Who has the last word to decide regarding Church dogma?
You would think it would be the wisest, the most influential, the most experienced, the most religious, the holiest man; or, in any case, the one who has presumably gathered all these qualities in himself.
That is not it at all!
It is a man who is usually sufficiently gifted and competent, but who may very well not be so endowed, and occasionally is one who is not gifted at all.
He is one who is chosen with a large degree of risk, a judge who does not offer any particular guarantee, except that he is regularly invested as the successor of Saint Peter and thereby becomes the inheritor of the promise.
A.-D. Sertillanges, O.P. Catechisme des Incroyants, Vol I, Flammarion: Paris 1930, p. 112.
(Plinthos translation)
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