If you start arguing, “My religion is more important than
yours,” or “Mine is the true one, yours is not true,” where does this lead? Somebody answer. [A young person answers, “Destruction”.] That is correct. All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different
languages that express the divine. But
God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children. “But my God is more important than yours!” Is this true? There is only one God, and religions are like
languages, paths to reach God. Some
Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.
As the article from which I quote this passage notes, while the Vatican’s initial English translation of the pope’s words attempted to sanitize them, it was later corrected to make it clear that this is indeed what the pope said. And what he said flatly contradicts traditional Catholic teaching. Francis criticizes those who take one religion to be the true or most important one, and implies that Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, etc. are as equal as different languages are.
Doubling
down on this, several days later the pope said, in a
video message to a religiously diverse audience:
Contemplate the difference of your traditions like a
richness, a richness God wants to be. Unity
is not uniformity, and the diversity of your cultural and religious identities
is a gift of God. Unity in diversity. Let mutual esteem grow among you, following
the witness of your forefathers.
Here Francis
indicates that the fact that there are different religions is a “gift” that God
“wants.”
By contrast,
stating the Catholic position on Judaism, Islam, and other religions in Ecclesiam
Suam, Pope St. Paul VI wrote:
Obviously we cannot agree with these various forms of
religion, nor can we adopt an indifferent or uncritical attitude toward them on
the assumption that they are all to be regarded as on an equal footing, and
that there is no need for those who profess them to enquire whether or not God
has Himself revealed definitively and infallibly how He wishes to be known,
loved, and served. Indeed, honesty
compels us to declare openly our conviction that the Christian religion is the
one and only true religion, and it is our hope that it will be acknowledged as
such by all who look for God and worship Him.
Similarly,
in Dominus
Iesus, issued during the pontificate of Pope St. John Paul II,
we read:
It is clear that it would be contrary to the faith to
consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the
other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially
equivalent to her… In treating the
question of the true religion, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council
taught: “We believe that this one true religion continues to exist in the
Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
Other texts
could be cited, but these two suffice to make the point (and also to rebut any
progressive defender of Pope Francis who might claim that Vatican II somehow
supports him).
Many further
examples of doctrinally dubious statements issued by Pope Francis or under his
authority could be given. There is the
ambiguity of Amoris Laetitia, which might
be interpreted to allow, in some cases, absolution and Holy Communion for those
in invalid and adulterous marriages who are sexually active and lack a firm
purpose of amendment. There is Fiducia Supplicans, which permits the
blessing of same-sex and adulterous couples (and not just the individuals who
make up the couples). There is Dignitas Infinita, which states that “the
death penalty… violates the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of
the circumstances,” contradicting scripture, tradition, and every previous pope
who has addressed the matter. And so
on. (I have discussed the problems with
these three documents here,
here,
and here,
respectively.)
Now, it is
possible for popes to issue badly formulated or even erroneous doctrinal
statements when
not speaking ex cathedra. It is extremely rare, but it can
happen and has happened with a handful of popes, such as Honorius
and John XXII. It would at this point in
his pontificate be intellectually dishonest, and indeed frankly absurd, for
anyone to continue to deny that Pope Francis is in this company. In fact, the main difference between Francis
and these other popes is that his doctrinally dubious statements are more
numerous and more obviously problematic than theirs.
Yet even
after a decade of this sort of behavior, there are still some orthodox
Catholics who insist, every time Pope Francis makes one of these dubious remarks,
that he has been misunderstood, and that the fault lies not with him but with
the media who report on his words or with critics who interpret him
uncharitably. These “popesplainers” (as
their critics have labeled them) sometimes appeal to what has been called the “infallible
safety thesis.” On this view,
while popes can err when not speaking ex
cathedra, they cannot make dangerous
errors, and in particular cannot say anything that might lead the faithful into
error on some matter of faith or morals.
Hence,
whenever Pope Francis says something that everyone else takes to be obviously
hard to reconcile with traditional teaching, these popesplainers judge it a priori to be at least “safe,” so that
anyone who thinks otherwise simply must
be misunderstanding it. Into the
bargain, they often accuse the critics of the error of private judgment, or of being
schismatic, or of hating the pope or otherwise having bad motives. Fans of 80s pop music might call this now
routine set of moves the popesplainer’s “safety dance.”
One problem
with the “safety” thesis is that it is not what the Church herself teaches, as
theologian John Joy has shown.
Another problem is that it is the
longstanding position of theologians recognized by the Church as
orthodox that popes can indeed err on
matters of faith and morals when not speaking ex cathedra. A third problem
is that the Church herself has acknowledged that such errors are not only
possible, but have in fact occurred. For
the notorious Pope Honorius was condemned by his successors and by three
papally-approved councils for giving aid and comfort to heresy, with the
councils even flatly labeling Honorius himself a heretic. (I discuss the case of Honorius in detail here
and here.) Some have defended Honorius against these
charges, but what is relevant is that popes
and papally-approved councils judged Honorius to be guilty of them. That means that either Honorius was wrong or these
later popes were wrong. And in either
case we would have a very serious theological error. That suffices to show that non-ex cathedra papal teaching is not always“safe.”
What I want
to call attention to here, though, is another problem with the “safety” thesis
which, as far as I know, no one else has pointed out. And that is that on close inspection the
thesis turns out to be not so much false as entirely vacuous or empty of
interesting content. To see what I have
in mind, consider a specific case like Pope Francis’s remarks in Singapore
about the diversity of religions. Taken
at face value, his words suggest that no religion, including Christianity, can
be said to be the one true religion. Or
consider Dignitas Infinita’s teaching
on the death penalty. Taken at face
value, the document is saying that the death penalty is always and
intrinsically wrong. Now, both of these
teachings would contradict previous irreformable doctrine. How can this be reconciled with the Church’s
claim that popes teach infallibly? Here
are the answers that the pope’s critics and the popesplainers, respectively,
would give:
The pope’s critics’
answer: Popes can make serious doctrinal errors when not speaking ex cathedra, and that is what has
happened in these cases. Fortunately, we
have pre-existing teaching to consult in order to determine what the correct
doctrine is.
The
popesplainers’ answer: Popes cannot
make serious doctrinal errors even when not speaking ex cathedra, so that this must not really be what has happened in these cases. Those who say otherwise on the basis
pre-existing teaching put their own authority above the pope’s.
On the
surface, the popesplainers’ answer seems to differ radically from the pope’s
critics’ answer. But when we peer below
the surface, we find that that is not really the case. For one thing, the popesplainers typically
agree with the critics about what the orthodox position would be. For example, they would typically agree that
it would be heterodox to hold that the Catholic faith is not the one true religion,
or to say that the death penalty is immoral intrinsically or of its very
nature. (To be sure, there may also be
some among the “popesplainers” who would be happy to depart from orthodoxy on
these matters. But my argument here is
directed at the orthodox popesplainers.)
How, then,
do the popesplainers deal with problematic statements like the pope’s remarks
about the diversity of religions, or Dignitas
Infinita’s teaching on the death penalty?
The answer is that they claim that such statements do not really say what they seem to be
saying. To know what Pope Francis really
means, they claim, we need to look at other things he has said, or at the
Church’s longstanding teaching, and read the pope’s more controversial claims
in light of these other sources.
But how do
the popesplainers know this? After all, Pope Francis himself rarely
clarifies his problematic statements, even when asked to do so. For example, he still has never responded to
the dubia issued by four cardinals requesting that he reaffirm traditional
irreformable teaching that Amoris
Laetitia seems to conflict with. He
has for a decade repeatedly made ever more extreme statements against the death
penalty, without once reaffirming the traditional teaching that capital
punishment can at least under certain circumstances be licit. In the case of the pope’s recent comments
about the diversity of religions, not only did the Vatican remove the sanitized
version of the pope’s comments and let the more problematic remarks stand, but
the pope doubled down on those problematic remarks just a few days later.
Moreover,
the popesplainers do sometimes admit that Pope Francis’s statements can foster
misunderstandings if read in isolation.
Consider, for example, Michael Lofton, who
has defended a version of the “safety” thesis. To his credit, when commenting
on Pope Francis’s remarks in Singapore, Lofton acknowledges that the
pope sometimes speaks with “ambiguity” and apparent “inconsistency,” “could be
more clear,” “needs to kind of explain himself better,” and sometimes
“unnecessarily confuses people.” Commenting
on the pope’s follow-up remarks, Lofton is even more frank,
admitting that the pope is sometimes not an “effective communicator,” that his
recent statement “causes problems, causes confusion,” and that “most people are
going to come away with an error here” even if there is “some kind of orthodox
sense” in which the pope’s remarks can be interpreted.
Again,
though, Pope Francis himself
typically does not explain, qualify, or walk back his controversial remarks in this
way. For example, in the case of his
recent comments on the diversity of religions, he hasn’t said that he was
speaking imprecisely and that people need to go look at more traditional things
he has said in the past, or at the Church’s longstanding teaching, in order to
understand what he meant. It is only defenders of Pope Francis, and not the
pope himself, who have done this. In his
many extreme remarks against the death penalty, the pope has never said that he
is speaking with rhetorical flourish, and that his teaching must be interpreted
in a way that would reconcile it with the traditional doctrine that the death
penalty is not intrinsically immoral. It
is only defenders of Pope Francis,
and not the pope himself, who have done that.
And so on.
The point is
this. When we consider that popesplainers themselves acknowledge
that Pope Francis’s controversial remarks need explanation, and that the pope
himself is typically not the one who
provides such explanations but rather the popesplainers
who do so – relying on their own theological
knowledge, and on their own judgments
about what he must have meant – the distance between them and the pope’s critics
turns out to be not as great as it seemed at first to be. The difference in their positions boils down
to this:
The pope’s
critics: The pope’s non-ex cathedra
statements can be erroneous when taken at face value, but knowledgeable
Catholics can consult previous teaching to determine what the correct doctrine
actually is.
The
popesplainers: The pope’s non-ex cathedra
statements can be misleading when taken at face value, but knowledgeable
Catholics can consult previous teaching to determine what he really must have
meant or should have said.
The line
separating these positions is pretty thin. The second no less than the first admits that
non-ex cathedra papal statements can
be problematic, and the second no less than the first admits that Catholics may
apply their knowledge of past teaching to determine what a pope should
say. The critics say “The pope said X,
so he is in error” and the popesplainers say “The pope couldn’t make such an
error, so he must not really have meant X.”
But they agree that X would be wrong, they agree that the Church’s past teaching suffices to show that X is
wrong, and they agree that Catholics’ knowledge of this past teaching justifies them in taking the stand they do toward a
current pope’s teaching (whether criticizing it as the critics do, or giving it
a sanitized interpretation as the popesplainers do).
And now we
can see how the “safety” thesis turns out to be vacuous. For it amounts to saying that papal teaching
is always “safe” insofar as somebody with
the requisite theological knowledge will always be able to come up with some sanitized interpretation of it that
reconciles it with past teaching. And if
you are going to say that, then you
might as well say that it is “safe” in the sense that even when it is
erroneous, somebody with the
requisite theological knowledge will always be able to explain what the correct
doctrine actually is. The only
difference is that where the latter approach is frank, the former
obfuscates.
In short,
when all the necessary qualifications are made to it, the popesplainers’
“safety dance” becomes pointless, and they might as well just acknowledge that,
though historically it happens only very rarely, it is possible for popes to
make serious doctrinal errors when not speaking ex cathedra.
Related
posts:
When
do popes speak ex cathedra?
When
do popes teach infallibly?
Popes,
heresy, and papal heresy
What
counts as magisterial teaching?
The
Church permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances
Aquinas
on St. Paul’s correction of St. Peter