Here are two propositions the Catholic doctrine of infallibility does not mean:
1. Everything the popes do will be holy and spotless in the eyes of God.I will deal with each objection in its turn.
2. The Church can infallibly declare whatever she wants about faith and morals.
(1) It is a waste of time for the opponents of infallibility to create a prejudice against the Catholic claim by pointing out the moral or intellectual shortcomings of the popes and councils which have pronounced definitive doctrinal decisions: the doctrine of infallibility says nothing about the moral or intellectual character of its organs, and consequently is not impaired by these objections. God always has and will use sinners to teach the world His truth. Moreover, if God can give the gift of prophecy to Caiphas who condemned Christ, He can certainly bestow the lesser gift of infallibility on unworthy human agents. From the beginning then I willingly grant all the wickedness in the papacy to which history bears witness (especially those three bad popes in the Renaissance); but that does not affect the substance of the Catholic claim.
The Catholic Church has never taught that every sinner who acted as pope is saved, nor even that all Catholics are saved. This is the heresy of the Donatists in the early Church, and later of Luther who maintained that only the predestined are members of the Church. But Catholics have anyways denied this, back to the time of the Apostles and our Divine Master. Christ denies it, St. Paul denies it, the Catholic Church denies it. Our Lord said the Church was to be like a net which gathered all kinds, both bad and good. Such was His Church; it does not prove then that we are not His Church, because we are like His Church; rather our being like the primitive Christian body is a reason for concluding that we are one with it. We cannot make His Church better than He made her; we must be content with her as He made her.
Certainly a real load of moral evil exists in the Church: an enemy has sown weeds there, and those weeds will remain among the wheat until the harvest. And this evil is found in the laity as well as the clergy: there have been bad priests, bad bishops, bad monks, bad nuns, and bad popes. If the charge you make against Catholics, B---, is that we do not all live up to our calling, but among us are found those who are worldly, lustful, proud, cruel or even unbelievers, I grant it all at once. I not only grant it but I maintain it, for the Church on earth is a community of sinners as well as saints.
The Church has been promised many great things, but she has not been promised the souls of all her children. Therefore, if you wish to form arguments against Catholics, you must show not that individuals are immoral or profane -- since sinful members may be found in any communion -- but that the Church teaches or recommends what is immoral or profane, rewards and encourages the sinner, or makes rules and enforces practices which directly lead to sin. And while Protestants love to imply and suggest as much, I have never seen one form a real argument for it. Perhaps you do not find the task as pleasant and easy as the short and quick method of making strong and harsh statements which are not true.
Now on to the doctrine.
(2) When the Catholic Church speaks of ecclesiastical infallibility she means that the Church is infallible in her objective definitive teaching regarding faith and morals, not that believers are infallible in their subjective interpretation of her teaching. Both Mike and I have the potential to misunderstand and misrepresent what that teaching is. Also, infallibility must be carefully distinguished from inspiration and from revelation. By "inspiration" I mean a special positive Divine influence and assistance by which the human agent is not only preserved from liability to error but is guided and controlled in such a way that what he says or writes is truly the word of God, that God Himself is the principal author of the inspired utterance. Infallibility, then, is a lesser gift than inspiration or prophecy, since infallibility implies only an exemption from liability to error. God is not the author of a merely infallible, as He is of an inspired, utterance; the former remains a merely human document. By "revelation" I mean the supernatural making known by God of some truth previously unknown (or at least not vouched for by Divine authority). Infallibility, on the other hand, is concerned with the interpretation and effective safeguarding of truths already revealed -- not with the introduction of new truths. When Catholics say that some doctrine defined by the pope or by an ecumenical council is infallible, we mean merely that its inerrancy is Divinely guaranteed according to the terms of Christ's promise to His Church, not that either the pope or the fathers of the council are inspired as were the writers of the Bible, nor that any new revelation is embodied in their teaching.
The pope and bishops come by their knowledge of revealed truth the same way everyone else does -- through study. Infallibility doesn't even guarantee the pope and the bishops will always know what a given biblical author means at the literal level (the meaning of some passages may be beyond biblical science's ability to penetrate with any certainty -- what Paul refers to as "baptism for the dead," for example). What infallibility does guarantee is that when the Church puts forth a definitive declaration on faith or morals, she is preserved from the possibility of error. Although scholarship and study are needed for the Church to determine the content of revealed truth, once such a conclusion has been reached, the Holy Spirit protects the Church from teaching wrongly about it. (For example, the Council of Ephesus condemned the proposition that "the Word became flesh" means Christ's eternal divinity substantially morphed into his assumed humanity in the Incarnation.)
To say that in other words, when the Church teaches what Christ revealed, she is infallible; when she teaches something other than what Christ revealed, she is not infallible. When Peter professed, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," he was speaking infallibly; and our Lord confirms this by telling him that the truth just uttered was revealed to him not by "flesh and blood" but by "my Father in heaven." That Christ is the Son of the living God is a revealed truth, revealed by God the Father, who neither deceives nor is deceived; and when the Apostles (and later the Church) taught that Christ is the Son of the living God, they neither can nor do err. If the Church were to teach that Mahommet was the Son of the living God, she would err. If she were to teach that God is anything other than a Trinity or that Christ is not divine, she would err. But as long as she teaches what has been revealed by Christ, she does not err. And again, all the bishops, even the pope himself, are not given infused knowledge of revelation by becoming a leader in the Church; they too have to learn what was revealed through study and prayer. And like the Apostles before them, the leaders of the Church both infallibly teach "commands from the Lord" as well as give pastoral advice "as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy." Do they sometimes err in the second set of truths? Of course. Does that mean the first set of truths are false? Of course not, for even Peter sinned before and after his declaration of Christ's divine sonship, yet that does not make his declaration false. Do Catholics sometimes confuse the two categories? Sadly, yes.
The doctrine of papal infallibility then does not mean the pope is always right in all his personal teachings. Catholics are quite aware that, despite his great learning, the pope is very much a human being and therefore liable to commit human error. On some subjects, like sports and manufacturing, his judgment is liable to be very faulty. The doctrine simply means that the Pope is divinely protected from error when, acting in his official capacity as chief shepherd of the Catholic fold, he promulgates a decision which is binding on the conscience of all Catholics throughout the world. In other words, his infallibility is limited to his specialty -- the Faith of Jesus Christ.
In order for the pope to be infallible on a particular statement four conditions must apply: 1) he must be speaking ex cathedra ("from the Chair'' of Peter), i.e., officially, as head of the entire Church; 2) the decision must be for the whole Church; 3) it must be on a matter of faith or morals; 4) the pope must have the intention of making a final decision on a teaching of faith or morals, so that it is to be held by all the faithful.
It must be interpretive, not originative; the Pope has no authority to originate new doctrine. He is not the author of revelation -- only its guardian and expounder. He has no power to distort a single word of Scripture, or change one iota of divine tradition. His infallibility is limited strictly to the province of doctrinal interpretation, and it is used quite rarely. It is used in order to clarify or define' some point of the ancient Christian tradition. It is the infallibility of which Christ spoke when He said to Peter, the first Pope: "I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven.'' (Matt. 16:19). And Christ would not have admonished His followers to "hear the church'' (Matt. 18:17) without somehow making certain that what they heard was the truth -- without somehow making the teaching authority of His Church infallible.
For a more complete understanding of the Pope's infallibility, however, one more thing should be known: his ex cathedra decisions are not the result of his own private deliberations. They are the result of many years -- sometimes hundreds of years -- of consultation with the other bishops and theologians of the Church. He is, in effect, voicing the belief of the whole Church. His infallibility is not his own private endowment, but rather an endowment of the entire Mystical Body of Christ. Unlike Protestant denominations who feel free to substantially change their doctrines, the Pope's hands are tied with regard to the changing of Christian doctrine. No Pope has ever used his infallibility to change, add, or subtract any Christian teaching; this is because Our Lord promised to be with His Church until the end of the world (Matt . 28:20).If you want to object to a particular teaching, then, you have to prove it is not revealed by God and Catholics teach it as if it was. But certainly saying "you think it is true because you say it" is a serious misrepresentation of what the Catholic Church teaches: for the Catholic Church has never taught that.
Peace, etc.
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