Papal Infallibility
The Roman Catholic doctrine of "papal infallibility" was adopted July 18, 1870 at the First Vatican Council (1869–1870). This asserts that popes are incapable of error when they teach about faith and morals, by virtue of their unique position as successors of St. Peter.
When the bishops gathered for the First Vatican Council, there was chatter about this new idea but everyone was confused about what would be voted on. Some bishops boycotted the meeting because of it. One Catholic historian writing under the name “Janus" compiled a list of times in history when popes had erred in their judgments, including a time when an ecumenical church council declared a pope heretical and anathematized him, and other times when popes contradicted their predecessors and overturned their decisions. There was tremendous pressure especially by the Jesuits who controlled Rome at the time to agree to this teaching that had little precedence in church history. Arguments for "the primacy of Peter" were not as directed to doctrinal truth as to how to strengthen the church's power that was being challenged from all sides. On this day in 1870 the council overwhelmingly adopted this statement:
“The Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his church should be endowed.”
Many Catholics then and today reject the doctrine of papal infallibility and the extraordinary power delegated to one man, the "Vicar of Christ," to speak for God to the world. Protestants are clear that we have one mediator between God and his people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5), and that God speaks decisively and clearly in the uniquely inspired written word: the Bible. Anglicans specifically deny papal infallibility in Article 19 when we state that the Church of Rome has erred, “not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.”
Catholicity was of paramount importance for the 16th century Protestant reformers, and from their perspective it was possible to be more catholic in the sense of the Apostles’ Creed (“We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church…”) than was the Roman Catholic Church of their day. John Jewel, for example, famously challenged Romanists to prove their catholicity by evidence of Holy Scripture, the first four general councils of the ancient church, and the teaching of the church fathers.
“We do believe that ther is onely one Churche of God, and that the same is not shut up as in time past among the Jewes into any one corner or kingdome, butte it Catholike and universall, and dispersed into all the world.”