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.”
“Not Infallible” does not mean “Contains Errors.”
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 19, 2019 • Apologetics; Papal Infallibility
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.
Cardinal Müller claims women’s ordination is impossible. He has Amazon Synod Derangement Syndrome, and has called it a “wrecking ball” bent on “restructuring the Universal Church.” We learn from this that the cardinal is very inept with metaphor, since wrecking balls don’t “restructure” anything. Maybe this is a minor problem. The bigger issue with Müller is that he says no pope, no synod, no council “could make possible the ordination of women as bishop, priest, or deacon.” “It would be invalid,” Müller says. 
Dean Dettloff at America Magazine seems to think there is one, but he doesn’t give us a Catholic case for Communism either. Much of his article is spent telling us that many Communists are very nice people, and they’re not all atheists, and a lot of their goals are things the Catholic Church is friendly to. I’m surprised any of that is in dispute. Dettloff does not tell us why Communism is a good way to achieve any of them; he just tells us the goals are nice. Nor does he account for St. John Paul II’s words condemning Communism in Centessimus Annus.
Mr. Pavone is so much more than a Trump apologist; he struts and waves pompoms for the stable genius, and he will not be caught protesting anything, unless it’s abortion. Good Mr. Pavone loves America, and babies. And because he loves babies, he has typed many hundreds of characters on Twitter defending the separation of children from their families. That’s what happens when you violate the law, he says. (And the children at the border are a very different set of babies than the infinitely more precious babies yet to be born.)
But Alt! But Alt! When the Church says deportation is evil, it has in mind the deportations that took place in World War II. You know, like that pic. That’s the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Jews were citizens. The Church doesn’t have in mind deportation of criminals who are in a country illegally. The Church has never taught that all deportation is evil.” Is that so? Is it? Now, you know, dear reader, I believe in going to Church texts to find out what the Church teaches. So in this case, I’m going to go to Veritatis Splendor 80, where Pope John Paul II defines “intrinsic evil.” 
In their generous service to the gospel ideal, some priests feel drawn to political involvement in order to help more effectively in reforming political life and in eliminating injustices, exploitation, and every type of oppression. The Church reminds them that on this road it is easy to be caught in partisan strife, with the risk of helping not to bring about the just world for which they long, but new and worse ways of exploiting poor people. In any case they must know that they have neither the mission nor the charism from above for this political involvement and activism.”
“It will not do,” John Calvin cries, “to say that the only ground on which we obtain forgiveness of sins is in the mass, because it has been already purchased by the death of Christ.” Protestants love false dichotomies: The Mass or the death of Christ; as though they are different. But no. The Mass is the death of Christ. It is not, as I pointed out in the last segment, a new death of Christ, but the same sacrifice done in obedience to Luke 22:19. (Do this is sacrificial language; the Mass is not a bare commemoration.) But Calvin, being Calvin, will have none of that. 
A legion of Taylor Marshall’s defenders seem to have picked up this claim from the false prophet himself: Demons speak the truth during exorcism; for they are compelled to by the power of Christ. One perhaps should be grateful they are attributing this truth-telling to the power of Christ rather than the demons’ native honesty. Small favors. Dr. Marshall never cited any source for the claim that demons tell the truth during an exorcism; he just said it’s “what I’ve been told.” He didn’t even do us the courtesy of mentioning who told him so. 
Very early in this chapter, John Calvin is already making claims that are painfully easy to disprove. He has grown desperate. “What is the direct aim of the mass,” he cries, “but just to put Christ again to death, if that were possible?” I’m glad he admits it’s not possible. That’s a first. Just before this, Calvin claimed that the Mass “overthrows the cross of Christ,” but nowhere says that that’s not possible. Though he seasons it with caution, Calvin grows more wreckless in his charges. You’d think we were processing Christ down the aisle in thorns.
Some years ago, I came across an audio file of part of the exorcism of Anneleise Michel. Probably I had just watched “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and was curious about the true story. Things like that interest me, but I don’t recommend you get interested; the audio, even in a language I could not understand, unsettled me. After Taylor Marshall recorded a ninety-minute podcast promoting things the demons said during the exorcism, I thought: Wait. Demons are liars. “There is no truth in him,” Jesus said. “He is a liar and the father of lies.” 
Too many people imagine that infallibility means nothing in the Church can change. They treat Church teachings or traditions as though they are museum pieces and must be kept in protective glass. It is not thus. The Church may grow in its understanding even of its infallible teachings, such as the Eucharist being the body and blood of Jesus Christ. So when change occurs before our eyes, there are those who panic and speak of crisis. But infallibility is not meant to force the Magisterium into an old wineskin. This is why the Magisterium is living.