What is the keystone of this unchanging unity? Of course, Our Lord could have safeguarded it direct from Heaven, but ordinarily it is His Will to work through human channels. His Church is in the world, and therefore must have a visible jon. This He provided for by appointing a visible head, St. Peter, to whom He entrusted His own administrative power. It was a vast power, and Christ conferred it not upon Peter only, but upon his successors, the Popes, right down to the end of the world; there would have been no point in giving it at all, if it were to die out in a few years time.
It is not cause for surprise that the Pope has this authority; it would be cause for surprise if he did not. He is not divine. In other matters he is liable to error like the rest of us, but when he speaks in his official capacity as vicar of Christ, he. possesses the infallibility of Christ. He is the central authority in the Church, around whom we gather and whom we obey, in matters of religion, as we would obey Christ Himself. And that is the secret of the Unity of the Catholic Church.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.