Sunday, May 18, 2025

Defining Doctrine

This week, I read on the Vatican's website several of Pope Leo's address to various groups. One that caught my eye was his address 'to the members of the "Centisimus Annus Pro Pontifice" Foundation', which he gave yesterday (Saturday, 17th May 2025). You can read the full address here.

This passage jumped out at me:
In the case of the Church’s social doctrine, we need to make clear that the word “doctrine” has another, more positive meaning, without which dialogue itself would be meaningless. “Doctrine” can be a synonym of “science,” “discipline” and “knowledge.” Understood in this way, doctrine appears as the product of research, and hence of hypotheses, discussions, progress and setbacks, all aimed at conveying a reliable, organized and systematic body of knowledge about a given issue. Consequently, a doctrine is not the same as an opinion, but is rather a common, collective and even multidisciplinary pursuit of truth.
In the 29 years of my Catholic life, I always understood 'doctrine' to mean the teaching of the Church. Wondering if I had been wrong all this time, I googled 'Catholic Church definition of doctrine' and found one on the Catholic Culture website, itself taken from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary. Fr. Hardon describes doctrine as being 'Any truth taught by the Church as necessary for acceptance by the faithful'. This is just the first sentence but if you read the whole definition (which you can do by clicking here) you will not find anything approaching what Pope Leo has said.

At times like this, I wonder if I have misread the author. Leo does seem, after all, to have all of a sudden dramatically broadened the Church's understanding of what doctrine is. 

Perhaps you might point to the first line quoted above and say that he is talking about the Church's social doctrine specifically but how likely is it that the Pope would say 'doctrine' means one thing here but another thing elsewhere?

Of course, maybe the Church already teaches what Leo says about doctrine and I just didn't know it. Would it have evaded someone like Fr. John Hardon, though?

Maybe she began teaching it post 1980 when he wrote his dictionary.

Or, maybe Pope Leo has with this address started the Church down a new path, one where doctrine means not just what Catholics (must) believe, but the journey by which we get there. That's what I am thinking at the moment. What consequences, I wonder, could this have?

Fr. John Hardon's cause for sainthood is currently active: he is currently classed as a Servant of God, so let's pray for his intercession: that the Lord may grant us all wisdom and insight. Amen

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