53 sats \ 4 replies \ @freetx 10 Jul \ parent \ on: Do you know anyone that self identifies as a Christian Nationalist? meta
I generally agree with many of your points + I also have no desire to descend into sectarian arguments, but I think the concept of "papal infallibility" is widely misunderstood and often a red-herring argument.
- Not everything a pope says is 'infallible'
- "Papal Infallibility" is a very narrowly defined concept, that extends only to rulings of doctrinal nature formally ruled ex cathedra (as you said).
- These doctrinal issues are just that....things like nature of Trinity, Immaculate Conception, etc.
- Such infallible doctrinal issues only extend to "Divine Knowledge" (ie. The church recognizes 3 types of knowledge (a) Divine Knowledge, (b) Definite Knowledge, and (c) Ordinary Knowledge. The pope can only infallibly rule on Divine Knowledge, which are things expressly mentioned in the Bible).
- The pope is not considered "inerrant" (ie. the pope cannot claim "the sky is green" - moreover this would fall into Ordinary Knowledge that the pope cannot even infallibly rule on).
All social systems require a final authority that make doctrinal decisions (ie. SCOTUS, CEOs , etc) - and in the end "papal infallibility" is just a formalized name of that within Catholicism. I mean the Southern Baptist Convention could itself be designated as exactly such an authority.
Would you consider the SBC to be "infallible"?
Would you consider a Baptist President to be incapable of holding office because he is beholden to SBC?
Fair points on the Papel infallibility. I don't suppose Francis is going to issue anything of national strategic significance to America "from the chair" anytime soon.
With the SBC, I don't think they have a claim to exclusive truth to quite the same extent. My understanding is their claim is limited to speaking on behalf of the denomination, not for Christendom in totality. So a hypothetical Baptist president who took issue with a doctrinal position of the SBC could choose, for example, to leave the SBC and join some other baptist group, and still have a credible claim to be orthodox while also having confidence in his own individual salvation. The Roman church won't say it clearly these days, but my understanding is that orthodox Roman doctrine is essentially ex ecclesiam nulla salus, with the Roman church as the only "true church".
Also, at least the SBC is American. Someone being a faithful Roman Catholic is, in my mind, similar to someone who has a foreign nationality and a loyalty to a foreign government. Which is also an issue with the Biden administration, I believe, with Israeli-American dual nationals. That's a rabbit hole for another day.
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Rabbit or Rabbi hole? You can shoot me now
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Yep, as I said I pretty much agree with you....including that SBC is not quite exactly the same thing as "papal infallibility". But generally these arguments just become semantics at a certain point.
Moreover I do fully agree with your main point, that the founding fathers specifically wanted to craft a political system that expressly excluded Catholic / Anglican / any other external religious body from any official involvement in governance.
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2 Presidents have been Catholic:
JFK
Biden
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