“Christ also stated that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18) so how can the Church commit error?”
First, the gates of hell do not attack the Church. Gates were the weak point in city walls, most likely to fall under attack. Jesus is talking about the Church on offense, not defense. Further, there is a case for saying the ‘gates of hell’ represent death, and He is assuring them that death will not prevail against Him - the next verse is “21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Either way, there is no promise that men will not be able to screw things up in a hierarchical church. We are told that we will have a mixture of good seed and bad growing, and it won’t be separated until the end. Think about Popes who have been condemned, or when there were 2 Popes, and get back with me on how infallible the Catholic Church is promised to be!
In any case, a church that can invent Purgatory & Indulgences can invent ANYTHING. My guess is that there will be open homosexual Catholic priests within the next 100 years, given the example of other hierarchical churches (Episcopal and Anglican). And why not? After all, the NT doesn’t have ANY priests, gay or not. If you can invent priests, you can decide they need to be celibate, or gay, or whatever.
“Scripture is pretty straightforward about the Church’s role in salvation, Its authority and Its organization.”
Please show me the explicit teaching on Priests and Popes in Scripture.
here is mr rogers with another of the tactics of sola scriptura, taking a well known, and historically known explaination, and using the powers of reinterpretation, as sola scriptura allows, makes it say something that can fit his particular view, in complete opposition to the historical church of even the first few centuries.
While it is true that individual clergy may commit sins, even popes commit sins because in the Church there are both "weeds and wheat" (Matthew 13:30), the Church remains Christ's bride; hence it without spot or wrinkle, as noted on my previous post.
Think about Popes who have been condemned, or when there were 2 Popes, and get back with me on how infallible the Catholic Church is promised to be!
True ... there have been some very bad popes - YET - never in it's 2000 year history has any pope erred on doctrines of faith or morals. You are confusing infallibility with impeccability.
It is the Holy Spirit who prevents the pope from officially teaching error, and this charism follows necessarily from the existence of the Church itself. If, as Christ promised, the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church then it must be protected from fundamentally falling into error and thus away from Christ. It must prove itself to be a perfectly steady guide in matters pertaining to salvation.
Of course, infallibility does not include a guarantee that any particular pope won’t "neglect" to teach the truth, or that he will be sinless, or that mere disciplinary decisions will be intelligently made. It would be nice if he were omniscient or impeccable, but his not being so will fail to bring about the destruction of the Church.
But he must be able to teach rightly, since instruction for the sake of salvation is a primary function of the Church. For men to be saved, they must know what is to be believed. They must have a perfectly steady rock to build upon and to trust as the source of solemn Christian teaching. And that’s why papal infallibility exists.
Since Christ said the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church (Matt. 16:18b), this means that his Church can never pass out of existence. But if the Church ever apostasized by teaching heresy, then it would cease to exist; because it would cease to be Jesus’ Church. Thus the Church cannot teach heresy, meaning that anything it solemnly defines for the faithful to believe is true. This same reality is reflected in the Apostle Paul’s statement that the Church is "the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15). If the Church is the foundation of religious truth in this world, then it is God’s own spokesman. As Christ told his disciples: "He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me" (Luke 10:16).