Papal Infallibility

[dcdurel]

What I find amazing is that in almost 2000 years of Church history, no one has been able to find any Pope teaching error, even in his ordinary teachings, whenever he taught as Pope for the whole Church on matters concerning faith or morals. Simply amazing considering the thousands of encyclicals, papal bulls, etc. they have put out.

On the other hand, catholic theologians, scripture scholars, catholic "experts", etc. are the source of almost every heresy that has come about in the 2000 years of Christianity and Catholic bishops, when not in union with the Pope have been those who have made it possible for the spread of every heresy that existed.

Thus, no Pope has ever taught heresy when teaching as Pope for the whole Church.
The Popes have always been infallible when teaching as Pope for the whole Church on matters of faith and morals.

No Catholic scholar has ever been infallible.
Catholic scholars are responsible for almost all the heresies in the 2000 years of Christianity.

Upon whom did Jesus build His Church?
Peter and his successors
or
Catholic scholars?

Who do you trust?
Catholic scholars who have NO authority from Jesus to authentically interpret the word of
God, and who have always taught error, or the Popes who have always been infallible and who are the representatives of Christ on earth.

Who is the source of the almost constant pressure everywhere in Catholic circles to critisize, condemn, and ignore the Popes, and thus rebel against Jesus?
Catholic scholars.

Who is the source of the constant pressure to accept every moral error from the murder of the innocent unborn, to the most devient sexual practices that exist?
Catholic scholars.

Those who love moral error and who don’t want to submit to God’s commandments hate the Popes and love the teachings of Catholic scholars.

Those who love Jesus and His teachings love the teachings of the Popes

 

[Montalban]

Dear Montalban
My point is that the Franciscan idea of poverty is not a matter of Faith and morals, whether a Pope agrees with it or not. And so what if another Pope disagrees with a previous Pope on that issue? It is like saying, “Pope A says oranges are red. Another Pope says he is wrong because oranges are orange.” Well, SO WHAT? If it is not an issue of Faith or morals, how exactly does infallibility come into play? Please explain.

Actually it is. The Franciscans wanted to make it a matter of faith. One pope agreed. Another didn’t. They argued that the ruling of the first pope couldn’t be over-turned by another later pope. If it were merely a matter of ‘opinion’ rather than dogma, there’d have been no great controversy.

Oh, I see your misunderstanding. NO, the Catholic Church does NOT teach that EVERY SINGLE ITEM proposed or pronounced by an ecumenical council, or even every single item of a pronouncement by a Pope ex cathedra, enjoys the guarantee of infallibility.

Actually it does, by virtue that the pope would be speaking ex cathedra. I’ve never heard of a Pope making an ex cathedra statement on a personal opinion.

In all cases, ONLY items regarding a definition of Faith and morals are guaranteed infallibility, for these are the things that can NEVER change. Even when a Pope makes a decree ex cathedra, ONLY the portion of his decree that is the definition of Faith or morals is considered to be infallible. Attendant explanations or comments (unless such explanations or comments are simply repeating previous infallible statements) in that decree are not considered infallible.

In light of this, yes, I believe it was wrong of the Sixth Council to condemn Pope Honorius as a heretic.

Such a ruling itself was confirmed by successive popes including Leo II.
“The condemnation of Pope Honorius was retained in the lessons of the Breviary for 28 June (St. Leo II) until the eighteenth century”
newadvent.org/cathen/07452b.htm

 

[Montalban]

dcdurel:

What I find amazing is that in almost 2000 years of Church history, no one has been able to find any Pope teaching error, even in his ordinary teachings, whenever he taught as Pope for the whole Church on matters concerning faith or morals. Simply amazing considering the thousands of encyclicals, papal bulls, etc. they have put out.

Except for the filioque, which affects the dogma about the nature of the Holy Spirit

 

[Montalban]

The Nicene Creed formulated dogma on the nature of the Trinity.

Churches in the west added to this. This move was opposed by a Pope. Later Popes would change this and claim that it was what was always taught.

They thus have made a change in a matter of doctrine.

 

[Montalban]

The Leos:
One Pope Leo opposed the changing of the Nicene Creed.[1] Another also.[2] The doctrine was changed when the text was changed, to show that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. The Creed had been changed, no doubt by the Second Ecumenical Council, but this change was to combat heresy, not produce it. The Third Ecumenical Council then decreed that no change could be made to the Nicene faith [3]

We Orthodox believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father as principle cause. He can proceed from the Father through the Son. One Catholic apologist site [4] tries hard to find Church Fathers who believed in it (even if they never used the term). They quote Tertullian, for instance.
I believe that the Spirit proceeds not otherwise than from the Father through the Son" (Against Praxeas 4:1 [A.D. 216]) (text can be seen at [5] ). However this is not proceeding from the Son! This is in fact what Orthodox believe, the Son can send out the Holy Spirit, but the source of the Holy Spirit is not Jesus, but the Father. The Filioque however is a double procession, both from the Father AND THE SON.

Endnotes
[1]
Letter 105

ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-12/Npnf2-12-105.htm#P1873_438004

[2]
“Pope Leo III (795-816) forbade the use of the filioque version and had it engraved without ‘and the Son’ on the walls of St. Peter’s Basillica. After a failed attempt to unite by marriage Charlemagne’s Frankish holdings with that of the Byzantine Empress, Charlemagne challenged Byzantinium’s claim of universal jurisdiction as the successor to Rome by claiming in 792 that among other things, that the Byzantines had omitted the filioque from the original text. The filioque was finally accepted by the Romans in the year 1014, and the revision has been part of Catholic doctrine ever since.”
sacred-texts.com/chr/nicene.htm

[3]
The Third Ecumenical Council.; The Council of Ephesus.
The Canons of the Two Hundred Holy and Blessed Fathers Who Met at Ephesus.
Canon VI
“When these things had been read, the holy Synod decreed that it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different (e9te/ran) Faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicaea”
ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-14/Npnf2-14-82.htm#TopOfPage
It would be debateable though if the addition of the ‘filioque’ is in fact a change of the faith. I contend here that it is, hence the early Popes who opposed it. A good site for the ‘objections’ to the addition (because they recognise the addition changes the Creed) can be found at
[geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/work(name removed by moderator)rog_filioque.html](http://www.geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/work(name removed by moderator)rog_filioque.html)

[4]
catholic.com/library/Filioque.asp

[5] slightly different wording…
because I believe the Spirit to proceed from no other source than from the Father through the Son.
Against Praxeas 4:1
ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-03/anf03-43.htm#P10374_2906966