Word.ws English Dictionary

papal infallibility

papal infallibility noun: the concept that the Pope, under certain circumstance (when making a statement on faith or morals, etc.) is protected by the Holy Spirit from being able to make a mistake.

Noun

papal infallibility (uncountable)

  1. The concept that the Pope, under certain circumstance (when making a statement on faith or morals, etc.) is protected by the Holy Spirit from being able to make a mistake.
    • Before examining specific interpretations of papal infallibility, we will first give a general introduction to the doctrine. This chapter begins with an overview of the pontificate of Pius IX and the historical setting of Vatican I. This overview is ...2009, Mark E. Powell, Papal Infallibility: A Protestant Evaluation of an Ecumenical Issue, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, →ISBN, page 20

Questions about papal infallibility

What does papal infallibility mean?
Papal infallibility means the concept that the Pope, under certain circumstance (when making a statement on faith or morals, etc.) is protected by the Holy Spirit from being able to make a mistake.
What part of speech is papal infallibility?
Papal infallibility is a noun.

Words near papal infallibility in the dictionary

  1. papal
  2. papal bull
  3. papal bulls
  4. papal cross
  5. papal crosses
  6. papal infallibility
  7. Papal State
  8. Papal States
  9. papal supremacy
  10. papalagi
  11. papalagis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: papal infallibility (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “papal infallibility.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/papal_infallibility. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.