Papal infalibilty

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We are refering to only infalibility in the matter of Teaching on faith and morals. The Pope and the church are not blameless and sinless.
 
davidv said:
The Church did not support torture
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The New Catholic Encyclopedia disagrees with you. It says that Pope Innocent IV authorized the use of torture for the Inquisition. Have you heard about the Inquisition? Have you read the papal bulls of Pope Innocent IV?
 
From Pope Agatho I’s letter to the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 681 AD:
For this is the rule of the true faith, which this spiritual mother of your most tranquil empire, the Apostolic Church of Christ, has both in prosperity and in adversity always held and defended with energy; which, it will be proved, by the grace of Almighty God, has never erred from the path of the apostolic tradition, nor has she been depraved by yielding to heretical innovations, but from the beginning she has received the Christian faith from her founders, the princes of the Apostles of Christ, and remains undefiled unto the end, according to the divine promise of the Lord and Saviour himself, which he uttered in the holy Gospels to the prince of his disciples: saying, Peter, Peter, behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for you, that (your) faith fail not. And when you are converted, strengthen your brethren. Let your tranquil Clemency therefore consider, since it is the Lord and Saviour of all, whose faith it is, that promised that Peter’s faith should not fail and exhorted him to strengthen his brethren, how it is known to all that the Apostolic pontiffs, the predecessors of my littleness, have always confidently done this very thing: of whom also our littleness, since I have received this ministry by divine designation, wishes to be the follower, although unequal to them and the least of all.
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http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3813.htm

Papal infallibility is the historic teaching of the first millennium church.

Arguments against the Pope only date to second millennium schismatics.
 
I’ve reread that over and over again. It’s not explicit about papal infalibility I guess, but still suggestive of it. How’s this for a case:

What is the rock Christ will build the church(unity) upon? Here are some possibilities:

1.Peter’s Faith. Why this does not make sense according to the orthodox Church: Any one who confessed that Christ was God would be in unity with the true church. Orthodox claim they are the ones in unity, but all christians would fall into this category.
2.Peter. Why this does not make sense according to the orthodox Church: Remove peter(through his succesor) as the cornerstone and the church collapses. Christ promised this wouldn’t happen, but Peter’s succesor has been removed from the orthodox church, so it would be over if this was true.

3.Ecunemical Councils. Why this does not make sense: He doesn’t say upon the bishops, or upon the council. He says upon this rock.

Here is a devil’s advocate one I came up with.

4.Peter(with his strength of faith) is a metaphor for the strong foundation of the church. Peter is metaphorically the same rock as the foundation of the church. Jesus is the true foundation.

I guess I do have an answer for this. Why did Christ “show off” Peter’s strong faith, unless it was gonna hold up. Why did he make peter a metaphor for himself by changing his name? It was a pretty terrible metaphor if his faith failed the church.
 
It is explicit. Pope Agatho I says:
has never erred from the path of the apostolic tradition, nor has she been depraved by yielding to heretical innovations, but from the beginning she has received the Christian faith from her founders, the princes of the Apostles of Christ, and remains undefiled unto the end
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You can’t get more explicit than that. Pope Agatho I says the Apostolic Church of Christ (which was the title of the Church of Rome, the “Apostolic See”) (1) has never erred and (2) “remains undefiled unto the end”. That is the doctrine of papal infallibility. And the Sixth Ecumenical Council affirmed this doctrine, saying:
Therefore to you, as to the bishop of the first see of the Universal Church, we leave what must be done, since you willingly take for your standing ground the firm rock of the faith, as we know from having read your true confession in the letter sent by your fatherly beatitude to the most pious emperor: and we acknowledge that this letter was divinely written as by the Chief of the Apostles, and through it we have cast out the heretical sect of many errors which had recently sprung up, having been urged to making a decree by Constantine who divinely reigns, and wields a most clement sceptre.
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This is the doctrine of the first millennium church. This is what the church historically believed. All the arguments you hear from Eastern Orthodox today are later innovations.

In matters of religion, follow the old.
And no man drinking old, hath presently a mind to new: for he saith, The old is better.
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Luke 5:39
 
PluniaZ said:
In matters of religion, follow the old.
And no man drinking old, hath presently a mind to new: for he saith, The old is better.
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Not to be a pain in the neck, but… your citation of Luke 5:39 doesn’t fit your argument. Jesus was saying that His teachings were the “new fabric” and the “new wine” which needed to be understood in a new context (a ‘new garment’ and ‘new wineskins’, respectively). His appeal to the notion of “old wine” was meant as commentary on the errors of the Jews who rejected His message: those who are filled with ‘old wine’ reject the ‘new wine’. Jesus isn’t saying this approvingly…
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PluniaZ said:
Pope Agatho I says the Apostolic Church of Christ (which was the title of the Church of Rome, the “Apostolic See”) (1) has never erred and (2) “remains undefiled unto the end”.
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Was it a mistake to support the Inquisition?
 
Again, we are talking about error in church teaching, not sinlessness.
 
It helped a little bit. History is all so messy and disputed. The only thing I’ve been able to hold onto assuredly is The fact that the orthodox teaching on divorce and remarriage is wrong. The Early Church Fathers support the indissolubility of marriage, except by death. Eastern Orthodox cite Mathew “And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” Its debated why Mathew includes this and what it actually means. But no one else uses it, and in Corinthians it says “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.” and Mathew: "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
 
History is messy, which is what makes the 1st millennium doctrine of papal primacy so remarkable: it is clear. It is entirely one sided in favor of the Pope.
 
AlNg said:
Was it a mistake to support the Inquisition?
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The Catholic Church never actually killed anyone during the Inquisition. The Inquisition always handed the prisoner over to the secular authorities to try them according to secular law. The Inquisition only tried those people who lied about their religion. If one was really a Muslim but pretended to be a Catholic for political/wealth/or power issues you were tried. There were problems with the Inquisition but it is not the horror that folks make it out to be.

Also, PluniaZ was talking about faith and morals, not practice. The Inquisition has nothing to do with one’s faith. There is no dogma relating to the Inquisition.
 
I’ll make a few points.
  1. The Biblical support has pretty much been given in this thread: “You are Peter…the Gates of Hell shall not prevail…” etc. It’s hard to just push all that under the rug, although Protestants do their best, which is of course ironic since they emphasize the primacy of scripture!
  2. In this day and age, it seems to me that anyone who wants a quick, objective view of a subject should turn to Wikipedia. It has excellent articles on “Magisterium” and “Papal infallibility.” There are always links to investigate more. But beginning there gives you an overview.
  3. Most people, including many Catholics, don’t understand what Papal infallibility actually means. Generally they give it a much wider application. In fact, an infallible statement is extremely rare–some would say it’s only been done once, with the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. Others would go back into history and add some other examples–that gets problematic because they’re not using the same vocabulary, and if they are, it’s not clear exactly what they mean by a word that may be the same, but whose meaning might have changed. (“Silly” for example.)
  4. Anyone who has actually read parts of Augustine, Aquinas, and other early theologians realizes that not everything they say would be orthodox in today’s church. Some early theologians were accepted on certain subjects, but on others were declared heretical. So to say “Augustine says such-and-such” is interesting and worth investigation, but he’s not always right.
  5. An infallible statement is not going to be used to proclaim a “new” doctrine. It’s going to be used to say (as in the case of the Assumption of Mary) that a widely held belief is, in fact, doctrine.
  6. There is an historical development in our understanding of even basic doctrines (Jesus is divine, for example) let alone ideas that are (and were) highly politically charged (primacy of the bishop of Rome). Sadly, after 1050 the Orthodox churches were no longer a part of that historical development. It’s tough to bridge a 1,000 year divide.
  7. Read Cardinal Newman–if not the whole Apologia, then the part where he decides to convert to Catholicism. He converted because he was doing historical research on the Donatists, and he realized that the rest of the church considered them heretics simply because the pope at the time said they were heretics. In other words, the rest of the church recognized the primacy of the pope.
  8. the free will stuff–when he makes an infallible pronouncement, the pope is speaking for God. This doesn’t affect his free will, because he has the ability to either speak for God or not. It’s his decision.
  9. I would steer clear of early controversies unless you’re doing a PhD thesis. It’s complex. And I suspect not many people are going back to the original Greek or Latin. So to pull a random statement out of a hat and say “So-and-so says X about Honorius” seems more than a little naive. You would need to immerse yourself in the history and theology of a given period. You can short circuit this by finding a modern theologian you respect and simply trusting their judgement.
Hope some of this helps.
 
PluniaZ said:
the 1st millennium doctrine of papal primacy so remarkable: it is clear. It is entirely one sided in favor of the Pope.
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If so, why did not the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and many other bishops accept the filioque which the Roman Church supported?
 
Not a specific point that needs direct addressing in a debate, but it is important to remember that the Pope’s infallibility is actually the infallibility of the Church and no the other way around. In other words, the Church is not infallible because of the Pope, but rather the Pope is infallible because the Church as a whole can not err on matters of Faith and morals. This is made explicitly clear in the wording of Vatican I, but it is often overlooked in such debates.

If the Pope acts as a “court of final appeal” to settle divisive matters, then of course the Pope is infallible in such instances because the Church is infallible. So has Rome historically always been the court of final appeal? The answer is clearly yes, even in the case of Honorius where a Pope judged and made a proclamation on the matter. The fact that the other Bishops examined the evidence and went along with Rome is not evidence that Rome was not infallible, it is merely evidence that the Church was working its infallible process. It is often overlooked that the teaching of the Immaculate Conception was similarly based on a Church-wide examination, with the Pope issuing the final word only after consultation with the Bishops. This is how Infallibility should be understood and debated, not as some kind of fiat power of the Pope alone.

In short, in some cases of extreme division there must be a final, authoritative voice than can bring an end to debate. We have seen that Ecumenical Councils alone aren’t able to provide this decisive ruling. With this lens of viewing the context of previous decisions and controversies is much clearer, and they need not be intimidating.

Peace and God bless!
 
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AlNg said:
Did Pope Clement V support the Inquisition?
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I don’t know but I would guess yes. Even he did it doesn’t say anything against Papal Infallibility. He wasn’t pronouncing from the chair of Peter anything on faith and morals.

Torture? The Bull Ad Extirpanda says that minimal torture is allowed only one time, as long as no limbs are broken and if the evidence against the subject is virtually certain. Ad Extirpanda is not considered a use of Papal Infallibility and was not meant to be when written. The first sentence in the bull is, “A Proclamation of the Laws and Regulations to be Followed by Magistrates and Secular Officials against Heretics and their Accomplices and Protectors.”
A use of infallibility has to involved all the faithful and not merely secular officials. Basically, it is not of the same caliber as, say, Munificentissimus Deus , the most recent use of Papal Infallibility.
 
Is torture immoral? Recent Popes seem to think so. Although your limbs are not broken when you are put on the rack, your arms and legs can be dislocated and the whole process is very painful. Similarly when you are hanged by the arms?
A papal bull, although not infallible generally, is part of the ordinary teaching magisterium of the Catholic Church, is it not?
Entwhistler said:
A use of infallibility has to involved all the faithful
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Some of the faithful do not agree with the decision against women priests,. For example, the priest at the local church is in favor of women priests. Still, the decision has been said to have been infallible?
Besides the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption of Mary and the papal Infallibility,and supremacy what other infallible teachings have been declared by a Pope speaking ex cathedra and not as part of a council declaration?
Entwhistler said:
The Inquisition always handed the prisoner over to the secular authorities to try them according to secular law.
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Tomas de Toquemada was a Dominican priest.
 
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