3. If any one shall assert it to be possible that sometimes, according to the progress of science, a sense is to be given to doctrines propounded by the Church different from that which the Church has understood and understands; let him be anathema.
Therefore We, fulfilling the duty of our supreme pastoral office, entreat by the mercies of Jesus Christ, and, by the authority of the same our God and Saviour, We command, all the faithful of Christ, and especially those who are set over others or are charged with the office of instruction, that they earnestly and diligently apply themselves to ward off and eliminate these errors from Holy Church, and to spread the light of pure faith.
And since it is not sufficient to shun heretical pravity, unless those errors also be diligently avoided which more or less nearly approach it. We admonish all men of the further duty of observing the Constitutions and Decrees by which such erroneous opinions as are not here expressly enumerated have been proscribed and condemned by this Holy See.
Given at Rome in Public Session, solemnly held in the Vatican Basilica in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy, on the twenty-fourth day of April, in the twenty-fourth year of our Pontificate.
In conformity with the original,
Joseph, Bishop of St. Polten,
Secretary of the Vatican Council.
FIRST DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH OF CHRIST.
Pius Bishop, Servant of the servants of God, with the approval of the Sacred Council, for perpetual remembrance.
The Eternal Pastor and Bishop of our souls, in order to continue for all time the life-giving work of His Redemption, determined to build up the Holy Church, wherein, as in the House of the living God, all who believe might be united in the bond of one faith and one charity. Wherefore, before He entered into His glory, He prayed unto the Father, not for the Apostles only, but for those also who through their preaching should come to believe in Him, that all might be one, even as He the Son and the Father are one (St. John xvii. 21). As then He sent the Apostles whom He had chosen to Himself from the world, as He Himself had been sent by the Father; so He willed that there should ever be pastors and teachers in His Church to the end of the world. And in order that the Episcopate also might be one and undivided, and that by means of a closely united priesthood the multitude of the faithful might be kept secure in the oneness of faith and communion, He set Blessed Peter over the rest of the Apostles, and fixed in him the abiding principle of this two-fold unity and its visible foundation, in the strength of which the everlasting temple should arise, and the Church in the firmness of that faith should lift her majestic front to heaven.[501] And seeing that the gates of hell with daily increase of hatred are gathering their strength on every side to upheave the foundation laid by God's own hand, and so, if that might be, to overthrow the Church: We, therefore, for the preservation, safe keeping, and increase of the Catholic flock, with the approval of the Sacred Council, do judge it to be necessary to propose to the belief and acceptance of all the faithful, in accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal Church, the doctrine touching the institution, perpetuity, and nature of the sacred Apostolic Primacy, in which is found the strength and solidity of the entire Church; and at the same time to proscribe and condemn the contrary errors, so hurtful to the flock of Christ.
Chap. I. Of the Institution of the Apostolic Primacy in Blessed Peter.