Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/120

108 XII. That, lastly, no centralisation of the ordinary and diocesan administration of the Universal Church could be in any way promoted by a definition of the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, speaking ex cathedrâ, in matters of faith and morals. Such a definition belongs to a higher order, with which the ordinary pastoral office of bishops can. rarely have any contact. Questions of faith and morals, on which the Church has not already judged, very seldom arise in any diocese. The infallibility here in question has no relation to the multifarious administration of dioceses. Such a definition would either have no appreciable influence on the ordinary administration of bishops, or, if any, only in the way of giving greater certainty to their judicial acts, and to the pastoral jurisdiction of the Episcopate throughout the world.

For these reasons it appeared to others that the objections to such a definition had no sufficient weight to dissuade the Council from making it.

11. But thus far we have only answered objections. It now may be well to state the positive reasons which decided the majority of the bishops to sign the petition by which they asked for the introduction of the subject of the infallibility, and in the end to define it.

I. They thought that such a definition would be opportune because the doctrine is true; for if true, how can it be said that to declare it is not opportune? Is not this question already closed by the fact that God has thought it opportune to reveal it? Can it be permitted us to think that what He has thought it opportune to reveal, it is not opportune for us to declare? It is true indeed that, in revealing the faith, God in his wisdom was slow,- deliberate, and gradual, measuring his light to the infirmities of the human intelligence, and preparing the minds