The infallible Pope asks a question

[Elind]

Concerning the OP, it has been my experience that those in the church who are most trained such as priests etc are more likely to openly admit doubts or to openly question "God".

Really?? Where? In Sweden?

I haven't heard it happen here; at least not on TV since I don't go to church.

 

[Elind]

People were undoubtedly the cause of the Holocaust, but to the extent that there's anyone who had sufficient information, who was technically capable of intervening effectively to prevent it without undue risk to himself or others, and didn't, then I'd say that person, strictly speaking, did allow (or contributed to allowing) the Holocaust to happen. Surely God - if he exists - falls into that category. (That doesn't necessarily mean the decision wasn't justified; just that we'd naturally wonder exactly what the justification was.) I'd apply a similar standard to any other sentient being; why should God be exempt?

All I can elicite from this is that you think not only that the Pope is a sentient being with attributable characteristics and failings, but that God is also one (if he exists).

Do you wonder that I question your logic?

On balance, a significantly mitigating role, as far as I can determine.

Mitigating is what you call acquiescing?

I don't understand how that conclusion follows from the fact that injustice, inhumanity, evil, and inscrutable suffering don't appear to have gone away since the Holocaust. What you're saying could be said of anyone who ever posed the question "Why would a just and merciful creator allow X?" (where X might be a national tragedy, the death of a loved one, a perceived flagrant injustice, etc.). What's the big deal?

The big deal is that the Pope, along with all other priests, preachers, Imams, and whatever claim to earn their keep by explaining such things to the sheep. They don't question in a non rhetorical manner without a followng sermon.

But then this is the third or fourth time I said the same thing in different forms, so I do have to question where your brain is, unless you be a troll?

We'll call that an argumentum ad "dona me fracturam".

As for my comment above? Perhaps we agree on that much?

 

[ceo_esq]

All I can elicite from this is that you think not only that the Pope is a sentient being with attributable characteristics and failings, but that God is also one (if he exists).

Do you wonder that I question your logic?

If you have trouble understanding, just say so. The point here is that it is perfectly legitimate for any believer to wonder "Why did God allow X?", even if X was directly the fault of human beings.

Mitigating is what you call acquiescing?

It is grossly unfair to charge the Catholic Church with "acquiescing" in the Holocaust, and for a generation after the actual events, it would hardly have crossed anyone's mind to do so. The only assessment of the Church's overall conduct in this regard that appears to be supported by the historical record is essentially the one I summarized in this post from another thread:

• The Vatican strongly condemned Nazi ideology in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s.
• During the war, the Vatican's attacks on Nazism were more guarded, largely due to the high risk of further jeopardizing anyone whom the Church sought to defend.
• The Catholic Church was very actively engaged throughout Europe in dangerous efforts to stop Jewish deportations or hide Jews.

A more detailed discussion of this would doubtless fall beyond the scope of the current thread.

The big deal is that the Pope, along with all other priests, preachers, Imams, and whatever claim to earn their keep by explaining such things to the sheep.

I don't know where you got that impression, but I know of no written job description, or claim of any sort by the pope, indicating that he earns his keep by explaining such things. You may be misinformed.

But then this is the third or fourth time I said the same thing in different forms, so I do have to question where your brain is, unless you be a troll?

You repeat the same apparently baseless assertion three or four times in different forms in one thread, and you're wondering whether I'm a troll?

As for my comment above? Perhaps we agree on that much?

Sorry, which specific comment?

 

[Elind]

If you have trouble understanding, just say so. The point here is that it is perfectly legitimate for any believer to wonder "Why did God allow X?", even if X was directly the fault of human beings.

You sound like a poor lawyer presenting a defense for a legal infraction that hasn't been claimed. The Pope isn't just "any" believer. He is supposed to be, in a non legal sense, the head of those who pretend to have answers for such inconsistencies.

It is grossly unfair to charge the Catholic Church with "acquiescing" in the Holocaust, and for a generation after the actual events, it would hardly have crossed anyone's mind to do so. The only assessment of the Church's overall conduct in this regard that appears to be supported by the historical record is essentially the one I summarized in this post from another thread:

I did not claim that the Catholic church supported the holocaust, but they certainly acquiesced to the Nazis, and I believe have since apologized for doing so.

A more detailed discussion of this would doubtless fall beyond the scope of the current thread.

Perhaps so, but they acted like many other political organizations to save their own asses at the expense of their claimed principles. Many others died for not doing so.

I don't know where you got that impression, but I know of no written job description, or claim of any sort by the pope, indicating that he earns his keep by explaining such things. You may be misinformed.

Another lawyer talking. So what is the Pope? Just a CEO of a multibillion enterprise selling what?

You repeat the same apparently baseless assertion three or four times in different forms in one thread, and you're wondering whether I'm a troll?

Lawyering again. You should thank me for trying so hard to reach your tunnel vision brain.

Sorry, which specific comment?

Who knows now? I've lost count. Take your pick.

 

[ceo_esq]

The Pope isn't just "any" believer. He is supposed to be, in a non legal sense, the head of those who pretend to have answers for such inconsistencies.

If by "answers for such inconsistencies", you mean specific answers to questions such as "What were God's precise reasons for allowing the Holocaust to occur?", then I'd like you to show me where the pope or the Catholic Church have pretended to have them.

I did not claim that the Catholic church supported the holocaust, but they certainly acquiesced to the Nazis, and I believe have since apologized for doing so.

The Church apologized on behalf of those individual Christians who failed to manifest the "spiritual resistance and concrete action ... which might have been expected from Christ’s followers."

Perhaps so, but they acted like many other political organizations to save their own asses at the expense of their claimed principles. Many others died for not doing so.

I find no historical reason not to conclude that the Church, by and large, acted out of due regard for innocent life, not for "their own asses" - thereby honoring rather than dishonoring their claimed principles. It is true that a great number of European clergy and laypersons died (or risked death) in these efforts, with the result that many of their Jewish neighbors were saved. The course of conduct charted by the overall Church in Europe during this period seems to have been largely creditable. Naturally, many such efforts were carried out clandestinely in order to maximize the chance of success, but a great number of these actions are reasonably well documented. This is why I suggested that the Church had played a mitigating role during those years; in the absence of that role the human costs of the Holocaust would have been worse.

So what is the Pope? Just a CEO of a multibillion enterprise selling what?

That's a strange metaphor for the papacy, I think. But why not do some research and let us know what you find out?

Lawyering again. You should thank me for trying so hard to reach your tunnel vision brain.

I doubt whether anyone here, and that includes the two of us, knows what you are talking about here.

 

[St.JosemariaOraProNo]

Please note that in the excerpt I present below the Holy Father’s question comes right out of the bible, as he, himself, pointed out in the address. What’s more the psalmist who asked God this very same question does not document receiving an answer nor does the psalmist give us one. The pope quoting the bible? What a shocker! ( <--- sarcasm, btw)

Here is the excerpt:

How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil? The words of Psalm 44 come to mind, Israel’s lament for its woes: “You have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness ... because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!” (Ps 44:19, 22-26). This cry of anguish, which Israel raised to God in its suffering, at moments of deep distress, is also the cry for help raised by all those who in every age - yesterday, today and tomorrow - suffer for the love of God, for the love of truth and goodness. How many they are, even in our own day!

We cannot peer into God’s mysterious plan - we see only piecemeal, and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and history. Then we would not be defending man, but only contributing to his downfall. No - when all is said and done, we must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature! And our cry to God must also be a cry that pierces our very heart, a cry that awakens within us God’s hidden presence - so that his power, the power he has planted in our hearts, will not be buried or choked within us by the mire of selfishness, pusillanimity, indifference or opportunism. Let us cry out to God, with all our hearts, at the present hour, when new misfortunes befall us, when all the forces of darkness seem to issue anew from human hearts: whether it is the abuse of God’s name as a means of justifying senseless violence against innocent persons, or the cynicism which refuses to acknowledge God and ridicules faith in him. Let us cry out to God, that he may draw men and women to conversion and help them to see that violence does not bring peace, but only generates more violence - a morass of devastation in which everyone is ultimately the loser. The God in whom we believe is a God of reason - a reason, to be sure, which is not a kind of cold mathematics of the universe, but is one with love and with goodness. We make our prayer to God and we appeal to humanity, that this reason, the logic of love and the recognition of the power of reconciliation and peace, may prevail over the threats arising from irrationalism or from a spurious and godless reason.

This is basic theodicy (if you don’t know what that means, please look it up), and is nothing new in the history of Christianity. Nor is it something that a pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church would be afraid of addressing publicly.

Regarding the “silence” of Pope Pius XII before, during or after the Nazi holocaust. Here is a link to Rabbi David G. Dalin’s very enlightening article about this ridiculous and bigoted version of history. Please read it before you continue to perpetuate this preposterous piece of blatant anti-Catholicism. You don’t have to agree with the good rabbi, but at least inform yourself as to where these ideas come from.

IN ITS JANUARY 21, 2002, ISSUE, the New Republic devoted twenty-four pages to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's "What Would Jesus Have Done?"--one of the most virulent attacks against the Roman Catholic Church ever printed in a major American publication. Last fall, Goldhagen expanded that essay into a book, a curious and furious production entitled "A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair," about the Vatican's role during the Holocaust.
Goldhagen is no stranger to controversy. His 1996 Hitler's Willing Executioners argued that blame for the Holocaust should be placed on all Germans--for "eliminationist" anti-Semitism was widely spread among prewar Germans and intrinsic to the German character. The Nazi exterminations could occur because the vast majority of Germans were already predisposed to kill Jews. Though Goldhagen gained international celebrity, his book's simplistic argument was widely criticized by serious scholars and historians.

In A Moral Reckoning, Goldhagen's argument is, once again, simplistic. It's dishonest and misleading as well. He identifies Christianity, and particularly the Catholic Church, as the preeminent source of anti-Semitism in the world--ancient, medieval, and modern. While indicting Pius XII as an anti-Semite and a collaborator with Nazi Germany--and ignoring any contradictory evidence--Goldhagen goes on to attribute anti-Semitism to the entire Catholic Church and its leadership, even the present-day Church under John Paul II.

Indeed, the book is so flawed--its facts error-prone, its arguments tendentious, and its conclusion, equating Christianity in its essence with anti-Semitism, both bizarre and dangerous--that most scholars in the field have simply tried to ignore it. Hitler's Willing Executioners sold very well and was widely praised in its early reviews. A Moral Reckoning, however, has flopped badly, despite a large publicity effort by which the publisher Knopf tried to recoup its advance. More prepared this time, reviewers have also been considerably less kind to Goldhagen, and the reviews have generally run from lukewarm to outraged. In the Sunday Times, the British historian Michael Burleigh held his nose long enough to brand the book "vile" and "a strip cartoon view of European history."

Despite my fury at Goldhagen's misuse of the Holocaust to advance an anti-Catholic agenda, I had hoped to join the vast conspiracy of silence in which most Holocaust scholars have, delicately and politely, pretended that A Moral Reckoning doesn't exist. But the book hasn't quite disappeared with the same speed with which, say, H.G. Wells's 1943 Crux Ansata: An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church fell down the memory hole. Rather, A Moral Reckoning--like Paul Blanshard's 1949 diatribe American Freedom and Catholic Power--is carving a permanent niche for itself out on the far edges of American culture.

Where Blanshard was a much-reprinted staple for the old anti-Catholic Evangelical world, Goldhagen seems to be turning into a staple for leftists whose hatred of Catholicism derives from the Church's opposition to abortion and the rest of the liberationist agenda. The huge outpouring of books in recent years attacking the wartime pontiff Pius XII--from John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope to Garry Wills's Papal Sin--were bad enough (and Goldhagen, who seems in A Moral Reckoning never to have consulted anything except secondary sources, relies heavily upon them). But when Goldhagen extends that attack to the demand that the Catholic Church, as we know it, be abolished as a disgrace and a danger to us all, he establishes a new marker for just how bad it can get--and the maddened anti-Catholics have responded by taking him to their breast, for his diatribe is more vicious and extreme than that of any other recent papal critic.



WITH ALL THAT IN MIND, it is perhaps worth putting on record some of the failings of A Moral Reckoning. Indeed, Goldhagen invites the reader to "acknowledge the incontrovertible facts and plain truths contained in this book." It's an invitation he shouldn't have issued. In the June/July 2002 issue of First Things, Ronald J. Rychlak published an extensive and damning list of errors in the New Republic article--astonishingly few of which Goldhagen has bothered to correct.

So, for instance, the establishment of the Jewish ghetto in Rome, one of the tragic milestones in the history of Catholic-Jewish relations, took place in 1556, not in 1555; the Venice ghetto in 1517, not 1516; the Frankfurt ghetto in 1462, not 1460; the Vienna ghetto in 1626, not 1570. It's not that these are particularly important errors, but that they are simple errors--easy to look up, easy to check. You can't trust anything Goldhagen reports. He is off by three decades about the beginning of the process for Pius XII's beatification and misidentifies the role of Peter Gumpel (who is not the "advocate" but the independent judge of Pius's cause). He claims that Pius XII neither reproached nor punished Franciscan friar Miroslav Filopovic-Majstorovic, when, actually, the so-called "Brother Satan" was tried, defrocked, and expelled from the Franciscan order before the war ended (and was killed by the Communists shortly after).

Then there's the caption that identifies a photo as "Cardinal Michael Faulhaber marches between rows of SA men at a Nazi rally in Munich"--except that the man in the picture isn't Faulhaber but the papal nuncio Cesare Orsenigo, the city isn't Munich but Berlin, and the parade isn't a Nazi rally but a May Day parade. Oh, and the fact that the irascible Faulhaber was a famous opponent of the Nazis. In October, a German court prevented publication of A Moral Reckoning until the slander against Faulhaber was corrected.



ON AND ON the factual errors go, the sloppy handling of dates, persons, and places all culminating in the selective use (or ignoring) of evidence to portray Eugenio Pacelli (later Pius XII) as the fount of the era's anti-Semitism. Relying entirely on Hitler's Pope, Goldhagen takes what was already an outrageous misreading of a 1919 letter (sent by Pacelli to Rome while serving as papal nuncio in Bavaria) describing a group of Bolshevik revolutionaries who had led an uprising in Munich--which Goldhagen extends to: "The Communist revolutionaries, Pacelli averred in this letter, were 'all' Jews."

The Holy See's 1933 concordat with Germany has long been a key instrument for critics of Pius XII, and indeed there are grounds on which to criticize it. But Goldhagen can't accept mere criticism: "Nazi Germany's first great diplomatic triumph," he has to label it, forgetting that the Four Powers Pact between Germany, France, Italy, and England preceded it, as did League of Nations recognition. Pacelli's concordat "helped to legitimate the Nazi regime in the eyes of the world and consolidate its power at home," Goldhagen insists.

But soon after the concordat was signed, Pacelli wrote two articles in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, unequivocally arguing that the Church had negotiated a treaty and nothing more--a treaty that implied no moral endorsement of Hitler or Nazism. While it's true that Hitler initially thought he would be able to use the concordat to harness the Church, he soon came to regret it--as his frenzied diatribes in his "Table Talk" reveal--precisely because it was being cited by Catholics as a legal basis on which to resist Nazism.

Goldhagen's efforts to portray Pacelli as a man whose whole life was fueled by anti-Semitism are made possible only by his ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Guido Mendes, a prominent Italian physician and Pacelli's lifelong Jewish friend, is never mentioned by Goldhagen. Nor is the fact that when Mendes lost his medical professorship as a result of Fascist anti-Semitism, Pacelli personally intervened on his behalf. With Pacelli's direct assistance, Mendes and his family were able to escape and eventually settle in Israel. Pacelli was instrumental in drafting the Vatican's historic 1916 condemnation of anti-Semitism. Bruno Walter, the brilliant Jewish conductor of the Munich Opera whom Pacelli befriended shortly after arriving in Munich in 1917, recounts that Pacelli helped free Walter's Jewish fellow musician, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, who had been imprisoned during a pogrom. These facts are also never mentioned in Goldhagen's one-sided polemic.

Goldhagen's centerpiece is the outrageous allegation that Pius XII "did not lift a finger to forfend the deportations of the Jews of Rome" or of other parts of Italy "by instructing his priests and nuns to give the hunted Jewish men, women and children sanctuary." Much of this is lifted straight from anti-Pius books like Susan Zuccotti's Under His Very Windows--and thus Goldhagen repeats the errors of those books and adds extras, all his own, in his determined attempt to extend their thesis into over-the-top railings against the sheer existence of Catholicism.



GOLDHAGEN IS APPARENTLY UNAWARE (or, more probably, doesn't care) that many distinguished scholars have declared Zuccotti's book "not history but guesswork," as the historian Owen Chadwick put it. Zuccotti's principal charge, mindlessly repeated by Goldhagen, is that there is no credible evidence that Pius XII ever explicitly ordered his subordinates to assist Jews in Italy. In fact, there is a whole body of evidence that proves Pius did. In 1964 Cardinal Paolo Dezza, the wartime rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, published a signed article stating unequivocally that during the German occupation of Rome, Pius XII explicitly told him to help "persecuted Jews" and do so "most willingly." In his 2001 book Gli ebrei salvati da Pio XII, Antonio Gaspari compiles additional testimonies. And more recently, Gaspari came across new documents, establishing that as early as 1940 Pius XII explicitly ordered his secretary of state, Luigi Maglione, and Maglione's assistant, Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Paul VI), to send money to Jews protected by the bishop of Campagna.

The Nazi deportations of Italy's Jews began in October 1943. Pope Pius ordered churches and convents throughout Italy to shelter Jews, and in Rome itself 155 convents and monasteries sheltered five thousand Jews throughout the German occupation. Pius himself granted sanctuary within the walls of the Vatican, and his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, to countless homeless Jews. Goldhagen's book conspicuously lacks any discussion of Castel Gandolfo, which enjoys a unique place in the annals of Jewish rescue (and Catholic rescuers) during the Holocaust: In no other site in all of Nazi-occupied Europe were as many Jews saved and sheltered for as long a period.

The recently released memoirs of Adolf Eichmann also contain new evidence disproving Goldhagen's claim. The memoirs confirm that Vatican protests played a crucial part in obstructing Nazi intentions for Roman Jews. Eichmann wrote that the Vatican "vigorously protested the arrest of Jews, requesting the interruption of such action." At Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, Israeli attorney general Gideon Hausner said, "the pope himself intervened personally in support of the Jews of Rome." Documents introduced at the trial provide further evidence of Vatican efforts to halt the arrest and deportation of Roman Jews.

No accusation is too preposterous for Goldhagen to accept. Commenting on the Vatican's alleged link to Nazi war criminals, he claims that Alois Hudal, an Austrian prelate and Nazi sympathizer, was "an important Catholic bishop at the Vatican," as well as a "close friend" and "confidant" of Pius XII. Indeed, he adds, both Pius XII and the future Paul VI actively supported Hudal in his criminal assistance to fleeing Nazi war criminals.

As it happens, Alois Hudal was never a bishop "at the Vatican," much less an "important" one, but rather an obscure rector of the Collegio dell' Anima in Rome, where he was placed to confine him to a post of little significance. Hudal also was never a "close friend" of Pius XII or Montini. In fact, Hudal's memoirs bitterly attack the Vatican for steadfastly refusing an alliance with Nazi Germany to combat "godless Bolshevism." Far from assisting Nazi war criminals in their escape, Pius XII authorized the American Jesuit Edmund Walsh to submit to the War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg a dossier documenting Nazi war crimes and atrocities. The recent book by David Alvarez, "Spies in the Vatican: Espionage & Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust," shows how much Hitler distrusted and despised Pius XII.



GOLDHAGEN'S VIRULENT A Moral Reckoning focuses on Pius XII as the symbol of Catholic evil and repeats almost every accusation, including the most discredited ones, that has ever been leveled against him. But Goldhagen doesn't limit his anti-Catholic diatribe to Pius. Indeed, the point of all the Holocaust material in A Moral Reckoning seems to be the concluding pages' attack on John Paul II and the Catholic Church today. Though Goldhagen begrudgingly acknowledges John Paul II's extraordinary efforts to bring Catholics and Jews closer together, he immediately takes this praise back and ultimately contradicts himself entirely by accusing John Paul II of tolerating "anti-Semitic libels and hatreds" during his visit to Syria in the spring of 2001.

Goldhagen claims that "neither John Paul II nor any other Pope has seen fit to make . . . a direct and forceful public statement about Catholics' culpability and the need for all the members of the Church who have sinned during the Holocaust to repent for their many different kinds of offenses and sins against Jews." On the contrary: John Paul II has frequently repented and apologized publicly. In his very first papal audience with Jewish leaders, on March 12, 1979, John Paul II reaffirmed the Second Vatican Council's repudiation of anti-Semitism "as opposed to the very spirit of Christianity," and "which in any case the dignity of the human person alone would suffice to condemn." During his 1986 visit to Rome's chief synagogue--the first time any reigning pope entered a synagogue--John Paul II publicly acknowledged and apologized for the Church's sins. Insisting that there was no theological justification for discrimination, he apologized to the Roman Jews in attendance (many of whom were Holocaust survivors), declaring that the Church condemns anti-Semitism "by anyone--I repeat: by anyone." In 1994, at the personal initiative of John Paul II, the Vatican established diplomatic relations with Israel. In 1998, the Church issued "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah," an official document on the Holocaust. And in 2000, the pope made his historic visit to Israel--one of the great legacies of his pontificate, which has done much to further Catholic-Jewish reconciliation.

But Goldhagen can acknowledge none of this. He identifies Christianity itself as the source of anti-Semitism and declares, "the main responsibility for producing the all-time leading Western hatred lies with Christianity. More specifically, with the Catholic Church." The definition of Jews as Christ-killers, claims Goldhagen, goes back to the origins of Christianity. Indeed, it is still central to Catholic thought today, and it has an "obvious integral relationship to the genesis of the Holocaust."

As the Jewish scholar Michael Berenbaum has noted, Goldhagen "omits all mention of the countervailing traditions of tolerance" within Roman Catholic thought, past and present. He also misrepresents the thought of those early Church leaders who advocated a tolerant attitude toward the Jews. Goldhagen's misrepresentation of St. Augustine's views of Jews and Judaism is especially appalling. As Ronald Rychlak has noted, Goldhagen's exposition on St. Augustine "is little more than a crude and contemptuous canard." Similarly, Goldhagen's unsubstantiated claim that "there is no difference in kind between the Church's 'anti-Judaism' and its off-shoot European anti-Semitism" is as unsubtle a statement as someone who claims to be a historian could possibly make.

In short, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's polemic against Pius XII, John Paul II, and the Catholic Church fails to meet even the minimum standards of scholarship. That the book has found its readership out in the fever swamps of anti-Catholicism isn't surprising. But that a mainstream publisher like Knopf would print the thing is an intellectual and publishing scandal.

Rabbi David G. Dalin, a visiting fellow at Princeton University's James Madison Program, is working on a book about Pius XII, John Paul II, and the Jews.

What is papal infallibility?

Instead of throwing around loose definitions of what papal infallibility is, wouldn’t it be intellectually honest to see what the Church, herself, says about it? (BTW, this isn’t a recent “invention”, and any such explanation of a dogma reveals a total misunderstanding of what dogma is.)

The Catechism of the Catholic provides a summary of what the Catholic Church teaches:

889 In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a "supernatural sense of faith" the People of God, under the guidance of the Church's living Magisterium, "unfailingly adheres to this faith."

890 The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. The exercise of this charism takes several forms:

891 "The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals.... the infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium," above all in an Ecumenical Council. When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine "for belief as being divinely revealed," and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions "must be adhered to with the obedience of faith." This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself.

892 Divine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, and, in a particular way, to the bishop of Rome, pastor of the whole Church, when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a "definitive manner," they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful "are to adhere to it with religious assent" which, though distinct from the assent of faith, is nonetheless an extension of it.

Infallibility does not equal impeccability. Infallibility is negative. It means that in the matter of a teaching regarding the faith or morals of Christ’s Church, and when it is the intention of the Magisterium to infallibly teach something regarding the faith or morals of Christ’s Church, the Magisterium does so without error. It does not mean that the Magisterium or member thereof, or any Christian in general, is impeccable. The pope is quite capable, and does make mistakes regarding any number of things, and he definitely retains the capacity to sin. The doctrine of infallibility has nothing to do with behavior or intellectual enterprise, nor does it mean in any way that the pope or any other member of the Magisterium, the Magisterium in general, or the Church collectively, has all the answers. It merely states that God has guaranteed that what we do know is reliable and sufficient for our salvation.

Take it or leave; you don’t have to agree with it, but please stop misrepresenting it.

 

[ceo_esq]

Regarding the “silence” of Pope Pius XII before, during or after the Nazi holocaust. Here is a link to Rabbi David G. Dalin’s very enlightening article about this ridiculous and bigoted version of history. Please read it before you continue to perpetuate this preposterous piece of blatant anti-Catholicism. You don’t have to agree with the good rabbi, but at least inform yourself as to where these ideas come from.

Even more enlightening are Prof. Dalin's full-length scholarly works on the subject. But, as a piece of friendly advice, you might want to edit your post to just link that article rather than reproducing it here.

 

[St.JosemariaOraProNo]

as soon as I have posted 15 times, I will edit the post, delete the article and provide the html link. I can't post links yet. Thanks!

 

[ceo_esq]

as soon as I have posted 15 times, I will edit the post, delete the article and provide the html link. I can't post links yet. Thanks!

That is a difficulty, since nowadays we only have a very brief window here to edit posts. You might have to ask a mod to do it for you. Don't let that dissuade you from getting in your 15 posts though!

Welcome to the forum.

 

[elliotfc]

I read the same line several time in different places. How many meaning do you give to "how could you allow this to happen"? How could you (meaning elliot) construe this to be anything but what I allude it to be?

I yield to the Escriva fan a few messages up! Nice one friend, and I hope you're not an albino monk!

Unfortunately leaders of the faith, IMHO, don't have the luxury of rhetorical questions that have no clear answer. They wouldn't be leaders if they didn't have answers to the most important questions of all, would they?

You tell me I guess! Does he have the answers? Yes or no? And is he a leader? Yes or no? I'm not sure if yours was a rhetorical question. Mine aren't.

-Elliot

 

[Elind]

Take it or leave; you don’t have to agree with it, but please stop misrepresenting it.

Please stop presenting the "evidence", for what amounts to explanations why the Church, and Pope, can't be criticized.

I post an opinion as an atheist who thinks it sounds funny to hear the leader of the largest Christian denomination (is that a bad thing to say?) on the planet ask God why something terrible was done by people, and you come on like a tribunal presenting case law. I particularly think it an odd, very public, comment to make 60 years after the fact. As I said earlier, why doesn't the Pope make the same question every single day? Plenty of opportunities abound.

I hear preachers of one sort or another explain such things every time I surf the TV and to the extent that that is comforting to some, all the best to them.

Frankly your posts on infallibility sound mostly like a rationalization for when things go wrong. The more elaborately phrased the more important the statements sound. Lawyer language.

As to the holocaust, I am not accusing the Catholic church of participating or even ignoring. They probably did not know more than anyone else until the end of the war, but they were a politically powerful force and played the politics game just like everyone else, but some others fought with guns and won. No doubt many of those were catholics too, but I doubt many were Bishops or Cardinals. This is a side issue that somehow got inserted into the original OP, and it is not my desire to lambast the Catholic church in that matter.

Keep on posting by all means, but please try to keep it shorter if possible, and also try to keep in mind that here all religions, or none, are equal.......game.

 

[St.JosemariaOraProNo]

Please stop presenting the "evidence", for what amounts to explanations why the Church, and Pope, can't be criticized.

Never said such a thing. If you disagree with what the pope said, then fine. However, saying that he was somehow unjustified in saying it, is silly. This is, after all, a man who believes in the bible, so his quoting of the bible should come as no surprise to anyone. You are free to disagree with the bible as well. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the pope or his address.

By the way, I know that I often ask God the same question, perhaps everyday, as I come across some inhumanity on the news or somewhere. So I would imagine that Pope Benedict XVI being a far holier man than I, asks that question often as well, perhaps even daily.

The point that I'm trying to make is that it is perfectly OK for a Christian to ask this question. It comes from the bible.

I hear preachers of one sort or another explain such things every time I surf the TV and to the extent that that is comforting to some, all the best to them.

So are you arguing that Christians should know everything, or that they should say they know everything, or what? What do you want out of us? If a Christian were arguing in defense of those preachers, would you be pointing out to us how arrogant we are?

I'm not attacking you, I'm just trying to figure out your motivation here.

Frankly your posts on infallibility sound mostly like a rationalization for when things go wrong. The more elaborately phrased the more important the statements sound. Lawyer language.

I presented what the Church teaches because even though many people were criticizing Church teachings, what they were criticizing weren't Church teachings at all. I didn't try to rationalize a thing. I just quoted what the Church actually teaches.

 

[Elind]

Never said such a thing. If you disagree with what the pope said, then fine. However, saying that he was somehow unjustified in saying it, is silly. This is, after all, a man who believes in the bible, so his quoting of the bible should come as no surprise to anyone. You are free to disagree with the bible as well. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the pope or his address.

You have a point, which I interpret as meaning that anything the Pope (or any religious leader for that matter) says is justified within the context of their beliefs. That is pretty obvious though isn't it? Clearly I am addressing it from a perspective outside of that belief.

By the way, I know that I often ask God the same question, perhaps everyday, as I come across some inhumanity on the news or somewhere. So I would imagine that Pope Benedict XVI being a far holier man than I, asks that question often as well, perhaps even daily.

In what way is he holier than you? Aren't all believers equally holy, depending on their personal life alone? Regardless, asking the same question repeatedly and getting no answer repeatedly seems to me to be an exercise in self delusion.

The point that I'm trying to make is that it is perfectly OK for a Christian to ask this question. It comes from the bible.

And the point I'm trying to make is that the answer doen't come from the bible, it comes from the wishful interpretation of the bible by whoever we are talking about. You are probably capable of listing contradictory interpretations of the bible far better than me; but I suspect you will claim that Your interpretation is the one intended by your god. A slight digression here, but I then have to ask what it is with your god that it allows so many to "know" that only their interpretation is correct, and then let you ask "why"? A test? Pretty crude if you ask me. Vicious even.

So are you arguing that Christians should know everything, or that they should say they know everything, or what? What do you want out of us? If a Christian were arguing in defense of those preachers, would you be pointing out to us how arrogant we are?

Actually I find many, not all, but probably the majority that I have occassion to sample (on TV or writings) to be extraordinarily arrogant. But then again I have no doubt they would say the same of me, except that I don't claim the ultimate answers to life. Are you telling me that the Pope doesn''t really have a clue about what his god has created the universe for, or are you telling me that perhaps he has doubts if such a god, if it ever existed, still pays any attention whatsoever to what we do to each other?

I'm not attacking you, I'm just trying to figure out your motivation here.

I have no problem with that. It does sound however like you have had little experience of interacting with atheists or even others somewhat removed from your beliefs.

I presented what the Church teaches because even though many people were criticizing Church teachings, what they were criticizing weren't Church teachings at all. I didn't try to rationalize a thing. I just quoted what the Church actually teaches.

Fair enough, but here we are more interested, I think, in what the actual posters think, and above all what they rationalize. Anyone can Google any "church" thinkings and frown or chuckle, or swoon. Then what?

 

[elliotfc]

Actually I find many, not all, but probably the majority that I have occassion to sample (on TV or writings) to be extraordinarily arrogant. But then again I have no doubt they would say the same of me, except that I don't claim the ultimate answers to life. Are you telling me that the Pope doesn''t really have a clue about what his god has created the universe for, or are you telling me that perhaps he has doubts if such a god, if it ever existed, still pays any attention whatsoever to what we do to each other?

I don't think any Christian, even the ones on TV, would ever claim to know the totality of God's motivation, God's plan, and the human condition.

Of course they speak about it. As Christians we think we're clued in. But people tell us all the time...you Christians always have the out...God works in mysterious ways. You recognize that we believe that, and that proves you understand that Christians don't claim total understanding of the ultimate answers/questions to life.

-Elliot

 

[aggle-rithm]

Right...The POPE is turning into an Atheist!

OH, BTW did you hear the news? Hell just froze over and pigs are starting to fly!

There have been athiest Popes in the past. Just not recently, and certainly not publicly.

 

[aggle-rithm]

What is papal infallibility?

Instead of throwing around loose definitions of what papal infallibility is, wouldn’t it be intellectually honest to see what the Church, herself, says about it? (BTW, this isn’t a recent “invention”, and any such explanation of a dogma reveals a total misunderstanding of what dogma is.)

The Catechism of the Catholic provides a summary of what the Catholic Church teaches:



Infallibility does not equal impeccability. Infallibility is negative. It means that in the matter of a teaching regarding the faith or morals of Christ’s Church, and when it is the intention of the Magisterium to infallibly teach something regarding the faith or morals of Christ’s Church, the Magisterium does so without error. It does not mean that the Magisterium or member thereof, or any Christian in general, is impeccable. The pope is quite capable, and does make mistakes regarding any number of things, and he definitely retains the capacity to sin. The doctrine of infallibility has nothing to do with behavior or intellectual enterprise, nor does it mean in any way that the pope or any other member of the Magisterium, the Magisterium in general, or the Church collectively, has all the answers. It merely states that God has guaranteed that what we do know is reliable and sufficient for our salvation.

Take it or leave; you don’t have to agree with it, but please stop misrepresenting it.

One analogy I've heard explaining the doctrine was that if someone were infallible at math the way the Pope is infallible in matters of the church, they wouldn't necessarily get 100% on every math test. They could conceivably turn in a blank test if they don't know the answers. There just wouldn't be any WRONG answers.

 

[elliotfc]

There have been athiest Popes in the past. Just not recently, and certainly not publicly.

I didn't know this. Which ones? -Elliot

 

[ceo_esq]

There have been athiest Popes in the past. Just not recently, and certainly not publicly.

I didn't know this. Which ones? -Elliot

Probably only Dan Brown knows for sure. We couldn't tell you, anyway - that's nonpublic information.

 

[Elind]

I didn't know this. Which ones? -Elliot

I've read of this in the past. Doesn't have much relevance today I suppose, but given that the Catholic Church was as much of a political power base as anything else in the past it isn't that strange. I believe there has been more than one Pope at a time too. Sh it happens in politics.

Here's one simple google hit. Enjoy!

http://www.geocities.com/missus_gumby/papal.htm

 

[Elind]

So are you arguing that Christians should know everything, or that they should say they know everything, or what? What do you want out of us? If a Christian were arguing in defense of those preachers, would you be pointing out to us how arrogant we are?

I haven't heard back from you yet on your attempt to understand motivation (simple answer: truth), but I came across this recently as an example of which there are millions of others, but it seems succinct and comprehensive enough an example.

"We deny that anyone, Jew or Gentile, believer or unbeliever, private person or public official, is exempt from the moral and juridical obligation before God to submit to Christ's lordship over every aspect of his life in thought, word, and deed."

http://www.angelfire.com/ca4/cor/25articles.html

Arrogant or not?

Now you may very well say you don't share that perspective, but my question to you is; what have you done to deny it as a Christian, and even call it a perversion of your religion perhaps?