Please tell us all about his theological liberalism? Why you’re at tell us all about the changes in doctrine on abortion, homosexuality, and women ordaination. Did he change Catholic doctrine while I was sleeping?
[To pv, et, and bn]: Fellas?
Why you’re at tell us all about the changes in doctrine on abortion, homosexuality, and women ordaination. Did he change Catholic doctrine while I was sleeping?
What good does an "unchanged doctrine" do if it isn't enforced? Or even if "debate" is allowed on it? What happened to the old Catholic Church that would have just told people "No" from the beginning and that would have been the end of it? Oh, that's right . . . Vatican II and its philosophical enablers happened!
The Catholic Church has changed radically. The fact that the Syllabus of Errors is still "theoretically" in force and still locked up in some musty old archive doesn't change the fact that post-VII papal and conciliar statements have said the exact opposite and are the basis of life in the Church today.
An unchanging church would be just that--unchanged. The post-VII church is so different from its predecessor that it isn't even recognizable as the same religion. Instead the patristic consensus on the Hexameron has been relegated to the dustbin of history and written off as "just their pre-scientific opinion" (while those same fathers' pre-scientific opinions on the virgin birth and the real presence are still held to as authoritative) and "St." Henry Cardinal Newman's "development of doctrine" thesis (which horrified his contemporaries but is adhered to as "gospel" by today's "conservative" Catholics) is invoked to justify this (dare I say it?) "evolution" in the Catholic worldview as an organic continuation of the ancient and even pre-Constantinian church.
Go to the library and find a big book called a "dictionary." Then look up the word "unchanging" in it. Maybe then you will understand.