Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 112

Infallibility is widely misunderstood. It’s not the same as the Catholic beliefs of inspiration or impeccability:

  Inspiration is a special gift of the Holy Spirit, which He gave to the sacred authors, those who wrote the Sacred Scripture (the Bible), so that only the things God wanted written down were written down — no more, no less. So the pope isn’t inspired, but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were when they wrote their Gospels.

 Impeccability is the absence and inability to commit sin. Only Jesus Christ, being the Son of God, and His Blessed Mother had impeccability — via a special grace from God. Popes aren’t impeccable, so they’re capable of sin — which, by the way, was visible in the case of the first pope, St. Peter, when he denied Christ three times just before the Crucifixion (Matthew 26:69–75).

Everything the sacred authors wrote in the Bible is inspired, but not everything every pope says or writes is infallible. Infallibility means that if the pope attempts to teach a false doctrine on faith or morals, the Holy Spirit prevents him (even by death) from imposing such an error on the faithful. So, for example, no pope can declare, “As of today, the number of commandments is nine instead of ten.” Nor can he declare, “Jesus was not a man” or “Jesus was not the Son of God.”

Infallibility also doesn’t mean perfection. Infallible statements aren’t perfect statements, so they can be improved so that subsequent popes can use better or more accurate language. Yet infallible statements can never be contradicted, rejected, or refuted. So according to Catholicism, an immoral pope (you’ll find several in Church history) can sin like any man and will answer to God for his evil deeds. But as head of the Church, the pope retains his infallibility on matters of faith and morals as long as he remains pope.

No pope in 2,000 years has formally and officially taught an error of faith or morals to the universal Church. Individually, some may have been poor or inadequate theologians or philosophers, and some may have had erroneous ideas about science. That has nothing to do with papal infallibility, however, because the main objective is to preserve the integrity of Catholic faith for all the members at all times and in all places.

The pope can exercise his papal infallibility in two ways. One is called the Extraordinary Magisterium, and the other is called Ordinary Magisterium. The word magisterium is from the Latin word magister meaning “teacher,” so the Magisterium is the teaching authority of the Church, which is manifested by the pope alone and or the pope along with the bishops all over the world.