“The festival on that day, December 8, 1854, sacred to the Virgin, was magnificent.  After chanting the Gospel, first in Latin, then in Greek, Cardinal Macchi, deacon of the Sacred College, together with the senior archbishops and bishops present, all approached the Papal throne, pronouncing these words in Latin, ’Deign, most Holy Father, to lift your Apostolic voice and pronounce the dogmatic Decree of the Immaculate Conception, on account of which there will be praise in heaven and rejoicings on earth.’  The Pope replying, stated that he welcomed the wish of the Sacred College, the episcopate, the clergy, and declared it was essential first of all to invoke the help of the Holy Spirit.  So saying he intoned in Veni Creator, chanted in chorus by all present.  The chant concluded, amid a solemn silence Pius IX’s finely modulated voice read the following Decree: 

“’It shall be Dogma, that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of the Conception, by singular privilege and grace of God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved from all stain of original sin.’  The senior cardinal then prayed the Pope to make this Decree public, and, amid the roar of cannon from Fort St. Angelo and the festive ringing of church bells, the solemn act was accomplished.’"[42] Here is an assertion regarding Mary’s Conception which has only the most tenuous connection with religious experience and which was pronounced for ecclesiastical and political reasons.  Here we have dogma at its worst.  Here, indeed, it is so bad as to resemble many of the current political and economic pronunciamentos!

[Footnote 42:  The Last Days of Papal Rome, pp. 127 ff.]

Now, nobody wants dogmatic preaching, but there is nothing that we need more than we do doctrinal preaching and nothing which is more interesting.  The specialization of knowledge has assigned to the preacher of religion a definite sphere.  No amount of secondary expertness in politics or economics or social reform or even morals can atone for the abandonment of our own province.  We are set to think about and expound religion and if we give that up we give up our place in a learned profession.  Moreover, the new conditions of the modern world make doctrine imperative.  That world is distinguished by its free inquiry, its cultivation of the scientific method, its abandonment of obscuranticisms and ambiguities.  It demands, then, devout and holy thinking from us.  Who would deny that the revival of intellectual authority and leadership in matters of religion is terribly needed in our day?  Sabatier is right in saying that a religion without doctrine is a self-contradictory idea.  Harnack is not wrong in saying that a Christianity without it is inconceivable.