Chaput Credited for CO death penalty repeal

Clayton

Claton

Well....had you followed the "living magisterium" in 1458 as a Portuguese sailor, you would have felt free to enslave any new world native who did not assent to Catholic dogma and your permission was given by that Magisterium then in Romanus Pontifex (1454) mid 4th paragraph…and you could steal from them…or Portugal as a whole could…and did. God actually wants Catholics to use their brain somewhat. Oh I know it sounds crazy. But God did not like Arnold Toynbee calling us a partially arrested culture with a too heavy emphasis on the mimetic. Who knew….just all the theologians from Vatican II who are criticized by the mean right (Chaput’s phrase not mine).
And actually Christ proof texted a number of times Himself so don't fall for the internet debating aphorism that it is always wrong. If Christ did it, it can't be as bad as you think. Perhaps the quotes I gave are just so foreign to the "Living Church" that maybe the "Living Church" is incorrect if it has drifted so far from the actual word of God.
What I notice on the net is that Catholic converts and reverts (who were away some years), enter or re-enter respectively under the false canard that Popes are always correct in the area of morals since the Holy Spirit is guaranteed in the area of morals (He is if a Pope speaks infallibly...but Fr.Brian Harrison will address the other moments below). And some cradles, who never left, talk the same way once they are ardent about religion instead of about rugby.
To all of you let me introduce Ludwig Ott from the Intro to his "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma"...a wonderful Catholic source even if an example of what Congar and Chenu saw as baroque Catholicism....which book however becomes a deck of cards once you've had it for ten years due to cheap binding...but that aside, let's see if Ott thinks that Popes are always correct in morals..from section 8's
ending from the Intro:

"With regard to the doctrinal teaching of the Church it must be well noted that not all the assertions of the Teaching Authority of the Church on questions of Faith and morals are infallible and consequently irrevocable. Only those are infallible which emanate from General Councils representing the whole episcopate, and the Papal Decisions Ex Cathedra (cf. D 1839). The ordinary and usual form of the Papal teaching activity is not infallible. Further, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Holy Office, Bible Commission) are not infallible. Nevertheless normally they are to be accepted with an inner assent which is based on the high supernatural authority of the Holy See (assensus internus supernaturalis, assensus religiosus)..."

Now you may then say what about the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Let's let Fr. Brain Harrison address that from his review of the torture issue at the Roman Forum:

"However, the consensus of approved theologians interpreting such magisterial interventions seems to be that by no means all ecclesiastical legislation enjoys such a guarantee, but only that which is "universal", not just in the geographical sense of applying throughout the Catholic world, but in the anthropological sense of applying to the faithful as a whole. In other words, we can be sure the Holy Spirit is never going to allow Peter’s Successor to command, or even authorize, the Church as a whole – the great bulk of the faithful round the world – to commit sin, or to do something that will cause grave harm. For that would be contrary to the ’note’ of sanctity ("One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic") which is a revealed attribute of the Church."

I’m not sure I agree with Harrison or Ott completely but I want to give you people from the traditional side as a source for Popes being incorrect sometimes. Now here is from the Catholic Encyclopedia…the new one not the one at new advent wherein Pope Paul VI alludes to the same potential for an encyclical being incorrect:

From the 5th volume of the New Catholic Encyclopedia in the article on encylicals:
“"the contents of an encyclical are presumed to belong to the ordinary magisterium unless the opposite is clearly manifested. Moreover since they belong to the ordinary papal magisterium,they are capable of change. Such possiblity of change was mentioned by Paul VI in his June 23,1964 address to a group of cardinals, when it was observed that it was not evident that certain teachings pertaining to the ordinary magisterium of Pius XII were " out of date and therefore not binding" and that these teachings were consequently still valid until he felt obliged to change them".

Notice how Paul VI agrees with the intro to Ott. Why have you not run into this often if at all...because clergy generally have an easier job if the laity think that all issues are of equal weight so a Pope infallibly declares on abortion section 62 of EV and never mentions that he has done so. He thinks more obedience results from the laity thinking all things are equally binding. The result as Gallup has shown is very much the oppposite of that.

But of course.

Amen to your last point Mary. If you compare two gospels, the good thief was railing against Christ at first along with the bad thief in one gospel and then as time got closer to actual death and in another gospel, it was then that he repented. The early Christians who only had the one gospel perhaps thought of both as bad to the end until such time as they had access oral or written to the ending found in the other gospel.