The Pope as “Infallible”

It is perhaps the news item in The Freeman last Sunday, Oct. 19 (p. 30:  “Pope Francis faces key test with vote on divorcees, gays”) that prompted my friend to ask me to explain the matter of the Pope’s “infallibility.”

To begin with, there is a need to distinguish between “infallibility” and “impeccability.” Papal “infallibility” means that the Pope cannot make any mistake when he makes solemn pronouncements on matters having to do with faith and morals.  Papal “impeccability” means that the Pope cannot commit sins. 

The Roman Catholic Church never teaches that the Pope is impeccable. Pope Francis effectively illustrated that he is a sinner like every one of us when he was shown on TV going to the confessional during Lent and accusing himself of sins committed. But it is solid Roman Catholic doctrine that the Pope is infallible, i.e., he cannot make mistakes under such conditions as when he makes solemn pronouncements; and on matters affecting faith and morals. Thus, when the Pope makes pronouncements regarding electricity, etc., he can make mistakes because he is not an authority on those matters and they have nothing to do with faith and morals. 

The second condition is that he makes the pronouncement “solemn.” The technical term in Latin is “ex cathedra,” meaning “from the chair.”  Of old, the Popes would sit at a huge chair (the biggest chair on earth) about ten feet above the floor of the sanctuary  of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and right below the stained glass oval window by Bernini depicting a dove with outstretched wings symbolizing the Holy Spirit.  This “cathedra” is held by two bigger-than-life statues of saintly Doctors of the Church from the West – St. Ambrose and St. Augustine – to its left and two from the East – St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. John Chrysostom – to its right.

Nowadays, the Pope no longer sits on that huge chair while making solemn pronouncements on faith and morals, and he usually does it in union with the Bishops from all over the world, as happened in the recently concluded Synod in Rome; the term for this new Papal practice is “collegiality.” Theoretically, the Pope is infallible when by himself alone he makes solemn pronouncements on faith and morals. However, after Vatican II he makes solemn pronouncements on faith and morals usually in union with the Bishops from the four corners of the world gathered in a Synod.

Being a Roman Catholic, I hold on to the truth that the Pope is infallible as specified above.  And I accept whatever Pope Francis, after the Synod, pronounces on faith and morals in connection with divorcees and homosexuals. As the saying goes in Latin, “Roma locuta, causa finite,” Rome has spoken and the case is solved.  It’s up to the non-Roman Catholics whether they are open to our truth just as I am personally open to their truth and to truth wherever it comes from.

As a philosopher, I don’t mind being labelled as “Roaming Catholic” due to my being open to truth wherever it comes from.  But as a theologian, I was born a Roman Catholic and I would like to die as one.  At age 13, I was sent by our parish priest in Borbon, the late Padre Ramon Tamayo, to be trained as a catechist at the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral. 

For more than 11 years, I imbibed its doctrines in seminaries here and in Rome, and preached about them for more or less another 11 years from the pulpit while in the active ministry of the Roman Catholic priesthood.  And now I am evangelizing the pupils in my school so that the complaint of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines that “Filipino Roman Catholics are sacramentalized, but not so evangelized” cannot be said of the “Fatherland’s Fair Hope” under my charge at the Ocaña Learning Center, Inc. (OLCI).