PAPAL INFALLIBILITY AND HISTORY.*
IN a foot-note on p. 118 of this little volume the author reveals with ingenuous frankness the fundamental difference between Ultramontanes and others in the study of ecclesiastical history. We chanced on a former occasion to characterise Dr. Littledale as " a trained theologian." Mr. Richardson is indignant. " What is a theologian ?" he asks, and then pro- ceeds to give his own answer :—" A theologian, in the Catholic sense of the word, does not mean a man who has studied many books, and thus teaches himself, but one who, having been himself a pupil under masters, uses that scholastic training as an instrument to shape his own natural talents. Dr. Littledale's lack of training renders him incapable of under- standing the simplest technicalities of our schools, and exposes him to the ridicule of the merest tyro among Catholic semina- rists. Dr. Littledale's masters are Encyclopaedias, English and foreign Reviews, and Catholic text-books he does not under- stand. He has never known the salutary discipline of sitting on a hard bench, very much under a theological professor, to be taught and not to teach." We are not concerned with Dr. Littledale's qualifications as a theologian further than by noting in passing that Mr. Richardson's esti of his learning is quite inadequate. What is really gnifi- cant and instructive in Father Richardson's note is t glimpse which it gives of the Ultramontane view as to the relation between theology and history. According t9 %hat view, none but a theologian is capable of unders..fling ecclesiastical history; and a theologian is a man wh-o'uses his " scholastic training.as an instrument to shape his own natural talents," —in other words, to bias his mind to such a degree that he • What are the Catholic Claims t By the Rev. Austin Richardson, late Professor of the Institute St. Louis, Brussels. With an Introductory Essay by the Rer. Luke Rivington. Loudon : Regan Paul and Co. 1886. becomes incapable of weighing' evidence fairly. Cardinal Manning has given emphatic expression to this view in his terse assertion that in matters of doctrine the appeal to history " is a treason and a heresy." If this opinion could be enforced, it would doubtless be a very convenient one for controversialists who find history an awkward stumbling-block in their path. But to appeal to history while deprecating the unbiassed study of it is a somewhat perilous experiment, as we shall presently show. Meanwhile, we must observe that Father Richardson is hardly loyal to his own theory. Cardinal Newman's Essay on " Development " he characterises as " that wonderful master- piece which no Anglican I ever met has studied and meditated as it deserves." It ".is a little epitome of the Fathers, and the most exact putting in practice of their rules for the study of antiquity." But that Essay was written when Cardinal Newman was an Anglican,—in other words, when he studied theology after the method which, according to Father Richard- son, exposes him to " the ridicule of the merest tyro among Catholic seminarists." Another of Father Richardson's great authorities is Mr. Allies. Now, who is Mr. Allies? He was a learned Anglican priest who wrote a book on the Papal claims which he has failed, as a Roman Catholic, to refute. In the Roman communion Mr. Allies occupies the position of a dis- tinguished lay writer on theological subjects ; but we believe that it is as true of him as of Dr. Littledale, that " he has never known the salutary discipline of sitting on a hard bench, very much under a theological professor, to be taught and not to teach." But it is to Mr. Luke Rivington that Father Richardson pays the highest compliment of all. It is Mr. Rivington whom he has selected to introduce his own book to the public, and to give it his imprimatur. But Mr. Rivington has had very little time to 2andergo " the salutary discipline " which, we are told, is necessary to save a writer from "the ridicule of the merest tyro among Catholic seminarists." It is little more than a year ago that he was an Anglican priest ; and among Anglicans his reputation, such as it was, was that of a facile preachei, with no great pretensions to theological learning. His theological reputation in his adopted communion is apparently so great, that Father Richardson abandons at his bidding some beliefs which he had himself previously held, and which have received the sanction of great names, Newman's included. It comes to this, then. Writers who accept the whole theory of the Papacy are, in Father Richardson's opinion, good theologians, no matter how trained or to what communion they may chance to belong. But if they reject the Papal claims, they cannot possibly be theo- logians, cannot possibly _understand ecclesiastical history, and can only expose themselves- to " the ridicule of the merest tyro among Catholic seminarists.". But we have said that Father Richardson has abandoned, at Mr. Luke Rivington's bidding, some of the beliefs which he had learnt " on a hard bench " in the Roman communion. On pp. 62-63, he admits the fall of Liberius, and apologises for it. " Whatever the nature of his fall," he says, " it is certain that he was considered (and the Roman See generally) as the unfailing defender and champion of the faith." " His weakness, whatever it was, was but momentary." Immediately after, he tells us that " having in some way, the exact details of which we shall never know, shown the white-feather," &c. Again : " It is possible that, wearied out by exile and persecution, he accepted anything that was asked him, but that, no sooner was he free than, like St. Peter, he saw the fiCult he had committed, and, hastening back to Rome, resolved, by a lifelong struggle against heresy, to atone for the weakness of a moment." Here we have the old Roman Catholic version of the fall of Liberius. The fact was admitted, but the Pope's infallibility was said to be saved because he betrayed the faith through fear,—by " showing the white-feather," as Father Richard- ;Ion puts it. But this is obviously to undermine the ft4ndations of infallibility altogether. For if a Pope can betraltbe faith through cowardice, there is no reason why he shoulcinot betray it through ambition, or covetousness, or any other personal reason. If the Pope is infallible, it is an impertinence and a gross disloyalty for any theologian, or even for the Chureh at large, to sit in judgment upon him and make excuses for Ilk fall. The Vatican Decree declares that " the definitions of the Roman Pontiff," " when lie speaks ex eathedrci," are " of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, irreformable." What right, then, has any member of the Church, or even the Church at large, to sit in judgment on Liberius and make excuses for his fall P Father Richardson's excuses for Liberius strike_ at the root of Papal infallibility. Mr. Rivington, fresh from the critical habits which he learnt in the Church he has abandoned, sees the weakness of the Roman position, and boldly asserts that Liberius never fell at all. Our author accordingly appends a note to his suicidal " white-feather " admission, in which he tells his readers that " Mr. Rivington, in his .new book, gives powerful reasons for holding that Liberius .never fell at all." Eighteen pages further on, Father Richardson waxes bolder, and speaks scornfully of " the pretended falls of Liberius and Honorius." All " the salutary discipline of sitting on a hard bench, very much under a theological professor," vanishes at the bidding of a brand-new convert from Anglicanism, when that convert offers Father Richardson a way of escape out of an awkward dilemma. Yet Father Richardson's historical conscience is not altogether easy, for he adds :—" It is clear that the Vatican Decree excludes from the title of infallible decrees signatures from a Pope in exile like Liberius, or con- tained in letters like those of Honorius." We have just quoted the gist of the Vatican Decree, and are content to leave our readers to compare it with Father Richardson's impossible interpretation. It seems that any argument is " clear " to Father Richardson which helps his theory, however little foundation it may have in reason and fact. What is gained, after all, to the cause of Papal infallibility by these new- fangled apologies for the errors of the organ of infallibility ? " Honorins never taught the Church anything contrary to the true faith," says Mr. Rivington, in his introductory essay; and Father Richardson echoes him. Very well. But the heresy of Honoring was recorded and anathematised in the Roman Breviaries for- centuries under the sanction of successive Popes. Let Fathers Richardson and Rivington make their choice. If they save the infallibility of Honoring by denying his heresy, it must be at the cost of the in- fallibility of the Popes who denounced him as a heretic. From that dilemma there is no escape. Well may Cardinal Manning denounce the appeal to history as "a. treason and.a heresy," for history and Papal infallibility cannot stand together. Some striking illustrations of that assertion lie before us as we write. Father Richardson and his Anglican teacher assure us that all antiquity, and especially the decrees and canons of the ancient Councils, bear conclusive witness to the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope. On the other hand, we find a diametrically opposite view advocated. in an elaborate treatise in defence of Papal infallibility and supremacy by a Roman Prelate and Professor of Hebrew. Ours is the revised edition, printed at Rome in 1875, "ex Typographa Vaticana." The book, moreover, is dedicated to the late Pope, " Pontifici Maximo Doctori et Judici inerranti a- Christo Jean in Ecclesia constituto cum potestate in ounctos Episcopos." This candid Prelate and Professor, Vincenzi by name, frankly admits that the Papacy and the records of the ancient Councils cannot stand together. But with Vincenzi the supremacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff is the primary article of faith with which Chriatianitystands or falls. The Papacy must, therefore, be upheld at all costs. From this it necessarily follows that the records of the ancient Councils (he reckons four hundred canons " in which the prerogatives of the Roman See are never once set forth, or if by chance referred to, are only mentioned to be disowned ") must be repudiated as forgeries :—" Tura necessario reprobandi aunt prtefati Canones adversus sacrum Petri et truccessorum principatum erecti." And he sums up the whole case in the
following language :—" Whatever we are to think of the origin and authority of these countless Canons, nobody will ever persuade me that the Apostles and the Fathers of Nictea,
Constantinople, Africa, Chalcedon, and, indeed, all the ortho- dox Fathers, ever sanctioned such Canons, in which both the
primacy of Peter and his successors is discredited and destroyed ; and together with it, the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiffs over the whole Episcopate of the Catholic Church."
Again, in his chapter on ".The Unity of the Church," the author, in that magisterial tone which he adopts throughout, rebukes Mr. Gore for confusing the three component parts of the Church,—namely, the 'Church Militant, the Church in Purgatory, and the Church Triumphant. The jurisdiction of the Pope, Father Richardson tells us, is confined to the Church
" As the Catechism teaches the smallest child, the sole Head of the Church," in her totality, " is Jesus Christ our Lord." But it is not safe to rely on Catechisms. There was Keenan's Catechism, to wit, which went through many editions with the imprimatur of Roman Catholic Bishops, and which taught, down to the Vatican Council, that the Pope's infallibility was not a doctrine of the Catholic Church, but only " a Pro- testant invention." There lies before us a volume of " Dis- courses," delivered on various occasions by Pio Nono, and pub- lished in the year 1872, " a tutti i fideli di Roma e orbe ;"- ex cathedrd utterances, therefore, if ever there have been such. On p. 133 of Vol. I. there is a discourse delivered to a Belgian deputation who presented the Pope with a tiara. In accepting it, the Pope calls it "a symbol of my triple royal dignity, in Heaven, on the earth, and in Purgatory" (" nn Triregno, simbolo della mia triple dignitii, reale, nel Celo, sopra in terra e nel Purgatorio "). And he adds : " And my kingdom will never perish;" and gives his reasons. After all, "the salutary discipline of sitting on a hard bench, very much under a theological professor," does not appear to have made Father Richardson particularly well instructed in the doctrines of his own Church. And considering the second and third hand kind of learning which his book displays, more modesty of language would not have been out of place. His patronising tone towards Mr. Gore (" poor, worthy Mr. Gore," he calls him in one place) is not altogether becoming, considering the respective positions of the two men in the learned world. Tested by the Vatican Decree, Father Richardson's pronounce- ment on the position of the Pope, which we have just quoted, is a distinct heresy.
On the whole, then, whatever may be thought as to the position of the Anglican Church, we cannot see that the Church of Rome, viewing it through all its history, offers a better security for unity and stability of doctrine. What is the use of an infallibility which has always got to be explained away when it comes in conflict with awkward facts, and as to the limits of which scarcely any two Roman Catholics agree ? We have one view of it in Dr. Newman's letter to the Duke of Norfolk ; another in Dr. Ward's writings ; and a third in Father Richardson's. Father Richardson makes merry over the difficulty of the mass of Christians discovering for themselves the Catholic faith. Is it an easier task to discover when the Pope really speaks infallibly, considering how little unanimity there is on that point in the Roman communion It is the same as regards the cuitus of the Virgin. Cardinal Newman characterised as " a bad dream " the large mass of popular and quasi-authoritative teaching on that subject ; while Dr. Ward thought Cardinal Newman's view barely orthodox. The truth is, the Roman view of authoritative teaching is a comparatively modern view, and has never been realised in the history of the Christian Church. If any- thing is certain in God's relations with mankind, it is that he does not intend them to have infallible guidance in the Papal sense. Light enough for guidance he does give them; but not light enough to overwhelm all doubt and dispense with moral and intellectual effort. The craving for infallible guidance is a natural but also an unwholesome craving. The Jews of our Lord's time were constantly asking for a sign, an infallible proof of his Messiahship. " How long dost thou keep us in doubt ? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." But he steadily refused. For " He knew what was in man," and was well aware that it was not on such a foundation that a stable faith could grow. He taught the same great truth when he represented Abraham as refusing the request of Dives to send his five brethren on earth an infallible message from the spiritual realm. Does Father Richardson feel certain that, in proportion to the re- spective nominal adherents of the two Churches, there are not more Anglicans who hold the Catholic faith, as defined in the Nicene Creed, than there are Roman Catholics P That, after all, is a more decisive test than mere superficial uniformity. From an uneasy feeling that the testimony of history will not support the Papal claims, Father Richardson hints that those claims are a legitimate development from a doctrine which was always held. But if the Pope had inherently the power to decide questions of faith and morals, why were the Bishops of the Church summoned to debate and decide the issue, leaving their dioceses shepherdless for months P The Vatican Decree is eighteen centuries too late. Infallibility lay dormant, it seems, when it was needed. It has been proclaimed when there is no need for it. The fact of (Ecumenical Councils is irreconcilable with Papal infallibility.
We have found fault with some blemishes of tone which somewhat disfigure Father Richardson's argument ; but jus- tice requires that we should acknowledge the courtesy and good temper which generally pervade his book.
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