Living with Heresy?

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Brandon I think that is a great point Wes. The language used by the Pope puts a lot of that pressure in decision-making for the last due to confusion on to us ley people. Coming from the protestant faith, that is not a good feeling. Many people start to define and believe even in subtle differences which leads to chaos and division in the church.
 
Even if the pope changed something like 2 men could get married, it would not change what I do on a daily basis, remaining faithful to God, offering up my joys and sorrows and struggles for the conversion of sinners and peace in this world. I still will soldier on even though the winds come up and the waves are high. Continue to bring light to your family, your friends, your workplace. This is what you have control over. Do your part well. It’s your part that you will answer for, and earn a crown in heaven for. May God strengthen us in our task!
 
Actually, I see this “unchanging written in stone 2000-year-old rule book” viewpoint to be a problem for the Church. Life is not black and white, and people who join the Church expecting everything to be black and white and getting worried or upset when the Pope or the Magisterium point out shades of gray, are going to be constantly upset or disappointed.

I also don’t see how a minor change in the wording about capital punishment has any effect on lay people who are not prosecutors, judges or executioners. (You can opt out of being on a capital crime jury in USA. All you have to say is you can’t vote for death penalty under any circumstances and you’ll be removed from the jury.)
Assuming you don’t work in one of the above stated positions where you might be directly responsible for getting someone executed, then it’s not like you have to change your daily behavior. And in any event, you should have already been having concern for that criminal’s human dignity whether the Church says it’s okay for the state to put him to death or not.
 
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ConcernedConvert said:
The thing I feel at peace about is that god promised his church he would protect it throughout the years. This doesn’t mean that some years aren’t terrible or confusion for us as Catholics, it means that in the end the church will stand. I don’t mean to be a negative, but feeling peaceful about how things are going doesn’t mean that the right things are happening in the church. It’s ok to feel uneasy about things, question things, and fight to keep truth truth. This has been done throughout the ages by Catholics who somehow, through the grace of god, preserved the church up to today. It’s our jobs to preserve the church for tomorrow. Our Pope’s, although vicars of Christ, are not perfect, they are men just like the rest of us.
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I think perhaps you mistake my use of peace here. I am under no illusions that there are no fallible people in the church or that there are no forces arrayed to attack Her, from within or without.

I have had many years of bring a Protestant, and have no wish to go anywhere near that ‘pope of my own church’ thinking ever again. Therefore, when someone can explain to me how I can reconcile something which looks a bit odd, I find some peace in that.
Not because I am heedless of the dangers, but because I am comforted that the Church has been through two millennia of challenges and attack and still stands, is not going to be broken by this.
 
Again my concerns are more for defending consistency in teaching over the death penalty on its own. It’s one thing for the church to point out gray areas, another to create gray areas or ambiguous teachings, which is actually addressed in the catechism itself. The church is supposed to offer clear and concise teachings. And most things are very black and white, for instance sin. Take this example of the death penalty, is the church now teaching it as a sin to support the death penalty?, and if so what about all of the people who supported it and perhaps were involved in sentencing of this type in the past. We’re those people living in sin and was the church teaching supporting sin at those times. This has been a teaching of the church, sopprted and taught biblically, both through the Old Testament and the New Testament. What makes us, this includes the clergy, any different than Catholics that have lived throughout the ages. What has changed so much in us as people within the past 100 years, that church teachings rooted in thousands of years of teachings and doctrine are becoming obsolete or inadmissible. The church has had minor teachings that have developed throughout the years. I will have to look into your examples, but this is a pretty big deal that could be very contradictory to early church fathers, biblical teaching and the long standing tradition of the church.
 
ConcernedConvert said:
The church is supposed to offer clear and concise teachings.
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It does. It teaches Jesus’ two commandments, Moses’ 10 commandments, and the basic doctrines of the Trinity, the Eucharist, and the Marian dogmas.

The Church does not have to give, nor can it give, a “clear and concise” teaching on every human issue out there. You are expected to form a conscience and act in a loving manner towards your fellow man as Jesus would want you to do. Some people have very complex personal situations.

However, in this case, it doesn’t take much thought to figure that if it’s possible to lock a person up humanely and give him time to repent, that’s more Christlike than killing him.
 
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I agree with you 100% “if it’s possible”. As I wrote early on in this post, it is not always possible to do this. That is supported by facts that anyone can find. Yet a blanket statement like the pope made now makes it inadmissible for everyone even if it is not possible to safely incarcerate people long term. Africa is a booming region for Catholicism, much of Africa doesn’t have the ability to do this, South America is another great example. Still here in the US you see recidivism for murderers. What about the dignity and worth of the people affected when a violent criminal, already charged and incarcerated, violates again? This is where the prior teaching on this was awesome. It pointed out that on very rare occasions it may not be possible to safely incarcerate someone long term, without encouraging people to utilize the death penalty.
I just reread some of my posts above and need to apologize for the terrible spelling and random words haha. I’m using my phone because my laptop is down and am apparently paying for that haha
 
Also, according to ccc1697, it does have to give catechesis in all clarity both for the joys and demands of the Catholic Church.
 
ConcernedConvert said:
Teaching throughout the past two thousand years has been done so to clarify, or to expound upon church teachings of the past.
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I have long questioned the need for the death penalty, so I have no problem with this teaching. Although I don’t understand what has everyone so concerned since I don’t feel the Pope is changing anything so much as clarifying.
 
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It’s not heresy. It’s just not.

Don’t worry.

The Holy Spirit prevails, always.

How do we know how where the Holy Spirit prevails? Via Christ’s own words, who promised that the Church on Peter will not be led to death! Matt 16:18.

If you become Catholic, you will note that there are various groups in the Church that like to put Pope Francis in a negative light at every turn. Some are truly concerned, but some are just flat-out anti-Francis folk. Don’t let them distort your understanding. Stick to balanced approaches. Catholic Answers has good content. So does EWTN. So does America Magazine (Jesuit, but still balanced).
 
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Lillypilly said:
You have the cart before the horse re “tradition”.
In the end it is the Pope who determine’s what an ambiguous tradition actually is. That is why the gift of Papal infallibility is important and invoked.
Anybody can infallibly declare what is undisputedly held as tradition already.
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The pope doesn’t “decide” what a Tradition with a capital T is. He speaks it, and upholds it. It’s already there. Tradition comes from what the Fathers of the Church have said, the Bible, and previous Popes. There’s a continuity there. Doctrine on capital punishment is that it is moral and has never, not once in the history of the pontificate said to be otherwise or even “inadmissible”. Development of doctrine doesn’t go from “it’s okay when used with discretion”. to “it’s not okay, ever”.
 
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HEre is a link for those thinking the church can change the doctrines established and maintained by the church. It’s breaks it down, duscusses Discipline and practice changes throughout the years. And how those differ from changing or contradicting Church doctrine. It’s provided by… wait for it… Catholic Answers!

https://www.catholic.com/qa/can-the-church-change-its-doctrines
 
Papal teaching, including exercises of the ordinary or extraordinary Magisterium, cannot contradict Scripture, Tradition, or previous binding papal teaching (which comes all the way back from the apostle Peter who was the first Pope). Nor can it introduce new and absolute novelties. Popes have the authority only to preserve and interpret what they have received. They can draw out the implications of previous teaching or they can clarify it where it is ambiguous. They can make formally binding what was already informally taught. But they cannot reverse past teaching and they cannot make up new doctrines out of whole cloth.

This is what the first Vatican council means when it says here,
For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.
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The Catholic doctrine on the death penalty is never going to change no matter what anyone says. It will never be 100% wrong because Catholic doctrine says otherwise. That spans back 2,000 years.
 
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Jimmy’s article is good. Please note that this morning the Moderator has put out an announcement that threads and posts relating to CCC 2267 are now disallowed. He references the Akin article for more details, but asks us to refrain from these threads. @camoderator.
 
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