Roman Catholicism Part III: Authority and Papal Infallibility

In my previous article, I addressed the Roman Catholic view of mediatorial authority, demonstrating how its institutional and theological system is bound together using the trellis of the Romanist view of the priesthood within a strict hierarchical structure. At the top of that structure is the Pope, the ‘Holy Father,’ who is ostensibly God’s representative on earth as the vicar of Christ. As the most senior priest within the Roman church, the Pope is accorded a unique form of authority. In this article I want to look specifically at Rome’s view of papal infallibility and its relationship to the idea that the Catholic institution itself is a parallel source of authority alongside the Word of God in the bible.

The Idea of a Pope

We should first ask, what is the origin of the concept of a Pope? The term itself is derived from the Latin papa and simply means father. The adoption of this term for a church leader is itself both interesting and problematic because the Lord Jesus specifically forbade calling any man ‘father’ in this spiritual sense (Matt. 23:9).

Although today, Roman Catholicism somewhat anachronistically claims the apostle Peter was the first Pope, the New Testament reveals no such authority structure at all. In fact, at Antioch, the apostle Paul was compelled to rebuke Peter to his face (Galatians 2:11-21) for hypocrisy in briefly siding with a separatist movement that deviated from the truth of the gospel–not a good start for a Pope–and an incident which suggests Peter was regarded as having no such supreme authority in the churches.

The reality is that no scriptural passages teach or reveal a transfer of unique kingdom authority from Peter to anyone else, nor does it show Peter operating as head of a centralized ecclesiastical structure. Peter refers to himself in the New Testament only as an apostle and fellow elder (1 Peter 1:1; 5:1). The apostles James, John and Peter were all recognised as “pillars” without any hint that Peter was a special case (Gal. 2:9). It is strange indeed that if Peter was truly the first Pope and the most senior priest in a hierarchical universal church, he did not say so in his epistles. And why did the apostle Paul not address him as Pope or as the ruler of the church in his epistle to the Romans? The reality is that we currently know next to nothing about the origins of Christianity in Rome – it was already flourishing when Paul wrote to them in AD 58, and yet Peter, by Catholic tradition, was supposedly already Pope there. If this is so, why did Peter not tell us in his epistles that he would be leaving an infallible succession of priests to guide Christ’s church? These problems mean that Rome’s appeal to justify its claimed status is grounded in tradition rather than the Bible. As such, the papacy’s appearance was progressive and complex.

In the gradual emergence of the papacy, Rome essentially appropriated the pagan title of Caesar, Pontifex Maximus–supreme high priest (pontiff)–and applied it to their most senior cleric. It was only at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 that the bishop of Rome was first designated Pope. Yet his universal authority has never been acknowledged by the ancient Eastern churches. Gregory I, known as Gregory the Great (AD 590), who consolidated power in the Bishop of Rome and founded the papal monarchy, actually refused the title of Universal Pontiff, but Boniface III accepted it (AD 607), and it has been used ever since. The word Pontiff means “bridge builder” and is derived from pagan Rome, where heathen high priests were thought to connect the human and divine, acting as a bridge between this life and the next.

From the fourteenth century, this extraordinarily elevated position of the Pope was expressed in the use of a Triple Crown (Tiara) and a literal coronation service–a practice that continued until 1963. This special crown was placed on the head of every new Pope at his “papal coronation” (now called an inauguration). Here the Pope symbolically assumes the place of Christ on earth and is called “father of princes and kings, ruler of the world, the vicar of our saviour Jesus Christ.” Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical, The Reunion of Christendom (AD1885) declared that the Pope holds “upon this earth the place of God Almighty.” This place of authority is said to be so great that the Pope has power to release souls from purgatory to heaven through indulgences. And so, the Popes were, for centuries, carried around by twelve men representing the twelve apostles in a silk-covered ceremonial chair called the Sedia Gestatoria, supported on two long poles (a practice only ended in 1978), and lived very much like kings.

During the period known to Romanism as the Babylonian Captivity in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, three competing ‘Popes’ were actually on the scene. A schism continued till the Council of Constance (AD 1414-1418) was called. It deposed all three Popes and elected Martin V. Interestingly, this council declared Popes subject to ecumenical councils in matters of faith and the reform of the church. The First Vatican Council of 1870 went on to contradict that with its assertion of Papal infallibility.

The Cultural Context

We have seen that the Western concept of a supreme Pope dates back centuries after the apostles. The idea of the Pope’s infallibility when speaking to all Christians from the chair of St Peter (i.e., ex cathedra) emerges and is formalized much later, after the Great Schism.

To properly understand its development and why the late nineteenth century was the era the Roman Catholic Church formally insisted on the infallibility of the papacy, we need to understand something of the currents in Europe during this period. The late 1800’s constituted the apogee of liberalizing Christian theology in the West. Though the movement was very small in Catholicism at that time, it was large and powerful within much of what passed for Protestantism. The renowned German scholar, Adolf von Harnack, typified the spirit of the age when he argued that the original ‘gospel’ was simply the brotherhood of all men, the fatherhood of God, and the infinite value of the human soul.[i] Distinctly Christian teaching rooted in the unique claims and work of Christ was being dropped. Even orthodox parts of Protestantism began abandoning a vision of Christian culture under Christ (i.e., of Christendom) for pietism and quietism–a sectarian faith for the individual that left the world behind–whilst similar ‘devotional’ movements, focused on venerating Mary, meditation, relics, and pilgrimages, were growing in Catholicism. As such, the public influence of Christianity was waning and the power of Rome fading fast in every sense. It was therefore the Catholics at that time who sought to defend the remnants of Christendom, and leading that charge was Pope Pius IX. His promulgation of papal infallibility was part of a wider effort to restore the authority of the papist church and the influence of Christianity within the culture. As such, however wrong-headed the approach, we can sympathize with some of its intentions. The historian Mark Noll points out:

From early in his long pontificate, Pius IX (pope 1846-78) mobilized all of his considerable resources to fight, as one enemy, the drift of secularism and the reduction in power of the Catholic Church. To him, the papacy’s thousand-year history as a significant ruler in the Italian peninsula represented a “robe of Jesus Christ” that sheltered the church’s body. In 1854 he formerly defined the immaculate conception of Mary in an effort to link the papacy with popular Marian devotions practiced by the churches ordinary faithful. Ten years later he issued a stunning encyclical that, even as it denounced modernising changes in general, ended with a “Syllabus of Errors” that specified eighty widespread contemporary opinions as grievous mistakes…Soon thereafter in 1869-1870 followed the First Vatican Council, where, with papal representatives bearing down hard on the assembled bishops, a declaration was promulgated defining the pope’s ex-cathedra pronouncements as infallible.[ii]

His vigorous efforts had some impact in hindering the progress of secularism within Roman Catholicism and perhaps in parts of Europe at the time, but today the liberalizing or modernizing influences are almost as apparent in Roman Catholicism as they are in Protestantism.

Within Protestantism, albeit from a very different starting point and theological perspective, the greatest voice raised against the de-Christianization of culture in this same period was that of Dutch Calvinist, Abraham Kuyper (AD 1837-1920), theologian, politician and institution builder, who provided the intellectual foundations from a biblically directed Christian worldview for the refutation of secularism and the forces of rationalism and romanticism.[iii] But neither the Catholics nor Calvinistic evangelicals were able to arrest the idolatry of the age, with its scientism and nationalisms, throwing centuries of Christendom away with the bloodbath of AD 1914-1918.

The Basic Claim and its Emergence

This context helps to provide a framework for understanding what is, for the reformed and evangelical world, one of the most bizarre and objectionable dogmas of Rome–papal infallibility. Rather than hearing the doctrine of Papal infallibility defined by Protestants, it is important to let Rome speak for itself on the matter. The Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 2051 makes plain:

The infallibility of the Magisterium of the Pastors extends to all the elements of doctrine, including moral doctrine, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, expounded, or observed. (emphasis added)

It is important to highlight that not only does the dogma of infallibility cover all theological and moral doctrine–and given that morality is bound to every dimension of life, this is a vast purview–Rome also claims that without the infallibility of the Magisterium, the saving truths of the Christian faith cannot be rightly expounded or observed. This immediately makes clear that for the papist church, those Christians and churches outside of Rome’s paternalistic embrace cannot truly preserve, expound, or observe the faith as they should, fundamentally and implicitly delegitimizing them. It is easy to see here the misguided attempt to maintain the unity of the Western church under Romanism in the face of modernism and secularism.

The widely respected Pope Benedict XVI, in his important and interesting writings on the church, clarifies this essential belief of Roman Catholicism today. He writes:

It means that…there is a final decision-making authority, that ultimately there can be binding decisions about essential issues, and we can be certain that they correctly interpret the heritage of Christ…

…The difference from Orthodoxy is only that Roman Christianity recognises another level of assurance in addition to the ecumenical council, namely, the successor of Peter, who can likewise provide this assurance.[iv] (emphasis added)

Notice here several important things. Firstly, the claimed unique connection to the apostle Peter is invoked to support the idea of papal infallibility (which I addressed in the previous article). For Rome, the concept of a continuous and unbroken line of apostolic succession has conferred upon its priesthood the power not only to perform the rite of Mass but also to localize the authority of the apostle Peter himself in the most senior cleric in the Romanist church. Secondly and critically, beyond whatever centralizing power motives may also be involved, we can observe that the pastoral goal of the dogma is the provision of assurance. What is being sought in this doctrine is a basis of assurance for the Christian, confirming that their beliefs and convictions are absolutely certain in an age of secularism, dechristianization and apostasy.

Along with its venerable antiquity, institutional visibility and broader political influence, this promise of assurance and certitude is one of the great appeals of Catholicism to many, especially in times of socio-cultural upheaval and insecurity. For here, in the ‘infallible’ Magisterium of Rome, the doubtful, confused and lost are promised certainty and assurance in the bosom of a ‘Holy Father,’ the flesh and blood ‘vicar of Christ,’ sitting in the highest priestly seat within the life of the Catholic institution.

It is precisely at this point the Reformed-evangelical tradition would, by contrast, locate both assurance and certitude in the transformative and unmediated work of the Holy Spirit alone, not in any temporal human personage. This is because Christ’s true vicar on earth, the Allon Parakleton, is in fact God the Holy Spirit himself (John 14: 16, 26; 16:13-14). Although the exact expression ‘vicar of Christ’ is not found in the Newer Testament (vicar meaning representative, substitute, or proxy), early church Fathers such as Tertullian explicitly called the Holy Spirit the vicar of Christ.[v] And it is by this same Spirit that the Lord Jesus Christ himself is building, preserving and protecting his church as pillar and support of the truth (1 Tim. 3:14-15). In Scripture, it is the certitude of His Word alone, communicated to the heart by God the Holy Spirit, by which people can find true hope and assurance (Rom. 5:5). All men can err; church institutions, denominations, pastors, priests and presbyters are all prone to error and can fail and fall. As such, the Reformed faith refuses to locate final and infallible authority, certainty, or assurance in the hands of any man or a particular church’s institutional expression, however noble the motive.

 

[i] Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity, third Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 254

[ii] Ibid, 256

[iii] Though largely overlooked by the Anglosphere at the time, his influence is now quietly growing again among Reformed and evangelical Christians in the West, including through the work of the Ezra Institute.

[iv] The Essential Pope Benedict XVI, 112

[v] Tertullian’s De Praescriptione Haereticorum (trans. ‘The Prescription Against Heretics’), Chapter 28, is one good example.