Firstly I want to say that I always welcome and highly value Lewisnotmiller's opinions, I hope he does keep around on this thread. I don't mind his intervention at all
He wants to change the RCC, so more people look at the RCC as more welcoming perhaps than She has been. But, if you distort authentic truths as a leader of an organization that promotes those truths, in order to gain more members...it is hard to trust such a person. I think he seems very devout on some fronts, has a lot of compassion. But, he is the leader of the RCC. If he doesn't like what it actually stands for, he should step down. Which would be fine, but just don't talk out of both sides of your mouth. That's what he does.
I think you've got Pope Francis quite wrong. He is not distorting religious truths held by the RCC, even less is he speaking out as part of a public relations coup to win more "members". He is developing our understanding of doctrine and its pastoral applications, sometimes especially with regard to the latter in a revolutionary way if you compare him with other recent papacies, but "development of doctrine" (as opposed to 'rupture' which we reject) is, ironically, an important "doctrine" in Catholic theology. People often forget this, both Catholics (i.e. fundamentalist Trads) and non-Catholics.
The problem here is twofold, as I see it:
(1) His understanding of our theology is very close to my own and eminently orthodox. He is preserving the authentic tradition of the Church from the views of "fundamentalists" or so-called "traditionalists" who present a simplified, caricature of our very nuanced and complicated doctrines. Many of these individuals "think" they understand their faith but are in fact "reductionists", ignoring the entirety of the Church's social teaching, for instance and making it seem as if the deposit of faith only consists of a few disjointed moral teachings concerned with controversial elements of sexuality. Of course we do hold to a few of these famous (or "infamous" depending on your vantage point) views on sexuality but our faith cannot be reduced to this, let alone a flawed and excruciatingly fundamentalized understanding of our teachings even in this respect. Such individuals are very similar to the excessively "liberal" Catholics they so often decry, like Fascists and Communists being so different yet so similarly totalitarian.
(2) Outside the Church, many people have an "idea" of what Catholicism is - often very close to the view of the aforementioned minority of "trads" - which is in fact a simplified caricature. There are too many reasons for this for me to capture in a single paragraph but needless to say, it's true.
Francis has been consistently emphasising "neglected" strands within Catholic thought. Suddenly, the religion seems "richer" and more sophisticated than the caricatures held by the Trads within her Mystical Body and some of those outside her bounds.
In response to this, the "Trads" - clinging to their own truncated, simplified, reductionist and heavily selective personal interpretation of orthodoxy - reach the conclusion that the Holy Father must be "compromising" the truth and distorting it.
In a similar manner, some people outside the Church who believe that the truncated, simplified, reductionist and heavily selective interpretation of the Faith espoused by these people, evident if one "pinpoints" only certain aspects of the RCC's history and theology to the exclusion of the "whole", is the genuine understanding of Catholicism, reach the conclusion that Francis must likewise be misinterpreting the faith.
He isn't. Francis was a professor of theology at the Philosophical and Theological Faculty of San Miguel and provincial superior of the Jesuits in Argentina. He "knows his onions".
I would like those who regard him as distorting Catholic dogma to point out to me where he has done so. I have every confidence that if you try this thought experiment with me, I will be able to prove to you that he invariably hasn't contradicted our doctrines - merely contradicting one or other (or both) of the faulty interpretations of Catholic theology that I presented in the above.
