Papal Contradictions

[razredge]

Which is true and which I agree with. I don’t see where that has any matter in the CCC.

Not really, if you’ve been following the various discussions on Adam & Eve on CAF you’d know why.

But if it is indeed not true that we are descended from a single pair then the CCC isn’t infallible.

 

[adrift]

And to those who insist that heliocentrism wasn’t condemned infallibly while modern scientific findings are, there are these rejoinders:

This answer is worthless as it does not document its source. Even so it admits that the Pope did not sign it and its counter

Alexander VII prefixed to the Index containing the condemnations of the works of Copernicus and Galileo and all books which affirm the motion of the earth a papal bull signed by himself, binding the contents of the Index upon the consciences of the faithful. This bull confirmed and approved in express terms, finally, decisively, and infallibly, the condemnation of all books teaching the movement of the earth and the stability of the sun.

shows a profound lack of understanding of what infalibility is.

 

[Cruxis117]

Not really, if you’ve been following the various discussions on Adam & Eve on CAF you’d know why.

I haven’t been following the discussions.

But if it is indeed not true that we are descended from a single pair then the CCC isn’t infallible.

Never said it was, I said it was authoritative and written well.

 

[razredge]

This answer is worthless as it does not document its source. Even so it admits that the Pope did not sign it and its counter shows a profound lack of understanding of what infalibility is.

What is infallibility then and how do we know what is infallible or not? Seriously, papal infallibility is so vague as to be worthless.

Alexander VII wrote one of the most authoritative documents related to the heliocentrism issue. He published his Index Librorum Prohibitorum Alexandri VII Pontificis Maximi jussu editus which presented anew the contents of the Index of Forbidden Books. According to Rev. William Roberts, he prefaced this with the bull Speculatores Domus Israel, stating his reasons: “in order that the whole history of each case may be known. ‘For this purpose,’ pursues the Pontiff, 'we have caused the Tridentine and Clementine Indices to be added to this general Index, and also all the relevant decrees up to the present time, that have been issued since the Index of our predecessor Clement, that nothing profitable to the faithful interested in such matters might seem omitted.”[8] Among those included were the previous decrees placing various heliocentric works on the Index ("…which we will should be considered as though it were inserted in these presents, together with all, and singular, the things contained therein…") and using his Apostolic authority he bound the faithful to its contents ("…and approve with Apostolic authority by the tenor of these presents, and: command and enjoin all persons everywhere to yield this Index a constant and complete obedience…")[9] Subsequent to Alexander VII’s pontificate, the Index underwent a number of revisions.[10] “In 1758 the general prohibition against works advocating heliocentrism was removed from the Index of prohibited books, although the specific ban on uncensored versions of the Dialogue and Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus remained. All traces of official opposition to heliocentrism by the church disappeared in 1835 when these works were finally dropped from the Index”.[11] The Index was abolished entirely in 1966.[12]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Alexander_VII

This contention, then, was at last utterly given up by honest Catholics themselves. In 1870 a Roman Catholic clergy man in England, the Rev. Mr. Roberts, evidently thinking that the time had come to tell the truth, published a book entitled The Pontifical Decrees against the Earth’s Movement, and in this exhibited the incontrovertible evidences that the papacy had committed itself and its infallibility fully against the movement of the earth. This Catholic clergyman showed from the original record that Pope Paul V, in 1616, had presided over the tribunal condemning the doctrine of the earth’s movement, and ordering Galileo to give up the opinion. He showed that Pope Urban VIII, in 1633, pressed on, directed, and promulgated the final condemnation, making himself in all these ways responsible for it. And, finally, he showed that Pope Alexander VII, in 1664, by his bull - Speculatores domus Israel - attached to the Index, condemning ``all books which affirm the motion of the earth,’’ had absolutely pledged the papal infallibility against the earth’s movement. He also confessed that under the rules laid down by the highest authorities in the Church, and especially by Sixtus V and Pius IX, there was no escape from this conclusion.

cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/White/astronomy/retreat.html

 

[Contarini]

I have no problem with believing that any condemnation on Galileo is not infallible teaching as long as it is consistently applied to other contradictions between science and tradition (where it is often the case that some Papal statement is used as ‘infallible teaching’ despite it being less forceful than the Galilean condemnation in many ways).

And to those who insist that heliocentrism wasn’t condemned infallibly while modern scientific findings are, there are these rejoinders:

What examples of “modern scientific findings” do you have?

Are you thinking of Humani Generis?

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

What is infallibility then and how do we know what is infallible or not? Seriously, papal infallibility is so vague as to be worthless.

Worthless for the pseudo-epistemological task it is often erroneously called on to perform, sure (i.e., giving people “certainty” about what is to be believed). Not worthless for its real task, which is to prevent a conflict between unity and truth.

cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/White/astronomy/retreat.html

This is propagandistic nonsense. One 19th-century Catholic priest (I presume he was a priest, since the permanent diaconate did not exist at that time), in the precise year when papal infallibility was defined, publishes a book making a dubious historical argument, so of course White (notorious among scholars today for distorting and poisoning the entire subject with his seriously misleading “warfare” metaphor) lauds him as “honest” and refers to him “confessing” what he may well have been happy to argue. Plenty of Catholics, including in particular many English Catholics, opposed papal infallibility. The “Rev. Mr. Roberts” is not himself infallible, and it’s quite likely that the book was written before the actual decree on infallibility was promulgated. This is a worthless piece of evidence. You need to consider your sources more seriously.

Edwin

 

[adrift]

What is infallibility then and how do we know what is infallible or not? Seriously, papal infallibility is so vague as to be worthless.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Alexander_VII

cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/White/astronomy/retreat.html

Infallibility

Papal infallibility

[Decrees of the First Vatican Council](http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum20.htm#Chapter 4. On the infallible teaching authority of the Roman pontiff)

Your sources do not understand infallibility. Not everything that is said by a Pope or written is infallible. The above links should give you a basic understanding of it.

 

[razredge]

What examples of “modern scientific findings” do you have?

Are you thinking of Humani Generis?

Edwin

A prime example

Worthless for the pseudo-epistemological task it is often erroneously called on to perform, sure (i.e., giving people “certainty” about what is to be believed). Not worthless for its real task, which is to prevent a conflict between unity and truth.

This is propagandistic nonsense. One 19th-century Catholic priest (I presume he was a priest, since the permanent diaconate did not exist at that time), in the precise year when papal infallibility was defined, publishes a book making a dubious historical argument, so of course White (notorious among scholars today for distorting and poisoning the entire subject with his seriously misleading “warfare” metaphor) lauds him as “honest” and refers to him “confessing” what he may well have been happy to argue. Plenty of Catholics, including in particular many English Catholics, opposed papal infallibility. The “Rev. Mr. Roberts” is not himself infallible, and it’s quite likely that the book was written before the actual decree on infallibility was promulgated. This is a worthless piece of evidence. You need to consider your sources more seriously.

Edwin

What, are you a closet Catholic or something?
I wouldn’t call it propagandistic nonsense since numerous other sources all say similar things and of course it isn’t like the articles written by Catholics contain no bias.

orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/papaldogma.aspx
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Vatican_Council

Most reputable historians would agree that Papal infallibility was defined to substitute the Pope’s faltering temporal power (with the loss of the Papal States) by increasing his spiritual power.

Your sources do not understand infallibility. Not everything that is said by a Pope or written is infallible. The above links should give you a basic understanding of it.

Yes, I have seen those definitions but people seem to always claim that some teaching they support is infallible due to some criteria being met wheras if you look for other teachings with the same criteria they say that isn’t an infallible teaching.

 

[adrift]

A prime example.

His question which you did not answer was

What examples of “modern scientific findings” do you have?

What you state is a prime example had nothing to do with science.

Most reputable historians would agree that Papal infallibility was defined to substitute the Pope’s faltering temporal power (with the loss of the Papal States) by increasing his spiritual power.

Oh I love the unnamed authoritarian “historian” right along with the statement that most “experts” believe what I am trying to promote but don’t really have the evidence to back it up argument . How about naming these reputable historians. I think you are overstating your position with the “most”.

Yes, I have seen those definitions but people seem to always claim that some teaching they support is infallible due to some criteria being met wheras if you look for other teachings with the same criteria they say that isn’t an infallible teaching.

It is easy to make a statement but back it up. I have seen where people claim they are the same but only in their eyes is it the same. Instead of these vague claims get specific using this criteria:
in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians,
in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority,
he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church,

 

[DavidPalm]

This is propagandistic nonsense. One 19th-century Catholic priest (I presume he was a priest, since the permanent diaconate did not exist at that time), in the precise year when papal infallibility was defined, publishes a book making a dubious historical argument, so of course White (notorious among scholars today for distorting and poisoning the entire subject with his seriously misleading “warfare” metaphor) lauds him as “honest” and refers to him “confessing” what he may well have been happy to argue. Plenty of Catholics, including in particular many English Catholics, opposed papal infallibility. The “Rev. Mr. Roberts” is not himself infallible, and it’s quite likely that the book was written before the actual decree on infallibility was promulgated. This is a worthless piece of evidence. You need to consider your sources more seriously.

Edwin

My understanding is that Roberts was an Anglican, not a Catholic. So his misunderstanding of papal infallibility is perhaps more understandable, but no less incorrect.

With regard to the citation from Alexander VII above (citing the Wikipedia article) the whole point as spelled out in that article is that his action was simply to maintain those works on the Index of Forbidden Books, which has never been understood by anybody to represent a definition of any doctrine ex cathedra. It has always been understood that the Index is a matter of discipline, which is demonstrated by the fact that it was repeatedly revised and ultimately done away with altogether. Even the works of Sister St. Faustina were at one time on the Index. It’s a matter of pastoral prudence, not infallible dogma.

And as for Roberts’s contention that earlier actions (as in 1616 and 1633) were infallible decrees, it’s just nonsense since in neither case was anything promulgated personally by the Pope directly on his authority. As I have said in my recent series against neo-geocentrism, the seventeenth century Popes knew perfectly well how to promulgate some matter as an article of faith for the whole Catholic Church. But on geocentrism they never did so.

Again, the Protestant scholar Karl von Gebler:

The conditions which would have made the decree of the Congregation, or the sentence against Galileo, of dogmatic importance, were, as we have seen, wholly wanting. Both Popes had been too cautious to endanger this highest privilege of the papacy by involving their infallible authority in the decision of a scientific controversy; they therefore refrained from conferring their sanction, as heads of the Roman Catholic Church, on the measures taken, at their instigation, by the Congregation “to suppress the doctrine of the revolution of the earth.” Thanks to this sagacious foresight, Roman Catholic posterity can say to this day, that Paul V. and Urban VIII. sere in error “as men” about the Copernican system, but not “as Popes.” (Karl von Gebler, Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia, trans. J. Sturge, London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879, pp. 235-6, 239)

 

[GraceSofia]

What, are you a closet Catholic or something?
I wouldn’t call it propagandistic nonsense since numerous other sources all say similar things and of course it isn’t like the articles written by Catholics contain no bias.

And numerous other historians of science say it is a discredited theory.

“The conflict thesis, at least in its simple form, is now widely perceived as a wholly inadequate intellectual framework within which to construct a sensible and realistic historiography of Western science”. (p. 7), Colin A. Russell “The Conflict Thesis”, Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction, Gary Ferngren, ed., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0".
“In the late Victorian period it was common to write about the ‘warfare between science and religion’ and to presume that the two bodies of culture must always have been in conflict. However, it is a very long time since these attitudes have been held by historians of science”. (p. 195) Shapin, S.
“In its traditional forms, the conflict thesis has been largely discredited.” (p. 42) Brooke, J.H. (1991). Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives… Cambridge University Press.

orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/papaldogma.aspx

This site is an extremist anti-Catholic site which even contains a very nasty hit-job page on Saint Francis of Assisi. I mean, come on. An Orthodox site with such a hatred for the Catholic Church that they attack St. Francis? This site even complains about calling the Catholic Church a “sister church.” Looking to this sort of Orthodox site for any credible treatment of the papacy is a mistake since papal universal jurisdiction and infalliblity and the Filiolque issue are the main causes of the Orthodox breaking away into schism.

Although the idea of going to any Orthodox site for information about papal infallibility is probably not a good idea, okay, let’s look at another one:

goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith8523

In summary, Orthodoxy does not reject Roman primacy as such, but simply a particular way of understanding that primacy. Within a reintegrated Christendom the bishop of Rome will be considered primus inter pares serving the unity of God’s Church in love.

By the grace of the Holy Spirit the Church is infallible when it meets in synods to clarify the Church’s understanding of the central truths of salvation once these synods have been recognized by the people of God as true and catholic expressions of the apostolic faith. [22] In such a context the universal primacy of the bishop of Rome would have him be the president as well as the spokesman of the Church and, in times of need, he would be the Church’s unitary voice, reflecting and expressing its conscience.

 

[GraceSofia]

What, are you a closet Catholic or something?

What, are you a closet non-Catholic or something?

Most reputable historians would agree that Papal infallibility was defined to substitute the Pope’s faltering temporal power (with the loss of the Papal States) by increasing his spiritual power.

What a strange thing for a Catholic to propound. What a very ugly accusation.