Posted on 07/19/2015 5:31:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
OK.
I misunderstood then.
PING!
The Pope favors those of a socialist/communist bent, while relentlessly attacking an imaginary, evil economic construct which he has arbitrarily labeled "capitalism". The political leaders and opinion leaders whom he praises and surrounds himself with (e.g. Evo Morales, founder of the "Movement Toward Socialism" party, Gustavo Gutierrez, founder of "Liberation Theology", Hans Schellnhuber, who "proposes the need for indispensable forms of World Governance — or in his own suspicious words, a “global democratic society” — to be organized within the framework of the current United Nations"*...) work actively to undermine subsidiarity as related to the right to political and economic self-determination. His appreciation for their efforts combined with his own calls for "redistribution" confirm his decidedly leftist leanings.
*http://catholicism.org/professor-hans-joachim-schellnhuber-a-rap-sheet.html
Do papal teachings change? Yes, in fact, they do: to an extent. Let's see if I can make this a little clearer without writing a book. (This is good for me, too, helps me make sound distinctions in my own mind--- so, thank you for bringing it up.)
I'm going to refer to non-Church ethical discussions about torture, and then relate that to the Church.
As you know, even in the matter of contemporary US discussions of torture, the first thing you have to do is to define torture. E.g., there are some who say that waterboarding is always morally impermissible because it is torture. There are others who say it is not intrinsically torture if used for interrogation purposes, but it is torture if used to satisfy an appetite for sadism, for its psychological effect on others (e.g. a spectacle meant to intimidate a subject populace), for punishment, or for revenge. There are those who say waterboarding is not at all torture, since it does not cause death, maiming nor permanent injury, but only a transient panic attack. Etc. etc.
I was following these discussions amongst the ethicists awhile back: the guy whose line of reasoning I thought most sound was Natural Law ethicist Christopher Tollefsen (LINK) in case you're interested. I also find this article by Canon Lawyer Fr. Brian Harrison (LINK) very helpful.
Bottom line, torture has (so far) never been defined closely enough to make possible an infallible statement about it by the Church, or to call it in every case unlawful as an exceptionless norm.
You may think this a round-about answer, but it's not simple. Look, the EU wants to deny child custody to parents who give their children a mild, non-injurious smack on the butt, thus effectively defining ordinary, non-traumatic child discipline as torture. You don't want the Church to prohibit something like "torture" via an exceptionless norm unless it's exceedingly well-defined.
As for exterminating heretics: Churchmen, even with Papal approval, did historically shameful and objectively morally reprehensible things, which no one can justify. This does not have automatic traction as an argument against the papal magisterium, since the Catholic Church teaches that all papal teachings does not possess the same level of authority. And nobody has the authority to command a sin.
The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium #25) states that one should attend to
Back to your main point, I think you'd have to distinguish between different kinds of heresy, running from maintaining an erroneous opinion ("Jesus was an archangel") to violating Natural Law ("Let's sacrifice war captives to Huitzilopochtli!") to organizing armed rebellion ("First, kill the papal legates"). You'd also have to distinguish between ecclesiatical penalties: "excommunication" which would involve being barred from the sacraments; "interdict" which is like excommunication for a whole group (a monastery, a province, a nation) plus economic sanctions (being shunned/boycotted); "extermination", which in ecclesiastical penalties means being physically banned from a place, i.e. expulsion, exile, outlawry.
The State had its own penalties, always more harsh and bloody; the Church did not have the power or authority to impose such penalties nor, strictly, to order them; and they were imposed mostly in cases where a heretical movement was morphing into political subversion, open rebellion, or civil war.
Feeling a little overwhelmed?
The "papal magisterium" bugtussle has gotten even more hair-splitting under Pope Francis, since he lards so much opinion-manifesto and prudential stuff into magisterial documents (like the public policy recommendations ---strictly non-magisterial --- in Laudato Si), and the Faithful have --- I think ---- the right to object, "A mashup isn't a mandate. Would you exercise a little more verbal self-restraint, already?"
Related posts: not about the papal magisterium per se, but about torture and the suppression of heresy: on the Inquisition (LINK) and "The Black Legend" (LINK)
Dismayed? I'm dismayed when a red light slows me down on my way to work. How about "outraged?" And how about making it the top priority, instead of an afterthought, while spewing ignorance about the best system for ameliorating the conditions of the poor that mankind has yet devised.
In this regard it is no different and no worse than any other system yet devised. And as bitter experience has shown, it is far better than most.
To ascribe only to capitalism those universal human corruptions, which occur in every system and usually to a far greater extent in the alternatives, is an egregious display.
Quite right.
It is the parasites he is catering to. While it is true that in Argentina, honest hard working people who live life prudently have a tough go of it through not fault of their own, that is NOT the case in the capitalist nations he is complaining about.
Commies can also be capitalists. Just look at the Chinese. Even beyond that, pretty much all commie countries idolize money and material objects as their false gods. If one is looking for people who literally worship money as their god, then one can find many among the inmates of communist regimes.
That's a good way to put it. A guy shouldn't be paying a cut to an all-powerful international finance system, in return for the license to run up a lemonade stand. But that's where our future is going, because the propagandists of the new world order have convinced people that this is synonymous with free enterprise.
Any attempt at defending the Red Pope and the nonsense he spouts falls on deaf ears with me. My mom told me she knows a Priest and Nun that say a rosary daily asking God to CALL HIM HOME!!
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