# How far does this "papal infallibility" stuff go? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 6, 2025, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956 "2025-05-06T13:55:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/41 "2025-05-11T22:26:35Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > What about Mary’s parents? And her grandparents? It’s immaculateness all the way down… Naw…just need it to be for Mary. I guess that means she is not really the daughter of her parents though. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/42 "2025-05-11T22:26:38Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I honestly do not know how the Catholic Church would handle that. It is a literal contradiction and absolutely not possible according to Christian dogma I asked you a question upthread: you stated that the Pope can be infallible if he says Mary was immaculately conceived — and my question is, can the next Pope be infallible if he says she wasn’t? (And maybe the _next_ next one then says she was?) ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/43 "2025-05-11T22:30:48Z")
I really do not know. The Pope speaking Ex Cathedra (infallible) has happened only twice and both had to do with Mary (immaculate conception and being bodily assumed into heaven). I suppose a new Pope could reverse it. It’d be a really big deal in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church’s politics are Byzantine to say the least and I really do not know how that would play out. Might be an interesting idea for a story/movie though. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2025, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/44 "2025-05-11T22:40:52Z")
Those who believe in the dogma of papal infallibility will tell you it will never happen, the Holy Spirit will prevent it. And people who don’t believe in that dogma will tell you the Pope could have been just as wrong about Mary being conceived without original sin ( which is what the IC means - it’s not the same as virgin birth) as he might be about who will win the World Series. So in their view, the teaching could change - just as the teaching about requiring celibacy for most priests\* might change since that was never declared infallibly. \* It’s not all priests - married men cannot generally be ordained in the Latin Rite but they can in the Eastern Rite. Married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism can be ordained as Catholic priests. ---
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2025, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/45 "2025-05-12T01:25:33Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Naw…just need it to be for Mary. I guess that means she is not really the daughter of her parents though. No, she is really the daughter of her parents. The teaching is not to the effect that she was a virgin birth (like Jesus) but that she was unmarked by original sin. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2025, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/46 "2025-05-12T01:53:25Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Wait — if it’s possible to just do a different miracle so that Mary gets born without sin, why not just do a different miracle so that _everyone_ gets born without sin? This has occurred to many people over the past two thousand years, and has been endlessly discussed by theologians. I wouldn’t bother engaging with a passel of godless atheists about it, myself, if you want serious answers. It is an exceedingly important question, unlike the dogmas surrounding Mary, which, to my mind, are not. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2025, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/47 "2025-05-12T02:01:54Z")
How would a world in which we were all born without sin look different from the world we live in? Aside: autocorrect briefly “fixed” typos in that post so that it read ״…we were all born when trout sin”. Never heard of that denomination! ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2025, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/48 "2025-05-12T02:02:54Z")
Where does an encyclical fit into this scheme? Almost, but not quite infallible? (they are far more common) ---
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2025, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/49 "2025-05-12T03:26:32Z")
An encyclical is a particular mode of expressing a teaching — a letter from the Pope addressed to all the bishops of the world. It’s authoritative, but not inherently infallible. In principle you could have a papal teaching expressed in terms that ticks all the boxes required for infallibility, expressed in a an encyclical. The decree on infallibility doesn’t specify that any particular formal class of document has to be used. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2025, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/50 "2025-05-12T17:26:53Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > It is a literal contradiction and absolutely not possible according to Christian dogma. The Holy Spirit is God. So, this would be saying God is also Satan. This would almost certainly need a brain addled Pope (dementia of some sort). > > Not sure how the Catholic Church as an organization would put a stop to that Well, what is in effect here is that IRL a Pope does not simply pull _ex cathedra_ proclamations out of his ass on the spur of the moment (St. John XXIII back in his time even explicitly stated he intended to never use the faculty). Both the official-record applications of infallibility in modern time were done through a Papal Bull/Apostolic Constitution, which means there was staff involved in researching and drafting the document over a period of time, and both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption were beliefs that had been supported by significant factions of Church Fathers and the faithful for centuries. ---
**Author:** ![UDS1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47774/32.png) [@UDS1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS1)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2025, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/51 "2025-05-13T01:04:07Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Well, what is in effect here is that IRL a Pope does not simply pull _ex cathedra_ proclamations out of his ass on the spur of the moment This. The whole point of papal infalliblity is that the pope is infallible, not when proclaiming what the pope believes, but when proclaiming what the _church_ believes. So any papal pronouncement with any pretensions to infallibility will be about a long-established belief of the church, and will be explicitly rooted in previously-proclaimed teachings. Mostly, it will resolve a point of dispute that has arisen relatively recently in relation to some long-held teaching. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/52 "2025-05-28T02:41:39Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > What if a Pope declared ex cathedra that Satan and the Holy Spirit were one in the same. Who would or could say that’s not correct? Unca Cecil addressed this scenario. > So: could the pope declare a surprising about-face with respect to abortion or the Prince of Darkness? Insofar as either would seem to involve faith and morals, well, why not? But perhaps it’s instructive to think of the pope’s relationship to infallibility like the U.S. president’s relationship to the nuclear codes. Sure, he’s got the authority and the means to launch a war on a whim — but history, political pressure, the expected aftermath, etc, all conspire to incentivize a sober, rational decision. In the president’s case, too nutty a move and he faces impeachment, maybe a coup. The pope doesn’t have to worry about that — there’s no mechanism for his removal — but one assumes a wholesale embrace of satanism might cause a bit of a rift among the flock. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2025, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956/53 "2025-05-28T05:09:53Z")
But wouldn’t you love to live in a world where Leo XIV could compel Donald Trump [to stand three days in the snow barefoot?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_to_Canossa) No, the pope can’t say 2+2=5, because he can’t command addition any more than he command division, as Stalin pointed out. He can marshal symbology, which to humans; irrational humans, is a vital force. Mary, as a divine force, is a symbol of the love any human craves from its mother (regardless of whether the actual woman who whelped it was psychologically equipped to provide it). The whole mumbo jumbo about the Eucharist is symbolic of how our goodwill towards each other should be as commonplace as our daily ingestion of bread. The pope commands the deployment of those symbols, if he’s on his best game. Father Coughlin, on the radio exploiting the Great Depression (not unlike many YouTubers today), race-baiting and Jew-hating and generally stirring the shit. FDR contacted the Vatican and said “can you please order this clown to shut the fuck up? In return (after 150 years of neglect), the USA will extend diplomatic relations with the Church of Rome.” Deal done: Coughlin went back to being the ignorant Maynoonth bog-trotter nobody he’d been. Don’t you wish there were a hierarchy that could shut down the voices shouting through their paper assholes like that today? And so what if only through the power of symbol, since man does not live by reason? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-far-does-this-papal-infallibility-stuff-go/1017956.md?page=2)