For the first and greatest criterion of the faith, the ultimate and unassailable test of orthodoxy is obedience to the teaching authority of the Church, which is ever living and infallible, since she was established by Christ to be the columna et firmamentum veritatis, “the pillar and support of truth.”

Jesus Christ, who knew our weakness, who came into the world to preach the gospel to the poor above all, chose for the spread of Christianity a very simple means adapted to the capacity of all men and suited to every age: a means which required neither learning, nor research, nor culture, nor rationalization, but only willing ears to hear, and simplicity of heart to obey (…) by hearing, from the living authority of the Church, a visible society composed of masters and disciples, of riders and governed, of shepherds and sheep and lambs.

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Pope St. Pius X

Allocution to the students at the

Second Congress of Catholic Universities at Rome

May 10, 1909