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<\/p>\nEver since a pope was elected who does not fit well with the American conservative agenda of selecting from the Magisterium to accessorize a now thoroughly demented right wing ideology that has metastasized into the Cult of Trump, the Right Wing Lie Machine in both secular and Catholic forms has worked overtime to discredit fidelity to the Pope\u2019s authority with the lie that \u201cbelief in \u2018papal fiat'\u201d has replaced Real Catholic Faith[TM].<\/p>\n
Accordingly, all the stuff we used to hear from Fr. Richard McBrien and Catholics for a Free Choice about how being a Catholic \u201cdoes not mean checking your brains at the Church door\u201d and how Thinking Catholics did not have to slavishly listen to the Pope when he is not \u201cspeaking dogmatically\u201d (which basically means \u201cnever\u201d) were suddenly repackaged by the Right Wing Lie Machine to give American MAGA Catholics the right to not only ignore, but endlessly slander the Holy Father and anybody who takes him seriously. We have now seriously reached the point where overt Protestantism is perfectly acceptable:<\/p>\n
In a way that was never attempted by liberal dissenters like McBrien, the Right Wing Lie Machine has not only said, \u201cFeel free to ignore the Holy Father\u201d but has, in fact, gone the extra mile and tried repeatedly to insinuate, suggest, and even outright say that the Holy Father is an apostate, a pagan, a heretic, and a wicked man dedicated to the destruction of the Catholic Church and that he should not merely be ignored, but fought tooth and nail.\u00a0 The war has become so lurid and weird that it long ago left behind shrieks like \u201cRESIGN!!!!\u201d from CYA functionaries like Vigano (who tried to shift blame from his own failure to get rid of McCarrick to the one man who did) and has frankly gone into Jack Chick territory with classic Panic ju Jour junk journalism<\/a> designed to gin up the silly fear that Francis the Pagan Idolator is paving the way to child sacrifice.<\/p>\n And since it has taken this tack, it has been necessary to likewise lie that ordinary recognition of the pope\u2019s authority on prudential matters is, in fact, a mindless belief that the Pope could overturn the Faith, decree Jesus to be a myth, institute Moloch worship on the High Altar at St. Peter\u2019s, and join the Moonies and the drooling members of the \u201cBergoglio sect\u201d would slavishly praise it all.<\/p>\n That lie is put in hard and soft forms: the soft version is that defenders of Francis are dumb dupes.\u00a0 The hard forms is that they are willing, knowledgeable and malignant accomplices.\u00a0 Pedro Gabriel of Where Peter Is<\/em> answers the soft form of this condescending argument<\/a>:<\/p>\n According to you, whatever the Pope says, goes, right?<\/p>\n This brings up the second misconception in Douthat\u2019s piece. No, I do not believe that the Pope rules by\u00a0fiat<\/em>\u00a0(except if we\u2019re talking, perhaps, by\u00a0fiat voluntas Tua<\/em>.) What I actually do is give my assent of mind and will to the Magisterium. So, when a Pope officially promulgates some development of doctrine, I begin (contrary to many papal detractors nowadays) with the assumption that the development is sound and legitimate. But this is very different from uncritical acceptance.<\/p>\n In our comments and on social media, one of the most frequent accusations we receive is that we \u201ctwist ourselves into pretzels\u201d to \u201cjustify everything the Pope does.\u201d In this sense, most of our critics actually place us more on the \u201cCatholicism that strains more mightily than Burke to interpret all of Francis\u2019 moves in continuity with his predecessors\u201d end of the spectrum. I\u2019m surprised that Douthat didn\u2019t pin that \u201cconservatism\u201d on us, rather than the \u201cpapal fiat\u201d one.<\/p>\n A person has no need to twist himself into a pretzel if he can just fall back on arguments from authority, correct? As I tweeted as soon after I read Douthat\u2019s piece, if we simply believed the Pope can change doctrine by\u00a0fiat<\/em>, then our blog would just be a big white background with a single sentence: \u201cIt\u2019s true because the Pope said so.\u201d<\/p>\n Granted, we publish a lot of articles on papal authority. But we don\u2019t do it because we think that the Pope rules by\u00a0fiat<\/em>. Of course, such pieces on papal authority underlie our articles on various doctrinal developments of this pontificate, because arguments from papal authority are not devoid of value. However, the main reason why we write articles on papal authority is that Francis\u2019 detractors have been disseminating erroneous views on papal authority since the beginning of his pontificate. They have been saying, against 2,000 years of Tradition, that Catholics need not give their assent of mind and will to the Pope if he is not teaching infallibly. This is wrong, this is not Catholic. They have been saying, against 2,000 years of Tradition, that we can simply disregard the Pope on matters of prudential judgment. This is wrong, this is not Catholic. And so on. Our articles in favor of papal primacy are actually a defense, not just of the Pope himself, but of Catholic Tradition as well.<\/p>\n Those articles on papal authority are not the totality of our output, however. Whenever Pope Francis issues a doctrinal development, we always try to explain how and why that development is legitimate. In this sense, Douthat\u2019s characterization of our blog is profoundly unfair to our efforts.<\/p>\n Let us take\u00a0Amoris Laetitia<\/em>, for example, and its change in Eucharistic discipline for the divorced and civilly remarried.\u00a0Here is an article from Paul Fahey<\/a>\u00a0explaining its the teaching.\u00a0Here is an essay I wrote<\/a>\u00a0doing the same thing.\u00a0Here is a piece explaining the continuity<\/a>\u00a0between\u00a0Amoris Laetitia<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Familiaris Consortio<\/em>.\u00a0Here is an article explaining its continuity<\/a>\u00a0with the Catechism.\u00a0Here is an article from Brian Killian explaining<\/a>\u00a0its Thomistic roots.\u00a0In this piece, Brian Killian explains<\/a>\u00a0the harmony between\u00a0Amoris Laetitia<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Veritatis Splendor.<\/em><\/p>\n Or let us take the Catechism revision on the death penalty.\u00a0Here is an article trying to prove how such a revision is a legitimate doctrinal development<\/a>.<\/p>\n Let us also consider a matter that, though not a Magisterial pronouncement\u00a0per se<\/em>, has also been exploited to attack Francis as somehow against Tradition: the controversial God wills \u201cpluralism and the diversity of religions\u201d bit from the Abu Dhabi Joint Declaration.\u00a0Here is an essay from Adam Rasmussen<\/a>\u00a0outlining its continuity with\u00a0Nostrae Aetate<\/em>.\u00a0Here is a piece I wrote<\/a>\u00a0explaining its continuity with\u00a0Dignitatis Humanae<\/em>.<\/p>\n We have even done this in reverse: not only have we discussed Francis\u2019 continuity with his predecessors, we have also demonstrated the continuity of his predecessors with him. This is why I wrote an essay entitled, \u201cPope Francis, disciple of\u00a0Humanae Vitae,<\/em><\/a>\u201d and then a sequel, \u201cHumanae Vitae<\/em>, precursor of Pope Francis<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n