I realized that there was a part of Mr. Jerrymanda101's response to me that I missed talking about, mostly because I was unsure what he was referring to and why it was relevant to what we were discussing:
Secondly. you're clearly clueless as to the Church's teaching on Papal Infallibility:
wikipedia(DOT)org/wiki/Papal_infallibility
What does Papal Infallibility have to do with Ratzinger's involvement in the cover-up of the pedophilia scandal? I then realized that this part of his response to me was referring to a seperate conversation I was having with another youtuber in the comments section of his video. My comment was this:
But the Pope himself doesn't refute the evidence of his involvement, so either Jerry admits that the Pope was in fact involved in the coverup or say the Pope is wrong, which doesn't work cause he's supposed to be infallible, so that's a little twisty.
Evidently this is a seperate issue, but what the hell, let's address this one too.
Admittedly I was not very clear as to what I meant, danged 500 character limit. When I say that the Pope does not refute the claims, I really should have said that the Pope didn't, at least to my knowledge, not only deny covering it up, but condemn the coverup. He half acknowledged that the Catholic Church caused pain to the victims who were abused (no shit Sherlock), but there was no apology for it, no saying we should not have created an environment in which these abusers thrived. We were wrong, I am sorry. The question becomes this, do you side with Ratzinger, and not think that covering up and moving around kiddie rapists is a big deal (I mean, I'm sure they repented in confession before getting shipped to a different parish, yeesh what more do you want), or do you think the Pope himself is wrong? I'm going with he's wrong (and a motherfucker), but then again I'm not constrained by papal infallibility.
So let's take a look shall we? Let's look at Jerry's own link and see what it says:
Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the pope is preserved from even the possibility of error[1] when in his official capacity he solemnly declares or promulgates to the universal Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals. It is also taught that the Holy Spirit works in the body of the Church, as sensus fidelium, to ensure that dogmatic teachings proclaimed to be infallible will be received by all Catholics. This dogma, however, does not state either that the pope cannot sin in his own personal life or that he is necessarily free of error, even when speaking in his official capacity, outside the specific contexts in which the dogma applies.
Woo, convoluted much? How can you, in the same definition, declare that by the action of the Holy Spirit the guy is "preserved from even the possibility of error", while at the same time say that this "does not [mean] that the pope (...) is necessarily free of error, even when speaking in his official capacity"?! Either he's preserved from error or not.
Clearly it's an ass-covering and I get that. They have to make sure that if the Pope makes a slip of the tongue, like says that the capital of Australia is Sydney or something stupid like that, his Catholic followers don't have to believe it to be true for the rest of time just because the infallible pope misspoke. Crafty little maneuvoring there, but OK, I'll give them that one. However, this has nothing to do with what I perceived to be part of papal infallibility in my comment there.
Nor does my comment have anything to do with sin. I am fully aware that the pope is capable of sinning, popes have been responsible for some terrible stuff throughout history, and really so long as you confess and repent catholics have no problem with sin anyway (who hears the pope's confession by the way? Someone further down in the priesthood than himself, or does he confess directly to God?), so sin has nothing to do with this. What I am referring to is that papal infallibility should be covering what the pope believes about morality.
I am saying that if the current pope has no moral objection to covering up a sex abuse scandal within the church and not allowing victims to go to the authorities, then you have to agree with that morally if you are to believe in papal infallibility. Am I wrong? Does papal infallibilty not cover at least that?
If I am wrong, and Papal Infallibility does prevent the pope from
A) Sinning
B) Making a factual error
C) Believing an immoral act to be moral
then the Holy Spirit is not doing a very good job of preserving the man from even the possibility of error now is he?
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