David Ancell / Monday June 09, 2003
I have taken on Mike Hayes in Busted Halo when he decided to tell me what the scandals prove:
The scandals refute nothing of what I have said. The Church taught then as she does now that sexual abuse of children is wrong. The problem was not the Church’s teaching but the failure of some to live the teaching. As Frank Sheed stated, “A medicine cannot be judged by those who buy it but by those who actually take it.”
The teaching of truth is in no way related to the personal holiness of the teachers. Even the most corrupt popes were unable to change Church teaching to fit their corrupt lifestyles. The hierarchy are not protected from sin, much less from errors in administrative matters, even those involving serious moral issues. However, the teaching of the Church can never be error. For example, we must believe everything in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, we could validly request changed in the Code of Canon Law, and the Pope may decide to make such changes as long as they do not violate divine law.
There are disciplinary matters that are subject to change. It would need to be so to evangelize people. However, the deposit of faith remains the same. Remember that all time is present to God at once. He knows very well what must be subject to change as well as what could never be. He is not himself subject to change as all reality is as one moment to him. Many councils were called not to change the Church’s teaching but to define it against some heresy that someone is teaching.
While you might think that it is “putting God in a box” or otherwise limiting his power to suggest that there are things that God cannot change, it is also a limit on the power of the Holy Spirit to suggest that he cannot declare something be so for all time no matter what we humans decide to think. Further, we should be warned that not every “insight” is of the Holy Spirit. Some are of the Devil.
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