All the issues you raise in your comment have been dealt with in the various posts on the subject on this site and elsewhere, all of which are linked to in the body of this post.

Father Peter has pointed out, several times, that his position is not a new one, but the accepted tradition up until the time of at least Humanae Vitae. His statements certainly do not articulate “new concepts that seem to contradict or differ from the Church’s traditional teaching.” Father Peter has been defending magisterial teaching, not contradicting it.

I realize that this may raise more objections from you; however, as already said, the issues you have raised and the associated doctrinal sources have been dealt with at length already. There is no need for repetition. With that the comments for this string are closed.

Fr Peter has misread me. In my post of Oct. 13 I began by agreeing with Fr. Peter that the policy decision of the Connecticut Bishops is mistaken because of how Plan B works; it allows for the use of a contraceptive that is potentially abortive for a rape victim. Then without stating any personal view of my own I simply called attention to the fact that apparently Fr. Peter’s additional view that a rape victim would never be justified to use a contraceptive is opposed to what [contemporary] bishops and theologians in general seem to teach about this matter.

Here I can further add that at http://www.coloradocatholicherald.com/display.php?xrc=401
Bishop Michael Sheridan, S.T.D. in an article states: “Under normal conditions, Catholic teaching views contraception as a distortion of the purpose of human sexuality, and therefore seriously wrong. In the case of rape, however, emergency contraception is morally acceptable for women as an act of self-defense. Catholic hospitals already provide emergency contraception to rape victims in a morally sound way as part of their medical care, and have done so for years.”

Bishop Sheridan adds within brackets this:
“[Number 36 of the Fourth Edition of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (2001) states: ‘If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she (the rape victim) may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum.’]???

Then from http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word012005.htm there is this:
“ ‘At the level of principle, the church’s teaching is that the only legitimate sexual activity is between a husband and wife, and must always be open to life,’ said Redemptorist Fr. Brian Johnstone. […] In the early 1960s, Johnstone said, the Vatican gave permission for religious women in the Belgian Congo to use contraceptives as a defense against rape.
‘It was seen as a protection against pregnancy arising from unwanted, unfree sexual intercourse,’ Johnstone said.???

At any rate, I’m no theologian, and so I am not exactly qualified to argue with Fr Peter about his disagreement over the contemporary teaching of U.S. bishops or other theologians about the use of contraception in the case of rape. Therefore, I would suggest that Fr Peter contact the Pontifical Academy of Life or the Congregation for the Faith to see if they might help clear up his concerns over those who justify the use of some forms of contraception in the case of rape.

Also, in Fr Peter’s second post he says that “One point not within the competence of these organizations [Episcopal Conferences] is binding statements on matters of faith and morals, unless they simply repeat what all bishops in union with the Roman Pontiff have always taught.???

At http://www.pacifier.com/~rosarweb/ll46n5.htm
Fr Basil Cole, OP writes about the religious assent of the mind and heart that the Church teaches must be given to authoritative magisterial teaching: This assent “means accepting their teaching by agreeing with it, and holding fast to it. We are called to give this religious assent to the teaching of the bishop in his diocese and especially to the Holy Father, because each teacher has special graces to teach the people committed to their care. (New Catechism of the Catholic Faith, #2004). This presupposes, of course, that the teaching of the bishop is in harmony with that of the Sacred Magisterium. […]Theologians, whose task it is to apply the gospel message to the changing times in which we live, may at times come up with new concepts that seem to contradict or differ from the Church’s traditional teaching. Loyal theologians will make known their doubts or hesitations either in scientific journals (as distinct from the media), or communicate with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding their objections. They should never publish their objections as a counter truth, or worse, as the work of a para-magisterium. Sometimes a theologian’s perplexities humbly submitted to the Church may prompt a papal or episcopal letter which further clarifies some problem of faith or morals. Unfortunately, in recent years some radically dissenting theologians have persisted in opposing common Church teaching, going public with their opinions as if they were a parallel teaching authority to the utter confusion of the Catholic laity. The faithful should wait for further clarification, if some aspect of the traditional teaching of the Church seems to be called into question.???

In his motu proprio Ad tuendam fidem of May 18, 1998, John Paul II promulgated the following modification to canon 750, the second paragraph being an addition:

Canon 750 – § 1. Those things are to be believed by divine and catholic faith which are contained in the word of God as it has been written or handed down by tradition, that is, in the single deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and which are at the same time proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn Magisterium of the Church, or by its ordinary and universal Magisterium, which in fact is manifested by the common adherence of Christ’s faithful under the guidance of the sacred Magisterium. All are therefore bound to avoid any contrary doctrines.

§ 2. Furthermore, each and everything set forth definitively by the Magisterium of the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals must be firmly accepted and held; namely, those things required for the holy keeping and faithful exposition of the deposit of faith; therefore, anyone who rejects propositions which are to be held definitively sets himself against the teaching of the Catholic Church.

It is not permissible to dissent from the ordinary magisterium or anything “definitively by the Magisterium of the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals.”

We have gone the gamut here. You are free to believe what you want, but what you have articulated is inconsistent with Catholic faith.

One can dissent from non infallible teaching according to seminary and imprimatured and nihil obstated moral theology tomes which post date Lumen Gentium’s section 25 on “religious submission of mind and will” and which are part of the ordinary magisterium themselves. Take a conservative one in the US…Germain Grisez’ Way of the Lord Jesus copyright 1997, volume one, page 854… ” a faithful Catholic is not in a position to think a moral norm currently proposed by the ordinary magisterium is false, unless there exists a superior source (such as Scripture, a defined doctrine, or a teaching proposed infallibly by the ordinary magisterium) which requires this conclusion.”

Since I have read the bible from beginning to end and read most of Augustine and all of the ST and have memorized much of that either word for word or in principle, I think I know when a Pope who appointed Raymond Brown…. is erring on the above two issues and I’d be mentally unhealthy if I still thought he was correct despite the pattern he showed of not dealing with the passages that opposed his views on both issues.

Parroting errors of authorities is why we had several errors last for centuries in the ordinary magisterium…perhaps the worst being just titled slavery ( a person born to a slave mother or caught in war) which actually lasted from prior to Aquinas to 1917 when the canons were revised….but still lingered in moral theology books like the 5th edition of Tommaso Iorio’s Theologia Moralis in 1960.

Your analysis of JPII’s choice of texts is insightful. Even so, I do not think an effective faith-filled approach to magisterial teaching, is in keeping with an inclination toward discerning discontinuity.

We are not free to dissent from even non-infallible teaching of the magisterium. So as teachings that belong to the ordinary magisterium, which are irreformable, are determined by their continuity with the received tradition and perennial teaching, we should make an effort to harmonize.

I do not think this does violence to the texts you mention. What is more, it seems to me, such an approach is conducive to assimilating the Church’s teaching and translating it into the best possible interior dispositions.

His reason for removing it is seen in section 40 where he disparages Old Testament violence while he coyly does not detail which violence but we know it contains some of the God ordered death penalties because he proceeds to say that that violence fails to have the refinement of the Sermon on the Mount. Obviously he failed to memorize Acts 5 and 12.

So he is a person influenced by people like Fr. Brown who he appointed to the PBC and who disbelieved that Mary said the Magnificat
and who therefore had a very wide freedom as to what in the Bible comes from God and what comes from human culture only.

Now return to the above passages and a similar thing happens in Dignity of Women which he also wrote and which also is not of the level of an encyclical on this husband wife matter. Just as in the case of his finding the Old Testament deficient on violence and that it really came not from God’s ordering it but came from the culture, on the husband wife thing he again refers to the OLD…the past burden on marriage in that the man then had a submission from the wife that was not mutual:

” Such a relationship, however, is not one of one-sided domination. According to the Letter to the Ephesians, marriage excludes that element of the pact which was a burden and, at times, does not cease to be a burden on this institution. The husband and the wife are in fact “subject to one another,??? and are mutually subordinated to one another.

John Paul wanted the submission to be mutual which it is in most moments of marriage….but not in all moments of marriage. That is why he never quotes in detail the 5 other new Testament passages that insist on the (OLD..to him) wifely submission. He never quotes them just as in Evangelium Vitae, he never quotes the two passages that most oppose his view of the death penalty…Genesis’s “shedding blood passage” delivered not to just the Jews but to the Gentiles…ham and Japheth….and he never quotes Romans 13:4 which supports in the death penalty as Aquinas noted.
Likewise John Paul never quotes in detail the wifely submission only passages from the NT but simply refers in one place to their existence without adequate attempts to say a real thing about them.

Above in authority of his talk and above his apostolic letter, is the encyclical level….Casti C. which insists on the wifely obedience that is to exist along with mutual submission which latter obtains in most days of marriage but the former is needed espcially for dead lock areas of decision making…
John Paul was trying to make wifely submission identical to mutual submission by using only Ephesians and not using the other 5 passages because he considered them the OLD way of jewish culture rather than NT passages willed by the Holy Spirit as permanent.

Why do you insist on seeing discrepancies everywhere, even to the point of pointing out what you think is a failure in a pope’s memory?

Passages of scripture need to be read in their own context, so that the same terminology used in a different context is not misunderstood. You compare what a pope said in reference to one passage of Sacred Scripture to what was written by by a different author of a different epistle. I have no problem with making a comparison. I do have a problem, when, as it seems, no effort has been made to reconcile the differences, especially when to do so does not seem to be such a monumental task.

There is no contradiction between Ephesians and 1 Peter. I know any number of Catholic families in which the father acts as head of the household, and at the same time is at the service of his wife and children.

Headship without domination: Difficult to achieve maybe. But difficult to conceive?

It seems that you favor a hermeneutic of discontinuity (Fra Roderic’s phrase).

TOB
“3. The opening expression of our passage of Ephesians 5:21-33, which we have approached by an analysis of the remote and immediate context, has quite a special eloquence. The author speaks of the mutual subjection of the spouses, husband and wife, and in this way he explains the words which he will write afterward on the subjection of the wife to the husband. In fact we read: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord” (5:22). In saying this, the author does not intend to say that the husband is the lord of the wife and that the interpersonal pact proper to marriage is a pact of domination of the husband over the wife. Instead, he expresses a different concept: that the wife can and should find in her relationship with Christ—who is the one Lord of both the spouses—the motivation of that relationship with her husband which flows from the very essence of marriage and of the family. Such a relationship, however, is not one of one-sided domination. According to the Letter to the Ephesians, marriage excludes that element of the pact which was a burden and, at times, does not cease to be a burden on this institution. The husband and the wife are in fact “subject to one another,” and are mutually subordinated to one another. The source of this mutual subjection is to be found in Christian pietas, and its expression is love.

Now watch I Peter 3:6:

“1 Likewise, you wives should be subordinate to your husbands so that, even if some disobey the word, they may be won over without a word by their wives’ conduct 2
when they observe your reverent and chaste behavior. 3
Your adornment should not be an external one: braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry, or dressing in fine clothes, 4
but rather the hidden character of the heart, expressed in the imperishable beauty of a gentle and calm disposition, which is precious in the sight of God. 5 For this is also how the holy women who hoped in God once used to adorn themselves and were subordinate to their husbands; 6 thus Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him “lord.”

You can see the difference…can you not. It comes from our no longer memorizing the Bible the way Aquinas did. He is the last Catholic with a stupendous memorization of the Bible as Augustine also had as did Jerome. John Paul, not having memorized I Peter, then proceeds to actually contradict its spirit and its terminology.