Pope infallibility

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I know the Pope can be infallible during certain circumstances. Can anyone explain that process? Also, I know that it is rare for the Pope to do so, but when is the last time a Pope made an infallible statement.
 
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  1. He must be speaking as the Pope, as in, from the Chair of St. Peter (ex cathedra).
  2. It must be over faith and/or morals.
As for the most recent occurrence, I think it was when Pope John Paul II declared that the Church does not have the power to ordain women to holy orders.
 
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Fauken said:
As for the most recent occurrence, I think it was when Pope John Paul II declared that the Church does not have the power to ordain women to holy orders.
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Not so. Although John Paul II did say that the Church has always, and infallibly, taught that only men can be ordained, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis was not itself an infallible pronouncement. The CDF confirmed this in its response to a dubium as to whether or not JPII was speaking ex cathedra.

So, although Pope John Paul said the Church has always, and infallibly, taught that women cannot be ordained, his statement was not infallible in and of itself.
 
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Ah, alright! In that case, I think the most recent one then would be Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception?
 
ajg said:
I know the Pope can be infallible during certain circumstances. Can anyone explain that process? Also, I know that it is rare for the Pope to do so, but when is the last time a Pope made an infallible statement.
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Never over and against the whole Church, in defined matters of faith and morals, both for dogma and secondary truths. More secondary truths have been defined infallibly by the Popes than dogmas. Recent examples of secondary truths are:
 
And before that, it was 1854 - the Immaculate Conception. This is not something that the Church just does for drill. Normally, it is in response to heresy, such as early on, condemning the Arian heresy.

Oddly enough the Church’s detractors in this regard hang on their pastor’s every word as if he was speaking…

…infallibly. :roll_eyes:
 
There is no process. Basically when he gives a definitive, final judgment for the whole Church as to a truth of faith or morals, he is infallible. This is because the Church as whole is infallible. Since the Pope has the authority as chief teacher to give the final say on dogmatic or moral questions, he must therefore also be infallible when doing so.

At the First Vatican Council, when some bishops wanted to condition papal infallibility on the Pope following some process, the relator (charged with providing official explanations of Council documents to the bishops at the Council) said this could not be done, because there were already so many instances of papal infallibility with various procedures or even none at all:

Bishop Gasser:
But, most eminent and reverend fathers, this proposal simply cannot be accepted because we are not dealing with something new here. Already thousands and thousands of dogmatic judgments have gone forth from the Apostolic See; where is the law which prescribed the form to be observed in such judgments?
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books.google.com

The Gift of Infallibility

Infallibility is a deeply misunderstood idea, within as well as outside the Catholic Church. It remains a subject of great theological debate, especially regarding papal infallibility and the ordinary magisterium of the Church. In The Gift of Infallibility, theologian James T. O'Connor clarifies...
books.google.com
 
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The range of the pope’s infallibility increases or decreases depending on how much the observant Catholic agrees or disagrees with any particular pope’s beliefs and teachings.

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Yes, that was irony. 😏
 
Besides the rare instances of the “Extraordinary Magisterium” there is also the “Ordinary Magisterium”.
 
Inisfallen said:
his statement was not infallible in and of itself.
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Technically speaking, JPII’s statement is infallible. It is simply that it is infallible by virtue of the perennial teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium, not because the pope was speaking ex cathedra and invoking papal infallibility.
 
Joe_5859 said:
Technically speaking, JPII’s statement is infallible. It is simply that it is infallible by virtue of the perennial teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium, not because the pope was speaking ex cathedra and invoking papal infallibility.
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Well, yes, but that means that the teaching is infallible, not that John Paul II was speaking infallibly then.
 
Inisfallen said:
Not so. Although John Paul II did say that the Church has always, and infallibly, taught that only men can be ordained, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis was not itself an infallible pronouncement. The CDF confirmed this in its response to a dubium as to whether or not JPII was speaking ex cathedra.
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Can you link this dubium and response and quote where this was stated?

I have seen the response that clarified that this was defined as a doctrine “to be definitively held” (definitive tenenda) , which also noted that this doctrine was taught as such by the ordinary and universal magisterium and, then, by the Pope’s present (at the time) formal declaration.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/c...ith_doc_19951028_dubium-ordinatio-sac_en.html

Along the same lines, the commentary to the Professio Fidei again reiterates that this was a definition of a doctrine “to be definitively held” rather than a dogmatic definition (a definition of a directly revealed truth “to be believed”).
https://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfadtu.htm

Doctrines to be definitively held, while not necessarily directly revealed, at least have a necessary connection to revealed truth.

The First Vatican Council’s definition of papal infallibility uses the “to be held” language to indicate these doctrines were infallibly defined by the Pope and that such doctrines fall within the scope of papal infallibility was further confirmed by the commentary on the Professio Fidei above.

I don’t see how it is not an example of papal infallibility–the Pope, by virtue of his office (not as a private person, etc.) declared a doctrine to be definitively held by the whole Church. The whole point of it was to definitively settle the matter and remove all doubt. That is the very definition of papal infallibility (in fact, he pretty much uses Vatican II’s definition word for word). How does what he did not fit that?
 
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Genesis315 said:
I don’t see how it is not an example of papal infallibility–the Pope, by virtue of his office (not as a private person, etc.) declared a doctrine to be definitively held by the whole Church. The whole point of it was to definitively settle the matter and remove all doubt. That is the very definition of papal infallibility (in fact, he pretty much uses Vatican II’s definition word for word). How does what he did not fit that?
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I don’t have it in front of me now, but I think what he said (and what the CDF confirmed) was that the magisterium of the Church had infallibly taught that women cannot be ordained, not that he himself was infallibly declaring and defining that women cannot be ordained.

In the long run, it seems that it is infallible teaching that women cannot be ordained. Just not from the Pope.
 
As I mentioned, I tried to look and couldn’t find anywhere it said the Pope was not providing a formal definitive declaration (aka a definition) in addition to this truth having been clearly taught in the ordinary ways. Of course, a truth can be taught by both the ordinary and universal magisterium and an extraordinary definitive act of the Pope (and, in fact, I would say they always are, since the Pope is not giving a new doctrine but definitively confirming the true doctrine of the Church, which she can never lose or corrupt).
 
That’s the general consensus but canonizations are not doctrines. They’re what Cardinal Ratzinger refers to as “dogmatic facts”.
 
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