NEWMAN, PASCAL, LOISY, AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
[To rue Sono. or in "Ersoriros.1
SIB,—There is a sentence in your eminently fair and sym- pathetic review of my book on Newman, Pascal, and Loisy (Spectator, January 26th) on which I feel myself bound to make some comment. Your reviewer says he is unable to discover in exactly what sense Liberal Catholics hold their Church to be infallible. For answer I must refer him to the history of that Church, which has been in the world for nearly two thousand years. There are almost as many theological opinions as there are theologians. But one thing is certain. The Catholic Church is both new and old. Her teaching is not of yesterday, nor can it be sufficiently presented in a formula. In my treatment of infallibility I have attempted to express myself in terms consistent both with the latest and with the earliest teaching of the Church. Those who hold that the infallibility of the Pope is a development do not mean thereby that it contradicts, but that it results from, the teaching of the Fathers. Now the Fathers hold that Peter was the symbol of the whole Apostolate. St. Cyprian speaks of the Chair of Peter as representing the whole Episcopate. If, then, the decrees of the Vatican Council are so interpreted as to leave out of account the representative character of Papal infallibility, they are no longer a development, but a contra- diction, of the teaching of the Fathers. No other attitude is possible to Catholics, of whatever school, nor can any citation from the Fathers, such as the famous one from St. Irenaens, bear any other interpretation. Proteatantism and officialism are apt to agree in ignoring the fact that the Church is, in the first place, a community, and in writing about it as if it contained nothing but officials. It is only by this considera- tion that I can understand how it is that the very mention of Galileo as a great Catholic and "a proof of intellectual fecundity" in the Catholic community should seem to your reviewer but a matter for amusement.—I am, Sir, &o.,
lifoorhurst, Holmwoock Dorking. W. J. Wrzsaams.
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