THE TEACHING THAT THE POPE CAN AVOID ERROR

The Catholic Church thinks that the pope is infallible on faith and morals when he speaks officially as shepherd and teacher of Church and intends to be infallible. The idea became an infallible dogma in 1870 through the infallible Vatican Council 1. The dogma says the pope can make an infallible statement without the consent of the Church and without consulting it. This declaration was part of the decree in Pastor Aeternus which was ratified as infallible at Vatican 1.
 
The dogma like all the dogmas defined by the Church or the pope is considered necessary for salvation. To say that the dogma is necessary for salvation not in itself but because to deny it is to deny the authority of God sounds very odd. It would indicate that you are making a dogma for the sake of condemning people who don’t obey you and believe in it to Hell. It would be like throwing your weight around aimlessly just to show people who is boss. If the dogma is necessary for salvation of itself then everybody before who did not realise that it was a true revealed by God and who did not believe in it properly as a correct doctrine must have been damned. It is total insanity to agree with Roman Catholicism that the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin and her Assumption into Heaven, the two papal dogmas, are needed for salvation in themselves. By implication, the Virgin is being made equal to Christ for the dogmas of his saving death and glorious resurrection are necessary for salvation and somehow illogically her conception without sin and her assumption are equal in value to that. The blasphemies and absurdities of Rome know no bounds.

Keenan published his approved Roman Catholic Catechism in 1851 and on page 102 he rejected the view that Catholics had to consider the pope infallible as a Protestant calumny. In 1870 the Church made a Gospel truth of this calumny.

The popes exercise their infallibility so seldomly that they can do without it. A fallible pope can be head of the Church and have the right to obedience in so far as he stands by revealed doctrine and that doctrine is the rod by which he is to be measured. As long as he has infallible doctrines it doesn’t matter if he can or can’t make such doctrines himself. The pope’s office does not mean that he must be infallible.

John Henry Newman declared before papal infallibility was proclaimed that he had an opinion that the pope was infallible but was not very sure (page 13, Church and Infallibility). It is no wonder for if the Church is infallible the pope need not be. When Newman was not sure despite his knowledge of the early Church how could the pope be sure enough to be able to validly proclaim the doctrine of papal infallibility?

The doctrine contradicts the fact that a reasonable God cannot do wasteful miracles.

Papal infallibility implies that a doctrine is fully revealed by God because the pope says so and not because reason says so for if reason were enough the infallibility could not and would not make the doctrine more convincing. If a doctrine can be proven to be revealed by God you don’t need infallibility. Infallibility must make the doctrine more certain otherwise being infallible would serve no purpose. Yet the Church says the pope cannot make a dogma unless he is sure the evidence says it is true first. In other words reason and investigation prove it first. So is a doctrine infallible if proclaimed as a result of faulty research or inaccurate information? The Church says it is so the research is not important at all. It isn’t necessary. Infallibility in that case would be inspiration. Popes would be prophets of God.
 
The Church teaches that the Bible cannot be added to which is one reason why it has to say infallibility is not inspiration. But virtually all Christian scholars these days think that the Bible's statements are infallible and the word of God in the same way as the popes statements are infallible. They think God pulls strings to ensure that what he wants to say is put across and that this doesn't tamper with the freedom of the instrument saying or writing those things. So if the scholars are right then the pope is adding to the Bible. They see inspiration not as God putting ideas into people's mind but as indirectly making sure they write what pleases him. For example, Mark might write a gospel and God might not like some of it so God sets the stage so that somebody will edit Mark and drop the unwanted bits. This idea fits the development of the Bible best rather than the stupid notion of God writing the Bible along with the authors.
 
If a man becomes pope and within seconds of being elected proclaims a new dogma such as that Judas Iscariot is in Hell forever what then? His research before he became pope can't count. The scenario shows the absurdity of papal infallibility and that it is inspiration and new revelation despite what the Church maintains.
 
To affirm the need for research is to say that the pope must be infallible when he sifts through the evidence to see what it really says. So the research is infallible as well as the doctrine.
 
It may seem that the research is only infallible if the pope intends to make an infallible dogma. But the pope will not know until the research is completed and it is decision time if he should make the dogma or not. For example, Pius IX proclaimed the doctrine that Mary was conceived without sin. He had to research it first. Then if he concluded that Mary was not conceived sinless he wouldn’t make a dogma of that. It would be pointless. So he didn’t know if he could proclaim that Mary was sinless at her conception until after the investigation was wrapped up. Also, if he is to do the research properly he cannot come to it with a biased mind. So the research cannot be infallible just because the pope wishes to make a new dogma after he has done it.
 
So everything the pope researches must be infallible because it is only when he reaches a conclusion that the option of declaring a doctrine infallible comes to him. But whether he proclaims a dogma or not the conclusions must be infallible. It must follow that all papal statements are infallible.
 
The pope has the power to be infallible even if he does not want to use it.

The pope needs to be clever before he can be infallible. Then why have most of the popes been so stupid? What about the popes that were only boys? To say they had latent infallibility or whatever is meaningless.

Papal infallibility though believed by millions of Catholics previously was not declared an infallible revelation of God until Vatican 1 in 1870. But years before Vatican 1, the pope claimed to be infallible as he taught that Mary was conceived without original sin and lived a sinless life.

It was certainly heretical for a pope to declare an infallible doctrine without the Church first using its infallibility to make his infallibility an article of faith. It is a contradiction to say that the decision of a man who had not been declared infallible could be binding on the Catholic conscience as a doctrine revealed by God. The pope was a heretic judging by Catholic standards. Even if he were infallible he ceased to be when he became a heretic for heresy puts you out of the Church. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was made infallible by a false pope in 1854. That pope was Pius IX who later convened Vatican 1 to get proclaimed infallible. The Catholic declares that any ecumenical council assembled by a fake pope is not infallible but is schismatical and heretical. Vatican 1 and 2 were fake ecumenical councils. The Roman Catholic Church does not exist any more for it has been replaced by a similar organisation.

If the pope could make an infallible doctrine without being infallibly declared infallible by the Church then he must be infallible – actually not potentially - all the time and every word he says on religion is correct. But Vatican 1 decreed that the pope can only use its infallibility under certain conditions so if the pope was infallible in defending the Immaculate Conception then Vatican 1 was a fake and fallible ecumenical council.
 
To say the pope is right that he can only make new dogmas that are necessary for salvation is to say that the pope must infallibly know what is necessary for salvation first. The pope can make a dogma anytime. Thus he needs to know what doctrines are needed for salvation all the time just in case. This knowledge would be a gift to him from God. So the pope is automatically infallible all the time for if he knows a doctrine is necessary for salvation he knows the doctrine is true. He knows how a doctrine is needed for salvation and why. He knows what the doctrine is.

The doctrine of papal infallibility is a trick.  It is meant to be used rarely for clearly a new dogma every day means that the pope will slip up.  But in reality, the Church has made loads of errors and still reigns as the most powerful organised religion of all time.