Catholic ping!
I trust in God. I have met wonderful priests, and some not so wonderful priests. History is laden with good and bad within the hierarchy of the Church. God is infallible. The human beings who populate the Church are not.
If we are humble enough to listen, there is always a voice inspiring us to truth, and to what is right. It’s not a very loud voice, and the world we all live in routinely drowns it out - but it is there. The idea that this voice speaks first to someone like the Pope, or ‘through’ the Pope to the rest of us, is not something I accept at any level - as a Catholic. This voice doesn’t speak preferentially to the hierarchy of any specific religion. It speaks to all of us. Most of us, including for sure myself in too many instances, ignore it.
If people like the Pope, or anyone who has dedicated themselves to God’s work, hear that voice before or more clearly than the rest of us, it’s because they’re listening harder, and have less worldly noise drowning out this voice.
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But both progressives and traditionalists must constantly measure their personal opinions and preferences against the magisterium of the Church and her authority.
Faith is ultimately an act of trust — trust in the truth of God, trust in the reliability of His Word, trust in the action of the Holy Spirit. The Church doesn’t ask you to trust the pope or the bishops; she asks you to trust in Christ’s promise that “the gate of Hades shall not prevail against” his Church (Matthew 16:18).**
Amen!
1 Corinthians 12:27
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.