INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 225, 23 September 1870, Page 2

INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE.

To the Editor of the Nelson Evening Mail Sir — A little salt is sometimes good, as it appears, to correct the taste of certain meals before we can take them ; a little sugar with the pill .h-lps a patient to swallow it. My letter on the Infallibility Dogma, as you headed it, was rather bitter for the taste of the generality of your readers ; it wanted a little sugar to help them to i swallow it. But you had near at hand something sweet in the " Papal Miracle," which you gave them readily ; indeed it was a real friandise for a great many of your readers. The Infallibility Dogma on one hand, and a ,; Papal Miracle" as that which you published yesterday, on ths other! There was the pill accompanied with some sugar. That a man should be infallible this is a hard saying, and who can hear it ? The infallible Pope attempting to work a miracle and failing to do it ! This indeed seems to solve the difficulty and to show the impossibility of the infallibility. Such are the ideas that one gathers from your article, through ignorance of the nature of the infallibility, and I must say such an idea is a great error. When we assert that the Pope is infallible, it does not mean that he is infallible in his private actions, conversations, politics, or as king or manager in temporal affairs ; nor does his infallibility depend upon his personal sanctity or combined learning, prudence, and wisdom. The Council in defining the Pope's infallibility doss not invest an autocrat in the Church with tyrannical and arbitrary power. Because the Pope is infallible it does not follow that he is able to make or unmake doctrines at will, and that he is subject to no other law but that of his own caprice or private ju3gment. But we maintain and prove it from scripture and the testionn> of all antiquity, that the Pope is infallible according to the divine promise, when he professes to teach as Pope or representative of Christ and head of his Church, a dogma of the Christian doctrine to all the bishops, which manner of teaching is said to be teaching ex cathedra. And now concerning the Papal Miracle which you have fxtracted from the Garten laube:—Do you think I believe such a story, no, not in the least ; it is too often that " contemporaries," " special correspondents," or " a particular friend," having no news to give, have, in their long idle moments, imagined and forged articles which were sure to find admirers and would answer the object of their correspondence. Such as the Marquis of Bute represented as meditating a return to the church of bis fathers ; the Cardinal Altieri assisting at a meeting, though dead two years ngo. &c , &c. I could refer you to many more instances, were I not afraid to trespnss too much on your space. Suffice it to say, that the Romans are so amazed at the blunders of the Times, that they have baptized him the Blunderer. And you would make me believe the news of the Papal Miracle ! I am yours, &c, Catholiccs. September 22, IS7O.