Letter #122, 2023, Wed Aug 30: Pope-Jesuits Portugal
“Looking back” is useless, Pope warns Catholics in America...
“The view of Church doctrine as monolithic is erroneous,” Francis said during an August 5 Jesuit Q&A in Portugal
In what may be his most explicit suggestion to date that he believes Catholic moral teaching can “change,” Pope Francis earlier this month told a gathering of Jesuits in Portugal that “today it is a sin to possess atomic bombs; the death penalty is a sin. You cannot employ it [the death penalty], but it was not so before.”
The Pope, in Portugal for the 2023 World Youth Day in Lisbon, which ran from August 1-6, met for several hours with Portuguese Jesuits on August 5, speaking with them in a question-and-answer format, the transcript of which was released on August 28. (full transcript text below)
Pope Francis’ just cited comments on sin and the atomic bomb came as part of his answer to a question from a religious brother — it was more of an observation than a question — concerning the criticism of the Pope’s leadership of the Church, and specifically the criticism by American Catholics, “even bishops.”
The Pope responded by criticizing the “reactionary attitude” of many American Catholics, whose “indietrismo” (state of being backward-looking) he called “useless.”
Francis followed up this criticism with his explanation of the “appropriate evolution” of Church doctrine: “...there is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of matters of faith and morals as long as we follow the three criteria that Vincent of Lérins [Editor's note: Vincent of Lérins lived c. 390-445 A.D., 1,600 years ago; therefore, by citing Vincent of Lérins so prominently and approvingly, Pope Francis was himself clearly "looking back" — being, as it were, "backward-looking" — to draw on the thought of a great theologian in order to help us today, and in time to come, as we attempt to understand the essential parameters and limits of "doing theology," link; here Francis continues...] already indicated in the fifth century: doctrine evolves ut annis consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate. [Editor's note: the Latin of the famous phrase of Vincent of Lérins may be translated as "(doctrine) is consolidated over the years, developed over time, deepened (made sublime) with age"; here Francis continues...] In other words, doctrine also progresses, expands and consolidates with time and becomes firmer, but is always progressing. So you change, you change, but with the criteria just mentioned.”
The first problem here is that Francis immediately followed up this general dictum with an example that seems to exceed the scope of the very dictum just enunciated, and in fact strays into the province of not just “expansion and consolidation” but “change” and actual “reversal.”
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