Papal infallibility does not mean a pope can’t sin. [Part 3.1 of a series.]

ow that we have seen how the Church defines infal­li­bil­i­ty at Vat­i­can I, we can turn to what infal­li­bil­i­ty does not mean. And the first thing it does not mean is that a pope can nev­er sin. Catholics would have to deny their own Church his­to­ry to believe this claim, typ­i­cal­ly made by anti-Catholic Protes­tants. The Calvin­ist pas­tor Dr. John MacArthur is an exam­ple of some­one who has made this error—I cite him as one of many. In a ser­mon of May 1, 2005 (part of a series enti­tled “Explain­ing the Heresy of Catholi­cism”), Dr. MacArthur said:

John Paul II apol­o­gized for the his­tor­i­cal fail­ings of Catholics in a very vague way, because when he was con­front­ed with some of the issues of the past, some of the embar­rass­ing things like forced con­ver­sion and anti-Semi­tism and some of the hor­ri­ble things that were done, he apol­o­gized in a vague way. And you have to under­stand this. Now, how can you apol­o­gize if you’re infal­li­ble? How can an infal­li­ble church apol­o­gize?

Else­where, Dr. MacArthur quot­ed the def­i­n­i­tion from Vat­i­can I accu­rate­ly enough, so it’s per­plex­ing why he would make this mis­take here and treat the sins of the Church as though they con­tra­dict­ed papal infal­li­bil­i­ty. Does he think sins are ex cathe­dra def­i­n­i­tions? If Pope Fran­cis takes a mis­tress, is he teach­ing that God has revealed popes shall have mis­tress­es? Dr. MacArthur does­n’t say.

What’s cer­tain is that Vat­i­can I does not say either, because its for­mal def­i­n­i­tion fails to name the behav­ior of popes as a cri­te­ria for infal­li­bil­i­ty.

Despite this fail­ure of Vat­i­can I to con­firm the errors of the anti-Catholics, many still cite Gala­tians 2:11–14 as though it refutes Pas­tor Aeter­nus. In Gala­tians, St. Paul records a sin of the first pope, St. Peter.

But when Peter came to Anti­och, I opposed him in pub­lic, because he was clear­ly wrong. Before some men who had been sent by James arrived there, Peter had been eat­ing with the Gen­tile believ­ers. But after these men arrived, he drew back and would not eat with the Gen­tiles, because he was afraid of those who were in favor of cir­cum­cis­ing them. The oth­er Jew­ish believ­ers also start­ed act­ing like cow­ards along with Peter; and even Barn­abas was swept along by their cow­ard­ly action. When I saw that they were not walk­ing a straight path in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you have been liv­ing like a Gen­tile, not like a Jew. How, then, can you try to force Gen­tiles to live like Jews?”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, over the past ten years, even some Catholics have cit­ed this text as though it gives them a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to reject teach­ings of Pope Fran­cis they don’t like. (See this arti­cle of mine from 2017.)

But Paul does not rebuke Peter over any false teach­ing. On the issue in question—that Gen­tile con­verts did not need to be circumcised—Peter’s teach­ing was cor­rect. In Acts 15, St. Luke records Peter’s teach­ing at the Coun­cil of Jerusalem:

Now there­fore why do you make tri­al of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the dis­ci­ples which nei­ther our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we shall be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. … There­fore my judg­ment is that we should not trou­ble those of the Gen­tiles who turn to God. (Acts 15:10–11, 19)

I not­ed in 2017 that Paul taught this him­self with some vehe­mence.

• “Are you so fool­ish? After begin­ning by means of the Spir­it, are you now try­ing to fin­ish by means of the flesh?” (Gala­tians 3:3)
• “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let your­selves be cir­cum­cised, Christ will be of no val­ue to you at all.” (Gala­tians 5:2)
• “As for those agi­ta­tors [who advo­cate cir­cum­ci­sion], I wish they would go the whole way and cas­trate them­selves!” (Gala­tians 5:12).

Paul hard­ly rejects Peter’s teach­ing. Instead he rebukes Peter for hypocrisy and cow­ardice: Peter was not fol­low­ing his own teach­ing. He taught that con­verts need not be cir­cum­cised, then avoid­ed those same peo­ple so as not to anger the peo­ple who reject­ed the Coun­cil of Jerusalem. Peter did not teach error; he sinned.

You can only cite Gala­tians as a proof-text against infal­li­bil­i­ty if you think infal­li­bil­i­ty means popes don’t sin.

But popes do. The his­tor­i­cal record is full of popes who were noto­ri­ous sin­ners, and Catholics don’t try to cov­er any of it up. The details are all over the Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia, pub­lished with a nihil obstat. I am hap­py to acknowl­edge the whole cat­a­log of papal sin.

• Pope Stephen VI (896–897) exhumed the corpse of his pre­de­ces­sor.

Prob­a­bly act­ing under com­pul­sion from the Holy Roman Emper­or, Lam­bert, Stephen ordered the body of For­mo­sus to be dug up to stand tri­al before an “unwill­ing syn­od,” since known as the Cadav­er Syn­od. The syn­od found For­mo­sus guilty for “per­form­ing the func­tions of a bish­op when he had been deposed.” Emper­or Lam­bert had real­ly been upset over For­mo­sus’s sup­port of a polit­i­cal rival, Arnulf of Carinthia, and Stephen VI was will­ing to act at Lam­bert’s behest. Accord­ing to the Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia,

The corpse was then stripped of its sacred vest­ments, deprived of two fin­gers of its right hand, clad in the garb of a lay­man, and ulti­mate­ly thrown into the Tiber.

A lat­er pope had the poor corpse of For­mo­sus retrieved from the Tiber and prop­er­ly buried.

• Pope John XII (955–964) was “a coarse, immoral man, whose life was such that the Lat­er­an was spo­ken of as a broth­el.”

On Novem­ber 6, 963, a syn­od in Rome for­mal­ly accused him of “sac­ri­lege, simo­ny, per­jury, mur­der, adul­tery, and incest,” but John XII refused to defend him­self, called the syn­od ille­git­i­mate, and excom­mu­ni­cat­ed all its mem­bers. At that point the syn­od attempt­ed to depose John and replace him with a new pope, although such a pro­ceed­ing was not valid under canon law. The pope exact­ed blood­thirsty revenge against his syn­od oppo­nents who tried to depose him:

Car­di­nal-Dea­con John had his right hand struck off, Bish­op Otgar of Spey­er was scourged, a high pala­tine offi­cial lost nose and ears.

Those who sur­vived were excom­mu­ni­cat­ed, but only sev­er­al months lat­er, in May of 964, John XII died after being struck by paral­y­sis in the act of adul­tery. God had the last laugh against this suc­ces­sor of St. Peter.

• Pope Urban VI (1378–1379) had ene­my car­di­nals tor­tured and com­plained their screams weren’t loud enough.

It is no defense of Urban to note that this was dur­ing the West­ern Schism, that his reign began just after the end of the Avi­gnon Papa­cy, that most of Europe believed that Clement VII was the true pope, and that a plot was under­way to arrest and depose him.

• Pope Six­tus IV (1414–1484) was guilty of nepo­tism and con­spir­a­cy.

In his defense, Six­tus also over­saw the cre­ation the Sis­tine Chapel and the Vat­i­can Library, and he sup­pressed the abus­es of the Inqui­si­tion.

On the oth­er hand, he appoint­ed rel­a­tives as car­di­nals and con­spired with the Pazzi to dis­place the Medici.

• Pope Inno­cent VIII (1484–1492) had eight ille­git­i­mate chil­dren.

The Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia also points out that, in order to increase funds in the Vat­i­can trea­sury, he cre­at­ed offices and sold them to the high­est bid­der.

• Pope Alexan­der VI (1492–1503) became pope through bribery, and his noto­ri­ous papa­cy was marked by con­spir­a­cy, for­ni­ca­tion, and incest.

The pope him­self acknowl­edged father­ing sev­er­al chil­dren with mis­tress­es.

• Pope Paul IV (1555–1559) was an anti-Semi­te who cre­at­ed a Jew­ish ghet­to in Rome and forced Jew­ish cit­i­zens to wear yel­low hats.

He did this by means of a papal bull, Cum nimis absur­dum, issued on July 14, 1555. The bull begins with a flour­ish of extrav­a­gance:

Since it is absurd and utter­ly incon­ve­nient that the Jews, who through their own fault were con­demned by God to eter­nal slav­ery, can under the pre­text that pious Chris­tians must accept them and sus­tain their habi­ta­tion, are so ungrate­ful to Chris­tians, as, instead of thanks for gra­cious treat­ment, they return con­tu­me­ly, and among them­selves, instead of the slav­ery, which they deserve, they man­age to claim supe­ri­or­i­ty.

It is impor­tant to note that a bull is a decree of the pope, not a teach­ing. The sense is “I order this,” not “I teach this”; and so it does not fall under the cat­e­go­ry of infal­li­bil­i­ty. A pope can sin through an offi­cial bull just as eas­i­ly as he can sin in pri­vate with a mis­tress.

•••

Catholics have nev­er hid­den the sins of their popes; those sins scream out from the pages of the Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia. We have no rea­son to hide them, as though it con­tra­dicts the Church’s teach­ing on papal infal­li­bil­i­ty. The teach­ing is that popes do not err when they act ex cathe­dra and define a teach­ing to be held by the whole church. The teach­ing is not that popes do not err in any of their pri­vate or pub­lic actions. Popes go to con­fes­sion all the time, which means that they sin all the time. Only Jesus and Mary nev­er sinned.