Sorry for the papal double-header but I’ve read a number of interesting things in articles on the pope recently. One was this comment:
Popes cannot delegate some things, including their ability to pronounce with infallibility on matters of doctrine.
Imagine if popes could delegate infallibility.
I don’t think I’d want this for two reasons. First, I learn a lot from my mistakes. Being wrong is an important part of human growth and think the less infallible people we have, the better.
Second (and excuse the Disney reference), it reminds me a little bit of the trap that Jafar fell into at the end of Aladdin when he tried extend his ultimate power by gaining the ability to delegate that power. He ended up stuck in a lamp. I don’t wish that on anybody.
“the less infallible people we have…”
I think that if you can count them, you should use “fewer”, but if you can’t it’s “less” – hence “the fewer infallible people…”.
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/amount.html (for example) contains more info.
Thanks for the great blog, btw.
Jaime :-)