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Hi, Rico—
You said:
- If indeed the Pope is the head of the Church, what about those thousands of years during which Popes did all sorts of evil things?
- How do Catholics justify or explain Divine authority while they were committing indecencies of various natures and degrees?
No Catholic in his right mind will defend the sinful behavior of any member: from the parishioner in the pew to any of the Popes starting with St. Peter onward.
No Christian should ever defend sin or cover it up, as has happened recently with the sex scandals in the Church; certainly none of us at AskACatholic will.
When Our Blessed Lord became incarnate Man for our salvation, He knew that even after our Baptism, we would have our tendency to fall back into sin. This is due to the effects of original sin called concupiscence. Even when we turn to the Scriptures we see Peter, out of weakness, denying Our Lord, not once, but three times. (Matthew 26:69-75)
- Some may be scratching their head at this point wondering how Jesus can promise Peter that his (singular) faith will not fail, (Matthew 16:13-20), while he goes on and denies him three times?
The answer is in distinguishing between issues of faith and morals in contrast to bad behavior by previous Popes that have scandalized the Church. We use two different words to distinguish these issues:
- impeccability, and
- infallibility.
We say that the Popes are not impeccable. Meaning they are prone to sinful, scandalous behavior.
We also say they are infallible, meaning when they speak in their official capacity for the Church, they will be protected by the Holy Spirit against saying anything that goes against issues of faith and morals of the Church.
Infallibility does not mean the Popes will always say the most holiest, or most correct teaching, but rather they are negatively safeguarded by the Holy Spirit against saying anything contrary to Catholic Christian faith or morals.
I hope this helps,
Mike
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