What is your understanding of papal infallibility?
Well, the CC teaches that papal infallibility is the ability of the pope (& the magistrum) to be infallible whenever speaking “ex cathedra” about matters of faith and morals. It is taken from the part in scripture when Jesus talks about Peter, the rock, and the Church he is building.
This is essentially correct. To build on these ideas a little further, here’s what I’d add to that, to make it a little more clear (I hope!)
We
all believe that the people who wrote the text of the Bible were infallible at the time that they wrote those books, because the Holy Spirit was protecting them from writing down anything that was in error.
The Holy Spirit isn’t limited to protecting the Bible - He also protects all of the teachings of the Church - the interpretation of the Scriptures and all of the other teachings - in exactly the same way, which is by protecting the people who promulgate them from promulgating any errors.
The Protestants hold that since the scripture was written in Greek and not Aramaic, the rock was a pebble and the church was built on Peter’s proclamation of faith.
If this were the case, then Matthew (who was writing in the common dialect of Greek of the time) would have used the word “lithos” instead of the word “Peter.”
What Matthew was doing with the Greek was he was inventing a masculine form of the word “petra” to use as a man’s name.
We do exactly the same thing in reverse today when we want to name a little girl after St. Peter. Instead of naming her “Peter” (since that is a boy’s name) we actually name her “Petra” because this is the feminine form of “Peter.” Young Petra figures out pretty early on (by the time she is three years old at the latest) that girls can’t be called “Peter” but that she is, in fact, named after “Peter” because “Petra” is the feminine form of “Peter.”
A second point to make here is that the text of the Bible is not more important than the actual words Jesus said. Jesus, speaking Aramaic to Simon, named him “Cephas” as we see througout the rest of the New Testament where he is referred to by that name. The Greek for “Cephas” is “Petra.”
I am floored whenever I hear of someone who says that “it doesn’t matter what words Jesus used; the text of the Bible is more important.” This is actually a form of idolotry, because someone is putting the Bible
in the place of Jesus Himself, who is God.
What do you think happens between you and Jesus when you sin?
The CC teaches that when you sin, you break away from Christ, and the holy spirit leaves you. In order to get the holy spirit back, you need to go to confession and receive an official absolution from a priest, acting in Christi persona (did I say that right?.
What we teach is that if someone commits a
mortal sin which has three necessary components:
Grave Matter (we’re talking murder, bank robbery, destroying someone’s reputation - stuff that goes against the Ten Commandments),
Deliberate Intent with Full Knowledge (not something that just slipped out, or happened by accident, or that you honestly had no idea it was wrong to do) and
Free Consent of the Will (nobody was holding a gun to the back of your head, or threatening your livelihood or your family) - meaning that, if you commit a mortal sin, you would definitely know it - if someone commits a mortal sin, they have killed off the grace that was in their soul at Baptism.
One image I have seen used is that “the phone line of the soul to God has been cut.” I like that image.
This doesn’t mean that Jesus/God has left the person. But they have lost their grace. God is still at the other end of the telephone. But, somehow, we have to repair the line.
Perfect Contrition will work (being sorry for your sins out of love for God), but Catholics also have a back-up plan.
What we Catholics can do is we can go to Confession with a priest. The priest acts as a “substitute phone line” when you are making your Confession, and he “repairs your phone line to God” when he gives you the Absolution.
I believe that Christ died for our sins, and knows we are sinners, and lives within our hearts. I think that if we love Jesus, we honestly will try our best to do what He wants, but because we are naturally born sinners, we always fall short. But so long as we continue to go to Him, and love Him, and DO OUR BEST to honor Him, and repent from our sins, we can not drive him out of our soul.
We Catholics would certainly agree with this.
I do believe we can reject Christ, though. But simply sinning (in my opinion) is not our actively trying to reject him. Rejecting him means not WANTING him in our life, and not repenting when we hurt him.
This would certainly qualify as mortal sin.
(continued …)
