I believe Iscool’s point is that we are told to recognize false teachers by their fruit. If someone buys high church office, then by their very offer to do so, they condemn themselves as false teachers.
No one is perfect, so in judging how their ‘fruit’ relates to being a false teacher, the individual must listen to the Holy Spirit and decide if the fruit is bad enough to merit saying the person is a false teacher.
If buying high church office doesn’t bother you, then you can believe they were true teachers. If it does, then you need to be concerned that they were false teachers - yet allowed and condoned to hold high church office in the Catholic Church.
BTW - NYer wrote: “Christ instructed the Church to preach everything he taught (Matt. 28:19–20) and promised the protection of the Holy Spirit to “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).”
Actually, those passages were to his disciples, not a church organization. And while I have no doubt the church will prevail, I see no reason to identify the organization called the Catholic Church as the Church mentioned in the NT. Too much Catholic doctrine comes from the uninspired writings of men, and contradicts the scriptures.
Yet he insisted "No one criticized any of your popes for not being perfect nor for being less than perfectly moral..."
Frankly, I'd be more concerned with the fruits of his teaching than the fruits of his personal behavior.
Again, Jimmy Swaggert is a flawed human being, but he never taught that what he did was not sinful. Quite the opposite, actually.
No one is perfect, so in judging how their ‘fruit’ relates to being a false teacher, the individual must listen to the Holy Spirit and decide if the fruit is bad enough to merit saying the person is a false teacher.
And for the anti-Catholic bigot, that analysis involves saying "their fruit is Catholic teaching, therefore they are false."
And Satan is the father of lies.
Just pro forma, and not kidding around, with respect to a Pope I would consider his "official" acts as fruit. His personal scoundrelitude would be more like bark or leaves or something.