With Pope Benedict XVI arriving for the first US visit of his papacy, the Saunterer dipped into August Bernhard Hasler’s book, How the Pope Became Infallible, to discover infallibility’s upside and downside to the Church:
Infallibility’s upside (p. 277): The new dogma [declaring papal infallibilty] taught that the pope was infallible in matters of faith and morals - a uniquely ideological thesis. This claim extends not to one doctrinal statement but to all of them; it covers every single one. It shields the entire doctrinal structure of the Catholic Church from criticism. Papal infallibility – the formal principle, as it were, of Catholicism - becomes the crowning conclusion of the system. The insurance policy is flawless: There can be no appeal from the pope to any other authority. Infallibility in this context functions as a meta-ideology, the ideologizing of an ideology. The many ideological elements in the system are protected by a single, constitutive, all-encompassing ideology. The aim of all this is stabilization and integration. Presupposing the fundamental principle of infallibility, the Church’s entire operation can run smoothly.
Infallibility’s downside (p. 37): Infallibility always constitutes a limit to the power of an individual pope, who is bound by the infallible declarations of his predecessors.
The Catholic Church’s infallibility stance eternally destines it to preach against birth control. Forever must the Church go up its blind brainless alley, contributing to overpopulation and the resulting disappearance of wilderness.
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