A question for Catholics: If the Pope is infallible, were the papal bulls calling for the crusades not mistakes?
How about the Cathar crusade started by Innocent III which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of local Christian heretics which included many women and children, was that not a mistake?
Dear Theosis,
Thank you for your question.
We do believe in
papal infallibility however it is has a very limited sphere both in scope and application.
Firstly, not everything a pope says is considered infallible. He is not an oracle, prophet or messiah-figure. It is only when he speaks
ex cathedra (from the Chair of St. Peter) and intimates expressly and clearly that he is solemnly defining a matter of dogma, that he has "infallibility".
Secondly, the pope can only speak infallibly in two areas:
faith and morals. He has no legislative or worldly authority, in terms of his spiritual role as Supreme Pontiff, which means that any actions or statements of a pope outside these two areas are not binding on the consciences of Catholics; nor are any of his statements even within the category of
faith and morals unless he explicitly speaks
ex cathedra.
Pope Urban II's call for a Crusade to the Holy Land in 1095 from Clermont, does not therefore constitute an infallible or binding statement. It is not a matter of faith or morals but rather a worldly call for a war against another world power.
The same goes for the Albigensian Crusade.
It should also be noted that the Church as a whole, especially the episcopate (bishops), has an equal collective infallibility to match the pope's singular infallibility that is expressed in two ways through:
The ordinary magisterium: the general, unified teaching of the world's bishops
The extraordinary magisterium: through a church council.
Generally, Catholic theologians accept only two statements as having been
definitely infallibly declared by a pope:
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception defined by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854 & the dogma of the Assumption of Mary defined by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950.
Infallible-like or even infallible statements
may have been made before 1854 however it is generally agreed not to be prudent to retrospectively search for infallible statements from the past since the dogma of papal infallibility had not been fully developed in the early middle ages. Popes therefore would not have had the full awareness that statements they were making in terms of faith and morals could have dogmatic effect. Therefore some scholars do not believe that any past statements meet the criteria laid down by Vatican I.
Such papal infallibility is not the norm, anyway, it is rather an extraordinary exercise of the magisterium when the pope speaks
ex cathedra such that we should not be surprised that there may be such few examples of it.
