Pope Francis is on the wrong side of history (again)

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

69. "Anyone who supports this church supports the subjugation of women by default."

At best, that's an oversimplification; in reality, it's just untrue. First, I would point out that I have stated in some detail why Humanae Vitae ("Human Life" -- Pope Paul VI's encyclical against contraception) is a piece of crap. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/1221328#post12

So, I hear you say, if the teaching on contraception is as I say it is, then why isn't it just changed? Unfortunately, it isn't that easy, for a number of reasons. The official line in Catholic thought is that truth is objective and "error has no rights". There is a corollary which presupposes that what the Vatican teaches is by definition "true" (for the Vatican cannot teach falsely), and those who teach that which is not approved by the Vatican are teaching falsely and should be corrected.

Sustaining that attitude requires both ignorance of history and outright deception. After all, if the Church teaches absolute truth, how can the teachings change? Even a cursory examination of the history of doctrine shows that the teachings do change. For example, as late as Pope Benedict XIV's encyclical of 1745, Vix Pervenit, the Church taught that the taking of interest on loans was usury and therefore sinful. The teaching has never been rescinded, but has been quietly dropped. Similarly, the first blanket condemnation of slavery in Catholicism was Pope Leo XIII's encyclical In Plurimus of 1888 (which, one must admit, is a bit late in the day for it -- a couple of centuries earlier and it would have been more meaningful.)

When I was in graduate school, I wrote a paper on how the Church went from the Council of Trent's "Biblical translations must be based on the Latin Vulgate" to Vatican II's "Biblical translations must be based on the original languages" without ever contradicting (indeed, quoting from) the previous position papers.

Unfortunately, the quoting from previous position papers is obviously highly selective. Cherry picking quotes is dishonest. I'm sure that when Pope Benedict was a theology professor, he would have slapped down any student who ignored evidence which did not support his thesis. (If you read Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, he starts each article by citing evidence against his thesis; he then answers each one.) However, ignoring contrary evidence is expected in Vatican position papers. The most egregious recent case I can think of was Pope Paul VI's encyclical defending priestly celibacy, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, which wholly ignores 1 Corinthians 9:5, in which the Apostle Paul is saying that he has a right to be married. That Paul chose not to exercise that right is immaterial, he still had it.

But the bottom line is that a Pope simply cannot say, "My predecessor was wrong when he taught <X>, the official teaching is now <Y>." Teachings are changed, but the process is slow and not really honest.