Is the Church actually trustworthy?

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harry3

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I’m currently taking world history, and this question has popped into my head while looking at European history, specifically post-reformation.

The Catholic Church did some pretty crazy things, such as arresting Galileo for his astronomical theories, persecuting some Protestant groups, etc. It makes me wonder: do these atrocities corrupt the trustworthiness and genuineness of the Church? If the Church is led by someone infallible, why would he make the command to kill people and persecute scientists and other Christian groups, which I think all can agree violates God’s inspired word (the Bible)?

I’m struggling with this, so I hope someone can shed some light on the topic.
 
Study the Galileo situation in more depth. It is not as the conventional wisdom implies.

And, there is blood on all hands post-reformation. Look into the Lutheran persecution and killing of Anabaptists. What did Catholicism have to do with that? Look at the list of English Catholic martyrs - murdered by the British crown due to their Catholic faith. No Vatican involvement there.

Broaden your view and you will see only that mankind is broken, no matter his faith or lack thereof.
 
The issue with Galileo was that he tried to justify his theory of a round Earth with the Bible, and made it a theological issue. Even after agreed to not teach his theory to students, he continued, and so he was punished. Whether he was correct or not, he went about things the wrong way.

Lastly, any institution run by man will make many mistakes. It’s inevitable. But the only reason we’ve lasted so long run by man is because of Christ’s promise. “And the Gates of Hades shall not prevail.”
 
I can see what you’re saying, but I still sort of question the whole issue of the Church being the final decider on issues. Does the fact that the pope had a direct role in persecution and killing affect the trustworthiness of the position?

The contrast here would be that the Protestants don’t have someone who is infallible, like the Pope.

Also, I don’t mean to start a debate/argument. I’m asking solely for my own edification. Im just deeply interested in the catholic tradition.
 
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CapitalistCatholic said:
Lastly, any institution run by man will make many mistakes. It’s inevitable. But the only reason we’ve lasted so long run by man is because of Christ’s promise. “And the Gates of Hades shall not prevail.”
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^^ This.

The Church’s mistakes in handling some situations does NOT somehow make the original teaching of Christ wrong. We are here in the Catholic Church not because we think the Church is some perfect institution that never makes a mistake, but because their teachings and traditions are handed down straight from Jesus and Jesus’ early Church. I don’t think you can find any human-run institution, including any church, that never makes mistakes and sometimes serious mistakes. Any other church you attend is going to have the same problem BUT in addition they won’t be Christ’s own church.

Regarding “infallible”, the Pope is only infallible when he is speaking ex cathedra. This is a relatively small subset of doctrinal statements coming from the Pope. Persecutions and such were not ex cathedra statements, any more than many of the things the Pope says today (for example in interviews) are ex cathedra statements.

By the way there have been Popes who did worse things than mishandle the Galileo situation. The Church keeps marching on, regardless, and our last several Popes include a number of saints and people on the path to sainthood, so it seems we have gotten better at selecting Popes.
 
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That’s a fair point. I didn’t think about the theological stuff. So thank you.

I asked a similar question to the other person who responded to my question. What about the pope? If he’s in fallible, can he still be considered such and given such responsibility if he orders killing and persecution? I understand that this may be a slightly miss guided and a loaded question, and I don’t mean it to be. That’s just when I’m wrestling with.

Thanks!!
 
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He is ONLY infallible when speaking in Ex Cathedra, or from the Seat of Peter. It’s a special charism that only the Pope possess, which means when speaking infallibly, he will never contradict dogma or doctrine. He cannot give orders to kill when speaking in Ex Cathedra.
 
The whole Church is infallible inasmuch as what God has revealed will be handed on in all its integrity for all time, so all people will have the potential to know it and be saved (revelation ended with the death of the last apostle). This true revelation has never and will never be lost or corrupted, as the Protestants and others claim.

The Pope is only infallible inasmuch as a doctrinal judgment of his would affect the above given his special office within the Church (ie he is infallible when, if he were to err, that revelation would be lost or definitively corrupted in the Church).

Popes and all Catholics, however, are otherwise all fallible sinners.

The Church is therefore credible in her dogmas, but when it comes to things resting on human wisdom, Catholics’ credibility will vary from person to person.
 
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harry3 said:
What about the pope? If he’s in fallible, can he still be considered such and given such responsibility if he orders killing and persecution? I understand that this may be a slightly miss guided and a loaded question, and I don’t mean it to be. That’s just when I’m wrestling with.
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Once again, the Pope’s infallibility in a small subset of DOCTRINAL matters is not relevant to other things he might do that aren’t doctrinal in nature.

Generally when the Pope pronounces infallibly on a DOCTRINAL matter it is something he has carefully studied with the help of many experts and in view of Catholic scripture and tradition. He doesn’t just roll out of bed and make an infallible statement off the top of his head.

Infallible statements are also quite rare as I said.

We believe that when the Pope makes such a statement, that Christ who protects his church would keep the Pope from expressing error, even if the Pope has other negative qualities.
 
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Of course Mother Church is trustworthy!

Regardless of all these ancient aberrations in her history, she still moves forward as a guiding light for everyone to look to, whether it be Catholic, Protestant, or any other religion.

I myself am riddled with doubt, regarding how the mainstream media presents the Church in the recent scandals and alleged inappropriate behavior by her priests.

I never doubt the Church though. She’s strong, ancient, and wise.

She may have some bad agents, but most of the attacks, at least in my opinion, are from the secular media.

Mother Church is trustworthy, Holy Father is trustworthy, God is trustworthy, and all but a minute sample of her priests are trustworthy. The media is not!
 
This is a good question, particularly as we are in the midst of one of the worst crises since the Reformation.

To begin an answer, it depends what we mean by the Church. If you are referring to the Eternal and Mystical Body of Christ - which is more properly called the “Kingdom of God” - then certainly that is trustworthy in all matters. It is the goal of all history, and the community of Heaven.

If we instead are referring to the institution on Earth, as I think you are, the matter is more complicated. While the presence of Christianity will never leave this world, at least if we take the “Gates of Hell” statement seriously, the structures within the Church are ever changing. We didn’t have any temporal power really, until the Emperor Constantine in AD 313. We didn’t have Cardinals until the 11th century, nor did we have the Papacy in all its power really until the Middle Ages.

In our long and difficult story, there have been many gross errors and atrocities even. You are right to point out the injustice surrounding Galileo, but it goes much deeper than that. Consider the Inquisition (not only the Spanish one) - which among other things, burned 4000 people alive in their castle, under the orders of Pope Innocent III. I don’t support that. I think that was a heinous crime, if you asked me. Consider the Crusades, and the multitudes of people slaughtered in the frenzy to loot the Holy land. I don’t support that either. More broadly consider the alliance with secular power, that lasted for some 1500 years, and kept the masses down. Not many of us would support that. Finally, we can look at the awful sexual abuse cover-ups of the past century, and the ongoing revelations.

That brief overview should be enough to make us realise we cannot trust the institution of the Church in everything. Certainly not in matters of temporal power. I’d say we should simply trust it in what it has been entrusted to teach - the matters of Faith. Even then, we still need to apply our own lights to what is said too.
 
Mac120 said:
particularly as we are in the midst of one of the worst crises since the Reformation.
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This may be your subjective view, but I don’t see whatever is going on today as being anything akin to the Reformation. From a historical standpoint, whatever “crisis” is happening today is going to look like a blip or a footnote in 500 years (if Jesus hasn’t returned by then).
 
harry3 said:
What about the pope? If he’s in fallible, can he still be considered such and given such responsibility if he orders killing and persecution?
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Which pope ordered killing and persecution?
 
harry3 said:
I can see what you’re saying, but I still sort of question the whole issue of the Church being the final decider on issues. Does the fact that the pope had a direct role in persecution and killing affect the trustworthiness of the position?
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Any authority will be called upon to be the “final decider” on a range of issues. The reason the Church is trustworthy isn’t because it’s been called upon to adjudicate controversies in the political or social arena – it’s because Jesus gave the Church the authority (and the charism of infallibility) to declare doctrine in the areas of faith and morals.

Outside of those two areas, it’s a human institution not terribly unlike other human institutions – they get some things right and some things wrong. 🤷‍♂️
 
harry3 said:
I’m struggling with this, so I hope someone can shed some light on the topic.
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As others have said, the Church’s gift has to do with carrying the torch, with preserving and proclaiming the gospel accurately regardless of whether or not her members, including leaders, have always heeded that message themselves.
"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach." Mat 23:2-3

The above verses outline a principle, which can hold true at any time. Anyway, the light has been brought into the world. The Church’s job is to keep & spread it. It takes time for the light to penetrate our darkness, for it to do its job in humankind. And its been having that very effect over the course of the last two millennia, whether we recognize it at first glance or not. The wheat and tares will coexist but the wheat will grow stronger in any case.

And don’t fail to observe the good the Church or her members have done over the centuries. Driven by the ideal given them members have virtually placed altruism on a huge scale on the world map. Untold hours of volunteer work, countless amounts of wealth donated, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, loving ones enemy instead of vanquishing him, schools, hospitals, orphanages, the preservation and development of education/the university system itself, the elevation of and strides in arts and science (Galileo never stopped being Catholic BTW, and Catholic scholars and scientists-some priests- have often been at the vanguard of new theories and findings), fostering the pursuit of excellence in general, offering light and hope and meaning to a lost and dying world.

The scandals or any way that the Church may have failed at practicing love are truly offenses. But they’re also inevitable wherever humans are to be found (the Church’s own teaching on Original Sin pretty well guarantees this, in fact), while the gift of infallibility on matters of faith and morals, on what we need to know for salvation and how to live, remain intact in spite of us, because Gods deems that to be right and necessary.
 
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CCHcolonel said:
You mean promoting theories as fact without evidence and disparaging the pope financing his work. And then placed under house arrest at his villa.
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And trying to use Scripture to support them before science confirmed those theories as fact.
 
The church is run by people. Some people are good and some are not so good. But it is not fair to blame the church for some of the mistakes made in history. While men and women in the church die, the church continues on. Thanks be to God!
 
Christ did not promise impeccability. At various points, mistakes were made, but the deposit of faith was always there.
 
Galileo didn’t have scientific proof for his theory. Instead, he used theology to prove his theory, and his theology was rejected by the church. It wasn’t until years later that sufficiently advanced telescopes proved the sun was at the center. Being prosecuted for theology is still bad, but without this often overlooked context, the situation cannot be fully understood.

War is tricky, because retaliation is not unjust, if done for self-preservation. Various Protestants wanted to force Catholics to convert. The Catholic countries fought back. There were justifications and excesses on both sides. To look back in hindsight and say everyone was wrong oversimplifies thimg.
 
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