nts and the domestics of God,
built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles, Jesus Christ
Himself being the chief cornerstone."(112) Though separated from earthly
relatives and parents, you need never be separated from her. She is ever
with us to comfort us. She says to us what her Divine Spouse said to His
Apostles: "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the
world."(113)

Chapter VII.

INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.

The Church has authority from God to teach regarding faith and morals, and
in her teaching she is preserved from error by the special guidance of the
Holy Ghost.

The prerogative of infallibility is clearly deduced from the attributes of
the Church already mentioned. The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic. Preaching the same creed everywhere and at all times; teaching
holiness and truth, she is, of course, essentially unerring in her
doctrine; for what is one, holy or unchangeable must be infallibly true.

That the Church was infallible in the Apostolic age is denied by no
Christian. We never question the truth of the Apostles' declarations;(114)
they were, in fact, the only authority in the Church for the first
century. The New Testament was not completed till the close of the first
century. There is no just ground for denying to the Apostolic teachers of
the nineteenth century in which we live a prerogative clearly possessed by
those of the first, especially as the Divine Word nowhere intimates that
this unerring guidance was to die with the Apostles. On the contrary, as
the Apostles transmitted to their successors their power to preach, to
baptize, to ordain, to confirm, etc., they must also have handed down to
them the no less essential gift of infallibility.

God loves us as much as He loved the primitive Christians; Christ died for
us as well as for them and we have as much need of unerring teachers as
they had.

It will not suffice to tell me: "We have an infallible Scripture as a
substitute for an infallible apostolate of the first century," for an
infallible book is of no use to me without an infallible interpreter, as
the history of Protestantism too clearly demonstrates.

But besides these presumptive arguments, we have positive evidence from
Scripture that the Church cannot err in her teachings. Our blessed Lord,
in constituting St. Peter Prince of His Apostles, says to him: "Thou art
Peter, and up