Did Pope John XXII issue a papal bull rejecting prior papal claims of infallibility?

Answer 1

A:

It is unlikely that any pope before the time of John XXII claimed papal infallibility, although the Church did accord the highest authority to papal pronouncements. He was concerned that a group of Franciscan monks called "the spirituals" contended that the pope must follow the precedent set by a previous pope who agreed with their view that the church must follow the life of St. Francis of Assisi and live in poverty.

Pope John XXII considered that nothing said by any predecessor could be held infallible and wished to reserve for himself the right to alter or revoke any such statements. He refuted all claims to infallibility in his papal bull, Quia Quorundam (1324),"However, it is evidently clear from the following that the premise of the above argument--namely, that those things which through the key of knowledge the supreme pontiffs have once defined in faith and morals it is not lawful for a successor to call again into doubt, or affirm the contrary, though it is otherwise (they say) with things ordained by supreme pontiffs through the key of power--is entirely contrary to truth." The issue was resolved in John's favour without recourse to this argument, but he specifically left open the possibility of future pontiffs declaring a position contrary to his own, just as he had insisted on the sovereign right to change the positions of his predecessors on faith and morals.

It was not until 1870 that the First Vatican Council defined that the pope could speak infallibly on faith and morals. Bishop Geoffrey Robinson (Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church) asks how a council can infallibly declare the infallibility of the pope unless we assume in advance that the council was itself infallible. In the absence of infallibility on the part of the First Vatican Council, papal infallibility is no more than an opinion.