Compatiblism and Incompatibilism

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ChristIsTheWay

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I am currently trying to study the issue of free will. Nearly as I can tell, there are two main options: compatibilism and incompatibilism, with many “subtypes” to each position. My question isn’t what is right or wrong with each position but whether or not the Catholic Church has an official position. Does the Church require an incompatibilist or compatibilist position or is there some room for discussion, like the issue of Thomism and Molinism on predestination?
 
A very brief definition of both, with links to Wikipedia articles with more information:

Compatibilism: “Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent.”

Incompatibilism: “Incompatibilism is the view that a deterministic universe is completely at odds with the notion that people have a free will.”
 
ChristIsTheWay said:
I am currently trying to study the issue of free will. Nearly as I can tell, there are two main options: compatibilism and incompatibilism, with many “subtypes” to each position. My question isn’t what is right or wrong with each position but whether or not the Catholic Church has an official position. Does the Church require an incompatibilist or compatibilist position or is there some room for discussion, like the issue of Thomism and Molinism on predestination?
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I don’t believe the church has an official position; I think we are free to debate the merits and consequences of either position.
 
The Church clearly teaches that God does not predestine evil:
*We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema. *
Council of Orange (529 AD)​
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If any one saith, that it is not in man’s power to make his ways evil, but that the works that are evil God worketh as well as those that are good, not permissively only, but properly, and of Himself, in such wise that the treason of Judas is no less His own proper work than the vocation of Paul; let him be anathema.
Council of Trent, Canon VI of the Decrees on Justification​
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God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.
Catechism of the Catholic Church # 1037​
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If determinism concludes that sinful behavior or final condemnation has been predestined then this view would be incompatible with Catholic teaching. So incompatibilism wins.
 
DavidFilmer said:
The Church clearly teaches that God does not predestine evil:
If determinism concludes that sinful behavior or final condemnation has been predestined then this view would be incompatible with Catholic teaching. So incompatibilism wins.
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I’m not very informed about these respective positions but it does not seem to me that determinism would require the idea that God has predestined evil. I don’t know. My only interest is whether or not the Church has taken a position in the contemporary debate between compatibilism and incompatibilism. Nearly as I can tell, it has not directly done so. There appears to be only parameters or guidelines, such as you have mentioned.
 
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