Blade_Runner wrote:
The pope is not the 2nd coming of Jesus, TJ, he is a human being and he is not by any stretch infallible.
As the article from the Catholic Resource Education Center says:
Pastor Aeternus is a largely negative document insofar as it says much about what the pope cannot do, which is to say, in highly circumscribed circumstances, he cannot make a mistake when offering a dogmatic statement ex cathedra. Those circumstances are extremely rare. The rest of the time, the pope is offered no such protection and remains on his own: a human being prone to weakness, sin, and error likeallh of us.
The pope is not the 2nd coming of Jesus, TJ, he is... (
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There you go.
You got it now.
He is, however, our Spiritual Guide even when not speaking ex cathedra.
This is primarily done through encyclicals.
Laudato Si on the environment is one of the most recent.
Look up his encyclicals if want to stay informed.