Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

We are passing through revolutionary times, with Pope Francis making headlines by his controversial comments.

Soon we may see a new Church, which may deny or at least reinterpret its history and doctrines, so I thought it is morally obligatory on the Muslim Times to save some of this for the posterity.

Infallibility should be understood in the context of the times, when the First Vatican Council (1868-1870) was held, in reaction to the French revolution, a few decades before and after Napoleon had imprisoned Pope Pius VI, in 1798.

If we pick up the essence or the core teaching of ‘Papal Infallibility’ and its basis in scripture, tradition and theology, without getting entangled in peripheral details, then we can show the error of this dogma and indirectly of the whole of Catholicism by showing the contradictions in moral teachings of different popes, over time.

The contradictions will become more obvious as Pope Francis continues to pursue his liberal agenda.

A few fertile areas may be teachings about slavery, sexuality, monasticism, divorce, Original Sin and human evolution, among many others.

In this post, I quote Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia on the subject of ‘Papal Infallibility.’

In this post, I quote a part of Catholic Encyclopedia and the rest of it I have saved privately:

In general, exemption or immunity from liability to error or failure; in particular in theological usage, the supernatural prerogative by which the Church of Christ is, by a special Divine assistance, preserved from liability to error in her definitivedogmatic teaching regarding matters of faith and morals. In this article the subject will be treated under the following heads:

I. True Meaning of Infallibility
II. Proof of the Church’s Infallibility
III. Organs of Infallibility
Ecumenical Councils
The Pope
Their Mutual Relations
IV. Scope and Object of Infallibility
V. What Teaching is Infallible?

True meaning of infallibility

It is well to begin by stating the ecclesiological truths that are assumed to be established before the question of infallibility arises. It is assumed:

• that Christ founded His Church as a visible and perfect society;
• that He intended it to be absolutely universal and imposed upon all men a solemn obligation actually to belong to it, unless inculpable ignorance should excuse them;
• that He wished this Church to be one, with a visible corporate unity of faith, government, and worship; and that
• in order to secure this threefold unity, He bestowed on the Apostles and their legitimate successors in the hierarchy — and on them exclusively — the plenitude of teaching, governing, and liturgical powers with which He wished this Churchto be endowed.

And this being assumed, the question that concerns us is whether, and in what way, and to what extent, Christ has made His Church to be infallible in the exercise of her doctrinal authority.

It is only in connection with doctrinal authority as such that, practically speaking, this question of infallibility arises; that is to say, when we speak of the Church’s infallibility we mean, at least primarily and principally, what is sometimes called active as distinguished from passive infallibility. We mean in other words 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. This is obvious in the case of individuals, any one of whom may err in his understanding of the Church’s teaching; nor is the general or even unanimous consent of the faithful in believing a distinct and independent organ of infallibility. Such consent indeed, when it can be verified as apart, is of the highest value as a proof of what has been, or may be, defined by the teaching authority, but, except in so far as it is thus the subjective counterpart and complement of objective authoritative teaching, it cannot be said to possess an absolutely decisive dogmatic value. It will be best therefore to confine our attention to active infallibility as such, as by so doing we shall avoid the confusion which is the sole basis of many of the objections that are most persistently and most plausibly urged against the doctrine of ecclesiastical infallibility.

Infallibility must be carefully distinguished both from Inspiration and from Revelation.

Inspiration signifies a special positive Divine influence and assistance by reason of which the human agent is not merely preserved from liability to error but is so guided and controlled that what he says or writes is truly the word of God, that GodHimself is the principal author of the inspired utterance; but infallibility merely implies 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.

Revelation, on the other hand, means the making known by God, supernaturally of some truth hitherto unknown, or at least not vouched for by Divine authority; whereas infallibility is concerned with the interpretation and effective safeguarding oftruths already revealed. Hence when we say, for example, that some doctrine defined by the pope or by an ecumenical councilis 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 or that any new revelation is embodied in their teaching.

It is well further to explain:

• that infallibility means more than exemption from actual error; it means exemption from the possibility of error;
• that it does not require holiness of life, much less imply impeccability in its organs; sinful and wicked men may be God’sagents in defining infallibly;
• and finally that the validity of the Divine guarantee is independent of the fallible arguments upon which a definitivedecision may be based, and of the possibly unworthy human motives that in cases of strife may appear to have influenced the result. It is the definitive result itself, and it alone, that is guaranteed to be infallible, not the preliminary stages by which it is reached.

If God bestowed the gift of prophecy on Caiphas who condemned Christ (John 11:49-52; 18:14), surely He may bestow the lesser gift of infallibility even on unworthy human agents. It is, therefore, a mere waste of time for opponents of infallibility to try to create a prejudice against the Catholic claim by pointing out the moral or intellectual shortcomings of popes or councilsthat have pronounced definitive doctrinal decisions, or to try to show historically that such decisions in certain cases were the seemingly natural and inevitable outcome of existing conditions, moral, intellectual, and political. All that history may be fairly claimed as witnessing to under either of these heads may freely be granted without the substance of the Catholic claim being affected.

Proof of the Church’s infallibility

That the Church is infallible in her definitions on faith and morals is itself a Catholic dogma, which, although it was formulated ecumenically for the first time in the Vatican Council, had been explicitly taught long before and had been assumed from the very beginning without question down to the time of the Protestant Reformation. The teaching of the Vatican Council is to be found in Session III, cap. 4, where it is declared that “the doctrine of faith, which God has revealed, has not been proposed as aphilosophical discovery to be improved upon by human talent, but has been committed as a Divine deposit to the spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted by her”; and in Session IV, cap. 4, where it is defined that the Roman pontiff when he teaches ex cathedra “enjoys, by reason of the Divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith and morals“.

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