Papal election and Holy Spirit

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robertmidwest said:
If the Pope is not selected by the Holy Spirit, i.e. the wrong man may be elected, then doesn’t this rule out Papal infallibility?

See attached article: ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/the-next-pope-will-be-gods-choice-.-.-.-right
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This is an interesting question. If there is free will involved in the electors and free will involved in the actual Pope, then why coudn;t a Pope say "this is an Ex Cathedral statement and then proceed to error? Would God literally strike him down or dumb?
 
robertmidwest said:
If the Pope is not selected by the Holy Spirit, i.e. the wrong man may be elected, then doesn’t this rule out Papal infallibility?

See attached article: ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/the-next-pope-will-be-gods-choice-.-.-.-right
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No. Papal infallibility does not mean impeccability.

The Holy Spirit guides but does not coerce (that would negate free will). But the ‘wrong man’ idea would presuppose that there is a double predestination effect, and that in some alternate universe there would have been some other man elected. . . It’s not a question of ‘wrong man’ (I mean, really, LOOK at the private lives of some of our popes, especially some of the Borgias), it’s a question that even IF every cardinal ignored the Holy Spirit and madly pushed for somebody totally depraved, that person who became Pope would STILL not be able to teach error when it came to faith and morals.

How? We don’t know. Would God ‘strike him dead?’ Maybe. Would God ‘open his heart’ so that right before he was going to speak, he realized the error of his ways and then refused to teach what he now knew was wrong? Maybe. Would this somehow trigger the Second Coming? Maybe. Again, we don’t know.

It hasn’t happened, that we DO know. Not even the Arians were able to get the Church to ‘change the teaching’ even when the majority of bishops themselves were going around teaching it ‘privately’ so to speak. . .and where are the Arians now?

The Holy Spirit will always work for good and the gates of hell will not prevail. We’re guaranteed of that. . .no matter who might be steering the barque of Peter.
 
Raymond Arroyo’s interview with then Cardinal Ratzinger. He asks a similar question.

The Cardinal’s response basically that thought the Holy Spirit guides, it does not choose. Men choose.

It’s a great interview.

youtube.com/watch?v=AKVO_v2FbtE
 
Tantum_ergo said:
IF every cardinal ignored the Holy Spirit and madly pushed for somebody totally depraved, that person who became Pope would STILL not be able to teach error when it came to faith and morals.
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Can you move that from your opinion to an argument with some documentation? What are your basing this on?
 
robertmidwest said:
Can you move that from your opinion to an argument with some documentation? What are your basing this on?
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From Vatican 1, when papal infallibility was defined as dogma.

(this is what it says)

“we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that
when the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA,
that is, when,
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,
he possesses,
by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter,
that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.
Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable.”
 
Marie5890 said:
From Vatican 1, when papal infallibility was defined as dogma.

(this is what it says)

“we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that
when the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA,
that is, when,
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,
he possesses,
by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter,
that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.
Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable.”
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Please explaint to me why this isn’t circular reasoning. A bunch of guys who admit that they are open to making errors (Pope Benedict and Jimmy Akin both agree (Jimmy Akin could never be wrong)) write a document that says this guy we elect (and it could be the wrong choice) will never make a mistake in an offical statement.
 
robertmidwest said:
Can you move that from your opinion to an argument with some documentation? What are your basing this on?
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Robert, you asked for documentation. That is what I provided.

According to the dogma of Papal infallibility, even if a scoundrel were to be elected to the papacy, if, and when, he were to talk and teach on faith and morals, he would be protected from error due to the promise that Christ made to Peter.

What you think about that is up to you.

I just provided the documentation you were asking for as to what the teaching of the Church is should an immoral man be elected to the papacy (and yes, we know thru history that there has been. No informed Catholic denies that)

Please understand, that papal infallibilty is restricted to faith and morals alone.
 
Marie5890 said:
I just provided the documentation you were asking for
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Thank you. And I was just pointing out that humans (who admit they are open to making errors) wrote the document that says when their guy speaks he is not making an error. So how do we know they weren’t making an error when they wrote the document? it is circular reasoning.
 
robertmidwest said:
Thank you. And I was just pointing out that humans (who admit they are open to making errors) wrote the document that says when their guy speaks he is not making an error. So how do we know they weren’t making an error when they wrote the document? it is circular reasoning.
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The way we know they were not making an error is that the Council was teaching a matter of faith and was prevented by the doctrine of infallibility from teaching error.

What may be confusing you is that you seem to think infallibility started with Vatican 1. It did not. Infallibility was there from the beginning of the Church. Vatican 1 simply restated what had been known and taught. My apologies if this is known to you.

Remember, it was not the humans who wrote the document that created inability, it was God who created infallibility. Humans simply codified what God had ordained.

Read the actual decree here and see if it is clearer: papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum20.htm#Chapter%204.%20On%20the%20infallible%20teaching%20authority%20of%20the%20Roman%20pontiff
 
Vatican IChapter 4.
On the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff
1. That apostolic primacy which the Roman Pontiff possesses as successor of Peter, the prince of the apostles, includes also the supreme power of teaching. This Holy See has always maintained this, the constant custom of the Church demonstrates it, and the ecumenical councils, particularly those in which East and West met in the union of faith and charity, have declared it.
 
Hoosier_Daddy said:
This is an interesting question. If there is free will involved in the electors and free will involved in the actual Pope, then why coudn;t a Pope say "this is an Ex Cathedral statement and then proceed to error? Would God literally strike him down or dumb?
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Actually, there are some examples where something like that seems to have happened.

Pope Clement VIII - 1605 A.D.

“In the spring of 1605, Pope Clement VIII, after a careful study of the opposing positions on the question of grace and free will, was about to render an official decision approving the so-called ‘Thomist’ position and condemning that of Luis de Molina, S.J. But before he could promulgate the already drafted condemnation, he died.” catholic.com/thisrock/1995/9501fea3.asp

Pope Sixtus V - 1590 A.D.

After a team of Bible translators presented a revision of the Vulgate to Pope Sixtus V, “[the pope] angrily announced he would personally revise the Vulgate. He declared, ‘We, weighing the importance of the matter, and considering carefully the great and singular privilege we hold of God, and our true and legitimate succession from Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles…[are] the proper and specially constituted Person to decide this whole question.’ ”

“Ill equipped for the task, Sixtus eliminated all the work done by the former commission, and started fresh. Unfortunately his abilities to translate, edit and make all the appropriate decisions were beyond his capabilities and the result was an error filled translation presented to the cardinals in early 1590.” According to Patrick Madrid, “If Sixtus had formally promulgated this distorted version, it would have allowed a strong case to be argued against the doctrine of papal infallibility since the Pope would have fulfilled the three requirements layed out by Vatican I for an infallible teaching.”

“Expectation was at a boiling point. The news in Rome had it that the official promulgation would happen any day. Advance copies of the new Vulgate had been bound and delivered to all the cardinals in Rome along with advance copies of the bull officially publishing it. Everything was ready for the pope to promulgate the new version. Nothing could stop him.”

“But at the last moment Sixtus, whose health and vigor were never questioned, took to his bed, dying on August 27, 1590 after a brief illness. The Holy Spirit’s promise to guide the Church to all truth seems to have been fulfilled again.”
Much of the above is quoted from Patrick Madrid, Pope Fiction, pages 242-51. The rest comes from catholicfaithandreason.org/papal-infallibility.html

Isn’t Church History wonderful?
 
dmar198 said:
Matthew 16:19 – “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
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Thank you!!! Something other than “because the church says so”.

I will still argue that it is a human interpretation/application of a scripture (and we all know human make mistakes because Jimmy Akins says so).
 
robertmidwest said:
Thank you!!! Something other than “because the church says so”.

I will still argue that it is a human interpretation/application of a scripture (and we all know human make mistakes because Jimmy Akins says so).
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I agree that this argument involves a human interpretation of a Scripture, at least if presented some ways. Without divine revelation, I think we can only have imperfect certainty about anything. But when one thinks there is good evidence that this interpretation is correct, or that some other argument for the Catholic Church is correct, then the appropriate thing to do, if I understand logic correctly, is to put divine faith in the Church’s teachings, because you can be reasonably sure that the Church is of God. That is when arguments from council documents and stuff like that come into play, if my understanding is correct.
 
robertmidwest said:
IF every cardinal ignored the Holy Spirit and madly pushed for somebody totally depraved, that person who became Pope would STILL not be able to teach error when it came to faith and morals.
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I suppose it comes down to your faith. You either believe that the Pope is infallible, or you don’t. Someone’s infallibility is not something that someone who is fallible could prove.

Given the objections you’ve already addressed here, I don’t think there is anything else left, but the issue of your own faith.

The thing that needs to be settled is what to do in cases when you have doubts that something a pope said is true.

There are several options, but it basically comes down to two:
“The Pope is wrong, and I know better than he.”
and
“Perhaps I don’t yet understand what exactly the Pope meant by what he said.”
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