The First Vatican Council, primarily because of its enunciation of papal infallibility, was the catalyst for far-reaching changes in the Roman Catholic Church. It directly resulted in schism leading to the development of a new denomination, and it widened the gulf between Roman Catholicism and both Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism. In an era when the Roman Catholic Church was losing temporal power, this attempt to increase papal authority ultimately resulted in further loss of that power. Additionally, the doctrine of papal infallibility has been used for specific further developments in Catholic Mariology. Apart from promulgating papal infallibility, the council sought to define the Roman Catholic response to a changing world where atheism, materialism and scientific investigation were