ialmisry said:
But take Pastor Aeternus, laying aside the tautology that it is infallible because it says he speaks infallibly: as Fr. Ambrose has actually posted, the Anglo-Irish Catechism of 1870, with its imprematur, states that "infallibility is a Protestant lie" claiming that it was a caricuture and slur that Protestants made against the papacy.
Because of my Irish background Keenan's Catechism fascinates me.
Keenan's Catechism was used throughout England and Ireland and parts of the United States. It used to be published n the UK by Burnes and Oates, the UK publishers to the Holy See.
The Irish and the English were taught to explicitly deny papal infallibility.
This Anglo-Irish Catechism contained the following question:
.......... (Q) Must not Catholics believe the Pope in himself to be infallible?
.......... (A) This is a Protestant invention: it is no article of the Catholic faith.
Every little Catholic boy and girl learnt this by heart. The Pope is not infallible.
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In 1826, in the time of Pope Leo XII, the Bishops of Ireland wrote to the faithful Catholics of Ireland a
"Declaration of the Archbishops and Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland" :
"The Catholics of Ireland declare their belief that it is not an article of the Catholic faith, neither are they required to believe, that the Pope is infallible."
Of course 40 years later in 1870 when the Pope was declared infallible, the poor Irish bishops, probably now in some sort of material heresy, had to hastily backtrack and try to forget that they had ever taught their people that he was not.
They were also obliged to change Keenan's Catechism and its teaching. What was Catholic teaching in 1869 had become heresy in 1870.
After Vatican I and 1870, the question was omitted from the Catechism, but 26 years later in 1896, the following was added:
.......... "Q: Is the Pope infallible?
.......... A: Yes, the Pope is infallible.
.......... Q: But some Catholics, before the Vatican Council, denied the infallibility of the Pope, which was impugned by this very Catechism.
.......... A: Yes, they did so under the usual reservation, insofar as they then could grasp the mind of the Church, and subject to her future definitions, thus implicitly accepting the dogma."
Does anybody other than me have to smile at the logic of that last answer? Declaring that the Pope is not infallible is an implicit assertion that he is! :laugh:
God bless,
Fr Ambrose o..o~