Bishop Schneider to Pope Francis: For the Sake of Your Soul, Retract Approval of Same-Sex Civil Unions

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sealabeag said:
ch has approved of the death penalty. Whether it is necessary in our times is certainly up for debate, though.
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According to the Vatican, the Catechism updates are magisterial…not the Pope’s personal opinion. It is your personal opinion that the Vatican is wrong, that the Pope is wrong…
 
“According to the Vatican”? What are you referring to? If I’m wrong, Church teaching has changed. If Church teaching has changed, there is no such thing as Truth. 🤷‍♂️
 
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Read this…The Church teaches… and this is in the Catechism itself which is an authoritative document: New revision of number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty – Rescriptum “ex Audentia SS.mi”

The Church’s position on social doctrine has evolved over time. Slavery is another obvious example. I think there is a difference between teaching that the death penalty is now inadmissible, which is the word used, rather than intrinsically evil. If the latter word choice had been used, it would indeed constitute a complete contradiction of previous teaching, as opposed to a development.
 
Yes I understand that this was added to the Catechism. As I explained above, the Catechism is not a vehicle for expounding “new” teaching, and this is a prudential judgement with very ambiguous language that is not binding on Catholics.
 
TMC said:
The Pope said clearly and unequivocally that states should adopt civil union laws for same sex couples, yes. It was not unclear, or cryptic. Nor was it really a surprise, that is the same position he took as a Cardinal.
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It is not clear, as it was in a documentary and we don’t know the unedited context.
This was previously seen as unsupportable by Catholics generally, but there are morally licit contexts for a Catholic to support this position.
One would be that this would be a restriction of the evil of gay marriage or as a “compromise” view when a country really wants to have gay marriage and is disregarding Church teaching, much like how a prolife person can support legislation limiting abortion to the first trimester since it is a limiting of evil, “getting what you can get”.
This could very well have been the context due to so many nations having gay marriage, like the USA and his own Argentina. This is very much different from trying to say we can unconditionally support civil unions.

While teaching can develop, it cannot transmodify into something else: a calf cannot become a fish. So while His Holiness Pope Francis has changed the CCC on the death penalty from being almost never admissible to being inadmissible, this is different from completely teaching something new. The pope is the guardian of true doctrine. Saying it is inadmissible is best interpreted in continuity with the past teaching, hence it is best interpreted as a prudential guidance concerning the modern world (ie the propositions that could be in place where capital punishment is acceptable are not in place now). For a doctrine to truly change, it’d have to be (logically speaking) something taught only fallibly and never infallibly taught. If a pope were to infallibly define something completely contrary to something infallibly taught prior, in the same way (ie a true contradiction), that’d simply be a logical disproof of Catholicism. But since Catholicism is true, this won’t and cannot occur.
 
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Show me the quote that says that this teaching is magisterial and binding in that letter, I don’t see it.
The phrase “inadmissible” is so vague that nobody really knows what it actually means. And you can’t assent to what you don’t understand. That’s why I asked what “inadmissible” means.
 
What is marriage as we define it?

Depends on who you are and where you get married.

For Catholics, marriage is a sacrament which takes place in the Church.

For non Catholics, it can be done at the JP’s office and is a simple paper indicating a legal contract between the two. IE civil union.

The Church does not recognize this as a sacramental marriage if Catholics choose to get married in this fashion.

So if a man and a woman get married, 1, 2 or 5 times outside the Church, the Church shouldn’t and doesn’t concern themselves with what is done outside the Church. The same holds true for if a man and a man or a woman and a woman decide to do that same thing.

That doesn’t mean that the Church approves of folks getting married 1, 2 or 5 times, or takes a position that those people aren’t committing sins. If the person’s aren’t members of the Church, and aren’t presenting themselves for other sacraments, it isn’t of concern for the Church.

No Church teaching has changed regarding approval of same sex civil unions based on what the Pope has said. Just like no Church teaching have changed regarding different sex marriages and divorces outside the Church.

Why is this so hard for folks to grasp?
 
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No, I wasn’t directing that at a particular poster, just the situation in general, caused by Pope Francis’s comments.
 
Oh, ok, sorry. It comes up as a reply in notifications so I thought it was to me. 🙂 And yeah, I probably agree…
 
sealabeag said:
The “clarification” issued by the Vatican did two things:

1…
2. They simply reaffirmed the Pope’s words regarding his previous support for civil-unions for homosexuals. That was…not so good.
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Why is this not so good?
 
Bishop Schneider is not the Pope, much less Jesus, the one who sits on the throne and judges the soul. Admonishing the Holy Father through public media over a stupid movie! I never thought some bishop would try that!

And yes, it was a movie, splicing several old interviews, which they cut, btw, so as not to put it out in public, and acting like this director was doing some new, cool interview.
 
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TMC said:
… Church teachings do change (or “evolve” if that word sits better) and have changed as recently as the recent change to the teaching on the death penalty.
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I agree. I suppose though that it could be argued that the past teachings were not infallible doctrines or something like that. I see the following changes in Catholic teachings:
Death penalty
charging interest on loans
torture
conditions for granting a marriage annulment
Filioque
Is the Blood shed for all or for many
Limbo
May women teach in Church
unleavened bread
 
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