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?