Papal infallibility and heresy

[Thom18]

Obviously I post this in light of the recent challenge that Pope Francis is spreading heresy. I guess this happened before, in the middle ages, and I don’t understand how a pope could both spread heresy and remain infallible.

I haven’t read AL (I think that’s what is being cited), so I’m not positive if the heresy he’s accused of spreading is supposed to be an ex cathedra teaching, so I would really appreciate if someone could explain to me how we can reconcile papal infallibility with this.

 

[PaulfromIowa]

Pope Francis has never issued any document that could possibly be covered by papal infallibility.

 

[JoshuaIsLord]

It is only Heresy because the Accusers are calling it so. I doubt Pope Francis will even respond to it. And yes Pope Francis has never issued any document that could possibly be covered by papal infallibility at least by our limited understanding of such things.

 

[Entwhistler]

The idea that I’m getting from all of this (and it could be wrong) is that folks are not accusing the Pope of teaching heresy. They are just accusing him of letting heresy or the confusion of possible heretical ideas continue without correction.

 

[pianistclare]

Don’t give it another thought.
We are blessed to have Pope Francis.
The only thing you need to understand is that there are some people who really don’t like him. It does not mean he has done anything wrong.
He is our Pope. The people who started this are not. Simple.

 

[Sir2v4]

In the old forums and now here, I’ve tried to call attention to paragraph 1735 of the catechism of the Catholic Church which says that not everything that is a objectively a grave moral evil is a mortal sin. There are conditions listed in 1735 that reduce or may completely erase a person’s guilt.

As cardinal before his papal election, even Pope Benedict xvi said that may be true of SOME homosexuals, who didn’t know what they were doing was a mortal sin. But, having come to the truth, they henceforth were required to obtain from the Biblically proscribed behavior.

So, my personal reading of AL is that maybe some Catholic DID divorce and remarry without the benefit of a determination of nullity of the first marriage. So, on a case-by-case basis, a confessor may absolve that person from that sin. What confuses me about the opposition to this idea, is that such a thing become an “unpardonable sin.” And, I don’t know that much about “unpardonable sins.” This sounds like “easy divorce” which has not been the policy of the Catholic Church.

 

[Sir2v4]

I breezed through reading the 24 page document from these 60 protesters. I can’t say that their objections jumped out at me, like they apparently did with them – except where the Pope has seemed to express some soft heartedness towards Martin Luther. What he may have said falls in the category of a “prudential judgment” of the pope, and we are not obligated to faith in such statements from the pope, bishops, or priests. On EWTN radio, for example, there was a q-and-a about the case of the US bishops statements about immigration. While they may want to influence us, we are not bound to their “prudential judgments” about such matters as changing immigration laws.

We may stumble into sin and only find out later. 1735 talks about a lot of cases where we sin “with both eyes open” – we are fully aware of what we are doing, but we may be sinning in situations where we do not have full freedom of action, such as those cases that are given, like through habit or attachments or for various (vague) psychological or social reasons. For example of a social reason, maybe a woman is pressured by her husband --a social pressure – to have an abortion.

The protesters have limited their objections and comments to the scope of AL but there are broader implications, in my opinion.

 

[ChunkMonk]

It’s not about an “unforgivable sin” as much as it is elements of the Church trying to say that true repentance isn’t required for forgiveness. That a person can fully intend to continue sinning and be absolved anyway. Or even more absurd is that what was explicitly defined as mortal sin by the Holy Spirit is not even a sin anymore… Because “encounters” and “peripheries” and other nonsense.

Also there is the problem you touched on which is the very unfortunate teaching of “mitigation” that is extremely vague and recently has been taken to mean that it’s only a sin if there are no consequences for doing the right thing.

 

[pnewton]

It is only a sliver of the tiniest of percentage of priests and bishops that believe he is spreading heresy. The news will of course blow it out of proportion. There have always been detractors over various things the Popes have done. The difference today is we have instantaneous media, and the corresponding desire for media attention.