A brief history of papal infallibility In November 1874, William Ewart Gladstone, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom who was destined to occupy that lofty office three more times in his long political career, published a pamphlet with the ominous title “The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance.” An Anglican with intensely held though frequently shifting religious views, Gladstone sharply criticized what the Catholic Church’s recent ecumenical council had taught about papal infallibility and suggested it raised doubts about Catholics’ loyalty to the British Crown. The pamphlet sold more than 150,000 copies before the end of the year and was soon followed by a second pamphlet defending the first and replying to its critics. One of the most prominent critics was Father John Henry Newman, a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism who years later was named a cardinal (and recently a saint). He replied to Gladstone in a vigorously written piece called “A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk” (the duke being a ranking Catholic member of the British establishment in Victorian England). Today the letter still stands as a model of Catholic apologetics. Before Vatican Council I and Pope Pius IX formally defined the doctrine of papal infallibility, Newman had fretted that the time wasn’t ripe for doing that. In the face of Gladstone’s attack, however, he leaped to the doctrine’s defense. Just as the Church is divinely preserved from error in the core elements of its faith, he argued, so is its supreme teacher, the pope: “Such then being … the infallibility of the Church, such too will be the pope’s infallibility, as the Vatican Fathers have defined it.” Today, 150 years after Vatican Council I, these events are worth recalling for their own interest as well as for the light they shed on issues still facing the Church. What is infallibility? What does it mean to say the pope has taught something infallibly? What is the extent of papal infallibility, and what are its limitations? Defining infallibility The idea of papal infallibility had been widely accepted in the Church for centuries before Vatican I. Those holding it included theological giants like St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century and St. Robert Bellarmine in the 17th century. Pius IX, pope from 1846 to 1878, spoke of it soon after his election as pope in an encyclical called Qui Pluribus. The papacy, he wrote, was established by God “to establish and teach the true and legitimate meaning of his heavenly revelation and to judge infallibly all disputes that concern matters of faith and morals” (Qui Pluribus, No. 10). In 1854, Pius IX invoked infallibility in defining — that is, formally teaching as something revealed by God and to be held as a matter of faith — the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Significantly, he consulted the world’s bishops before issuing this definition, and the vast majority replied favorably. Then, in a document published Dec. 8, 1854, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the pope said, “We declare, pronounce and define” — a formula clearly identifying what followed as infallible teaching — the doctrine that Mary from the moment of her conception was “preserved immune from all stain of original sin.” This truth, he added, was “revealed by God and … firmly and constantly to be believed by all the faithful.” The years that followed weren’t easy ones for Pope Pius. Having come to office as a moderate, reforming pope, he was forced into an increasingly conservative posture by events that included the seizure of the Papal States by the largely anticlerical Italian nationalist movement (many of whose leaders were Masons); the assassination of one of his closest advisors, whose funeral was disrupted and his body thrown into the Tiber River; and an uprising in Rome that forced him to flee for his life, only returning under the protection of French troops. Restored to the See of Peter, historian James Hitchcock writes, Pius IX henceforth regarded many of the ideas and movements of the modern age with “unrestrained loathing.” In 1864 — once again on Dec. 8 — that negative view of modernity found expression in an encyclical entitled Quanta Cura and especially in a long document attached to it called the “Syllabus of Errors.” Pope Pius IX The “Syllabus” (or summary) was a collection of 80 propositions that the pope condemned. Their subjects ranged from pantheism, naturalism and absolute rationalism, through socialism, communism and secret societies, to errors pertaining to Christian marriage. The last — and as history has shown, most famous — of the 80 propositions was this: “The Roman pontiff can and should reconcile and adapt himself to [and come to terms with] progress, liberalism and the modern culture.” Considering the contents of “progress, liberalism and the modern culture” as Pius IX had experienced them and now condemned them in the preceding 79 propositions, it is hard to see anyone could have expected him to “reconcile and adapt” himself to them. But almost without exception the secular response to Quanta Cura and “The Syllabus of Errors” was a chorus of jeers and cries of outrage. The documents were publicly burned in some places, while in France bishops were threatened with arrest if they caused the pope’s words to be read from the pulpit. Teachings from the Catechism The Catechism of the Church covers the topic of infallibility in a section on “The episcopal college and its head, the pope.” It begins by declaring that “by a supernatural sense of faith,” the Church as a whole, under the guidance of the Church’s magisterium — the teaching authority of the pope and bishops — “unfailingly adheres” to this body of belief. The Catechism goes on to say that it’s the task of the teaching authority to preserve the people of God from “deviations and defections” and thus make it possible for them to profess the Faith “without error.” For this purpose, it adds, Christ endows the pope and bishops with “the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals.” The Catechism then goes on to quote Vatican Council II on the infallibility of the pope and the bishops teaching in union with him, “above all in an ecumenical council.” Members of the Church have a duty to adhere to such an exercise of infallibility “with the obedience of faith,” it says (CCC, Nos. 889-891). Opposing views This painting of the Council of Trent is featured in the Museo del Palazzo del Buonconsiglio. Laurom/Wikimedia Commons Pius IX was not a man to back down. Now he began to consider convening an ecumenical council — a gathering of the bishops of the world — for the first time since the 16th century at the Council of Trent. As planning proceeded, it became clear that at the top of the council’s agenda would be papal authority, including the infallibility of the pope. Most bishops had no problem with that. But some did, especially bishops in France, Germany and Austria-Hungary. In some quarters there was even talk of trying to get secular governments to intervene to prevent the council from taking place. Prominent in the opposition were two Frenchmen, Archbishop Georges Darboy of Paris and Bishop Felix Dupanloup of Orleans, along with Bishop Joseph Strossmayer of Djakovo in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whom historian Owen Chadwick calls a “larger-than-life personality” and the opposition’s leading figure. As time passed, another group also emerged — the so-called “inopportunists” who accepted the idea of infallibility in principle but held that this was not the time for a formal definition of the doctrine — mainly because it faced too much opposition in non-Catholic circles. In England, Newman was one of these. Cardinal Henry Edward Manning But Archbishop, later Cardinal, Henry Edward Manning of Westminster, like Newman a convert from Anglicanism, was a prominent supporter of defining papal infallibility. And, as that suggests, still another group of Catholics looked forward happily to the prospect of a definition. These were the ultramontanists, people accustomed to seeking guidance in religious matters “beyond the mountains” (that is, the Alps) in Rome. Their attitude was summed up by one wit who said he would be glad to receive a new papal declaration every morning together with his copy of the London Times. And so the stage was set for Vatican I. The council opened at the end of 1869 — the date, once more, was Dec. 8 — with more than 700 of the Church’s 1,000 bishops in attendance. Although the number later fell to around 600, Vatican I was the Church’s largest council ever up to that time. Europeans made up about two-thirds of the assembly. But reflecting Catholicism’s geographical expansion in the previous three centuries, there were 67 bishops from the U.S. and Canada, 21 from Latin America, 15 each from China and India, and 18 from Australia and the Pacific. On the central question before them, Owen Chadwick writes that the majority had no objection to declaring the pope infallible since the doctrine was “so widely believed in the Church and had behind it a historic tradition.” The opponents numbered about 150, including both inopportunists and those who simply didn’t accept the idea as true. Vatican I also was the occasion for something new in the history of ecumenical councils: determined efforts on both sides to influence public opinion by media leaks. Trent had been an open affair. By contrast, the organizers of Vatican I attempted to keep its deliberations secret. This was unrealistic from the start, since there was no way of hiding what took place at a meeting of six or seven hundred bishops busily debating matters of substantial public interest from the large press corps assembled to chronicle the event.