But that’s where confusion sets in: while popes can, in a singleextraordinary act, assert something with infallible certitude sufficient to bind the faithful in belief or morals (Canon 749 § 1), no pope can, by a single ordinary act, assert something with anything like the equivalent force for Christian consciences.
If infallibility seems to be logically required for the Pope to arbitrate two disputing claims regarding dogma (and even that may be more of a practical, linguistic preference rather than a question about the reality being signified), or for the pope with a council to teach definitively (if infallibility is necessarily guaranteed only with respect to the act of teaching, and not also with the act of reception by the Christian faithful), then does it entail that the pope is infallible when he speaks alone, even if he has supposedly "consulted" the bishops of the world? If the Pope has no divinely sanctioned role as a "universal" teacher, and his role with respect to the Church Universal is limited to his cooperative role with respect to other bishops, speaking collectively as a body, then how can it be claimed that his "extraordinary" acts as a "universal" teacher (even if "taught" by Vatican I) are infallible? Where is the justification in the historical exercise of the office of the bishop of Rome in the first millenium for this?
No comments:
Post a Comment