Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/302

 282 pleas, dogmas whose irregularity is acknowledged so long as their validity is saved, dogmas which depend for their acceptance on the melting away of the episcopal minority, were evidently straining the faith of Catholics almost to breaking point, or they would never have been defended in such a manner. Here is nothing of the devout thankfulness for fuller enlightenment, or the triumph of truth; nothing of the glad recognition of a decision guided by the Holy Ghost. Newman could never have treated the Nicene Council as he did the Vatican. Behind these endeavours, to prevent secession or schism, lies Newman's recorded conviction in his letter to Ullathorne.

Newman's theory that the ecumenical character of the Council might be ascertained from its ultimate acceptance, that acquiescence on the part of the defeated minority would atone for any irregularities in the passing of the Decree, by no means carried conviction to many of the perplexed. The nature of the doctrine decreed seemed to exclude this kind of defence. For if the utterances of the Pope are infallible of themselves, and not from the consent of the Episcopate, it is difficult to base that Infallibility upon episcopal consent. Instead of waiting to see what the Episcopate might do it would appear more appropriate to consider what the Pope had done. And in another letter written within the same anxious month this is precisely the view which Newman takes.

"I have been thinking over the subject which just now gives you and me, with thousands of others, who care for religion, so much concern.

"First, till better advised, nothing shall make me say that a mere majority in a Council, as opposed to a moral unanimity, in itself creates an obligation to