Posted on 02/01/2026 11:13:17 AM PST by ebb tide
On January 27, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, opened the plenary session of the dicastery at the Vatican with a meditation urging intellectual humility, warning against excessive certainty in theological judgments—especially online—and calling for prayer, listening, and awareness of human limits in order to avoid serious moral and historical distortions.
“On any blog, anyone—even without having studied much theology—can express his or her opinion and condemn others as if speaking ex cathedra,” Fernández said, adding that the Church must recover “that healthy realism proposed by the Church’s great sages and mystics.”
The plenary session of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which runs from 27 to 29 January, brings together more than 70 participants in Vatican City for days of prayer, reflection, and discussion.
In his opening meditation, Fernández stressed that the human capacity for thought, though universal in scope, is inherently limited and incapable of grasping reality in its totality.
“God has given the human being the capacity for thought,” the cardinal said, “but this does not mean that human persons possess an exhaustive capacity, an integral perception of reality.” According to Fernández, even the most advanced technologies cannot enable the human mind to comprehend reality in all its dimensions, a capacity that belongs to God alone.
However, while the digital age has indeed multiplied voices and opinions, the growing criticism and dissatisfaction among the faithful cannot be explained by online discourse alone, but is also rooted in many official documents and acts that have generated objective ambiguity in recent times.
“The problem is that we cannot have a complete understanding of even a small part of this world, since that same part can be understood fully only in the light of the totality in which it is integrated, for everything is connected,” the Cardinal said.
He warned that ignoring this limitation can lead to what he described as a “terrible deception,” which, he said, has historically contributed to events such as “the excesses of the Inquisition, the world wars, the Shoah, and the massacres in Gaza,” all of which, he noted, were justified through what he called fallacious arguments. Fernández emphasized that this danger is not merely historical but can be repeated in everyday life when individuals become overly confident in what they believe they know.
In this context, Fernández recalled recent remarks by Pope Leo, who stated that “no one possesses the whole truth; we must all humbly seek it, and seek it together.”
Fernández said this approach is especially necessary in theology, where scholars often have expertise limited to specific disciplines, while the mysteries of the faith are interconnected within what he described as a “precious hierarchy” centred on the core truths of the Gospel.
However, while the digital age has indeed multiplied voices and opinions, the growing criticism and dissatisfaction among the faithful cannot be explained by online discourse alone, but is also rooted in many official documents and acts that have generated objective ambiguity in recent times.
Documents such as Fiducia supplicans and the Note on Marian titles introduced formulations that many bishops, theologians, and ordinary faithful found difficult to reconcile with prior magisterial teaching.
Texts issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope Francis and later under Pope Leo XIV, bearing the signature of Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, have been widely perceived as unclear in language and scope, thereby fostering confusion rather than resolving it.
Documents such as Fiducia supplicans on blessings for couples in irregular situations and the Note on Marian titles introduced formulations that many bishops, theologians, and ordinary faithful found difficult to reconcile with prior magisterial teaching. When authoritative documents lack precision or continuity of expression, they inevitably provoke questions, divergent interpretations, and unrest within the People of God, independent of the noise of blogs or social media.
“Certainly, in a place such as this, where we have the possibility of giving authoritative answers, of writing documents that become part of the Ordinary Magisterium, and even of correcting and condemning, the risk of losing the breath of our perspective is greater,” said Fernández.
Attention to the “peripheries” of the Church, often invoked as a priority, cannot come at the expense of overlooking the many ordinary Catholics who experience disorientation in matters of faith and morals.
Since documents that enter the Ordinary Magisterium should be infallible by canon law (cf. can. 750 §1) and required to stand in continuity with what the Church has always taught, they demand a high degree of doctrinal coherence and clarity. When this continuity is not clearly perceived, the risk is not merely academic but pastoral: confusion spreads among the faithful, who rely on the Magisterium as a secure guide.
Attention to the “peripheries” of the Church, often invoked as a priority, cannot come at the expense of overlooking the many ordinary Catholics who experience disorientation in matters of faith and morals. Otherwise, a contradiction emerges, whereby pastoral concern is professed in principle, yet those within the heart of the People of God who are struggling to understand recent teachings feel unheard and effectively left behind.
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LOL!
OK, think I’d rather be behind him than in front.
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