The Dogma of Papal Infallibility is Fallible
- Charles Perez
- Jul 24
- 3 min read
By Chuck Collins
July 24, 2025
The dogma of “papal infallibility" was officially adopted July 18, 1870 at the First Vatican Council. This asserts that popes, when they speak with the authority of their office (ex cathedra, the chair of authority) are incapable of error by virtue of their unique position as successors of St. Peter.
When the bishops gathered for their Council that day, there was chatter about this new idea but everyone was confused about what would be voted on. Some bishops boycotted the meeting because of it. One Catholic historian writing under the name “Janus" compiled a list of times in history when popes had erred in their judgments, including a time when an ecumenical church council declared a pope heretical and anathematized him, and other times when popes contradicted their predecessors and overturned their decisions. There was tremendous pressure especially by the Jesuits who controlled Rome at the time to agree to this teaching that no precedence in church history, even though Catholics today are told that the idea goes back to the medieval church and even to antiquity. Arguments for "the primacy of Peter" were not initially directed to doctrinal truth, but rather as an attempt to strengthen the church's power. On this day in 1870 the council overwhelmingly adopted this statement:
“The Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his church should be endowed” (Pastor aeternus).
Many Catholics then and today reject the doctrine of papal infallibility and the extraordinary power delegated to one man, the "Vicar of Christ," to speak for God to the world. But this church dogma is invoked hundreds of times, and many more times by Pope Francis than his predecessors. For example, every time the pope canonized a saint he said, “We declare and define infallible that Blessed John Henry Newman is a saint” (October 13, 2019).
Protestants, on the other hand, are clear that we have one mediator between God and his people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5), and that God speaks decisively, clearly, and uniquely in his inspired written Word, the Bible. As Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 12, Protestants differentiate ministries in the church in terms of function and not status. The Archbishop of Canterbury, for example, is first among equals of the bishops of the Anglican Communion, and his word is only as good as he upholds the Bible, the only infallibly inspired Word from God. When Canterbury tramples the catholic faith, as he has in recent years, he excuses himself from the Anglican Communion and renders his leadership irrelevant. Anglicans specifically deny papal infallibility in Article 19 (Thirty-nine Articles of Religion) when we state that the Church of Rome has erred, “not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.”
Catholicity was extremely important for the 16th century Protestant reformers, and from their perspective it was possible to be more “catholic” in the sense of the Apostles’ Creed (“We believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic church…”) than was the Roman Catholic Church of their day. Catholicity for Catholics is whatever was pronounced true over time by councils, popes, etc.; for Protestants, catholicity was how the church interpreted and understood Scripture over time. John Jewel, for example, famously challenged “Romanists” to prove their catholicity by evidence of Holy Scripture, the first four general councils of the ancient church, and the teaching of the church fathers.
“We do believe that ther is onely one Churche of God, and that the same is not shut up as in time past among the Jewes into any one corner or kingdome, butte it Catholike and universall, and dispersed into all the world” (The Apology of the Church of England, 1564).
The Rev. Canon Chuck Collins is a Reform theologian and historian. He lives in Texas.
No need to get too exercised about this teaching, since a number of prominent Catholics, such as Lord Acton, opposed the idea of papal infallibility.
The idea of papal infallibility does go back to the Middle Ages, but not in the church. When the papacy became a temporal power and had influence over citizens of every country, the various powers in Europe found that the pope would do the opposite of what his predecessor had agreed to, and the magnates and people would follow that lead. They tried to force the popes to agree to infallibility, just in order to be able to have that consistency and gain influence over the papacy. This idea was to an extent resisted by the Roman church over the early Middle Ages, even though it seemed de facto as though it were true; but the popes, as individuals exercising…