Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/113

Rh in full a summary of the reasons on both sides. Those against the opportuneness come from a very high and authentic source, and were drawn up by one of the 102 theologians who prepared the schemata of the Council. He was one who held the doctrine as a divine truth in its amplest sense.

They shall be given here in full because they truly and adequately represent the balancing of motives which at that time caused some to hesitate, but decided the great majority.

9. The reasons against the definition were stated by a very learned and able theologian as follows:—

I. No necessity or urgent reason exists for such a definition, because the whole episcopate and the whole priesthood of the Church, and the whole body of the faithful, few excepted, have always received, and at this present time receive with veneration and docility, the doctrinal decisions of the Pontiffs, and recently those of Pius the Ninth.

II. For the determination of all controversies, and for the solution of all doubts, the decree of the Council of Florence respecting the supreme authority of the Roman Pontiff as universal doctor, together with the creed enjoined by Pius the Fourth after the Council of Trent, is sufficient.

III. In order to decide and to determine with exactness the question of the infallibility, it would not be enough simply to declare the Pope to be infallible. It would also be necessary to declare, and that by a decree, the form and the mode in which the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff is to be exercised and known; which would be a difficult question, and would involve the authority of the Holy See in many new and grave complications,

IV. The making of such a definition would be exposed to