Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/265

 ] nothing more dangerous to the authority of the Church and the Holy See. It was not right to separate either the head from the body nor the body from the head in the discussion of this doctrine. Infallibility was a prerogative of the entire body of the Church. The difficulties which the doctrine of Papal Infallibility create were endless and almost insoluble. The consequences of a definition would be bad and dangerous. It was therefore to be hoped that the Pope will, of his own accord, set this cause of discord aside. Many of the Fathers of the Vatican Council were persuaded that such an example of humility and self-denial on the part of the Pope would really increase the authority of the Apostolic See, and render the name of Pius IX. glorious in the annals of the Church.

Another member of the Council—Bishop Clifford, one of the three candidates proposed by the Chapter for the Archbishopric of Westminster, and who therefore, if the will of the Roman Catholics in England had not been overruled by Pius IX., might have been in Manning's place—declared that the definition of this opinion as of faith would be the greatest hindrance to the conversion of Protestants and a stone of stumbling to many Catholics. What good it could produce he was unable to see. It would be especially disastrous in England; for at the time of the Catholic emancipation from civil disabilities the Bishops and theologians were publicly questioned by Parliament whether English Catholics believed that the Pope could impose definitions on faith and morals apart from the consent, either tacit or express, of the Church. All the Bishops, among them the predecessor of the present Archbishop of Dublin, together with the theologians, replied that Catholics did not maintain this doctrine. This statement was entered in the Parliamentary Acts. On the strength of these