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March 14, 2002

Infallibility

Every bishop was, and is, a sinner:

Stop for a moment and consider how the Church understands infallibility. For she does not make her claims on the basis of power. As Stalin said, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" Nor does she see infallibility as some sort of mark of special virtue or braininess. Indeed, infallibility does not mean that the members of the Church (including the Pope) are without sin. On the contrary, it is a solemn teaching of the Church that every man who ever occupied a bishop's chair was a sinner (and, we might add, it is a matter of historical record that many were fools as well.) Yet all this is exactly what the Spirit's gift of infallibility is given to the Church to amend. For infallibility is a special gift given by God to the Church in her weakness, not bestowed on her for being especially clever or strong. If we want to get the hang of it, we have to imagine the Church, not as an ace student who letters in football, gets all the girls and never has to study, but as a character in a farce who is guided through life miraculously (by the good graces of his fairy godmother) and who (only through those good graces) is preserved from walking into walls or off cliffs. Thus the term is, if anything, a confession of failure, blindness and ineptitude on the part of the Church. That is how the Church sees her gift of infallibility. For she holds with gratitude to the promise which Christ gave her, that He would lead her (often by the nose) into all truth; not that she would figure truth out because of her brilliance. For truth possesses her; she does not possess it.

"Infallibility Doesn't Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry," by Mark Shea, 2001

Posted at March 14, 2002 08:08 PM | Categories: Catholicism

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