Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/376



forty years have elapsed since the recognition of the Infallibility of the head of that vast Communion. The dogma was pushed through admittedly to enable authority to meet by the rapidity of its decisions the speed of modern life. Authority, however, with admirable discretion, has not once availed itself of its newly decreed prerogative within the last fifty years. Since Pius IX. expired, authority has spoken many times; but never once on the levels of unalterable decree. Certainly this development of history is very different from the future, as the advocates of 1870 pictured it. The practical utility of the new Decree has been, if any, purely retrospective, historic. It applies, according to the Roman theologians, to utterances prior to that decision, not since. What the future may produce it is impossible to say. Whether a long series of supreme irreversible pronouncements are yet to issue, or whether the supreme prerogative will be kept in abeyance is a speculative enquiry of the greatest interest.

It has been the function of Roman writers, since the passing of the Vatican Decree, to apply the definition as a test to the papal utterances of nineteen hundred years, in order to ascertain which of those utterances comply with its requirements; which of those are