This past Sunday at my parish we had a visiting priest. Father's sermon focused on the Pontifical Academy for Life, and he lamented that the Academy was now undermining the very ideas that John Paul II founded it to defend. How right Father was and is. There's absolutely no reason in the world for this Church entity to point out HV's non-infallibility unless they're attempting to undermine the teachings therein. For quite a while, Pope Francis has been hinting at the "development of doctrine" on this issue. Despite the Holy Father's generally oblique comments, I think everyone understands what the "development of doctrine" would mean with respect to Humanae Vitae, i.e., that one may develop or discern themselves into recognizing HV's "deeper meaning" in which one discovers circumstances under which it is not a sin to artificially contracept. And I think everyone also understands, those circumstances would quickly come to mean "all the time."
It starts with contraception and ends with a white female bishop telling a black seminarian he can't be ordained because he doesn't believe in structural racism. Press F for the Anglican church.
Why does it feel like all the terrible things that were tried to be pushed on the Church in the 70s and 80s, that we all thought were dead and done with, are now being raised up again like an army of paraconcilliar zombies? Camosy's observation that we see the results of these horrible ideas now very clearly in our culture and world is the real takeaway.
Even if Pope Francis, by the grace of God, doesn't attempt to reverse doctrinal teaching on this matter, it is still such a great scandal for the PAL, who is supposed to be promoting life-affirming theology in the culture, to be leading the charge from within the Church towards the culture of death. And it's not just an occasional one-off tweet by some college intern either, it's high ranking of the PAL itself, including its president, who was granted the position by Pope Francis.
The idea that infallibility is just about magic words or only applies to two or three teachings is nonsense. If Humanae Vitae is not infallible, then no papal teaching is infallible. Every papal teaching is just waiting to be reversed by a development or clarification. Those who oppose papal teaching are just ahead of the curve.
So Pope Francis will never contradict Humanae Vitae, either because he is inspired by the Holy Spirit, or because to do so would make the papacy a joke. God will not tell him to contradict it, and only a fool pope would do it for human reasons.
It does raise questions about Vatican employment practices. If the social media manager of the PAL can create the chaos he/she evidently is, one has to ask, how did that person get hired, what is their remit, what oversight do they have, and is Archbishop Paglia even paying attention?
Also not infallible: having to tithe to the church...
I wonder, as someone who wholeheartedly accepts HV, just what would happen if the pope rescinded HV? Would I humbly accept the church's new teaching or stubbornly hold onto HV? Or see it as "boldly" holding onto HV? hopefully I never am faced with that.
I'm feeling a little bit 'I told you so' as I've been arguing against the modern trend of downgrading papal authority and calling into question their documents etc. for years. How was that not going to backfire on us? Especially regarding HV. When Pope Pauls Mass, teaching on religious freedom, ecumenism, teaching on Jews and Muslims and various other Vatican II teachings are called into question... why not HV? What goes around comes around.
Lex dubia .... The Church's teaching on sex has "developed" over time. Do I understand that St Augustine thought intercourse for pleasure (but not procreation) sinful? Was it not taught at some point that intercourse on Sundays and Holy Days was sinful? Did not St Alphonsus Liguori develop the view (rather late) that intercourse for pleasure (and not just procreation) was legitimate? Do parents have the right to limit births? Was this always acknowledged? But if now acknowledged, did they not always have that right? But now thought only by "natural means." But before the invention of the thermometer and the understanding of the fertility cycle, such limitation was only legitimate by abstinence?
It seems obvious that Humanae Vitae's warnings about the direction of modern sexual liberation are all too obviously valid. But it also seems to me that the lived practice of immense numbers of believing pious married Catholics ought to provoke at least as much reflection as an interpretation of natural law which, if I understand it, even Jacques Maritain had difficulty in supporting.
I'm at a loss for why the PAL should be tweeting at all. It's just not a good format for this subject matter, no matter what views they wind up expressing on it.
This past Sunday at my parish we had a visiting priest. Father's sermon focused on the Pontifical Academy for Life, and he lamented that the Academy was now undermining the very ideas that John Paul II founded it to defend. How right Father was and is. There's absolutely no reason in the world for this Church entity to point out HV's non-infallibility unless they're attempting to undermine the teachings therein. For quite a while, Pope Francis has been hinting at the "development of doctrine" on this issue. Despite the Holy Father's generally oblique comments, I think everyone understands what the "development of doctrine" would mean with respect to Humanae Vitae, i.e., that one may develop or discern themselves into recognizing HV's "deeper meaning" in which one discovers circumstances under which it is not a sin to artificially contracept. And I think everyone also understands, those circumstances would quickly come to mean "all the time."
It starts with contraception and ends with a white female bishop telling a black seminarian he can't be ordained because he doesn't believe in structural racism. Press F for the Anglican church.
Why does it feel like all the terrible things that were tried to be pushed on the Church in the 70s and 80s, that we all thought were dead and done with, are now being raised up again like an army of paraconcilliar zombies? Camosy's observation that we see the results of these horrible ideas now very clearly in our culture and world is the real takeaway.
Respectfully, the Pontifical Academy for Life needs to put someone else in charge of its tweets.
I'd normally chalk this up to sampling public response in preparation for a future announcement, but I don't think PAL is that sophisticated.
Even if Pope Francis, by the grace of God, doesn't attempt to reverse doctrinal teaching on this matter, it is still such a great scandal for the PAL, who is supposed to be promoting life-affirming theology in the culture, to be leading the charge from within the Church towards the culture of death. And it's not just an occasional one-off tweet by some college intern either, it's high ranking of the PAL itself, including its president, who was granted the position by Pope Francis.
The idea that infallibility is just about magic words or only applies to two or three teachings is nonsense. If Humanae Vitae is not infallible, then no papal teaching is infallible. Every papal teaching is just waiting to be reversed by a development or clarification. Those who oppose papal teaching are just ahead of the curve.
So Pope Francis will never contradict Humanae Vitae, either because he is inspired by the Holy Spirit, or because to do so would make the papacy a joke. God will not tell him to contradict it, and only a fool pope would do it for human reasons.
It does raise questions about Vatican employment practices. If the social media manager of the PAL can create the chaos he/she evidently is, one has to ask, how did that person get hired, what is their remit, what oversight do they have, and is Archbishop Paglia even paying attention?
Also not infallible: having to tithe to the church...
I wonder, as someone who wholeheartedly accepts HV, just what would happen if the pope rescinded HV? Would I humbly accept the church's new teaching or stubbornly hold onto HV? Or see it as "boldly" holding onto HV? hopefully I never am faced with that.
I'm feeling a little bit 'I told you so' as I've been arguing against the modern trend of downgrading papal authority and calling into question their documents etc. for years. How was that not going to backfire on us? Especially regarding HV. When Pope Pauls Mass, teaching on religious freedom, ecumenism, teaching on Jews and Muslims and various other Vatican II teachings are called into question... why not HV? What goes around comes around.
Lex dubia .... The Church's teaching on sex has "developed" over time. Do I understand that St Augustine thought intercourse for pleasure (but not procreation) sinful? Was it not taught at some point that intercourse on Sundays and Holy Days was sinful? Did not St Alphonsus Liguori develop the view (rather late) that intercourse for pleasure (and not just procreation) was legitimate? Do parents have the right to limit births? Was this always acknowledged? But if now acknowledged, did they not always have that right? But now thought only by "natural means." But before the invention of the thermometer and the understanding of the fertility cycle, such limitation was only legitimate by abstinence?
It seems obvious that Humanae Vitae's warnings about the direction of modern sexual liberation are all too obviously valid. But it also seems to me that the lived practice of immense numbers of believing pious married Catholics ought to provoke at least as much reflection as an interpretation of natural law which, if I understand it, even Jacques Maritain had difficulty in supporting.
I'm at a loss for why the PAL should be tweeting at all. It's just not a good format for this subject matter, no matter what views they wind up expressing on it.