Rousseau_CHN

IN our age, the Catholic Church has gone on an apology spree. The pope has personally apologized to the millions of Jews who suffered under the silence of the Church during WW2. He has also apologized for the Church maltreatment of Galileo and other scientists.

This is all fine except that the Vatican II states that the Pope is morally infalliable. He can't err; he can't make mistake. Now if your someone who can't mistake...what's the meaning of all these apologies.

Shake

Catholics will probably just say that the Pope, although divinely inspired, is indeed human and therefore fallible like the rest of us. They'll have to admit that unless they can come up with some better explanation.

Egoinos

Catholic teaching does not say that everything the Popes have ever said is infallible. According to the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm#IIIB" target="_blank">Catholic Encyclopaedia</a>:

"The Vatican Council has defined as "a divinely revealed dogma" that "the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra -- that is, when in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians he defines, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole Church -- is, by reason of the Divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished His Church to be endowed in defining doctrines of faith and morals; and consequently that such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of their own nature (ex sese) and not by reason of the Church's consent"

The conditions for infallibility are these (again from Cathen):

• It must be clear that he speaks as spiritual head of the Church universal.
• It must be sufficiently evident that he intends to teach with all the fullness and finality of his supreme Apostolic authority, in other words that he wishes to determine some point of doctrine in an absolutely final and irrevocable way, or to define it in the technical sense.
• It must be clear that the pope intends to bind the whole Church.

The Pope can only apologise for those things which were said when he wasn't being infallible.

<a href="http://www.catholic.com/library/Papal_Infallibility.asp" target="_blank">From Catholic Answers</a>

<a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility" target="_blank">Wikepedia Article</a>

<a href="http://www.catholicfaithandreason.org/papal_infallibility.htm" target="_blank">From Catholic Faith and Reason.org</a>

--Egoinos--

[Edited for formatting]

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Egoinos ]</p>

Rousseau_CHN

Catholic teaching does not say that everything the Popes have ever said is infallible. --Egoinos

So what's your point man?

I didn't say everything. I know that the "infalliability" only pertains to issue of moral concern. In fact, the examples I gave, like the Jews and the persecution of Galileo, were moral in nature.

You, Egoinos, said that one condition is that it must be clear that he speaks as spiritual head of the Church universal.

When he was silent during WWII, he (whoever he was) was acting as an ordinary citizen?

God(pun not intended), millions were dying, evil was spreading, and he acts like an ordinary citizen.

You also said, of course...by quoting the catholic dogma, that another condition is to bind the whole Church. Boy, wouldn't it be nice if he bound the Catholic Church against fascism during those awful time.

But those are just wishful thinking, because he wasn't speaking as a spiritual head. Poor us.


Come on, just admit it. The pope is just a person like you and me. He acts on interests, earthly interests like you and me.

[ December 08, 2002: Message edited by: Rousseau_CHN ]</p>

Evangelion

Rousseau_CHN, FYI Egoinos is agnostic. He's not a theist, and he's definitely not Catholic.

When you say this...

...you're saying nothing more than that which Egoinos believes. (And just for the record, I agree with it too.)

Egoinos has correctly observed that your argument attacks a straw man, and therefore has no impact on Catholic theology whatsoever.

Living Dead Chipmunk

And according to most Catholics, the heirarchy can backdate that. For instance, if the Pope in 1519 said something, and everyone said it was ex cathedra, and then the Pope in 1992 takes it back, well, it obviously wasn't ex cathedra, and the Pope is still infallible.

I've actually had it explained to me that the only way to know if he was speaking ex cathedra is if it's not contradicted later. Which comes out to, roughly, two ex cathedra statements in the entire history of Catholicism.

Rousseau_CHN

Evangelion said that Egoi and I agree on the same thing. Okay.

Then came the Chipmunk, and boy am I more confused now than I ever was regarding this "Infalliable Thing."

I guess that's just the nature of the metaphysical. It gets crazier as you go along.

Shake

This sounds like a good excuse to be able to deny anything he said that might come up later and bite him in the ass!

Evangelion

Of course it is.

You can expect the more sophisticated hierarchical churches to have these kinds of epistemological safety nets.

Egoinos

The actions of the Popes during the Nazi era, and their various statements on Nazism (they did condemn it, in an extremely veiled fashion) are just seen as things the Pope said - they are not eternally binding on the Church because the Popes did not mean them to be so. Its a fairly pragmatic move on the part of the RCC, they would be in real trouble if they said that everything a Pope said was eternally correct, because you can't have infallibility without omniscience. Thats why there really aren't many things that Popes have said which are considered infallible - they stand to lose a great deal if they say something is correct and it then turns out it was not.

The Popes were speaking as heads of the church at that time, not the Church eternally. The present-day church, in Catholic belief, btw is called the "Church militant", whereas the church outside time, the church whose members are in heaven as well as the ones not yet born, is called either the "Church triumphant" or sometimes the "church universal". Infallible statements, being as they are out of time, can be uttered by the Pope as head of the church triumphant (i.e. speaking as Jesus) whereas his other statements belong to the church militant, and can therefore contain mistakes.

They bound them against racism, if that is any comfort to you.

And Catholic dogma on this issue is a reflection of their earthly interests - they don't want to fall into the trap that fundamentalists have gone into, staking their entire church and religion on issues which are disputed and liable to be falsified in the future.

--Egoinos--

[ December 09, 2002: Message edited by: Egoinos ]</p>