Notes On Current Topics [pp. 371-382]

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`378 NOThS ON CURRENT TOPICS. [April,
There were also $631,460 8~, individual and miscellaneous gifts,
chiefly for general oThects, making the total as above.
The Ccrn'an Fni~ire and M2e Va/ican Dogma of Infallibility.
The Prussian Roman Catholic bishops in a letter to the Emperor
~Villiam, dated Sept. 7, 1871, protested against the action of the
government in protecting excommunicated " Old Catholics," continning them in office, etc. T he late Prussian Minister of Public
Instruction replied formally, Nov. 25, saying in substance, that the
laws of Prussia were nnd~anged, and that il~ere was no pretence
that they had been wrongly applied; that the change was wholly in
the Roman Catholic Church, since the late decrees of the Vatican.
He then puts the case thus: "If, on the one hand, as the letter [of
the bishops~ asserts, the whole episcopate connected with the Papacy is invested with the ~ight of inft~llible interpretation, and, on
the other, the Constitution promulgated on the i8th of July, 1870,
pronounces the ex-eathedra definitions of the Pope ex sese, non autem
ex eonsensu ecciesia, irreformabdes (infallible in themselves, and not
in consequence of the assent of the Church), the logical inference is
inevitable, that the Constitution of July iS, 1870, has changed the
person of the bearer of the right of ecclesiastical interpretation,
and, consequently, has established a new dogma, at variance with
the ancient creed of the Catholic Church, as attested by the signers
of the memorial of September 7. Hence it is not, as the letter
says, a play with words, but an inevitable inference from the declarations of the legitimate organs of the Catholic Church, to say that a
Catholic who, prior to the i8th of July, 1870, did not believe in the
-dogma promulgated on that day, even though he did not believe in
it after that day, is still a Catholic, inasmuch as he believes the
same things which, prior to that day, were sufficient to make him a
Catholic."
"~Vhat the letter says about the duty of individual Catholics to
remain in harmony with the teachings of their Church is legitimate
only if the teachings of the Church are not changed. If a change
takes place, as was the case in the Constitution of July i8, 1870, the
State is neither bound, nor has it even the right, to treat as renegades the adherents of the old creed in their relations to the state.
They have not lost their right to the protection of the State in consequence of the fact that the Church has changed its teachings, and
this protection will be given to them in the future as in the past"