These writings, I am pretty sure, came out of heretical sects.
Yes, that's the one I'm referring to. And to be fair, I don't think the person who showed it to me claimed it was infallible, I think I just assumed, so that's on me. :) Thank you for setting me straight.
They [heretics] then slipped in their false teachings around these true stories. I think that the Protoevangelion is Gnostic of some sort. There are certainly parts of it that are pretty wacky, as I recall.
Therefore, it would be completely unfair of me, as an outsider, to say that Catholics believe in such and such based on the Protoevangelion because I can't possibly know what part is heretical.
The fact that heretics made use of the story is no more evidence that it isn't true than is the fact that Mormons came up with their own stories of Christ means that the Biblical stories about Christ that they also teach aren't true.
Point well taken, thanks.
"If you are referring to the Protoevangelion of James that contains some of the stories of the early life of the Theotokos, etc, these are most emphatically *not* infallible writings.
These writings, I am pretty sure, came out of heretical sects.
Yes, that's the one I'm referring to."
I have read that the Protoevangelium is from a heretical even Gnostic source, but I have never read that The Church took that position. The Fathers quoted quite liberally from it and of course in Orthodoxy, we have several feasts commemorating events spoken of in it as well as the names of Panagia's parents. As Agrarian says, it isn't scripture as such nor is it per se an "infallible document", of course neither are any given writing of any given Father so far as Orthodoxy is concerned, but it is certainly part of the Holy Tradition which the Fathers drew upon.