Papal Infallibility

[Anacoluthon64]

What do you suppose would happen if the Pope officially declared himself to be always wrong?

This would be a wicked twist on Russell's Paradox.

'Luthon64

 

[Oxymoron]

What do you suppose would happen if the Pope officially declared himself to be always wrong? Would the paradox open a rift in spacetime?

First the Vatican would implode. This of course would open the gate to Hell. Which in turn would unleash the beast. Which would eat all non-believers like a turkey leg at Thanksgiving dinner. (er...So I've been divinely inspired to report.)

 

[ceo_esq]

Which side are you arguing here? And how does papal infallibility follow from god's assumed properties? After all, he (the pope) is still human in all other essential ways; even the RC spin doctors are apparently reluctant to make so bold as to suggest differently.

What were the sides again? Seriously, though, what I meant was this: Catholics believe that Christ promised that the Church would be preserved from serious (dogmatic) error. The properties of God (as viewed by Catholics) logically imply that such a promise can and will be kept. Since the nature of the Church is such that a false ex cathedra pronouncement from the pope would result in a violation of God's promise, it follows that God will not permit the pope to make an ex cathedra pronouncement if it would be a false one. What's driving that putative outcome isn't the qualities of the man in Rome; it's God's supposed properties of truthfulness, power and so forth. Such a God could prevent the pope from making a false ex cathedra statement of faith in any number of ways that would not confer any superhuman wisdom or insight on the man himself; accordingly, nothing about the doctrine of papal infallibility per se requires anyone to think there's anything superhuman about the pope - just about God.

Still working from the Catholic perspective for the sake of argument, let's suppose that the pope were the sort of person so ignorant of or indifferent to God's will that any ex cathedra statement he made would be either wrong, or else right only by sheer lucky guess. Such a pope could still be infallible within the meaning of the doctrine of infallibility, because God could either prevent him from speaking ex cathedra at all, or else let only the lucky guesses slip past the pope's lips. That wouldn't make the pope deserving of any special credit, but it would leave Christ's promise intact.

 

[jmercer]

An exercise that I've found useful when dealing with organized religions of all sorts is to set aside claims of supernatural preference and to review the organization's actions as secular rather than religious.

I've found that when you do this, you suddenly find some rather practical and worldly probable motives for many of the actions taken.

In example, successful large corporations go to great lengths to imply that the president and/or CEO of a given organization is inspired, genius, infallible - usually without using any of those terms overtly, of course. The primary objective is to inspire investor and employee loyalty. Viewed in this light, the Church's motives for perpetuating the myth of infallibility (both Papal and doctrinal) is virtually identical to corporations in that goal; ultimately, the focus is to inspire faith in both the organization and it's leadership to all concerned.

While any analogy can be taken too far, divorcing the Church from "Divine Inspiration" and then re-examining it's historical and current actions can yield some rather surprising - and sadly, often cynical - results. Just thought I'd suggest it.