Expert: Griff Ruby - 3/4/2005

Question
***If we are old enough to have formulated an opinion of our own, the Church asks us that we believe in what Jesus Christ taught, and that we accept it all and agree to submit to it all.***

How and why can you continue as a Catholic or claim to be a Catholic while you do not recognize the pope?  What Church are you speaking of above?  Allow me to illustrate my confusion below:

I have aksed you about the subject of infant baptism, and you have given me an answer which I have found WAS common in Pre-Vatican II times, namely "that personal faith is not necessary to the sacrament of baptism but that the faith of the sponsers is enough" which is obviously antibiblical and wrong.  However, I have also recently asked this of MANY Vatican II Catholics, and their standard answer is "infants have faith, just not perfect faith" which is ridiculous and makes no sense.

Neither answer is satisfactory to me, but the fact that a supposedly infallible Magesterium for a long time taught the first but now teaches the latter proves to me that the Magesterium is not infallible at all.

Answer
The answer you call "common in Pre-Vatican II times" is always and eternally common in the Church.  What the Catholic Church taught on the first Pentacost in 33 AD, and throughout the New Testament, and in the times of Athanasius, Augustine, Pope Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Alphonse Ligouri, and today remains ever the same, fixed and unchangeable.
I find it interesting (indeed a healthy sign) that your reactions to the Pre and Post Vatican II teachings differ in that, while you disagree with the one, the other you find (as do I) patently ridiculous.  Post Vatican II has nothing to do with authentic Catholicism (that of all history), but with the teachings of a new and man-made "church."  (In fact it was made at Vatican II itself, and is organizationally distinct from the Catholic Church of history, which also still exists today as much as it ever existed, albeit in smaller numbers.  I have nearly completed a series of articles on how this happened canonically, entitled "What is Your Picture" on the DailyCatholic website.)
As to being "popeless," the Church has had its popeless periods before, and now is no different.  By definition (to say nothing of God's promises to be "always" with His Church, see Matthew 28:20), a Pope, in the real and authentic and Petrine sense of that word, must and necessarily will be all about upholding and enforcing that "Pre-Vatican II" Faith, however poorly some few individual popes themselves have done so.
IF (and I admit that it does indeed seem so, though it is not for me to say) the current Vatican leadership does not uphold and enforce that "Pre-Vatican II" Faith, then that would indeed amount to them not being Pope in any real sense of that word.  But again, I can't make that declaration here.
Meanwhile, back to the diagreement you have about Infant baptism, do you not realize that water baptism is to the Christian Covenant exactly what circumcision was to the Jewish Covenant?  And the Bible is quite explicit in stating that the infant children of Jews are to be circumcised on the eighth day (Genesis 21:1-4, Acts 7:8).  In the New Testament times, many were baptised as adults, first requiring their decision for Christ, even as Abraham was circumcised as an adult, first requiring his friendship with God.  But that is not the norm for those born into the Covenant, and never was for Christians either.  Imagine if the Old Testament had stopped with the conversion of Abraham.  We then might similarly not know that circumcision was meant for Jewish infants.  And even baptism in the New Testament:  Might not Lydia's household (all of whom were baptized) have included any infants, either of her own flesh or of her servants?  (Acts 16:14-15)