The pope has as prog-rock album coming out soon. Not even kidding.
The Onion headline made me smile as usual: Pope Francis Reverses Position On Capitalism After Seeing Wide Variety Of American Oreos
Autotune the Pope
I guess it was inevitable.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/25/world/pope-heresy/index.html
The widely publicized, theologically dense letter was delivered to the Pope with 40 signatures on August 11, according to its organizers. It has since gained 22 more signatures and was released to the public on Saturday. In a press release, the organizers say they speak for “a large number” of clergy and lay Catholics who “lack freedom of speech.”
The letter does not accuse the Pope himself of being a heretic, but of supporting “heretical positions” on “marriage, the moral life and the Eucharist.”
Wait, I thought the Pope was infallible on anything in the catechism (sp?).
Nah. Think of Papal Infallibility as a 7th Level cleric spell from the #@$% you, I know what I’m talking about domain. It must be deliberately “cast,” and is done so with extreme rarity.
Armando gets me (thanks for clearing the reference up for non-d20 players)
So the Catholic church still ducks and weaves when it comes to sexual abuse by its priests.
This is a sticky problem and Francis’ move here—regardless of what you think about the DP—could be disastrous for politics in the church. On the one hand, the past three papacies have all been very outspoken that the death penalty is not acceptable in modern societies where life imprisonment is a viable alternative. The whole point of this formulation was to avoid contradicting the church’s past recognition (we’re talking Middle Ages) of the death penalty as licit.
I’m sure it seems silly to non-Catholics (even lots of average Catholics), but the church declares that it teaches the universal and eternal truths on questions like this. As the pontiff, your responsibility from a doctrinal perspective is to first “do no harm,” if you will. You can’t state that, on very important doctrine or moral matters, what the church taught in the past was wrong. But you also have to reframe and refine those teachings to be clearer and more relevant to the times. That’s what JPII’s death penalty teaching was doing.
Francis might be breaking that (although the announcement included the arguments by which this is a “development” of doctrine and not a change, they just aren’t very convincing).
Here’s the more pragmatic issue, if you’re not super compelled by the “eternal truths” bit: What Francis could be doing is opening up a political Pandora’s box. What’s to stop the next pope from saying “I’m deciding the DP is okay again”? Or changing any other teaching? If continuity with the teachings of the past isn’t important, then the church’s doctrine is just your typical political battlefield. It’ll get as ugly as American politics, maybe worse.
But if it wasn’t for the death penalty, how could Jesus’ have died for our sins?
Life imprisonment for our sins would mean that he would still be around, right?
Yeah, I got that. It wouldn’t be funny if I didn’t get that.
Your argument makes sense but you’re bringing in the “consistent life ethic” as an authoritative standard. While it’s a common and generally respected principle in Catholic thought, it’s not actually Catholic doctrine. At best it’s a term to package up a set of Catholic doctrines into a conceptual fabric. So to appeal to it to alter the teaching about the death penalty is a little bit backwards. I think many proponents would say that improving the “consistency” of the consistent life ethic is a thing worth striving for. But for a Pope, the aim of maintaining the consistency of Church doctrine is probably more critical. Once the Pope undermines the authority of his predecessors, then why does anyone need to listen to his contemporary opinion?
On the topic of politics in and around the Church, of course there are endless examples. And for at least the first 500 years of the Church’s history there was a ton of wrangling over doctrine. But since maybe Vatican I (when the Pope was declared infallible on matters of doctrine and morals), there’s an understanding that it’s extremely problematic to start playing politics with doctrine, and that it’s the Pope’s responsibility to maintain coherence with the past judgments of the Church through history.
It’s a crazy balancing act when you’re running the world’s oldest institution–especially one that’s supposed to be guarded by the Holy Spirit to never be in error!
I should never have read the comments there. Disgusting people.
