Catholic News Agency portal (December 8, 2025) attempts to explain papal infallibility through modernist lenses, framing it as a rarely exercised power while citing post-conciliar theologians like Fr. Patrick Flanagan and John P. Joy. The article references Pius IX’s 1854 definition of the Immaculate Conception and Pius XII’s 1950 Munificentissimus Deus on the Assumption as examples of infallible pronouncements, claiming these demonstrate continuity with Matthew 16:19. It misleadingly suggests that infallibility operates within a hermeneutic of continuity with conciliar ecclesiology, ignoring the rupture caused by Vatican II’s collegiality heresy.
Eclipse of the Extraordinary Magisterium Under Modernist Occupation
The article’s superficial treatment of infallibility ignores the sede vacante reality since Pius XII’s death in 1958, when Roncalli (John XXIII) initiated the conciliar apostasy. As St. Robert Bellarmine establishes in De Romano Pontifice: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope” (II:30), rendering all subsequent claimants incapable of exercising the charism of infallibility. The conciliar sect’s pretense that antipopes like Bergoglio (“Leo XIV”) retain this power constitutes blasphemous parody. Pius IX’s authentic definition of the Immaculate Conception stands precisely because it occurred before the masonic takeover of the Vatican apparatus.
“The pope must speak ‘in his official capacity as supreme pontiff’… and it ‘must be intended to bind the whole Church as a matter of divine and Roman Catholic faith,'”
Flanagan’s four criteria dangerously omit the essential requirement of doctrinal continuity. Vatican I’s Pastor Aeternus insists infallible definitions must align with “the deposit of faith handed down from the apostles” (Ch.4). The Assumption dogma of 1950 already contained modernist seeds by implying Marian doctrines could “develop” beyond patristic consensus – a notion condemned by Pius X in Lamentabili (Proposition 21: “Revelation could not be something completed with the apostles”).
Naturalistic Reduction of Infallibility to Managerial Technique
By reducing infallibility to procedural “criteria” rather than divine protection of transmitted truth, the article adopts the modernist error condemned in Pius X’s Pascendi:
“They make conscience a mere department of the soul… and in this way they eliminate all authority and all the teaching office of the Church” (Encyclical on Modernism, 1907). Joy’s claim that Catholics trust “God, whom we firmly believe will intervene” to stop false definitions perverts the hierarchical nature of truth transmission, suggesting God merely corrects errors rather than preventing them through constituted authority.
Theological modernism evident in the article manifests through:
1. Omission of Pius IX’s Syllabus condemning proposition #23 (“Roman pontiffs have usurped princes’ rights”)
2. Equivocation regarding Pius XII’s compromised papacy amid initial conciliar preparations
3. Silence on how Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium (n.25) distorted infallibility by extending it to “collegial” bodies
Assault on the Petrine Ministry Through False Continuity
Matthew 16:19’s keys symbolism becomes weaponized when Joy claims it means God “endorses and ratifies in heaven all judgments Peter makes on earth.” This ignores the Council of Constance’s decree Haec Sancta (1415), which affirms that “even the pope is bound to obey ecumenical councils in matters of faith” – a principle demolished by the conciliar sect’s anti-hierarchical ecclesiology. The true Church maintains that papal infallibility exists not for innovation but preservation, as Leo XIII taught in Satis Cognitum:
“The Church has been so constituted that in her there are pastors and doctors, in her there is the authority of the rulers, there is the obedience of the people” (1896).
“Theologians and historians do not always agree on what papal statements through the centuries can be deemed infallible.”
This relativistic formulation epitomizes the neo-modernist mindset. As Pius XII taught in Humani Generis (1950): “Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent… for these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority” (n.20). The conciliar sect’s reduction of infallibility to “rare historical, narrowly defined moments” (Flanagan) constitutes doctrinal dissolution, preparing the ground for Bergoglio’s synodal deconstruction of dogma.
Conclusion: Eclipse of Authority in the Great Apostasy
The article’s failure to mention Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (1559) exposes its conciliar captivity. Pope Paul IV’s bull establishes that “if anyone… prior to his promotion was a heretic, his promotion is null and void” – the very condition applying to Vatican II’s antipopes. Until the restoration of a legitimate Roman pontiff, all claims to exercise Petrine authority constitute sacrilegious theater. True Catholics recognize only those infallible pronouncements issued before the occupancy of Peter’s throne by manifest heretics – a sifting made necessary by the Church’s passion under masonic occupation.
Source:
What is ‘papal infallibility?’ CNA explains an often-misunderstood Church teaching (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 08.12.2025