Well, let's answer a dumb question with a few other dumb questions.
No, why don't you just trying answering the actual question, dumb or not? Why are you trying so hard to avoid doing that? Here, you've taken semantic advantage of my use of the word "inspired" to compare the authorship of the Bible with a running back rushing for 200 yards in a game. Is that the extent of the value you place on the inspiration of the Bible? Because if it is, we're talking from very different points of view.
I have a book that refers to the inspiration of the Bible as "this mysterious working together of God and man, of divine grace and human liberty." And I'm danged if it ain't mysterious. Pope Leo XIII said this: "By supernatural power God so moved and impelled them to write, He was so present to them, that they first rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth the things which He ordered, and those only." Here we have God influencing both the understanding of the Bible's human authors and their wills. Were they free to write down lies and errors? It seems not.
Now, perhaps you disagree with Pope Leo and me about the inspiration of the Bible. Maybe you think when we talk about the "inspiration" of the Bible, we're talking about some merely natural process, and that the supernatural and the divine didn't play any real role in the Bible's authorship. If that's the case, I wish you'd let me know, because then this line of discussion is fruitless. If, however, you think God did play a real and direct role in writing the Bible, I put my question to you again: Did His role violate the free will of His human aides?
The idea of infallibility isn't simply that the Pope is never wrong on matters of faith, but rather that he, by definition, can't be wrong. And I argue that it's similar to the manner in which the human authors of the Bible couldn't have made a mistake in the Bible.
It is impossible for him to have any fault whatsoever in his interpretation of what God wants the Church to teach. I get the feeling you didn't read the link FLA Jill posted. At any rate, it's impossible for him to define error as infallible truth.
I find it difficult to reconcile that idea with he fact that all people are, by definition, fallible. Hey, I never said it was an easy concept, commodore. Lot's of questions of faith are deeply mysterious to us. If you can wrap your head around the Hypostatic Union, call me immediately, I need to talk to you. Concepts like this are mysterious precisely because they're difficult, and seem to our limited comprehension to be self-contradictory.
Maybe part of the difficulty, though, is simply in what you and I believe about the Catholic Church. You, I have to assume, think it's really only a human institution. I don't. I believe it's both human and divine. I think God is present in the Catholic Church in a real way. I think the supernatural exists, and exerts real influence. I don't view the Church as simply a community of like-minded believers, as perhaps you do.
my quite responsive point about filtering of God's will through people. It is not possible for people to be infallible.
Filtering, in this case, need not- does not- mean the same thing as mingling with error. It's ture that we can't fully comprehend many of God's truths in all their depth. They're beyond us, we're forced to labor under the limitations of our humanity. One might say that these truths can sometimes only be conveyed dimly, filtered as they must be through human agents. But that doesn't mean God can't protect against error being transmitted through his agents.
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."