Page:True and False Infallibility of Popes.pdf/19

10 sions, and of this whole work of Dr. Schulte there remains—

'Dr. Schulte had asserted that the definition of the Infallibility of the Pope has completely altered the relations between the spiritual and the temporal power. The object of his work was, as he says, "to show governors and governed what a Catholic is in conscience obliged to believe if he admits the Infallibility of the Pope." So he drew up from the declarations and acts of the Popes of the Middle Ages a catalogue of what he called doctrinal propositions, which he presented to his horror-stricken readers as the decisions of the Infallible teaching office of the Sovereign Pontiffs, and so, of course, since the Council of the Vatican, as Catholic dogmas. If it can be shown that all that Dr. Schulte so laboriously quotes has nothing whatever to do with Infallibility, his book is answered, and falls as a dead letter. This feat it is that Mgr. Fessler has so victoriously performed. The result of an investigation of passage after passage, quoted by Dr. Schulte, shows that they none of them can be regarded as infallible definitions on faith and morals. Accordingly, Catholics when they accept, as is their duty, the constitution of the Council on the Infallible teaching office of the Roman Pontiff, are in no wise bound to believe what Dr. Schulte asserts they are, in regard to these assumed doctrinal propositions of Popes.

'Mgr. Fessler might have confined himself to this reply. But in behalf of those of his readers who might possibly have been perplexed regarding certain acts and declarations of Popes quoted by Dr.