Papal Infallibility Question

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garysibio

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I’m a cradle Catholic but left the Church for 11 years and returned 25 years ago. I have to admit that some questions have really started to trouble me lately. I haven’t been able to find any reasonable answers so I thought I’d like to ask one here.

If the doctrine of papal infallibility is so clearly true, why was it rejected by the eastern churches?
 
garysibio said:
If the doctrine of papal infallibility is so clearly true, why was it rejected by the eastern churches?
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I hate to be controversial or flippant, but: if God is so clearly the Lord, why was His order not to disobey … disobeyed by Adam & Eve? Well, there we are. Free will - and now, with us, fallen nature. 😦

To be fair, sometimes infallibility wasn’t and isn’t so clear and obvious. It can take a lot of delving into history to see it come out. The Orthodox themselves believe that the Church’s Holy Tradition is infallible - they just don’t take it to its ultimate conclusion in defining exactly how that works.
 
Classicist said:
I hate to be controversial or flippant, but: if God is so clearly the Lord, why was His order not to disobey … disobeyed by Adam & Eve? Well, there we are. Free will - and now, with us, fallen nature. 😦

To be fair, sometimes infallibility wasn’t and isn’t so clear and obvious. It can take a lot of delving into history to see it come out. The Orthodox themselves believe that the Church’s Holy Tradition is infallible - they just don’t take it to its ultimate conclusion in defining exactly how that works.
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Adam and Eve disobeyed because God created them with a free will which allowed them to do so. Satan tempted them with the same pride - the desire to be like God - that he fell victim to himself.
 
garysibio said:
I’m a cradle Catholic but left the Church for 11 years and returned 25 years ago. I have to admit that some questions have really started to trouble me lately. I haven’t been able to find any reasonable answers so I thought I’d like to ask one here.

If the doctrine of papal infallibility is so clearly true, why was it rejected by the eastern churches?
Click to expand...
Compare what has happened to the East and the West churches, look at their developments. There in lies some of the answer.
 
pablope said:
Compare what has happened to the East and the West churches, look at their developments. There in lies some of the answer.
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Do you have any insights that don’t require studying 1,000 years of history?
 
garysibio said:
I’m a cradle Catholic but left the Church for 11 years and returned 25 years ago. I have to admit that some questions have really started to trouble me lately. I haven’t been able to find any reasonable answers so I thought I’d like to ask one here.

If the doctrine of papal infallibility is so clearly true, why was it rejected by the eastern churches?
Click to expand...
A large part of it has to do with personal issues they had with the Pope. The Eastern bishops were mad at him and when he called them back to union with him, a lot of bishops refused to accept “that man” as the head of the Church.

Very often, the profound theological explanations that held us explain our faith can be abused by using theological language to build up reasons not to do what we know we are supposed to – and then that can be very easily passed off to others if it’s made to sound beautiful and true. So when some personal problems with the Pope disposed certain Eastern bishops to write up theological explanations for why the Church should have no leader, their explanations had a lot of influence, and bishops listened to them and agreed with them. A lot of them might not have heard the reasons for believing in papal infallibility; it is hard to make an informed decision if you’re only given one side and you’re pressured into accepting it because it’s read in council by an authoritative patriarch. For all these reasons, it would be very easy to lead the Eastern churches into schism.

Remember that that was not the first time they had gone into schism – it also happened during the Arian controversies, and it took an ecumenical council to bring them back. Well, the Pope called an ecumenical council after the 1054 schism, and the Eastern delegates agreed to the Pope’s supreme authority, but they couldn’t bring their bishops and flocks back into agreement – and part of that was due to the odium the Pope had brought onto the Western Church (at least in the eyes of the Easterns). That was something that hadn’t existed when the Arian schism happened – during that schism they were actually grateful to the Pope because he had received Athanasius and protected him when he had been deposed by Emperor Valens. So it was easy to come back into union with the man they had never fully wanted to depart from in the first place. But in the 1054 schism, it was more difficult, because there was real animosity between the two halves of the Church, and both sides of the Church can be blamed for some of that. But that’s why they didn’t accept his infallibility – personal problems built up by theological treatises that were composed in the service of ideology rather than truth.
 
2,000 years of Church History is a lot to research lol. 🙂 There is a part in Church History where there was a Great Scism (spelling?) . There were a lot of disagreements in the practice and liturgy of Mass and other traditions and customs between Eastern and Western Churches. Some examples are the Roman Rite requisite of Priests being celibate when ordained to the priesthood. Eastern churches believed that priests could marry if it was done before ordination. Papal Infallibility does not mean that the Pope is not able to make mistakes because he’s just as human and prone to error as anyone else. It means that only in the areas of Faith, Morals and Catholic Doctrine/Teaching- he’s infallible because of the authority of Peter to be able to ‘bind or loose anything on earth and it will be bound or loosen in heaven’.
 
garysibio said:
Do you have any insights that don’t require studying 1,000 years of history?
Click to expand...
Let me try from memory…😃

First, keep in mind the parable of the mustard seed…from a small seed to a sturdy, big tree.

Liken the Church to this mustard seed.

In the west…a strong papacy emerged…to keep the west together…a necessary development-maybe or maybe not…with God’s guidance…🤷…think about it.

In the East…due the Islamic hegemony, the Eastern churches could not come together…could not develop as the West did. They essentially became separate national or country based churches…they did not grow into the big mustard tree like the west.

And as the Western church grew…how would the Church respond to the growth and advancement…would you say Christ has stopped guiding the Church or there is the hand of Christ behind the moves, the growth of the Church and how it responds to this.

My question is…with the declaration of doctrine of infallibility…is the Church, the world, better served by it or not? Is it needed because of how the world has grown?

Do you trust the Holy Spirit that it is still there guiding the Church?

Another insight…should there be one voice of Christ for the Church or several voices all claiming to speak for Christ here on earth?

If there is only one…would it be the Bishop of Rome? If not the Bishop of Rome…who would you say can speak as the voice of Christ here on earth?

Would you take the Bishop of Constantinople? of Antioch? the Archbishop of Canterbury? From the protestant world, and their thousands of denoms…who would you pick to be the voice of the Church?
 
I just read the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Good stuff. You can see there the reverence and obedience that is rendered to the Roman See (mentioned often as the Apostolic See).

You can read them here:

newadvent.org/fathers/

The councils are towards the bottom. You can also read many, many of the Fathers. Enjoy! 🙂
 
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