For
five hundred years it has been attacked, and for five hundred years has it been
victorious. Threatened by genius, by genius it is gloriously defended. Always
denied by some, it at length receives the consent of all; finally, accused at
one time of heresy by a rash theologian, it manifests itself in the nineteenth
century as a devotion eminently Catholic, Such are the mysterious ways of God.
That long series of combats was but the march to a solemn triumph. Wonderful
policy of God! (Father Felix, S.J., “Introduction. Immaculate Conception of
Mary. Historical Sketch of the Controversy,” in Luigi Lambruschini, A
Polemical Treatise on the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin [New
York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1855], 15)
All
belief dogmatically defined must make part of revelation; must consequently be
contained in the divine word, whether written or transmitted; for if the word
of the Church is the immediate and living rule of our faith, she herself has in
the word of God her supreme and fundamental rule. The Church, by dogmatical
decision, does not, then, create the truth; she makes neither the dogma, nor
the revelation of the dogma; she merely proclaims its existence with an
infallible, indeclinable authority. The dogma which authority proclaims today,
was yesterday; before the decision, it existed in its substance; after the
decision, it appears with its formula, and it of obligation. (Ibid., 17)
Do
the doctors of the first centuries explicitly testify the belief of the
primitive Church? Suppose they do not, no one will conclude what witnesses are
wanting to tradition; tradition being able, without the holy Fathers, to
accomplish its work and pursue its course. The first Fathers spoke little of
the Immaculate Conception: it is easy to conceive that the design of God was to
instruct his Church by little and little; and that almost unbroken silence need
not surprise us, seeing that the defenders of the faith had many more decisive
questions to maintain. . . . The silence of the first Fathers of the Church would
then prove nothing against Mary’s privilege; neither would the apparent opposition
of the doctors who came after them. (Ibid., 27-28, 31)
