Infallibility of the Bishop of Rome as an Ecclesial Issue ad Intra and ad Extra

Abstract

The infallibility of the Bishop of Rome has never been universally accepted in the Church. Controversies were present during the council debate after the solemn 1870 declaration but, even today, not all doubts have been clarified. They arose from the ecclesiological reflection within the Church, but were also a consequence of the ecumenical dialogue with other Christian communities. The aim of this paper is to present the ecclesial issues that arose soon after Vatican Council I, which led to the schism and to the emergence of the Old Catholic Church, and a similar situation after Vatican Council II, exemplified by the case of H. Küng. There is a significant theological issue of the relation between Church infallibility in the transmission of the saving truth and the papal infallibility in this regard. A key question arises from it: is the Bishop of Rome independent of the Church while announcing the truth with the official stamp of infallibility, or is he just expressing the truth developed within the community of faith? The present reflection and the answer to these questions places the papal subjectivity within the broad spectrum of the Church, anchoring his office in the dimension of the collegium of bishops and of the whole community of believers, who have a supernatural sense of faith. By this train of thought, it is possible to abandon understanding infallibility as a tragedy and to see it as a gift and charisma of the Holy Spirit.