The Pope IS the Catholic Church. To be a good Catholic in good standing with the Church you follow the Pope blindly. The Pope is God (Jesus) on earth. In all matters of religion, the Pope is infallible.
Incorrect. The Church has defined in the past that any pope who was a heretic was, by that fact alone, not the Pope, and no Catholic owed him any allegiance.
I was wondering why this thread?
Didn't take long to find...From Wikipedia:
One of the first acts of Pope John XXIII, in 1960, was to eliminate the description of Jews as perfidius (Latin for "perfidious" or "faithless") in the prayer for the conversion of the Jews in the Good Friday liturgy.
He interrupted the first Good Friday liturgy in his pontificate to address this issue when he first heard a celebrant refer to the Jews with that word.
He also made a confession for the Church of the sin of anti-semitism through the centuries.
While Vatican II was being held, John XXIII tasked Cardinal Augustin Bea with the creation of several important documents that pertained to reconciliation with Jewish people.
[...]
In 1965, the Catholic Herald newspaper quoted Pope John XXIII as saying:
We are conscious today that many, many centuries of blindness have cloaked our eyes so that we can no longer see the beauty of Thy chosen people nor recognize in their faces the features of our privileged brethren.
We realize that the mark of Cain stands upon our foreheads. Across the centuries our brother Abel has lain in blood which we drew, or shed tears we caused by forgetting Thy love.
Forgive us for the curse we falsely attached to their name as Jews. Forgive us for crucifying Thee a second time in their flesh. For we know not what we did.
