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To: tom h
And Catholics claim, with a straight face, that the Pope is infallible.

The Pope is infallible in only certain narrowly defined circumstances:

  1. In canonizing a saint
  2. When he, as Pope (not as a private theologian), teaches definitively, to the whole Church, a doctrine concerning faith and morals.

Note that in the last case, there are four conditions, all of which have to be met. (Pope Francis has never attempted to use this second form of infallibility.)

Also, infallibility is a merely negative charism. It speaks of conditions in which the Pope won't teach error.

Catholic Answers used to ask a question to illustrate this: "If the Pope were infallible in trigonometry, what is the lowest grade he could get on a trigonometry test?" The correct answer is "zero", because he could hand in a blank paper.

79 posted on 05/21/2019 5:13:16 AM PDT by Campion ((marine dad))
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To: Campion

The Pope is infallible in only certain narrowly defined circumstances:

1. In canonizing a saint
2. When he, as Pope (not as a private theologian), teaches definitively, to the whole Church, a doctrine concerning faith and morals.


1. The Church has retracted sainthood in circumstances where later historical evidence proved that such a person never really existed in the first place.

2. Before he is done I expect Francis is really going to put this one to the test when he makes climate change and wealth redistribution acid tests of “faith and morals”.

Infallible, not so much.


83 posted on 05/21/2019 6:01:58 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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