Some persons have found it difficult to understand, what kind of assent it is which can possibly be due, to a judgment not strictly infallible. We have on former occasions given various instances to illustrate its character. Thus, a youth of fourteen years old is being instructed by his father, to whom he has every reason for looking up, in the facts and principles of history; he accepts the whole instruction with unqualified assent, nor does the very thought of its being erroneous in any particular so much as enter his mind. Again, I feel ill, and send for a physician of first-rate eminence, with whose integrity I am intimately acquainted. "Your case is distressing," he says, "but very simple. You have a rheumatic fever; there is no doubt about the matter." I must be very strangely constituted, if I do not yield firm intellectual assent to this judgment. And considering the intimate relation which exists between the Holy Ghost and the Church, where is the difficulty of supposing, that even those judgments of hers, which are not strictly infallible, are nevertheless watched over with such constant Divine supervision, that the one course of orthodoxy and security lies in humbly assenting to their truth?

Such assuredly is the teaching of the Holy See; as is evident in the case of ontologism just mentioned, and still more obviously from the Munich Brief to which we have also referred. Then again Pius IX., when repeating his condemnation of Günther, thus pronounces :

"The original censure of that philosopher's works by the Congregation of the Index, sanctioned as it was by our authority and published by our command, ought to have been amply sufficient, in order that the whole question should be considered as having received its final decision (penitùs dirempta censeretur); and that all who glory in the Catholic name should clearly and distinctly understand that obedience was altogether due, and that the doctrine contained in Günther's books might not be regarded as sound (sinceram haberi non posse)."

For a similar purpose, we will cite the still more remarkable instance of Louvain traditionalism. This doctrine was not otherwise censured, than by a Congregational judgment expressing its own Papal confirmation. The inculpated Professors declared, that this judgment was " disciplinary" not "doctrinal"; and that it demanded, not interior assent, but only abstinence from open contradiction. This plea was peremptorily rejected,-with an expression of surprise that it could have been advanced,-by Cardinal Patrizi writing in the Pope's name; and the Professors were required to sign a declaration, that they "fully, perfectly, and absolutely submit themselves to

the " relevant "decisions of the Holy See, reprobating and rejecting every opposite doctrine."* From these two cases -the case of Günther and of Louvain traditionalism—a disjunctive proposition inevitably follows. Either the extent of infallibility is to the full as large as we have ever maintained ;or there may be a doctrinal judgment not infallible, to which "full, perfect, and absolute" interior assent is due from every Catholic. And the same remark may be made concerning that doctrine on the Pope's civil princedom, which is taught in certain specified Allocutions and Apostolic Letters. The Syllabus-avowedly issued by the Pope's express commanddeclares that "all Catholics" owe to this doctrine their most firm adherence (firmissimè retinere debent). Either in those Allocutions and Apostolic Letters he had been teaching ex cathedrâ,—or most firm interior adherence may be due from all Catholics to a Pontifical instruction not strictly infallible.†

F. Franzelin takes up the position which we are here defending, in a scholion on "the Subject and Object of Infallibility," of which we published a translation in July, 1871; pp. 258-268. The Holy Father, says this illustrious theologian, "may prescribe opinions to be followed or proscribe them to be avoided," even "without the intention of infallibly deciding the truth by definitive sentence." In such case, he adds, it is "unsafe and incompatible with the submission due to the divinely-constituted magisterium," for a Catholic to decline the interior acceptance of such authoritative direction. Such teaching, he considers, is issued by the Pope as exercising "the authority of universal ecclesiastical provision" and whereas to infallible teaching is due the assent of faith,whether immediately or mediately divine,―to this teaching is due what he calls "religious assent."

Similarly speaks F. Newman in "the "Apologia" (p. 389). "I submit myself," he says, "to those other decisions of the Holy See, theological or not,‡ through the organs which it has itself appointed, which, waiving the question of their infallibility, on the lowest ground come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed.' The meaning of this latter word

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* The documents concerning this very remarkable case will be found in our number of January, 1868, pp. 279-289.

† Our own firm conviction is, that this doctrine has been defined by the Pope ex cathedrâ: but (as we have often pointed out) this by no means implies, that the doctrine is a revealed verity and a dogma of the Faith.

F. Newman does not of course mean, that Pontifical Congregations can pronounce on matters which are in no sense theological. The distinction which he intends must be, between decisions which set forth some integral part of the Deposit, and decisions which merely set forth some truth im portant for secure preservation of the Deposit.

"obeyed" is fixed by the accompanying word "accepted." That the decisions of which F. Newman speaks are doctrinal, is manifest-not only from the context of the whole paragraph from which we have made the extract, but also from his saying, that he "waives the question of their infallibility." Now to "accept" a doctrinal decision, cannot possibly mean anything else, except to yield it interior assent.

But in fact the word "obeyed," taken by itself, cannot fairly bear any other signification. All loyal Catholics admit. as a matter of course, that "obedience" is due to the doctrinal decrees of a Pontifical Congregation. Now in such a case, what can possibly be meant by this word "obedience"? Sometimes one comes across the implication, that a certain purely external obedience is alone required; that it suffices, if Catholics do not openly write and publish a contradiction of the inculcated doctrine. But no one can have duly pondered his words, who gives such an answer as this. Is there then to be a clique of Catholics, forming a kind of secret society on the basis of some condemned opinion? May they encourage each other in their acceptance of such opinion, and use every means in their power to diffuse it, saving only that they do not actually print and publish their sentiments? And is this forsooth obedience to a doctrinal decision? Is it the Church's intention to effect this, when she issues such a decision?

Another interpretation will perhaps be given of the word. "obedience." Perhaps it will be admitted, that each dissentient is required to conceal his dissent from all others; but it will be added, that he may freely cherish it within his own breast. On such a supposition, indefinite numbers of Catholics will exist-no one being able to guess who and how many they are-who indulge in silent protest against this or that doctrinal judgment, each within the gloomy depths of his heart. Surely no one will doubt, that such constant and irksome self-restraint as this would be an immeasurably heavier and more intolerable bondage, than the very simple course of submitting their intellect to the Church's judgment. But one cannot in fact gravely contemplate so preposterous a theory.

A somewhat different reply has before this been given to the question, wherein consists due obedience to the doctrinal decree of a Congregation. It has been said, that Catholics should presume the decision right, until they see some ground for doubt. But-putting aside (what is not here in point) the intolerable presumption of an individual pitting his judgment against the Church's authoritative teaching— no one can call this obedience to the decree, but the very reverse. If I resolve on stealing as soon as my funds may

run low, I am at this moment transgressing the Seventh Commandment. In like manner Catholics, who resolve to withhold their assent from some doctrinal decree as soon as their private judgment may incline to a different opinion, are ipso facto disobeying the decree.*

Evidently obedience to a doctrinal decree cannot mean anything other, than its interior acceptance. The youth of fourteen years old, who has had every reason for full confidence in his father, takes for granted that his teaching in this or that particular instance is salutary and true. The patient, who by long experience has acquired an intimate conviction of his physician's skill, never dreams of doubting, that that physician's confidently expressed judgment on the character of some malady is a true judgment. On how much stronger grounds, and with how far greater firmness of conviction, will the loyal Catholic adhere with profound interior assent to any doctrine, which the Church may teach him through the tribunals, appointed by her for that express purpose!

We may refer, for a fuller exposition of what we would say on this matter, to our number of July, 1871, pp. 143-154; where we have set forth various reasons for our thesis, and have replied to all the objections against it, which we have seen adduced, or can think of as adducible. Nor will our readers have failed to anticipate the bearing of our remarks, on the question immediately before us. If firm interior assent be due even to the doctrinal decrees of a Pontifical Congregation,-far more obviously must it be due to those "condemnations of the chief errors of our most unhappy age," which Pius IX. testifies that he has issued "according to the duty of his apostolic ministry," "in many published Encyclicals, Consistorial Allocutions, and other Apostolic Letters."

Indeed no one has ever denied, nor can any one possibly deny, that so much as this is expressly declared by the Vatican Council, in the "monitum," on which so much was said at the time, and which closes the first Dogmatic Constitution, the "Dei Filius" :

But since it is not enough to avoid heretical pravity, unless those errors also be diligently shunned which approach it more or less closely, we admonish all of the duty of also observing those Constitutions and Decrees, whereby such evil opinions, which are not here distinctly enumerated, have been proscribed and prohibited by the Holy See.

Here is no possible question of what the Jansenists used to

*There is nothing whatever, in the case of Galileo, adverse to this doctrine; as we consider ourselves to have shown conclusively in our article of July, 1871.

call "respectful silence." Not only must heretical pravity be "avoided" (devitare), but errors, which more or less nearly approach it, must be "shunned" (fugiantur). In other words, every Catholic is not merely bound to abstain from publicly expressing such errors,-but to "shun" them, and so interiorly to dissent from them. And in order that this interior dissent may be secured, he is warned of his duty of "observing" those Constitutions and Decrees whereby they are proscribed. The Council then warns the faithful of the duty incumbent on them, that they yield interior assent to those Pontifical Acts, which condemn non-heretical errors.

And here we are reminded of a very important result, which the Vatican Council seems indirectly to have produced. No well-intentioned Catholic now openly alleges, that he is at liberty to dissent interiorly from those judgments of the Church, which he may not account strictly infallible. The reverse indeed was always the case with truly loyal Catholics. From the moment when the Index condemned the seven ontologistic propositions, every Catholic philosopher renounced them; though much question was raised, as to what was their precise import. Those good Catholics who (most strangely to our mind) have doubted whether the Syllabus were ex cathedrâ, do not dream nevertheless of doubting, that all children of the Church are summoned to reject and contend against the errors there condemned. But there were Catholics claiming to be the Church's defenders who professed a very different maxim, when we began writing on the extent of infallibility; nor should we otherwise have raised the question at all. In England there was a small, but certainly very able, knot of writers -to whom the name of "Catholic" could not with truth (so far as then appeared)* have rightly been refusedwhose maxims were the very reverse of what we have just expressed. Their fundamental principle was the impassable gulf which they alleged to exist, between a definition of faith and any other judgment of the Church; and they boldly professed, that they yielded to the latter no kind of interior assent. Looking to France, things were even much more anxious; in proportion as illustrious champions of the Church, like M. de Montalembert and his friends, were likely to have more weight with the Catholic body, than the writers of the "Home and

*We add this parenthesis, because subsequent circumstances have made it very doubtful, whether some of them at least did not doubt, or even deny, the infallibility of those Pontifical ex cathedrâ Acts, which had been accepted by the Episcopate. We do not admit that any one so thinking could truly have been called a Catholic.