Papal infallibility and free will

[Curious_Hobbit]

Does papal infallibility conflict with the popes free will? It seems that on matters of faith and morals when the pope speaks ex cathedra he doesn’t have the choice to purposely lie. A Catholic friend of mine who says he has problems with some catholic teachings listed this as one thing that confuses him.

 

[JRKH]

Does papal infallibility conflict with the popes free will? It seems that on matters of faith and morals when the pope speaks ex cathedra he doesn’t have the choice to purposely lie. A Catholic friend of mine who says he has problems with some catholic teachings listed this as one thing that confuses him.

Trying to disect things too much will leave you with nothing but a gooey mess.

The Pope, long ago, freely turned his free will over to God for God to use as He Wills.
So now, when a Pope speaks ex-cathedra it is not “his will” but “His Will”.

Even outside the bounds of ex-cathedra, in normal speach and wrting, the Holy Father would never, “purposely lie” for this same reason. It is not Ratzinger’s will but Christ’s Will that is at work through the guidence of the Holy Spirit.

Anyway that is the approach I would take in explaining it.

Peace
James

 

[cajun2core]

The way I understand it is that the Holy Spirit protects the church, not controls the pope. Think of it as a guardrail protecting the church not confining the pope. I would say that if I pope were going to intentionally proclaim something wrong that he would be prevented somehow from doing it.

Example (a good one but an extreme one):
Here is an excellent discussion on it. Copied from one of the posts is my personal view of it:

It would be a long post and the hour is getting late, however, I believe you will find the answer you seek in Patrick Madrid’s book, Pope Fiction. The following quote is the final line in a ten page response that Pope Sixtus V issued a botched revision of the Latin Vulgate Bible. “What we do know, is that the mighty Pope Sixtus V didn’t live long enough to cross that line.” The bull announcing it was never issued.

Anyway, here is the link:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=81780

 

[copperblade]

Does papal infallibility conflict with the popes free will? It seems that on matters of faith and morals when the pope speaks ex cathedra he doesn’t have the choice to purposely lie. A Catholic friend of mine who says he has problems with some catholic teachings listed this as one thing that confuses him.

Well… the question of absolute protection from error really only matters from pope to pope, so to speak. If the Pope is guided by the Holy Spirit, and could possibly be in error on a tiny detail, then we couldn’t know that–we would still have to treat it as infallible. The only time it comes up is possibly when the Holy Spirit guides the Pope to make a “clarification” of something previous.

None of this has to do with the intentions of the Pope, as such intentions would probably be evidently heretical. The Pope cannot contradict the Tradition of the Church, for example.