On This Day in History: July 18

Papal infallibility

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You know all that nasty shit done by the Catholic Church? Crusades and inquisitions and rape and covering up rape and residential schools with their thousands of unmarked graves and enough other atrocities to fill a library? Doesn’t matter, because the pope can’t be wrong. He’s infallible. The Church says so. It’s kinda like those diploma mill “degrees” that are “accredited” by an accrediting body owned by the same “university.”

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 18, 1870--

Pope Pius IX was pope for a long time, longer than anyone else in verified history, taking charge in 1846 and running that religious show for 32 years. In 1864 he said it’s been a few hundred years since we had an ecumenical council so I guess it’s about time. But they took their time, spending five years in planning before launching the First Vatican Council. It was “first” because of the change of location from the Lateran Basilica to the Vatican Basilica. A basilica, FYI, is like a super church, a church that the pope says you get to do extra shit that other churches don’t. 

Why have this council? Well, because the world was going to shit. People were getting all rational and liberal and wanting to like, have stuff. You know, more stuff than the bare necessities of life. The Church was all well we can’t be having that because we need people to believe in mysticism and only get satisfaction through coming to our big expensive house and throwing money at us because only we get to be materialistic. 

The Church had been bandying about this whole papal infallibility thing for a while, but they figured it was time to make that shit official. So on July 18, 1870, that’s what they did. Although not without some pushback among some bishops, who were all like, really, dude? I saw you not wash your hands after taking a shit then pick your nose and eat it. Actually, they were more worried about marketing, fearing it might piss off some of the flock. The flock that gives them money. It was a matter of properly branding their product.

But they were in the minority. The Church decided that, based on papal supremacy, which means as the Vicar of Christ the pope is supreme ruler of the Church and gets to do whatever dafuq he wants, that if he can do what he wants then when he makes a decree regarding faith or morals it cannot have been done in error. It was totally the right thing, no matter how stupid. 

I have a feeling some of the victims of the Catholic Church’s faith and morals would be inclined to disagree. 

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