THE ULTRAMONTANES AND THE NEW LIBERALISM.-
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR.') Sia,—In your article on "The New Liberalism [which, by the way, is old and common] on Church and State" the following passage occurs in relation to the Infallibility of the Papacy :— "That decree has always been defended by the Romanist teachers —we believe quite sincerely—as a defensive measure. Heresy was- spreading at so rapid a rate and was infecting the Church so deeply in Germany and elsewhere, that a swifter and more definite authority on the subject of heresy was felt by her teachers to be needed, and hence the decree."
Permit me to say, Sir, that this assumed rendering—which I have no doubt is meant quite sincerely—of the views of " Romanist teachers" is pretty much about the direct contradictory of the fact. The universal, constant, and unceasing faith of the Church in the Infallibility of the Papacy was declared against the heretics of the nineteenth century, just as the Church's infallibility was declared against the heretics of the sixteenth century, not as defence, but as truth, as a simple expositio Fidei. As for the " need " which you imagine to have been " felt " for "a swifter and more definite authority," any Catholic in any century, past or present, who disobeyed a Papal decision in the sphere declared by the Vatican was excommunicated, and there was the end of it. Where the excommunicated did not abandon his error, he protested,. of course. All heretics are Protestants, and all Protestants are heretics or infidels. The Papal excommunication simply remains to-day as always, the decisive stigma of non-Catholicity. Nothing has been changed. A particular doctrine of the Church, having been mooted, has been affirmed. There are Protestants against the Council, just as there were and are Protestants against the
Pope. That is all.—I am, Sir, &c., LAICITS.
P.S.—As for the quarrel between the Spectator and the Pall Mall, it is only apparent and nominal. The Pall Mall holds that "Render all things unto Cmsar " is the only gospel of progress. The Spectator suggests the Liberal emendation, "Render all things unto Cmsar, save so much as Cresar may condescend to leave to God." There are more words in the Spectator's declaration.
[Our correspondent must settle the question with Father- Dalgairns, who is, we take it, almost as competent a judge of the Catholic view of the argument for the opportuneness of the Vaticats decree,—which was all we referred to,—as himself, and who made the statement which we shortly summarised in a very able paper in the Contemporary Review about a year ago.—ED. Spectator.'
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