Madam, – Leo Clear (March 2nd) lets himself and his argument down very badly when he resorts to argumentum ad hominemand prefaces my title and name with the intended-to-be-insulting term "self styled".
For the record, let me state that my episcopal holy orders, through my consecrating and co-consecrating bishops, come from Patriarch Elie X Denha (1776) of the Nestorians and Cardinal Scipione Rebiba (1566), the source of the episcopal holy orders not only of Popes Benedict XIII, Benedict XIV and Clement XIII but of over 90 per cent of the of the current world’s Roman Catholic bishops.
Mr Clear is wrong when he says that Cardinal Newman’s letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1874) was a “defence of papal infallibility”. Rather, it was a reply to Mr Gladstone, who was concerned lest the pope’s claim to universal jurisdiction might leave an English Catholic with problems when it came to his allegiance to the state. Cardinal Newman states: “The main question which Mr Gladstone has started I consider to be this: Can Catholics be trustworthy subjects of the State? Has not a foreign Power a hold over their consciences such, that it may at any time be used to the serious perplexity and injury of the civil government under which they live”? Cardinal Newman manages to reassure Mr Gladstone that such a conflict need not occur.
Cardinal Newman sees a limited place for so-called papal infallibility. He writes: “The Pope’s infallibility indeed and his supreme authority. . . have been declared matters of faith; but his prerogative of infallibility lies in matters speculative and his prerogative of authority is no infallibility in laws, commands, or measures”. Cardinal Newman goes on to declare that while papal infallibility has always called for obedience there have always been and will always be “exceptions”. I would have no hesitation at all in calling Cardinal Newman to the stand on the question of papal infallibility – especially now that he enjoys the benefit of the Beatific Vision.
We are asked to believe that the current Pope Benedict is infallible in matters of faith and morals! That means that we must accept that gay people are a greater threat to the world than climate change. It means we must accept that Pope Benedict was infallibly correct in reconciling the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson to the Catholic Church and its episcopate. It means that he was infallibly correct in recently appointing Father Gerhard Wagner as Bishop of Linz, Austria ( Wagner claims that God flooded New Orleans as a punishment for its tolerance of liberal sexual mores). It means he was also infallible when he went on to accept Wagner’s withdrawal after the ensuing international public outcry.
If papal infallibility was a computer programme, recent events would suggest it was infected with a deadly virus. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – In his response to Bishop Pat Buckley, Leo Clear (March 2nd) essentially argues that it is impossible for the conscience of a Catholic to set him or her against the dogma of the Catholic Church because, in essence, the Pope is the conscience of all Catholics.
Whether true or not, this is a notion that every rational, reasonable human being should find utterly terrifying. – Yours, etc,