What do I do? I don't have a spiritual home anymore.

[Julia_Mae]

Please go read the bottom of the first post. Then read the ENTIRE series of posts that follow. I didn’t start talking about this. In fact, I said from the beginning I did not want this to turn into a discussion on this point. That was NOT the purpose of this. I didn’t turn it into this, I have just defended my position. Every single post about infallibility was in response to someone else’s post. Before you speak so poorly of me, you should read what was actually said.

And before you get all defensive, you should not presume someone is your enemy. I am not speaking poorly of you at all. I want to know what you want. I asked you way back when you started the thread.

As for the discussion, if you didn’t want to have it, you don’t have to respond to people who were talking about the thing you said you didn’t want to talk about.

And further, your attitude is pretty ridiculous. I doubt Jesus would have such an attitude. I am not disrespectful to you

Sounds disrespectful.

and yet you, because you don’t like what I have to say, have chosen to attack me.

I did not attack you. Not before, not now, not ever. Yelling at me might make you feel better but it won’t change the fact that I was actually one of the few who respected the parameters you set for your thread and tried to understand what you want. Which you still haven’t addressed. I am asking you very straightforwardly why you are asking at all? Why you don’t just go to Mass?

Would they rather I just say, “Screw the Church!”? No. Of course not. But obviously you would.

You are so out of reality here. What I said, for the at least third time is: *why don’t you just go to Mass like everyone else? * You make a very poor mind-reader.

But it is apparent to me that you want to have this big long argument about infallibility and it must have been your original intention since you have no interest in discussing what belse could have brought you here, so, go have it.

I have never insulted you, attacked you, criticized you, or done anything but try and understand what you wanted from the forum. Anyway, cya.

 

[LilyM]

Ok…I understand what you are saying (I think), and I appreciate you adjusting the way in which you explain it, because it has definitely helped…So let me try to explain it to ensure I have it right.

You are saying the entire Church is protected with infallibility…meaning everyone in the Church…and the infallibility protection comes from the Holy Spirit, right? But, the only single person who can teach with this infallibility is the Pope and everyone else (the college of bisops, the magesterium, etc.) must be in communion with the Pope, right? So if the college of bishops get together and discuss something, the Pope can still come in and make an infallible pronouncement that trumps everyone else…right? S

But it’s not like the Pope ever ‘trumps everyone else’ in the sense of pulling a teaching out of thin air that completely ignores and goes against both historic Apostolic Teaching and all the opinions of his bishops and cardinals and lay faithful

The closest thing to the scenario you imagine was Humanae Vitae, but even then it was a matter of consistent Apostolic and historic teaching, rather than the Pope’s own views, doing the ‘trumping’.

And not of everyone else, although a lot of people wanted to be allowed to contracept. Even then there were some who foresaw, as Paul did with uncanny prescience, the myriad social problems, the destruction of families, relationships, respect for life and marriage, that would be caused by widespread contraception. And that’s not getting into
the medical issues with it, which have led my own sister, although a non believer, as a knowledgeable physician to steer clear of ABC herself.

 

[jinc1019]

But it’s not like the Pope ever ‘trumps everyone else’ in the sense of pulling a teaching out of thin air that completely ignores and goes against both historic Apostolic Teaching and all the opinions of his bishops and cardinals and lay faithful

The closest thing to the scenario you imagine was Humanae Vitae, but even then it was a matter of consistent Apostolic and historic teaching, rather than the Pope’s own views, doing the ‘trumping’.

And not of everyone else, although a lot of people wanted to be allowed to contracept. Even then there were some who foresaw, as Paul did with uncanny prescience, the myriad social problems, the destruction of families, relationships, respect for life and marriage, that would be caused by widespread contraception. And that’s not getting into
the medical issues with it, which have led my own sister, although a non believer, as a knowledgeable physician to steer clear of ABC herself.

I never said that the Pope was pulling anything out of thin air. I said, if the Pope thinks one particular way or if the Holy Spirit is guiding him in that way, he has the authority to overrule any other opinion to the contrary. I just read it in the catechism so I am sure it is correct according to Catholic theology…All I am trying to do is understand it.

 

[jinc1019]

From what I read in the Catechism, it sounds like this, and please feel free to correct me if I am wrong:

The Pope can issue an infallible decree via ex-cathedra. Or, the Magesterium, comprised of the world’s bishops, can make an infallible decree so long as it is in communion with a Pope, and this is done through ecunemical councils (at least typically). Is this right? I know there are other, lower forms of teaching as well but these seem to be the primary methods where infallibility is involved.

 

[jinc1019]

If that is correct…then I don’t understand how the Pope is not integral to all of this. In the Catechism, it says “The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals. . . . The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter’s successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium,” above all in an Ecumenical Council." This is from 891 of the Catechism.

So, while I understand the Church is considered infallible…everything declared infallible can only be done with an agreement from the Pope.

 

[jinc1019]

Am I missing anything here? Is this pretty much right (The last two posts only)?

 

[Usagi]

Ok…I understand what you are saying (I think), and I appreciate you adjusting the way in which you explain it, because it has definitely helped…So let me try to explain it to ensure I have it right.

You are saying the entire Church is protected with infallibility…meaning everyone in the Church…and the infallibility protection comes from the Holy Spirit, right? But, the only single person who can teach with this infallibility is the Pope and everyone else (the college of bisops, the magesterium, etc.) must be in communion with the Pope, right? So if the college of bishops get together and discuss something, the Pope can still come in and make an infallible pronouncement that trumps everyone else…right? S

He could do that, yes, if somehow every other bishop had departed from the Tradition on the issue. It would be a rather extreme example of “strengthening the brethren.”

That has never actually happened, though, and is unlikely ever to happen. Even in the darkest days of the Church, as when politically-favored Arianism dominated most of the world’s sees for awhile after Nicaea, there’s been more than one bishop standing up for the truth (though Rome’s has always been one of them).

Conversely, the Pope is bound by the Tradition. The teachings of past Popes and Councils, as well as those teachings we’ve been talking about as coming from the ordinary and universal magisterium, are just as irreformable as anything a Pope might declare ex cathedra today. If the Pope got it into his head to teach that Mary is part of the Godhead or something, he’d be wrong. Indeed, the idea of papal infallibility is that God won’t even let a Pope teach something like that, lest it lead the faithful astray.

Remember, the Church (even us Catholics, not just the Orthodox) got along fine without an explicit declaration of the Pope’s personal infallibility until 1870. (It wasn’t a completely new idea, of course, but it hadn’t needed to be nailed down despite centuries of various heresies and controversies.) In a way, that supports your idea that we might have done just as well without papal infallibility. But it also undermines your idea that the entire concept stands or falls on Peter’s Biblical uniqueness. The Church believed certain of her teachings to be infallibly determined for her entire history, without connecting that to the person of the successor of Peter until very recently. That the Pope has a unique position of authority does ride on all those Petrine texts, but you don’t seem to have a problem with that. Infallibility – that the Church can teach certain things and know them to be true, even if they are developed when compared to the raw Scriptural data – derives more from Christ’s promises of protection to the whole Church. Even if the Church had never recognized that the Petrine office exercises the charism of infallibility in a special way, the idea of infallible teaching would still be out there. Yes, today we recognize that even the whole college of bishops could be wrong if they are teaching in opposition to the Pope, but that doesn’t mean that the entire idea of infallible teachings hinges on powers granted to Peter alone, and therefore disappears if you can’t find such powers,

Usagi

 

[catharina]

Am I missing anything here? Is this pretty much right (The last two posts only)?

The command that we are to pick up the cross and follow Jesus -
perhaps your cross is one of intellectual dysfuction. That does not make
you bad or odd yet it could call you to CHOOSE tha path of faith reather
than the path of argumentation and dissent.

Like love, chosing faith, (choosing love) is an act of the will.

 

[Nate13]

@jinc1019
So you recognize the apostolic authority of a council of bishops but not the pope alone? Is that the position your taking?

What is your response to this quote from Gaudium-et-spes which is a document produced by the Vatican II council, which I assume would meet the qualifications you specified as being authoritative…

1. This council realizes that certain modern conditions often keep couples from arranging their married lives harmoniously, and that they find themselves in circumstances where at least temporarily the size of their families should not be increased. As a result, the faithful exercise of love and the full intimacy of their lives is hard to maintain. But where the intimacy of married life is broken off, its faithfulness can sometimes be imperiled and its quality of fruitfulness ruined, for then the upbringing of the children and the courage to accept new ones are both endangered.

To these problems there are those who presume to offer dishonorable solutions indeed; they do not recoil even from the taking of life. But the Church issues the reminder that a true contradiction cannot exist between the divine laws pertaining to the transmission of life and those pertaining to authentic conjugal love.

For God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the surpassing ministry of safeguarding life in a manner which is worthy of man. Therefore from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes. The sexual characteristics of man and the human faculty of reproduction wonderfully exceed the dispositions of lower forms of life. Hence the acts themselves which are proper to conjugal love and which are exercised in accord with genuine human dignity must be honored with great reverence. Hence when there is question of harmonizing conjugal love with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspects of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards. These, based on the nature of the human person and his acts, preserve the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love. Such a goal cannot be achieved unless the virtue of conjugal chastity is sincerely practiced. Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law.(14)

All should be persuaded that human life and the task of transmitting it are not realities bound up with this world alone. Hence they cannot be measured or perceived only in terms of it, but always have a bearing on the eternal destiny of men.

Also do you see that citation that I bolded the number 14? Guess what that reference is after that statement:

1. Cf. Pius XI, encyclical letter Casti Connubii: AAS 22 (1930): Denz.-Schoen. 3716-3718, Pius XII, Allocutio Conventui Unionis Italicae inter Obstetrices, Oct. 29, 1951: AAS 43 (1951), pp. 835-854, Paul VI, Address to a group of cardinals, June 23 1964: AAS 56 (1964), pp. 581-589. Certain questions which need further and more careful investigation have been handed over, at the command of the Supreme Pontiff, to a commission for the study of population, family, and births, in order that, after it fulfills its function, the Supreme Pontiff may pass judgment. With the doctrine of the magisterium in this state, this holy synod does not intend to propose immediately concrete solutions.

vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html

This looks to me like official sanction by a council of Bishops of the encylcical Casti Cannubii and its conclusions on permissible forms of birth control and recognition of the Supreme Pontiff to pass judgement on the matter.

 

[LilyM]

I never said that the Pope was pulling anything out of thin air. I said, if the Pope thinks one particular way or if the Holy Spirit is guiding him in that way, he has the authority to overrule any other opinion to the contrary. I just read it in the catechism so I am sure it is correct according to Catholic theology…All I am trying to do is understand it.

Even if the entire weight of Apostolic and historic teaching as well as current opinion - and I mean literally 100% - was against him?

I would say that his technically having the authority to do such a thing means as little as the US technically having the capability of literally blowing the rest of the world to kingdom come many times over. Technically the Pope, like the US, can do lots of things, but some of them just ain’t gonna happen in any number of parallel universes, and it’s fruitless to speculate about them.

A Pope is more like a judge - entrusted with a responsibility and holding himself very much bound by the rules, procedures and precedents put in place by his predecessors in exercising his office - than a maverick mistaking any random thought for an inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

 

[jinc1019]

The command that we are to pick up the cross and follow Jesus -
perhaps your cross is one of intellectual dysfuction. That does not make
you bad or odd yet it could call you to CHOOSE tha path of faith reather
than the path of argumentation and dissent.

Like love, chosing faith, (choosing love) is an act of the will.

Honestly, this is the kind of trash that turns people away from the Church. “Intellectual dysfunction?” I asked a simple question…Is what I wrote in those two comments correct?

 

[catharina]

Honestly, this is the kind of trash that turns people away from the Church. “Intellectual dysfunction?” I asked a simple question…Is what I wrote in those two comments correct?

Standard teaching that involves the protection and growth of faith is
trash to you? That’s your opinion?

If you haven’t noticed you are already “turned away from the Church.”

C-YA.

 

[jinc1019]

@jinc1019
So you recognize the apostolic authority of a council of bishops but not the pope alone? Is that the position your taking?

What is your response to this quote from Gaudium-et-spes which is a document produced by the Vatican II council, which I assume would meet the qualifications you specified as being authoritative…

Also do you see that citation that I bolded the number 14? Guess what that reference is after that statement:

vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html

This looks to me like official sanction by a council of Bishops of the encylcical Casti Cannubii and its conclusions on permissible forms of birth control and recognition of the Supreme Pontiff to pass judgement on the matter.

I appreciate your efforts but no…I am not saying, nor have I ever said, the council of bishops is infallible. I said the Catechism says that and I quoted directly from it. The Catechism also says that their infallibility is only valid when the Pope agrees…that’s all I said about councils and the infallibility of bishops.

My primary argument has nothing to do with this. My primary argument relates to the individual seats of the other 11 apostles, not all of the bishops.

 

[jinc1019]

Standard teaching that involves the protection and growth of faith is
trash to you? That’s your opinion?

C-YA.

No, as I made clear in my post…the “trash” comment is referring to what you called “intellectual dysfunction,” which was a CLEAR personal attack and you know it.

 

[catharina]

No, as I made clear in my post…the trash is referring to what I said as “intellectual dysfunction,” which was a CLEAR personal attack and you know it.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to “attack” you.
However, I can’t imagine that anyone who accepts teachings
of the Church could easily reach you. You have locked
up your brain behind unnecessary questions.

That is your choice - being locked in a box.

 

[Nate13]

I appreciate your efforts but no…I am not saying, nor have I ever said, the council of bishops is infallible. I said the Catechism says that and I quoted directly from it. The Catechism also says that their infallibility is only valid when the Pope agrees…that’s all I said about councils and the infallibility of bishops.

My primary argument has nothing to do with this. My primary argument relates to the individual seats of the other 11 apostles, not all of the bishops.

Then your original question is nonsensical. Let me get this straight:

Your asking if its permissible for you to receive communion because of a teaching that it would be wrong for you to do so from Vatican I. You however do not recognize the authority of Vatican I to make said pronouncement infallibly. So to sum it up your asking if its ok for you to receive communion and disobey and authority you do not recognize…

That question would seem to answer itself would it not?

I think the problem your having is that your starting point in all of this is you don’t believe contracepting is immoral. You are prepared to reject any authority that tells you otherwise and jump through any intellectual hoops to get there.

 

[LilyM]

I appreciate your efforts but no…I am not saying, nor have I ever said, the council of bishops is infallible. I said the Catechism says that and I quoted directly from it. The Catechism also says that their infallibility is only valid when the Pope agrees…that’s all I said about councils and the infallibility of bishops.

My primary argument has nothing to do with this. My primary argument relates to the individual seats of the other 11 apostles, not all of the bishops.

It says the bishops exercise it ‘together with’ the Pope.

Now if a husband or wife exercises authority over the household ‘together with’ his or her spouse, does that mean that they are never allowed to do things on their own? Of course they are. It does mean they cannot directly oppose the other spouse. But in both Church and marriages this still leaves a heck of a lot of freedom and independence to act.

The Popes are not, and cannot be, micromanagers even on matters of faith and morals.

 

[Nate13]

It says the bishops exercise it ‘together with’ the Pope.

Now if a husband or wife exercises authority over the household ‘together with’ his or her spouse, does that mean that they are never allowed to do things on their own? Of course they are. It does mean they cannot directly oppose the other spouse. But in both Church and marriages this still leaves a heck of a lot of freedom and independence to act.

The Popes are not, and cannot be, micromanagers even on matters of faith and morals.

Jinc also ignores the fact that the Pope could never issue a teaching infallibly by himself that contradicted something a council of bishops taught infallibly. He could also never issue an infallible teaching that contradicted something that is part of the ordinary Magesterium that is infallible.

 

[catharina]

Jinc also ignores the fact that the Pope could never issue a teaching infallibly by himself that contradicted something a council of bishops taught infallibly. He could also never issue an infallible teaching that contradicted something that is part of the ordinary Magesterium that is infallible.

Yep - couldn’t AND wouldn’t.

 

[DJK100]

Even if everything you say in this post is true about interpreting Mathew…you are still wrong. Why? Because if Jesus only gave infallibility to the other apostles as a group, my point still stands, because many (if not all) of the other apostolic seats have left the communion with the Catholic Church, and if those seats are necessary to have infallibility, then the Church cannot make claims of infallibility without them. Your interpretation still produces the same result. It just doesn’t make sense. You say Peter was the only one promised infallibility, but the Church says the others were as well, so you are disareeing with the Pope. The apostles were given infallibility, as the Church agrees, but the difference is about whether this infallibility is dependent on being in communion with Peter or not. And my point is, where do you see in Mathew that the infallibility promise to the other apostles only works if they are in communion with Peter? You don’t see it anywhere because it isn’t there.

I am not saying Peter was the only one given infallibility. What I am saying is that Peter was given the it alone by Jesus and then Jeus turned and gave it to the Bishops as a whole/group. It seems significant that this event occured otherwise what is your explaination for it. Why even include the event in the bible. Why did he single Peter out first when he could have just told him along with the rest of the Apostles?