Sunday, September 22, 2024

The popesplainer’s safety dance

Pope Francis recently added yet another item to the long list of doctrinally problematic statements he has issued through the course of his pontificate.  Commenting on the plurality of religions during a speech at the Catholic Junior College in Singapore, he said:

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

Papal fallibility

The error and condemnation of Pope Honorius

Can Pope Honorius be defended?

55 comments:

  1. I like what this commentator has to say:
    https://media.benedictine.edu/did-pope-francis-just-say-all-religions-are-equally-true#:~:text=Pope%20Francis%20delights%20people%20worldwide,languages%20that%20express%20the%20divine.%E2%80%9D


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    1. I suppose that Hoopes - and Pope Francis - would say that Satan-worship is just one more path to God; that when you interact with Moloch-worshipers, you should not say that they have killed someone. After all, that's what the saints did. Check out what St. Peter did on Pentecost Sunday (Acts 2)...oh, wait, don't look there. Sorry.

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    2. "Satan-worship?" No. Anon, if you are going take issue with the pope's comments, do so in a learned way like Dr. Feser did.

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    3. "All the gods of the Gentiles are devils" (Psalm 95:5)

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    4. And the Psalmist was not referring to any of the religions named, but to the forms of worship of the ancient near East.

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  2. Could a "popesplainer" perhaps also argue that even if one does *not* interpret the pope's remarks "right," and thus does interpret them in a way that contradicts the magisterium, the error one is thereby led into will never be a grave or soul-threatening one?

    That would seem to me to give more heft to their position (however implausible it might be).

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  3. This was a great post. I had not considered this take before. It does seem that the infallible safety thesis is vacuous. Here is my argument for why that might be fitting:

    It seems that God wants Catholics to have someone (the Pope) with the authority to make a final decision, but not so much authority that Catholics are committing a kind of papal idolatry where they believe that “man lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Pope”. Primarily we will get our teaching from Scripture, Councils, and Catechisms along with some ex cathedra statements from the Pope, probably in that order. This frees Catholics up to live the typical pious life without constantly worrying about current events with the Pope and keeping up with his homilies and all of his encyclicals. We can know the faith and be firm in it, but if there are genuine questions that begin to tear the Church apart, we still have recourse to the Pope as a principal of unity.

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    1. This seems to me to be how the papacy operated for most of the Church history. After all, how much of the people could the pope even reach in, say, 1352?

      It seems that our situation is completely contingent on our "celebrity or influencer culture", not something the papacy normally can be.

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  4. When I was a kid, we'd ask, "Is the Pope Catholic?" as though to call attention to a self-evident truth.

    But now, the Pope is not Catholic? We are left with private judgment after all? John Henry Newman looked back on the spires of Oxford from the railway with a sadness not he needn't have felt?

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    1. I wish I could recall the context in which an Episcopalian childhood friend brought that question to my attention for the first time.

      My friend had a small frame with a brass key in it in his living room. I asked what the key went to, and was told that an ancestor had been the sexton at the Old North Church in Boston.

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  5. I have a great dislike for ‘80s music, but found it quite fitting here. Good points!

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  6. The issue of papal inerrancy is not that cut and dried. Of course, not erring when speaking ex cathedra does not mean necessarily that the Pope can be a heretic when not speaking ex cathedra. That is another proposition altogether, which the Church has not settled. I vote for Thomas Aquinas, who says no to it.

    Extracting ex cathedra infallibility from a man who has lost the faith seems as hard to fathom as Balaam's talking ass. It is also true that man a man who has not lost the faith (every Pope in history to date) can still be an abysmal guide in day to day, non ex cathedra mode.

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  7. Many popes have failed non-ex cathedra in history, starting with Peter. But they all seem like babies compared to Francis.

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  8. "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."

    Do Popes do more public speak these days than before?
    Are their words more often recorded than before?
    Do their words make it around the world a lot easier these days?

    I wonder if this is partly to account for it. Pope Francis is the first Pope of the social media age. Popes previously just didn't have so much opportunity to make problematic public remarks, nor have them recorded, nor have them spread out so far and wide so quickly.

    Perhaps this will simply be a problem that comes with all future Popes. I don't know.

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    1. to be fair, not bothering to clarify the statements do not help.

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    2. "To be fair, not bothering to clarify the statements do not help"

      It's not even not bothering to clarify them, it's repeatedly making the same kind of ambiguous statements on the same kinds of issues over the years.

      It would be one thing if, even if he pretended he didnt make a mistake by not acknowledging it and not clarifying it. But it's not like he quietly learned his lesson and figured out that he needed to speak more clearly and corrected it after the first couple of times. He's still doing it.

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    3. That is true. One can see some deliberate intent there in winking to certain poisonous groups, which is not a good thing.

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  9. Great Post Dr Feser,

    I agree with everything you said. Pope Francis statements were completely wrong and utterly misleading. I think if he wanted to avoid sparking tensions he could have followed the example of John Paul II

    At the same time though on the topic of Papal Statements, I disagree with your judgment that the Pope should have outright stated "we are the one true faith and ya'll are all going to hell if you don't convert" in a place where religious tensions may already be very high, to children of all people. I fully believe in the truth of the outright statement. But when and whom to say it to is a question of prudence. The sense I get from your post ,respectfully Prof, is that you wouldn't have taken kindly to even statements such as these made by Pope St John Paul II in India in 1986 while speaking to adult religious representatives.

    "In India, without doubt, this reality offers us a spiritual vision of man. I believe that this spiritual vision is of supreme relevance for the people of India and for their future; it says much about their values, their hopes and aspirations and their human dignity. I believe that a spiritual vision of man is of immense importance for the whole of humanity With an emphasis on spiritual values the world is capable of formulating a new attitude towards itself – new, but based to a great extent on ethical values preserved for centuries, many of them in this ancient land. These include a spirit of fraternal charity and dedicated service, forgiveness, sacrifice and renunciation, remorse and penance for moral failings and patience and forbearance."

    And within the same address he goes on to say,

    "While speaking of my own convictions, I know that many of them are in accord with what is expressed in the ancient wisdom of this land. And in this wisdom we find today an ever old and ever new basis for fraternal solidarity in the cause of man and therefore ultimately in the service of God.

    The spiritual vision of man that India shares with the world is the vision of man seeking the face of God. The very words used by Mahatma Gandhi about his own spiritual quest echo the words quoted by Saint Paul when he explained that God is not far from each of us: " In him we live and move and have our being " ."

    http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1986/february/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19860202_rappresentanti-religioni.html

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  10. Continuation...

    I have many Hindu friends who I love dearly, Indeed I make clear to them, that given the contradictory beliefs that exists between our faiths, there has to be only one true faith because if you hold to so and so belief it logically excludes other beliefs.

    Recently Dr Feser quoted St Francis Xavier whose uncorrupted remains are held in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in my home state of Goa. One important thing that gets skipped is that St Francis Xavier always took pains to learn the local vernacular, my mother tongue Konkani, in order to bring the Gospel to the locals.

    I have witnessed the the manner in which many of the Hindus in India conform to the natural law in questions of morality. The families are happy and have a joy for life despite the dearth of material pleasures. Sex is seen as appropriate only within the context of marriage. Marriage is seen as something that exists for the sake of bearing and rearing children as recently expressed by the Indian Govt in their successful defence of Traditional Marriage in the Supreme Court thereby averting the evil of recognising same sex relationships. One can't help but agree with Pope John Paul II when he says as quoted above: "With an emphasis on spiritual values the world is capable of formulating a new attitude towards itself – new, but based to a great extent on ethical values preserved for centuries, many of them in this ancient land."

    One gets the sense that Dr Feser himself in his atheistic days wouldn't have been moved by the blunt approach. The need for being prudent increases even more while communicating with a Pre-Christian culture who have not had all together positive experience of Christianity in the past as Pope St John Paul II said of Mahatma Gandhi in COTH ,

    "Could a man who fought for the
    liberation of his great nation from colonial dependence accept
    Christianity in the same form as it had been imposed on his country by
    those same colonial powers?"

    Ultimately, one would hope that , Dr Feser would allow someone like me who happens to communicate regularly with close friends of other faiths to extend the same intellectual charity unto them that he has extended to some of his more respectful atheist contemporaries when he said of Quentin Smith,

    "My earnest prayer for this man from whose work I have profited is that, through divine grace, he now comes to know divine eternity more perfectly than any of us ever could in this life."

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    1. At the same time though on the topic of Papal Statements, I disagree with your judgment that the Pope should have outright stated "we are the one true faith and ya'll are all going to hell if you don't convert" in a place where religious tensions may already be very high, to children of all people.

      Fine: it is not necessary (nor often useful) to say to non-believers "you are all going to hell if..." But you have presented a straw man - Feser didn't say that, either. There is a HUGE gulf between "you are going to hell" and "we are all on different paths to the same God." You don't have to say "you are going to hell" in order to say many, MANY true things that don't mean "you'll go to heaven because your path is just as good as Catholicism". And of course that's all aside from the fact that at times you don't have to say anything (in words) at all. You can proceed in the way attributed to St. Francis of Assisi "preach the Gospel always; if necessary, use words." Nothing required of Francis that he SAY ANYTHING as to the equality of religions, or that they all head toward God, or similar. Like Paul VI and JPII, he could have restricted his comments to a narrower scope that didn't make outrageous claims that are edgy and frankly ridiculous.

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    2. "Could a man who fought for the
      liberation of his great nation from colonial dependence accept
      Christianity in the same form as it had been imposed on his country by
      those same colonial powers?"


      With respect, JPII's comment too presents a straw man, and denigrates the immensely right actions of Hindus who DID IN FACT freely and worthily accept the true Christian religion during the period of the Indians' colonial conquest by Portuguese and Brits.

      It also papers over the impact that Christian missionaries had even on those Hindus who did not convert: the monotheistic impetus of Christianity has almost certainly affected Hinduism so that those strains of their religion that are purely and utterly polytheistic are diminished, and those aspects that were notionally more sympathetic to a single transcendence of divinity were strengthened. There are different strains of Hindu belief. I believe that Ghandi's own beliefs were at least somewhat unsatisfied with true out-and-out multiplicity of "gods" who are each separately independent and each transcendent. So, Ghandi was himself probably the recipient of beneficial contact with Christianity.

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    3. Thanks for quoting what Dr Feser said about the passing of Quentin Smith. I used to correspond with him years ago.

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    4. First Anon

      Thanks for the engagement.

      If you follow Dr Feser's twitter posts, he quotes an article of Rorate Caecelli which indicates that what I quoted above seems to be what Prof Feser would have wanted to be said.

      If you read what I wrote right in the beginning, I agree completely that Pope Francis statements were utterly misleading , wrong and should be criticised. So I agree with you there. And I agree with you that he should have opted for something like what Pope John Paul II and what Pope Benedict XVI would have said. That's why I quoted Pope John Paul II. My intention was merely to present a more clear picture of what he could have said to rebut the objection that Francis was merely being prudent or didn't want to stir tensions. The point is precisely that Francis could have opted for something like what Pope Saint JPII said.

      Hello Tony

      Thanks for your engagement.
      I don't mean to denigrate at all. Indeed my ancestors of Goa very probably among the ones converted St Francis Xavier in Goa. St Francis Xavier worked miracles, learned my mother tongue Konkani and preached. He struggled with learning them but it is well documented that he did put efforts to learn the language.

      Bearing that in mind though, there's no denying the atrocities and horrors commited by the Portuguese and British at times in the name of Christianity of which there is greater consciousness among Hindus post Indian Independence in 1947. My ancestors were very likely converted well before the inquisition in Goa which was brutal, the things they did during the inquisition were horrific. The atrocities of the British are also well documented. You could read about the Jalian Wala Bagh Massacre and the actions of the British in causing the The Great Bengal Famine (ie by forcing farmers to grow the commercial crops they wanted to sell abroad). Churchill was quoted to have said, "They deserve it for breeding like Rabbits". Rather reminiscent of the anti human tendencies of today one might think.

      Pope John Paul II was no doubt well aware of these factors.

      You could be right about reducing the polytheistic influences, they might be more willing to accept there's One God but they are less willing to accept that there's only one Incarnation of Him. I have found this to be true in personal experience and Pope John Paul II documented it in Ecclesia in Asia.

      Second Anon

      Quentin Smith was well respected indeed.

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    5. Norm: Churchill displayed major flaws in both character and policy, but causing or ignoring the Bengal famine doesn't seem to be among them: that accusation seems to be the equivalent of the demonisation of Pius XII in that in each case it was begun by a single author for propaganda purposes. https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/masani-bengal-famine/ is a useful article in this context.

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    6. Hi Anonymous

      Thanks for your response.

      One thing I'd point out right of the bat is this statement in the article

      "Churchill and his cabinet sought every possible way to alleviate the suffering without undermining the war effort."

      The author also seems to one of liberal sensibilities, having quoted very liberal economists like Amartya Sen as authorities.

      But mainly, The accusations aren't really denied, namely the rationale for the decisions seems to be situated or have tried to be situated within a different context.

      It ignores the fact that India as a people with claim to sovereignty didn't have to be involved or associated with any wartime efforts in the first place. Indian men didn't have to be drafted to be killed in the War. So blaming war time situations don't really absolve him, because Indian interests needn't have been subservient to British one's in the first place

      At one point the author says Churchill was vindicated because of the partition of India. If one were using post independence events to judge pre independence decisions
      the war time justification makes even less sense given that India has always had a policy of non alignment, they don't take sides in any war preferring to maintain cordial relations with both warring factions.

      The wars that India have fought post independence have all been retaliatory.

      The scale of suffering in the famine was unparalleled and if it had been any other country , they would have definitely put their interests first above any other war time considerations.

      The death caused by the famine was equal to the population of a small country.

      So even if there wasn't a direct hand, the lack of ability of the people to make decisions for themselves and the fact that Churchill was against that Sovereignty itself is a mark against him.

      Having said that though I see a bright future for India and the West in terms of relations especially in the defence of Traditional Values like the importance in marriage, family , the sanctity of sex as something that isn't casual and is only licit within the context of marriage.


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  11. This whole pontificate really feels like being in an abusive relationship.

    The "no, it doesn't mean what you think it means and also it's your fault for taking it that way and you need to be more charitable even though he keeps doing it, and also it's a good thing that he said what he said" just gets so tiresome.

    I'm curious to see if these same people will extend the same deference to the next Pope.

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    1. I strongly suspect that at the next consistory to elect Francis's successor, there will be a very large movement away from Francis's excesses. Whether this will include a majority of cardinals, or only a very vocal minority, remains to be seen, but given that the very process for generating bishops has, for 3 generations now, emphasized a "go along to get along" attitude along with complete spinelessness, it seems unlikely to me that MOST cardinals are happy with Francis's methods or his edgy views.

      Whether that discomfort will ever become public and explicit is more doubtful, except in whoever it is that the cardinals choose. If he is just like Francis, then the flaming left wing of he college of cardinals will have won. If he is more restrained and less heterodox in approach, then the African bishops (along with some individual outlier bishops in the rest of the world) will have won. They may never make any details explicit.

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    2. "I strongly suspect that at the next consistory to elect Francis's successor, there will be a very large movement away from Francis's excesses."

      From your lips to God's ears. But I'm far less sanguine, given how thoroughly Francis has packed the court. Of the 122 cardinals eligible to vote in the next conclave, Francis has appointed 92.

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  12. "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."

    If one concedes to the Popesplainers Francis didn't really mean what he said (Which is possible given he doesn't just make these mistakes. He contradicts himself). It still must be pointed out what he said was bad and a grave problem & that he doesn't correct himself.

    I wish he would stop.

    PS He would be easier to stomach if he would correct himself.

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    1. Popesplainers aren't a serious group of people. They're sycophants who will do anything to keep bootlicking

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    2. Well b4 Francis there was a species of Radical pseudo-Traditionalists who used to never miss an opportunity to rag on Pope St John Paul II & bash him and slander him because they hated Vatican II. John Paul II made Vatican II work and they really hated that. They were not as harsh toward Benedict XVI because he made the TLM more readily available, but they still found reasons to complain.
      By the time Francis came about all that Wolf Crying took its toll especially since many of Francis' early cock ups could be plausibly defended.
      But over time Francis got worst and basically never defended himself or clarified himself for the most part (there are a handful of exceptions).
      Popesplainers are the unpaid bills of Pope Haters who go way back b4 Francis. If you cry wolf too many times when a wolf shows up yer not believed.
      I've seen Feser say something complementary about Francis then somebody chimed in and started raging at him and accused him of being a "Popesplainer". So Popehating is a thing.

      In summery I don't much care for unreasonable defenses of the Pope. But that doesn't mean I condone treating him like Shite and unjustly criticizing him either. Both are wrong.

      BTW I am not convinced he was literally trying to teach all religions are equal. It is plausible he was making an inarticulate Reference to CCC 843. Francis is lazy and a bad communicator.
      Basically, a male version of Kamala Harris on crak when it comes to speaking. He is no St John Paul II.
      Also, I won't hold my breath waiting for him to defend himself. If someone falsely accused me of heresy well that person would hear from me.

      Those are my thoughts yer free to think differently. Cheers & Blessings.




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    3. BTW I am not convinced he was literally trying to teach all religions are equal. It is plausible he was making an inarticulate Reference to CCC 843. Francis is lazy and a bad communicator.

      I agree with Son of Yakov, Francis is sloppy and doesn't bother to take care in his comments. And this could mean that he THINKS the truth (with some approximation) but just doesn't say that very clearly.

      But the totality of the evidence is that (a) HE KNOWS his penchant for loose talk, (b) he refuses to correct, clarify, or walk back (most of the time), (c) he has actually gotten after some Vatican officials for "explaining away" some of his comments, (d) he reverses and says opposite things; and (e) his personality and his management philosophy includes as a major plank to "make a mess".

      The best explanation for these taken together is that he positively intends to be confusing in many of his communications. The confusion is at least part of the objective, not just an accidental by-product of sloppiness.

      And of the handful of plausible explanations for this (possible) line of intention, the one that best explains such an intention in a pope is that he wants to muddle "papal teaching" because his own beliefs differ in some significant ways from the standard line in the Church. E.G. his belief about what Vatican II meant is in stark contrast to what Benedict and JPII and Paul VI said, and he wants to generate enough confusion about what his own teaching represents as to allow most Catholics to go on thinking he is mainly saying the same things but just a bit edgier, while giving plenty of rope for innovators and "reformers" (i.e. revolutionaries) to also say that "the Pope is for fundamental change". Each of them is true - of different parts of "what Francis says".

      And looking at how he gradually ramped up the level of his weird and outre teachings (and Vatican appointments) over 11 years, it seems likely that the OVERALL TRAJECTORY manifests his true thinking, i.e. that what he really thinks is what the revolutionaries want, he just pushes that line slowly and with "cover" for those who want to explain away his nonsense.

      Is this certain? No, by no means. Is it unlikely? By no means, sad to say.

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  13. I am a Protestant. If you go to a Southern Baptist church in rural Georgia, you will often hear a fire and brimstone sermon and stern warnings about divine justice. If you go to a Presbyterian church in metro Atlanta, you will often hear a sermon about God's love and mercy towards all his creatures.
    I know Polish Americans who met privately with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican and spoke with him in Polish about personal matters. I will only say that in his personal remarks to other people he emphasized God's mercy and saving grace for all mankind, just like Pope Francis does in his public remarks.
    I remain a Protestant, but I do appreciate Pope Francis.

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    1. As a Presbyterian in metro Atlanta, this statement mystifies me in multiple ways. My church preaches on divine justice, stern warnings (since those are in the Bible, after all?), and God's love and mercy.

      But worse, to say you are a Protestant who *appreciates* a man who not only arrogates himself false power in the name of a church of Christ and, on top of that, uses his position to teach utter blasphemy is impossible for me to understand.

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    2. We go to different churches, Ryan. And no, Francis does not utter blasphemy.

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    3. No one said we went to the same church. And there is only one path to God, a path foreign to Hindus and Muslims.

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  14. It seems, to me, that Francis recognizes his limitations, better than any papal figure before him. Whether the Roman Catholic world likes that, or not. See, I don't know if he wanted to be Pope. In whatever case, he is articulating views. This is a little of the popular fiction of the 1960s. There was a comic book figure, Howard, the duck. Howard was *trapped in a world he never made*. Just so, Francis. Get over it. Change, changes everything---sooner, or later.

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  15. What the Papal Safety apologist would argue is that Honorious, is indeed innocent, and if his letter is read in this other way, he wasn’t a heretic. Then we say, so his condemnation is not safe.

    Then they say; the condemnation was matter of discipline NOT doctrine, and the Pope can error in discipline all he wants.

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    1. But discipline depends on doctrine. If Pope Francis says we all must worship Moloch, that is a discipline, but it is founded on the heresy of polytheism. Similarly, if one condemns a pope as a heretic, it is founded on the belief that a pope can be a heretic. It makes no sense to say that somehow the Councils claimed that Pope Honorius was a heretic without claiming that it is possible for a pope to be a heretic. That would be tantamount to denying the Law of Noncontradiction, which would itself be a doctrinal error.

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    2. "Then they say; the condemnation was matter of discipline NOT doctrine, and the Pope can error in discipline all he wants."

      They would never say this lol. This concession is essentially the lynch pin of the entire SSPX position (and Recognize & Resist positions in general.) To admit that the Pope can err in discipline *is* the way out of much of this difficulty but opens the door to a whole bunch of other issues

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  16. It seems to me there are various "popesplainer" camps that would be good to distinguish.

    1) The popesplainers who are unorthodox. They are defending papal deference now because they like what the pope appears to be saying.

    2) The popesplainers who are ultramontanist adjacent. They are defending a broad understanding of papal infallibility and what it may or may not extend to. This has not been dogmatically defined, so it's mere conjecture.

    3) The popesplainers who are moderate. They admit that the pope may err on matters or faith/morals when not speaking ex cathedra. They are orthodox (or try to be) in their beliefs. And they try to be charitable and submissive in assuming the pope is not erring.

    I think camp 3 is a good place to be. The pope's statements have been confusing, and obviously scandalized well-meaning Catholics. At the same time, they can be understood in an orthodox light, especially when combined with the whole of Francis's corpus. It seems to me that the pope is talking about what he sees as effective methods of evangelization, and pointing out the fact that all religions have a elements of truth to them.

    I don't defend this reading because I secretly agree with indifferentism (camp 1), or because I think the whole church would be proven false if the pope were actually speaking erroneously (camp 2), but simply because I give him the benefit of the doubt, and think he may be imprecisely/confusingly trying to get at a nuanced point.

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    1. If Christ's guarantee to Peter that his faith would not fail (perhaps covered by your point 2) is "pure conjecture" because it has not been dogmatically defined, then so is the alternate position that "a Pope can be a heretic when not speaking ex cathedra", because that also has never been dogmatically defined. In fact, the First Vatican Council defined that the See of Rome would confirm our faith until the end of time, using Christ's guarantee of personal faith to Peter as its justification. Only the Pope has this personal guarantee of faith. Francis is far from swearing he "does not know" Christ, as the first Pope did in a time of weakness.

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  17. as the first Pope did in a time of weakness.

    Peter was not pope until Christ was gone. Jesus had foretold Peter's failure, his 3-fold denial of Christ, and that happened while Christ was still present in the flesh, so Peter was not Christ's vicar on Earth yet. Christ told Peter to strengthen the brethren "after you have turned back [or 'converted]", i.e. after his faith DID in fact fail:

    but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers

    You can't talk about the absolute fidelity of the papacy on Christ's promise to Peter based on Christ's prayer that his faith not fail, and then cite Peter's actual failure, and claim Peter failed as pope. What kind of nutter are you?

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    1. The First Council of the Vatican did use this promise as one the arguments for papal infallibility, so we Catholics feel entitled to use it too. When Saint Peter denied knowing Christ his faith did not fail, of course, because this was weakness, not a desire to renounce Our Lord and his doctrine. Like the establishment of the Mass, the Sacraments, and the hierarchy of the Church, Our Lord was grounding the Church when he made the promise of personal faith to Saint Peter and his successors.

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  19. Modern Catholicism has simply succumbed to a kind of nihilism. Not in the sense that Truth doesn't exist but that Truth is the Papal Will. They are one and the same. It's why every single pop apologist has become nothing more than "proving" the Papacy, why Lofton has gained a cult following of bootlickers, and why the only thing that matters is submission. So long as the Papal Office promulgates something, it is true as a result of being promulgated.

    We can quibble about tone or delivery but the statements themselves must be true. All that matters is the Papal will.

    This is pathetic.

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  20. ". All religions are paths to God"-that he didn't mean this literally is not hard to imagine. Let us concede that for the sake of argument. That is not the problem.

    The problem is he doesn't clarify or correct himself....

    Which is a grave problem....

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  21. Thank God we finally have a Pope which makes Catholicism an acceptable position for a decent person again. Sadly most persons, including here, fail at that

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    1. With all due respect Dominika your statement...Catholicism as an acceptable position for a decent person..says it all. Christianity is not just a religion/ club to belong to, it is so much more..centrally a redemptive salvific grace bestowed on us from God centered in Jesus christ God,s only son and the only way back to the Father....we are all sinners saved by grace not a position one takes because it is inclusive and is acceptable to the world at large therefore cool to belong too....it is not one choice of various foods on a menu....it is as jesus himself says....I am the way rhe truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me...pick up our crosses and follow him.

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  24. You know it's gone too far when Lofton won't even defend it.

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  25. Whatever pope defending you want to do, it seems just as damaging to the Church to argue that the protections promised to the papacy are super-strong, and then to dispel the example of Honorius by saying he didn't hold the heresy that was attributed to him, or to dispel the example of John XXII by saying he just wasn't teaching formally: either way, in their papacy their actions and words led others toward error.

    Francis has been lending his papal capacity to push error: even if these errors are not formally defined heresies, or even if he is not trying to teach them in a definitive way, and even if he doesn't hold heresy himself, that doesn't diminish the fact that what he is doing is fomenting error. And it seems the way Catholics can protect themselves right now from his errors is to rely on the truth taught by the Church in all prior ages.

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  26. Lots of good comments here! The one from Anon, previous to this, was especially poignant. Insofar as we are discussing the Papacy and the current Pope, it is well to remember tenets of axiology and deontology may get a little abuse. Popes are imagined as infallible. History does not always, or in all ways support that premise. I suspect it never will.

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  27. Nothing new under the sun. Pope Francis is not an original! "“the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them [other religions] as means of salvation", November 1964, Second Council of the Vatican. Like the Council of Constance and the generations of confusion it brought, Vatican II needs to be revisited by the Church. Who can possibly disagree with this? Nobody can even agree on what numerous passages mean!.

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