Unit quiz: Cases of Change and Non-Change: Capital Punishment, Slavery, Indulgences, Sacramental Validity and Liturgical Discipline

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Question 1

During a parliamentary debate on abolishing the death penalty, one Catholic legislator says the Catechism's word 'inadmissible' is only a policy preference that legislators may disregard, while another says the 1992 edition of the Catechism, which allowed recourse to the penalty in principle, taught something the Church has now admitted was wrong. Using the 2018 letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Evangelium Vitae 56, assess both.Both flatten a layered change. The 2018 letter says the revised text of 2267 'situates itself in continuity with the preceding Magisterium while bringing forth a coherent development of Catholic doctrine', and that the new formulation 'expresses an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium'. It explains the earlier teaching as belonging to 'a social context in which the penal sanctions were understood differently, and had developed in an environment in which it was more difficult to guarantee that the criminal could not repeat his crime'. On that account the constant is the state's duty to protect the innocent and the inviolability of the person; the change is the judgment that, given modern detention, the penalty is no longer necessary and attacks a dignity that is not lost by crime. John Paul II had already moved the argument in Evangelium Vitae 56, where the cases in which execution is 'an absolute necessity' are said to be 'very rare, if not practically non-existent'. A legislator may therefore argue about means and timetable, but not treat the teaching as a preference; and a Catholic may not say the earlier Catechism was heretical, because the same magisterium has said it was not.The first legislator is right in substance: because the change was made on prudential grounds about detention conditions, 'inadmissible' expresses a policy judgment, and a Catholic legislator who judges that abolition would endanger the public may vote to retain the penalty. The second legislator is also right in principle, since a Catechism that once permitted what is now called an attack on human dignity cannot have been teaching the truth.

Question 2

A teacher tells a class that because the Church tolerated slavery for centuries and now teaches that it is intrinsically evil, doctrine is simply the reflection of social consensus; a student replies that the Church always condemned slavery in principle, so nothing changed at all. Using Gaudium et Spes 27, Veritatis Splendor 80 and the 1839 letter In Supremo Apostolatus, give the accurate account.The teacher is right that the change tracks social consensus, since the Church abandoned slavery only after the abolitionist movements had won; the student is right that no doctrinal change occurred, because the Church's condemnation of the slave trade in 1839 already contained everything that Gaudium et Spes later said, and the intervening theological defences of servitude were the opinions of individual writers with no magisterial weight.Neither account survives the documents. The Church did not merely tolerate slavery as a private practice: papal acts of the fifteenth century granted rights over non-Christian peoples that were later invoked to justify the Atlantic trade, theologians defended servitude with arguments from Aristotle and from the law of nations, and an 1866 reply of the Holy Office, approved by Pius IX, held that slavery considered in itself was not contrary to natural law while urging restraint in the trade. Against that, Gregory XVI's In Supremo Apostolatus (1839) condemned the traffic, Paul III had condemned the enslavement of the Indians in Sublimis Deus (1537), and the modern magisterium states the opposite of the 1866 reply: Gaudium et Spes 27 lists 'slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children' among the infamies that dishonour the Creator, and Veritatis Splendor 80 cites that list as examples of acts which are 'always seriously wrong by reason of their object'. So the change is real, it concerns the moral evaluation of an institution and not merely its circumstances, and it is not a case of doctrine following fashion, because the principle that generated the change, the dignity of the person as image of God, was taught throughout.

Question 3

A parish bulletin announces: 'Plenary indulgence for the faithful departed: enrol your deceased relatives for a donation of twenty pounds; all temporal punishment and the guilt of sin are remitted.' A parishioner asks whether this is what the Church teaches. Using the Council of Trent's decree on indulgences, the Catechism 1471-1479 and Paul VI's Indulgentiarum Doctrina, identify each error in the announcement.Four errors, of different kinds. First, the announcement says the guilt of sin is remitted; Trent's doctrine and the Catechism's definition both say an indulgence remits 'the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven' (CCC 1471), so guilt is the business of the sacrament of penance, not of an indulgence. Second, it attaches a donation as the price of the grant; Trent ordered that 'all base and illicit bargains' connected with indulgences be wholly abolished, and the offering attached to an indulgence must be a free almsgiving, not a fee. Third, it promises a plenary indulgence for the dead as though the Church could absolve them; the Church's act regarding the dead is suffrage, a prayer of intercession, not a juridical sentence, and the Catechism's phrasing is that the faithful 'can gain indulgences for themselves or apply them to the dead' (CCC 1471). Fourth, it omits the conditions: for a plenary indulgence the norms require confession, communion, prayer for the pope's intentions and the absence of all attachment to sin, including venial sin (Indulgentiarum Doctrina, norm 7). What is sound in the announcement is the doctrine itself: that the Church has power from Christ to remit temporal punishment by applying the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints.The announcement is substantially correct: Trent defended the practice of indulgences against Luther, so the Church does claim power over the punishment and guilt of sin, and the offering is legitimate because indulgences have always been attached to almsgiving and to the building of churches, which is why the 1517 indulgence was lawful in itself.

Question 4

A diocese discovers that for fifteen years baptisms in one parish were conferred with the formula 'We baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit'. Using the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 2020 response and the canons of the Council of Trent on the sacraments, state what has happened, what must now be done, and why the minister's good intention did not save the rite.The baptisms are valid but illicit: the minister's intention to do what the Church does was present, the water and the Trinitarian names were used, and Trent's canon on intention (Session 7, canon 11) is satisfied, so the diocese should record the defect and regularise the liturgy without rebaptising anyone, since rebaptism is forbidden.On the 2020 response, such baptisms are invalid, and those so baptised 'must be baptised in forma absoluta', that is, unconditionally rather than conditionally, because no baptism occurred. The doctrinal note explains why: the faith of the Church is expressed in the sacramental act 'not only by the minister's intention but also by the formula and matter', and the change from 'I' to 'We' alters the formula in a way that obscures who is acting. The minister does not baptise in his own name but 'in the person of Christ who acts in his Church', and the first person singular is the linguistic form of that acting; a congregational 'we' makes the community the subject of the rite. The intention was presumably good, and the Trent canons on intention (Session 7, canon 11) require only that the minister intend at least to do what the Church does, but an intention cannot supply for a defective form, because the sacrament is constituted by sign as well as by intention. Practically: the records must be annotated, the persons baptised absolutely with the correct formula, and the confirmations and ordinations that depended on the invalid baptism examined, since orders and confirmation presuppose baptism.

Question 5

Two Catholics argue about the 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes. The first says it abrogated the traditional Latin Mass, proving that the 1962 Missal had been doctrinally defective all along. The second says no pope can restrict the older rite, because the Mass of Pius V was established by the Church's immutable tradition and a pope has no authority over it. Using Sacrosanctum Concilium 22, Summorum Pontificum article 1 and Traditionis Custodes article 1, adjudicate.Both claims mistake the level at which the documents operate. Sacrosanctum Concilium 22 states that 'the regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church', exercised by the Apostolic See and, within limits, by the bishop; so liturgical permissions are disciplinary acts that a pope may grant, narrow or withdraw, and both motu proprio are such acts. Summorum Pontificum article 1 called the 1962 Missal a form 'never abrogated' and permitted its use as an extraordinary form; Traditionis Custodes article 1 states instead that the books promulgated by Paul VI and John Paul II 'are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite', and article 8 abrogates the previous norms, instructions, permissions and customs that do not conform to it. That is a reversal of discipline, not of doctrine: neither document touches the canon of the Mass, the doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice (Trent, Session 22) or the validity of either missal, and both missals were approved by the Apostolic See. What remains open is a juridical question canonists argue: whether the 1962 Missal was ever abrogated, and whether a permission withdrawn leaves a rite forbidden or merely unregulated.The first Catholic is right about the effect and roughly right about the reason: the Church would not withdraw a rite it considered orthodox, so the restrictions confirm that the older missal carried defective doctrine about the sacrifice and the priesthood. The second is right about principle but wrong about this pope, since a general council alone could reverse the traditional Mass.

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