Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/96

84 Two observations may be made on these facts. The first is that now, for a second time, when the subject of infallibility would, according to the adversaries of the Council, be expected to take the first place, it was deliberately set aside. The second observation is that Pius the Ninth had neither desire nor need to propose the defining of his infallibility. Like all his predecessors, he was conscious of the plenitude of his primacy. He had exercised it in the full assurance that the faith of Christendom responded to his unerring authority; he felt no need of any definition. It was not the head of the Church nor the Church at large that needed this definition. The bishops in 1854, 1862, 1867, had amply declared it. It was the small number of disputants who doubted, and the still smaller number who denied, that the head of the Church can neither err in faith and morals, nor lead into error the Church of which he is the supreme teacher, that needed an authoritative declaration of the truth.

As to the labours of the other sections, on Discipline, on Religious Orders, on Missions and the Oriental Churches, and on Rites, no comment need be made. The world has little interest in them, and takes no notice of them. The one object of its hostility is the Definition which has affirmed the divine authority of the head of the Church.