"There is no difference between the Pope and Jesus Christ" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Thelogica xxxiv and Papal Bull of Pope Pius V in 1570.)

Catholic Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger, once wrote:

"In future every Catholic Christian when asked why he believes this or that can and may give but the one answer: I believe or reject it because the infallible Pope has bidden it to be believed or rejected" (Declarations and Letters, pgs. 101,101.)  

A Catholic Truth Society published a pamphlet, which read in part: 

"The Catholic Church is essentially, and by divine institution, papal in its nature...that to be a Catholic means precisely to be in communion with the Pope and nothing else" (Rev. P.H, Anglo-Catholics, Have They Grasped the Point?, p.12.) 

So to be in communion with the Pope, by his divine appointment, Catholics to this day are expected to believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Infallibility of the Pope, and the perpetual sacrifice of the mass, each of which are totally foreign to Scripture. 

If the above statements weren't bad enough, the following quote is even more absurd:

"All the devotion to Jesus as Priest, Shepherd and Father that enlightened faith can inspire is summed up practically and effectively in devotion to the Pope...If one would have a devotion to the sacred Scriptures, the Pope is the living and speaking Bible. If it is the duty to be devout to the Sacraments, is not the Pope the Sacrament of Jesus by the mere fact that he is His Vicar" (M.D. Petrie, quoting Monsignor Gay in Modernism, p.189, 190.)   

According to official Catholic doctrine, lay and clergy members of the Church are not allowed to have their own opinion as to what is factual and what is not. This may stun many modern people, but Rome has long retained this erroneous view and even adds, that for those "free thinkers" their desire to check such claims for oneself, is simply "madness" (Leo XIII in his Encyclical Immortale Die and Gregory XVII Encyclical Mirari Vos.) 

This is something that the KGB spent decades imposing on its poor beaten down subjects.

The late Bishop Headlam of Gloucester offered his thoughts: 

"The Papacy as authority is inconsistent with the very essence of Christianity....Again and again in its history the Papacy had adopted such methods and violated the rules which should guide Christian action. We may find in this imperialistic ambition the worst perversion that Christianity has ever undergone" (The Doctrine of the Church, p.194 & Inge, Christian Ethics and Modern Problems, p.189.)  

Yet, Papal "infallibility" was never practised or taught during the first thousand years of Christianity.

Rome's greatest ever canon lawyer, Gratian said the following, concerning some of the grave errors made by the apostle Peter, after the Resurrection: 

"He compelled the Gentiles to live as Jews and to depart from Gospel truth" (Gal. 2:11-14.) 

There is no doubt that what Gratian said is very serious and quite accurate. 

And Leon Morris offers his own stinging comments on Peter, by quoting two sources, which both line up to condemn the Apostle and his actions: 

"The same Peter who had denied his Lord for fear of a maidservant now denied Him again for fear of the circumcision" (Stott.) Now Morris quotes his second source - Luther: "If Peter dissembleth, sinneth not of ignorance, but deceiveth by a colour which he knoweth himself to be false" (Galatians: Paul's Charter of Christian Freedom, 1996, p.79.)

Peter was indeed teaching (if only for a short while) a different gospel to what Paul was teaching. So one can understand the fury that Paul would have felt when he confronted Peter. It should be pointed out, however, that Peter many years later would echo all that Paul had taught (faith in Christ alone) in his epistle to his Jewish Christians (2 Pet. 3:15,16.) So clearly there was no infallibility here, but many gross errors and human weakness (Mark 14:38), something the best saints have been guilty of.

On the two occasions when a Pope has spoken ex-cathedra (this means he is totally infallible, something none of the apostles or Church fathers ever were or taught), their main interest was to venerate Mary.  

The first of these occasions was in 1854 (however, 21 Archbishops and 64 bishops voted against this new and unheard of authority, so it was only passed after a split vote) when Pope Pius IX infallibly decreed Mary was not conceived in original sin.

Former Jesuit, George Tyrell had the following to say about this type of theatre: 

"Why should men of today be forced to believe under pain of eternal damnation what St. Thomas [Aquinas] and St. Bernard [and St. Bonaventura, not to mention the Franciscan and Dominican orders] denied with impunity" (Medievalism, pg. 49.)

Then in 1950, Pope Pius XII decreed that Mary, after she had died, was bodily assumed up to Heaven.  

There is absolutely nothing in Scripture that even hints at this Roman doctrine about Mary.  

Yet infallible Pope Gelasius taught that anybody who believed in the bodily ascension of Mary would be anathema. So one must ask, is John Paul II cursed? And what about Pope Paul V who condemned (anathema) Galileo and anybody else who believed that the sun revolves around the earth. Is today's Pope and 2/3's of the earth also cursed?

And then there is Alexander V who said that Gregory XIl was a heretic (Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. I, pg. 28.)

Peter Ruckman, in his two-volume work on Church history, offers the following comments on this type of folly:

"For example, the Roman Catholic Bishop Strossmayer pointed out to Pius IX and his half-insane hierarchy that pope Victor (192) approved of Montanism and then condemned it. Pope Marcellinus (296-303) was an idolator. Gregory I (785-790) called anyone "ANTICHRIST" who took the name that Pope John Paul II took (and John XXIII took and Paul VI took!) Pope Paschall II and Pope Eugenius III authorised dueling. Julius II and Pius IV forbade it. Pope Eugenius IV approved of the Council of Basel. Pius II revoked it . Hadrian II (867-872) declared civil marriages to be valid. Pope Pius VII (1800-1823) said they weren't, etc, etc" (Vol. II, pg. 439.) 

And also the late Bishop Kerr, contributes the following:

"In the thirteenth century the Franciscan order was convulsed by a controversy about holding to the principles of their founder. George IX in 1231 issued a bull that it was not lawful for them to have property. In 1279 the bull of Nicholas III, Exiit, endorsed this and stated that Christ taught by word and example. Pope John XXII, however, in his bull Cum inter nonnullos, 1332, denounced the tenet of the absolute poverty of Christ as contrary to Scripture and heretical. Where is certitude to be found" (pg. 37.)

Other popes have wanted to speak ex-cathedra, like in 1968 when pope Paul VI tried to teach against contraception, but a backlash from clergy and laity made the papal decree not worth the paper it was written on. (This was the first open rebellion the church had seen in the 20th century. Paul VI never emotionally recovered from this assault on his papal authority and indeed he would never issue another papal encyclical up until his death in 1978 - the year of three popes!) Therefore, popes are very reluctant to see another form of open and embarrassing rebellion within Catholicism.