1. Every organization . . . PARTICULARLY bureaucratic political !!!!TRADITION!!!! bound large organizations like the Vatican et al . . . has
A) the 'legal' documents prescribing policy, membership criteria, rules of behavior etc.
and
B) what's generally accepted as true and/or kosher and/or routinely acceptable; routinely accepted in common dialogue as doctrine etc. by the rank and file in the pews or wherever.
A) and B) are NEVER equal.
Lots of type "A" personalities with "aggressively reactive temperaments," prissy foolish obsessive compulsive folks in all kinds of organizations can wail and puff themselves up and harumph up one side and down the other about what OUR ORGANIZATION BELIEVES XYZ and quote the documents ad nauseum.
And most of the time, what . . . 75-95%? of the rank and file and probably 20-50%? of the INSTRUCTORS IN THE BOUNDARIES OF THE HOLY GRAIL (or whatever such educators might be called in a particular organization) would shake their heads in dumb-founded NON-RECOGNITION of the verbatim documents quoted by the prissy foolish folks.
This is true for a number of reasons.
A) organizations are supposedly more less alive because they have somewhat living people within them--though many be the walking dead and certainly the walking brain-dead. And living groups of people develop norms of behavior, normative definitions of key terms; norms of assumptions and beliefs that are NEVER identical to the organization's documents.
B) The founding and related documents are usually so comprehensive, if not wordy that no one but those married to and idolatrous of the organization are going to learn them and keep them in mind. So, of course, being human, normal people will drop great portions of said documents' pontificationis and sort of hold loosely in their minds THEIR interpretations of the KEY portions of 'holy writ' that they feel SHOULD RIGHTFULLY govern MOST of their IMPORTANT-VIS-A-VIS-ORGANIZATIONALLY RELATED BEHAVIORS. The rest falls by the wayside. And, THEIR interpretations are NEVER IDENTICAL to what the CURRENT TOP LEADERS of the organization would assert as kosher doctrine.
C) Even the top leaders in succeeding eras will always redefine, reinterpret, reapply, re-color various parts of the 'holy writ' of the organization. It's human nature. The Vatican is no different on that score. Every leader wants their imprint on what flows out of their reign. And, the rank and file will pick and choose from those changes as to which of them the rank and file will OWN and live out, follow through on--to varying degrees of closeness to what said leaders do.
So, do we believe that 99.9% of all Roman Catholics believe 100% identically in lock step slavish mind-melds to Petronski?
It is conceivable that Petronski believes deep in his heart and bone marrow that he is leading the pack of the most orthodox, most holy, most Roman Catholic minded, most accurately wedded to the proper Vatican documents of all the world's titular Roman Catholics.
In my experience, there are lots of such folks running around loose in every organization. Each one of them considers that THEY ARE UNIQUELY AMONGST THE CLOSEST AND MOST ORTHODOX of all said IN-GROUP members that they know of. And, of course, whether it's WELS insisting on identical FELLOWSHIP worthy doctrines or RC's . . . no two paragonly prissy super orghodox obcoms even agree with each other identically--much less identically with the founding documents.
So they can strut and prance and fluff up their feathers and raise their noses all they want about what is the PURE beliefs of the organization. Most folks will just shake their heads at the pitiful displays and walk on by thinking quite otherwise.