Vatican I Does Not Say Popes Can Bind to Falsehood

This topic would be good for a more thorough article, but for now I just wanted to post a comment I made in a Facebook conversation.  A lot of people have a confused notion of papal infallibility, as if the Pope is protected from error only in certain very specific occasions that hardly ever happen (I've heard people say things like "It's only happened twice in all of history."), and the rest of the time he can teach all kinds of errors and must often need to be ignored or resisted in his teaching.  But this is a far cry from the actual teaching of the Catholic Church regarding the reliability of papal teaching.  This issue came up once again recently in a conversation going on on Facebook, and I made this comment which I wanted to post here:

I think that Vatican I's very narrow ruling on papal infallibility tends to be a source of confusion for some. as if Vatican I was intending to allow Rome to be involved in all sorts of error except in one, narrow sliver of its exercise of authority. But I don't think a historically contextual reading of V1 bears that out.

For the previous 1800 years, the Magisterium had taught constantly that the See of Rome cannot err in general, and that everyone always has to be on its side in doctrinal disputes, thus guaranteeing the orthodoxy and unity of the whole Church. Vatican I itself cites many quotations making that point. There had never been any clear Magisterial distinction made between what we now call "definitive" vs. "non-definitive" teaching. Vatican I wanted to define papal infallibility more formally. In doing so, they got very specific and ended up defining infallibility only in its supreme form in extraordinary cases. But this led to a kind of loophole in the view of some where we could say the Pope is only free from error in these extraordinary cases, and the rest of the time he could commit all kinds of errors and could be ignored and resisted. But this interpretation of V1 contradicted all the previous teaching of the Church concerning the general indefectibility of the See of St. Peter. Vatican I had specifically defined extraordinary papal infallibility, but its lack of dealing with the more ordinary teaching of popes led the Magisterium to see a need to address this lacuna, and so we see the Magisterium after this time developing the idea of the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary teaching and definitive vs. non-definitive teaching, affirming that all papal teaching is reliable and must be submitted to, even if the highest, technical form of infallibility is limited only to extraordinary, supreme definitions. Thus the Magisterium filled the lacuna left by V1 and reaffirmed the Church's historic position regarding the general indefectibility of the Apostolic See, but now that position is articulated with greater nuance regarding the distinction between definitive and non-definitive teaching, etc.

All official papal teaching (as opposed to the private teaching of popes) is free from error in that it cannot bind to error, but there are different degrees of definitive-ness based on the intention of the Popes in teaching. We are called always to submit to all official papal teaching, but our submission is to match the form and degree of the Magisterial intention.

Where the modern dissenters go wrong is in thinking that because non-definitive teaching is not infallible in the technical sense that is only applied to definitive teachings, it is therefore not protected from error in any real sense, and so such teaching can bind people to error and must sometimes be resisted. This is contrary to the Church's teachings regarding the authority and reliability of all papal teaching. The problem comes from thinking that the difference between definitive and non-definitive teaching is that the former is more inherently reliable than the latter, when the actual difference is not in the reliability of the teaching but in the scope of the Magisterial intention in the teaching. Some teaching is intended as definitive, some teaching isn't, etc.

And then we have another category--the pope's comments and actions when he does not intend to bind the Church to any particular teaching. According to the magisterial intention, we are not bound to agree with the pope when he does not intend to bind us to agree, and so in such cases there is room for respectful disagreement, criticism, etc.

If we would all just keep this basic balance, we would be alright.

For more, see here (for the short version) or here (for the long version).