From: kasprj@isaac.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Subject: Angels and Pinheads
Reply-To: kasprj@rpi.edu
Organization: The Big Wedge 
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 22:57:05 GMT

In article <IDF.92Oct10001700@fat-controller.cs.bham.ac.uk>, idf@cs.bham.ac.uk (Ian Fitchet) writes:
|> 
|>  On 9 Oct 92, Michael Chance wrote
|> > A friend of mine and I were discussing imponderables the other day,
|> > and the topic of the old medieval arguments about the number of angels
|> > that can dance on the head of a pin came up.  He said that the Vatican
|> > actually accept a number (like 489 or some such) during the
|> > Renaissance, based on arguments presented to the Pope.  Anyone have
|> 
|>  Of a more general discussion, I understand that the Pope (ie he who
|> heads the Catholic church) has a great of of grief to overcome should
|> he want to repeal a judgement made by one of his predecesssors.
|> 
|>  Is this true?  Enquiring minds want to now.
 
 Okay, I knew that my Catholic-school religion classes would come in handy 
for something someday. Let's get a few facts straight.
 
 First of all, the debate about how many angels could dance on the head of
a pin was not a debate over a certain number of angels, e.g. 42 versus 469
or whatever. The question was a metaphor for whether angels were physical 
or strictly spiritual beings. If they had some sort of physical existence, 
then only a finite number of them could fit on the head of a pin. Doesn't 
really matter how many; obviously you can get an arbitrarily large number
of angels onto said pin by making the angels arbitrarily small. If they 
were purely spiritual entities, then an infinite number could fit. Those
early Catholics may have thought that the sun revolved around the Earth, 
but that didn't stop them from being clever mathematicians. 
 
 As for your alleged "great of of grief", this seems to be based on the 
doctrine of Papal Infallibility, one of the most misunderstood doctrines of
the Catholic Church. Even most Catholics aren't entirely clear about it. 
Papal infallibility does _not_ mean that every word the Pope speaks is 
immutable Church doctrine. It only applies to certain statements which the 
Pope makes _ex cathedra_ ("from the chair"). These statements are, by Church
doctrine, the direct Word of God spoken through the Pope. A prudent religious
organization would be _very_ careful about invoking this privilege, and 
indeed, the Catholic Church has used it very sparingly, and only on points 
of doctrine which concern the Church itself. As far as I remember, the most
recent _ex cathedra_ statement made by a Pope was sometime in the sixteenth 
century, and concerned some obscure point about the divinity of Mary or the 
saints or something of that nature (I may be mistaken here; anyone who had 
a more comprehensive church history class is welcome to correct me on this).
It would indeed take a great of of grief to reverse one of these statements;
in effect any Pope who did so would be breaking from the Church and creating
a schism which could split the Church right down the middle (not that that
hasn't happened before). 
 
 Ordinary statements made by a previous Pope may be revoked, reversed or 
even condemned by a subsequent Pope without greatly rocking the boat of the
Church. For instance, when Pope John Paul II admitted in the early 80's that
Galileo had been right after all, there was no great of of grief. In fact, 
the only effect this had on the Church was that Catholic astronomers no longer
had to go to confession after publishing their papers.
 
 (Thanks to my religion tecahers at East Catholic High, Manchester, CT for
stuffing this ex-Catholic head full of such useful trivia.)
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