Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/196

Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of Christian people, the sacred Council approving, we teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedrâ—that is, when in the discharge of the office of pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church—is, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church.

The definition declares that the doctrine of the infallibility of the successor of Peter is a tradition from the beginning of the Christian faith; it then declares that doctrine to be contained in the divine revelation. Let it be noted that the definition rests itself not upon any inspiration, or consciousness, or conviction of any person, even of the head of the Church. It affirms a given doctrine to be a tradition from the beginning, and therefore to be revealed. But an objector may say, "How can that be known? who can tell what tradition is from the beginning?" Certainly no individual, nor any aggregate of individuals, can tell us this; they cannot exhaust the evidence of the Christian Church. But the Church itself can, and does, know its own evidence and its own tradition. It knows its own present and its own past with a living consciousness like that by which we know our own personal identity. No one outside