June 16, 2010
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Infallible Pope
Yeah the Pope is infallible – under the following circumstances:
1) if He says beforehand that he is making an infallible statement.
2) And, he makes a statement that is in accord with the Catholic faith as accepted by BOTH
the bishops, AND the laity in general.
if these conditions are not met, then the statement is not infallible. At least that’s what the First Vatican Council set as the circumstances in which an infallible papal statement is really infallible.
So far, there’s only been ONE infallible papal statement – and that was made by Pope Pius XII in 1950 when he declared that doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, which says that Mary’s body was taken to heaven, that she is in heaven bodily.
Why that one? Because after the Vatican investigated the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima in 1917, they concluded that Mary was really physically there. They reached certainty. So the Pope could declare it. The doctrine was affirmed by the college of bishops, and the faithful hailed it. So it is infallible.
That’s great. It is a gift from Jesus who founded the Catholic Church. Truth can be known with certitude. It provides great consolation in a crazy world.
The infallibility of the Pope also serves as a new yardstick for the faithful to discern the validity of the Pope himself. In these END TIMES, it may pass that a demoniacally possessed false Pope could get elected. This false Pope may attempt to make a false “infallible” statement so as to lead the Church astray. For example, the Pope may declare that women may be priests, or homosexuals may marry, or some such false teaching. The doctrine of Papal infallibility will show that he is a fraud.
This may happen sooner than you may think. According to the prophecy of St. Malachy (A.D. 1000) there is only going to be ONE MORE POPE before the “end of the present age.” The final Pope will be known as “Peter The Roman.” It is not clear to me whether this next Pope will be true or false. (at least it won’t be Cardinal McCarrick, thank God)
Notice how our present Pope has expanded the Fatima prophecy to apply to himself also, even after Pope John Paul II seemed to give closure to the Fatima prophecy. Benedict XVI also stated that it was not enemies OUTSIDE the Church that were its greatest danger, but those INSIDE.
There are many other infallible statements in the Catholic Church – all made my Ecumenical Councils. All such infallible statements are doctrinal; none are infallible statements of MORAL LAW. I petitioned Pope John Paul II on two occasions to declare infallibly that marriage is valid only for a man and a woman. But he declined. He also declined to infallibly define as doctrine the idea that Mary is Co-Redeemer along with Jesus.
Jesus infallibly declared that marriage cannot be dissolved. I think that that is the Lord’s only infallible statement of MORAL LAW that is not already in the Hebrew Scriptures, but I may be wrong on that.
Comments (2)
very cool post, if I do say so myself….
well, this post needs an addendum. There is ONE OTHER WAY the Pope can be infallible, most probably. And that is through an encyclical. Encyclical letters, if they are true encyclicals, i,e, teaching letters addressed to the WHOLE CHURCH, are the Pope’s official teaching. As the Pope’s official teaching they are considered to be correct, or to use another term, inerrant.
“Inerrant” is a different word than “infallible” and connotes a slightly different idea.
The difference (as I grasp it, and in all things I defer to the officially correct definition as explained and held by a largely unanimous collection of proper authorities – strange eh?)- well, the difference between “inerrant” and “infallible” as I see it is that both are correct, but you can be absolutely sure that an infallible declaration is true because it meets all the requirements to be infallible, whereas, an inerrant teaching in an encyclical is MOST PROBABLY true because it is the official teaching of a Pope, but it has not been declared infallible.
Such was the case with several encyclicals which aroused intense debate. Examples: “Humanae Vitae” by Paul VI which condemned artificial birth control as sinful; and “Humani Generis” by Pius XII which said all humans come from an original pair of parents. Personally, I got burned big time by choosing to differ from the Pope’s official teaching. Living in a hippie commune I agreed with the consensus of women that the IUD was the ideal method to avoid pregnancy. Later I learned that the IUD – just like the “morning-after Pill” does not stop conception, but causes an abortion. Was I ever pissed at the IUD maker – JOHNSON+JOHNSON Co., of New Brunswick, NJ. That’s why when the Drs. Mr+MRs.John and Evelyn Billings came out a few years later with their sure-fire natural way of determining fertility by looking at the changes in the mucous lining of the woman’s vagina, I was thrilled to finally find out the Truth that the Pope was right all along. Mitochondria tracing seems to validate Pius XII’s claim too…although that has not been sufficiently substantiated yet by Science to be held as a fact. and don’t forget…scientific “facts” change all the time, and quite easily too.