On Papal Infallibility
● Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. But not all Catholics are convinced of the matter. Said Francis Simons, Catholic bishop in Indore, India: “The apostles themselves, when demanding faith, appealed to evidence, to what they had heard and seen; they never laid claim to a personal, inherent, subjective endowment of infallibility which would operate and give them certainty even independently of the evidence. Nor is there any divine promise or assurance that the church received such an endowment by virtue of which she can have certainty about Christ independently of the assured contents of the apostolic witness. As soon as she leaves the sure foundation laid by the Apostles, she is subject to the ignorance and errors of her age, which extend, as experience has shown, even to her understanding of the scriptures.”—Quoted in Commonweal, Sept. 25, 1970, pp. 479, 480.