This light will always be clear and strong enough to reveal the sources of any misunderstanding and to prevent him sinking into invincible error (error invincibilis). The Catholic is therefore generally protected from that radical attitude which deliberately detaches a man inwardly from the professed faith of Catholic Christianity and, reveling in a purely negative criticism, embarks upon research about Christ and the Church as though neither existed. On the other hand the Church does not compel the Catholic to shut his eyes to the religious problems which arise, nor conviction of conscience. Even though the judgment of his conscience be objectively false and even though it be not in its genesis ethically irreproachable, yet he is bound to follow conscience and conscience alone.

In the light of this fact it is an unfair and untenable charge—which does not become more tenable by constant repetition—to say that the Church enslaves conscience by requiring an unqualified obedience in matters of faith and by claiming divine authority. As the authorized preacher of the truth, the Church will never cease to give her authoritative witness to it and to oblige all consciences to accept it. Yet she does not seek to overpower conscience, but to convince it. She seeks internal, not merely external assent. And when a man cannot give this internal assent, she leaves his conscience to the mercy of God and sets him free. That is not fanaticism or severity, but a service to truth and sincerity. For the Church cannot and may not endure that there should be some among her members who are Catholics only in name. She requires that all such men should draw the logical consequence from their new state of conscience and leave her communion. And in this she protects the sincerity of their consciences as much as she guards the sincerity of her own being. The Church does no injury to “liberal” laymen or theologians when she excludes them from communion with her children. On the contrary such people do an injury to the Church if they remain in her communion when they have lost her faith.