Here's a closer-to-home example: The Pope could write and declare infallible an opinion that evolution is a bunch of bunk and the world came into existence just a few thousand years ago.

The majority of Catholics wouldn't accept that, and would leave the church. Most would probably migrate to the Episcopal church since that's about as close to Catholic as you can get without being there. There would also be bishops and cardinals who resign in disgust and they would probably found a new church that is everything Catholicism is today, minus that new ruling. They would recruit priests from the Catholic church in order to maintain the lineage of the clergy. Once organized, they'd start trying to bring back all the parishioners that went to the Episcopalians and other churches. And the Roman Cathlic church would probably never recover.

Now, if you were the Pope, and you believed that evolution was a bunch of bunk and the world was created a few thousand years ago, what would you do?

You certainly wouldn't declare it as infallible and lose half you church, would you? Instead, you would simply state it as your opinion. Lots of people would agree with you and lots wouldn't. But the fact that they are allowed to disagree with you but remain in the church means that it won't tear the church apart.

As you can see, declaring a teaching as infallible runs a very big risk. If everything out of the Pope's mouth was to be considered infallible, he'd have to never appear in public for fear of accidentally saying something that destroys all the church stands for.

(Incidentally, neither Paul II nor Benedict believe that. They have both shown support for evolution, but not just blind random evolution. They support the view that evolution was guided by God. In my own explanations of how I think God made us, I've said that it was set up at the time of the Big Bang that we would evolve to our present state and to whatever state we continue into. As I see it, that's the same exact thing as guided evolution. They see it as an ongoing guiding, but I believe the universe is atemporal so an ongoing anything is the same as a time dimension set up when the whole system is built.)

As for a real example of fallibility in the past, you've got Pope Pius the XII, who sat quietly by and allowed the genocide of the Jews to proceed at the hands of Hitler. Pope John Paul II made a public apology for that, acknowledging that it was a terrible error by Pius, but also pointed out that it was the sin of a man and not a sin of the church. It was a mistake made by a man - not the church as a whole sitting idly by. In fact, many Catholics were actively involved in protecting Jews. But the church itself had no policy one way or the other because such a policy would have had to come from the Pope. Unfortunately, he screwed up. But he didn't pass an infallible decree saying that the church shall stand idly by. Had he done so, then the church would have splintered. It would have been good for him to pass an infallible decree that Catholics must help our Jewish brethren in that time of extreme need, but it is not the church's fault as a whole that he didn't.

If a Pope's every word and deed were infallible then John Paul II could not have apologized for Pius XII's actions (or lack thereof, actually).

w

Last edited by Wayne Zeller; 03/26/07 07:06 AM.