Some Catholics cope with Pope Francis by taking the position that even if he's a heretic, that's not too big of a deal so long as his heretical views are just his private option rather than dogma.
But of course, that poses a dilemma. What if Francis makes his heresies official? Then they cease to be heretical. Yesterday's heresy can be tomorrow's orthodoxy while yesterday's orthodoxy can be tomorrow's heresy.
Catholicism is akin to theological voluntarism in that respect. According to voluntarism, nothing is intrinsically right or wrong. It depends on God's arbitrary fiat.
In Catholicism, something isn't heretical unless it's officially heretical. It's heretical if an ecumenical council condemns it.
Catholicism is like Schrödinger's cat, suspended in a state of superposition where it's both dead and alive until someone opens the box and peers inside.
Francis is a heretic until he make it official, at which point it becomes dogma.
Rightly or wrongly, as I understand it all Catholics believe there can be false Papal claimants (e.g. the Western Schism when there were three "Popes" at one time). Some Catholics even believe that a false Pope can occupy the true Papal See. In the case of the latter, I've always wondered how they don't know that the Papal See hasn't been vacant since right after Peter. Or since a Pope officially dogmatized a teaching Protestants would consider heretical. Sedevacantists seem to be functional Protestants in terms of determining via private judgment who is or isn't a legitimate Pope.
ReplyDeleteIf they say that the teaching magisterium can later infallibly confirm which Popes were legitimate and which weren't, that seems to beg the question. Maybe the teaching magisterium was wrong at that later time for endorsing a false Pope. I mean, the magisterium, as a whole, was wrong for about 5 decades During the Arian Ascendancy (with a few exceptions like Athanasius). Why couldn't such a situation happen for a much longer period of time? To say that in God's providence He wouldn't allow that seems ad hoc. A much simpler and common sense hypothesis is that there is no such thing as a Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church [i.e. a "Pope" in the Western sense].
DeleteIf it weren't for the private judgement of Rome's apologists, we would be very confused by this Magisterium.
DeleteIf the pope is permitted to have heretical beliefs, why not the laity?
ReplyDeletePeter, it's not "permitted", but from the point of view of a Roman Catholic convert, it's a thing that "doesn't break the system" "The system" can go on with one (or a hundred) heretical popes, so long as they don't use their infallibility powers to create a new heretical dogma. The purity of the dogmas are what count. And so far there have been two of them: the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary. Anything else can be reasoned away as "not breaking the system".
DeleteIt's the "Alias Smith and Jones" defense for these folks. "For all the trains and banks they robbed, for all the heretical things they said, they never 'taught' anything." Just a placeholder. Good enough to keep the succession "unbroken". "We have a pope".
Who infallibly interprets the words of the infallible interpreter when people still fail to heed/understand to infallible teaching?
ReplyDeleteJesse: anyone who seems to be saying the right things at the moment.
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