The author deceitfully implies that the three conditions of papal infallibility were only added after the Catholic church was sent reeling backwards from people pointing out papal error. That’s nonsense. Why cite a 1999 work, when it merely restates what was declared in Vatican I?
Specifically, regarding the failures of Peter: Jesus tells Peter that he WILL receive authority, not that he HAS. That authority was given to him when he reconciled with Jesus after the Resurrection. Jesus tells Peter, “Shepherd my sheep.”
Further errors are abundant: “Heresy” means that someone within the faith deviates from it. Those outside the Catholic Church are not called “heretics,” by the Church but “schismatics,” (if they still belong to an apostolic church), “apostates,” (if they have abandoned the faith), or simply the unconverted. So the criticism of Vatican II’s teaching on other religions is absurd: the punishment for heresy cited in Vatican 1 is “anathema.” That is, they are excluded from the Catholic Church. The passage from Vatican II relates to people who are already outside the Catholic Church in the first place!
Couldn’t someone still interpret that passage from Vatican II as at least being the heresy of indifferentism? (That is, the heresy of believing that it doesn’t matter what religion someone is.) It’s funny RnMomof7’s source doesn’t mention this passage:
“Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, [this Council] teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.”
So, what we learn from Vatican II is that the Catholic Church respects that these religions may offer a “reflection” of certain elements of the Church’s truth, but that such a reflection of the truth is inadequate for salvation.
Inconvenient truth
Gal 2:11 Now when Peter[a] had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; 12 for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. 13 And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.
14 But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, “If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?[ 15 We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, 16 knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.