Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/124

112 or to die out of themselves. It had forced itself into the history of the Church, and would live on until, by the Church, it should be finally condemned.

VII. Prudence would require the condemnation of any notorious error which, even if innocuous at first, might hereafter produce ill effects; but the denial of infallibility in the head of the Church had already produced ill effects. Nevertheless, so long as no final condemnation was stamped upon the error, it would always pass for a tolerated opinion. Men will never believe that it is wrong to do that which they see done with impunity every day. Where there is no law there is no transgression.

VIII. But the true and ultimate reason which determined the majority of the bishops to define the infallibility of the head of the Church was to protect from denial or doubt the divine certainty on which the revelation of Christianity comes down to us. We believe in revelation because God is its author. We know what he has revealed because the Church by divine assistance guards it. He might have ordained other ways for the custody and declaration of His truth. But the way he has actually ordained is a visible body of witnesses in perpetual succession with a special assistance of His presence and guidance. All Catholics believe that the Church, by the assistance of the Holy Ghost, is infallible, and therefore that all doctrines proposed by it for our belief are divine, and for that reason certainly true. But if the head of the Church may err in his teaching, doctrines may be proposed by him that may not be divine, and would therefore be doubtful. But if the teaching of the head of the Church cannot exclude doubt, for that reason it cannot form a foundation of faith. Where faith is, doubt cannot be; and where doubt is faith ceases to be. If therefore it be left in doubt whether the teaching of the head of the Church be certainly true, those who believe that he may err can always contradict his teaching. A fallible head to an infallible body is a doctrine which would soon give way before the logic of common sense, and the denial of the infallibility of the head of the Christian Church is the first position of vantage to assail