As to the testimony of the Church with regard to the proposed dogma, Kenrick states it thus—
The dogma is not contained in the creeds; it is not given in the Catechisms as an article of faith; it is not found as such in any monument of public worship. Therefore the Church has not heretofore taught it as being of the faith; and had it been a doctrine of faith, she ought to have taught it, and to have handed it down.
Not only has the Church not taught it in any public standard, but she has permitted it to be impugned, and not in one place alone, but in almost all the world, Italy excepted, and that throughout a great length of time.... To speak of the nations which use the English tongue, in no one standard or catechetical book of theirs is this opinion enumerated among the verities that are of faith. In the United States, as in Ireland, all books of piety and doctrine were drawn from England till the opening of this century, and later. In the greater part of those books, the opposite opinion is contained. In none is this opinion found as being of faith (p. 212).
He shows that recently a few books had appeared as if to prepare the people for the new dogma. Alluding evidently to the work of the Jesuit Weninger, which the Pope had praised, he calls the author a zealous but unlearned man, and says his work was more calculated to excite ridicule than anger, and that when the author had applied to himself for some commendation, he had incautiously promised him the charity of silence.
As to the use made by Cullen of his brother's work, he said he had felt as if the dead had been commended in order to rebuke the living. As to the faith of the Irish, he remarked that a smile had been raised when Verot, of Augustine, in Florida, said that the Irish believed even their priests to be infallible. But it was true, for believing the Church to be infallible, and the priest to be in harmony with the Church, they believed him to be infallible, and with the difference of his more exalted rank, it was precisely in the same sense that they believed the Pope to be infallible. But as to their understanding the question now agitated, or being able to form an opinion concerning it, that was too ridiculous to need confutation (p. 216). He even doubted if a meeting in Cork, over which the bishop of the see was said to have presided, had understood the question; and indeed it was apparent, from what had passed in that Hall, that there were bishops there who were not clear as to what Papal infallibility meant.
Turning from the populace of Ireland to the prelates and doctors, he was ready to grant that now, influenced by some distinguished names, the preponderating opinion might be in favour of Papal infallibility; on that point, however, he knew nothing more than what he had been able to learn since coming to Rome. But in the beginning it was not so. His proof of this was the almost universal applause with which the writings of Dr. Doyle had been received, and those of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary. Further, he cited answers given to a committee of the British Parliament in 1825 by the Archbishops of Dublin and Tuam, Murray and O'Kelly, as well as by Bishop Doyle. These answers he printed with his speech, both in the original English and in a Latin translation. He further cited a manifesto of all the Irish bishops in the year 1815, addressed directly to the Holy See, which clearly shows that they did not hold the views embodied in the proposed Decrees. He prints this document also.
Next, passing from the Irish prelates to the priests, Kenrick confidently affirms that they in former times did not differ from the prelates. Long after the establishment of Maynooth College, the professors, he declares, came from France, and their treatises were in the hands of the pupils long subsequently to their own death. He calls the Archbishop of Cashel as a witness, while he relates how the change of teaching was first introduced in that college. They were there at the time as fellow-students. Forty years ago, says Kenrick, John O'Hanlon was Tutor in Theology, as he is now Moderator of the higher theological sciences in the college. The text-book De Ecclesia at that time was Delahogue. It contained nothing, says Kenrick, about Papal infallibility, except a proposition in these or similar words, "It is not of faith that the Pope is infallible" (p. 218).
In the year 1831, O'Hanlon gave his pupils, as a theme, the following proposition: "The Pope, speaking ex cathedrâ, is infallible." O'Hanlon did not indicate any opinion of his own, and did not urge the pupils in discussing the thesis to take either one side or the other, but left them to argue for the negative or affirmative at their discretion. Kenrick was one of those who took the affirmative; but he adds, Language so new, and hitherto unheard of, did not please all the professors. One of them, who subsequently became President of the college, strongly expressed his dissatisfaction to my fellow-student, now the Bishop of Clonfert, from whom I had the statement. Kenrick then makes a confident appeal to MacHale, to whom Cullen had made a presumptuous one—
There sits here a venerable man, who many years ere I entered that college expounded theology within its walls, who is by good right looked upon as the Nestor of the Irish bishops, for he has lived with almost three generations of men; one who with eminent theological learning combined a glory of classic lore, and also had intimate acquaintance with the prelates whom I have cited, and with other men of learning whose bright and venerable names are inscribed on the hearts of the Irish, and among their glories.... He, with rare moderation, had not given expression to his views on the matter now under discussion. So that his Eminence of Dublin did not hesitate to speak for him, and to claim him as being upon his own side. Those who feel with me, and who had known him, desiring to see him contending by our side, were grieved to behold him sitting apart like another Achilles. I was filled, therefore, with an unlooked-for joy when I heard him say that in judgments on matters of faith the head ought to be conjoined with the body; not, as his Grace of Westminster would have it, that the head of itself, communicating infallibility to itself, should draw the body along with it, but that head and body, conjointly bearing witness to the faith delivered to the saints, should declare it with one mind. As the Archbishop of Tuam descended from this pulpit, I congratulated him in these words: 'You have vindicated Ireland—Vindicasti Hiberniam.' If witnesses of the faith of the Irish are to be, as they ought to be, weighed and not counted, the Archbishop of Tuam, at least in the capacity of a witness, will easily surpass the other Irish bishops, not even excepting his Eminence of Dublin (p. 218).
The above important statement of Archbishop Kenrick shows that the new dogma, according to which the Bull Unam Sanctam becomes of divine authority in doctrine, was not kept out of Maynooth very long after the oaths and denials of preceding years had served their purpose. It was introduced as early as 1831.
The day following the speech of Cardinal Cullen—for our light on which we are indebted to Kenrick's important contribution—the Primate of Hungary appeared in the pulpit. His position as a member of the Committee on Faith, his doubtful bearing, and, above all, rumours of a hat, had made an impression that he had gone over to the side of the Infallibilists. On the contrary, he now spoke with decision and force against them. It was after the courage of the minority had been for a moment revived by this speech, that one ascended the desk, who to most present was only a feeble old man, but to Irish prelates, and to some of Irish origin, he represented one who, in the thundering days of the Liberator, was spoken of, at every wake and "patron," as a mighty son of hail and storm. It was he to whom Cullen had appealed, on the previous day, as a witness to the ancient faith of the Irish in Papal infallibility. But Kenrick has already shown us that John MacHale stood as a hoary monument of departed principles; and it was when he came down that Kenrick cried, "Thou hast vindicated Ireland." Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel, was the next called up; but after the speech of MacHale he declined to speak.[411]