Contradictory Papal Statements?

[SaintOlaf]

I've been dialogging for the past 2 months now with a friend of mine about my decision to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. In a previous e-mail he had asked me to show him, scripturally, where we get our doctrine of apostolic succession and authority. I quoted a hefty amount of verses for him, and also gave him our reasoning behind the office of the Pope, and the primacy of Peter.

His most recent e-mail basically gives a classic "Nuh-uh" to everything that I said, that I was taking everything out of context and then questions how the Pope can teach infallibly if He contradicts the teachings of other popes.

[quote]With regard to Papal authority, one major hurdle would seem the contradictory nature of Papal statements with the Bible and other Papal decrees. This just can't fit into my worldview. If these all have equal authority, how could they ever contradict? What does this do to our understanding of truth?[/quote]

I'm posting here to try and understand what he's talking about, are there documented cases of Papal teachings contradicting scripture that I don't know about? All responses are appreciated, I hope I put this in the right forum.

God Bless!

~Paul

[beatty07]

He's right about refusing contradiction, and about the very nature of Truth depending on that. He's simply mistaken about our claims regarding infallibility.

Popes contradicting each other, or even the Bible, is honestly no obstacle to the Catholic faith. As long as they don't do it in such a way that their authority to teach in the name of Christ is invoked. There's a whole range of "weightiness" to individual Papal statements. At the top is a definition ex cathedra, which can not teach error by guarantee of the Holy Spirit. At the bottom might be the recent book "Jesus of Nazareth", whose preface makes it clear that's it's contents are private opinion and anyone is free to argue with them.

So, your friend's objection would be valid if, for instance, Pope Benedict XVI issued a solemn ex cathedra definition that Our Lady was born subject to original sin, and not immaculately conceived. That would be an infallible statement contradicting an infallible statement, and that's just not possible. So we'd have a lot of explaining to do!

[SaintOlaf]

I think I may have to clear up with him the roll of Magisterium in the church, and the different levels of teachings, like you say. One of the most common protestant misunderstandings about the Catholic church is that everything the pope does and says is infallible. Thanks for the input!

[thessalonian]

We have to be careful about many alledged contradictions as well, that they are put in historical context and that doctrine is correctly applied to the statement.

For instance one Pope said that democracy was an abomination. Another (Pius XII) lauded democracy. The frist was against the aethistic democracy of the French revolution and the second was in favor of American Deomcracy.

In truth I find amazing consistency among papal statements regarding many issues. For instance, on the matter of slavery, the Popes were very consistent in what kinds they condemned and what kinds were moraly allowable. Race based slaver from it's inception in the 1400's (it was little known before then) was immediately condemned by Eugene IV and succeeding Popes for instance.

But again the only real issue he would have is if he goes to the decrees on Vatican I concerning infallibility of the Popes, learns what the dogma means and how it is applied and then finds two contradictory statements in that regard. He can even look to the councils and scripture for his contradiction. If he understands the statements and those of the councils and the scriptures he will not find one contradiction.


Blessings

[goldenchild17]

[quote name='SaintOlaf' post='1399443' date='Oct 8 2007, 02:20 PM']I've been dialogging for the past 2 months now with a friend of mine about my decision to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. In a previous e-mail he had asked me to show him, scripturally, where we get our doctrine of apostolic succession and authority. I quoted a hefty amount of verses for him, and also gave him our reasoning behind the office of the Pope, and the primacy of Peter.

His most recent e-mail basically gives a classic "Nuh-uh" to everything that I said, that I was taking everything out of context and then questions how the Pope can teach infallibly if He contradicts the teachings of other popes.
I'm posting here to try and understand what he's talking about, are there documented cases of Papal teachings contradicting scripture that I don't know about? All responses are appreciated, I hope I put this in the right forum.

God Bless!

~Paul[/quote]

No pope has ever infallibly contradicted a past infallible teaching. A pope may disagree with past non-infallible teaching. He may be a very bad man and do very evil things, and I would say that he could even declare heresy (non-infallibly) and become a heretic himself (though this is very unlikely and maybe an impossibility) but he can never change the deposit of faith through infallible teachings.