France in 1682 is found to contain errors condemned and open to
condemnation.[16] After 1819, M. de Maistre, a powerful logician,
matchless herald and superb champion, in his book on "The Pope,"
justifies, prepares and announces the coming constitution of the
Church. - Step by step, the assent of Catholic community is won or
mastered;[17] on approaching 1870, it is nearly universal; after 1870,
it is wholly so and could not be otherwise; whoever refuses to submit
is excluded from the community and excludes himself from it, for he
denies a dogma which it professes, a revealed dogma, an article of
faith which the Pope and the council have just decreed. Thenceforward,
the Pope, in his magisterial pulpit, in the eyes of every man who is
and wants to remain Catholic, is infallible; when he gives his
decision on faith or on morals, Jesus Christ himself speaks by his
mouth, and his definitions of doctrine are "irrefutable," "they are so
of themselves, they alone, through their own virtue, and not by virtue
of the Church's consent."[18] For the same reason, his authority is
absolute, not only in matters which concern faith and morals, but
again in matters which concern the discipline and government of the
Church."[19] His judgment may be resorted to in every ecclesiastical
case; nobody is allowed to question his verdict; "nobody is allowed to
appeal to the future oecumenical council;"[20] He has not only "a
priority by right, an office of inspection and of direction; he holds
again priority of jurisdiction, a full and supreme power of
jurisdiction over the universal Church, . . . ", "the total plenitude
of this supreme power," not indirectly and extraordinarily, but
"directly and ordinarily, over all churches and over each one of them,
over all pastors and all believers, over each believer and each of the
pastors." - Read this in the Latin: each word, through its ancient
root and through its historic vegetation, contributes to strengthening
the despotic and Roman sense of the text; the language of the people