we’ of royal declarations. The document is dated ‘Pontificatus nostri Anno XXV.,’ and the humble share of the assembled episcopate in the transaction is represented by sacro approbante concilio.” Mr. Gladstone, stating that the Trent canons are published as Canones et Decreta Sac. Œcum. Concilii Tridentini, and particularizing in a foot-note the place of publication as “Romæ: in Collegio urbano de Propaganda Fide, 1833,” leads his readers wrongfully to infer that there exists no similar publication of the Vatican decrees. However, the very first complete edition of the Vatican decrees, printed especially for distribution to the fathers of the council, bears this title: Acta et Decreta Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani in Quatuor Prioribus Sessionibus—Romæ ex Typographia Vaticana, 1872. What Mr. Gladstone appears to have quoted are the small tracts, containing portions of the decrees, for general use, one of which is entitled Dogmatic Constitution concerning the Catholic Faith, Published in the Third Session, while another is entitled The First Dogmatic Constitution of the Church of Christ, Published in the Fourth Session. Mr. Gladstone has not scrupled to take one of these tracts as his text-book, misstating its very title; for he quotes it as “edita in sessione tertia” instead of “quarta,” and deriving from it, instead of from the authentic Acta et Decreta, his materials for charging the decrees with a change of form “amounting to revolution.” Had the Acta in their complete version been before him, he could not truthfully have said “the humble share of the assembled episcopate in the transaction is represented by sacro approbante concilio”; for he would have found it distinctly stated, and apparently as reason for their confirmation by the Pope, that the decrees and canons contained in the constitution were read before, and approved by, all the fathers of the council, with two exceptions—“Decreta et Canones qui in constitutione modo lecta continentur, placuerunt patribus omnibus, duobus exceptis, Nosque, sacro approbante concilio, illa et illos, ut lecta sunt, definimus et apostolica auctoritate confirmamus.” Why does Mr. Gladstone call attention to the date as being “Pontificatus nostri Anno XXV.”? Is it in order to show that the Vatican despises the other mode of computation, or is it to exhibit his own minute accuracy in quoting? In either case Mr. Gladstone was wrong, for the date in the Constitutio Dogmatica before him was as follows: “Datum Romæ, etc., Anno Incarnationis Dominicæ 1870, die 18 Julii. Pontificatus Nostri, Anno XXV.” And why should Mr. Gladstone describe as “seductive” the plural of the Pope’s “docemus et declaramus,” and assert that plural form to be “simply the dignified and ceremonious ‘We’ of royal declarations”? Did he mean to impute to the use of the plural number a corrupt intention to make people believe that the ‘we’ included the bishops as well as the Pope? Did he mean also to impute to the use of the plural an arrogant affectation of royal dignity? If such were the purpose of Mr. Gladstone, it can only be said that such rhetorical artifices are unworthy of him and are not warranted by truth. The ‘we’ is simply the habitual form of episcopal utterances, employed even by Protestant prelates in their official acts. It is evident, moreover, that the use of the plural docemus or declaramus, and the employment of the formula sacro approbante concilio, denounced by Mr. Gladstone as innovations, have ancient precedents in their favor. The Acta Synodalia of the Eleventh General and Third Lateran Council, held under Pope Alexander III. in 1179, are thus worded: “Nos … de concilio fratrum nostrorum et sacri approbatione concilii … decrevimus” or “statuimus.” The same form, with trifling variation, was employed in 1225 by Innocent III. in another General Council, the Fourth Lateran. Mr. Gladstone thinks “the very gist of the evil we are dealing with consists in following (and enforcing) precedents of the age of Innocent III.,” so that it may be useless to cite the General Council of Lyons in 1245, under Innocent IV., with its decrees published in the obnoxious strain, “Innocentius Episcopus, servus servorum Dei, etc., sacro præsente concilio ad rei memoriam sempiternam.” The language of another General Council at Lyons, in 1274, under Gregory X., “Nos … sacro approbante concilio, damnamus,” etc., and the language of the Council of Vienne, in 1311, under Clement V., “Nos sacro approbante concilio … damnamus et reprobamus,” come perhaps too near the age of Innocent III. to have weight with Mr. Gladstone. But he cannot object on this score to the Fifth Lateran Council, begun in 1512 under Julius II., and finished in 1517 under Leo X. In this General Council, the next before that of Trent, Pope Leo was present in person, and by him, just as by Pius IX., in the Vatican Council, all the definitions and decrees were made in the strain which Mr. Gladstone calls innovating and revolutionary, namely, in the style, “Leo Episcopus servus servorum Dei ad perpetuam rei memoriam, sacro approbante concilio.” Leo X. uniformly employed the plural statuimus et ordinamus in every session of that council. Pius IX. followed the example of Leo X., and obeyed precedents set him by popes who presided in person—not by legates, as at Trent—at General Councils held in the years 1179, 1225, 1244, 1274, 1311, and 1517. Accordingly, “the change of form in the present, as compared with other conciliatory (sic) decrees,” turns out on examination to be no revolution, but, on the contrary, appears to have in its favor precedents the earliest of which has seven centuries of antiquity. And yet to this alleged change of form, and to this alone, Mr. Gladstone appealed in evidence of “the amount of the wonderful change now consummated in the constitution of the Latin Church” and of “the present degradation of its episcopal order”!
The Encyclical and Syllabus of 1864 have been treated by Mr. Gladstone in the same loose, careless, and unfair way as he treated the Vatican decrees. He promised, at page 15 of his Expostulation, to “state, in the fewest possible words and with references, a few propositions, all the holders of which have been condemned [the italics are Mr. Gladstone’s] by the See of Rome during my own generation, and especially within the last twelve or fifteen years. And in order,” so proceeds Mr. Gladstone, “that I may do nothing towards importing passion into what is matter of pure argument, I will avoid citing any of the fearfully energetic epithets in which the condemnations are sometimes clothed.” The references here given by Mr. Gladstone are to the Encyclical letter of Pope Gregory XVI. in 1831—a date, it may be noticed, rather more ancient than “the last twelve or fifteen years”—and to the following documents, which at page 16 of his pamphlet are thus detailed: The Encyclical “of Pope Pius IX., in 1864”; “Encyclical of Pius IX., December 8, 1864”; “Syllabus of March 18, 1861”; and the “Syllabus of Pope Pius IX., March 8, 1861.” Here are apparently five documents deliberately referred to, the first an Encyclical of Gregory XVI.; the second an Encyclical of Pius IX., in 1864; the third another Encyclical of Pius IX., dated December 8, 1864; the fourth a Syllabus of March 18th, 1861; and the fifth another Syllabus of the 8th of March, 1861. Yet these apparently five documents, to which reference is made by Mr. Gladstone with so much seeming particularity and exactitude of dates, are in reality two documents only, and have but one date—namely, the 8th of December, 1864—on which day the Encyclical, with the Syllabus attached, was published by Pius IX. At page 67 of his pamphlet Mr. Gladstone “cites his originals,” and curiously enough, by a printer’s error, assigns the Encyclical of Gregory XVI. to Gregory XIV. But he cites from two sources only—namely, the Encyclical and Syllabus of 1864. That Encyclical contains a quotation from an Encyclical of Gregory XVI., which and the Syllabus are positively the only documents actually cited. By a series of blunders, all of which cannot be charged to the printer—and in a work which has arrived at the “sixteenth thousand” edition printers’ errors are hardly allowable—the two documents, with their one date, have been made to do duty for five documents, ascribed gravely to as many different dates!
Moreover, Mr. Gladstone’s assertion that he will state “a few propositions, all the holders of which have been condemned by the Holy See,” is inaccurate, as far as his extracts from the Encyclical and the Syllabus—the only documents to which he appeals—are concerned; for in them no “holders” of any propositions are condemned, nor is there a single anathema directed against any individual. The errors only are censured. Mr. Gladstone cannot illustrate any one of his eighteen propositions by a single epithet which could with truth be called “fearfully energetic.” As a matter of fact, there are no epithets at all attached to any condemnations in the eighty propositions of the Syllabus. When, therefore, Mr. Gladstone professes, in order to do nothing “towards importing passion,” that he will “avoid citing any of the fearfully energetic epithets in which the condemnations are sometimes clothed,” he plays a rhetorical trick upon his readers. In truth, had he quoted the entire of the Encyclical and Syllabus, he would not have been able to make his hypocritical insinuation that he might have culled, if he wished, more damaging extracts. Catholics have to lament, not that he quoted too much, but that he quoted too little; not that he quoted with severe rigor, but that he quoted with absolute unfaithfulness. It is justice, not mercy, which Catholics demand from him, and which they ask all the more imperatively because he has himself laid down the axiom: “Exactness in stating truth according to the measure of our intelligence is an indispensable condition of justice and of a title to be heard.”
It was urged by some persons that Mr. Gladstone gave sufficient opportunities for correcting the effect of his inaccuracies by publishing in an appendix the Latin of the propositions he professed to quote. But so glaring is the contrast between the “propositions” in English and the same in Latin that a writer in the Civiltâ Cattolica exclaims in amazement: “Has he [Mr. Gladstone] misunderstood the Latin of the quoted texts? Has he through thoughtlessness travestied the sense? Or has his good faith fallen a victim to the disloyalty of some cunning Old Catholics who furnished him with these propositions?” Mr. Gladstone has asserted that Pius IX. has condemned “those who maintain the liberty of the press,” “or the liberty of conscience and of worship,” “or the liberty of speech.” On referring to the Latin original of these the first three of his eighteen propositions, it is found that Pius IX. has given no occasion for such a monstrous assertion. The Pope has merely condemned that species of liberty which every man not a socialist or communist must from his heart believe worthy of censure. Gregory XVI. called this vicious sort of liberty by the name of delirium, and Pius IX., in his Encyclical, terms it the “liberty of perdition.” It is a liberty “especially pernicious (maxime exitialem) to the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls,” and the claim to it is based on the error “that liberty of conscience and of worship is the proper right of every man; that it ought to be proclaimed and asserted by law in every well-constituted society; and that citizens have an inherent right to liberty of every kind, not to be restrained by any authority, ecclesiastical or civil, so that they may be able, openly and publicly, to manifest and declare their opinions, of whatever kind, by speech, by the press, or by any other means.” Such is the sort of liberty which the Encyclical condemns, which is not the general liberty of the press, or of conscience and worship, as Mr. Gladstone would have it, but that sort of liberty which might be better termed licentiousness—a liberty, that is, which knows no bridle or restraint, whether human or divine, and which refuses to be kept in check by any authority, ecclesiastical or civil—“omnimodam libertatem nullâ vel ecclesiasticâ, vel civili auctoritate coarctandam.” The Expostulation has been widely circulated among the learned, and also in a sixpenny edition among the masses. It is evident that thousands of persons accustomed to entertain a high opinion of the veracity of great men in Mr. Gladstone’s position will take his statements upon trust, and never dream of testing, even had they the requisite acquaintance with a dead language, the accuracy of his translations and quotations. To abuse the confidence of this section of the public is a sin severely to be reprobated.
The Speeches of Pius IX.—which, it would appear, were not read by Mr. Gladstone until after he wrote the Expostulation—have been by him criticised in the Quarterly Review unmercifully and unfairly. He did not take into consideration the circumstance that these speeches are not elaborate orations, but are merely the unprepared, unstudied utterances of a pontiff so aged as to be termed by the reviewer himself a “nonagenarian,” borne down with unparalleled afflictions, weighted with innumerable cares, and oppressed with frequent and at times serious illnesses. The speeches themselves were not reported verbatim or in extenso. No professional shorthand writer attended when they were delivered, and they were not spoken with a view to their publication. But every word which comes from the lips of Pius IX. is precious to Catholics; and as some of these speeches were taken down by various hands and appeared in various periodicals, it was thought proper to allow a collection of them to be formed and published by an ecclesiastic, Don Pasquale de Franciscis, who himself took notes of the greater number of these Discourses. This gentleman is described by Mr. Gladstone as “an accomplished professor of flunkyism in things spiritual,” and one of the “sycophants” about the Pope who administer to His Holiness “an adulation, not only excessive in its degree, but of a kind which to an unbiassed mind may seem to border on profanity.” Mr. Gladstone is fond of insinuating that his own mind is “unbiassed” or “dispassionate,” and that he would by no means “import passion” into a controversy where calm reasoning alone is admissible. But, in point of fact, as the Pall Mall Gazette has pointed out, he shows himself the bigoted controversialist instead of the grave statesman. Forgetting the genius of the Italian people, and the difference between the warm and impulsive natives of the South and the phlegmatic Anglo-Saxons; forgetting, also, the literary toadyism of English writers not many years ago, and the apparently profane adulation paid to British sovereigns, he attacks Don Pasquale for calling the book of the Pope’s speeches “divine,” and accuses him of downright blasphemy. Dr. Newman, in one of his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, has given an humorous account of the way in which foreigners might be induced to believe the laws and constitution of England to be profane and blasphemous. This he did by culling out a series of sentences from Blackstone and others, such as “the king can do no wrong,” “the king never dies,” he is “the vicar of God on earth.” Thus impeccability, immortality, and omnipotence may be claimed for the British monarch! Moreover, the subjects of James I. called him “the breath of their nostrils”; he himself, according to Lord Clarendon, on one occasion called himself “a god”; Lord Bacon called him “some sort of little god”; Alexander Pope and Addison termed Queen Anne “a goddess,” the words of the latter writer being: “Thee, goddess, thee Britannia’s isle adores.” What Dr. Newman did in good-humored irony Mr. Gladstone does in sober and bitter earnest. He picks out epithets here and there, tacking on the expressions of one page to those of another, and then flings the collected epithets before his reader as proof of Don Pasquale’s profanity. The temperament of Italians in the present day may or may not furnish a valid defence, in respect to good taste, for Don Pasquale. But it is certain that the phrases used by the latter, when taken in their context and interpreted as any one familiar with Italian ideas would interpret them, afford slight basis for the odious charge of profanity—a charge which Mr. Gladstone urges not only by the means already pointed out, but by other means still more reprehensible, namely, by fastening on Don Pasquale expressions which he did not employ. Thus, at page 274 of the Review, Mr. Gladstone, in reference to the “sufferings pretended to be inflicted by the Italian kingdom upon the so-called prisoner of the Vatican,” adds, “Let us see how, and with what daring misuse of Holy Scripture, they are illustrated in the authorized volume before us. ‘He and his august consort,’ says Don Pasquale, speaking of the Comte and Comtesse de Chambord, ‘were profoundly moved at such great afflictions which the Lamb of the Vatican has to endure.’” It seems, in the first place, rather strained to term the application of the word “lamb” to Pius IX., or any other person, a “daring misuse of Holy Scripture.” Many a man, when expressing pious hope under disaster, exclaims, “The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” using or misusing, as the case may be, not the language of Holy Scripture, but the words of the author of Tristram Shandy, to whose works, we believe, the epithet “holy” is not commonly applied. If Pius IX. had been termed “the lamb of God,” then indeed Holy Scripture might have been used or misused; but the single word “lamb,” even in the phrase “lamb of the Vatican,” is no more an allusion, profane or otherwise, to the Gospels than it is to the Rev. Laurence Sterne. In the second place, the expression, be it proper or improper, was not used by Don Pasquale. Turning to volume ii. of the Discorsi, page 545, as Mr. Gladstone directs us, we find the words were not employed by Don Pasquale, but by the writer of an article in the Unità Cattolica! Pages 545 and 546, the pages cited, contain a notice of the presentation to the Comte and Comtesse de Chambord of the first volume of the Discorsi; for the article is dated in 1872, and the second volume was not printed until 1873. So that it appears the naughty word was not only not used by Don Pasquale, but did not in reality form part of the “authorized volume,” being merely found in a newspaper extract inserted in an appendix. In this same newspaper extract the Comtesse de Chambord is said to have called the first volume of the Discorsi “a continuation of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.” This statement rests on the authority of the writer in the Unità Cattolica, but is brought up in judgment not only against Don Pasquale, but against the Pope himself, who is held by Mr. Gladstone to be responsible for everything stated either by Don Pasquale in his preface or by any other persons in the appendices to the Discorsi!
Concerning the Pope, Mr. Gladstone, at page 299 of the Review, thus writes: “Whether advisedly or not, the Pontiff does not, except once (vol. i. 204), apply the term [infallible] to himself, but is in other places content with alleging his superiority, as has been shown above, to an inspired prophet, and with commending those who come to hear his words as words proceeding from Jesus Christ (i. 335).” At page 268 of the Review it is also said that Don Pasquale, in his preface, p. 17, calls the voice of Pius IX. “the voice of God,” and that the Pope is “nature that protests” and “God that condemns.” If, however, in order to test the worth of these assertions of Mr. Gladstone, we turn to the passages he has cited, it will be discovered that Pius IX. did not even once apply the term infallible to himself; for he, in the passage cited, applied it not to himself individually, but to the infallible judgment (giudizio infallibile) in principles of revelation, as contrasted with the authoritative right of popes in general. Nor did Pius IX. assert any “superiority to an inspired prophet” by saying (Review, p. 276, Discorsi, vol. i. 366): “I have the right to speak even more than Nathan the prophet to David the king.” The right to speak upon a certain occasion does not surely contain of necessity an allegation of superiority nor imply a claim to inspiration! Nor did Pius IX. commend “those who came to hear his words as words proceeding from Jesus Christ”; for he merely said, in reply to a deputation: “I answer with the church; and the church herself supplies to me the words in the Gospel for this morning. You are here, and have put forth your sentiments; but you desire also to hear the word of Jesus Christ as it issues from the mouth of his Vicar.” That is to say: You shall have for answer “the word of Jesus Christ”—meaning this day’s Gospel—spoken by, or as it issues from, or which proceeds (che esce) out of, the mouth of his Vicar. The words, “He is nature that protests, he is God that condemns,” are evidently metaphorical expressions of the editor, harmless enough; for, as Pius IX. cannot be both God and nature literally, the metaphorical application is apparent to the meanest comprehension. It is true that Don Pasquale, in his preface, page 16, ascribes to Pius IX. this language: “This voice which now sounds before you is the voice of Him whom I represent on earth” (la VOCE di colui che in terra Io rappresento); but, turning to Don Pasquale’s reference (vol. i. p. 299) to verify the quotation, it is found that the editor made a serious mistake, by which the entire character of the passage was altered. The Pope had just contrasted himself (the vox clamantis de Vaticano) with John the Baptist (the vox clamantis in deserto). “Yes,” he adds, “I may also call myself the Voice; for, although unworthy, I am yet the Vicar of Christ, and this voice which now sounds before you is the voice of him who in earth represents him” (è la voce di colui, che in terra lo rappresenta). Don Pasquale imprudently put the word “voce” in capital letters, changed “lo” into “Io,” and “rappresenta” into “rappresento.” The Pope simply said that his voice, as it cried from the Vatican, was the voice of the Vicar of Christ. And in the belief of all Catholics so it is.