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ORIGINAL: Dr.Sardonicus
Saying it is not the faith, it is only the leaders is, to my mind, trying to justify allegiance to the church with pretzel logic. The leadership of the church in fact claims that they are the embodiement of the faith. The pope is infallible, with a direct line to god. You are supposed to believe that with all your heart, to be catholic.
like erad, i grew up catholic, went to catholic schools, etc. this particular tenet seems to confuse many people. in truth, the “infallibility” of the pope mainly pertains to the rote execution of the faith itself. what i mean by this is that if the pope says you no longer have to pray in latin during mass, that’s the legislative equivalent of god saying so. there are other “official” church policies that one could say are given the ‘thumbs-up’ of the catholic god, but most stuff we read about doesn’t fall under that purview. it isn’t meant to be generalized to say that anything the pope (or the cardinals, or bishops, etc) does is divinely inspired, or even particularly clever.
the handling of the sex abuse scandal is deplorable, we can all agree on that. and its my personal opinion that the whole celibacy bit IS to blame (at least in part). i personally know of people who even went so far as to enroll in seminary only to quit because they wanted to, you know, be normal and get married.
