How to interpret the Pope

Mike Lewis, editor of WherePeterIs.com, wrote a blog post in June that contains the following passage:

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 the Church approves of the death penalty because it doesn’t align with their understanding of Catholic doctrine. They can’t.

He’s right to think that this will never happen. But in that post, he seems to think that this can never seem to happen, either. And I think this isn’t right.

The Church could seem to teach absurdities, but never truly teach them

If the Pope added the sentence to the Catechism, “all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans”, this sentence in that context wouldn’t necessarily mean to teach that all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans. This is because faith cannot contradict reason, and the Church herself teaches this, and it would be contrary to reason to believe that all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans.

If the sentence “all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans” were added to the Catechism, the proper interpretation of it would therefore be as meaning something figurative, or as a misprint, or something else like that. It certainly can’t mean what on the surface it appears to mean, since that would be irrational. And since it never meant to teach anything wrong, it would not be dissent to disagree with the idea that all Catholics are morally bound to be Yankees fans; it would only be dissent to disagree with whatever the sentence’s “true meaning” was in that context.

Absurdities are different from contradictions with (the apparent meaning of) Tradition

I do not mean to propose a standard of what I agree with, but only one of conformity with the nature of human reason itself, which cannot believe absurd ideas like “murder is okay” or “circles are not round”. These sentences are impossible to accept on their surface meaning, and if we wanted to be charitable with an ordinary friend, we certainly wouldn’t believe he meant to teach their surface meaning if he said the corresponding sentences. We should be much more charitable with the Church, which necessarily never contradicts herself or human reason.

Mike has a point when he raises examples about the Trinity or about traditions more broadly. Unlike matters of reason – such as morality – we don’t have knowledge about the true interpretation of matters of faith. Private interpretation is Protestant, after all. So, if the Pope said that “the Trinity has four persons in it”, it is possible that the surface meaning of that is actually correct, and the previous Church teachings that seemed to teach the contrary were the ones who misspoke. Either way, the Church is consistent, and it is possible for a reasonable person to accept all her teachings, as we are required to. Mike seems to think that in some cases, it would be impossible, and we would have to dissent from some – even though it would still not be right to do so. But we can’t have a moral duty to do the impossible.

Surface interpretation can be dissent, while rational and consistent interpretation cannot

Mike seems to think that this sort of rational and consistent interpretation of sentences is itself some kind of Protestant private interpretation. But it isn’t, since the Pope remains the authority on which persons are Catholic. If the Pope really meant to teach that murder is okay, he could exercise his authority by excommunicating everyone who interpreted his sentence “murder is okay” in a more rationalized way. If he did this, of course, it would mean that Catholicism is false, since it would obviously be necessary to believe something irrational to be a Catholic. But until the Pope did this, it would be the Catholics who actually believed that the Church taught that murder is okay who would be the dissenters, since it is blasphemous to interpret the Church to have meant something irrational.

Anyway, Mike has recently said these arguments in the context of a discussion with Ed Feser about the death penalty, and I don’t agree with either of their opinions on the topic.