this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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How does this square with papal infallibility?
That's only a thing if he says it ex cathedra, i.e, from his big pimp chair.
The catch is that there's no way to get on the thing
Thus is one of those things that we just kinda say but also isnt meaningfully true. Ratzinger as head of the congregation of the doctrine of the faith wrote a whole thing about how thats obviously not true ans that also what "Ex Cathedra" means is so much broader than what people realise.
Yeah, it's as meaningful as saying "from the Oval Office" when talking about an executive order.
The idea of a special pope chair is funny though, I want to will it into being true.
Can you link it? I'm trying to understand the claim of infallibility better and so far I've mostly been going off of John Henry Newman.
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=5189
Thank you
Papal infallibility is about what the popes teach, not about what the popes do. There are some controversies about whether popes in the past have taught things that are contradictory, such as John XXII with the Beatific Vision controversy, or Honorius with failing to reject Monophysitism (which opponents of papal infallibility would strengthen to saying that the pope taught monophysitism, not just that he failed to reject it, based on his anathemization in the subsequent council of Chalcedon).
IMO this opens up an interesting question of to what extent Alexander VI and previous popes that allowed slavery (or actively gave orders that would see it expanded) were teaching when doing anything at all. But I don't think it's necessarily contradicting the understanding of infallibility that the Church has held since Vatican II, which means that this shouldn't bring anyone from believing in Catholicism to not believing in Catholicism (unless they're really, really racist... which actually maybe does include a lot of people)