A Church that Can and Cannot Change
Notre Dame Law School is moving, lock, stock, and bookcase to a brand-new building in a few days. It’s hard not to feel nostalgic–or to find layers of meaning here. As I was packing up my books, I came across John Noonan’s A Church that Can and Cannot Change, which he delivered as the Erasmus Lectures at Notre Dame. Judge Noonan, for whom I clerked, started his career as a law professor at Notre Dame Law School. In fact, he wrote his classic book Contraception while working in this building.
A Church that Can and Cannot Change talks about development of Catholic moral doctrine on issues ranging from marriage to religious liberty; it’s a good, and very readable, account based on years of research. It would make a good Christmas present. Here’s a good review by James Keenan, SJ, Professor of Moral Theology at Boston College, in the Journal of Religion.
John T. Noonan’s works on usury, contraception, religious freedom, abortion, divorce, and bribery have set the gold standard for research in theological ethics. While sensitive to the hermeneutical context of any particular teaching, he has traced and articulated the evolution of normative teachings across cultures and history.
His research is especially compelling for Roman Catholic ethics shaped to some degree by magisterial teachings that often make the claim of inerrancy precisely through another claim: that its utterances are continuously the same and resist change, despite evidence to the contrary. Noonan’s present project addresses this issue head-on: is there historical change in these teachings, and, if so, is history edifying? Does history build up the church and bring us to wisdom?
Noonan presents his investigations in six parts. In the first, he sets up his argument. The next four parts treat the evolution of four particular teachings: slavery, usury, religious freedom, and divorce. The final one is framed by maxims relevant to understanding the effects of history on moral teaching.
Noonan prefaces his treatment of slavery with a theologically troubling concept, “an unknown sin.” Such a sin is an act that is not recognized for centuries as a sin but at some point becomes “regarded with horror as the blackest kind of affront to the human person and among the most serious derelictions of duty to God” (14). Slavery is the unknown sin and is treated in the second part, comprising more than half the book. The narrative is absolutely riveting.
Noonan describes a church unable to recognize slavery’s sinfulness and a long-standing theological community at home with the institution, even when it is innovating the moral law. From Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Antoninus of Florence to John Mair and Francisco de Vitoria, the slave receives no recognition. “As masters of morality taught, the masters of slaves were moral owners of property” (61).
As incipient recognitions of the horror of slavery are reported, popes speak out while theologians and local religious leaders seem remarkably blind. For instance, in 1839, Pope Gregory XVI decries “the inhuman trade” of slavery (107), but the leading prelate in the United States, Bishop John England, asserts the lawful title to slaves, the moral theologian Francis Kenrick defends the practice of slavery, and the Jesuits of the Maryland Province actually own more than two hundred slaves. Later Pope Leo XIII issues two other denunciations against slavery, and, in a devastating diatribe against theological obtuseness, Noonan notes how Karl Rahner, in editing the teachings of pontiffs and councils for the past twenty centuries, failed to recognize any papal teaching of slavery as worthy of mention (117). Indeed, “the first categorical condemnation by the church of an institution that the church had lived with for over nineteen hundred years” is finally made in 1965 in the Second Vatican Council document Gaudium et Spes.
Noonan then turns to changes in the opposite direction, actions that are, in a way of speaking, no longer sinful: usury, religious freedom, and divorce. But like the issue of slavery they witness to how faith leads us, over time, to understand moral matters differently.
Noonan closes his work by offering wisdom on how history teaches us that no one ever has a full purchase on any moral insight, that humility is an effective epistemological virtue, that development should neither be exaggerated nor denied, and, above all, that love should lead us. But Noonan leaves this moralist a bit unsettled. Declaring moral teachers from previous generations innocent for the positions they held, he explains the acquittal with an overarching assertion: “We must be judged by the moral criterion we know” (200). Did no one have a responsibility to learn what he did not yet know? Is there not any culpability for ignorance? Do not the prophets rightly condemn when we do not bother to understand? This brilliant book teaches us that, if we appreciate history, inevitably we are called to understand more than we presently know.
This is one of the many “must have” books that I haven’t managed to read yet. Its mention reminds me of a discussion recently on Vox Nova in which a lot of things came up involving the story of the centurion and his servant that Jesus healed from a distance. Someone was arguing that the word used to describe the servant (pais) would have been understood at the time to mean same-sex partner and that Jesus, in healing the servant, did not discriminate against homosexuals. I have a feeling this interpretation of the story has very little support among “orthodox” scholars, but I don’t think there is any doubt that the centurion’s servant was a slave. And slavery is an “intrinsic evil.” Why didn’t Jesus say, “I’ll heal your servant, but you have to free him”? Does the story indicate an acceptance of “intrinsic evil”? And then there is the “intrinsic evil” incest, although one of Abraham’s wives (Sarah) is his half sister. (Is polygamy now also considered intrinsically evil?)
The question that occurs to me is that some things now considered “intrinsically evil,” such as slavery, can be recognized as evil at the time, if not by the perpetrators, at least by the victims. But it seems like other “intrinsic evils” (mainly those involving sexual behavior) are kind of like victimless crimes. And if the perpetrators don’t know they are evil — how can I put this? — where does the evil go? For example, suppose in the movie Blue Lagoon, the two youngsters that grew up on the island together had not been Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins, but two males or two females who developed, in all innocence, a sexual relationship. They would not be guilty of doing anything wrong, and assuming it was a loving, caring relationship, no harm would come of it. So where there is no culpability and no negative outcome, what does it mean to say that objectively there was evil? Are some “intrinsic evils” kind of like “technical violations”?
And of course what does it say about the argument that we can know right from wrong by our own reason, through natural law, when such an evil as slavery could exist so long under the nose of the Church without being condemned?
Noonan’s books are wonderful! He may be ignored but he cannot be refuted, IMHO.
As for the category of “intrinsical evil” and the capacity of reason to detect it, I would say that culture inhibits reason. We tend for the most part to suppose that what our cultural milieu approves is good and what it tolerates is tolerable and what it condemns is bad. And because we are habituated to look at things and evaluate them according to the promptings of our culture, we tend in so doing to image that we are being reasonable in our assessments. Our familiar way looks like the reasonable way. Could it be that we are unreasonable? One road to emancipation from unrecognized prejudices–we all have them–is the reading of studies like Noonan’s. If we learn nothing from history, whom then are we to blame?
David, regarding your example of the Blue Lagoon scenario, a more traditional approach might evaluate the situation (2 boys or 2 girls, as the case may be) in terms of objective evil vs. moral culpability. Any sexual relations — mutual tenderness and consent et al notwithstanding — might be deemed as “contrary to the natural law” because the impossibility of procreation will in time result in the demise of this little “society.” Of course, how to reconcile this argument with a situation where an infertile heterosexual couple lives in the middle of nowhere: no chance of procreation, either! This little “society,” too, is doomed to perish!
Joseph, your comments seem to reflect cultural stasis. Life is change, the latter occurring over time — perhaps a long time. Take abortion, for example: There is no genuine consensus although it may be developing as we “speak.” To acknowledge the reality of change in this context is one thing. The rub may be in explaining it. Might an “intrinsic evil” be similar to something hidden that requires time, human experience, and conversation to discover?
“…how history teaches us that no one ever has a full purchase on any moral insight, that humility is an effective epistemological virtue, that development should neither be exaggerated nor denied, and, above all, that love should lead us.”
A far cry from the “always held”, “mentally held”, scenario, or better fiasco. And Christians who disagreed were killed. Historians tell us that if Jesus or Paul militated against slavery they would have been put to death a lot sooner. When a belief is so ingrained in society, even prophets seem to realize that a different approach is necessary. And slavery is a result of conquest as slaves were taken from the conquered countries. Rather than condemn Paul we should appreciate how he deftly works on making Timothy a freeman as he must have done so many others.
“Love should lead us.” Always, but it ain’t easy to run a church that way. The biggest lacuna which most have not a clue, is the obliteration of women from church history, especially from the fourth century on. Except for female theologians and one or two on this blog, most have no idea of how women were wrested from the history of the church. And when they were not ignored they were made into prostitutes as Luke changes Mary Magdalene in his gospel. Ergo, the downgrading of women is arguably the largest miscue. This malpractice exists today in most of Catholicism, including this blog. More than amazing.
Hello All,
I purchased a copy of Judge Noonan’s “A Church that Can and Cannot Change”
at a philosphy conference soon after its publication. Shortly thereafter I
had to pack the book away because I began a series of moves around the country
as I looked for a new job. I only unpacked my copy of Noonan’s book two months
ago and have belatedly started studying it. The work is fascinating, in addition
to being exceptionally well-written and well documented. I second
Cathleen’s recommendation – this work would make a fine Christmas present.
Sadly, I think Noonan’s recent work may not receive the fair attention it
deserves in some quarters. In a work I otherwise mostly admire,
John Finnis in “Aquinas” dismisses Noonan’s earlier
book “Contraception” in a single footnote, claiming the entire work is flawed
because Noonan allegedly misinterprets one of Aquinas’ arguments on contraception.
I hope I am wrong but I fear this latest work “A Church that Can and Cannot Change”
may receive similar short shrift by those who insist the Roman Catholic Church has
always vigorously and consistently opposed slavery, has always championed
religious freedom, has never changed its teaching on usury, and is not now
starting to change its practice with respect to divorce.
I think I should add that in his “Aquinas” Finnis, who I rate the most important
contemporary champion of Thomistic natural law theory,
acknowledges that some popes in the distant past
allowed that torture is acceptable under certain cirsumstances
so long as lethal force is not used. Noonan does not address torture in this
recent book. But I find it interesting that even Finnis, who insists
on an “absolutely and permanently constant” view of Roman Catholic Church teaching
on so many issues, appears to allow that at least Papal teaching can change
on the issue of torture.
I look forward to reading Noonan, and welcome his refreshing approach. Thank you, Prof. Kaveny for the thread.
A leader in VOTF in the early days was a priest who attended Vatican II, and had met John 23. He would muse about the Vatican’s penchant for never admitting doctrinal changes with the phrase, “as we’ve always taught.”
That comment came to mind when I read John Allen’s Word from Rome back in 2006 about the Dominican Fr. Enrico di Rovasenda, a leader in the Vatican’s reevaluation of Galileo. He was chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences from 1974 to 1986, and celebrated his 100th birthday in 2006.
Now if there were one instance where the Vatican could not say, “as we’ve always taught” I thought Galileo was it. Wrong.
Allen wrote:
“Looking back, di Rovasenda insists that what John Paul did was not a “rehabilitation” of Galileo or a “revision” of the church’s original judgment, so much as a vindication for a more open point of view that has existed within Catholicism since the 17th century.
“There has always been within the church an opinion and a judgment that can be reconciled with Galileo’s discoveries,” di Rovasenda wrote.”
Who knew? This is humorous in the extreme, but typical of the unreconstructed Vatican mindset. At some point it gets beyond anger to where you just throw up your hands and laugh. If only it truly were so funny…
Does Noonan discuss Galileo, I wonder?
Just to prove how denial and rationalization can become ends in themselves, a very conservative friend wrote against Noonan regarding slavery. He claimed that the Church’s good motive in accepting slavery was to prevent the killing of captives, the only alternative. Better slave than dead, to promote life over death, given the options at the time.
Oh my.
Amazon’s reviews of Noonan’s book includes one review which quotes Avery Dulles’ review of the book. Dulles pans Noonan.
It seems to me that the disagreeent is a semantic one involving the meaning of The Church”.
Numerous disagreements among Catholics seem to revolve around these semantic questions:
1) what are the meanings of “the Church” (as in “the Church teaches . . . “) ?
2) when there is a question about a teaching of “the Church”, which meaning should be the privileged one?
Cathy’s suggestion and thread are an excellent gift in itself.
As the discussion in the Merz/”doubt” thread indicates, the uncertainty of many is met by the continuing need for some to think we’ve got it all and we always will.
For the latter, there is then need to create an apologetic to both explain change that has happened and to fight against change that may be coming. This apologetic only increases the “doubt” in others.
One of the questions I continue to think is important is if the pace of change quickens, how does this impact the dynamic?
Joseph J. My point was that culture tends to muffle the voice of reason. History teaches this and should make us wary.
Carolyn. The best single book I know of on the church and Galileo is The Church and Galileo edited by Ernan McMullin and published by Notre Dame University Press. In the 27 November issue of L’Osservatore Romano, cited in the Tablet (6 December) “the head of the Vatican Observatory, Fr. Jose Funes, said that the Church had made its mistakes, but ‘without the Church there would not have been Galileo’”. Fr. Funes seem to me right that the Church has made mistakes, or at any rate the two Popes in question and the Holy Office and even the estimable Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church. What he means by the odd conterfactual that follows: “‘without the Church there would not have been Galileo” I can only wonder. One might say the same about Galileo’s parents without whom he would certainly not havbe been. I wonder if Fr. Funes meant to hint, but was not quite prepared to say, that without the Church there would have been no Galileo affair.
Fr. Keenan, apparently from his reading of Noonan, cites Leo XIII as twice denouncing slavery. This is not quite how I read Noonan. The passages are too long to quote here but anyone who has the book can find them by looking in the index s.v. Leo XIII. As for Gregory XVI, he did at last condemn the slave trade, but not slavery itself, and his condemnation was elicited by the British government, which had undertaken to suppress the slave trade.
Perhaps Fr. Funes meant that science did not spring full-grown from the temple of Galileo. Scientific method itself was invented by Friar Bacon, and the beginnngsi of experimentation are clear in both the Franciscan and Dominican orders. Unfortunately. Rome was not so tolerant by Galileo’s time.
I am more inclined to think that Fr. Funes, having first boldly said that the Church had made mistakes (a debit), wanted to balance that with something positive (a credit).
I believe Fr. Funes is correct. However, the Church’s opposition to Galileo had nothing to do with the scientific method per se but with theories that challenged Church doctrine and hence its authority. Witness the Church’s opposition to Evolution throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century, which only gave way when the scientific evidence became overwhelming. Considering the op-ed piece by Cardinal Schoenbrun in the NY Times, however, one might suspect that even now the Church only grudgingly accepts the theory.
Returning to the issue of slavery, one might wonder why the Church was not in the forefront of those seeking its abolition. As late as 1866 the Holy Office insisted “that, although the popes had left nothing untried by which slavery might be abolished, slavery per se was not repugnant to natural law or to divine law…”. (Noonan 115).
One suspects that the Church’s late-found change of heart had more to do with political expediency than religious conviction. Admissions of error are worthless when they can be done only when expedient or when shown to be so at odds with reality that to continue to hold them would be damaging to the institution.
when there is a question about a teaching of “the Church”, which meaning should be the privileged one?
I suspect the de-facto criterion is ‘the teaching that supports one’s position’ — whatever that position is.
Regardiing books on Galileo and the Church, someone in another thread also mentioned “Galileo for Copernicanism and the Church”, by Annibale Fantoli, which is published by the Vatican Observatory. I’m no authority, but it seemed like an even-handed treatment of the issue to me. At an Amazon price of $42, it is not quite a stocking stuffer though.
It is amazing how with 2009 approaching we still attribute qualities to the church which were really a product of the fourth century, especially starting with Damasus, when Christians began killing each other, to Augustine, Athanasius, Eusebius, and a succession of church officials who insisted on church as empire as contrasted with church as living people imbued with the spirit of God. Women theologians are showing many deficiencies of the Fathers of the Church. John XXIII tried to turn things around and he did a great job considering the difficulty of centuries of hierarchical dominion minded clerics. Inevitable events, like the pedophilia crisis, clearly give the message that we are a church of sinners and that he who loves her neighbor (CF the Samaritan) is the true lover of God.
People are constantly attracted to Jesus despite the poor example of too many of his official representatives. People understand service and are repelled by the abuse of power. In the end one can only stand on one’s actions not one’s office or position. That is a change most Catholics understand more and more.
When I first read Noonan’s “Contraception” I was young and hopeful enough to think that it laid the case for real change so clearly and fairly that we would never hear the “as Mother Church has in her wisdom always and everywhere said” argument again. I should have known better. But when “A Church that Can and Cannot Change” seemed to sum up the case so clearly and even more comprehensively, I again found myself wondering how anyone could discount it. Wrong, again.
But it is interesting to see the way the discounters are now going about their work. Take the Avery Dulles review on Amazon cited by Ann Olivier, above. Ann suggests that Dulles’s problem with the book lies in having a different view of what “Church” means. That is a subtle point, and I think she is right. For one thing, Dulles mainly discusses papal interventions, while Noonan’s case ranges much more broadly.
But it is interesting to see the way Dulles goes about making his more narrowly focused case., On the one hand, he contends that because various Popes in the past spoke out about the evil of slavery in specific cases, the Magisterium was not always completely supportive of slavery, so any “new” opinion would not really be a change. And on the other, John Paul II’s condemnation of slavery as an “intrinsic evil” was, for Dulles, not a change in doctrine, because the list of evils condemned along with it included such doubtful items as deportations of undesirables (possibly a necessary political practice in his view) and inhuman and degrading living conditions which might in his view, in some cases be unavoidable. He is so sure that John Paul couldn’t have meant what he said, that he adds: “If pressed, I suspect, the pope would have admitted the need for some qualifications, but he could not have specified these without a rather long excursus that would have been distracting in the framework of his encyclical. So far as I am aware, he never repeated his assertion that slavery is intrinsically evil. Neither the Catechism of the Catholic Church nor the recent Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church… speaks so absolutely.” And then he ends up quoting Jacques Maritain to the effect that some forms of slavery are not really so very bad, serfdom, for example. And you can’t expect such practices to be done away with except over a long period of time..
The somewhat desperate way that Dulles is pressed to make his skimpy case suggests the difficulty of critiquing Noonan’s solid mass of evidence without, well, cheating a little. (For an interesting response to the Dulles review check out the replies on the Amazon site by Anne Rice [Yes, that Anne Rice.] and William F. Bannon.)
For convenience, here are the Dulles and the Rice and Bannon reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3C2FVUDM82AG1/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&ASIN=0268036039&nodeID=#wasThisHelpful
Carolyn and Susan –
What scandalizes me about the prelates and theologians who say, “As the Church has always taught . . . ” when it clearly isn’t true is that these people are, so to speak, in the truth business. If they scandalize me, think how they must impress the young people. No wonder the yoing leave the Church in droves.
In the FWIMBW Dept, I stumbled across a dissertation, “The Creativity of Church Teaching,” by Gerald Floyd, PhD, Philosophical Theology, GTU Berkeley, on the internet. (My search was unrelated to this thread.)
To access his basic site, go to http://www.creativeadvance.blogspot.com
Scrolling down to the right will take you, inter alia, to a link to his dissertation.
Regarding Cardinal Dulles’ review of Judge Noonan’s book (which I have not read): what is posted at Amazon is an excerpt, culled by someone identified only as “a reader”. The rating attached to the Amazon excerpt – two stars out of five – was scored by the same anonymous excerpter.
The original Dulles review appeared in First Things, sans stars or thumbs, and is accessible here:
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=234
I’d suggest reading Dulles’ original review, which covers a good deal of ground omitted in the excerpt, to get a more well-rounded idea of his critique of the book. I take the liberty of pasting the conclusion of Dulles’ review:
“All in all, Noonan has written a stimulating book dealing with questions of great importance. He shows himself to be knowledgeable about the history of the four problems here treated. He brings to bear many of the skills of a historian, a civil lawyer, a canon lawyer, and to some degree those of a theologian. Anyone who wishes to question Noonan’s conclusions must at least take account of the facts he has unearthed. He renders no small service in presenting the most powerful objections against continuity that can be raised.
“The reader should be warned, however, that Noonan manipulates the evidence to make it seem to favor his own preconceived conclusions. For some reason, he is intent on finding discontinuity—but he fails to establish that the Church has reversed her teaching in any of the four areas he examines. “
Hello All,
Thanks to Jim P. for pointing us to the complete Dulles review in First Things. I’ve studied it, and I confess I’m rather annoyed by it. I think Dulles misrepresents Noonan’s work in a number of places. For one thing, I don’t recall Noonan ever referring to the change he claims to have identified in Church teaching on slavery as a revolution. And Dulles is also misrepresenting Noonan when he claims Noonan identifies the moment of “revolution” in JP II’s 1992 address. For Noonan, the moment where the change on slavery is first explicitly identifiable is when the Second Vatican Council published Gaudium et Spes. Noonan also argues that the change in Church teaching and practice had already occurred, but that Gaudium et Spes explicitly confirmed what had already changed (though to be fair to Dulles, Gaudium et Spes does not explicitly acknowledge that the Church has changed its teaching on slavery).
But anyway, the late Cardinal Dulles was right on one point: The only way one can coherently deny that Noonan is right and insist no change has occurred in Church teaching on slavery is to maintain that the Church still does not teach that slavery is intrinsically evil. As Susan has already noted here, this would require one to read Gaudium et Spes and JP II’s later Veritatis Splendor in quite a strained manner. And the CCC for that matter. As I noted a while back in an earlier thread, while the CCC does not explicitly state that slavery is intrinsically evil (a fact Dulles uses as ammunition for his interpretation), read in context I find it hard to conclude anything otherwise from what the CCC does say about slavery.
And while we can no longer ask Cardinal Dulles, I can’t help wondering if he felt somewhat embarrassed by his conclusion. Given that the Catholic Church teaches that a number of practices are intrinsically evil that many people of good will believe are morally acceptable, would one really want to maintain that the Church does not teach that slavery, a practice about as universally condemned as any practice, is not intrinsically evil?
It is really difficult to assess the development on thought in the writings of Dulles. Andrew Greeley wrote that before Vatican II we had the Confident Church while after Vatican II we have the Confused Church. Dulles and others, in the final analysis, opted for the confident church which seems more secure than the confused church. Basically it is fear of turbulence which is incumbent in all growth. How else does the mustard seed grow. Jesus said “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent people take it by force.” What this means is that we have to suffer the rough storms of growth rather than be complacent with the apparent calm of orthodoxy.
Dulles chose orthodoxy as a solution. The storms got to him the way they did to Ratzinger at Tubingen.
Cardinal Dulles says, ” But the principle of noncoercion of conscience in matters of faith remains constant”.
Tell that to the Albigensians.
Given the following from the Dulles review, I can see why some react with annoyance.
It seems to me that if he [JP II] had wanted to assert his position as definitive he would have had to say more clearly how he was defining slavery. He would have had to make it clear that he was rejecting the nuanced views of the biblical writers and Catholic theologians for so many past centuries. If any form of slavery could be justified under any conditions, slavery as such would not be, in the technical sense, intrinsically evil.
He seems to be saying that the intrinsic evil of slavery is not self-evident (at least to him). That it requires careful study to determine whether or not there might be some condition under which slavery is licit (in the technical sense, of course). Besides being a strange thing to say, this is a fine example of theological hair splitting in an attempt to rescue his premise.
Noentheless, even if one were to grant the validity of this statement, it seems to me that the Chuch should have made the necessary effort to decide the issue a long time ago. Of course, to do so at this rather late date would be embarassing. I can see the NY Times headline now “Church Declares Slavery to be an Intrinsic Evil”. I guess it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.
A bishop once asked me was it St Augustine or not rather St Paul who sent us down the wrong road about sex. He also suggested that many lose their faith in the Church’s teachings on other subjects because they see the Church has been so wrong on this one.
Those were quite troubling thoughts.
Antonio–
Yes, it’s the hair-splitting that is so frustrating. These days, of cpirse, they call hair-splitting “nuanced thinking”. But a contradiction by any other name is is still not a truth.
Not that hair-splitting doesn’t have its place. It’s its use as rhetoric that I object to. (That sort of rhetoric used to be called “a snow job”.)
I should hasten to add that had I been passing St, Patrick’s after Cardinal Dulles’ funeral Mass I would have applauded in gratitude too. I am very grateful to him for his analyses of various metaphors which reveal (partly) what “the Church” means. More important, I am grateful for his shining example at the end of his life, example which we other old folks particularly need.
Eternal rest grant unto him. I Lord!
Welll, my iiPhone did it again — “O” Lord came out blasphemmously. My apology.
It seems that some are disappointed that Dulles points out the flaws in Noonan’s work. Most of what Noonan addresses can be refuted by basic Catholic apologetics. Usury – there is nothing new here – he seems to forget that the function of money changed when money could fructify. Slavery – already addressed and debated by many a Jesuit and yes – modern (market driven) race based slavery is different than slavery in antiquity. It is true that many modern popes condemned the new modern form of slavery (Eugene IV. Pius II, Paul III, Gregory XIV, Urban VIII, Innocent XI, Benedict XIV, Pius VII) but only saw dissent from some American religious orders who continued to hold their slaves and weak bishops who failed to implement papal teaching. This is similar to the response of a few aging American religious communities & bishops to H. Vitae and Ex Cordo. The late Cardinal’s criticism is that Noonan appears to be committed to proving discontinuity in a manner similar to those who’ve been debating with Catholic apologists for 500 years. The only thing new in what Noonan’s written is his claim to still be in union with the Bishop of Rome and the way some Catholics seem to find comfort in his prose. Would this work be getting any attention if Noonan were a Methodist?
“As the Church has always taught…”
With all due respect, Ann, it is the Church’s Mission to speak the Truth as He Has Revealed Himself in the Trinitarian relationship of Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Teaching of the Magisterium.
The Truth is consistent from the start. The Blessed Trinity Has always been about Unity, which is why the Holy Spirit must proceed from both The Father and The Son. Wherever the Holy Spirit is, so too, is The Father and The Son. Peace
If you start with the Truth, you end up with the Truth, unless you introduce a false assumption.