Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/392

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
78
THE VATICAN COUNCIL.

gence with the deposit of faith, and the principles of revealed morality: that is, in order to the end of its infallible office, namely, the guardianship of Divine revelation.

I will not here attempt to enumerate the subject-matters which fall within the limits of the infallibility of the Church. It belongs to the Church alone to determine the limits of its own infallibility. Hitherto it has not done so except by its acts, and from the practice of the Church we may infer to what matter its infallible discernment extends. It is enough for the present to show two things:

1. First, that the infallibility of the Church extends, as we have seen, directly to the whole matter of revealed truth, and indirectly to all truths which though not revealed are in such contact with revelation that the deposit of faith and morals cannot be guarded, expounded, and defended without an infallible discernment of such unrevealed truths.

2. Secondly, that this extension of the infallibility of the Church is, by the unanimous teaching of all theologians, at least theologically certain; and, in the judgment of the majority of theologians, certain by the certainty of faith.

Such is the traditional doctrine respecting the infallibility of the Church in faith and morals. By the definition of the Vatican Council, what is traditionally believed by all the faithful in respect to the Church is expressly declared of the Roman Pontiff. But the definition of the extent of that infallibility, and of the certainty on which it rests, in matters not revealed, has not been treated as yet,