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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.

Explaining Papal Infallibility

Audio only:

Questions Covered: 

  • 18:40 - Since Papal infallibility wasn’t defined till Vatican 1, how was a Catholic supposed to know when he was speaking infallibly? 
  • 21:36 - How can we explain the infallibility of the pope in a context that avoids seeing the limits as an excuse to ignore that which is not infallible? 
  • 32:25 - My cousin and her husband have started attending an independent Catholic Church (Society of Christ the King). Can I attend church with them even though they don’t accept papal infallibility? 
  • 36:58 - What declarations can a pope overrule from a previous pope? 
  • 46:00 - Why not just believe everything the pope says if it’s not really going to affect my life? 
  • 50:20 - I know the teachings on contraception were clarified by Pope John Paul II, I was told that Pope Francis overturned that teaching. Can he do that and is that true? 
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