Reply #37: Both Infallibility and Immaculate Conception were not pushed

[CatholicEdHead]

until after the Papal Sates were lost. That was the retrenching of temporal power. They have been untouchable ever since, not even debatable. It was actually an attack on a pope prior to the 1850s to even suggest the Pope was infallible, so times changed then.

All this retrenching and moving backwards still comes back to the total inability of the Hierarchy to deal with the sex scandals. Tradition is a way to move the people onto something else and get the money rolling in again. In conservative seminary circles they are taught the Church is a "Perfect Society", so it has never and can never do anything wrong. They believe their own propaganda and are unable to deal with it in relation to the real world.