Mendham contends that under the general policy of the Church, as expressed in its Indexes, the inference is legitimate that what the Indexes do not condemn they approve and sanction. It therefore follows that the authority from which those Indexes issue (an authority which is the highest in the Church) must be understood as approving and even sanctioning all doctrines or assertions presented by writers of her own communion which her condemning decrees have failed either to proscribe or to expurgate. (This contention is, it must be remembered, denied absolutely by the Jesuit Hilgers, writing in 1905.) In the examination held in 1825 on the state of Ireland, the Rev. M. O’Sullivan stated in one of his answers that in the case of an author of authority, such as Cardinal Bellarmin, the omission of criticism on the part of the authorities amounted to an approbation. The questioner drew the immediate inference: “Then you understand by the Index, not only a negative condemnation of all the books specified, but a positive affirmation of the doctrines or principles of all the books by Catholic writers not condemned.” Against this inference the witness was reported as making no protest. With respect to Bellarmin, it may be noted that his name was entered in the Index of Sixtus V because he had failed to affirm the direct power of the pope in matters temporal, an entry which may be considered as supporting the above inference. [Sidenote: Ignorance of the Indexes] That the works appearing under the form of Indexes, catalogues, etc., however various, still all belonging to, or coming from, Rome, are at least uncommon and extensively unknown, requires no proof more elaborate or unquestionable than the not only ready but forward declaration of ignorance by the very persons who should be presumed to be best acquainted with them, by well informed members of the ecclesiastic community which promulgates and enforces them. Charles Butler, writing in 1824, says: “Few of the Roman Catholics know of the existence of the _Index expurgatorius_.”[177] Dr. Murray, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, states before a committee of the House of Commons, in 1825: “The _Index expurgatorius_ has no authority whatever in Ireland; it has never been received in these countries [_sic_] and I doubt very much whether there be ten people in Ireland who have ever seen it; it is a sort of censorship of books established in Rome and it is not even received in Spain, where they have a censorship of their own. In these countries, it has no force whatever.”[178] Mendham trusts that “no equivocation lurks under the ambiguity of the epithet _expurgatorius_.” Dr. Slevin, prefect of the College of Dunboyne, says (in 1826): “Our Catholics will respect the prohibitions of the Congregation of the Index.”