Explain infallibility to me like I'm 5

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mugglestruggle

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Although I’m researching a lot about it, nowhere does it explain it in a way I can fully understand. I get lost in the ex cathedras, the dubias and the various councils. And what is the difference between dogma and doctrine? Please explain to me like I’m 5.
 
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mugglestruggle said:
Although I’m researching a lot about it, nowhere does it explain it in a way I can fully understand. I get lost in the ex cathedras, the dulias and the various councils. And what is the difference between dogma and doctrine? Please explain to me like I’m 5.
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Let’s say the Pope is infallible at math. He takes a math quiz of five questions. What is the minimum questions he will get correct under infallibility?

Five? Wrong.

The correct answer is zero. However, it also means he will provide zero wrong answers. If the Pope did not do his math homework, infallibility will prevent him from putting down a wrong answer. It does not prevent him from turning in a completely blank test paper, all questions unanswered.

That’s what infallibility is. It is a negative protection.
 
Generally-speaking I wouldn’t be explaining infallibility to a 5 year old 😂.

Joking aside.

Papal infallibility is a Catholic doctrine that states that the Pope is protected from pronouncing false teaching on questions of faith.

Papal infallibility does NOT mean that everything the Pope ever says is true. For example, Catholics do not believe that if the Pope says that the sky is blue on a rainy winter day then the sky should suddenly turn blue.

Furthermore, the Pope only speaks infallibility when he speaks ex cathedra, and only on questions related to faith and morals. The Pope cannot speak infallibly on physics and declare that gravity does not exist.

That’s about the extent of my knowledge on the issue, and I shall refrain from answering your other questions as I’m not sure. I shall mark the thread as I am interested in answers.

God bless.
 
It really isn’t something a five year old is going to understand.

The basic concept of infallibility is fairly easy to understand though. But just like everything else, people get lost in the nuances. And so the concept of something so absolute sounding as infallibility loses it’s thrust. For that reason, IMO, the concept of infallibility is not worth losing any sleep over. It’s largely been ignored for the last 100 years anyway, aside from die hard academics who live for arguing about such minutiae as ‘is this infallible, is that infallible?’.
 
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Christ gave a special gift to the Church and Her leaders, both the Holy Father and the Magisterium, the gift to confirm some teachings as unchangeable truth. This gift is used rarely, it only applies to matters of faith and morals.

For instance, the Church cannot pronounce infallibly that there are rings around the planet Saturn as that is a matter of science, not of faith or morals.
 
Way too many people focus on infallibility, in my opinion. That said, here are a few things about infallibility that may be important to remember:

Infallible doesn’t mean “mandatory,” with the implicit corollary that not infallible means “optional.” Most people ask if something is infallible because they disagree with it and want to opt out of it, (or because they agree with it and want to shove it in someone else’s face.) The fact that something is or is not infallible does not make it “real” or “mandatory” teaching or vice versa.

Because of the above, you don’t need to know what is infallible to be a good Catholic. It doesn’t need to come up every day, or ever.

The Church has never undertaken to list out what is infallible and what is not. There has been a lot written on the topic, but (for understandable reasons) the Church does not say this is infallible, this is not.

Even for teachings that pretty much everyone agrees are infallible, the nature and scope of the infallible teaching is not always clear or obvious. I don’t want to drift the thread by giving examples, but there are lots of threads discussing this. To me, this nuance of infallibility is a feature, not a bug, and it reinforces that one need not try to suss out exactly what is infallible or not to be a good Catholic (or any kind of Catholic, really).
 
Dogma refers to teachings that we believe to be true. Other teachings are thought to be true, perhaps even as certainly as dogmas are believed, but we do not have the supernatural gift of faith guaranteeing them. The Immaculate Conception was considered true by most Catholics, but since 1854 it is a dogma, something we believe to be true.

Papal infallibility is about this transition from doctrine to dogma. It is really a recognition that the teaching is something that the Church believes, not a naming of something as to be believed. The assent of the Church will not be denied to an act of papal infallibility, because the act does not change the faith already held.

That is my somewhat murky thought about it. Hopefully someone else will give better definitions of dogma an doctrine, perhaps from Ott?
 
The Church’s infallibility is based on the promises of Christ to always be with us and that the Holy Spirit would lead us in the truth. It simply means the whole Church will never defect from the faith. The truth revealed by God for our salvation will always be handed on by the Church so all generations can benefit from it. In other words, not only are the Protestants and other groups wrong who say the Church’s faith was corrupted in the past, what they claim is impossible.

The particular acts of the Church and her pastors are infallible when, if there were an error, the Church’s faith would be definitively corrupted. That’s why definitive dogmatic decisions binding on the whole Church by the entire body of bishops (either in council or spread throughout the world) or their head, the Pope, must be infallible. If they were not the whole Church would follow them into error, which is impossible.

On the other hand, individual Popes and bishops and lay Catholics say and do lots of things that don’t require the absolute assent of the whole Church. They can err as individuals, and so long as the whole Church, doesn’t follow them in their error (which the Holy Spirit prevents).

As for the dogma, doctrine distinction, a doctrine is just a broad term for teaching. A dogma is a truth revealed by God, and, being revealed by God, must be believed with faith. But the pastors of the Church apply these truths and points of the moral law to various situations, they draw logical conclusions from them, etc. These should not be considered revealed dogma.
 
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