Welcome back to Seamus Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire, and today I want to explore seven of what I think are the most common misconceptions and myths about the Catholic Church and what the church believes. These are going to be some misconceptions that you may have heard before, ones you may in fact believe or may have believed. And I think it's important whether you're Catholic or not Catholic, to know that these

misconceptions are false.

I mean, after all, if you're going to accept or reject Catholicism, you should at least

accept or reject it based on what it actually is, what it actually teaches, and not on a fictional

version.

It would be a shame to make any decision that important based on

bad information. So I want to look at misconceptions coming both from nonbelievers like atheists,

but also fellow Christians like Protestants. Number one on that list has got to be the idea that

the Pope is always right. This is partly our fault. We have a doctrine called

papal infallibility, and if all you know is the title, it's easy to imagine that this

means the Pope is never wrong about anything whatsoever. And if that was what we believe,

it would be super easy to disprove Catholicism. You can say, aha, look at this time,

the Pope was wrong about something. In fact, this is kind of a longstanding joke among Catholics.

So, for instance, in the early 20th century or mid-20th century novel, Brideshead Revisited

by the Catholic author, Evil and Waugh, there's the character of Rex Matrim.

And Rex is a Protestant who is in the process of maybe converting to Catholicism in order

to marry his Catholic fiancé, Julia.

And along the way, he's meeting with the priest, and the kind of running gag is that Rex has a very confused understanding of anything about Catholic theology.

He's ready to say yes to anything, but he has a very funny kind of misconception about Catholicism.

And so at one point, the priest is pressing him on the question of papal infallibility.

And I always am reminded of this scene. I'm always tickled by it. I'm going to share it in the hopes that maybe you'll find it as

funny and illuminating as I do. Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said it's going to

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