Catholic Church contradicted itself on these issues

Infant baptism should be performed when the parents are doubtful of the infants spiritual development as well as their own.

Can. 867 §1. Parents are obliged to take care that infants are baptized in the first few weeks; as soon as possible after the birth or even before it, they are to go to the pastor to request the sacrament for their child and to be prepared properly for it.

The Church disagrees. If the faith of the parents is in doubt that can actually delay the baptism of the child. You learned something new.

Baptism will help shrink the difference between those saved and those who fail the test.

Can the Catholic Church Contradict Itself on Faith and Morals?

One of the strongest arguments against the Catholic doctrine of ecclesial and papal infallibility is not that Catholics have changed their minds about incidental matters. Human beings obviously change their minds, and Christians have always had to distinguish between genuine development in understanding and genuine reversal.

The deeper problem is this:

What happens when the Catholic Church appears to teach one thing about faith or morals at one point in history and later teaches something incompatible with it?

Catholicism has an unusually strong answer to this problem. It does not merely say that the Church is generally guided by the Holy Spirit or that the pope is usually a reliable teacher. The First Vatican Council taught that when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra—when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all Christians, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the universal Church—he possesses the infallibility with which Christ intended His Church to be endowed. Such definitions are described as irreformable of themselves, not merely because the Church subsequently agrees with them.

The modern Code of Canon Law states the principle similarly: the pope possesses infallibility when he proclaims by definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held. It also says that a doctrine is not to be understood as infallibly defined unless this is manifestly evident.

That creates an important philosophical test.

If a pope or council definitively binds Catholics to proposition A, and a later pope or council definitively binds Catholics to proposition not-A, then at least one of three things must be true:

1. the first teaching was never actually definitive;

2. the second teaching is not actually definitive;

3. or the Church contradicted itself.

The first two possibilities are legitimate Catholic responses. But they also create the central difficulty: how many apparently authoritative reversals can be explained this way before the claim of infallibility becomes unfalsifiable?

I. The Catholic distinction between contradiction and development

Catholic theology has a sophisticated answer to this objection.

The Church says that doctrine can develop without changing its essential meaning. A later formulation may make explicit something that was implicit in an earlier formulation. Circumstances may change. The application of a principle may change. The Church may also distinguish between a universal moral principle and the prudential circumstances in which that principle is applied.

This is an important distinction.

For example, “human life is valuable” does not necessarily determine every question about criminal punishment. Likewise, “Christ is necessary for salvation” does not necessarily mean that every person must have explicit knowledge of Christ in order to be saved.

The Catholic can therefore argue that many apparent contradictions are actually examples of development.

That argument should be taken seriously.

The problem is that development cannot mean simply that any later teaching can be reconciled with any earlier teaching by discovering a more sophisticated interpretation of the earlier words.

Otherwise “doctrine cannot contradict doctrine” becomes almost impossible to test.

The crucial question is therefore not whether Catholics can construct a reconciliation. They often can.

The question is whether the reconciliation is historically and logically persuasive—or whether it amounts to retroactively narrowing the earlier teaching after the Church has already changed its position.

That distinction becomes particularly important in the historical examples.

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II. “Outside the Church there is no salvation”

The classic example is the Catholic teaching commonly summarized as extra Ecclesiam nulla salus—“outside the Church there is no salvation.”

The early and medieval Church repeatedly used extraordinarily strong language about this principle.

Pope Boniface VIII's Unam Sanctam declared:

«“It is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”»

The Council of Florence's Cantate Domino likewise declared that pagans, Jews, heretics, and schismatics could not attain eternal life unless they were joined to the Church before death.

Modern Catholicism, however, explicitly teaches that people who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel or the Church can nevertheless attain salvation if they sincerely seek God and cooperate with grace. Vatican II's Lumen Gentium teaches precisely this.

The Catholic response is that the two teachings are not contradictory.

The Church remains necessary for salvation, but a person can belong to the Church in an implicit or non-visible manner. The grace by which an apparently non-Christian person is saved is still understood to come through Christ and, ultimately, through His Church.

This is a coherent theological theory.

But it does not completely answer the historical objection.

The question is: is that really what the earlier statements meant?

The problem is that some medieval formulations sound considerably stronger than “the Church is the ordinary means of salvation, while those innocently ignorant of Christianity may be saved by God's grace.”

Unam Sanctam does not merely say that the Church is necessary in some mysterious invisible sense. It explicitly speaks of every human creature being subject to the Roman Pontiff. Cantate Domino speaks categorically about those outside the Church not sharing in eternal life unless they are joined to her.

The later Catholic interpretation therefore requires us to distinguish the literal and historical force of the language from the theological meaning Catholicism now assigns to it.

A Catholic can say that this is legitimate doctrinal development.

But a critic can reasonably respond:

If the earlier formulation naturally communicated a much narrower doctrine to generations of Catholics, and the later Church must reinterpret the earlier formulation to prevent contradiction, then the burden of proof is on Catholicism to show that the later interpretation was genuinely contained in the earlier teaching rather than being introduced later.

That is a serious problem for an infallibility claim.

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III. Unbaptized infants: from condemnation to hope

The case of unbaptized infants is even more revealing because it illustrates the difference between formal dogma and the practical theological conclusions drawn from dogma.

The Council of Florence taught that those who die in original sin alone descend to hell, although with a different punishment from those who die in actual mortal sin. Medieval Catholic theology subsequently developed the idea of limbus infantium, or limbo, as a way of understanding the condition of infants who died without baptism.

Modern Catholicism takes a much more hopeful position.

The Catechism states that the Church can only entrust unbaptized infants to God's mercy and says there is hope that God provides a way of salvation for children who die without baptism.

The Catholic defense is strong here: limbo was never formally defined as dogma.

That matters.

The Church can legitimately abandon a theological opinion without contradicting itself. Catholics are not required to believe that limbo exists.

Furthermore, the Council of Florence's statement about original sin need not necessarily have been intended as a specific definition concerning the eternal destiny of infants.

So this is probably not the strongest example of a direct contradiction.

Nevertheless, it exposes a broader historical phenomenon. For centuries, the Church's theological and pastoral environment strongly encouraged Catholics to think of baptism as essential to escaping the consequences of original sin. Later Catholicism emphasizes God's mercy and the possibility of salvation for unbaptized infants.

The movement is unmistakable even if the formal dogmatic contradiction is difficult to establish.

Therefore, this example should be used cautiously. It demonstrates development and a major change of theological emphasis, but by itself it does not decisively disprove Catholic infallibility.

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IV. Usury: a more serious problem

The history of usury presents a different difficulty.

Medieval Catholic teaching strongly condemned usury. The Third Lateran Council imposed ecclesiastical penalties on unrepentant usurers, while Pope Clement V condemned the claim that usury was not sinful and treated persistent defense of it as heretical. The traditional understanding was closely connected to the idea that taking profit simply for lending money was morally wrong.

Pope Benedict XIV's Vix Pervenit likewise condemned usury and described it as demanding more than what had been lent.

Modern Catholic moral theology, however, permits interest under numerous circumstances. Catholic institutions routinely participate in modern financial systems in which interest-bearing loans are normal.

The Catholic response is that usury and interest are not synonymous.

That response has considerable historical merit.

Catholic theology distinguished between unjust exploitation of a loan and legitimate compensation for risk, lost opportunities, administrative costs, inflation, or other circumstances. The medieval prohibition therefore need not mean that every possible form of interest is inherently immoral.

But again, the historical question matters.

If earlier authorities described the sin as demanding more than the amount lent, without making the elaborate economic distinctions modern theology makes, then the later distinction represents more than merely a change in vocabulary.

It represents a significant development in the moral analysis of lending.

A Catholic can maintain that the underlying principle never changed:

profit without a morally sufficient reason is unjust; profit accompanied by a legitimate extrinsic reason is permissible.

But the critic can respond that the practical moral boundary has nevertheless moved dramatically.

This illustrates an important point: doctrinal development can be genuine without being evidence of contradiction—but the more extensively the Church must reinterpret the older formulation in light of later distinctions, the harder it becomes to demonstrate that the later teaching was simply the inevitable unfolding of the earlier one.

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V. The death penalty is perhaps the clearest modern test

The death penalty provides perhaps the most philosophically interesting case.

Historically, Catholic teaching clearly permitted capital punishment.

Pope Innocent III required converts to affirm that secular authority could exercise “judgment of blood” without mortal sin. Pope Pius XII explicitly taught that public authority possessed the right to deprive a condemned person of life under appropriate circumstances.

The pre-2018 Catechism likewise stated that traditional Catholic teaching did not exclude capital punishment when it was necessary to protect human lives from an unjust aggressor, although it emphasized that such cases were extremely rare in modern circumstances.

Pope Francis then revised the Catechism to say:

«“The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”»

The Church presents this as a development rather than a reversal.

There is a plausible Catholic argument here.

The earlier Church taught that legitimate authority could execute criminals under certain conditions. It did not necessarily teach that execution was always morally desirable. As prisons became more effective and societies gained the ability to protect themselves without killing offenders, the circumstances justifying execution became increasingly rare.

The Church can therefore argue:

The principle never changed. What changed was the factual judgment concerning whether execution is necessary.

But there is a serious objection.

The older teaching did not merely say:

«“Capital punishment is permissible only because sometimes society cannot otherwise protect itself.”»

It also rested upon a broader understanding of legitimate state authority and the nature of retributive punishment.

The modern teaching goes considerably further. It emphasizes the dignity of the offender and the possibility of redemption and says capital punishment is inadmissible.

Thus, the critic can reasonably ask whether this is genuinely the same moral judgment.

If killing a guilty person is morally permissible in principle, then the question is whether circumstances can make it impermissible in practice.

If killing a guilty person is intrinsically incompatible with the dignity of the human person, however, then the earlier teaching appears to have permitted something that the later teaching excludes.

The Catholic answer depends upon interpreting “inadmissible” as a conclusion about the modern circumstances and contemporary understanding of punishment rather than as an assertion that capital punishment was intrinsically immoral in every circumstance throughout history.

That interpretation is possible.

But it demonstrates precisely why the infallibility controversy persists: the distinction between “development” and “contradiction” sometimes depends upon identifying an underlying principle that was not stated with anything like the clarity of the later formulation.

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VI. Slavery presents the most uncomfortable case

Slavery may be the most morally troubling example because the historical record is difficult to reduce to a simple story.

Pope Nicholas V's Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex authorized forms of enslavement connected with the conquest of non-Christian peoples. The historical Church also existed within societies where slavery was legally recognized and where children born to enslaved mothers could inherit enslaved status.

Later Catholic teaching became increasingly explicit in condemning slavery. Pope Leo XIII's In Plurimis condemned slavery, and modern Catholic teaching treats slavery as intrinsically evil. Veritatis Splendor includes slavery among intrinsically evil acts.

The Catholic defense is that “slavery” is an imprecise English translation of several different concepts of servitude.

Historically, Catholic thinkers distinguished between unjust enslavement and forms of servitude that they believed could be legitimate—such as certain forms of punishment, captivity in war, or contractual labor. The defenders in the DebateCraft discussion make precisely this argument.

Moreover, there were Catholic condemnations of the enslavement of indigenous peoples and Africans long before modern abolitionism. So it would be historically inaccurate to say that Catholicism simply taught “slavery is good” until the nineteenth century and then suddenly changed its mind.

Nevertheless, there remains a serious problem.

Modern Catholic teaching condemns slavery as an attack upon the dignity of the human person. That principle appears difficult to reconcile with historical acceptance of systems in which human beings could be legally possessed, inherited, transferred, or deprived of liberty because of their status or ancestry.

The distinction between “just servitude” and “unjust slavery” may explain some historical cases.

It does not automatically explain all of them.

And this is where the infallibility argument becomes stronger: if the moral status of a human institution can change so dramatically while the Church continues to describe itself as preserving an unchanging moral deposit, what precisely guarantees that the later interpretation is the authentic development rather than the earlier interpretation having simply been mistaken?

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VII. The strongest Catholic counterargument: most of these weren't infallible definitions

The strongest response to this entire argument is actually quite straightforward:

None of these examples necessarily satisfies the strict conditions for papal infallibility.

This is not a trivial objection.

Vatican I did not teach that every papal statement is infallible. Nor did it teach that every disciplinary decision, theological opinion, sermon, papal letter, or prudential judgment is protected from error.

The pope is infallible only under particular conditions.

And the modern Code of Canon Law explicitly says that something is not to be regarded as infallibly defined unless that is manifestly evident.

Consequently, a Catholic can answer:

“Show me a case where a pope actually made an ex cathedra definition of proposition A, and then a later pope made an ex cathedra definition of proposition not-A.”

That is a much harder challenge.

In fact, there are extremely few universally acknowledged examples of papal ex cathedra definitions at all. Catholic theology traditionally identifies the Immaculate Conception and Assumption as paradigmatic cases.

This means that the historical examples above should not be presented as easy mathematical disproofs of Vatican I.

But this defense creates a different philosophical problem.

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VIII. The “infallibility escape hatch”

Suppose the Church says:

“This earlier statement was not infallible.”

Then the critic can ask:

How authoritative was it?

If the pope was speaking to the entire Christian world about salvation, morality, slavery, punishment, or economic ethics, and Catholics were expected to take him seriously, then the statement was presumably not meaningless.

Catholicism itself has levels of teaching authority between ordinary theological opinion and an ex cathedra definition. Vatican II teaches that bishops united with the pope can teach infallibly when they definitively agree on a matter of faith or morals, and Catholic theology also recognizes the ordinary and universal magisterium as capable of infallible teaching.

Thus the problem does not disappear merely because a particular quotation fails the technical test for ex cathedra infallibility.

The Catholic Church claims something broader than:

«“The pope has occasionally made two correct definitions.”»

It claims that Christ has given the Church a reliable teaching office capable of definitively preserving the deposit of faith and morals.

The question therefore becomes:

How can Catholics identify which historical teachings belong to that protected deposit without relying on the Church's present judgment about what its past teaching must have meant?

That is the circularity problem.

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IX. The danger of retrospective reinterpretation

Imagine a hypothetical church that says:

«“Whenever we make a definitive moral teaching, it cannot be wrong.”»

Suppose it later changes its teaching.

It then says:

«“Our earlier teaching was not actually definitive.”»

That is logically possible.

But imagine that this happens repeatedly.

The church can always protect itself from falsification by classifying the earlier teaching as non-definitive.

At some point, however, the critic is entitled to ask whether the doctrine of infallibility is doing any explanatory work.

A robust doctrine of infallibility should ideally allow us to say in advance what kind of statement cannot be wrong.

Otherwise, “infallible” risks becoming equivalent to:

«“Whatever the Church finally teaches definitively is what the Holy Spirit was protecting.”»

That is not quite a contradiction, but it is epistemically circular.

And this is particularly important because Vatican I's doctrine was not merely that papal definitions happen to be correct. It claimed that the pope possesses a divinely instituted charism of infallibility when he defines doctrine concerning faith and morals for the universal Church. Those definitions are irreformable in themselves.

The more difficult it becomes to identify what actually counts as a protected definition, the less useful the doctrine becomes as an independent test of truth.

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X. “Development” cannot mean “anything can become its opposite”

There is an important philosophical limit to doctrinal development.

Suppose someone originally teaches:

«“X is morally permissible.”»

Later he teaches:

«“X is morally impermissible.”»

He cannot simply say:

«“I have developed my understanding of X.”»

There must be some explanation of why the two propositions are not contradictory.

Catholic theology recognizes this. Genuine doctrinal development must preserve continuity with the deposit of faith.

But that raises the question:

What counts as sufficient continuity?

Consider the death penalty.

Old:

«Under certain circumstances, the state may legitimately execute a criminal.»

New:

«The death penalty is inadmissible because of the dignity of the person.»

One can construct a reconciliation.

But it is equally possible to argue that the moral conclusion has changed.

Likewise with slavery:

Old:

«Certain forms of human servitude are legitimate.»

New:

«Slavery is intrinsically evil.»

Again, one can distinguish different meanings of “slavery.”

But if the historical institution involved hereditary ownership and deprivation of liberty, the distinction becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.

The same pattern appears with usury and salvation.

The question is therefore not whether a clever theologian can produce a reconciliation.

Almost any two historical propositions can be reconciled if sufficiently many distinctions are introduced.

The more important question is whether the reconciliation preserves the ordinary meaning, historical context, and practical force of the earlier teaching.

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XI. What the Catholic position gets right

A fair critique should acknowledge that Catholicism has a genuine answer to these problems.

The Church has never claimed that every theological opinion is infallible.

It has never claimed that every disciplinary practice is permanently binding.

It has always distinguished doctrine from prudential judgments.

It recognizes legitimate doctrinal development.

And the Catholic tradition contains substantial examples of moral development that do not necessarily constitute contradiction.

The DebateCraft respondent is therefore correct to insist that simply juxtaposing two quotations does not prove contradiction.

Historical context matters.

Latin terminology matters.

The precise object of a doctrinal statement matters.

Whether a pope intended to make a definitive universal judgment matters.

Whether a proposition was merely theological opinion matters.

Whether a later statement addresses exactly the same proposition matters.

These are all legitimate considerations.

But these qualifications should not be allowed to become an automatic escape from every historical difficulty.

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XII. The deeper argument: the problem is epistemological

Ultimately, the strongest objection is not:

“I found five quotations that contradict one another.”

It is:

“Your doctrine of infallibility creates a very high burden of proof for distinguishing genuine development from genuine reversal, and historical Catholicism sometimes appears to meet that burden only by retrospectively reinterpreting its own earlier teaching.”

That is a more powerful argument.

It does not require proving that Boniface VIII, Eugene IV, Clement V, Pius XII, or Nicholas V were each speaking ex cathedra.

Instead, it asks whether the Catholic system provides an objectively identifiable boundary between:

- a doctrine that can never be wrong,

- a doctrine that Catholics must definitively accept,

- an authoritative but reformable teaching,

- a theological opinion,

- a prudential judgment,

- a disciplinary rule,

- and a historically conditioned application of an eternal principle.

Catholicism has developed an elaborate hierarchy to answer these questions. The 1998 Profession of Faith, for example, distinguishes doctrines formally revealed by God from teachings that must be definitively held because they are necessary to preserve and explain the deposit of faith.

But that elaborate structure itself raises the question of how we know which historical statements belong in which category.

And here the Catholic is ultimately forced to appeal to the present Magisterium.

The Church tells us what the Church meant.

That is a powerful internal mechanism for maintaining doctrinal continuity.

But from outside the system, it can appear circular.

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XIII. What would actually prove a contradiction?

The most intellectually honest conclusion is therefore more modest than saying:

«“These five examples conclusively prove that Catholicism is false.”»

They do not.

A genuinely decisive contradiction would require something like this:

1. A pope or ecumenical council definitively teaches proposition A as a matter of faith or morals for the universal Church.

2. The teaching is sufficiently clear that its object and meaning are manifest.

3. The proposition cannot reasonably be interpreted as compatible with not-A.

4. A later pope or ecumenical council definitively teaches not-A concerning the same object and under the same relevant conditions.

If such a case could be established, papal or ecclesial infallibility would face a direct logical contradiction.

But the historical record is more complicated than that.

What the examples demonstrate more securely is that Catholic doctrine has undergone substantial changes in formulation, application, theological interpretation, and moral judgment.

The controversial question is whether those changes represent legitimate development or contradiction.

And that question cannot be settled merely by saying “the Church says it is development.”

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XIV. The fundamental challenge to Catholic confidence

The deepest challenge, therefore, is not that Catholicism has changed.

Christian doctrine necessarily develops in the sense that Christians come to understand old truths more clearly.

The deeper challenge is this:

If the Holy Spirit prevents the Church from definitively teaching error in faith and morals, why has the historical Church sometimes spoken about faith and morals in ways that later Catholics find necessary to qualify, reinterpret, contextualize, or substantially revise?

The Catholic answer is that the earlier teaching must be understood correctly.

The critic responds:

But who determines the correct interpretation—the historical Church that originally taught it, or the modern Church that has inherited it?

If the historical meaning is decisive, some apparent contradictions become difficult to avoid.

If the modern interpretation is decisive, the doctrine becomes increasingly dependent upon retrospective reinterpretation.

That is the central tension.

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Conclusion

The Catholic doctrine of infallibility is stronger and more sophisticated than the simplistic caricature that “Catholics believe everything every pope has ever said is infallible.”

They do not.

The technical doctrine is considerably narrower. Vatican I specifically limits papal infallibility to circumstances in which the pope, exercising his office as universal pastor and teacher, definitively teaches a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the universal Church.

That qualification means that the historical examples of salvation, unbaptized infants, usury, capital punishment, and slavery do not automatically constitute formal disproofs of papal infallibility.

Nevertheless, they expose a serious philosophical difficulty.

The Catholic Church claims not merely that its present teaching is correct, but that Christ has provided it with a divinely protected teaching authority. Yet when historical teachings appear to conflict with later teachings, the Church frequently resolves the problem by distinguishing terminology, context, scope, circumstances, levels of authority, or implicit principles.

Sometimes those distinctions are entirely convincing.

Sometimes they appear strained.

And when they become sufficiently numerous, an important question arises:

Is the Church demonstrating that it never contradicted itself, or is it demonstrating that a sufficiently flexible system can reinterpret its earlier statements so that contradiction is never officially acknowledged?

That is the real challenge.

The issue is therefore not whether Catholic doctrine has developed. Development is compatible with Christianity and, properly understood, is unavoidable.

The issue is whether development has an objective boundary.

If “development” means that the Church may clarify, deepen, and apply an unchanged truth, then Catholicism remains intellectually coherent.

But if “development” can include moving from one substantive moral judgment to its opposite while subsequently discovering that the original teaching “really meant” something compatible with the new position, then the concept threatens to become unfalsifiable.

And that is why the historical record raises a legitimate question about Catholic infallibility:

If the Church truly possesses a divine guarantee against teaching error in faith and morals, we should expect not merely eventual theological reconciliation, but a sufficiently clear continuity between what the Church once definitively bound Christians to believe and what it definitively binds them to believe today. Where that continuity must repeatedly be reconstructed after the fact, the Catholic claim to infallibility becomes considerably less self-evident.

The historical cases therefore do not by themselves establish that Catholicism is logically contradictory. But they do establish a substantial burden of explanation for Catholicism: it must show that the differences between past and present teaching are genuine developments of an unchanged deposit of faith rather than instances in which the Church's understanding of faith and morals has actually changed.

That is a much harder claim to demonstrate than simply asserting that the Church cannot contradict itself.

The Catholic Church is morally justified in its actions. Though some adjustments have to be made over time.

That's true they had to adjust their propensity for homosexualism, paedophilia and convent based child abuse.

The priests have to fully test these theories before changing their doctrines.

And fully test they did...Popes and all.

God can read the intentions in your heart. If you are killed on your way to being baptized you will still be accepted as one who sought to be baptized.

linate wrote:

No salvation outside the catholic church

No salvation of unbaptized people and infants

No usury

Death penalty is inherently moral

Slavery is permissible. Notably newborns automatically become slaves if the mother was a slave

I know this ain't much of a catholic hangout but I thought id toss this out there

What is your denomination, and what are their beliefs on these issues?

How about salvation, are Catholics saved?

How about outside Christianity, is salvation exclusive to Christians?

Yes salvation is exclusive to Christianity. Jesus introduced the concept and was crucified soon after.

Debby wrote:

God can read the intentions in your heart. If you are killed on your way to being baptized you will still be accepted as one who sought to be baptized.

Debby wrote:

Yes salvation is exclusive to Christianity. Jesus introduced the concept and was crucified soon after.

Man made tosh Debs...Or in this instance Debs made tosh.

Hearts are muscular organs that pump blood, baptism is a club ritual, more often imposed upon brainwashed children, and getting killed on the way is tough s**t.

And Jesus introduced a concept...Well, concepts abound...And the guy was executed for his perceived wrongdoings...Yep, tough s**t...Much better to keep quiet and concentrate on the carpentry business with stepdad...His gay, wandering self-righteous lifestyle obviously rubbed people up the wrong way.

Jesus was an explorer. He discovered heaven and made it accessible to all.

He's not sincere, man (at least that how he seems to me). You can read earlier in this thread where I responded to all of his claims. He actually ceded ground on every issue whether he liked to or not. He's just trying to restate what he originally said without having to continue with the thread that seemingly ended months ago.

He provided a lengthy response and very accurate as well.

Im non denomination but id consider liberal Catholicism. Basically Catholicism without papal infallibility. I actually have some really developed and informed thoughts on the merging of Catholicism and orthodoxy and protestantism into a grand theory, but the theology and logic runs deep

Show me where the catholic church made distinguishment between pure interest and usury back when Catholics believed for practical purposes that charging interest is a sin.

Your problem is that you try to rationalize absolutely anything that looks like a contradiction. I did cede issues to you, in that if a person plays games philosophically you can justify any apparent contradiction. But where does that ever end? And, still, looking at it most objectively, it looks like the church taught one thing then taught another, on many many issues

See above

Also my view on non Christians being condemned is the same as the catholic church. Knowingly rejecting jesus is the basis for condemnation. And, its not so much that they cant advance in the afterlife, its that they aren't proactively saved by the covenant of jesus with the father

Debby wrote:

Jesus was an explorer. He discovered heaven and made it accessible to all.

More tosh Debs.

He wandered about locally, but not sure if he built any roads.

I'm guessing that heaven was John's arse.

Also Florence said those in original sin go to hell. And popes have consistently taught that babies are born in original sin. And the consistent understanding is that unbsprized babies go to hell or limbo. You do fancy footwork to get around this stuff. I admit the normative rule and the grace rule could be different in a legit way, but where do we draw the line rationalizing every apparent contradiction?

Do you think if slavery for debts owed is fine morally, and perpetuating the slavery is moral... is this still moral? Should children of debt slaves be held into slavery into perpetuity? The current teaching that slavery is intrinsically immoral doesnt apply to any of this stuff?

Your problem is that you are so far down the rabbit hole with the church, that you cant look at this stuff objectively

Consider a country's constitution.

Suppose a constitution says:

«“The government may do X.”»

A century later the supreme court says:

«“The government may not do X.”»

The court cannot simply say:

«“This is not a contradiction because we have now discovered that the original constitution secretly meant something else.”»

It has to provide an interpretation based upon the text, historical meaning, structure, precedent, and principles of interpretation.

And even then, people can legitimately argue that the court has changed the law rather than merely interpreted it.

Catholic doctrinal development faces a similar problem

And Zebedee said time for bed...Such is a child's fantasy tale.

Notwithstanding Florence and the magic roundabout, can either you (linate) or Mr Dei prove that the basis of the Abrahamic hypothesis is in anyway factual or logical, rather than just a naive idea blown out of all proportion...Me thinks not.

And yet here you are (presumably mature adults) espousing this stuff in great fabricated detail as if it's somehow logical and reasonable.

And Debby is no better, and yet they are supposedly a therapist...What chance ailing minds when your therapists mind is so corrupted with nonsense.

It's no wonder that the human race and global society is never able to evolve beyond the limitations imposed by subconscious innate data, especially when it's still hooked up on the ramblings of an old man who may or may not have existed several thousand years ago.

And if you cannot validate the basis, you therefore cannot validate anything that came after.

I do appreciate your detached outsiders skeptical perspective. Its healthy to be challenged. Ive given lots of reasons on this site for why I choose to be Christian (such as chirtian miracles and jesus in ndes and chritisn philosophy) and believe in near death experiences. Such as my evidence for afterlife thread. I could see maybe being skeptical about some things, but ultimately not believing anything at all is skepticism for the sake of skepticism, and not completely a rational position itself

Also I didn't see you chime in on my cstholicism and orthodoxy early church thread. You are going to great lengths to rationalize papal infallibility when its not even a teaching that was expressed in the early church, or much at all for well over a thousand years

Jesus was an explorer. He discovered heaven and made it accessible to all.

Do you actually realise the import of what you have written there? Because I doubt you do.

John 14:2-4.

My fathers house (in heaven)has many rooms, if that were not so would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you.

1274 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 78, A. 1 & 2

1431-1433 St. Bernardino of Siena, On Contracts and Usury

1515 The Fifth Lateran Council declares that Montes Pietatis are not usurious.

1745 Pope Benedict XIV, Vix Pervenit

1917 Code of Canon Law, Can. 1543

Although you dislike the development of doctrine this timeline will show you the Church's view of interest and usury in the past thousand years. The issue you have is that you believe the understanding of money is unchanged, which if that were the case there might be credence to what you say. However, the understanding of money has completely changed from what it was 1000 years ago. Originally, money was deemed to be sterile, a consumable. As economics develop so does His Church. As you will see, as the views on what money is develop, so does how usury and money interact. Money stops being viewed solely as a medium of exchange but an actual economic factor with future potential. Hence, if you were to try to explain the time value of money to someone form 1000 AD, they would look at you like you had three heads.

Your argument against alleged contradictions is the same one that atheists use against the Bible. I don't care if you think something is a contradiction. Prove it to be one. The fact that, as you have said multiple times, you have ceded ground to me, and not vice versa, says a lot.

As to your comment on non-baptized infants, I already responded to you originally. My statement hasn't changed since then. If you would like to try and prove me wrong, be my guest.

As to your ridiculous constitution dilemma, prove it with the Catholic Church. I'm still waiting. I also didn't know that the Catholic Church posits new, secret meanings. I thought it was a development of doctrine. Weird. But as a secondary question, is it that you posit that doctrine cannot develop overtime with the births of new ideas in the world?

In regard to your questions on slavery, first, yes, the belief that slavery is intrinsically immoral doesn't apply to the just titles of servitude/slavery. If it did, then that means a state could never have prisoners of war and prisoners convicted of crimes. That would be illogical. Debt slavery is not immoral, no. As to whether the children born into this slavery shall remain in slavery depends on the law. If we follow Roman Law, then was they shall remain slaves as well. If you do not want to follow Roman Law and say that the children won't be considered slaves, that's fine. Can you show the immorality? Maybe a Bible verse here and there? But mind you, as I asked you months ago, is St. Paul promoting immorality when he tells Christians to treat their slaves right instead of emancipating them?

Even if I did, would you care? Methinks any evidence given in favor of the One, True God would be met with the buts of he without any answers himself.

Such is the nature of the denier.