are the conditions of infalibillity ever even met?

[SpiritualAntiseptic]

You keep saying "one perverts the sexual act and one doesn't" but you haven't given any cohesive reason for saying that beyond repeating it in different words; it's obviously self-evidently true to you and not at all to me.

Because you seem only interested in the end result as the determination of morality.

 

[SpiritualAntiseptic]

Do you really believe that?

I can't possibly imagine how sin could the the result of multiple periods of time. That makes absolutely no sense.

 

[ebia]

Because you seem only interested in the end result as the determination of morality.

The end result is one easily understood determination, but I'll settle for an alternative - but it actually has to explain, that is, it has to take me from where I am to understanding. Keep saying "one is distorted and one is not" doesn't do that.

 

[SpiritualAntiseptic]

The end result is one easily understood determination, but I'll settle for an alternative - but it actually has to explain, that is, it has to take me from where I am to understanding. Keep saying "one is distorted and one is not" doesn't do that.

Then the problem is in your philosophical outlook.

If I accept or reject a particular premise, then I am going to reject any argument not in line with it.

 

[ebia]

Then the problem is in your philosophical outlook.

If I accept or reject a particular premise, then I am going to reject any argument not in line with it.

I'm looking for a way I can make sense of your position. So far I'm not getting that. Telling me "the problem is [my] philosophic outlook" doesn't really help.

 

[SpiritualAntiseptic]

I'm looking for a way I can make sense of your position. So far I'm not getting that. Telling me "the problem is [my] philosophic outlook" doesn't really help.

I am sure you are being genuine in your desire to understand the issue. I am not going to insult your intelligence by dancing around the fact that it comes down to what you accept about the universe.

for example, if a person believes the only truth that can be known is through empirical evidence, then there is no reason to try and prove God to them. It is impossible under their accept premises.

If you believe that if the result of different acts makes the morality of the means equal, then there is no use discussing it further.

 

[ebia]

I am sure you are being genuine in your desire to understand the issue. I am not going to insult your intelligence by dancing around the fact that it comes down to what you accept about the universe.

for example, if a person believes the only truth that can be known is through empirical evidence, then there is no reason to try and prove God to them. It is impossible under their accept premises.

If you believe that if the result of different acts makes the morality of the means equal, then there is no use discussing it further.

I don't hold that similar result necessarly means similar morality, but lacking a difference in result I'm looking to be shown a difference somewhere else. We certainly don't need to be working in a utilitarian framework.

 

[MrPolo]

Ebia - I take it you have nothing to say of Christ as bridegroom reflecting why the summit of marriage must be an unbridled giving of self?

 

[Standing Up]

Vatican II says: ‘The Bishops proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, they maintain the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, authentically teach matters of faith and morals, and are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held.’
Lumen Gentium § 25b.

Five conditions are therefore required:

Collegial action.
It is clear that the bishops must be involved in an exercise of teaching authority as one body.

As ‘judges’.
The bishops must be free to express their own considered opinion.

In service of the faith of the whole Church.
The bishops must listen to the Word of God and the ‘sensus fidelium’.

Regarding faith and morals.
The teaching must concern matters relating to the object of faith.

In a teaching consciously imposed as ‘definitive’.
The bishops must want to impose the doctrine as definitely to be held.


I don't believe there has ever been a single infallible decision that would mee this criteria.


additionally, I need someone to define what "regarding faith and morals" truly encompasses, as It shifts around like a sapling in a windstorm when you try and pin it down.

The connection of Pope Honorius I. (Oct. 27, 625, to Oct. 12, 638) with the Monotheletic heresy has a special interest in its bearing upon the dogma of papal infallibility, which stands or falls with a single official error, according to the principle: Si falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. It was fully discussed by Catholic scholars on both sides before and during the Vatican Council of 1870, which proclaimed that dogma, but could not alter the facts of history. The following points are established by the best documentary evidence:
History of the Christian Church, Volume IV: Mediaeval Christianity. A.D. 590-1073. | Christian Classics Ethereal Library

 

[Korah]

Your claim is unsubstantiated. What dispute there is, is not coming from the Magisterium but rather spear-headed by dissenting Catholics and people outside the formal boundaries Church who cannot alter the Church's teaching on morality. Perhaps they don't like the Church's teaching which goes against their sexual desires. Rather, Catholic magisterial documents consistently speak of the objective immorality of contraception, such as any USCCB doc on contraception, Paul VI's Humanae Vitae, Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body, the Catechism, not to mention the teaching of the historical Church affirmed by the Magisterial doc Vademecum for Confessors which clearly said, "The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful."

The magisterium has spoken consistently. At a minimum, even the wiliest dissident is faced with the consistent teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium making this teaching infallible. Your watering down the certainty of this teaching from the Church is not accurate or realistic. Even if UB were to switch out "infallible" with "the highest certainty" the point he was trying to make would still stand. There is no indication that the Church's teaching on birth control resembles a pius theory like limbo which was always posited as a possibility rather than as a truth. UB is right to recognize contraception as evil in the eyes of the Church.

I was a devout, practicing RC from 1969 to 1992. I did not believe nor did I hear anyone say that any RC teaching on birth control was infallible. Nor has there been any infallible pronouncement since (comparable to IC and the Assumption). What made it infallible since 1992?
Nor during those 23 years did I ever hear the term, "Ordinary Magisterium". Is all this stuff just made up by EWTN types?

 

[LittleLambofJesus]

I was a devout, practicing RC from 1969 to 1992. I did not believe nor did I hear anyone say that any RC teaching on birth control was infallible. Nor has there been any infallible pronouncement since (comparable to IC and the Assumption). What made it infallible since 1992?
Nor during those 23 years did I ever hear the term, "Ordinary Magisterium". Is all this stuff just made up by EWTN types?

http://www.christianforums.com/f26/

http://www.christianforums.com/t7490292-14/#post55446770

Birth control?? Just out of curiousity??

quote OP:
I know that birth control is supposed to be wrong in marriage unless your using NFP. I was always confused by this and never understood why. All I've heard about hormonal birth control is that it can cause early abortions and if that's the case I understand why, but why not condoms or other methods? If your married I don't see the big deal.
NFP is cycle prediction but it's not 100% so you are open to children but condoms and the sort aren't 100% either so I guess i'd just like some clarification.

 

[MrPolo]

I was a devout, practicing RC from 1969 to 1992. I did not believe nor did I hear anyone say that any RC teaching on birth control was infallible. Nor has there been any infallible pronouncement since (comparable to IC and the Assumption). What made it infallible since 1992?
Nor during those 23 years did I ever hear the term, "Ordinary Magisterium". Is all this stuff just made up by EWTN types?

Catechesis had not been great for a few decades up until organizations like Catholic Answers stepped up to the task in the 90s. But ultimately your personal experience is irrelevant as to whether or not the Church has pronounced a teaching.

 

[Uphill Battle]

They are two different things. One is a series of different actions (sex) and inactions (abstaining). The other is a single action that has been changed from its normal state. Sex with contraception is giving oneself partially to their spouse during sex, thus objectifying and twisting the marital act. You have a specific action which has been made sinful by alteration. Sin is usually something which is good that is altered or improperly done in some way. Eating is good, gluttony is not. Sex is good, prostitution is not, etc.


NFP does not change any aspect of the act itself. Abstaining from sex is not a sin. Thus, NFP is a method of choosing when to have sex that in no way changes the sexual act. Abstaining from sex during certain periods is not a sin.

I know that's what you think of it.

I do not.

the mind is also a sexual organ, and if they are avoiding sex at certain times to avoid pregnancy, it is a birth control method.

 

[Korah]

Catechesis had not been great for a few decades up until organizations like Catholic Answers stepped up to the task in the 90s. But ultimately your personal experience is irrelevant as to whether or not the Church has pronounced a teaching.

Hey, I was right!
It is just EWTN types! And I've never heard Catholic Answers claim that the teaching on birth control is infallible. Got a program number and speaker?
And wouldn't Sungenis say that Geocentrism is an infallible teaching? Or any St. Pius X priests that non-Catholics are all going to Hell? So it goes....

 

[MrPolo]

And I've never heard Catholic Answers claim that the teaching on birth control is infallible. Got a program number and speaker?

Search the word "birth" on this Q&A page at the Catholic Answers website. There might be other pages too, but this one gives the example you request. I don't have transcripts of the radio show to see if I can find you a radio episode echoing that sentiment.

 

[Korah]

Search the word "birth" on this Q&A page at the Catholic Answers website. There might be other pages too, but this one gives the example you request. I don't have transcripts of the radio show to see if I can find you a radio episode echoing that sentiment.

I came up first with almost the opposite to what you claim.
Then I checked again, and found "infallible" coming up several times at the end of their first-listed piece But always the word is outside any cited material from any magisterial source (much less an ecumenical council or an infallible papal pronouncement, and certainly not the Bible). There is a Nihil Obstat at the end, but that never meant very much. So we're just dealing with the uninfallible opinion of some un-named person at Catholic Answers.

 

[MrPolo]

So we're just dealing with the uninfallible opinion of some un-named person at Catholic Answers.

Sentient Catholics don't scruple about their own infallibility. Just because I'm not infallible, I'm not some psycho who breaks into a cold sweat at night wondering if the consistent Church teaching on birth control has met the criteria for infallibility via the Ordinary Magisterium. I think it's obvious that it has been taught definitively and infallibly, and I'm not going to worry about people who can't see the consistency of the teaching. Funny enough, I cited the infallibility of this teaching via the Ordinary Magisterium even before I saw the Catholic Answers page saying the same thing.

Plus, all of us must make reasoned decisions, including answering the question of whether there is a God, even though we are fallible. Despite that reality, there will always be non-Catholics who demand that Catholics scruple about their certainty of Church teaching. These critics will not hold their own view of Biblical infallibility, or that they could be fallible in saying there's a God, to the same standard. Will the honest critic admit that he is fallible and thus argue that we have no cause to trust the Bible or that we who say there is a God are saying it as fallible persons? Will the honest critic make sure you know that his very criticism is neither infallibile, and thus we should dismiss the critic's contra-Catholic rant as quickly as he wishes us to dismiss Catholicism for the same reason?

Ultimately, such critics have no effect on the Church's infallibility and they discredit their own belief system entirely.

 

[Rick Otto]

Sentient Catholics don't scruple about their own infallibility. Just because I'm not infallible, I'm not some psycho who breaks into a cold sweat at night wondering if the consistent Church teaching on birth control has met the criteria for infallibility via the Ordinary Magisterium. I think it's obvious that it has been taught definitively and infallibly, and I'm not going to worry about people who can't see the consistency of the teaching. Funny enough, I cited the infallibility of this teaching via the Ordinary Magisterium even before I saw the Catholic Answers page saying the same thing.

Plus, all of us must make reasoned decisions, including answering the question of whether there is a God, even though we are fallible. Despite that reality, there will always be non-Catholics who demand that Catholics scruple about their certainty of Church teaching. These critics will not hold their own view of Biblical infallibility, or that they could be fallible in saying there's a God, to the same standard. Will the honest critic admit that he is fallible and thus argue that we have no cause to trust the Bible or that we who say there is a God are saying it as fallible persons? Will the honest critic make sure you know that his very criticism is neither infallibile, and thus we should dismiss the critic's contra-Catholic rant as quickly as he wishes us to dismiss Catholicism for the same reason?

Ultimately, such critics have no effect on the Church's infallibility and they discredit their own belief system entirely.

LOL,... it's the inconsistency attached to the fear that only attends what keeps me up at night,... or used to when I was a young RC.
Add an iota of doubt to an ounce of raging hormones,... well, we can pray for reason to prevail. Looking to leadership for honesty in any of the sects can be dicy nowadays as far discrediting belief systems goes.

 

[LittleLambofJesus]

*snip*
Sentient Catholics don't scruple about their own infallibility. Just because I'm not infallible, I'm not some psycho who breaks into a cold sweat at night wondering if the consistent Church teaching on birth control has met the criteria for infallibility via the Ordinary Magisterium.

Who here has implied you were a pscho

 

[Uphill Battle]

Sentient Catholics don't scruple about their own infallibility. Just because I'm not infallible, I'm not some psycho who breaks into a cold sweat at night wondering if the consistent Church teaching on birth control has met the criteria for infallibility via the Ordinary Magisterium. I think it's obvious that it has been taught definitively and infallibly, and I'm not going to worry about people who can't see the consistency of the teaching. Funny enough, I cited the infallibility of this teaching via the Ordinary Magisterium even before I saw the Catholic Answers page saying the same thing.

Plus, all of us must make reasoned decisions, including answering the question of whether there is a God, even though we are fallible. Despite that reality, there will always be non-Catholics who demand that Catholics scruple about their certainty of Church teaching. These critics will not hold their own view of Biblical infallibility, or that they could be fallible in saying there's a God, to the same standard. Will the honest critic admit that he is fallible and thus argue that we have no cause to trust the Bible or that we who say there is a God are saying it as fallible persons? Will the honest critic make sure you know that his very criticism is neither infallibile, and thus we should dismiss the critic's contra-Catholic rant as quickly as he wishes us to dismiss Catholicism for the same reason?

Ultimately, such critics have no effect on the Church's infallibility and they discredit their own belief system entirely.

"there is a God" is a fallible statement.

Faith isn't faith without the possibility that we're wrong.