Catholicism can and must change, Francis forcefully tells Italian church gathering

[Vouthon]

Everything that we know to be true will forever continue to be true.

That is true (no pun intended! ), although we must bear in mind that while what has been declared true in the past will never become false, we cannot think it legitimate to explain the truth according to the comprehension of prior generations. The Church today has a more developed insight into divine revelation because of advancements in human learning as a whole, as well as the great changes that have occurred in society, as directed by the Holy Spirit. Centuries from now, later generations of ecclesiastics will say the same regarding our time. The truth is constant but it does develop according to the needs of different ages, without losing its substance - indeed its reality becomes more clearly refined and sharpened with time.

What has in the past been said to be true will always be true but it would be improper to think that how it was understood in the past is more accurate than how it should be understood today. The truth will never become untruth but our understanding of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of it most certainly will change, along with unforeseen elements that may have been implicit or veiled too prior generations but which have, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, became readily explicit and clear for us today.

 

[Brendan]

There are parish goings on but much of the stuff does not flow easily through to the parish. And there is work which could be shared out for all parish members that only circulates within the diocese. What comes from the Bishops has to find ways more directly on through to parishes, IMO - I am allowed an opinion, being a Christian (maybe not a very good one) too, I think?! I stand by this opinion from personal experience of where I live.

You are, of course, free to have an opinion on your experiences. What I am asking is to help me understand the opinion.

I am still unclear as to exactly HOW your diocese is preventing the parish from doing exactly what Pope Francis is asking for?

I agree that there is probably work being done at the diocesan level, and such work might ease the process of doing similar work in the parishes, but how does it prevent it? Why not START at the parish level, I think that is more along the lines of what Pope Francis is looking for. Would you not agree?

 

[Brendan_64]

We shall see if it falls on deaf ears, however. Even here, among ourselves, the CAF regulars, there is an aversion to “go forth to the streets”. We all to often sit comfortably within the walls of our parish chapel, more concerned with who we think is worthy of sitting in the pews than opening the doors for "the abandoned, the forgotten, [and even more so], the imperfect.

How do you know what CAF regulars do when they are not posting here? You seem to imply that those who are concerned about the prospects of attempts to change doctrine (or at least ‘pastoral practice’) do not “go forth to the streets”. How do you know this? Or should I say, who are you to judge?

 

[Thomas_White]

If you want to, of course. But since it seemed to bother you, that’d be odd.

Of course. Anything said is likely to be disputed. Is this not correct?

 

[Brendan]

That is true (no pun intended! ), although we must bear in mind that while what has been declared true in the past will never become false, we cannot think it legitimate to explain the truth according to the comprehension of prior generations. The Church today has a more developed insight into divine revelation because of advancements in human learning as a whole, as well as the great changes that have occurred in society, as directed by the Holy Spirit.

What has in the past been said to be true will always be true but it would be improper to think that how it was understood in the past is more accurate than how it should be understood today. The truth will never become untruth but our understanding of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of it most certainly will change, along with unforeseen elements that may have been implicit or veiled too prior generations but which have, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, became readily explicit and clear for us today.

It would be wrong to state that what was understood about a truth in the past is in anyway inaccurate either.

What was said about the Theotokos at Ephesus is certainly accurate. And the writings of Council Fathers and the documents thereof are useful in understanding HOW the teaching is meant to be understood. So, in many ways, the understanding grows by looking backwards in time in attempts to achieve the understanding that they had.

Our understanding will improve, but it is dependent upon, and builds upon, the understanding of the Church throughout all of history.

Remember that all of these revealed truths were given as the Deposit of Faith, which was given to the Apostles. So while our understanding will improve, it is based 100% on the understanding given to the Apostles, to whom we hope to draw ever closer to.

As Chesterton noted, the dead will always have a vote in the Church

“Tradition may be defined as the extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition.”

-GK Chesterton,

 

[Vouthon]

More from Blessed John Henry Newman - development of doctrine is ‘natural growth’ not ‘mutation’:

newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter5.html

**This is readily suggested by the analogy of physical growth, which is such that the parts and proportions of the developed form, however altered, correspond to those which belong to its rudiments. The adult animal has the {172} same make, as it had on its birth; young birds do not grow into fishes, nor does the child degenerate into the brute, wild or domestic, of which he is by inheritance lord. Vincentius of Lerins adopts this illustration in distinct reference to Christian doctrine. “Let the soul’s religion,” he says, “imitate the law of the body, which, as years go on, developes indeed and opens out its due proportions, and yet remains identically what it was. Small are a baby’s limbs, a youth’s are larger, yet they are the same.”…

However, as the last instances suggest to us, this unity of type, characteristic as it is of faithful developments, must not be pressed to the extent of denying all variation, nay, considerable alteration of proportion and relation, as time goes on, in the parts or aspects of an idea. Great changes in outward appearance and internal harmony occur in the instance of the animal creation itself. The fledged bird differs much from its rudimental form in the egg. The butterfly is the development, but not in any sense the image, of the grub. The whale claims a place among mammalia, though we might fancy that, as in the child’s game of catscradle, some strange introsusception had been permitted, to make it so like, yet so contrary, to {174} the animals with which it is itself classed. And, in like manner, if beasts of prey were once in paradise, and fed upon grass, they must have presented bodily phenomena very different from the structure of muscles, claws, teeth, and viscera which now fit them for a carnivorous existence. Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, on his death-bed, grasped his own hand and said, “I confess that in this flesh we shall all rise again;” yet flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and a glorified body has attributes incompatible with its present condition on earth…

Nay, one cause of corruption in religion is the refusal to follow the course of doctrine as it moves on, and an obstinacy in the notions of the past. Certainly: as we see conspicuously in the history of the chosen race. The Samaritans who refused to add the Prophets to the Law, and the Sadducees who denied a truth which was covertly taught in the Book of Exodus, were in appearance only faithful adherents to the primitive doctrine. Our Lord found His people precisians in their obedience to the letter; He condemned them for not being led on to its spirit, that is, to its developments. The Gospel is the development of the Law; yet what difference seems wider than that which separates the unbending rule of Moses from the “grace and truth” which “came by Jesus Christ?” Samuel had of old time fancied that the tall Eliab was the Lord’s anointed; and Jesse had thought David only fit for the sheepcote; and when the Great King came, He was “as a root out of a dry ground;” but strength came out of weakness, and out of the strong sweetness **

 

[Maximilan_Kolbe]

Of course. Anything said is likely to be disputed. Is this not correct?

No, it’s not.

Okay, I said that just to dispute you.

 

[Thomas_White]

Doctrines can develop, but what is known to be true will never become false.

No development of doctrine will ever declare that the Holy Trinity is FOUR persons in one Godhead, nor any new understanding of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation will ever declare that the Eucharist is anything other than the full and complete Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.

Everything that we know to be true will forever continue to be true.

Mary will forever more be the Mother of God, and has been since the Annunciation. We might understand her role more fully, and declare NEW titles for her, like Mediatrix of All Graces. But what is previously known will never cease to be true.

Artificial Contraception will always be intrinsically immoral and has been since the creation of Time itself. We might gain new insights into other acts that are intrinsically evil, but no new understanding of a doctrine will ever make what is evil into good. or even morally neutral.

We have seen what is said before. But the world is not the same as it was in the year 500 or 1500 either, is it? The reality of the world today could not possibly have been understood by the Council of Trent. This is the temporal world of change, and it is this reality, a process, that results in the continued understanding of doctrine. There is no fixed point in time where the fullness of revelation could be understood before the end of time. All there is to know has not yet been revealed.

 

[Vouthon]

It would be wrong to state that what was understood about a truth in the past is in anyway inaccurate either.

What was said about the Theotokos at Ephesus is certainly accurate. And the writings of Council Fathers and the documents thereof are useful in understanding HOW the teaching is meant to be understood. So, in many ways, the understanding grows by looking backwards in time in attempts to achieve the understanding that they had.

Our understanding will improve, but it is dependent upon, and builds upon, the understanding of the Church throughout all of history.

Remember that all of these revealed truths were given as the Deposit of Faith, which was given to the Apostles. So while our understanding will improve, it is based 100% on the understanding given to the Apostles, to whom we hope to draw ever closer to.

I was not implying that we do not build upon the prior understandings and definitions of doctrine, of course we do. It is a living tradition within one public revelation, not a new revelation. What I was saying, however, is that prior generations understanding of doctrine is incomplete. It has to be, or else we wouldn’t have developed doctrine at Ephesus in the first place. That the Church did is tantamount to the growth in insight and maturation of intellect that comes with time. The Church moves forward towards the Eschaton, gaining in strength and wisdom from the same wellspring of divine revelation.

We must note, however, that the Apostles left us the deposit of faith as a seed. One of the errors of the Protestant Reformation was an attempt to wind the clock back to primitive times and understandings, as best as the reformers could tell. This led them to reject many Catholic doctrines that were never explicitly delineated in apostolic times because they were present only in an as yet undeveloped foetal form.

 

[Thomas_White]

No, it’s not.

Okay, I said that just to dispute you.

That’s not a proper dispute. Peace.

 

[dans0622]

From the same speech

Don’t build walls! Unless you like the TLM, or Ember Days, or the like. Then we should totally build a special wall just for you and make sure you don’t attract anybody else to your weird practices.

Hence why I really don’t take the whole “no one is excluded” stuff very seriously. The people who push that, whether in the church, or politics, or on a college campus always seem to end up wanting to exclude certain people and opinions. Just what they accuse others of doing.

Hence why I don’t take Francis too seriously. He seems to want to reach out to everybody else at the expense of what Cardinal Dolan called the “new minority”. Now if he merely assumed they were faithful Catholics who are good to go and didn’t require much attention, that’s one thing. But the Pope seems to want to push them away. “Take your culturally unmeaningful practices and get out.”

Hello,

Well, since those practices and conduct still have meaning to people, he must have been talking about something else. If I was there, I would have asked “practices…such as?”

Dan

 

[dans0622]

Jesus preached to the masses, not to theologians and canon lawyers.

Hmm…

Dan

 

[Brendan]

I was not implying that we do not build upon the prior understandings and definitions of doctrine, of course we do. It is a living tradition within one public revelation, not a new revelation. What I was saying, however, is that prior generations understanding of doctrine is incomplete. It has to be, or else we wouldn’t have developed doctrine at Ephesus in the first place. .

I would claim that the understanding was always there ( in fact, it would be, since the whole Deposit of Faith is preserved)

The clarifications, such as the Theotokos, come when the understandings of the Deposit of the Faith are challenged. Such as the case when Nestorius challenged the Church’s understanding of the dual Natures of Christ.

And once the understanding, that has really always been know, has been clarified, is it preserved unchanged. We will always understand that Christ is both Man and God, and that Mary is His Mother.

And challenges to that defined understanding can readily be declared to be outside of the Church.

 

[Zeldarocks2]

Here’s how I see it, Pope Paul VI could well have approved the lifting of the ban on Contraception, because I’m sure that the Bishops in the commission were able to draft a document and reinterpret the teaching in a modern light.

Maybe Pope Francis cannot change doctrine, but he can appoint some canon lawyers to reframe it.

 

[gilliam]

“… It is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism,” the pope said. “We are not living an era of change, but a change of era.”

Christian doctrine, he added, “is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, queries, but it’s alive, and able to unsettle, animate.” Doctrine, Francis said, “has a face that isn’t rigid, a body that moves and develops, it has tender flesh: that of Jesus Christ.”

cruxnow.com/church/2015/11/10/pope-francis-says-catholics-must-be-open-to-change/

 

[Smfm]

" Oh Blessed Mother undoer of Knots, please pray for us."

 

[Vouthon]

I would claim that the understanding was always there ( in fact, it would be, since the whole Deposit of Faith is preserved)

The clarifications, such as the Theotokos, come when the understandings of the Deposit of the Faith are challenged. Such as the case when Nestorius challenged the Church’s understanding of the dual Natures of Christ.

And once the understanding, that has really always been know, has been clarified, is it preserved unchanged. We will always understand that Christ is both Man and God, and that Mary is His Mother.

And challenges to that defined understanding can readily be declared to be outside of the Church.

Consider that St Paul and most early Christians appeared to believe that the Parousia and Second Coming would take place in their lifetimes. Was their understanding of this doctrine ‘full’? Did not the passage of time suggest that a deeper insight was needed into the words of Christ?

The understanding of doctrine is not merely clarified in the face of challenges and exterior transformations in the world, it develops in response to it and grows closer to the fullness of the truth implicit in the original teaching.

 

[Neofight]

How do you know what CAF regulars do when they are not posting here? You seem to imply that those who are concerned about the prospects of attempts to change doctrine (or at least ‘pastoral practice’) do not “go forth to the streets”. How do you know this? Or should I say, who are you to judge?

Me thinks thou protest too much.

 

[Thomas_White]

I would claim that the understanding was always there ( in fact, it would be, since the whole Deposit of Faith is preserved)

The clarifications, such as the Theotokos, come when the understandings of the Deposit of the Faith are challenged. Such as the case when Nestorius challenged the Church’s understanding of the dual Natures of Christ.

And once the understanding, that has really always been know, has been clarified, is it preserved unchanged. We will always understand that Christ is both Man and God, and that Mary is His Mother.

And challenges to that defined understanding can readily be declared to be outside of the Church.

The theologian Joseph Ratziner “held that God reveals and revealed himself in history and through history and not just once to the authors of the Bible. He further held that the static bible-based concept of divine revelation was nonexistent in the thirteenth century.” He continued to teach this understanding of revelation as Pope Benedict XVI.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology_of_Pope_Benedict_XVI#Divine_revelation

 

[Mongo]

The understanding of doctrine continuously advances and that it does is a dogmatic teaching.

Development of doctrine isn’t a dogma. If you think it is, then show the canon condemning those who reject development of doctrine.