hing in Rome, and what was printed elsewhere was liable to be
treated as contraband. His written observations on any measure were
submitted to the Commission, without any security that they would be
made known to the other bishops in their integrity. There was no longer
an obstacle to the immediate definition of papal infallibility. The
majority was omnipotent.

The minority could not accept this regulation without admitting that the
Pope is infallible. Their thesis was, that his decrees are not free from
the risk of error unless they express the universal belief of the
episcopate. The idea that particular virtue attaches to a certain number
of bishops, or that infallibility depends on a few votes more or less,
was defended by nobody. If the act of a majority of bishops in the
Council, possibly not representing a majority in the Church, is
infallible, it derives its infallibility from the Pope. Nobody held that
the Pope was bound to proclaim a dogma carried by a majority. The
minority contested the principle of the new Regulation, and declared
that a dogmatic decree required virtual unanimity. The chief protest was
drawn up by a French bishop. Some of the Hungarians added a paragraph
asserting that the authority and oecumenicity of the Council depended
on the settlement of this question; and they proposed to add that they
could not continue to act as though it were legitimate unless this point
was given up. The author of the address declined this passage, urging
that the time for actual menace was not yet come. From that day the
minority agreed in rejecting as invalid any doctrine which should not be
passed by unanimous consent. On this point the difference between the
thorough and the simulated opposition was effaced, for Ginoulhiac and
Ketteler were as positive as Kenrick or Hefele. But it was a point which
Rome could not surrender without giving up its whole position. To wait
for unanimity was to wait for ever, and to admit that a minority could
prevent or nullify the dogmatic action of the papacy was to renounce
infallibility. No alternative remained to the opposing bishops but to
break up the Council. The most eminent among them accepted this
conclusion, and stated it in a paper declaring that the absolute and
indisputable law of the Church had been violated by the Regulation
allowing articles of faith to be decreed on which the episcopate was not
morally unanimous; and that the Council, no longer possessing in the