Papal authority?

Question

Educated Catholics only, please.

What is the authority of the Pope? Is he infallible? If so, by what means is he infallible? Any information would be helpful. Logic and pure reason would be best.

Answer 1

The Pope is the Vicar of Christ, seated on the Chair of Peter.
These are hereditary titles, from the time of the Apostles.
He is only human, fallible as any man, like everyone else.

But when he pronounces a dogmatic or moral truth,
which has always been believed, he may make a claim
for the Church, that this teaching authority is infallible.

This authority has only been exercised twice:
1) To proclaim the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
2) To proclaim the Assumption of Mary into Heaven.

This created such controversy & confusion,
that it has never been explicitly invoked again.
Instead such authority is attributed to the whole church.
Justification for this authority is attributed to the Holy Spirit.
Who Jesus promised will protect the Church from error.

Answer 2

Papal infallibility is something that has been debated for a long time.
Everything the Pope says is not considered an infallible statement - in fact, the last infallible statement was made, I think, in the 1920s. The Pope, after long and arduous discussion, prayerful meditation, preparation, etc, has to clarify that the statement he is about to make is an infallible one. It is not said lightly and without great stake.

I didn't quite understand your first question - "what is the authority of the Pope?" Catholics follow that Jesus appointed Peter the first Pope and Popes following Peter continue the Apostolic succession of the Church up to the present day.

Answer 3

The authority of the pope supposedly comes from God. The pope believed to be Jesus' successor and as such the pope speaks with the authority of Jesus. There's a bit somewhere in the New Testament to the effect that whatever you hold on earth is held in heaven -- Catholics believe that applies to the pope. As for being infallible, that only applies to matters of religious doctrine. The pope is not infallible when calling a horse race, for example.

Answer 4

The Pope (from Latin: papa, father;[1] from Greek πάπας (papas) = father - originally written πάππας (pappas), as in Homer's Odyssey, book VI, line 57)[2] is the Bishop of Rome, the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church and head of state of Vatican City. Faith communities which recognize Apostolic Succession acknowledge the Bishop of Rome as successor of St Peter. As such, Catholics believe the pope to be the Vicar of Christ, while the other faith communities disacknowledge Petrine primacy among the bishops. The office of the pope is called the "papacy"; his ecclesiastical jurisdiction is called the "Holy See" (Sancta Sedes in Latin) or "Apostolic See" (this latter, on the basis that both St. Peter and St. Paul were martyred at Rome). Early bishops occupying the See of Rome were designated "Vicar of Peter"; for later popes the more authoritative Vicar of Christ was substituted; this designation was first used by the Roman Synod of 495 to refer to Pope Gelasius I, an advocate of papal supremacy among the patriarchs. Marcellinus (d. 304) is the first Bishop of Rome whom sources show used the title of pope. In the 11th century, after the East-West Schism, Gregory VII declared the term "Pope" to be reserved for the Bishop of Rome. The current (265th) pope is Pope Benedict XVI, who was elected April 19, 2005 in papal conclave.

In addition to his service in this spiritual role, the pope is also Head of State of the independent sovereign state of the Vatican City, a city-state entirely enclaved by the city of Rome. Before 1870 the pope's temporal authority extended over a large area of central Italy: the territory of the Papal States. The papacy retained sovereign authority over the Papal States until the Italian unification of 1870; a final political settlement with the Italian government was not reached until the Lateran Treaty of 1929.

For over a thousand years, popes have played powerful roles in Western Europe, crowning emperors (Charlemagne was the first emperor crowned by a pope) and regulating disputes among secular rulers. [3] The Bishop of Rome continued to be nominally allied and part of the civil structure of the Byzantine Empire until the 8th century, when the Donation of Pepin gave Rome and the surrounding area to the full sovereignty of the pope, which the popes already had been de facto rulers, creating the Papal States that lasted until 1870. For centuries, the forged Donation of Constantine also provided the basis for the papacy's claim of political supremacy over the entire former Western Roman Empire.

Over the centuries, the pope's claims of spiritual authority have been ever more clearly expressed since the first centuries, culminating in the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility for those rare occasions the pope speaks ex cathedra (literally "from the chair (of Peter)") when issuing a solemn definition of faith or morals. The last such occasion was in the year 1950 with the definition of the dogma of the Assumption of Mary.

The office of pope has often been controversial among the Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, secular rulers, and sometimes within the Catholic Church itself.

There is a lot more at the link below.

Answer 5

there is no logic in catholicism.... is the pope infallible? the first and second commandments... don't take a god before me... the rosary 5 hail Mary to 1 our father... and Jesus... then all those saints.. which leads to the second commandment... do not bow down before idols... statues are idols... seems to me they do that for a living. is the pope infallible? there's a million examples like these about catholicim...

Answer 6

edit: i'm not a catholic

the roman catholic church teaches that the pope is infallible when he speaks from his position of authority on a particular issue or doctrine [speaking ex cathedra]. according to the roman catholic church, this infallibility of the pope, only when speaking ex cathedra, is part of the roman catholic church’s magisterium, or the “teaching authority of the church” which God gave to the “mother church” to guide her infallibly.

the bible speaks of only one abiding, "tangible," infallible guide left by God for his church. it is the written word of God, not an infallible leader. and as he gave the holy spirit to bear holy men along in the writing of those scriptures, so he has given his holy spirit to indwell, fill, guide, and gift members of his church today for the purpose of directing his church through the proper interpretation of that written word.

Answer 7

educated catholics only?
i'll use a quote..."think outside the box"