Frequently someone who hates Pope Francis will call me a “papalolator,” or a “papal positivist,” or an “Ultramontanist,” or whatever the slur of the week is. Supposedly I think everything a pope says is infallible, or I think everything this pope says is infallible. And now this week, a Protestant apologist has decided that I think the papacy is “useless.” How wildly does Alt change with every new wind that blows! Said apologist is known on this blog as Steve “Purple” Hays. We’ve dueled before. Once upon a time, he imagined that I was trying to promote him to a bishoprick.
Did I say the papacy is useless? and other comedy from Steve Hays.
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 31, 2019 • Apologetics; papacy
Exsurge Domine was the bull excommunicating Martin Luther; and the pope lists forty-one “errors,” but takes care to point that the errors fall into different categories. “Some of these,” he says, “have already been condemned by councils and the constitutions of our predecessors, and expressly contain even the heresy of the Greeks and Bohemians. Other errors are either heretical, false, scandalous, or offensive to pious ears, as seductive of simple minds, originating with false exponents of the faith who in their proud curiosity yearn for the world’s glory …” 
A few months ago, when Taylor Marshall’s book Infiltration had just come out, someone asked me if I intended to write a review of it. I had no such interest, and already knew that Dave Armstrong planned to do so. But it occurred to me that it might help to put together, in a concise way, a documentation of Dr. Marshall’s frequent attacks on Pope Francis. (And as it turns out, he goes back in time and attacks every pope from Pius XII forward, as well as Vatican II.) I thought others might find this a valuable resource. 
Strictly speaking, “infallibility” covers whatever teachings fall under a divine guarantee to be free from any possibility of error. That does not mean, and never meant, that non-infallible teachings — the Ordinary Magisterium—do contain errors. Still less does it mean that the pope could under any circumstances teach heresy. Pope Pius XII says in Humani Generis 20: “Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority.” 
Those FaithfulCatholics™ who have been swallowing whole pharmacies of red pills over Pope Francis have a real problem. They want to reject his Magisterium, but deep down they know that’s not really consistent with their chest-thumping insistence on their own faithfulness. But if the conclave was illicit, if it broke the rules, if the pope’s not really the pope, then we have a license to throw all that out. We can get rid of Evangelii Gaudium, we can get rid of Laudato Si, we can get rid of Amoris Laetitia. And we can get rid of that pesky Bergoglio and call another conclave. 
No Catholic apologist I know defends, say, the Marian dogmas by telling us that the Church teaches the Marian dogmas and stopping there. The Catholic apologist does that no more than the Protestant apologist says “The Bible is true because it says so in the Bible.” It’s fair to assume that whoever we are trying to convince already knows that the Church, or the Bible, teaches these things. So we go further. I’m not going to convince Mr. Noodle that Mary was assumed into Heaven by saying, “Pope Pius XII taught this.” Noodle already knows.
When John Calvin reaches the “crowning point” of his rant against the “popish Mass,” he becomes truly incoherent. (As though he were not already.) Here’s the crowning point: “the sacred Supper, on which the Lord left the memorial of his passion formed and engraved, was taken away, hidden, and destroyed, when the Mass was erected.” So if I am to take Calvin at his plain word here, the Church has took the Eucharist away. The Church has hidden the Eucharist. The Church has indeed destroyed the Eucharist! 
Steve “Purple” Hays asks the question at Failablogue. (He calls it Triablogue, for optimistic reasons known to him alone.) I am happy to answer Mr. Hays’ question, which he puts like this: “Hypothetically, what would the magisterium have to do for devout Catholics (or Catholic apologists) to conclude that the Roman Catholic church never was the one true church founded by Jesus Christ? Can the magisterium ever do anything, in principle or practice, to discredit Roman Catholicism? … What’s the standard of fidelity?” In fact, there is.