Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/275

 ] Mgr. Pie, Bishop of Poitiers. His antecedents were, from a curialist standpoint, irreproachable. He was, says his Ultramontane biographer, "very Roman." Already he had laboured to propagate the distinctive Roman doctrines in five provincial Councils in France; had taught the Infallibilist opinion twenty years; had suggested suitable theologians of the proper school for preliminary service in Rome. The Bishop of Poitiers had impressed upon his clergy his theory of the relation of Mary to the Councils of the Church. The Council of Jerusalem, he informed them, was "honoured with her presence," and she had never been absent from the Council Chambers since. He suggested as a fruitful subject for spiritual reflection, "Mary and the Councils." The Vatican Assembly deserved better than any to be associated with her name, for was it not opened on the Festival of her Immaculate Conception? Mgr. Pie had known perfectly well at least a year that Pontifical Infallibility was bound to come up for discussion in the Vatican deliberations. While still residing in his own episcopal city, his Roman correspondents had informed him that the preliminary Commission in Rome was entirely agreed on the definability and opportuneness of the doctrine. And he himself had publicly repudiated the notion that Papal Infallibility depended for its completeness upon at least the tacit consent of the Episcopate. That the Bishop's own silence and that of his colleagues conferred upon Peter's doctrinal utterances a value not obtainable from Christ's promise, and from the help of the Spirit, was to Mgr. Pie unthinkable. And he administered a public rebuke to Bishop Maret, the learned advocate of the opposite view, through the medium of a sermon on the text, "the servant of God must be teachable." The superb confidence of Mgr. Pie