re sspx schism from jhpb sarto budd lake nj us joseph h buehler many catholics will decide to side with the pope there is some soundness in this because the papacy is infallible so eventually some pope will straighten all this out but on the other hand there is also unsoundness in this in that in the short term the popes may indeed be wrong and such catholics are doing nothing to help the situation by obeying them where they re wrong in fact if the situation is grave enough they sin in obeying him at the very least they re wasting a great opportunity because they are failing to love christ in a heroic way at the very time that he needs this badly joe your logic excapes me if the papacy is infallible and this is a matter of faith then the pope cannot be wrong if on the other hand this is not a matter of faith but a matter of church law then we should still obey as the pope is the legal head of the church in other words given the doctrine of infallibility we have no choice but to obey bob bob van cleef peace be revc garg campbell ca us the land of garg bbs unto you bbs you might want to look at the faq on infallibility the doctrine on infallibility does not say that the pope is always right all catholic theologians acknowledge that there have been a number of occasions when the pope was wrong there appear to be two aspects to infallibility one is a general concept that in the long run the church is protected from serious error however this does not mean that it s impossible for it to take wrong turns at one time or another the more specific concept of papal infallibility is that in very specific circumstances a papal statement can be known to be infallible however a relatively small fraction of statements meet those criteria this does not absolve catholics from the duty to obey even ordinary teachings of the pope however only a few teachings are made in a way that is explicitly infallible clh
