infallibility

infallibility , in Christian thought, exemption from the possibility of error, bestowed on the church as a teaching authority, as a gift of the Holy Spirit. It has been believed since the earliest times to be guaranteed in such scriptural passages as John 14.16,17. The analogous attribute of the Bible is usually called inerrancy. Protestants widely reject infallibility of the church. The Orthodox Eastern Church holds that only the church, taken as an integral community and spiritual body guided by the Holy Spirit, is infallible. Roman Catholics hold that the infallibility of the church is vested in the pope, when he speaks ex cathedra (i.e., from the chair of Peter, as the visible head of the church) on matters of faith and morals. Definitive pronouncements resulting from an ecumenical council, when ratified by the pope, are also held to be infallible. The pope speaks ex cathedra only rarely and after long deliberation. The dogma of papal infallibility was enunciated by the First Vatican Council (1870).

Bibliography: See B. Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350 (1972).

infallibility in the Roman Catholic Church, the doctrine (also called papal infallibility) that in specified circumstances the Pope is incapable of error in pronouncing dogma; the assertion that infallibility attached to his definitions in matters of faith and morals was made by the Vatican Council of 1870.

infallibility. Inability to err in teaching revealed truth. While many Christians maintain that the Church is infallible, on the basis of such texts as Jn. 16: 13, various beliefs have been held as to the seat where such infallibility rests. At the First Vatican Council (1870) the RC Church declared that the Pope was infallible when he defined that a doctrine concerning faith or morals was part of the deposit of Divine revelation handed down from apostolic tradition.