Infallibility Explained

9 Common Misconceptions

Infallibility is the doctrine most contrary to the bent of the liberal mind. It’s a divine protection by which the Catholic Church is unfailingly preserved from error in declaring and interpreting truths already revealed.

This isn’t the same thing as revelation or inspiration. Revelation makes known or manifests truths, and inspiration is a divine impulse to commit certain truths to writing. By contrast, infallibility means that truths already revealed are interpreted without error.

To Protestants, this is absurd. If you want to join any Protestant church, you simply have to profess whatever doctrines it teaches. Yet the fundamental Protestant doctrine of private interpretation means all are free to base their faith on their own interpretation of the Bible. Thus no minister can logically claim to present anything more than his own private opinion, and anyone is therefore free to reject it.

If you don’t like what one Protestant sect teaches, you simply go to one of the others instead. Ultimately, all that matters if your own opinion. You don’t have to listen to agree with any of them. In fact, not only does each say all the others are wrong but each also, by not claiming infallibility, admits that it, too, might itself be wrong.

No Protestant sect, then, really has any meaningful teaching authority at all. Of course, Protestants have pet pastors or theologians whose interpretations of Scripture they regard as authoritative. Logically, however, they are mere opinions and have no binding authority. Luther, with the insanity of a true fanatic, tried to get around this problem by claiming to be personally infallible:

The first Protestant thus understood that infallibility is logically necessary, and this is an important starting point for a discussion of the top misconceptions concerning the doctrine.

9 misconceptions about infallibility

1. “No church can claim to be infallible.”

A church claiming to be established by Christ HAS to be infallible in matters of faith and morals.

Would Christ teach error through it and thereby lead souls to hell?

No, so infallibility is necessary.

2. “It’s arrogant to claim infallibility.”

The Catholic Church does not say she made herself infallible.

Instead, it’s a gift from Christ.

And she admits that.

3. “If the Catholic Church is infallible, you don’t need God.”

On the contrary, infallibility means God is necessary.

Only God can preserve the Church from error when teaching faith and morals.

And Catholics also need God’s grace to live up to the Church’s teachings.

Man by himself is weak.

4. “Infallibility isn’t in the Bible.”

Christ established His church on a rock and said the forces of evil wouldn’t prevail against it.

That means it must be ‘the pillar and ground of truth’ (1.Tim.3.15) to transmit His teachings so all nations can hear them.

And He said His Church would last to the end of the world, guided by the Holy Spirit.

5. “But the gates of hell did prevail.”

The Arians said this in the 4th century; the Greeks did in the 9th; the Protestant Reformers did in the 16th; the Rationalists did in the 18th.

Some say so today.

Their claim means Christ failed in His promise.

6. “The Catholic Church forfeited its claim to be the true church by falling away from the teachings of Christ.”

So you think that infallible retention of the teachings of Christ really is the mark of the true Church?

But does your own Church claim infallibility? No.

So, by your own logic, your own church is not Christ’s.

7. “The doctrine of Infallibility was only defined in 1870.”

This *defined* a truth the early Church already knew was contained in Christ's words to St. Peter.

Around 200 A.D., Tertullian wrote that if Paul rebuked Peter it was certainly ‘for a fault in conduct, not in teaching.’

And St. Cyprian, in 256, said ‘no errors can come’ from the seat of St. Peter.

In the 4th century, St. Augustine said, "Rome has spoken; the cause is finished.”

8. “But there are bad Catholics and even bad popes.”

The Church is infallible in her official teaching on faith and morals.

She does not claim to be infallible in making people live up to it. They have free will.

And the pope is *only* infallible when he speaks for the whole church in defining a question of faith or morals.

He can otherwise make mistakes — even be heretical in his private beliefs — and live a bad personal life.

9. “When Christ said He founded His Church ‘upon this rock,’ He meant himself, not Peter."

In John 1.42, Christ said to Peter, "Thou art Simon . . . thou shalt be called Cephas, Which is interpreted Peter."

Peter's name was Simon, but Christ changed it to Peter.

In Aramaic, Peter is Kepha — the word for rock or stone.

This was never used as a proper name in Aramaic.

Infallibility and Orthodoxy

Orthodoxy avoids the absurdities of Protestantism. However, although the Orthodox churches teach that the first seven ecumenical councils were infallible in proclaiming the doctrines of Christ, whether the Church still possesses an infallible teaching authority is disputed. Theologians like Adroutsos say it does; others, like Kyriakos, say it doesn’t.

Certainly, they recognise no supreme living authority to teach or govern. For example, the Orthodox churches recognised as inspired the deuterocanonical books until Prokopovitch rejected them at the beginning of the eighteenth century. But there was no binding authority to reject this error, and then it became official doctrine. So either the Orthodox churches were in error concerning the books of Scripture before or after this, in which case that even that single contradiction means any claim to infallibility collapses.

And of course there are other contradictions of doctrine between the various Orthodox churches anyway: to take just two examples, Constantinople and Russia disagree about the validity of Baptism conferred by a Protestant or Catholic, and the creed of Moghila and that of Dositheus teach contradictory doctrines on various points.