In the current pontificate, I submit, it has become simply impossible to square the Pope’s statements with those of his predecessors. 1/5 https://t.co/aqRCBzmF0v
— Philip Lawler (@PhilLawler) October 8, 2020
The majority of content of those encyclicals, much like most of RC Social Teaching, is moral theology, open to scrutiny and discussion. The problem is that it is not acknowledged as such in encyclicals. Bishops of Rome whose office has been continually inflated through Latin ecclesiological claims and Latin synods of the second millenium consider themselves to be "teaching," even when what they are putting forth is theologoumena and not dogma. When one has "orthodox" (i.e trained in Latin scholasticism) ghost-writers to do the actual writing, it is easy to maintain the semblance of orthodoxy (which here is really adherence to a dominant strand of scholastic theology) and "continuity." Hence, the claim that the dogma of papal infallibility is true could be credible. While JP2 and B16 probably wrote all or the majority of each of their encyclicals, they were careful to preserve some semblance of continuity with previous papal theology. Is that the case with Francis? Bergoglio most likely doesn't have the acumen for theology, as he has admitted. He can rely instead on Latin ultramontanes to do his work for him and claim that there is continuity, even if it goes against the plain sense of Bergoglio's own words. Ultramontanist Latin can also rely on the old stand-by that "x is not ex cathedra," using distinctions formulated by theologians after the decrees of Vatican I were given. (A weak response of the sensus fidelium.) And such distinctions are not justified by the text of Vatican I.
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