If the Church/Pope claim to be absolutely infallaible, why has it altered teachings/contradicted itself?

[Tomdstone]

Both priests have assured me emphatically! that Catholic doctrine has not been changed! .

According to Catholic Father Luis M. Bermejo, S.J, in the early church, if a slave fled from his master, he was excommunicated and subject to an anathema and refused Holy communion. In other words, the Catholic Church taught it was wrong for a slave to flee from his master and thereby did not teach that slavery was wrong. Today it is taught that slavery is wrong and slaves may escape if they can. For example, there have been women captured and held in slavery and it is taught that they would not be anathematized and forbidden Holy Communion if they escaped.

Luis M. Bermejo, S.J., Infallibility on Trial, 1992, Christian Classics, Inc., ISBN 0-87061-190-9, p. 313.

 

[Tomdstone]

On the first point:
“I, John Smith, am the son of Robert Smith.”
“I, John Smith, am the son of Robert Smith and Jane Smith who was born Jane Jones.”
Does the second statement contradict the first or does it merely expand upon the first?

On the second point:
I think you mistake variations in terminology for contradictions in doctrine.
“The Blood was shed for many” does not contradict “The Blood was shed for all”.

If it is acceptable to add or subtract the filioque, why then in the papal bull of 1054 excommunicating Patriarch Cerularius, why was it mentioned that one reason for the excommunication was that he had omitted the filioque from the creed?
"Like Pneumatomachoi or Theomachoi, they cut off the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son;…
Therefore, because we did not tolerate this unheard of outrage and injury of the first, holy, and apostolic see and were concerned that the catholic faith would be undermined in many ways, by the authority of the holy and individuated Trinity and the apostolic see, whose embassy we are performing, and of all the orthodox fathers from the seven councils and of the entire catholic Church, we thus subscribe to the following anathema which the most reverend pope has proclaimed upon Michael and his followers unless they should repent.
… Let them be anathema Maranatha with the Simoniacs, Valesians, Arians, Donatists, Nicolaitists, Severians, Pneumatomachoi, Manichaeans, Nazarenes, and all the heretics — nay, with the devil himself and his angels, unless they should repent. "
Secondly, I see a difference between all and many. For example, do you say that the following two statements mean the same thing?
Many Americans are Catholic.
All Americans are Catholic.

 

[po18guy]

The Pope is traditionally seen as being absolutely infallible in all of his teachings.

Here is your problem. Look up “ex cathedra.”

 

[Duane1966]

If a math student writes down nothing for an exam of 25 questions, he gets an F.

He may get an F, but what he wrote down was infallible.

In the case of “all and many,” the Church has always officially taught “many.” The Church in America chose to translate the Latin poorly. But in the official documents of the Magisterium, and remember, when we are talking infallibility, we are always talking about the official documents of the Pope or Magisterium that bind all Catholics, the wording has always been “many.” For that matter though, I doubt if the Church has ever bound Catholics to hold to either translation, meaning infallibility would not apply in this scenario.

 

[Cathoholic]

No loss of infallibility, no altered teachings, no self-contradictions in the sphere of teaching where the Church claims to have Divine protection Balaco.

None.

Not one.

Hypothetically speaking (bear with me here. This is a hyperbolic exercise for learning), if one Pope stated that his favorite TV show was the ONE SINGLE BEST TV show ever, and another Pope made the same claim but insisting upon a different TV show, WHY would that NOT violate the protected teachings claims of the Church?

God bless.

Cathoholic

 

[Xystus]

Infallible does not mean the same as impeccable. The Holy Spirit prevents the Pope from teaching error when it comes to faith and morals, when he intends on making that statement in his official capacity as Pope (ex cathedra). Nothing prevents a Pope from erring in his personal opinions.

 

[Tomdstone]

He may get an F, but what he wrote down was infallible…

It is misleading to say so, because he did not write down anything. IMHO, it is wrong to go around misleading people.

 

[Gorgias]

If it is acceptable to add or subtract the filioque, why then in the papal bull of 1054 excommunicating Patriarch Cerularius, why was it mentioned that one reason for the excommunication was that he had omitted the filioque from the creed?

Because he was moving backward. Once the ‘clarification’ of the procession of the Holy Spirit was declared, it was now part of the Deposit of the Faith. Saying something different, then – that is, deliberately omitting something that had been taught – was a positive act of disobedience.

Secondly, I see a difference between all and many. For example, do you say that the following two statements mean the same thing?
Many Americans are Catholic.
All Americans are Catholic.

Aah… but your statements are written in English, not Koine Greek – and, your statement is not a Hebraism.

Ratzinger commented on this exact question, and as part of his comments, he wrote, " I leave open the question of whether it was sensible to choose the translation “for all” here and, thus, to confuse translation with interpretation, at a point at which the process of interpretation remains in any case indispensable."

He raises the point that there’s a difference between translation and interpretation. The text of the Institution Narrative literally says “περὶ πολλῶν”. Its translation is “for many”. However, the question of its interpretation is a distinct question. The Hebraism in play is that “the many” can tend to take on a meaning that’s expansive. In fact, that meaning trickles into an English turn-of-phrase: the Greek word is ‘πολύς’, and it appears in this Scripture verse as ‘pollon’. Ever hear the phrase “the hoi polloi”? In contemporary English, it has the connotation of “the masses”. So, we’ve got a similar thing going on here: ‘polloi’ (or ‘pollon’) is being used to point to an entire group of people and reference them.

It’s not a simple question of whether, in English, ‘many’ = ‘all’.

 

[Duane1966]

It is misleading to say so, because he did not write down anything. IMHO, it is wrong to go around misleading people.

How is that misleading? He wrote nothing down, so it becomes an impossibility that what he wrote was fallible.

If people want to judge the doctrine, and whether the Church has declared something infallibe that in actuality contained error, then they need to judge the Church within the parameters the Church set down. Anything else is spurious and futile.

 

[Vonsalza]

Hey Balaco,

Concerning the infallibility of the Pope, you’re putting him on a higher pedestal than both he and most Catholics place him. As Pope Francis admitted, the Pope is also a sinner that has to go to confession.

His infallibility is only expressed when he speaks ex-cathedra, which is, “from the seat” of his authority. His regular communications don’t reach this lofty status. In fact, the last time any Pope spoke ex-cathedra, I wasn’t alive. I’m not young =)

Concerning the “contradictions” of the Church, Christ gave the Church the authority to bind and loose. Ergo, the Church can draft new doctrines and dispose of old ones. A great example is priestly marriage. While the very early Church did not appear to initially limit the marriage of its priests, It identified that those who were not called to marriage had more time to be devoted to the leadership of the Church and were more free to spread the Church in areas where the initial reception would be hazardous to the pastor, in particular his potential wife and kids. Thus the Church “loosed” an old rule and “bound” a new one.

So remember that the Pope is not perfect, and the Church can “loose and bind” per her authority given by Christ himself.

Go in Peace.

 

[joeybaggz]

If a math student writes down nothing for an exam of 25 questions, he gets an F.

So would the pope, but he still didn’t write down error, hence infallible.

 

[Wesrock]

The Pope is traditionally seen as being absolutely infallible in all of his teachings.

This is not true. There are very specific circumstances in which infallibility applies, and different levels of authority/respect for other statements the Pope makes though it’s not a hard science.

Concerning the “contradictions” of the Church, Christ gave the Church the authority to bind and loose. Ergo, the Church can draft new doctrines and dispose of old ones.

To be clear, the Church cannot develop new doctrines, though it can develop authoritative understanding of teachings that have been handed down. I believe you meant discipline. Church disciplines can be adapted for the time and place.

So would the pope, but he still didn’t write down error, hence infallible.

Yep. Infallibility is a gift to the Church, not some superpower of the Pope. In many ways it can be seen as a limitation of the Pope. He is prevented from declaring error as dogma, thus protecting the Church.

 

[Gorgias]

Well, whoever the author is, he is quite poorly educated if he said what you contend.

Blessed Pius IX was Pope from 1846-1878. Pope Leo XIII was Pope from 1878-1903. Pius could not change what Leo taught because Pius was already dead; his death was the occasion of Leo’s election.

Well, it’s not quite what you’re making it out to be, it seems. Rather than quibble about who preceded whom, I did a quick Google search on the claim. Looks like there’s a blog post out there by someone whom the OP is quoting. Balaco seems to have misunderstood what the blogger is claiming. It’s gonna take a minute to unravel the confusion, though.

First off, the blog post begins with a quote hotlinked from the Roman Theological Forum, which itself claims the quotation to be the “text of an address given at the Wanderer Forum.” The blogger uses the claims of that citation to bolster his own thesis (that the statements of Pope Francis have led him to leave the Church).

So, this quotation really does mention both Pius IX and Leo XIII. But, that author isn’t making the claim that Pius IX (in his Quanta cura) is ‘responding’ to Leo XIII (in his Immortale dei). After all, that would be quite the trick – Pius wrote Quanta cura 21 years before Leo’s encyclical!

Moreover, it’s not the case that the author is claiming that Pius and Leo disagree with one another. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite claim: the author is trying to make the case that one characterization of the teaching of Vatican II – that is, that it’s immoral for the state to support religion – is a departure from the traditional teachings of the Church. The author is claiming that Pius IX and Leo XIII in fact agree with one another, and he’s attempting to use them against an understanding of Vatican II with which he disagrees.

The blogger uses the quote to attempt to make his own point: if Vatican II disagrees with prior Church teaching, and Francis likewise teaches something that conflicts with Church teaching, then the Church must be teaching man-made and false doctrines.

This claim, naturally, is easily enough defeated: the quotation misconstrues the teachings of Vatican II, and misunderstands what Pope Francis has been teaching. Therefore, it is neither the case that the Catholic Church teaches error nor that the notion of ‘infallibility’ has been demonstrated to be false.

 

[3_Dog_Night]

I am posting the following from the standpoint that “there is no such thing as a ‘stupid question’.” I think I know the answer, but I freely and openly admit that could be wrong.

I am under the impression that there are only two infallible doctrines, where the Pope spoke from the “chair of Peter”, throughout the entire history of the Catholic Church.

These are the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the Assumption of Mary into Heaven. Two times in nearly 2,000 years. Am I wrong about this? Am I missing something?

 

[Vonsalza]

To be clear, the Church cannot develop new doctrines, though it can develop authoritative understanding of teachings that have been handed down. I believe you meant discipline. Church disciplines can be adapted for the time and place.

I appreciate your view. However, I think the development of the trinity was a novel doctrine when it was defined at Nicaea as it lacked clear definition in Scripture. The Nestorians and Arians clearly thought so, as do the Pentecostal congregations of today.

Go in Peace

 

[Usagi]

I appreciate your view. However, I think the development of the trinity was a novel doctrine when it was defined at Nicaea as it lacked clear definition in Scripture. The Nestorians and Arians clearly thought so, as do the Pentecostal congregations of today.

Go in Peace

The decisions at Nicaea and Constantinople defined the doctrine of the Trinity in a way that excluded certain ranges of belief and expression that some Christians had previously thought (and continued to think) were okay, true.

But the idea was not to teach something novel, but to define the limits of Christian belief on the subject based on the Biblical and Traditional data (which, as you note, were scattered and not clear, even seemingly contradictory).

Just from the Scriptures, we have numerous data that are difficult to reconcile. Yet the Church must take all the data into consideration and ignore none of it in order to teach the truth. Heretical teachings usually emphasize one side of a difficult idea at the expense of the other, equally true side.

For example:

There is only one God.

But Scripture refers in different places to the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as being God, and yet as being distinct from each other.

When you bring in the Incarnation, also carefully defined in the Creed, it gets even stranger:

Jesus is in some places identified as God.

Yet he talks to the Father as a different person, and at one time even says “Not my will, but thine, be done.”

And it is vitally important to our understanding of the Redemption and our future glorification that Jesus was born and died a true human being, and that one of us now reigns on the throne of the Universe.

The philosophical language hammered out at Nicaea and Constantinople is the best way the Church has yet found to embrace all of those truths simultaneously. Views thereby labeled heretical, such as “Jesus pre-existed as the greatest creation ever, but not as God” or “Jesus wasn’t really one of us, but just God in a costume” may seem simpler and easier to defend than the frankly weird doctrine of the Trinity we ended up with, but they put aside some of the data to achieve that.

Thus, in the eyes of the Church, even though “three hypostases in one ousia” may never have been asserted in quite that way before, the Nicene understanding of the Trinity was not a novelty but a way of reconciling and expressing truths Scripture and Tradition had insisted on for centuries already.

 

[Usagi]

For a while, it was taught that the Blood was shed for all. However, it has been changed back to the previous teaching that the Blood was shed for many. But I heard a priest say at Mass recently that the Blood was shed for all.

 

[steve_b]

I am posting the following from the standpoint that “there is no such thing as a ‘stupid question’.” I think I know the answer, but I freely and openly admit that could be wrong.

I am under the impression that there are only two infallible doctrines, where the Pope spoke from the “chair of Peter”, throughout the entire history of the Catholic Church.

These are the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the Assumption of Mary into Heaven. Two times in nearly 2,000 years. Am I wrong about this? Am I missing something?

There are ***many ***times the Church has taught infallibly.

Here’s another

Re: women priests. The language used by the pope defines this as infallible teachig

from*** OrdinatioSacerdotalis JPII***

1. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
   Wherefore,* in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.*

 

[Usagi]

Re: women priests. The language used by the pope defines this as infallible teachig

from*** OrdinatioSacerdotalis JPII***

1. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
   Wherefore,* in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren *(cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.

That is powerful language, yes, and did prompt some people to ask whether it was meant to be an ex cathedra declaration. The official response from then-Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, however, was that the statement did not represent an exercise of the Pope’s Extraordinary Magisterium, but simply a strong restatement of a truth already irreformable as part of the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium (basically, that the Magisterium had never taught anything otherwise).

 

[catholic1seeks]

Infallibility means that when the Church approaches a fork in the road, and one path is the way of truth and the other path is the way of error, God will ensure that His Church does not proceed on the way of error. Could it be any other way? The church is not just a collection of fallible humans. It’s the dwelling place of God’s Spirit, whom Christ promised would lead the church “into all truth.”

This otherwise vague promise is grounded in another promise of Chirst’s: That the “gates of hell would not prevail” against his church, the foundation of which is directly related to Peter, the “rock” of the church given the “keys of the kingdom.”

Perhaps you recognize the primacy of Peter and the consequent primacy of the See of Peter, in the office of Pope. But maybe you doubt the pope’s infallibility. Here you must connect two points:

(1) The general infallibility of the church, stated above

connected with:

(2) The role of the pope, who holds primacy in the church.

Now the significance of the bishop of Rome is to hold the entire Body of Christ together in unity. Union with the pope is the visible sign of unity with Christ’s Church. Cyprian said this in the AD 250s. A century earlier, Irenaeus said that all churches must agree with Rome’s teaching because of its preeminent authority. Decades earlier still in AD 107, Ignatius of Antioch described the church of Rome “presiding in love,” which some understand to mean presiding over the “brotherhood of love” or the entire church. Still earlier, the See of Rome stepped up to resolve conflicts in another Christian community in Corinth.

The earlier Christian church clearly perceived Rome to have a unifying function in the church. Now if this church of Christ is meant to last until the end of the age, faithfully proclaiming the gospel and the teachings of Christ, the it is a natural conclusion that the pope must be infallible – in at least some sense - on some occasions. For if the Pope is able to speak for and to the entire church as an instrument of the church’s unity (remember Peter and his role and the subsequent responsibility of Rome), then he CANNOT speak or act in a way that would lead the entire church on the wrong path… on the Way of Error.

For then the gates of hell would truly “prevail against the Church.”