THE POPE ON INFALLIBILITY

Evening Star, Issue 3821, 24 May 1875, Page 3

THE POPE ON INFALLIBILITY

Recently the Pope delivered an address to the “Academy of the Catholic Religion,” the text of which has been republished by the ‘ Journal of Florence.’ In the course of it the Holy Father made tho following remarks on the question of infallibility : “ Among the different subjects which you will have to treat there is one which seems to me of special importance, and that is to bring to nothirg the efforts that are being made to falsify the idea of Pontifical Infallibility. Of all these efforts that which seems the fullest of malice consist) in attributing to the infallibility of the Pope the right af deposing Sovereigns and of absolving subjects from their allegiance. Without doubt, this right has sometimes been exercised by tho Popes in the supreme struggles, but it never has anything in common with their infallibility, and its source was not in infallibility, but in the Pontifical authority. Moreover, the exertions of the right in the ages c f faith—when men recognised in the Pope, what he really is, the Supreme Judge of Christendom, and acknowledged tho advantages of his tribunal for tho solution of great questions arising between peoples and their Sovereigns—the exercise of that right spread itself, seconded as it ought to have been by public law and the general agreement of the nationalities, to the gravest interests of the Stale and their Chiefs. The conditions of tho present day are greatly changed, and only malice can confound two things so different; infallibility in regard to revealed principles, and the right which the Popes exercised in virtue of their authority when the welfare of society demanded it. Our enemies know this as well as we, and it is easy to sea why they call upon this confusion of ideas and put forward hypotheses in which nobody believes. t They invent these pretexts in order to afflict us and to excite princes against the Church. There are some who wish I should explain and render still more clear the definition of the Council. I will not do it. it is clear enough in itself, and has no need of further explanations or commentaries.”