INFALLIBILITY
573
INFALLIBILITY
council cannot judge liira, but can only announce the judgment of (iod, and thus one cannot properly say that a pope can become heretical, since he ceases to be pope at the moment of passing from orthodoxy to het- erodoxy. The doctrine entered on a fresh phase of development from the time of Leo X. Its foremost defender at that time was Thomas of Vic or Cajetan, yet the doctrine was so far from becoming dominant at Rome that the successor of Leo X, Adrian YI, who, as professor of Louvain, had maintained in liis jirincipal work that several popes had been heretical, and that it was certainly possible for a pope to establish a heresy by his decision or decretals, caused, as pope, his work denying infallibility to be reprinted in Rome.
Another patron of the infallibility theory, who la- bored hard to naturalize it in Belgium, the Louvain theologian, Ruard Tapper, returned in 1552 from Trent cruelly disillusionized, and thought the deep-seated cor- ruption of the Church a matter not to be disputed, but to be deplored. The third of the theological fathers of papal infallibility in the 16th century was Tapper's contemporary, the Spaniard iMelchior Canus, whose work on theological principles and evidences was, up to Bel- larmine's time, the great authority used by all infal- libilists. Like Taiiper, he became in later years dis- gusted with the effect of the papal system on the popes and the Curia, and in a report to tlie king of Spain ex- pressed the opinion that the whole administration of the Church at Rome was " converted into a great trad- ing business, a traffic forbidden by all laws, human, natural, and divine." Out of Italy the hypothesis of infallibility had but few adherents, even in the Ifith century, till the Jesuits began to exercise a powerful influence.
The bishops and prominent scholars of France, Spain, Germany, ami other countries were almost unanimous in advocating- the superiority of oecumenical councils over the \w\\c. The turning of the tide was chieHy due to the intluenee of the Jesuits, who were naturally in- clined to favor the extremest absolutism in tlie Church. As their representative, cardinal Bellamrine further de- veloped the ideas of Cajetan, in wliich he generally con- curs ; but he rejects decisively Cajetans hypothesis of a heretical pope being deposed ipso facto by the judgment of Cod. A heretical pope is legitimate so long as the Church has not deposed him. If Cajetan said the Church was the handmaid of the pope, Bellarmine adds that whatever doctrine it pleases the jwpe to prescribe the Churcli must receive ; there can be no question raised about proving it ; she must blindly renounce all judgment of her own, and lirmly believe that aU the pope teaches is absolutely true, all he commands absolutely good, and all he forbids simply evil and noxious. For the pope can as little err in moral as in dogmatic questions. Nay, he goes so far as to maintain that if the pope were to err by prescribing sins and forbidding virtues, the Church would be bound to consider sins good and virtues evil, unless she chose to sin against conscience; so that if the pope absolve the subjects of a prince from their oatli of allegiance, which, according to Bellarmine, he has a full right to do, the Church must believe that what he has done is good, and every Christian must hold it a sin to remain any longer loyal and obedient to his sover- eign. Through the influence of Bellarmine and other writers of his order, the infallibility hypothesis no^v' made immense strides. One great stumbling-block had, however, to be removed. Every theologian, on closer inspection, found papal decisions which contra- dicted other doctrines, laid down by popes or generally received in the Church, or wliich appeared to him doubtful, and it seemed impossible to declare all these products of an infalliljle authority. It became necessa ry, therefore, to specify some distinctive marks by wMch a really infallible decision of a pope might be recog- nised, or to fix certain condition?, in the absence of which the pronouncement is not to be regarded as in fallible. And thus, since the KJtli century, there grew
up the famous distinction of papal decisions promulga- ted ex cathedra, and therefore dogmatically, and with- out any possibility of error. By means of this ingen- ious distinction, some of the most inconvenient decisions of popes, which it was desirable to except from the priv- ilege of infallibility generally asserted in other cases, could be explained away. Thus pope Honorius, in the dogmatic letter which was condemned as heretical by the sixth oecumenical council, and the decision address- ed by Nicolas I to the Bulgarian Church that baptism administered simply in the name of Jesus is valid, were declared to be judgments given by the popes as pri- vate persons. A number of other limitations were pro- posed by the theologians advocating infallibility, but only two were commonly received, viz. Bellarmine's, that the papal decree must be addressed to tlie whole Church; and Cellot's, that he must anathematize all who dissent from his teaching. According to tliis doctrine, which is taught by the most prominent dogmatic writer of the order in the present century, Perrone {Pm-lect. r/ifo/o^.viii, 497, Louvain, 1843), and received by pretty nearly the whole order, the pope is liable to err when he addresses an instruction to the French or German Church only ; and, moreover, his infallibility becomes very (juestionable whenever he omits to denounce an anathema on all dissentients. Since the time of Bellar- mine, the infallibility hypothesis has been one of the chief distinctions of the Jesuits and the most radical portion of the Ultramontane party on the one hand, and all other schools within the Catholic Church on the other. A number of synods, bishops, and prominent theologians, and in some instances tlie whole Catholic Church of several countries, put themselves on record against the doctrine, for which, on the other hand, the Jesuits and other Ultramontane writers incessantly strove to gain friends among bishops, clergj^, and laity, and, in particular, among the sovereigns.