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Technically, so long as it isn't ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, isn't it always a possibility that the pope is wrong about [insert topic here]? I mean, at least from the Catholic perspective?
There's a fun saying I bring up from time to time when people try to use the statements of leaders of my church (I'm Mormon) against me/my faith/some position I hold: "The pope says he's infallible, but no one believes him. The Mormon prophet says he is fallible, but no one believes him."
Yes, you don’t have to believe non-official pronouncements of the pope, or official pronouncements not about faith or morals. But also the usual line about ‘papal infallibility has only been used 4 times in the history of the church, dogmatic beliefs are quite limited’ is also wrong.
The Catholic Church has the extraordinary magisterium, which is always infallible- infallible papal pronouncements and anathematizations by ecumenical councils fall here- and the ordinary magisterium, produced by the normal working of church governance, and which Carries varying levels of weight. A few arguable examples of infallible acts of the ordinary magisterium are Humanae Vitae, canonizations, the condemnation of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rulings that women cannot be priests, etc. All of these are arguable as to their infallibility but Catholic theologians universally agree that disagreeing with them and remaining a Catholic is an extremely high bar(except for a minority of theologians who argue that disagreeing with post 1980 canonizations has a much lower bar due to changes in the process. Many of these theologians can point to specific examples of recent canonizations they disagree with, usually Oscar Romero or JoseMaria Escriva) in terms of effort put in and carefulness of the claim.
So in practice there’s some ambiguity as to what’s infallible or not, but general agreement as to what’s a weighty teaching and what can be disagreed with rather more freely(recent doctrines on the death penalty being an example in the latter category). There’s also an understanding that some teachings can be disagreed with, but the disagreement Carries a very high minimum in terms of effort, theological supports, caution with which it is expressed, etc.
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Oh, yeah. The Pope can't say "The Brazil nut is the one and only official nut of the Catholic Church and anyone consuming any other nut is going straight to Hell". There's wiggle room. If he's going to change teaching, he better have a dang good reason and an entire team of theologians backing him up (this applies to any pope, I'm not picking on Francis in particular here).
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