Tradition and Current Teaching

[RHIC12]

How does a person look at current teachings in light of old teaching and tradition?

That’s all. Thanks!

 

[JoeShlabotnik]

Could you be a bit more specific?

 

[fhansen]

Current teachings may further clarify and expand on old teachings-but otherwise reflect the same truths.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

How does a person look at current teachings in light of old teaching and tradition?

We look to harmonize them and show them as a continuation of the same underlying principles (the “hermeneutic of continuity”). The Catholic Church cannot change truth, and “just because the Church teaches X” does not, in itself, make X true. Neither does the Church “make” truth. The Church is solely the guardian, protector, interpreter, and expositor of truth.

If a more recent teaching appears to contradict one taught earlier, we seek to determine how that contradiction doesn’t really exist. If that is not easily done, we may remind the Church of the seeming contradiction, and ask for clarification. Respectfully done, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with that.

 

[RHIC12]

I read another thread that mentioned how rad trads nitpick old disciplines without current ones and how liberals nitpick recent papal statements without context or reference to Church tradition. I was really mostly wondering how does one not nitpick.

 

[RHIC12]

So, if uber-liberals nitpick without context, it means pretty much that they take the apparent contradictions without the old thing?

 

[Weave]

Dogmas are clearly defined and cannot change. Every Catholic is obliged to accept dogma. Disciplines however, can be debated, and people can, in good faith, hold different opinions on disciplines.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Dogmas are clearly defined and cannot change. Every Catholic is obliged to accept dogma. Disciplines however, can be debated, and people can, in good faith, hold different opinions on disciplines.

Disciplines are not teachings, and they can change — examples would be mandatory celibacy for all priests (in the Latin Rite), voluntary versus mandatory Friday abstinence where the bishops allow for this (e.g., in the US), the length of the communion fast, and which holy days are recognized in a diocese. Doctrine cannot change but it can and does develop. Dogma cannot change at all.

 

[Dovekin]

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church’s decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves.
Benedict XVI Christmas greetings to the Roman curia 2005

One example Benedict used in this address was the teaching on Religious Freedom from Vatican II. Many people understood this as a new teaching that could not be reconciled with what Pius IX had taught. Benedict instead pushed for a deeper understanding that cleared the way for a change:

The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one’s own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God’s grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all.

This address is where Benedict described the hermeneutic of rupture and the opposing hermeneutic of reform. (anybody know where hermeneutic of continuity came from?)

 

[JanR]

“The Catholic Church cannot change truth, and “just because the Church teaches X” does not, in itself, make X true.”

I am confused by this statement. If the Catholic Church cannot change truth, then how can a teaching by the Church not, in itself, be true, IF the Church teaches truth?

See the problem with that wording? It’s self-contradictory.