Once more with feeling

Authentic Church teaching does not depend on how I feel about it

When I write about the authority of the pope, right-wing papal critics often respond with hypothetical questions like, "If the pope taught that there were four persons in the Trinity, would you accept it?" or "If the pope said abortion was morally good, would you believe him?" or “Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said ‘It’s going to rain’?”

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me this type of question, I would have... a lot of dollars. Recently I came across this interesting poll devised by some charming stranger on Twitter:

These types of questions are based on a faulty assumption that conflates two distinct things:

1. The Church's teaching, and

2. Whether I accept the teaching.

As I've pointed out many times, Catholics on the “right” who reject Church teaching seem to be incapable of admitting that they disagree with a single teaching of the Magisterium, so they redefine Church teaching to match their views, an "imagisterium," if you will.

If the pope teaches something to the Church on a matter of faith and morals in his official capacity as Roman Pontiff, it’s Church teaching — part of the authentic Magisterium — whether you agree with it or not.

This isn't a hard concept. If you reject the teaching, you dissent from the Magisterium. Your own opinion doesn't change that. As the Catechism (and Canon Law, and Lumen Gentium) teaches:

892 Divine assistance is also given to the successors of the apostles, teaching in communion with the successor of Peter, and, in a particular way, to the bishop of Rome, pastor of the whole Church, when, without arriving at an infallible definition and without pronouncing in a "definitive manner," they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals. To this ordinary teaching the faithful "are to adhere to it with religious assent" which, though distinct from the assent of faith, is nonetheless an extension of it.

When Pope Francis declared that the Church teaches the death penalty is inadmissible, that became the Church's teaching. Your feelings can't change that. Your logical reasoning can't magic away the reality that the teaching is on the books.

So the question becomes whether you are able to accept the teaching in good conscience or not. If the pope was to, say, add a sentence to the Catechism mandating that all Catholics were morally bound to be Yankees fans, I would (obviously) dissent.

Fortunately I believe Catholicism to be true, so that will never happen. But the point is that I lack the authority to change the actual Church teaching. Yet many Catholics think they can undo Amoris Laetitia or say they Church approves of the death penalty because it doesn’t align with their understanding of Catholic doctrine. They can't.

I always found this quote by St Josemaria interesting: "I prefer simply to obey the Pope. If, at some time, he were to decide that the use of a particular medicine were licit to prevent conception, I should adapt myself to whatever he said." (Source)

Note that he wrote this in the middle of a treatise against contraception. But he recognized the pope's authority in the Church (and professed his loyalty to it). He didn't claim that the pope lacked the ability to teach authoritatively on the matter.

It seems that for these Catholics, their need to self-identity as an "orthodox Catholic" supersedes both the authority of the living Magisterium and the reality of the Church's official teachings. For them, it boils down to "real Catholicism is what I believe it to be." It doesn't work that way.

What am I trying to say here? If you want to dissent from Pope Francis's Magisterial teachings, that's your decision. You have free will. But at least be honest about it.