WI: Pope converts to Islam

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility is not a bad definition.

As it says not everything a Pope says is held to be infallible..... and not everybody who says they are Pope is accepted by the Church as being such - either at the time or later

Go back far enough and the Pope as Bishop of Rome is only the first among equals which would not meet the requirement.

To quote the 'Bull of indiction of the sacred ecumenical and general council of Trent'

Meanwhile our cruel and perpetual enemy, the Turk, attacked Italy with a vast fleet, having taken, ravaged, sacked several cities of Apulia, and carried off a booty of captives; we, amidst the greatest alarm and danger of all, were busied in fortifying our shores....

Now the Pope did not spend every minute in Rome - and nor was Rome a great fortified city at that time so it is not impossible that a C16th Pope could be captured by a raiding party...
 
Isn't the clue in the name of the religion? If you are a Christian and you accept that Christ isn't Christ then by definition you are not a Christian and therefore your opinion is irrelevant.

If a Pope went mad and declared god to be a stuffed donkey would the entire Catholic Church worship Eeyaw from Winnie the Pooh?
 
I think the most important butterfly people wouldn't be able to dismiss others for stating the obvious by saying "And the Pope is Catholic". Rather, the obvious would become "And the Pope is Muslim".
 
That's a pretty inaccurate and sort of insulting representation of Catholicism.

Anyways he would be declared insane and be forced to step down from office; and he would probably be killed depending on the era.

Yeah, I realize that it may have been inaccurate to think that way -- overplaying the whole principle of papal infallibility. I'm sorry if I offended you in any way.
 
Exactly. As I noted also, he would either willingly resign on his own or resign "under pressure". If he was truly sincere in his conversion to Islam, the former is much more likely. The only possible way this could affect the long term viability of the Catholic Church or Christianity would be if the conversion occurred in the context of a Muslim conquest of Rome and much of western Europe. In this case, there would be non-Christian military forces at hand to enforce the new understanding of Jesus, Mary, and Monotheism.

Well, I was considering a true and willing conversion. A forced conversion, or a conversion in a context where the dominant political and military forces on the field are Islamic, is a completely different scenario.
 
Yeah, I realize that it may have been inaccurate to think that way -- overplaying the whole principle of papal infallibility. I'm sorry if I offended you in any way.

As a Catholic, I took the question as inaccurate, but not insulting.
Don't forget that papal infallibility is a very recent thing, as other have pointed out.
It wouldn't work before 1870.
In the Dark Ages in particular, strange and painful things happened to the Popes at times... but most of the time, those Popes weren't exactly in position similar to the one of the Popes of later times (let's say, from the tenth/twelfth century onwards).
 
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