NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Herald
Yesterday was Pope Benedict’s last day in office, but the words customarily used to announce that we have a new Pope, “Habemus Papam”, are likely to be a long time in coming. For much has changed in a short space of time.
The forced resignation this week of Cardinal Keith O’Brien as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh demonstrates the intensity of the events through which the Catholic Church is passing. The College of Cardinals that will shortly assemble to make the choice has a difficult task.
One characteristic of the papacy that will be hard to maintain is the dogma of papal infallibility. The Vatican Council of 1870 defined it in the following terms: the Pope is “possessed of infallibility” when “he defines … a doctrine concerning faith and morals to be held by the whole Church”. Once the Pope has spoken, the Vatican Council agreed, his definitions “are irreformable of themselves”.
But the resignation of the Pope, an unprecedented act in modern times, makes the notion of infallibility look distinctly odd. Does it mean that Pope Benedict was possessed of infallibility yesterday but not now since he has begun his retirement? No wonder the Church delayed many centuries before clothing the idea in legal form.
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