papal infallibility

noun

: the Roman Catholic doctrine that the pope cannot err when speaking ex cathedra in defining a doctrine of Christian faith or morals

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Most famously, Ratzinger helped censure his friend Hans Kung, a Swiss theologian skeptical of the concept of papal infallibility. —Henry Chudeputy News Editor, Los Angeles Times, 31 Dec. 2022

Küng rejected the doctrine of papal infallibility and was banned in 1979 by Pope John Paul II from teaching Catholic theologians. —al, 30 Apr. 2021

His rejection of the omnicompetent state seemed attended by a notion of an omnicompetent papacy, something perhaps encouraged by the First Vatican Council’s declaration of papal infallibility and supreme and universal Church jurisdiction. —David P. Deavel, National Review, 24 Oct. 2019

The idea that the Vatican, with its doctrine of papal infallibility, would invite open debate about official religious doctrine shocked religious and irreligious people around the world. —Andre Pagliarini, The New Republic, 25 June 2019

In recent years, papal infallibility, a concept officially codified by Pius IX nearly 150 years ago, seems to have been supplanted by papal apology. —Ian Austen And Jason Horowitz, New York Times, 23 Apr. 2018

But when Pius IX secured the declaration of papal infallibility, Döllinger refused to concede and was excommunicated, remaining under church condemnation until his death in 1890. —D.g. Hart, WSJ, 29 Aug. 2017

That gathering ratified the dogma of papal infallibility, the capstone of Pius’s expansion of the papacy’s power. —D.g. Hart, WSJ, 29 Aug. 2017

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Word History

First Known Use

1831, in the meaning defined above