Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/122

 102 article of the Catholic faith, neither are they thereby required to believe that the Pope is infallible."

Accordingly, a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Clifford, writing to reassure the English peers on the Maynooth Endowment Bill, could say in 1845: "It is not an article of Catholic faith that the Pope is infallible even in matters of faith."

There is not the slightest reason to doubt the sincerity of the Romanist statements. They were not misrepresenting their convictions to improve their circumstances. They genuinely believed these principles. They claimed as Catholics an independence from Romanising views.

When Dr Wiseman (afterwards Cardinal) was nominated by the Pope to the London District in 1847, nearly all the clergy, says Wilfred Ward, "were sufficiently imbued by the conservative and national spirit to be opposed to his energetic scheme of reform." They viewed with distaste his "Romanising" proclivities. Trained in the College in Rome, having spent years under the Pope's immediate direction, Wiseman returned to England bent on propagating that "papistic spirit" against which the older English Roman Catholics, as represented by Sir John Throgmorton, had so vigorously protested. The introduction of the Jesuit and other religious Orders was Wiseman's work, and it was repugnant to the temper and prejudices of the old Romanist families in England. But Rome approved, and Wiseman persisted. Then came the re-establishment of the Roman Hierarchy in England, the elevation of Wiseman to the Cardinalate, and his return to England as Archbishop of Westminster. Then the Tractarian movement gave new life to the Anglican Church; but