Papal infallibility

[1] It does not mean that the pope cannot sin or otherwise err in some capacity, though he is prevented by the assistance of the Holy Spirit from issuing heretical teaching even in his non-infallible Magisterium, as a corollary of indefectibility.

[2] This doctrine, defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council of 1869–1870 in the document Pastor aeternus, is claimed to have existed in medieval theology and to have been the majority opinion at the time of the Counter-Reformation.

[9] According to the teaching of the First Vatican Council and Catholic tradition, the conditions required for ex cathedra papal teaching are as follows:[10] The terminology of a definitive decree usually makes clear that this last condition is fulfilled, as through a formula such as "By the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by Our own authority, We declare, pronounce and define the doctrine … to be revealed by God and as such to be firmly and immutably held by all the faithful," or through an accompanying anathema stating that anyone who deliberately dissents is outside the Catholic Church.

For example, in 1950, with Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII's infallible definition regarding the Assumption of Mary, there are attached these words: Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which We have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.

He emphasizes that Hormisdas formula was not meant to apply so much to "... individual dogmatic definitions but to the whole of the faith as handed down and the tradition of Peter preserved intact by the Roman Church."

"[38] The 12th-century Decretum Gratiani contained the declaration by Pope Gregory I (590–604) that the first four ecumenical councils were to be revered "... like the four gospels" because they had been "established by universal consent", and also Gratian's assertion that, "The holy Roman Church imparts authority to the sacred canons but is not bound by them."

This is seen as a further step in advancing the idea that papal infallibility "... had been part of church history and debate as far back as 519 when the notion of the Bishop of Rome as the preserver of apostolic truth was set forth in the Formula of Hormisdas.

Appeal was made in particular to the 14 August 1279 bull Exiit qui seminat, in which Pope Nicholas III stated that renunciation of ownership of all things "both individually but also in common, for God's sake, is meritorious and holy; Christ, also, showing the way of perfection, taught it by word and confirmed it by example, and the first founders of the Church militant, as they had drawn it from the fountainhead itself, distributed it through the channels of their teaching and life to those wishing to live perfectly.

A year later, John XXII issued the short 12 November 1323 bull Cum inter nonnullos,[50] which declared "erroneous and heretical" the doctrine that Christ and his apostles had no possessions whatever.

[51] He denied the major premise of an argument of his adversaries, "What the Roman pontiffs have once defined in faith and morals with the key of knowledge stands so immutably that it is not permitted to a successor to revoke it.

He viewed it as an improper restriction of his rights as a sovereign, and in the bull Qui quorundam (1324) condemned the Franciscan doctrine of papal infallibility as the work of the devil.

And in order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided, He placed Blessed Peter over the other apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion.

[61][62] In its 1998 Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the 'Professio fidei', the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith listed "the canonizations of saints" as "those truths connected to revelation by historical necessity and which are to be held definitively, but are not able to be declared as divinely revealed".

Since the declaration of papal infallibility by Vatican I (1870), Flinn states, the only example of an ex cathedra statement thereafter took place in 1950, when Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary as an article of faith.

A 1998 commentary on Ad Tuendam Fidem issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published on L'Osservatore Romano in July 1998 listed a number of instances of infallible pronouncements by popes and by ecumenical councils, but explicitly stated (at no.

[63] When he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), under John Paul II's authority, stated in a formal response (responsum) to an inquiry (dubium) that John Paul II's decision on the ordination of women into the Catholic priesthood in his apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis was part of the "ordinary and infallible" magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church.

[79] In the Declaration and Protestation signed by the English Catholic Dissenters in 1789, the year of the French Revolution,[80] the signatories state:[81] We have also been accused of holding, as a Principle of our Religion, That implicit Obedience is due from us to the Orders and Decrees of Popes and General Councils; and that therefore if the Pope, or any General Council, should, for the Good of the Church, command us to take up Arms against the Government, or by any means to subvert the Laws and Liberties of this Country, or to exterminate Persons of a different Persuasion from us, we (it is asserted by our Accusers) hold ourselves bound to obey such Orders or Decrees, on pain of eternal Fire: Whereas we positively deny, That we owe any such Obedience to the Pope and General Council, or to either of them; and we believe that no Act that is in itself immoral or dishonest can ever be justified by or under Colour that it is done either for the Good of the Church, or in Obedience to any ecclesiastical Power whatever.

"[84] Professor Delahogue asserted that the doctrine that the Roman Pontiff, even when he speaks ex cathedra, is possessed of the gift of inerrancy or is superior to General Councils may be denied without loss of faith or risk of heresy or schism.

[85] The 1830 edition of Berrington and Kirk's Faith of Catholics stated: "Papal definitions or decrees, in whatever form pronounced, taken exclusively from a General Council or acceptance of the Church, oblige no one under pain of heresy to an interior assent.

He was pleased with the moderate tone of the actual definition, which "affirmed the pope's infallibility only within a strictly limited province: the doctrine of faith and morals initially given to the apostolic Church and handed down in Scripture and tradition.

"[90]A 1989–1992 survey of young people of the 15 to 25 age group (81% of whom were Catholics, 84% were younger than 19, and 62% were male) chiefly from the United States, but also from Austria, Canada, Ecuador, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Peru, Spain and Switzerland, found that 36.9% affirmed that, "The Pope has the authority to speak with infallibility," 36.9% (exactly the same proportion) denied it, and 26.2% said they did not know.

We can conclude that we are witnessing what may be the biggest decline of papal authority in real terms ever seen in history.Catholic priest August Bernhard Hasler (d. 3 July 1980) wrote a detailed analysis of the First Vatican Council, presenting the passage of the infallibility definition as orchestrated.

The Westminster Confession of Faith,[121] which was intended in 1646 to replace the Thirty-Nine Articles, goes so far as to label the Roman pontiff "Antichrist"; it contains the following statements: (Chapter one) IX.

Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God.

[123] A British Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, publicly attacked Vatican I, stating that Roman Catholics had "forfeited their moral and mental freedom."

He published a pamphlet called The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance in which he described the Catholic Church as "an Asian monarchy: nothing but one giddy height of despotism, and one dead level of religious subservience."

He further claimed that the Pope wanted to destroy the rule of law and replace it with arbitrary tyranny, and then hide these "crimes against liberty beneath a suffocating cloud of incense.

Hollyday, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck feared that Pius IX and future popes would use the infallibility dogma as a weapon for promoting a potential "papal desire for international political hegemony": Bismarck's attention was also riveted by fear of what he believed to be the desire of the international Catholic Church to control national Germany by means of the papal claim of infallibility, announced in 1870.

The result was the Kulturkampf, which, with its largely Prussian measures, complemented by similar actions in several other German states, sought to curb the clerical danger by legislation restricting the Catholic Church's political power.

[129][130] The principal motive of this decree was that the oath taken by deputies might be interpreted as an approval of the spoliation of the Holy See, as Pius IX declared in an audience of 11 October 1874.