Twisted in Knots by ‘Romanist Errors’

Understanding Church authority is key to navigating today’s troubled and confused waters.

By Deacon Frederick Bartels
6 February 2025

After about 5 minutes of online perusing it’s apparent that thousands of people don’t know what they think they know about the Catholic Church. There’s no shortage of rants against “Bergoglio’s heresies” or “papist inventions” or “pagan teaching.” “The Catholic Church is unbiblical!” they shout. To add fuel to the fire, there’s a plethora of media headlines crafted as attention grabbers, which, 99% of the time, commit to easily refuted large scale distortions. But who has the time to sort through the mess? And isn’t it easier to glob on to what we’d like to think? What we’d hope to think?

Then there are Catholics themselves—severely un-catechized as they often are—who sometimes spread errors. Others are downright confused, even scandalized, by recent events. We need only think of stuff like Fiducia supplicans and “the Church approves of gay marriage,” or the “reversal” of the Church’s teaching on the death penalty, or the exceedingly bad behavior of some of the shepherds in past or present times.

That’s a laundry list of things to tackle—I can’t do all of that here. But let’s focus on one issue: The notion that if a pope is ever wrong, then the whole project is trashed. If Francis or any other pope happens to teach (or even speak) error, “Then that proves it! The Church is wrecked” (or was always a failed thing).

After all, is not the pope the Vicar of Christ whose business is to teach divine truths without error? Is not his place as the supreme pastor to unfailingly guide the faithful into all truth by speaking—always—what’s true? Is he not the guardian of the deposit of faith and the unfailing sign of unity?

And should not the pope be morally impeccable? He does represent Christ, right?

The point is, if Catholics (and others) fail to understand precisely what the scope and authority of the pope is, especially as it relates to the power to define doctrine infallibly, they’ll quite easily spiral into endless spiritual disarray. It can be a real test of faith—and many fail it (perhaps through no fault of their own).

Hence the need to know exactly when and how a pope can infallibly define doctrine and when and how he does not.

So, let’s get started.

First of all, let’s address papal infallibility. When and how, precisely, can a pope define doctrines of faith or morals infallibly (without error)?

Here are the criteria outlined by Vatican I: In order to infallibly define doctrines of faith and morals, a pope must:

1. Exercise the full and official weight of his supreme office, which is often called teaching “ex cathedra,” a Latin phrase meaning “from the chair [of Peter].”
2. He must definitively define a doctrine of faith or morals. Anything outside of that category, such as saying stuff about science or the environment doesn’t qualify.
3. He must make his teaching binding on the entire Church—on all of the faithful.

When his teaching meets those criteria, it is an exercise of the extraordinary papal magisterium (teaching office). As such, his teaching is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit to be infallible. And, as such, it is irreformable. The faithful are required to give it the assent of divine and Catholic faith.

This is quite rare in the Church. Theologians think it’s happened about 8 or so times in history. The most recent example is the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, defined by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

Now, let’s look at what happens when a pope does not teach infallibly—which is nearly all the time.

The ordinary magisterial teaching of a pope on faith and morals is non-infallible (although it’s possible that he may be repeating infallibly defined doctrine). When a pope teaches non-infallibly, he is not guaranteed by the Holy Spirit to teach without error. In this case, the faithful are to give religious assent of intellect and will to his teaching, not, on the other hand, the assent of faith.

In very specific circumstances, after careful study of the evidence, based on the constant teaching of the Church in the past, and on an exceptional basis, it is sometimes possible to withhold religious assent of mind and will with regard to non-infallible teaching.

Why? Because it is possible for a pope to err in his ordinary teaching. That this should come as a surprise to anyone is, well … as surprising as it is unfortunate.

But what does all of this have to do with anything?

Some Catholics and others point to something a pope said or did that seems to be wrong theologically, and then conclude that the Church has failed. Next, more than a few Catholics jump ship. And non-Catholics say, “See! That’s why I’ll never be Catholic!”

The truth is, Christ did not guarantee the popes to be impeccable. No member of the Church is. Nor did he guarantee that everything a pope says is always error free in every circumstance. What he did guarantee is that the Church would be—and is—indefectible (Matt 16:18), which means the Church’s infallible teaching on faith and morals will stand indefinitely. It also means we can trust non-infallible teaching as the truth. If the magisterium makes an error vis-à-vis non-infallible teaching, it will get corrected over time. As a matter of faith, we know the magisterium will not leave the faithful in error habitually.

Often, Catholics are shocked when they learn that Pope Honorius was formally declared a heretic, or they’re scandalized to hear about the atrocities committed by Pope John XII.

But none of that—as much of a black mark as it is—undermines Church teaching on the papacy. Nor does it relegate the Church of Christ, the “pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15) to the ash heap.

The bottom line is that there have always been problems in the Church—and I’m not suggesting that we sweep them under the rug or paper over them. We should not be shocked to find problems at present. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church was and is indeed instituted by Christ for our salvation. She is the fullest means of grace, truth, and salvation. She is God’s plan for mankind.

There is no reason—no reason—to jettison the Church or deliberately remain outside her fold. There just isn’t.

And understanding the teaching authority of the Church is key to making sense of the mess.