George Stephanopoulos to Don Imus this morning, on the Pope's regret of the Islamic reaction:
But I think this is a tough one because how can the Pope apologize when he's, not in every statement but in most statements, infallible?So we got from:
"When the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church..."to:
"he can't apologize because he's infallible in most statements"in one easy jump. But to be misunderstood is to be human. Turnips are never misunderstood. Chesterton wrote:
Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.A refresher link:
Notice that the boundaries of papal infallibility are carefully delineated. And on reflection the limitations make perfect sense. Infallibility does not adhere to the man, else he would be infallible in everything he says. Nor does infallibility adhere to the office, for the same reason. Rather, the gift of infallibility must adhere to the exercise of the office. Note, for example, that a king may write letters to his various officials discussing possible legislation and even give public statements concerning his intentions, but it is only his official promulgations that actually become the law of the land. Similarly, the pope may carry on private correspondence, speak or write as a private teacher, or even make certain public pronouncements without invoking the authority of his office. No one, for example, looks to a book like Crossing the Threshold of Hope by Pope John Paul II as an infallible dogmatic pronouncement. It is a product of the pope in his capacity as a private Catholic theologian, not as the Vicar of Christ. And infallibility is not impeccability.Likewise, George (I assume he's a Greek Orthodox Christian) ought have no problem in principle to infallibility:
We should note at the outset that infallibility per se should present no problem to non-Catholic Christians. All Christians who seek to remain faithful to the earliest historical expressions of the Christian faith—such as the Nicene and Athanasian creeds—believe in the principle of infallibility. All believe that God uses fallible and sinful men to communicate His truth infallibly. Evangelical Protestants staunchly defend the notion that God used fallible men to speak His truth in the written Word. So the all-too-common jibes about the impossibility of mere men speaking infallibly or objections that sinful popes cannot possibly be the bearers of God’s infallible truth show a lack of reflection and fairness.
"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church, which is, of course, quite a different thing."- Fulton J. Sheen
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