The Christian Post published an article on December 8, 2024 about the First Vatican Council, which began December 8, 1869. This Roman Catholic Church Council decided that the pope, the leader of the Church cannot make a mistake about certain matters of faith, and that Jesus’ mother, Mary, never sinned. Are these claims actually Biblical? We’ll see.

Part of this article appears below:

First Vatican Council begins – Dec. 8, 1869

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This week marks the anniversary of when the First Vatican Council, an influential gathering of Catholic Church leaders that would last nearly a year, held its opening proceedings.

Convened by Pope Pius IX, the first session of the gathering was held at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Italy, with the proceedings being indefinitely halted the following year due to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War.

Also known as Vatican I, the gathering officially recognized the concept of papal infallibility, which states that under specific official circumstances, the pontiff cannot err on matters of faith.

Since the 1800s, papal infallibility has only been invoked twice: when Pope Pius IX declared that the Virgin Mary was born sinless and when Pope Pius XII declared that Mary was assumed into Heaven rather than dying a natural death.

The Bible says that, “No distinction is made: all have sinned and lack God’s glory” (Romans 3:23 Roman Catholic New Jerusalem Bible). Every human, even the most devout Christians, including Church leaders, sin. Indeed, “there is no one on earth so just as to do good and never sin” (Ecclesiastes 7:20 Roman Catholic New American Bible). There are no exceptions, not even for Mary, Jesus’ mother.

The Roman Catholic Church claims that Jesus’ apostle Peter was appointed by Jesus as the first pope of the Church. However, this claim is contradicted by the scriptural evidence, such as the following:

“But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, ‘Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?'”—-Galatians 2:11-14 NAB

Peter was obviously neither the first pope nor infallible. The scriptures resoundingly debunk the major claims of Roman Catholic Church’s First Vatican Council.