If you are confused about papal infallibility, its because there is plenty of be confused about.
I agree. You
do seem plenty confused about ‘infallibility’.
First off, you use it as if it applied to a
person. It doesn’t. It applies to
statements of faith and morals. In a casual sense, when people talk about it, they might say “the pope is infallible when…” or “the pope and the bishops are infallible when…”, but that’s not the way the Church talks about infallibility. Rather, the Church uses the term to refer to the subject matter: “the pope teaches infallibly when…”. See the distinction? It’s not the
man, but rather the
teachings that can take on the tenor of infallibility.
It uses a definition of “infallible” that is completely meaningless and is applied anachronistically (after the fact)
OK… take a deep breath and think for a minute:
- if the definition of an infallible teaching includes prerequisites about what conditions must be present for a teaching to be able to be declared infallible
- and if a pope consciously intends to – and does! – meet these prerequisites in the way he declares a teaching
- and if a teaching cannot be declared ‘infallible’ before it’s actually taught
… then there’s no way to characterize a teaching until after it’s been taught! Moreover, we look at the intent of the person proclaiming the teaching and recognize that it was his intent, prior to proclaiming it, to make it an infallible teaching! So… no: not ‘meaningless’ and not ‘anachronistic’.
Doctrine doesn’t change. When it develops, it develops along the lines of the existing expressions of it, in order to clarify what the doctrine means.
we just go back and say well the Pope wasn’t speaking ex cathedra, so papal infallibility doesn’t apply.
Umm… has anyone from the hierarchy of the Church ever done this? I think you’re making this up…
The inevitable result is confusion.
Welcome to the wonderful world of religion, where folks who don’t want to follow a set of teachings make up their own rules and attempt to rationalize them.
The word “infallible” means incapable of making error, or always effective or correct.
It’s funny: it looks like you’re using the definition that comes up when you Google “infallible definition”. But, if you
do Google it, then there’s a third definition – which you’re ignoring here. That third definition is “(in the Roman Catholic Church) credited with papal infallibility”. So, yeah… use that third definition, not the first two. You’ll see that your contradictions fall away.
If we pick and choose when someone is infallible then they aren’t infallible.
Again: not about a person, but about teachings. And, to your point, we can absolutely make the claim that “the teachings of the Church on faith and morals are always infallible”. So, there are no problems on
that front, either.
