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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.