Unfortunately (or is it fortunately?), Steven, the Catholic Church doomed itself by the Doctrine of Infallibility. They are only marking time and waiting for the end.
http://www.population-security.org/phil95.htm
"...The eminent Catholic theologian, Hans Küng, best described the situation when he wrote: we cannot solve the problem of contraception until we solve the problem of infallibility.
What is infallibility? What did Dr. Küng mean?
Infallibility is a Catholic dogma—a Catholic teaching—a principle. As you know, according to Catholic dogma, the pope is God’s representative on earth and God guides him as he cares for his flock. When the pope formulates a teaching, he is simply transmitting this teaching on God’s behalf. Therefore, the teaching cannot possibly be in error. Thus, his teachings are infallible.
This principle was not created until 1870, the very year when the pope lost all temporal power with the creation of the country of Italy. Up to that moment, the Vatican was still executing so-called heretics, people whom it viewed as posing a threat to papal power. But suddenly this source of power was gone.
The Vatican urgently needed a new source of power. It could no longer control the laity by means of its governance, as it had in the papal states which would later become Italy. But it could control the laity directly by adopting a policy of psychological coercion founded on a new doctrine—that of papal infallibility.
This was a brilliant concept—and it worked—for a century. But at its introduction in 1870, the Catholic intelligentsia, among them theologians, historians and bishops, recognized that at some point in the future, this principle would lead to self-destruction of the institution.
Why? Because they recognized that times were certain to change—and in unpredictable ways. This principle would lock the Church into an inexorable course—teachings that could not be changed without destroying the principle of infallibility itself.
These thoughtful Catholics foresaw that this principle would immediately become the fundamental principle of the Catholic Church, upon which all other Catholic dogma would rest—the very foundation of the Church.
They understood that if this principle were undermined and destroyed at some future date, all Church teachings would collapse around the eroded foundation and the institution itself would be devastated..." |
