By Mark Rhoads -
One of the most misunderstood beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church by Americans who are not Catholics is the doctrine of "Papal infallibility."
What does the doctrine mean with respect to the opinions of Pope Francis or any other Pope?
The dogma of the Roman Cahtolic Church is based on a belief that 2,000 years ago, Jesus made a promise to St. Peter that the Pope would be protected from the possibility of error "When, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church."
In other words, for the Pope's opinion to be an official belief of all Catholics, it must relate only to Church teaching about faith and morals and the Pope must be speaking ex Cathedra meaning from the Chair of Peter.
This happens very rarely in history. It only happened once in the last century in 1950 when Pope Pius XII defined the doctrine of the assumption of Mary into Heaven at the end of her life.
Any other personal opinion of the Pope on any other topic is not mandatory teaching of the Church and Catholics are free to disagree and dissent from the Pope. The Pope can be wrong about politics, economics, world cup soccer, the stock market, or cultural entertainment and Catholics are free to ignore his opinions if they think they are misguided.
Like any other person and maybe more so, Pope Francis can hold uninformed opinions on free enterprise, on climate change, or on international trade and Catholics are free to disagree or ignore his opinions if they think the opinions are not well informed. As a Roman Catholic, I join millions of others who reserve the right to be critical of Pope Francis when we think he wanders into topics he does not know much about, As a Jesuit from a South American dictatorship, I don't think Pope Francis knows very much about the practical blessings of free enterprise because he has no experience with how a good free market system works. Yet he often has offered uniformed opinions on this topic. I have also seen little in the opinions of Pope Francis that leads me to believe that he has really studied in detail the climate change debate and yet he does not shy away from offering his opinions, informed or not.
Because I do not want to invite the usual torrent of anti-Catholic diatribes that are still too common in America, I want to emphasize to my non-Catholic friends among Protestants and Jews that I think Pope Francis wants to be a good shepherd for his flock and I pray for him in his role as shepherd. I will defend the Pope when he is speaking on official church teaching on faith and morals. But no Pope has done that since 1950 and the personal opinions of Pope Francis on other topics that have been well covered in the secular press do not speak for me and many others as a Catholic or as a U.S. citizen. Pope Francis has a right to speak his personal opinions of course but he should be more careful to point out that they are his personal opinions and other Catholics retain the right to strongly disagree when we think Pope Francis is mistaken.
