Punditry

Sacerdos in Aeternum posts on a Kansas City Star article that is rather strange. The women who wrote the article must be the Pollyana of progressives. An optimist with a large imagination.

Yes, I know all about the chances of snowballs surviving in the netherworld, but I still think Pope Benedict XVI is moving toward ordaining Catholic women.

Of course it contains the usual misinformation that women in the early Church acted as deacons, without mentioning that the normal role of deaconesses in the early Church was helping to baptize women in full immersion fonts.

Three times in the last year or so, the pope’s comments leaned in that direction. The telltale words are “governance” and “ministry.” Each is technically reserved to the ordained.

In the flood of ideas coming from the scholar-pope, the theme of charity stands out. Would a pope turning 80 on April 16 ordain women to minister in charity?

A year ago, a Rome priest publicly asked Benedict if women could be included formally in Church governance and ministry. Surprisingly, Benedict said yes. He said so again on German television last August.

The idea that “governance” and “ministry” is only for the ordained is just a form of clericalism and a form of it that I guess progressives are for.

Of course Cardinal Razinger replied in a Dubium:

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

But I guess since he didn’t say "Hell no" that leaves some room for "telltale" signs.

When Benedict talks about women, he always begins by deflecting the idea of women priests, pointing out that Jesus chose male apostles from among his men and women disciples. Such is the Catholic Church’s fundamental argument against women priests.

But that has nothing to do with women deacons. In fact, Benedict has now — three times — reiterated that women were actively engaged in Jesus’ ministry. And “ministry” is the key word when we’re talking about deacons.

Ministry is what deacons do: They minister in and through the word, the liturgy and charity. Deacons preach. Deacons participate in the Mass. Deacons manage the Church’s charity, or at least they used to.

Deacons watched over the stores and treasures of the early church. They cared for the poor and the orphaned, for the homeless and the widows with church funds, properties, and possessions. They even paid the salaries of the priests.

I guess if you are not ordained a deacon you can not care for the poor and the orphans. The homeless and widows need help, but sadly you have to tell them that you are not a deacon.

That may not be the case today, but it begs the question: why not? As Catholicism is increasingly bereft of priests it is concurrently flooded with deacons — there are over 15,000 in the United States alone. These are capable men, able to run a parish plant, manage Catholic charities, or oversee the cemeteries or the various aid societies of a parish or a diocese. They can free priests to do priestly — rather than diaconal — ministry.

What exactly is a "parish plant?" I assume it is not some potted plant but perhaps a view of the parish as some kind of sacramental factory. Once again though I can’t see from her example why anybody can perform the jobs she cited and not be ordained.

If Catholicism were to return to its older tradition, that would add women to the mix. Then women could oversee church money and properties on behalf of the pastor or the bishop. What if women watched where the money went? Perhaps then there might be more money around for the poor and maybe fewer financial scandals.

You learn something new everyday. I was not aware that original sin applied only to men.

And what if women deacons ministering in charity could preach each Sunday? Would not the church hear more about the way the gospel functions in the real world, here and now, in the 21st century?

Well women can preach all they want. Just not at the homily during Mass.

It’s just a thought, but it might be Benedict’s idea too.

Well as a prophet I hope she keeps her day job.

ROME (AFP) – Advocates of abolishing the celibacy requirement for Catholic priests exaggerate the numbers of those who leave the Roman Catholic Church in order to marry, an influential Jesuit magazine said Thursday.

Groups such as the US-based Married Priests Now claim that between 80,000 and 100,000 men have done so.

But the magazine Civilta Cattolica said that while "no precise statistics" are available on the number of priests who have married after leaving their ministries, "on the basis of information from the dioceses" 69,063 priests left overall from 1964 to 2004.

Of those, more than 11,000 returned between 1970 and 2004, "which means that married priests cannot number more than 57,000 today" given that a certain number have no doubt died over the 40-year period, the magazine argued.

Also, each year some priests are allowed back into the fold after they are widowed or their children grow up, according to the magazine, which is tightly controlled by the Vatican.

Civilta Cattolica noted that rejection of the celibacy vow was not the only reason for leaving. Some priests suffer crises of faith, have conflicts with their superiors or disagree with Church teaching, for example, it said.

Severe depression can be another cause, it added.

In the past 40 years, 438 married priests have asked to return to the Church, of whom 220 have been accepted. Another 114 applications are still under consideration.

The Church can take back priests who have been widowed, who were not married in a church or whose marriages were annulled.

The last line seems a little off to me. Priests that leave to get married without seeking laicization can not get validly married in the first place because of the canonical impediment and as far as I know the large majority of those who left especially in the seventies never received permission.

As a teenager I would attend Mass with my mother at a Church in Portland, Or with two touchy-feely liberal priests whose view of the supernatural seemed to exactly match my views as an atheist at the time. Plenty of "vibrant" Masses with pop songs, holding hands and swaying, etc. Both left the priesthood to get married.

Jay Anderson catches a unintentionally funny bit of prose from the Washington Post on Pope Benedict XVI.

Benedict’s persistent defense of the "traditional family" based on marriage between a man and a woman has emboldened Italy’s bishops, who are waging a fierce battle against the government’s proposal to extend some rights to unmarried couples, including same-sex unions.

Yes the traditional family in scare quotes and the pope daring a persistence defense of it. What’s next – teaching that Jesus is the Son of God?

Enrique Miret Magdalena, a respected moderate Spanish theologian who is himself 93, said Benedict, who turned 80 on Monday, is "an old man, and the papacy weighs heavily upon him. He’s afraid of change."

Yes the 93 theologian who must be an "old man" afraid to leave his moderate theology gets the "Kettle meet Pot award."

Before his Germany trip in September, Benedict told a German TV interviewer that "Christianity, Catholicism isn’t a collection of prohibitions." But in March he issued a 131-page "exhortation" to ensure that bishops, priests and the world’s 1.2 billion faithful strictly follow church teaching.

It included a nostalgic note about Latin, which has been in sharply declining use since the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. He suggested that the faithful be taught to recite the more common prayers in Latin.

First off I think every time the media talks about Sacramentum Caritatis the number of pages in it gets longer as a kind of discouragement to actually read it – something this reporter obviously did not do. I do wonder how a document with 97 paragraphs makes it to 131 pages? Maybe the have a specially issue with larger text and pictures made just for journalists. You can spot this version because it has Mother Goose on the cover.

The second thing is a style guide issue that requires anytime the word Latin in used it must be associated with nostalgic?

It must be tough to survive in the religious marketplace out there, competing with other progressive chapels for the gay Catholic demographic; and especially so when you don’t have any other clientele. The Jesuits in Boston have announced the planned closure of their city church in the South End neighborhood, the Jesuit Urban Center.

Besides a general decline in the gay-Catholic market segment, credit for the Jesuits’ downtown defeat probably has to go to the Franciscans of Holy Name Province. St. Anthony Shrine moved into the gay-friendly market a few years ago, making for a three-way competition against the Jesuits and the Paulists who have catered to dissenting Catholics downtown for over 30 years. The Shrine’s broad-based weekday Mass attendance, heavily trafficked location, and extensive service hours probably give it a stronger position than either of its two competitors, so St. Anthony’s is probably best situated to endure for years to come. In contrast, the JUC had only one Mass per week, with a congregation of 150-200 confused souls.

Jester Hat Tip:

RC at Catholic Light

Predominately the headlines I have seen on this story say "Jesuits closing Boston church that serves many gays." Which seems rather odd for a parish with one Mass a week and less than 200 parishioners and even if every one of them had same-sex attraction it still isn’t very many.

"A lot of people are still in the church because of the Jesuits," Regan said. "We do not want to abandon these people. But there’s a spirit among this group, and I think that’s going to be lost, and that’s very sad."

I guess my definition of "a lot" varies from theirs.

Here is an interesting article called "Back in the habit, young nuns on the rise" which details such orders as Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist and others who are attracting vocations at an increasing rate.

McGlynn is one part of the new blood there that includes a former lawyer and bartender, with an average age of 24. The national median age for nuns is in the 70s, according to CARA.

"There’s time every day to be with God and not having all the distractions that are in the world that keep you from God."

The new nuns say they are looking for an alternative lifestyle in troubled times.

I very much doubt that these new nuns quite phrased their vocation as an "alternative lifestyle in troubled times."

They also mention some orders that are not exactly attracting vocations.

That attitude has helped their order, the Adrian Dominican Sisters in Michigan, attract a handful of new candidates in their 20s and 30s this year.

"We’re not selling ourselves like we’re worried we’re gonna die out," Scott said. "We’re evolving into something else."

Truer words have seldom been spoken and that something else of evolving is something other than Catholic.

Sister Julie Vieira’s popular blog, A Nun’s Life, isn’t meant as a recruiting tool, though plenty of girls and young women visit the site. Vieira, of Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Monroe, Mich., blogs about politics, enjoying a beer at a bar and her favorite bands along with religious content, hoping to dispel sister stereotypes.

She says nuns have to do a better job of marketing themselves.

"It’s very hard to do that sort of thing because you are talking about a personal relationship with God," she said. "And a personal relationship with a community, so it’s a hard thing to advertise."

A Massachusetts order is hoping to appeal to the broader public by restructuring memberships to include roles for married women and those with no formal connection to the congregation.

The Sisters of St. Joseph in Springfield have extended their roles to include associates, agregees, and partners in mission, along with vowed members. Each have varying levels of commitment. Four women are working to become agregees, said Sister Natalie Cain, coordinator of membership and association for the Sisters of St. Joseph.

"We realized we could be creative in ways in how people could be part of who we are," she said.

Of course the last thing they will do is to look at the orders that are growing and why. But faithfulness to the magisterium is not a bullet point they are willing to swallow.

Sister Julie Vieira has appeared on Good Morning America and NPR so that is not exactly a ringing endorsement and she recommends dissident groups like New Ways Ministry when answering questions.

A reader this week sent me a link to a Time Magazine article from 1979 called "The New Nuns" which is quite interesting in a time warp way.

They dress in everything from miniskirts to medieval mantles. They do everything from classroom teaching to police work. One has a job with Cesar Chavez, another with Ralph Nader. There is a deputy attorney general and an Air Force lieutenant. They live in inner-city slums, in posh suburbs, on farms, even in the desert. They come singly, by the dozen and in battalions. They are the new American nuns who, in the decade since the Second Vatican Council first provided the inspiration, have streamed out of their centuries-old enclosures into the modern world.

The most radical of the new nuns have abandoned their orders to form "noncanonical" experimental communities outside the reach of church authority. But they do not consider themselves "ex-nuns." A free-form, geographically dispersed group (32 states, Canada and England) called Sisters for a Christian Community (S.F.C.C.) was founded in 1970 to "experiment and pioneer new forms of religious life for the 21st century." Essential to the undertaking, says Founding Sister Lillanna Kopp of Portland, Ore., is the elimination of the bureaucratic, authoritarian structures that have driven American nuns out of traditional religious orders by the tens of thousands since the Vatican Council closed in 1965. Since that year, the number of U.S. nuns has dropped from 180-000 to 150,000—far more than can be accounted for by normal attrition. "We must be a pilgrim people on the road, unencumbered by luggage," says Sister Kopp, a sociologist and author, who left her order in 1969. "Marble mother houses are what destroyed the old orders."

…the new nuns are confident that they are moving with a historical tide. With secessionist Sister Anita Caspary, they maintain that the church "stands to lose the whole community if it stands in the way."

A reverse prophet if there ever was on. The problem was that many religious order followed that way and whole communities were lost or greatly reduced. Like Chesterton said "only a live thing can swim upstream" and it is certainly dead things that went with the flow of the times. Rather ironically the title of the Time article "The New Nuns" lead to the religious orders chronicled where a New Nun was rarity.

You could start a competition for really dumb article of the week on Pope Benedict and the only problem would be which once to most deserving. "The Missing Pope" by Joseph Contreras for Newsweek International is surely a contender though. For proof of of the Pope’s ineptness for the role they quote a Milanese housewife and the author of a supposedly acclaimed book (that I have never heard of) on Pope Benedict XVI. The author, David Gibson a convert to the Church, in his books seems to be the typical progressive upset by the Pope not changing what they want changed (Amazon suggests that the book to go together with his is the latest by dissident theology Charles E. Curran).

Carl Olson who posts parts of the article and comments on it says "Truly pathetic, even for Newsweek."

The funny thing about all of these articles is that they always compare him unfavorably to Pope John Paul II and that his greatest sin was that he is not the world globetrotter that JPII was.

But Benedict, who turns 80 this month, has rarely left home and seems most interested in trying to revive European Catholicism.

Yet is is an amazing fact that a Pope who was elected much younger would travel much more than one elected at age 78. Egads trying to revive European Catholicism? What is he thinking? Certainly the Pope’s role it to just ignore the declining state of the Church in Europe. Feed those sheep, just not those European ones.

The pope should choose his words carefully; on one of his last trips, to his native Germany, he sparked a firestorm when he quoted in passing scathing comments about the Prophet Muhammad. Within days Benedict was being burned in effigy. He can expect a warmer greeting in South America. But there’s no denying he’s been a disappointment to many faithful there and elsewhere. Some U.S. Catholics condemn him as aloof, Europeans resent his intrusions into their affairs and he’s never been popular in Latin America. The region, home to 450 million Catholics, had hoped to see one of its own succeed John Paul. Many there have felt ignored by the man who ultimately did.

Just ignore the massive cheer that went up when Catholic who actually believe what the Church teaches sent out when he was elected. Ignore that "So many young people requested the free tickets to the liturgy that hundreds of them had to watch on television screens in the Vatican audience hall" As Amy Welborn noted last week.

Benedict’s popularity is noted, but only in terms of crowds at the General Audiences. As we’ve pointed out before, it’s odd that when trying to figure out how "popular" Benedict is, no one gives book publishers a call. 220,000 copies of Sacramentum Caritatis sold in Italy in the first week after its release. Copies of Deus Caritas Est sold quite well. 5 weeks before its release in the US, The Pope’s book on Jesus is #230 on Amazon.

So I guess what they mean is that he is not popular in the halls of the National Catholic Reporter and those of like-minded watered-down Catholic philosophies

Part of the problem is style. The last pope was a former parish priest who recast himself as an international player (he spoke eight languages, including Spanish and Portuguese). Benedict is a colorless academic who spent much of his career teaching theology and philosophy.

Pope Benedict XVI, in addition to his native German, fluently speaks Italian, French, English, Spanish and Latin, and has a knowledge of Portuguese and of course he can also read Ancient Greek and biblical Hebrew. So I guess he needs to study up to meet the requirements of Newsweek which only speaks one language (BS). Anybody who can call the Pope a colorless academic has neither read him or observed him in public.

He was nowhere to be seen in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, arguably the most Catholic city in the United States. Nor has he paid much attention to Latin America, home to nearly half the world’s Catholics and a key focus of John Paul’s papacy. "He’s ignored us completely," says Roberto Blancarte, a sociologist specializing in religious affairs at the Colegio de México in Mexico City.

The idea that the Pope goes around visiting places after natural disasters and especially if they are suppose to be very Catholic areas is rather laughable. Though I guess they see the Pope as more of a PR agent for the Church than as a Shepherd guiding the whole Church. The Latin America jibe is also pretty funny coming two weeks before he heads to Brazil. Though this is also part of the philosophy that if you are not visiting places you are not doing anything for them. That what Benedict has done so far does not affect anybody outside of Rome.

In Benedict’s absence, the influence of his church has continued to wane. In Latin America an estimated 8,000 people leave the Catholic Church every day, and according to the polling firm Latinobarómetro, the number of locals who call themselves Catholic dropped 9 percent between 1995 and 2005.

And did this drop happen in the aftermath of his election? Well the simple answer is no and the decline has been continuous and occurred during JPII’s pontificate. This has been a problem long before the Pope was elected, but hey that fact does not fit in with a hatchet job.

But left-wing politicians no longer fear the Vatican. Under John Paul, politicians "used to have a certain respect [for the church] and a belief that it wasn’t in their interests to pick a fight" with it, notes Elio Masferrer Kan, a religious historian at Mexico’s National School of Anthropology and History. Now they see it as a "paper tiger," as do judges in Argentina and Colombia, who have ruled in favor of allowing abortions in the past year.

I guess the MSM just loves to have it both ways. First he is painted at the mean-spirited enforcer forcing his ways on everyone, and then he is the paper-tiger and politicians that had a certain respect under JPII have totally lost it now. This is so laughably funny as a piece of analysis it is hard to know where to start. Secular politicians promoting gay marriage and abortion never cared one bit about the Pope whether it was JPII or B16.

And then with his visit to South America you know they are going to bring up the document critical of Father Jon Sobrino. So I guess the paper-tiger is back to biting. They of course frame the criticism of Father Sobrino’s writings in the framework of Liberation Theology when it was a condemnation of his weak-Christology.

His criticism thus struck many as mean-spirited and unnecessary; Leonardo Boff, a former Brazilian priest, wrote an open letter saying the pope’s sanctions "filled me with sadness" and "defraud[ed] the poor."

What a former priest isn’t happy with the Pope? What a shock and surprise. How could that be?

The problem, according to Gibson, is that Benedict "doesn’t seem to realize that he’s a world leader and not an academic." Indeed, the pope’s great misfortune may be his election to a job he was never suited for. With the Vatican facing an acute shortage of priests and nuns and its moral authority tarnished by child-abuse scandals, the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics could use a shepherd who would help them tackle present and future problems. What they’ve got instead is a reclusive intellectual more interested in resurrecting old rituals and disputes.

How soon they forget how unhappy they were with JPII who fulfills what they see as lacking in Pope Benedict. John Paul II saw eye to eye with his Prefect of the CDF on maters of faith and what they consider as disputes are simply parts of the Catholic faith that are not to be jettisoned for convenience sake in the Culture of Death.

The Missing Pope is an ironic title since they totally missed the Pope.

"colorless academic"

Christopher Blosser has a large roundup to the Pope’s Urbi Et Orbi Easter Message and his statement "Nothing Positive Comes from Iraq"

I woke up on Easter to find an email from a sometime reader demanding to know why I hadn’t blogged on the Pope’s statement, calling me a neocon and afraid of the truth. At the time though I hadn’t blogged since Holy Thursday and in fact hadn’t read his message yet.

Now for the record I am not a neocon, as I have said before I am a "kneel con." In the latest issue of Crisis magazine they had an article on neocons and what they are. The descriptions certainly match me to a certain extent. I was "a man of the left" like many neocons and was involved in anti-Vietnam demonstrations. I was also a bleeding heart liberal who thought the government should solve all problems and a wannabe hippie. Like many neocons I became disenchanted over the Democratic Party on the issue of national defense as my own position changed (Thank you Jimmy Carter for waking me up), especially to the anti-American rhetoric coming from the left. Nothing like being in the Navy and traveling the world to get a appreciation for being American. Like Ronald Reagan (who I once despised being a good Portland, Or leftist) I did not leave the Democratic Party, it left me – especially as I left my pro-abortion stand and became pro-life. There is the joke that a conservative is a liberal who was mugged, well I was mugged by reality.

As regards to the Iraq war will know that I seldom blog on the topic and before it started I had reservations about it. There are people I respect on both sides of the question as to whether the initial war fulfilled just war criteria. I know my own biases being both ex-military and a general supporter of President Bush and so I have tried to be very careful into taking that into account. Regardless though whether the initial Iraq war was just I think it would be totally wrong to leave now. When you try act as a midwife to birth a Democracy you don’t run away when the contractions start. The Bush Administration has certainly made major mistakes in the aftermath of the war and the transiting of the government. Though I am slightly optimistic in that the surge does seem to be slowing down some of the violence. So whether there is anything positive coming out of Iraq is certainly something open to question. I just can’t see how withdrawal of our troops will make the terrorists who are often being aided from Iran stop their violence and their search for dominance. Iran likes a destabilized Iraq and they certainly don’t want a successful democracy that would put pressure on them to change.

Right now I support both the troops and their mission. I don’t really understand those who say they support one and not the other. For example if a Democratic politician asked me if I supported them and I said yes, but I won’t give you any money, won’t vote for you, and I don’t like what your doing – I am sure they would think that regardless of what I said I was not in fact supporting them.

I do find it rather funny the new found love that progressives now have for the Pope’s words. Encyclicals, Apostolic Letters, Church Documents can all be discarded, but the Pope making a personal comment on the situation in Iraq and all of a sudden it is as if he has made a dogmatic definition. They latch on to one sentence while not giving the same weight to the Pope talking about "contempt of life" and the horrific situations in the other countries the Pope mentioned. But cherry picking is nothing new.

Mark Shea often gets a lot of heat from both sides as he dares to try to be consistently Catholic. That is decrying torture apologists on the right along with abortion advocates mostly on the left. I really don’t like prefix Catholicism. That is where you have to put some prefix to describe yourself before the world Catholic. I never describe myself as a Conservative Catholic since I think prefixes take away from and not give more meaning to the word Catholic. Exactly how does universal need a prefix? But I am only a truth hating neocon I guess. I learn something new everyday.

I saw the article Diabetics cured by stem-cell treatment on Drudge and I had to read 3/4 of the article to find that the treatment was based on stem-cells from the persons own blood. When it comes to adult stem-cell treatment they often bury the lede.

Not surprisingly in the first part of the article it said.

But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells — those acquired from human embryos — is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.

Now since this particular treatment had nothing to do with ESCR it is a non-sequitur to the story, but if you don’t read to the last part of the article you might get that impression that it did.

Update: Diogenes notices the same thing, but also finds an AP story on the same subject manages to mention that the stem-cells were from the persons own blood and doesn’t editotorialize on ESCR.

Edwina Gateley, a Catholic laywoman and author of 10 books, got cold feet and opted out of her speaking engagement, when informed her seminar would be taped in order to review content during a retreat at a Franciscan Renewal Center. She stood to lose $4,000 from the canceled engagement, but two unidentified women who thought it best to remain anonymous covered the costs to speak at a series of alternative events during the same time frame. Since her feminist theology of a feminine god is well known, I have my suspicions about the organizers of the event and the 20 nuns who signed up to hear her.

Gateley insists that her refusal of being recorded is due to the producers of her copy written material forbidding outside tapings of her talks, but is more likely the manifestation of her fundamental rejection of authority along with the fear and insecurity that comes from being denied the total control to which she is accustomed.

	Jester Hat Tip:	CLS

I guess she didn’t want to see her "retreat" turned into a DVD called "Catholic Feminists gone theologically wild." This though is a great idea if a diocese would tape all retreats for review. For one having a video of good retreats could be very useful. The other reason of course is that like in this case many would be hesitant to have what they say taped. Often they will have the name of their speeches shrouded in terms that make it just possible that they might be orthodox for plausible deniability sake.

This is of course also the reason that when a couple years back EWTN went down with a film crew to Cardinal Mahony’s Religious Education Congress that they were not allowed to film any of the speeches.

I was listening to the Hugh Hewitt show and he was interviewing Kenneth L. Woodward about an article on Romney that had a lot of Mormon bashing in it. Woodward has been responsible for Newsweek’s Religion section since 1964 and he identified himself as a Catholic. In part of the interview Hugh was asking him the difference between some aspects of Mormonism and Catholicism and Woodward went on to explain that infallibility was something that has only been invoked once in the last 150 years and this happened in the 1950s.

Now I am not surprise to hear that people responsible for religions sections of the MSM would know so little about their faith. For one he event gets the common misunderstanding wrong. Normally people will claim that there has only been two acts of infallibility since Vatican I defined it. This would of course be the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the Assumption in 1950. So to say there is was only one case is to get even this wrong. The truth is that the Pope uses the charism of infallibility every time there is a canonization. The language used in a canonization is "we declare and define that Blessed N., is a saint" which triggers the Church’s gift of infallibility. It would be true to say that there have been only two dogmatic declarations since Vatican I, but not that these were the only case of papal infallibility.

Then of course there is the fact that infallibility was something that came into play many times in the history of the Church especially in regards to Church councils. The dogma of infallibility was only defined in 1870 and many think that it didn’t exist for then, but this would be like saying that Jesus wasn’t divine until the 1st Council of Nicea.

Mr. Woodward could not even come up with any differences between Mormon prophets and when the Church invokes its gift of infallibility. There is a large gap between development of doctrine and the defining of one and the abrupt changes that have occurred in Mormonism.

All I can say is that if Kenneth L. Woodward is as knowledgeable of other faiths as he is about his own then that explains the Newsweek coverage.

Hugh’s post on the subject

Jimmy Akin’s post on infallibility.

Update: I made a glaring error since the Immaculate Conception was defined before Vatican I and so there has only been one dogmatic declaration since Vatican I.