Ronnie Polaneczky: Allow Me to Pontificate for a Bit about Infallibility

By Ronnie Polaneczky
Philadelphia Daily News
February 12, 2013

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20130212_Ronnie_Polaneczky_.html

IF I'M EVER elected pope - a long shot for a female, nonpracticing Catholic - I would never resign from the position the way Pope Benedict XVI has done after fewer than eight years on the job.

The pontiff cites his age, faltering health and decreasing stamina as reasons for handing over his staff and crown. But if I were pope, I wouldn't care how creaky, pooped or mentally goofy I was becoming. I'd hang on to those red slippers until my last breath.

That's how badly I want to be infallible.

Most people know that Catholic dogma proclaims the pope's infallibility on matters of faith and morals. As explained by the Catholic website New Advent, "Specifically, that infallibility means more than exemption from actual error; it means exemption from the very possibility of error."

Whoa! Even the very possibility of error?

Can someone please recommend me to the papal conclave for the job?

Yes, the pope's infallibility is limited to matters of faith and morals. But those are awfully broad categories.

You could argue that faith and morals underpin every aspect of society - from declarations of war and acts of civil disobedience, to explanations of personal behavior and reasons for public funding. Basically, pretty much everything we think, act upon and feel has a faith or moral component to it.

Which means, if I were pope, I'd get to be right all the time. What a relief, after toiling in the exhausting gray area of compromise, to know that it's now my way or the highway - because God says so!

And what a satisfying trump card to pull in the middle of a difficult discussion with my husband. Or - better still - my teenager.

Parents, am I right, or am I right?

"But, Ronnie," you say, "that's silly! If you were pope, you wouldn't have a spouse or child because priests are celibates who don't marry."

See, I'd change all that.

I'd use my infallibility to open the priesthood to women, to allow all priests to marry and to welcome children into their lives. Because, if the Catholic Church's decades-long sex scandal taught us anything, it's that we desperately needed some parents in church leadership positions all these years.

If some of our bishops had been parents - mothers and fathers who loved and worried about and feared for their children - the church never would have been so callous in how it handled the violation of innocents.

Pedophile priests wouldn't have been secretly moved from parish to parish like Parcheesi pieces because one of those parents would've said, "If we don't do something about this now, the next kid who's hurt might be mine."

Pope Benedict could've used his nearly eight years of infallibility to open all church records to the light of day, to come clean about the extent of the cover-up and let the chips fall where they would've. And he'd have an easy answer to those who might've implicated him in the cover-up, back in the days when he was a cardinal.

"I was fallible then. And now I'm not."

See how well this thing works?

Pope Benedict will step down on Feb. 28. That gives him 16 more days of infallibility - time in which he can act without worrying about "even the possibility of error." I can think of no better way to use his time than to honor a request of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

In a statement released Monday, its founders called upon the pope to take meaningful action on behalf of victims of priest sex crimes.

"Imagine the shock waves - and the hope - that would be generated if, in his waning days, the pontiff demoted, disciplined, or defrocked even a handful of bishops who are concealing child sex crimes," the statement said. "And imagine the deterrent that would be to present and future cover-ups."

He could even pardon his past lack of action on his way out the door.

Infallibility, man. It's a beautiful thing.

Contact: polaner@phillynews.com