( please read down the picture )
We have a great passage written by Dr. Scott Hahn about the mission of Vicar of Christ and Papal Infallibility :
Quote :
So when we look at the Pope, as we will this morning, we are going to be looking at him, not as some tyrant, not as some authoritarian "know-it-all" and not as some magician who can just kind of concoct a new revelation to satisfy all parties, or anything like that. We are going to be looking at a father figure that Christ has established over the family that He has purchased with His own blood.
Now, there are many misconceptions that people have. They sometimes think that the teaching of the Church is that the Pope is infallible; therefore, he can't sin. That's nonsense, although the present Pontiff goes to confession, I understand, at least once a week. He's got to have something to confess for it to be a valid sacrament administered to him. Others think that he always says the best thing at the right time. No, the Church has never insisted upon the fact that the Pope will always say the best thing at the right time. Rather, the teaching of the Church would allow for the Pope perhaps to postpone out of cowardice, a right thing. Or when he says the truth, when he teaches the truth, he might do so in a way that includes an ambiguity.
So we are responsible as Catholics to understand, not only what the Church teaches, but what the Church doesn't teach to help clear up these misconceptions. The Church teaches in a simple summary that the Holy Father, the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, as the successor to Peter and the Vicar of Christ, when he speaks as the universal teacher from the Chair of Peter in defining faith and morals does so with an infallible charism or an infallible gift through the Holy Spirit so that we can give to him the full assent of our intellect and our will, and we can hear the voice of Christ coming to us through the voice of the Pope when he is speaking in this capacity.
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Infallibility, in a sense, is a negative gift. It doesn't mean he always says the right thing, it's always the right time; but that when he speaks with the authority that Christ gives to him, we have this Divine guarantee, because Christ promises that "I will build my Church." The Church of Christ is not a human institution first and foremost. Jesus identifies it as His own. "My church" and the institution and edification and up-building of the Church Jesus claims for himself, "I will build my Church." So, whatever instruments that Jesus chooses to use, ultimately are going to be under His control and He is going to be using them with this ultimate intention in mind, of building His Church, of governing His family and thus bringing about the guarantee that He imparts in Matthew 16, as we will see, that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, and will not prevail against the Rock which is Peter and the Popes who are in the line of succession with Peter.
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One of the greatest Protestant Biblical scholars of the century supports this -- W. F. Albright, in his Anchor Bible Commentary on Matthew. I opened it up. I was surprised to see, "Peter as the Rock will be the foundation of the future community, the church. Jesus here uses Aramaic and so only the Aramaic word which would serve His purpose. In view of the background in verse 19, one must dismiss as confessional interpretation any attempt to see this rock as the faith or the confession of Peter."
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