decisions of a supreme authority can be altered; those of an
infallible authority cannot. A Borough Council may change its
traffic regulations at the next meeting; but the Vicar of Christ,
when in certain circumstances and with certain precautions, he
has once spoken, has expressed, for all the ages, a part of the
immutable, absolute, and eternal Truth. It is this that makes the
papal pretensions so extraordinary and so enormous. It is also
this that gives them their charm. Catholic apologists, when they
try to tone down those pretensions and to explain them away,
forget that it is in their very exorbitance that their
fascination lies. If the Pope were indeed nothing more than a
magnified Borough Councillor, we should hardly have heard so much
of him. It is not because he satisfies the reason, but because he
astounds it, that men abase themselves before the Vicar of
Christ.

And certainly the doctrine of Papal Infallibility presents to the
reason a sufficiency of stumbling-blocks. In the fourteenth
century, for instance, the following case arose. John XXII
asserted in his bull 'Cum inter nonnullos' that the doctrine of
the poverty of Christ was heretical. Now, according to the light
of reason, one of two things must follow from this--either John
XXII was himself a heretic, or he was no Pope. For his
predecessor, Nicholas III, had asserted in his bull 'Exiit qui
seminat' that the doctrine of the poverty of Christ was the true
doctrine, the denial of which was heresy. Thus if John XXII was
right, Nicholas III was a heretic, and in that case Nicholas's
nominations of Cardinals were void, and the conclave which
elected John was illegal-- so that John was no Pope, his
nominations of Cardinals were void, and the whole Papal