MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News
Bob Redig
While Pope Francis is on the right track, moving from pomp and arrogance to simplicity and humility, he has two major problems to deal with.
While some concepts can be dismissed as a theological construct, as Pope Benedict did with “limbo,” others require the consent of the whole Catholic Church.
Papal infallibility and irreformability are, as Bishop Robinson of Australia says, a prison that the Vatican has built around itself stone by stone. By definition only one entity can claim that perfection. The institutional church is not God. Truth may be absolute but human interpretation and understanding of it is imperfect and must adapt and grow.
Only when all Catholics are included in the discernment process can we humans begin to approach the truth. If not, egregious mistakes will be (and have been) made, too numerous to list, but among them the claiming of papal infallibility and irreformability.
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