Vatican Concern for Life is Life at the Vatican

The RC Church can’t change its position on birth control because that would mean the Church had been wrong and the Church can’t be wrong. In 1870 Pope Pius IX decreed that popes are infallible. Also in 1870 the Roman Catholic Church lost its Papal States. The Papal States was an independent territory of about 16,000 square miles in central Italy. These lands were owned personally and ruled over by the popes. Pepin the Short, King of the Franks gave land to Pope Stephen II in 756, which eventually became the Papal States. In 1870, Victor Emmanuel captured Rome. He asked Roman citizens if they wanted the city to become the political capital of a united Italy. They voted for unification and that ended papal rule over the Papal States. The land owned by the Vatican now is only about 0.17 square miles. Pope Pius IX protested the loss of his Papal States by shutting himself up in the Vatican and calling himself a prisoner. The papacy was in danger of going down the tubes. But Pius IX had Plan B. As Stephen D. Mumford, Phd, noted in 1999 in his treatise for the Center for Research on Population and Security: “For more than a millennium, the Vatican had possessed temporal power which ensured its survival. With the loss of the Papal States in 1870, it appeared all but certain that a strong Papacy would simply disappear. The Vatican urgently needed a new source of power. “A group of conservative and influential leaders, including Pope Pius IX, came up with a brilliant idea for a new source; an infallible pope. What is infallibility? According to Catholic dogma, the pope is God's representative on earth and God guides him as he cares for his flock. When the pope formulates a doctrine, he is simply transmitting this dogma on God's behalf. Therefore, the teaching cannot possibly be in error. Thus, the pope's teachings are infallible.” Mumford says that the concept of papal infallibility was a brilliant strategy and it worked for a century, “But,” he says, “at its introduction in 1870, the Catholic intelligentsia, among them theologians, historians and bishops, recognized that at some point in the future, this principle would lead to self-destruction of the institution. Times were certain to change and in unpredictable ways.” “This decision (papal infallibility) would lock the Church into an inexorable course—teachings that could not be changed without destroying the principle of infallibility itself,” Mumford said. The RC Church had painted itself into a corner. It was just a matter of time before the house of cards collapsed. Interestingly, a minority report on papal infallibility was prepared and co-authored in 1966 by John Paul II. JPII stated in the report: “If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubii was promulgated), in 1951 (Pius XII's address to the midwives), and in 1958 (the address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error.” Translation: The Church had declared itself infallible because the Church claimed God told it what to do. Therefore to reverse any position the Church had ever held would mean that the Church believed God was in error. We are left with only one conclusion about the “culture of life” bullshit and the ranting about abortion and contraception being a sin. The Vatican’s show of outrage is not because the Vatican believes life is sacred. It’s because the Vatican believes the Vatican is sacred. Ordinary folks voted against papal rule over their land in 1870. In 2005, ordinary folks have seen through the false piety of the papacy to its true intention. The self-destruction of the Roman Catholic Church is inevitable.