Note: This post is considerably more in the weeds of Catholic institutional politics and theology than my previous posts have been. I understand that readers may find it rather abstruse. As always, I’m writing mainly to express something that’s been on my mind, so I apologize if the “inside baseball” nature of the post is too much.
This week, the Vatican published the Pope’s responses to a number of dubia or formal doctrinal questions which had been submitted some months back by a group of conservative Cardinals. Both the dubia and the responses have made the news across a large number of secular and religious outlets, and for good reason. I’d like to discuss the dubia and responses. But first, let’s review some background.
Submitting dubia (“doubts”, or questions) to the Pope or the Vatican’s doctrinal office1 is a traditional mechanism by which Catholics can trigger a doctrinal clarification on some matter in open dispute. Dubia (singular dubium) are usually submitted in the form of propositions with yes/no questions tacked on to them.
The general method for submitting a dubium is to propose a (putatively heretical) viewpoint to the Vatican and ask whether it can be taught, with the expectation that the Pope or the relevant doctrinal office will respond, saying, “No, you can’t teach that, it’s heretical.” In other words, the dubium is a form of doctrinal policing by which the boundaries of orthodoxy can be more clearly defined in the face of new philosophies or new theological ideas. If one is submitting a dubium, it’s probably because one is seeking vindication against an ideological opponent, and hopes the Vatican will pick one’s own side and respond that the other side is somehow heretical.
For example, here is a dubium that was submitted to the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1909, together with its response. (I have put the grammatical core of the question in bold to make it a bit easier to see what’s being asked.)
Question: Whether, when the nature and historical form of the Book of Genesis does not oppose, because of the peculiar connections of the three first chapters with each other and with the following chapters, because of the manifold testimony of the Old and New Testaments; because of the almost unanimous opinion of the Holy Fathers, and because of the traditional sense which, transmitted from the Israelite people, the Church always held, it can be taught that the three aforesaid chapters of Genesis do not contain the stories of events which really happened, that is, which correspond with objective reality and historical truth; but are either accounts celebrated in fable drawn from the mythologies and cosmogonies of ancient peoples and adapted by a holy writer to monotheistic doctrine, after expurgating any error of polytheism; or allegories and symbols, devoid of a basis of objective reality, set forth under the guise of history to inculcate religious and philosophical truths; or, finally, legends, historical in part and fictitious in part, composed freely for the instruction and edification of souls?
Reply: In the negative to both parts.
To simplify a bit, the person submitting the dubium in this case was asking whether it is OK to deny the real historicity of the first three chapters of Genesis, and whether it is OK to teach that the creation narratives and the story of Adam and Eve are mythic representations of religious truths, rather than historical facts. The Pontifical Biblical Commission (which operated under the direct supervision of the Pope at the time) responded “No, it’s not OK, you must teach that these chapters are historically true.”
The authority of responses to dubia depends in part on the nature of the questions and who in particular responds to them. For example, a response by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline in the Sacraments on some question concerning Catholic liturgy would be considered normative as far as the celebration of the mass is concerned, but not absolutely binding with respect to any particular doctrinal matter. But if the DDF (see footnote 1) issues a response, it has considerably more weight. And if the Pope himself signs the responses, they have a great deal of weight.
Why is that? Well, the Catholic system of “magisterial authority” is based on a kind of hierarchy of authentic sources. One defers above all to the contents of Scripture, as being the inspired Word of God. Below that one defers to the formal teaching acts of the Popes and Ecumenical Councils, which are understood to be protected by a guarantee of infallibility. If a council of all the bishops united with the pope were capable of error on some question about the contents of the catholic faith or correct morals, that would mean that those authorities could never be absolutely trusted in their teaching, making the Church a fallible, unreliable source of truth about God, Jesus, and the rest of it.
This is all to say that a formal response from the Pope himself to a group of cardinals on topics concerning the constitution of the Church and the way we should think about morality is of the highest degree of authority within the hierarchy of magisterial acts. Short of some sort of pompous definition anathematizing everyone who disgrees with him, there are few ways that a Pope can act more decisively within his function as guarantor of orthodoxy and supreme pastor. In fact, the few (albeit somewhat dubious) bits of historical evidence in support of papal doctrinal supremacy in the early centuries of the Church are of exactly this form: Popes responding to doctrinal disputes submitted by bishops elsewhere in the Church. This is the origin of Augustine’s famous line, Roma locuta, causa finita (“Rome has spoken, the matter is closed.”)
This aspect of the dubia and their responses is important to keep in mind in part because it sidesteps one of the most common coping strategies non-progressives have used to make sense of the current pontificate. Specifically, I’m thinking of the strategy of downplaying the authority of a particular pronouncement, or strategically minimizing its interpretation so as to qualify it back within the bounds of traditional orthodoxy. Anyone who has kept up with the American Catholic press over the past decade will be familiar with what I’m talking about. Publications like the National Catholic Register have been chock full of articles explaining how the Pope’s words have been “twisted” by the “mainstream media” and offering a “proper interpretation” of what he “really said”, or reminding readers over and over that off the cuff remarks, homilies, airplane interviews, etc. do not constitute formal teaching acts and are therefore not magisterially binding on the faithful.
This coping strategy has offered concerned Catholics the ability to continue believing that nothing has changed, that the pope is still “orthodox” in the way they want him to be. Under John Paul II and Benedict XVI the papacy functioned as a doctrinal lodestar for conservatives in the face of widespread progressivism and doctrinal relaxation at the diocesan and parish level. Many conservative catholics have done their best to retain that vision of the papacy even as Francis has openly embraced much of the revisionist progressivism they fear and despise.
To some extent, I suspect the Pope himself has intentionally structured the more controversial elements of his revisions to Catholic doctrine to allow this kind of coping behavior (for example, burying the most explosive element of his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia in a footnote, or reserving his most unorthodox theological declarations for off-the-cuff sermons or casual interviews). By hedging and hinting a great deal before moving forward with a big doctrinal change, the Pope has effectively embraced a “boiling frogs” strategy of transforming the Catholic Faith. A great deal of consternation is elicited at first, when there is the greatest degree of ambiguity. As time goes on the hinting is transformed into policy changes, and the policy changes are backed up with strict enforcement.
Consider the case of Amoris Laetitia and the introduction of a policy of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. Previously, Catholics in second marriages who had not (i) had their previous unions annulled by the Church, or (ii) committed to perpetual abstinence with their new spouse, were not allowed to receive the sacraments. It was understood that the second marriage was essentially adulterous and therefore gravely sinful. Pope Francis changed this, but he did so slowly and with a lot of ambiguity.
First, he invited Cardinal Walter Kaspar to deliver a series of spiritual reflections on the topic at the Vatican. Then he convoked two “extraordinary” synods on the pastoral care of married people and families. The papal mandate for these synods was to examine modes of “accompaniment” and “mercy” that could be marshaled to better serve people “on the margins”. A number of catchphrases were repeated during this period: “The Eucharist is food for the journey, not a prize for the perfect” and “The Church is a field hospital.”
After the synods were over, he published a very long document on the topic, the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. This document contained one or two footnotes that suggested the possibility of “accompanying” Catholics in illicit second marriages so that they could “discern” whether it was appropriate for them to continue receiving the sacraments without abstinence or annulment.
Ambiguities remained. It was still possible to interpret everything the pope had officially published as orthodox, even though the tendency of the Pope’s doctrine was quite obvious to anyone not determined to think he was toeing the orthodox line. From there, various conferences of bishops (most notably CELAM, the congregation of Latin American bishops) set about implementing the Pope’s teaching in Amoris Laetitia, specifically by taking the next step and offering pastors permission to “accompany” people in second marriages back into the Church’s sacramental life. In this way, a basic reversal of Catholic dogma on the nature of marriage and the proper reception of the sacraments was achieved in practice, without the Pope needing to come out and say that he was nullifying the Council of Trent’s dogmatic decree on the Eucharist, or reversing the moral norms formally set down by Pope John Paul II.
The reality on the ground, in the midst of all this hinting and permitting, is that most pastors seem to understand that the real situation of their divorced and remarried parishioners is difficult, and either excluding them from the Eucharist or asking them to live in abstinence is an intolerably bitter pill to force on people who are, nonetheless, probably trying their best. By providing license to soften the pastoral rules around such people, the Pope more or less guaranteed that the changes would be adopted. A few hardliner holdouts no doubt remain, but in the vast majority of cases no one is policing communion lines looking for divorcees.
Back to the dubia that were published this week. The particular questions the Pope responded to were submitted earlier this summer by a group of Cardinals generally recognized to represent the hardline, conservative holdouts to the current pontificate: Burke, Sarah, and Brandmüller being the chief names on the list. I won’t go over the full text of the questions themselves (interested readers can find them, with the Pope’s responses here). Rather I’d like to focus on a few salient points.
First, the responses to the dubia were published by the Vatican’s main doctrinal organ, the DDF, on its official website. The responses are signed not by Cardinal Fernandez, the head of the DDF, but by the Pope himself. This is to say that, while Francis himself almost certainly did not write the replies himself (Popes do not generally author the documents they officially promulgate), he has endorsed them officially and they are issued in his name. This means that they represent an official Papal response to the doctrinal questions posed by the five Cardinals who submitted them.
Second, I’d like to focus in on the Pope’s response to the first of the five submitted questions, which asks specifically about the extent to which the Catholic Faith can be reinterpreted according to cultural changes from one age to the next. The thrust of the question is intended to prompt the Pope to affirm that Catholic Doctrine may develop in its expression but is immutable in its content. Instead of affirming this, the Pope’s response says the following:
…both the texts of the Scripture and the testimonies of Tradition require interpretation in order to distinguish their perennial substance from cultural conditioning. This is evident, for example, in biblical texts (such as Exodus 21:20-21) and in some magisterial interventions that tolerated slavery (Cf. Pope Nicholas V, Bull Dum diversas, 1452) [a Papal grant affirming the Portuguese king’s right to enslave non-Christians in West Africa]. This is not a minor issue given its intimate connection with the perennial truth of the inalienable dignity of the human person. These texts need interpretation.
In short the Pope responds to the question about whether Divine Revelation is immutable by focusing in on historically intolerable doctrines on the licitness of human slavery and the mistreatment of women. He does not explicitly say that doctrinal reversals are possible, but the illustrations chosen for the response are specifically those where the Church has fully rejected its prior stance, including the stance explicitly set down in Scripture itself. He justifies this by identifying the Catholic Faith as something over and above the particular doctrinal definitions that have historically been identified with it:
It is important to emphasize that what cannot change [emphasis mine] is what has been revealed "for the salvation of all" (Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum, 7). Therefore, the Church must constantly discern between what is essential for salvation and what is secondary or less directly connected with this goal.
In other words, any particular doctrinal point is capable of being relativized or reversed if it is discerned (subsequently) to be “secondary” or “less directly connected” with salvation. The vision Francis lays out is one of a Church perpetually wrestling with its own notions, reworking them in light of a renewed understanding of what is “essential”, and jettisoning previously held doctrines when it becomes clear that they are contrary to more essential ones. This is so far from being the kind of affirmation the Cardinals’ dubium was looking far, that it ends up coming close to an endorsement of the vague heresy of “modernism” condemned by Pope Pius X in the early 1900s.
The Catholicism described by Francis in this response to the Cardinals is quite different from the Catholicism one finds envisioned in the writings of Popes from centuries prior. There, the notion of divine revelation was tied to a supposedly unchanging “deposit of faith”, which could be known through the authority of Scripture, the Church Fathers, and the Magisterium. The Faith imagined by Francis is an ethereal kernel encased in various historically determined and mutable interpretations.
To say that this viewpoint is unappealing to conservative Catholics is an understatement. It is anathema. It amounts to rejecting the idea of the deposit of faith, and opening the door to any number of heretofore inconceivable theological innovations or reversals.
Finally, I’d like to turn to the second dubium, which received the most attention in the press. The question here concerns the “widespread practice” in the Church of offering non-matrimonial church blessings to homosexual couples. This practice has been the subject of a great deal of controversy since it was publicly adopted by Catholic bishops in Belgium and Germany, including a number of high ranking Cardinals. The idea among clergy performing such blessings is that, while official Church teaching does not allow two men or two women to receive a sacramental “marriage”, there ought to be some acknowledgement of the reality of homosexual partnerships and the good they do in the lives of gay men and women.
The cardinals who submitted the dubia asked specifically about these blessings in order to pressure the pope into another denunciation of them. The reason here is quite obvious: the Church has historically viewed all homosexual activity and all homosexual relationships as gravely immoral and intrinsically evil. Homosexual men (or at least those with “deep seated” homosexual inclinations, whatever that means) are considered to be so psychologically and morally deficient that they are not allowed to enter the priesthood. Homosexual sexual relations are considered one of the four “sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance”. The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the church’s position thus:
Tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
In the context of this teaching, which has been reaffirmed repeatedly, the dubium of the Cardinals should have been a slam dunk. The desired outcome would have been a plain denunciation of the quasi-marital blessings being given in Belgium and Germany (and elsewhere, though less publicly), causing the Pope to take a clear stance against the innovation being introduced there. But the response was anything but that.
Instead of simply saying “the Church cannot in any way condone or bless a relationship founded upon sin”, the Pope said this:
In our relationships with people, we must not lose the pastoral charity, which should permeate all our decisions and attitudes. The defense of objective truth is not the only expression of this charity; it also includes kindness, patience, understanding, tenderness, and encouragement. Therefore, we cannot be judges who only deny, reject, and exclude. Therefore, pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of blessing, requested by one or more persons, that do not convey a mistaken concept of marriage.
The Cardinals ask whether the blessing of same-sex couples should be allowed. The Pope responds by insisting on the case-by-case discernment of whether blessings are appropriate. “We cannot be judges who only deny, reject, and exclude.”
He then follows this with:
…it is not appropriate for a Diocese, a Bishops' Conference, or any other ecclesial structure to constantly and officially enable procedures or rituals for all kinds of matters, because not everything that "is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances can be elevated to the level of a rule" as this "would lead to an intolerable casuistry" (Amoris laetitia, 304). Canon law should not and cannot cover everything, nor should Episcopal Conferences with their varied documents and protocols claim to do so, as the life of the Church flows through many channels other than normative ones.
This response amounts to extremely permissive hedging. The Pope seems to prohibit the establishment of a rite for blessing same-sex couples, but he also excludes the opposite. In fact, by specifically ruling out the capacity of local Bishops or Bishops Conferences to establish guidelines for determining whether such same-sex quasi-marital blessings can be offered, the Pope has effectively issued a license for any priest anywhere in the world to exercise his own “discernment” on the matter, since “it is not appropriate” for higher authorities to legislate on it.
This reversal is profound. While it still means gays cannot marry in the Church, it amounts to a universal permission for the blessing of homosexual couples by priests, something utterly inconceivable in ages past, even as recently as a century ago. It is a huge step forward for the Church.
Back to the “boiling frogs” of my title. For the past few days I’ve been cycling through online catholic forums and publications observing people’s reactions to what the Pope wrote in his responses to the dubia. Since I left the Church in 2019 a number of other Catholics I knew have also left, some for personal reasons, others because it was increasingly obvious that the Church had reneged on its claims of infallibility and doctrinal consistency. But most of the people I knew and bloggers I read have held on, apparently too immersed in the mental habit of rationalizing and excusing to allow themselves to recognize that the religion they believe in is evolving into something else.
Last night, one of the talk shows on the Catholic TV network EWTN hosted a panel to discuss the dubia and the Pope’s ongoing “Synod on Synodality” (which is likely to produce further openings and revisions in Catholic doctrine). One was Robert Royal, the conservative editor of The Catholic Thing, another was Gerrald Murray, a priest in the Archdiocese of New York. While these men were discussing the dubia, it struck me as incredible that they were capable of denouncing the Pope, at this point more or less openly, while appealing to a set of doctrinal norms which the Pope’s own actions fundamentally undercut.
To put it succinctly, there’s an implicit contradiction in objecting to Francis’s response to the dubia. As a formal teaching act, concerning matters of faith and morals, the traditional catholic view is that these statements are owed, if not a recognition of infallibility, then at least the religious submission of one’s intellect and will. If the responses are wrong, then the Pope is wrong, and if they are evil then the Pope is promulgating evil in his official capacity as Supreme Pastor of the Church. To object to these things from the position of traditional Catholic orthodoxy is to reject the idea that the Pope is a sure source of orthodox teaching. It’s sawing off the very branch one is sitting on.
Elsewhere in my survey of Catholic reactions to the dubia I saw a lot of people resorting to the claim that the responses were being misrepresented by the media. That the pope couldn’t possibly mean that same-sex blessings are allowed on a case by case basis. On reddit there were numerous posters ranting about the lies of the mainstream press and lamenting that the Pope hadn’t spoken “more clearly” about the topic of homosexual unions. In the midst of this, I saw Catholics attacking each other for not having the “right” perspective on the matter. Some expressed dismay at what the Pope had written. Others expressed anger at those feeling dismayed, because they weren’t adequately committed to believing in the divine protection from error claimed by the Papacy. There were several citations of “Tu es petrus” and related lines from Scripture.
To be honest, I wonder what will happen to those people in the long run. The Synod on Synodality is likely to produce a working group to investigate the possibility of female deacons, if not more. Same-sex blessings will likely continue in Europe and expand to other regions, just as communion for people in second marriages has. Beyond that, the College of Cardinals has been stacked overwhelmingly at this point with Francis appointees, meaning that the next Pope will almost certainly be of a similar mindset.
The Catholic Church is in the midst of a period of evolution akin to what it went through in the 1960s and 70s. Those with the ability to sustain an unthinking institutional allegiance in the face of the obvious contradictions will no doubt continue to do so. Those who have been driven away by legalism and backwardness may find Catholicism more appealing than it was previously. My hope, personally, is that there is another mass-exodus like the one that happened after Vatican II, and what is left behind is, indeed, a “smaller, holier Church” like what Joseph Ratzinger described, but in a very different way than he imagined it. Smaller in its grandiosity and doctrinal posturing, holier in its commitment to the poor. Smaller in its rejection of wealth and power politics, holier in its inclusivity and intolerance of internal malfeasance.
Historically speaking, this is one hell of a pipe dream. Either way, it does seem like the monolithic monarchical church of dogmas created by popes like Pius IX is at an end.
That is, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). This office has changed names and been re-organized repeatedly in recent centuries. Most recently it was known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Prior to that it was the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office (“the Holy Office”), and prior to that it was known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition (“the Roman Inquisition”). This office of the Vatican has, since the Reformation period, functioned as the official doctrinal watchdog of the Roman Catholic Church. Its publications are generally considered to be binding on the faithful in doctrinal matters, and it has historically operated under the direct supervision of the Pope, lending its decrees on matters of faith and morals a high degree of “magisterial authority”, which is to say that (for those Catholics who care about such things), the output of the DDF/CDF/Holy Office/Roman Inquisition has been considered to be normative for the faithful under pain of sin, schism, or heresy. This is the office that put Galileo on trial.