p. 1 | Papal Infallibility

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 29, 1870

Papal Infallibility.

It is somewhat remarkable that the temporal status of the pope, which had experienced no change for so many years, and bade fair to remain unchanged for an indefinite period of time, should meet, on the heels of the proclamation of the infallibility dogma, with so many, so radical, and (in a Catholic point of view), such adverse changes. Following so swiftly on this assumption of divine attribute, people not prone to regard remarkable occurrences as special manifestations of divine will, cannot be blamed if they see in these events the hand of the Almighty. Some of these changes are very happily epitomized by the Rev. Dr. Cumming, in a recent lecture delivered at Liverpool on the subject stated in the caption to this article, and which we find reported in one of the papers of that city. No sooner had the pope, says Dr. Cumming, pronounced the dogma of infallibility, thus assuming to himself a divine attribute, than he heard the first sounds of a war, which, in its proportions, in its area, and in its intensity, was more a universal massacre than a war. On that very day Napoleon—the “eldest son of the church,” as he was styled—wrote to Cardinal Antonelli that he must recall his troops from Rome—the troops that had upheld the pope’s temporal power for twenty years. Then followed the overthrow of Napoleon and Eugenie, erstwhile the most powerful supporters of the pope in Christendom. Austria, even, long the dungeon of Europe, always the guardian of the pope when no one else could be found to support him, shocked at the pope’s assumption of an attribute of Deity, tore the concordat into shreds and cast it to the winds, and renounced the pope’s jurisdiction in Austria, root and branch. Then Austria passed a law granting liberty of the press, liberty of conscience, and freedom of education, throughout the length and breadth of the land. Swiftly following the retiring soldiery of France came the armed forces of Victor Emanuel, intent on securing the one fond dream of all patriotic Italians, the unity of Italy. They thundered at the gates of Rome; the foreign levies of his holiness were compelled to surrender, and when his own people were asked by the plebiscite to say whether they would have the pope or Victor Emanuel to be their king, they by an overwhelming majority preferred Victor Emanuel; and yet Victor Emanuel was an excommunicated person—not entitled to Christian baptism or Christian burial. The consequence was that the pope was sent to the Leonine city, denuded of his tiara and stripped of his splendor.

Dr. Cumming mentions an incident in connection with the ceremony of proclaiming the dogma of infallibility, we do not remember to have seen described in other accounts of the occasion. Here it is:

“It was decided by 535 voices—many of them voices of bishops in the air, bishops representing petty dioceses in Italy—that the pope was infallible; and then came the great event of the proclamation of that infallibility. His holiness posed himself—placed himself outside an eastern window of St. Peter’s in his gorgeous robes, expecting the first rays of the rising sun to shine upon him and to cover him with an apparel of splendor. But the sun did not seem to rise to the occasion, for never was there a sky in Rome so black with clouds as on that same morning, and never was the air so murky or dim; and when the pope rose to speak, the thunder rolled in crashing reverberations throughout the length and breadth of St. Peter’s, the lightning flashed from pillar to pillar with unearthly splendor, and so startled was an eminent member of the Ecumenical Council that he leaped to his feet and exclaimed, suddenly, and as if by inspiration, ‘God has sent down another Mount Sinai with its lightning and thunder into the midst of St. Peter’s.’ After that a candle was brought down, as he could not get the light of the sun, and by its light he read the decision of the Ecumenical Council pronouncing him to be infallible.”

Certainly, in a superstitious age all these sudden changes and signs would be regarded as having a particular significance—as marks, indeed, of the Divine displeasure. However they may be regarded, one lesson they teach is plain—to wit; that kingdoms, nor empires, nor infallibility-assuming popes, can stay the onward march of liberal principles and progressive thought, bray they never so loudly of kingly prerogative, “divine right,” and papal infallibility.—Journal.