William John Sparrow Simpson

“ He is convinced that this traditional principle will be maintained. Catholics have no cause to fear. A Council is a sublime union of authority with liberty. This will be illustrated in the coming events in Rome. He appeals with impassioned eagerness to the separated Eastern Churches, and to the Protestant communities, to seize this golden occasion for unity. In his glowing vision the Council is invested with all the graces of considerateness and caution: it becomes the means of re-uniting Christendom—a work of pacification and of light. ”

“ Resort to suppressive methods is, Acton was profoundly persuaded, suicidal as well as immoral. It argues either a timid faith which fears the light, or a false morality which would do evil that good might come. "How often have Catholics involved themselves in hopeless contradiction, sacrificed principle to opportunity, adapted their theories to their interest, and staggered the world's reliance on their sincerity by subterfuges which entangle the Church in the shifting sands of party warfare, instead of establishing her cause on the solid rock of principles!" ”

“ The greatest theologian of the Roman Church, St Thomas Aquinas, is an embodiment of mediæval theories of papal claims. He died in 1274. The treatise, De Regimine Principum, whether his or not, was universally ascribed to him in former days, and possessed for many centuries the weight of his name and authority. It represents, at any rate, the prevailing mediæval view. By an obvious misuse of the metaphor that the Pope is the Head of the Church, it draws the inference that from the Head all understanding descends to the Body. In the Pope is the plenitude or fulness of all grace ”

“ But his admiration for Dupanloup's outspoken words was unbounded.
"No doubt," wrote Montalembert, "you greatly admire the Bishop of Orleans, but you would admire him vastly more if you could realise the depth into which the French clergy has sunk. It exceeds anything which would have been considered possible in the days when I was young. ... Of all the strange events which the history of the Church presents, I know none which equals or surpasses this rapid and complete transformation of Catholic France into a vestibule of the antechambers of the Vatican." [14]
4. ”

“ To Cardinal Bellarmine, Jesuit of the sixteenth century, the persistent refusal of Cyprian to accept the Pope's teachings appeared very grave indeed. Cyprian, says Bellarmine, was not a heretic, because those who say that the Pope can err are not even yet considered manifestly heretics. But whether Cyprian did not commit a mortal sin in disobeying the Pope, Bellarmine is not sure. On the one hand, Cyprian sinned in ignorance. Thinking the Pope in serious error, he was obliged to disobey; for no man ought to go against his conscience—and a Council of eighty Bishops agreed with him. ”

“ If Dupanloup pronounced the dogma of Papal Infallibility most inopportune, it was partly because he understood sympathetically the conditions of religious life outside the Roman Communion, and knew that nothing in the world could be less calculated to win. He wrote most forcibly on the futility of inviting, as the Pope had done, the Oriental Bishops of the separated Churches to attend a Council, while preparing to erect a higher barrier than ever against their reception. Could anything, he asks, be less persuasive than this? "There is already a division between us: we will make it an abyss. ”

“ If the Gallican School set the Council above the Pope, as the final judge in matters of faith, De Maistre entirely depreciates the significance of Ecumenical Councils. His estimate of their value as compared with his valuation of the Papacy is almost contemptuous. Councils are, in his view, periodical or intermittent exhibitions of sovereignty. They are extremely rare, purely accidental, without any regularity of recurrence; easier to assemble in primitive days when the extent of Christendom was comparatively small. But in modern times an Ecumenical Council is a mere chimera. ”

“ We believe that you, too, from the reality of your religious feeling and faith, approve what is religious as well as true. Nevertheless, we know there are those who cannot readily part with principles once imbibed, or easily alter a view of their own, but who, without hurting the bond of peace and concord between colleagues, hold to special practices once adopted among them, and herein we do no violence to any one and impose no law. For, in the administration of the Church each several prelate has the free discretion of his own will having to account to the Lord for his action. ”

“ The Liber Diurnus contained the papal profession of faith. "As Pope Honorius is condemned in the profession of faith of the new Pontiffs," says Cardinal Bona, "it is better not to publish this work." "That is to say" exclaims Gratry, "behold a fact which overwhelms us. Let us prevent its being known."
The maxim that truth may be suppressed in the interests of religion roused Gratry's boundless indignation. ”

“ He is a heretic if he rejects a truth which he knows to be revealed although not defined. There is to Dechamps only one truth in all the Gospel affirmed with the same superabundant clearness as Papal Infallibility, and that is the real presence in the Eucharist. Do not therefore let us hesitate to define this truth, which forms the basis of the Divine constitution of the Church a truth which Scripture conclusively reveals, and which twenty centuries have glorified. ”

“ It is the duty of the son to cover the shame of his father; and the Catholic owes it to the Church to defend her against every adverse fact as he would defend the honour of his mother. He will not coldly examine the value of testimony, or concede any point because it is hard to meet, or assist with unbiassed mind in the discovery of truth before he learns what its bearing may be. ”

“ Two antagonistic principles were engaged in final strife for supremacy: on the one hand, Papal absolutism ; on the other, the genuine Catholicism. The principles of the Syllabus declared that the Church had the right to resort to coercion, and possessed direct power even in temporal affairs. Liberty of conscience and liberty of the Press were denied to be human rights. Were these principles to be erected by Papal Infallibility into dogmas of faith? Was Christendom to witness the triumph of absolutism and a new Ultramontane confession? ”

“ De Maistre's argument for Papal Infallibility is a political argument pure and simple. All true government in human society is monarchy. And the ultimate decision in the political order must be regarded as an infallible decision. The sovereign power cannot permit the laws to be called in question. What sovereignty is in the political order, the same is infallibility in the spiritual. We only demand, therefore, for the Church the same prerogative of finality which we demand for the State. ”

“ It may at times be a duty of the State to protect freedom of conscience, yet this freedom may be a temptation to apostasy. A discovery may be made in science which will shake the faith of thousands, yet religion cannot refute it or object to it. The difference in this respect between a true and a false religion is, that one judges all things by the standard of their truth, the other by the touchstone of its own interests." [50]
And this led Acton to pronounce a severe criticism on methods of defence prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church of the day. ”

“ The dogma was necessary also to justify the believer's attitude toward the Pope. Faith, argued Manning, requires the Infallibility of the teacher of truth. If the teacher be fallible, our certainty cannot be Divine. If the Pope be fallible, we cannot be certain that the doctrines propounded by him—the Immaculate Conception, for instance—are of faith. "The treatise of Divine Faith is therefore incomplete so long as the Infallibility of the proponent is not fully defined." ”

“ First of all, I believe Infallibility to be a conjunctive and collective attribute of the whole Catholic Church according to the words of Holy Church in her Collect, 'God by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified.' In other words, the infallible assistance of the Holy Spirit is given to the whole Church in its collective capacity, to the Laity as well as the Clergy. ”

“ Cecconi says that those who knew the deeply Catholic sentiments of Montalembert, unfortunately entangled though they were with magnificent Utopias on liberty, will not credit him with uncatholic extremes. He rendered to the Church most signal services. If he was sometimes deceived, this was due, not to want of intelligence, but of theological learning. When the alternative lay between liberty and religion, he did not hesitate. "I love liberty more than all the world," he said, "and religion more than liberty." ”

“ In the Council Chamber of Trent, from the lips of Bishops, both theories are sharply stated.
On the papal side it was claimed that consecration to the Episcopate confers orders but not jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is the authority to govern the Christian flock. And it was argued that a Bishop does not necessarily possess jurisdiction. He possesses jurisdiction when the flock has been assigned to him. But, said the papal advocates, it is the Pope who gives to the Bishop his flock. Consequently, it is the Pope who confers the jurisdiction. ”

“ For that which may deceive us, or leave us in error, cannot be Divine. He endorsed the principle of De Maistre, that Infallibility is a necessary consequence of supremacy. One who pronounces absolute dogmatic decisions, and addresses them to all the faithful and the entire Catholic Episcopate, without requesting the consent, either direct or indirect, of the Episcopate, but rather commanding them to publish and carry out his decisions, forbidding them to infringe them, or rashly oppose them, under penalty of de facto excommunication, is personally infallible. ”

“ To speak of "one energy" in Christ seemed strange to many, and offended them because it seemed to deny the duality of nature in our Lord; while the expression "two energies" offended others, because it would follow that there were two contradictory wills in Christ. Sergius then explained his theory by the illustration that as the body is controlled by the soul, so is the human nature in Christ controlled by His Divine Will—an illustration which certainly ought to have opened Honorius's eyes, even if the proposal to abandon the orthodox expression, "two energies," did not already alarm him. ”

“ The conditions essential to an article of faith are: that it be revealed by God; and that it be contained in the Deposit which the Christian centuries have faithfully guarded and transmitted one to another without alteration. Now it is incredible that five or six hundred Bishops will affirm in the face of the world that they have found in the convictions of their respective Churches that which is not there. ”

“ True, schoolmen discuss some such points; but let me ask his Lordship whether he finds any Catholic who denies or doubts that a General Council, with the Pope at its head, or that the Pope himself, issuing a doctrinal decision which is received by the great body of Catholic Bishops, is secure from error? Most certainly not, and hence he may gather where all Catholics agree in lodging Infallibility."
Milner's view of Catholicism is that if we would know what is of faith, we must ask what is and ever has been the doctrine of the Church. A dogma cannot be something new. ”

“ Even Lord Acton's faith could only hope that authority might ultimately acknowledge the principles upon whose suppression it was for the present actively engaged. Thus the Church, in his view, was committed to a fruitless conflict with truths to which it must at last surrender. It was destined evermore to oppose all truth for which the ignorance of the majority precluded recognition; to silence its prophets and hereafter adorn their sepulchres; to denounce as injurious what it would one day embrace as true ”

“ Moreover, if the character of the two doctrines be considered, it is inevitable to ask whether the doctrine of Papal Infallibility is fundamental in the Christian Faith. If it be fundamental after the Church has defined it, it was fundamental before the definition. A doctrine does not become fundamental through the Church's definition, but through its own intrinsic character. It therefore remains unaccounted for that a fundamental of the Christian Faith should be described as a Protestant invention, and such description sanctioned by Catholic Bishops, and tolerated by Rome. ”

“ But apart from all enquiry whether the estimate of an Ecumenical Council outweighs that of an individual theologian, apart from the question of the accuracy of their decision, there lie the theological principles which this severity of judgment on a papal utterance involved. Such condemnation obviously assumes a certain conception of the value and authority of papal decisions. Hefele said that "It is in the highest degree startling, even scarcely credible, that an Ecumenical Council should punish with anathema a Pope as a heretic." ”

“ Unless one doctored all one's facts one would be thought a bad Catholic. The truth is, there is a keen conflict going on just now between two parties one in the Church, one out of it; and at such seasons extreme views alone are in favour, and a man who is not extravagant is thought treacherous. I sometimes think of King Lear's daughters, and consider that they, after all, may be found the truest who are in speech more measured." [59]
Hence it was that Ward's vehement and exaggerated Ultramontanism drew down upon him one of the severest rebukes which Newman perhaps ever wrote. ”

“ To demonstrate that a doctrine was not the conviction of the entire Church, that it was not logically included as an undeniable sequence in the original Deposit of Revealed Truth, was hitherto regarded as a conclusive demonstration that such doctrine could never be raised to the dignity of a dogma of the Church. Döllinger contended that on this principle the case for Papal Infallibility was already adversely determined. In the Eastern Church no voice had ever been heard to ascribe dogmatic Infallibility to the Pope. The doctrine did not arise within the West until the thirteenth century. ”

“ That the Infallibility of the Chief Pontiff is a revealed truth, and therefore definable, as of Catholic faith, is to me personally perfectly clear. Nevertheless, since it belongs to the Church alone to determine what is essential to belief, and since that dogma has never yet been in that manner proposed to be believed, they who genuinely hold the contrary are by no means or only in the least degree (unless indeed some other ground be shown) to be considered alien from the Catholic Faith." [37] ”