UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
A Prediction for 2014: Increasing Attempts to Undercut Pope Francis’s Socioeconomic Teaching by Dividing His Supporters Over Gay and Women’s Issues
The mainstream media love to play the centrist (which is to say, right-wing-in-disguise) game of pretending that Catholic teaching about doctrinal or moral issues cannot be revised and never has been changed. History notwithstanding: history and all it demonstrates to us about how, in fact, Catholic teaching has been changed in the past, and repeatedly so, notwithstanding . . . .
And so a constant theme in the mainstream media since Pope Francis came on the scene has been the theme, “He can’t possibly change Catholic teaching about xyz (usually, this conversation is about homosexuality, women’s ordination, sexual ethics including contraception, and abortion). He’s a loyal son of the church.”
I like how James Carroll pulls the rug out from under that mainstream media meme (which, I’ll repeat, serves right-wing interests) in his recent New Yorker reflection on “a radical pope’s first year”:
Francis describes himself as a loyal “son of the Church,” and has a record as a doctrinal conservative. Many observers insist that in a Church understood as semper idem—always the same—the most that even an apparently innovative figure like Francis can effect is “pastoral” adjustments in discipline or practice: a merciful easing up on rules without repealing them. Even if he wanted to, Pope Francis could not alter the basic beliefs of the Church.
But in fact the Church has made profound doctrinal changes in living memory. In 1964, the council repudiated a millennium-long tradition of “No Salvation Outside the Church.” That formulation dates at least to the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, and was reiterated by councils and Popes through my youth. Vatican II overturned the doctrine by affirming the primacy of conscience—a teaching Francis has reiterated, applying it to atheists as well.
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