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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
CATHOLICS AND THE POPE
The following questions and answers dealing with
Catholics and their relations to the Pope are taken
from a pamphlet issued by the Catholic Laymen’s
Association of Georgia. Copies of the pamphlet will
be mailed free to any address on request. This is
the third article of the series.
“Will you tell me why the fact that there was a
wicked man Pope does not break The chain of
Apostolic Succession which you claim?”
Because Christ founded His Church to last to thf
end of the world. Her mission is to save souls and
this mission cannot be fulfilled so long as there are
souls in the world to be saved. Therefore, to admit
that any man, Pope or otherwise, by any means, could
break the Apostolic Succession of the Church, and
thereby even for a moment destroy her integrity,
would be to admit that the purpose of our Lord in
His Church could be thwarted by a man, which is too
much to admit. Once it be granted that Christ
founded a Church, and promised to be with it “unto
the consummation of the world,” it must be granted
also, that in spite of the acts of this man or that, her
existence continues unbroken, her identity remains
unchanged and her integrity holds unimpaired, as
Christ intended and said, unto the end of the world.
Jesus Christ cannot be circumvented by Satan, even
with the help of a wieked man.
The Church may be likened in a sense to a cor
poration. When a corporation is chartered it ac
quires an entity of its own, separate and apart from
its officers, who may violate or exceed the charter,
may die and leave a vacancy, may be illegally chosen,
may practice corruption, may have their rights con
tested and be ousted from office, without breaking
the continuous existence or impairing the complete
entity of the corporation itself. In the same respect
we may say that the Church is a corporation chart
ered by Jesus Christ and having an entity of her own
separate and distinct from her officers, the Pope,
Cardinals, Bishops and Priests, who cannot by their
failure or wrongdoing break the continuous existence
or impair the complete entity of the corporation
that Christ created. We have not been altogether
free from defections in our civil affairs. We have
had vacancies in office; excessive use of authority;
contests; corruptions, and all that; but do we think
of the State’s existence being interrupted or its author
ity being diminished or its integrity being impaired
in consequence?
Here is the whole thing in a nutshell: Christ
founded His Church for mankind; her power, authori
ty, teaching, sacraments, constitution—all her rights
and prerogatives—were given her, not for the sake of
Popes or Bishops or any other class, but for every
member of the human race until the end of Time; and
nothing that any man or set of men on earth can do
will ever be able to defeat our Lord’s purpose and
deprive His Church of anything that for the blessing
of all men He gave her. We have His word that the
very gates of Hell shall not prevail against her.
“If the Pope is not inspired, and not in any waj
divine, how is he infallible?”
By virture of his succession to St. Peter whom
our Lord made Chief of the Apostles and Supreme
Shepherd of Christendom, and to whom He gave the
keys of His Kingdom and whose acts on earth He
promised to ratify in Heaven. Since God cannot
fail of His promise to ratify, and cannot ratify error
He must give His supreme agent such assistance in his
office as will prevent him from teaching error when
he teaches as the agent of God.
“Is every Pope infallible, even though he be 2
wicked man?”
As infallibility attaches to the office and not the
man, and means freedom from liability to err and not
freedom from liability to sin,(impeccability), every
Pope is infallible. Even though the Pope be a
wicked man he could not err when in the exercise of
his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians he
defines a doctrine of faith and morals to be held by
the whole Church. Every Pope, however, does not
exercise the infallible magisterium, and it happens
that none of the few Popes who have uphappil}
proved to be wicked men, ever defined a doctrine of
faith and morals to be held by the whole Church,
which alone would be infallible. Here again, we
may look to our civil government for illustration. It
so happens we never had a Chief Justice of the
United States who was known as a wicked man; but
should we be unfortunate enough to have such a one
in the future, who would claim that his bad personal
character invalidated his ruling and decrees? In
older countries men notoriously wicked have been
High Chancellors, but none has ever ventured merely
on that account to question the force and verity of
their official decisions.
“Is the Pope infallible in his private judgment?’
No.
“Is he infallible in his private interpretation of
Scriptures?” No, he is not infallible in any private
capacity.
“Is he infallible in his public utterances? Not all
of them.
Continued on Page 14.