It is very difficult to make out what the numbers
for the dogma of Infallibility and against it are supposed to be. The Pall Mall Gazette's correspondent in Rome said on Thurs- day that 400 signatures have been given to the Infallibilist petition which we mentioned last week ; that a Spanish and a Neapolitan petition couched in stronger terms have obtained 100 more signatures, and that, with the Commissions and Cardinals, not less than 600 adherents are virtually certain, while it estimates the inexorable dissentients as not likely to number more than 50 ultimately. On the other hand, the Ultramontane organs seem much more cautious. The Tablet does not seem to count on more than 410 signatures for the Infallibiliats, and gives the Opposition 140 signatures already. It seems certain that the Italian Bishops are getting up a petition of their own, asking the Council to sanction the definition in the very words of St. Alfonso, —namely, that "although the Roman Pontiff may err as an individual (i peculiaris persona ') or as a private doctor, and also ia fallible on questions of mere fact which principally depend on the testimony of man, yet when he speaks as Pope defining ex cathedrci as universal doctor, i.e., out of the supreme power of teaching the Church delivered to Peter, then, in deciding contro- versies of faith and morals, he is incapable of error" (" ab errore immunem "). This definition is surely much weaker than that of the 400. If the Pope be not infallible in deciding questions of fact depending on the testimony of men,—he clearly cannot be infallible in deciding on the Assumption of the body of the Virgin Mary, or even on the saintship of saints.
