An interesting Reformation side. . .

While some question the need for the Reformation then or its continuing relevance today, there is a strange debate going on in Rome that would seem to cry out for some Reformation help.  One is the way that Pope Francis seemed to decide for Roman Catholics that Scripture is wrong and the long history of the Church's tolerance of even if not endorsement of capital punishment is to no effect.  The pope changed the catechism and said the death penalty must be condemned.  This is hardly about the death penalty but about a growing debate within Rome over papal authority to decide something about which Scripture has already spoken clearly and then to go against the wisdom of God's Word.

The issue is not so much about the death penalty itself but whether or not authentic development of doctrine in Rome can also then involve the very negation of explicit prior doctrine?  In other words, if God's Word has spoken and the Church given witness in its doctrine of the truth of something, can it later be changed or abrogated and if so does that mean it was wrong?  With it goes the parallel question of which doctrines are allowed to be changed and which cannot be changed, which belong to the deposit of the faith once for all delivered to the saints?

It would seem that some are pretty intent about insisting that if the negated doctrine belongs to the deposit of faith, it cannot be abrogated nor set aside.  Can it be changed even by nuance?  Well, who knows?  Papal authority has been used to change many things, to invent things that never were either clearly nor uniformly said before, or to add to the deposit of faith.  So where does the death penalty stand?  I suppose that might interest some more than others but my question is deeper.  What are the limits of papal invention or doctrinal development?  This is a Reformation question to be sure. 

As we approach Christ the King, the question of the state's acknowledgement of Christ's reign and rule come into play.  One pope invented a feast to draw attention to that but Vatican II seems oblivious at best to the whole idea.  Murder is always immoral.  Not because a pope concurs but because the law of God insists.  Is the death penalty murder?  In the past it was clearly a "no" but now it would seem that the direct, voluntary killing of an innocent human being is "always gravely immoral" and that the death penalty fits under this prohibition.  Who gets to definitively say so in this?  And what is this thing called human dignity.  Under Francis and Leo, the rule that would bar the death penalty is based not upon the Scriptures or any doctrine explicitly defined by Scripture but the surmising of such rule within the concept of "human dignity."  If they are wrong, who gets to say so?  

Implicit in this is then the question of whether or not one may disagree with the pope in this and remain in good standing with the Roman Catholic Church?  When the pope invents a new position or new teaching, can you hold to the older teaching or is that prohibited and is it required by submission to accept what the pope decrees?  This seems to be again a Reformation question.  If Luther were here today, he would probably have something to say about it.  Along with some of the other rather colorful things he might say, I am fairly certain he would ask whether our allegiance is to the teaching of the church or its leaders OR to the Scriptures and the catholic faith?  The whole point of Lutheranism in the Augsburg Confession is that our submission in mind and will is not to a magisterium or a pope but to the Word of God.  That may not exactly be the cleanest thing to deal within practice but it is no less messy than popes who suddenly rise up to say, in effect, the Scriptures are wrong.