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 “It is indeed a great matter and ever to be borne in mind … that all Catholics should know that they should receive the doctors with the Church, not that they should quit the faith of the Church with the doctors (‘se cum Ecclesia doctores recipere, non cum doctoribus Ecclesiæ fidem deserere debere’).”—Vine, of Lerins, Common. n. 17.

I. The Teaching Apostolate, with its auxiliaries on the one hand and the body of believers on the other, together constitute the Church. The union between them is not mechanical, but is like the mutual union of the members of a living organism. To obtain a correct idea of the relations between the two parts, we must bear in mind that infallibility and the other attributes granted to the Teaching Apostolate are intended only as means to secure an unerring Faith in the entire community, and that the supernatural Faith of all the members, both teachers and taught, is the result of the influence of the Holy Ghost. From this we infer that the teachers and their hearers compose one indivisible, complete organism, in which the teachers figure as the principal members, the head and the heart; that they constitute a homogeneous organism, because the teachers are at the same time believers, and because the belief of the Faithful is a testimony to and confirmation of the doctrines taught. They are an organism living supernaturally, because the Holy Ghost infuses into all the members the life of Faith by external teaching and internal grace. This union between teachers and taught likewise leads us to further consequences. The doctrine of Christ is manifested in two ways: in authoritative proposition and in private belief. The latter form, being only an echo of the former, and, moreover, being the result of the action of the Holy Ghost, becomes in its turn a kind of testimony of doctrine. The private form reacts upon the public proposition and confirms it. The Faith of the whole Church cannot be wrong, and, therefore, what all believe must infallibly be true, and must represent the