Infallibility is Inspiration in Disguise and in Practice 

According to Roman Catholicism, “It is the teaching of our Holy Mother the Church that her infallibility and that of the pope is not inspiration. It is not putting an idea into their mind but just preventing them from making the wrong decision (page 190, Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Part 1). She can only use her infallibility to find out if a doctrine is part of divine revelation by thinking about it objectively and by examining its basis. So if the thinking behind the doctrine is faulty then it is not revealed by God and the Church and pope are not infallible and are guilty of polluting the apostolic doctrine with new material and fostering the heresy of further revelation just like the Mormons and the Moonies.”

The doctrine that the virgin Mary had been taken up into Heaven came from puerile apocryphal scriptures and even if Mary was sinless it does not follow that God must have assumed her into Heaven. He might have done but his ways look strange to us so there is no reason to believe in the assumption even if we think God would save Mary perfectly by resurrecting and perfecting her after death. In 1950, Pope Pius XII infallibly taught in Munificentissimus Deus that the assumption is a doctrine revealed by God. At best this was a conjecture so when he makes infallible guesses he must be inspired. He was claiming to be a prophet of God on a par with those of scripture which made him a heretic and a fake pope for the ban on new prophets was part of the basic and constant doctrine of the Church.

Nearly all Catholic doctrines have the same problem. Priests pardoning sins, the papacy, Church infallibility and the power of baptism to remove original sin in babies are all guesses. There is no real evidence for them. The early Church believing in them means nothing for Jesus said that apostasy would be the preference of his followers and there always were opponents. And what makes it even worse the earliest Church showed no trace of these doctrines.

The distinction between infallibility and inspiration is a distinction without a difference. If the pope has three options A, B and C and he is guided to reject A and B and this shows that C must be true then he is inspired to accept C. He must have been inspired to see that A and B are wrong. The words of C are ratified as infallible by God when this happens so they are as much scripture as the Bible. The Bible itself is full of sayings from people who were not prophets but whose words God chose for his book. He did not inspire the words but he inspired the insertion of the words and approved of them which is in essentials just as good. So the infallible statements of the Church are new scripture. The Church is heretical and incapable of infallibility as a consequence for not recognising this scripture and officially teaching that it is scripture.

The teaching that God does not inspire the choice of C but inspires the rejection of A and B is a bizarre one to say the least. What if there should have been a choice D that nobody thought of? God would have to inspire the pope to see that choice D exists. It would be easier if he just inspired choice C in the first place. His playing games like this hardly commends him as somebody we can be proud of and put confidence in. The Church has made up the doctrine that the infallibility it has is different from inspiration because it wants to dodge the accusation that it is creating new scripture when it gives new doctrine. The Church also says the apostles’ teaching cannot be added to and additions are always heresy so she has to look as if she is not creating new dogma but discovering with the help of God and sanctioning things that are implicit in apostolic teaching. But when you look close enough you see the Church is employing inspiration and adding to scripture. If the apostles teaching cannot be added to then the Church is not infallible and not apostolic in the unique way for it to be the one holy Catholic and apostolic Church.

When infallibility only works if the Church thoroughly does its homework first it follows that the Holy Spirit has to inspire it to realise that all this was done exhaustively and correctly meaning that the reasons for the definition are infallible as well.

The Church denies that it is inspired when it does its homework. The Church says that if it does it all wrong the infallible conclusion will not really be infallible. The logical consequence of this has to be that each and every Catholic has to see this homework and check it before he or she could have the right to believe in the dogma that was infallibly sanctioned. Why? To let men get you to believe what they say God says would be blasphemous unless you are as sure as can be that he did speak to them for God comes first. And you have to be sure that the infallibility was able to function and it is only right to check out the homework for it is only human work. To fail to check is, in effect, to leave the Church by opposing its dogma and the purity of the dogma. The chief work of the Church is to teach (page 231, Catholicism and Fundamentalism) for she sanctifies through this teaching so the teaching comes first so doctrinal aberration in any form is a means of excommunication. The unity of the Catholic Church is thoroughly artificial. A Church that is not one and therefore not a Church can’t be infallible or have a monopoly on being infallible.

The problems with infallibility are so obvious that it makes one certain that the pope and the higher level Catholics who have the power to make infallible statements know fine well that they are deceiving.
 
INFALLIBLE CONCLUSION MEANS INFALLIBLE PREMISES

Because infallibility is not inspiration, the Church has to think about a doctrine to see if it is credible and basing her claim on the grounds in favour she may and only can then infallibly proclaim that God says it is true.

Her logic will be like the syllogism with two premises and a conclusion. Here is an example. The Bible is right. Jesus said he turns communion into his body in it. Therefore communion is the body of Christ.

The examination needed for proclaiming a doctrine infallible is carried out under the protection of the Holy Spirit.

The Church does not obligate you to accept her proofs for a doctrine but if they cause the infallibility then they are automatically proclaimed infallible revelations when the doctrine is proclaimed. The Church believes many things now for different reasons than it did in the past proving that it is not the true Church for if a Church was founded that was true to the principle that the reasons for a dogma are as infallible as the dogma it would then be the true Church.

Before a doctrine can be raised to an infallible dogma it has to be seen that it fits in with previous dogmas.
 
If a previous dogma implies that the doctrine is true there is no need for an infallible proclamation though it might still be done. If previous dogmas do not imply but allow for the proposed new dogma then it follows that the grounds for it are not as strong as they would be if the doctrine were implied and it can’t be proclaimed infallible. A dogma is as good as proven when proclaimed infallible but this tells us different. Thus, Catholic dogmas like the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary, the virgin birth and several others are not really infallible for the verification is insufficient.
 
The theologian pope, Benedict XIV, declared in 1740 that there was silence on the assumption of Mary in the early Church and he also said that there was not enough to go on to make a dogma of her assumption. Each doctrine has a different quality and quantity of evidence behind it too which means that the more evidence there is the more infallible the dogma made of it is. But the Church cannot accept this for if a doctrine is not convincing then it makes the infallibility that elevates it to dogma not convincing whereas the purpose of infallibility is to make a doctrine as convincing as the other parts of the faith in the sense that you are certain that God has said it is true so it is true.

The pope could not make the Immaculate Conception a dogma without considering what Original Sin is and does. So when he made it a dogma his interpretation of original sin was being made a dogma as well. The logical links between dogmas such as become dogmas themselves. The Church got the idea of substance and appearance not being the same thing from Aristotle and this convinced it that transubstantiation was possible for then you could have the wafer seeming to all intents and purposes to be bread while it is really the body of Christ. In substance it is the body of Christ and not bread. So when the Church created the dogma of transubstantiation it was approving of Aristotle’s ridiculous physics and imagining that it showed that transubstantiation was possible when neither Aristotle or logic show that his theory makes it possible so we have two foolish dogmas created automatically and implicitly with the proclamation of transubstantiation.

To cast doubt on the infallibility of one Catholic doctrine is to doubt them all because they are all products of that alleged infallibility.

Infallibility instead of safeguarding the proud claims of the Church dismantles them.

Infallibility is a useless miracle because it is giving certainty but it can only make a doctrine certain when the doctrine is already certain. Thus, a doctrine that has not formally been declared infallible like the immortality of birth control can still be as certain as an infallible doctrine.

The Catholic believes that the Church is infallible because it claims to be infallible and that it claims to be infallible because it is infallible. This is the fallacy of circular reasoning. The vicious circle is unjustifiable even if you believe in justifiable ones for there is no need for belief in revelation especially revelation coming through a Church.

So popes and bishops have left the Church and the one true faith in their hearts by rejecting and changing the reasons for believing things and the notion of apostate and schismatic clergy being infallible is preposterous and contrary to infallible Catholic doctrine. How anybody can expect the Church to have real humility is beyond me.

There is nothing more serious than ending human life. The papacy set up the Inquisition and butchered right up until soon after 1856 when Pius IX said that serious cases of heresy should be treated with clandestine murders (page 244, Vicars of Christ). Pius VII revived the Spanish Inquisition in 1814 which went as far as to persecute Catholics who did not observe the fast days of the Church (page 243, ibid). This was done on religious grounds. To make dogmas as cruel as that is definitely a far stronger statement of infallibility than just making an infallible statement in St Peter’s.  They are more believable for the pope endorsed them by death. He declared his dogmas by human sacrifice. The rules of the Church that heretics should be slain are stated to be as important as human life. That is what the pope was saying when he backed up these rules.

The claim that infallibility does not involve new revelations is a smokescreen. It does.

If the Church really believes she is infallible then why does she not give all her dogmas that she believes come from God the full sanction of infallible authority instead of waiting until the doctrine is challenged? In the case of the doctrine that the bread and wine of communion are literally Jesus Christ the Church only used its infallibility after several people emerged in the Church who said the Eucharist was symbolic. The Church was trying to silence them. It would have made more sense and prevented divisions if the doctrine had been infalliblised as it were in the first place. The real reason the Church uses its strange procedure is because it invents doctrine and prefers to pick what it likes out of theological theories so it waits until it hears them all first. God would not bestow infallibility on a cult that does this.

Infallibility in practice is treated like an oracle.