The notion of papal infallibility enjoys an unhappy distinction. One of the most widely known memes of the last one-hundred-and-fifty years, it is also one of the most utterly misunderstood. The mediaâ??s reporting of two recent events illustrates the issue.
First, consider the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI. After Benedictâ??s dramatic announcement, serious and respected commentators raised such questions as â??Will a resigned pope continue to be infallible?â? and â??What will happen if an infallible Benedict is contradicted by an infallible successor?â? Questions like that may sell papers, but they show no evidence that the writers made the effort even to Google the term, â??papal infallibility.â? More recently, take the commentary on Pope Francisâ??s Synod on the Family. At the close of the synodâ??s initial sessions, a columnist for the New York Timesâ??an educated Catholicâ??blankly depicted the policy of denying Communion to civilly divorced-and-remarried Catholics as an unavoidable implication of infallible papal teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.
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