No, because infallibility requires him to be acting as Pontifex, “in representation of the Church and inspired by the Holy Ghost” (paraphrasing and translating from Spanish).
The Church would rapidly decide that His Holiness needed to take the waters, yes? Cut down on the caffeine, yes? Decaf cappuccinos, heavy on the chocolate, that’s exactly what the doctor ordered (a medical one; the Doctors of the Church missed writing on the food of the gods). Here, Your Holiness, these nice Swiss Guards will lead you to your car and drive you to a nice balnearium…
Sadly, no, they aren’t leaving in swarms due to the abuse scandals. You know how many left the RCC in Germany in the last months when several abuse scandals (Bishop Mixa…) were in the forefront of the media?
Go on, guess:
1%.
They loose more people due to apathy or that they can’t afford (mandatory) church tax (9% of the income tax).
Well said. Many use scandals as an excuse to “come out of the closed” and display their “I no longer beleive” instead of “I haven’t for a looooong while, but went though the motions”
Actually, it would be far more likely and effective in destroying the Catholic Church if he were just to come out and announce the Absolution and complete forgiveness for every priest and bishop involved in any pedophile scandal. Not just past, but future. Which means the church will no longer apologize or punish any of it’s own people for raping children. That as priests are forbidden to marry, the church accepts their right to fulfil their carnal needs with children, and that this is not a sin, but a right of priesthood. That any parent or parishoner that objects will be excommunicated.
Of course, I would tend to expect that in mid-speech, he’d be dragged kicking and screaming from the podium by the Cardinals.
Of course you’re right that the abuse scandals are not the prime reason for the German (ex-)catholics to leave the church, but there seems to be a correlation between all the bad news the church made since the beginning of last year and an increase of 40 % in the number of withdrawals from the catholic church. From sueddeutsche.de:
of course they are —for most christian denominations. but there are some denos that don’t believe this (mainly bible-based) and they like to swipe at the RCC often.
In fairness to the Church (can’t believe I just wrote that) exhuming and trying people wasn’t unknown in Europe by secular rulers too. It happened to Oliver Cromwell after the Restoration of the monarchy, for example.
Who gets to choose whether the Pope is acting in representation of the Church and is inspired by the Holy Ghost? I thought it was the Pope himself who made that call.
I suspect that you’re right, that there would be an effort to depose him, and that someone else would take the mantle of being Pope. But I also suspect that, if he worded it eloquently and with Luther-style reasoning and dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s, he could cause a huge chunk of the faithful to break away. Infallibility is so rarely used that it would make a huge impression on a lot of people, and the automatic excommunication of anyone who tried to keep the church going would give a lot of people pause.
Interesting Trivia: This film was intended to be “Attack of the Killer Potato”, but a mistranslation caused the mostly-Spanish crew to film the move you see here.
Think of it this way: if you go to a restaurant with a group of friends and the hostess asks “smoking or non?” and you answer “non smoking, please”, you’re acting in representation of the whole group. If nobody complains, non smoking it is. But if someone says “woah, smoking!” you need to talk things over (at the very least you have to tell them to suck it up).
It wouldn’t be the first time that a bishop has to apologize to his flock for letting power go to his head - it just hasn’t been the Bishop of Rome so far.
