2.1 Documents of the congregation for the doctrine of the gaith (1978–2005)

Of all the CDF publications, Dominus Iesus (2000) – the Declaration on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church –is widely regarded as the most doctrinally significant of the pontificate of John Paul II. It dealt with issues in ecclesiology, ecumenism and inter-faith matters. At section 6 it declared that ‘the theory of the limited, incomplete, or imperfect character of the revelation of Jesus Christ, which would be complementary to that found in other religions, is contrary to the Church’s faith’. In other words, the fullness of revelation is found in the life of Christ and is not in need of supplementation from non-Christian religious traditions. section 12 followed through the logic of this principle with the further declaration that the ‘hypothesis of an economy of the Holy Spirit with a more universal breadth than that of the Incarnate Word, crucified and risen’, is contrary to the Catholic faith, which, on the contrary, considers the salvific incarnation of the Word as a Trinitarian event’. Here the idea criticised is that there might be a difference between the teaching of Christ as recorded in the Gospels and the work of the Holy Spirit in our own times.

The most often cited of all the paragraphs of Dominus Iesus is section 16. It declared:

The Catholic faithful are required to profess that there is an historical continuity – rooted in the apostolic succession – between the Church founded by Christ and the Catholic Church: ‘This is the single Church of Christ [...] which our Saviour, after his resurrection, entrusted to Peter’s pastoral care (cf. Jn 21:17), commissioning him and the other Apostles to extend and rule her (cf. Mt 28:18ff.), erected for all ages as ‘the pillar and mainstay of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15). This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in [subsistit in] the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him’‌. With the expression subsistit in, the Second Vatican Council sought to harmonize two doctrinal statements: on the one hand, that the Church of Christ, despite the divisions which exist among Christians, continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church, and on the other hand, that ‘outside of her structure, many elements can be found of sanctification and truth’ that is, in those Churches and ecclesial communities which are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church. But with respect to these, it needs to be stated that ‘they derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church.’‌

This paragraph is of central importance to Catholic ecumenical theology. section 17 went on to distinguish between Christian churches that retain a valid eucharist and episcopate and those who do not. Those Christian communities who have lost a valid eucharist and episcopate are deemed to be ‘not Churches in the proper sense’; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by baptism, incorporated in Christ and [thus are deemed to be] in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church’. 

After Dominus Iesus, in order of prominence, the liberation theology movement was the subject of two documents from the CDF: the Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation (1984) and Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation (1986). The first of these documents declared that: ‘the ultimate and decisive criterion for truth can only be a criterion which is itself theological. It is only in the light of faith, and what faith teaches us about the truth of man and the ultimate meaning of his destiny, that one can judge the validity or degree of validity of what other disciplines propose, often rather conjecturally, as being the truth about man, his history and destiny’. (CDF 1984 section VII, 10). In short, scripture and tradition trumps social theory or is the standard by which social theories themselves are judged.

The second of the two CDF documents acknowledged that experience can play a role in theological work but again a caveat was added that ‘the theologian will be careful to interpret the experience from which he begins in the light of the experience of the Church herself’. (CDF 1986, section 70). Such experience is said to shine with particular brilliance in the lives of the saints and it falls within the responsibility of the ‘pastors of the Church, in communion with the Successor of Peter, to discern its authenticity’ (CDF 1986, section 70).

Towards the end of the pontificate the CDF produced the Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life (2002). A central principle undergirding it is that the Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. This issue most commonly arose in the context of abortion legislation. Some Catholic politicians would argue that while they were personally opposed to abortion, they would not vote against legislation allowing others to partake in this practice. Against this attitude the document declared:

It is a question of the lay Catholic’s duty to be morally coherent, found within one’s conscience, which is one and indivisible. «There cannot be two parallel lives in their existence: on the one hand, the so-called ‘spiritual life’, with its values and demands; and on the other, the so-called ‘secular’ life, that is, life in a family, at work, in social responsibilities, in the responsibilities of public life and in culture. The branch, engrafted to the vine which is Christ, bears its fruit in every sphere of existence and activity. (section 6)

The document also stated that ‘those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a ‘grave and clear obligation to oppose’ any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them’. (section 4). The only qualification to this principle is ‘the situation in which it is not possible to overturn or completely repeal a law allowing abortion which is already in force or coming up for a vote, ‘an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality’ (section 4).

2.2 The Catechism of the Catholic Church

In 1993 John Paul II promulgated a new Catechism of the Catholic Church. The structure of this document is built on four pillars: the baptismal profession of faith (the Creed), the sacraments of faith, the life of faith (the Commandments), and the prayer of the believer (the Lord’s Prayer). The aims of the Catechism are described as ‘presenting an organic synthesis of the essential and fundamental contents of Catholic doctrine, as regards both faith and morals, in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the whole of the Church’s Tradition’. Its principal sources are the Sacred Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, the liturgy, and the Church’s Magisterium. It was drafted primarily for bishops and catechists. As stated in the apostolic constitution Fidei depositum (1992) with which its publication was ordered, the Catechism was composed so ‘that it may be a sure and authentic reference text for teaching Catholic doctrine and particularly for preparing local catechisms’.

2.3 Dominant theological interests of the pontificate of John Paul II

The two areas of theology that dominated the magisterial teaching of the Pontificate of John Paul II were theological anthropology and moral theology and both were set within an overarching framework of Trinitarian theology. The moral theology was said to be explicitly Christocentric, scriptural and personalist. It also affirmed the belief that there are moral absolutes, that is, actions that are either right or wrong irrespective of the individual actor’s intentions or cultural formation. One of the most difficult issues addressed in the context of moral theology was that of the situation of those who are divorced and remarried and wish to receive communion. The apostolic letter Familiaris Consortio (1981) addressed the issue and held that:

The Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage. (section 84)

In a series of Wednesday audience addresses in the early years of the pontificate, John Paul II offered what became known as the Catechesis on Human Love, popularly marketed as a ‘theology of the body’. In his reflections on the creation narratives in the book of Genesis John Paul II highlighted how these narratives treat a range of original human experiences. These include not only original sin, but original innocence, original solitude, original unity, original nakedness and original shame. Other key concepts in the theology of the body include: the hermeneutic of the gift, the spousal meaning of the body, and the notion of marriage as the primordial sacrament.

In addition to the emphasis given to moral theology, to the sacrament of marriage and to the sanctity of human life issues, including contemporary bioethical issues, the pontificate of John Paul II is associated with the promotion of religious freedom and the denunciation of all forms of totalitarian government (including, and especially, Marxist governments). John Paul II was a major actor in the events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and its political control of the countries of Eastern Europe. His pontificate is also associated with the promotion of the spirituality of divine mercy. In the year 2000, at the canonisation Mass for Poland’s St. Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), John Paul II decreed that the second Sunday of Easter would henceforth be known as Divine Mercy Sunday.

3.1 Documents of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith (2005–2013)

The two most doctrinally significant documents of the CDF during the pontificate of Benedict XVI were Responses to some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church (2007) and Dignitas Personae: On Certain Bioethical Questions (2008). The ‘Responses to some Questions’ document clarified the meaning of concepts used in the Conciliar document Lumen Gentium (1964) and in Dominus Iesus (2000). The focus of Dignitas Personae was on the morality of various methods for treating infertility. This document declared new medical techniques must respect three fundamental goods: (a) the right to life and to physical integrity of every human being from conception to natural death; (b) the unity of marriage, which means reciprocal respect for the right within marriage to become a father or mother only together with the other spouse; and (c) the specifically human values of sexuality which require ‘that the procreation of a human person be brought about as the fruit of the conjugal act specific to the love between spouses’. (section 12). Concretely, this means that ‘all techniques of heterologous artificial fertilization, as well as those techniques of homologous artificial fertilization which substitute for the conjugal act’, are not morally licit.

3.2 Five major speeches of the Benedict XVI Papacy

In addition to the usual suite of papal encyclicals, apostolic exhortations, letters and constitutions, the papacy of Benedict is also associated with a number of famous public lectures, the foremost being: the Regensburg University Address of 2007, the Address to the United Nations of 2008, the Address to the Collège des Bernardins in Paris of 2008, the Address in Westminster Hall of 2010, and the Bundestag Address of 2011. Each of these public speeches centred around the subjects of Christian culture and contemporary political life.

The Regensburg Address is remembered for the hostile reaction it received from elements within the Islamic community since it criticised religious violence as irrational. However the philosophical point Pope Benedict made was that both liberalism and the intellectual tradition of Islam each share a voluntarist starting point – for one tradition it is the individual will that is the highest good, for the other it is the will of Allah. Therefore the address can be read as a criticism of voluntarism, as much a problem in western countries as it is in Islamic countries. Pope Benedict’s macro-level principle was that faith and reason need to work in a symbiotic relationship, mutually purifying the other.

The Address to the Collège des Bernardins was on the origins of western theology and the roots of European culture. It includes several paragraphs on Benedict’s understanding of scriptural exegesis. He cites the medieval couplet littera gesta docet – quid credas allegoria and explains its meaning as ‘the letter indicates the facts; what you have to believe is indicated by allegory, that is to say, by Christological and pneumatological exegesis’.

In the same address Benedict XVI noted that in contrast to the Graeco-Roman world that did not have a creator God, the God of the Jews and the Christians is a creator. Thus with the emergence of a Christian intellectual tradition, human work was ‘seen as a special form of human resemblance to God, as a way in which man can and may share in God’s activity as creator of the world’. As monasticism developed it encompassed both a culture of the word, and a culture of work, without which, Benedict XVI argued, ‘the emergence of Europe, its ethos and its influence on the world would be unthinkable’. He also observed that when human persons lose this sense of a creator God, they arrogate to themselves the status of a god-like creator, and with this, the ‘shaping of the world can quickly turn into destruction of the world’.

In his speech in Westminster Hall during his 2010 state visit to the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict declared:

Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law. While couched in different language, Catholic social teaching has much in common with this approach, in its overriding concern to safeguard the unique dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, and in its emphasis on the duty of civil authority to foster the common good.

In the Bundestag Address of the following year Benedict argued that ‘for the development of law and for the development of humanity, it was highly significant that Christian theologians aligned themselves against the religious law associated with polytheism and on the side of philosophy, and that they acknowledged reason and nature in their interrelation as the universally valid source of law’. He believed that respect for reason and for nature as foundations for law managed to be upheld until the second half of the twentieth century when the idea of natural law became viewed as a ‘specifically Catholic doctrine, not worth bringing into the discussion in a non-Catholic environment, so that one feels almost ashamed even to mention the term’. In his analysis of this cultural transition Benedict XVI identified a significant cause as the positivism of Hans Kelsen. He suggested that ‘in its self-proclaimed exclusivity, the positivist reason which recognizes nothing beyond mere functionality resembles a concrete bunker with no windows, in which we ourselves provide lighting and atmospheric conditions, being no longer willing to obtain either from God’s wide world’. He further noted that the ecological movement at least recognises that there are problems with the concrete bunker, something wrong with the idea that matter is just raw material to be shaped according to human will. Proponents of the ecological movement understand that nature must be respected but many within the movement fail to appreciate that there is also an ecology of man. Thus, Pope Benedict argued:

Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.

Pope Benedict concluded his address to the Bundestag with an affirmation of an understanding of law that is built upon the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law.

The Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations made similar arguments and focused on the ethical foundations of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Again Pope Benedict argued that the natural law is a foundation for human rights. He argued:

Removing human rights from this context would mean restricting their range and yielding to a relativistic conception, according to which the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary and their universality would be denied in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks.

In his Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations Pope Benedict also raised the specific issue of the right to religious freedom. Here he stated that the right ‘cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion, and hence to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order’.

3.3 Dominant theological interests of the pontificate of Benedict XVI

Fundamental theology and liturgical theology were two dominant interests of the papacy of Benedict XVI. His trilogy of encyclicals on the theological virtues (counting Lumen Fidei as largely his work, although it was promulgated under the name of Francis) cover the territory of fundamental theology and theological anthropology, and the encyclical Caritas in Veritate covers the territories of fundamental theology and social teaching. The apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis covered liturgical and sacramental theology and the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum was also in the territory of liturgical theology.

Deus Caritas Est, the first of the encyclicals on the theological virtues, can be read as Benedict’s answer to the Nietzschean charge that Christianity had killed eros. Instead of fostering the notion that eros is defective in relation to agape, Benedict argued that the relationship between the two different types of love is symbiotic.

The second encyclical on the theological virtues, Spe Salvi, can be read as an antidote to secularist readings of Gaudium et spes as a call to accommodate the Christian faith to the culture of modernity, and it can also be read as offering an alternative understanding of the relationship between hope and history and related themes in eschatology from those typically found in the works of liberation theologians.

The first three chapters of Lumen Fidei read as vintage Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. One of the gifts that he brought to the papacy was an extensive knowledge of the history of ideas and in particular a deep knowledge of German philosophy. As Kant is a key to deciphering the culture of modernity, Nietzsche is something of a Rosetta stone for post-modernity. Kant gave scholars the quest for autonomous reason severed from any association with theological presuppositions and Nietzsche gave the world the critique of Christianity as an oppressive strait-jacket whose moral compass it fit only for the lower classes. Much of the encyclical is a criticism of these German philosophical contributions and their side-lining of the theological virtue of faith.

Lumen Fidei measures the light of autonomous reason against the light of faith and finds it wanting. This was a consistent theme throughout Ratzinger/Benedict’s life and was one of the strong Augustinian currents in his thought. In an essay commenting on the Conciliar document Gaudium et spes and published in 1969 he wrote that ‘the organ by which God can be seen cannot be a non-historical ‘ratio naturalis’ [natural reason] which just does not exist, but only the ratio pura, ie. purificata [purified reason] or, as Augustine expresses it echoing the gospel, the cor purum’. (Ratzinger 1969: 155) He also emphasised that ‘the necessary purification of sight takes place through faith (Acts 15:9) and through love, at all events not as a result of reflection alone and not at all by man’s own power’ (Ratzinger 1969: 155).

In Lumen Fidei the further point is made that faith is not a private matter. It is necessarily communal and in particular ecclesial. No one baptises himself. In this context reference is given to the ideas of Romano Guardini who was a Professor at the University of Munich in the years 1948–1962 and one of the intellectual heroes of Ratzinger’s generation of German seminarians. Ratzinger remarked that ‘Kantianism had shattered [Guardini’s] childhood faith into pieces’ and thus ‘his conversion developed into an overcoming of Kant’ (Ratzinger 2013: 392). For Guardini the work of the intellect included both ratio associated with logic, deductive reasoning and thus mathematics, and intellectus associated with intuition. He believed that these two dimensions of the intellect needed to play in concert, and not only did so in the scholarship of the medieval Christian philosophers, but also in classical Greek thought as well.

Caritas in Veritate explored the relationship between charity and truth. It was a plea to understand the limitations of a secularist notion of development, that is, of placing trust in institutional processes and material prosperity without any reference to God or the interior dynamics of the human soul. Benedict believed that when cultures no longer serve the deepest human needs and actually narrow the spiritual horizons of people, the result is anomie and depression. He argued that the remedy is to grasp the fact that truth is something which is given as a divine gift, and is not something self-constructed.

This third encyclical covering social development issues was the subject of some criticism from American neo-conservative quarters. Benedict XVI had a strong interest in the social effects of economic policy and emphasised that the market is never morally neutral and thus its activity needs to be monitored with reference to higher social goods than economic freedom.

One of the most dramatic moments in Benedict’s papacy was the release of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum on July 7, 2007, lifting the sanctions against the use of the Tridentine Rite of the Mass as it has been slightly modified in the papacy of John XXIII. In his pre-papal writings Ratzinger observed that those who preferred this Rite to the Missal of Paul VI had been treated like lepers and that this was not just. According to Ratzinger there was nothing theologically defective about the older form of the Rite. The Missal of Paul VI was promulgated with a view to meeting the pastoral needs of ‘modern man’, however quite a significant proportion of Catholics did not fit into that sociological category and preferred the high solemnity of the older Form to the folksy manner in which the new Form was often celebrated. Ratzinger/Benedict did not oppose liturgical pluralism providing that any Rite in use must be able to defend itself as being a Rite of apostolic provenance. It could not be something recently ‘cooked up’ by a committee of liturgists.

In lifting the sanctions against the use of the older Form of the Roman Rite Pope Benedict said that he hoped that the two Forms would be ‘mutually enriching’. He believed that the change in the new or Ordinary Form to having the scripture readings in the vernacular was a positive development, but nonetheless he thought that the Latin Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnes Dei should be part of the cultural capital of all Catholics regardless of their national backgrounds, and the same goes for the Greek Kyrie.

Scripture and the principles for its interpretation was also a subject close to the heart of Pope Benedict. He therefore declared the twelve month period from June 2008–2009 as the Year of St. Paul. He remarked:

St. Paul offers a model for all time of how to approach theology and how to preach. The theologian, the preacher, does not create new visions of the world and of life, but he is at the service of truth handed down, at the service of the real fact of Christ, of the Cross and of the Resurrection. (General Audience, November 5, 2008)

The Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini (2010) was Pope Benedict’s response to the Synod on the ‘The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church’ that coincided with the Pauline Year. Part I of Verbum Domini covered the following themes: The Church as the primary setting for biblical hermeneutics, the soul of sacred theology , the development of biblical studies and the Church’s magisterium, the Second Vatican Council’s biblical hermeneutic, the danger of dualism and a secularized hermeneutic, faith and reason in the approach to Scripture, the literal and spiritual sense of Scripture, the need to transcend the ‘letter’, the Bible’s intrinsic unity, the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments, the ‘dark’ passages of the Bible, Christians, Jews and the sacred Scriptures, the fundamentalist interpretation of sacred Scripture, the dialogue between pastors, theologians and exegetes, the Bible and ecumenism, and finally, the saints and the interpretation of Scripture.

Part Two focused on the Word of God in the Church, including its liturgical context and Part 3 addressed the word of God in the world, with a focus on the mission of the Church to preach the Word of God to the world.

A recurring theme in Benedict’s publications is the idea that Christianity is primarily about a person’s participation in the life and love of the Trinity, mediated through the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. The apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis presented Ratzinger/Benedict’s eucharistic theology as well as his ideas about the ars celebrandi and the meaning of the active participation of the faithful. He argued that there should be no antithesis between ‘the ars celebrandi, the art of proper celebration, and the full, active and fruitful participation of all the faithful’. He declared that the ‘primary way to foster the participation of the lay faithful in the sacred rite is the proper celebration of the rite itself’. (section 38). The backstory to these statements was the attitude that became popular after the Second Vatican Council that the good of lay participation in the liturgy required the jettisoning of such solemn forms of liturgical music as Gregorian chant and polyphony in favour of ‘sacro-pop’ music. The argument was that the more solemn music, because of its degree of difficulty, excluded the less musically educated members of parish congregations from participating in the singing. Pope Benedict however argued that ‘participation’ need not necessarily mean vocal participation. He was critical of sacro-pop music and affirmed the use of Gregorian chant and polyphony.

At the core of Ratzinger/Benedict’s theological vision there is a Trinitarian Christocentrism heavily influenced by St. Bonaventure and Romano Guardini and an Augustinian ecclesiology heavily influenced by Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar. There is also a classically Thomist concern about truth and the Christian engagement with Greek philosophy, and a typically mid-twentieth century European interest in personalism, mediated through the works of Martin Buber and Peter Wust, as a supplement to Greek philosophical ideas and categories. There is also an engagement with the typically nineteenth century Romantic movement interests in the affective dimension in spiritual and moral life, the epistemic importance of tradition, the theological significance of history and the transcendental of beauty (especially the role of beauty in the liturgy). Combined, these various elements of his theology present different facets of an Incarnational Humanism.

4.1 The dicastery of the doctrine of the faith under Francis

In the early years of the pontificate of Francis the leadership of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith was carried by prefects who had been promoted during the pontificate of Benedict XVI – Cardinal Gerhard Müller (2012-2017) and Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer (2017–2023), however in July 2023 Pope Francis named his fellow Argentinian and long-time supporter Victor Manuel Fernández as Prefect for the re-badged Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Fernández is famous for his opposition to John Paul II’s encyclical Veritas splendor and for his publication of a book about kissing. Under his direction on the eighteenth of December 2023, the Dicastery released the declaration Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings, prompted by the pastoral issue of same-sex couples who are by the fact of their sexual practices denied access to Communion, coming forward to ask for blessings. The document distinguishes between ‘liturgical blessings’ and ‘non-liturgical blessings’. By allowing a ‘non-liturgical blessing’ that is, a blessing outside of any liturgical context, the document declares that it is possible to bless couples in irregular situations and same-sex unions ‘without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage’. The document was widely criticised and has been rejected in some dioceses, including nine dioceses in France, as well as dioceses throughout Africa where it has been described as an exercise in western imperialism. The Polish Bishops’ conference responded to the document by issuing a statement to the effect that ‘since practicing sexual acts outside marriage, that is, outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open to the transmission of life, is always an offense against the will and wisdom of God expressed in the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, people who are in such a relationship cannot receive a blessing’. The Hungarian Bishops’ Conference decreed that ‘priests should always avoid common blessings for couples who live together in a non-marital partnership or a marriage that is not valid in the Church, or who live in a same-sex partnership’. The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church also completely rejected the document.

Fiducia supplicans was followed by another declaration from the Dicastery of the Faith titled ‘Dignitas Infinita’ (on Human Dignity) in April, 2024. It has given rise to some academic discussions about whether or not human dignity is always ‘infinite’ or whether it is something that can be diminished by sin.

4.2 Dominant theological interests of the pontificate of Francis

Whereas the pontificate of St. John Paul II was focused on theological anthropology and moral theology and the pontificate of Benedict XVI on liturgical theology and fundamental theology, in both cases heavily imbued with the influence of Communio-style theology, (that is, the theology associated with the journal Communio: International Catholic Review that was founded by Joseph Ratzinger, Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar, among other lesser names), the pontificate of Francis has a focus on social and environmental teaching and is heavily imbued with the influence of liberation theology, especially the Argentinian variant known as ‘People’s Theology’.

Liberation theology is a relatively new movement in Catholic theology arising from a post-World War II interest in the relationship between theology and politics and theology and economics. Rather than partnering scripture with concepts borrowed from the world of Greek philosophy such as logos, nous and natural law, liberation theology begins with the categories of experience and practice (praxis). For most practitioners of liberation theology the bible provides texts for reflection. What is important is not what a particular biblical author intended to say or what actually happened historically speaking, the important issue is what ideas arise from the reflection against the background of the reader’s social circumstances. Different liberation theologies arose depending on the particular social theory or theories informing the reflections upon praxis. The Argentinian variant known as Teologia del Pueblo (Theology of the People) prides itself on being Peronist rather than Marxist. Its leading proponents include: Juan Carlos Scannone (1931-2019), Lucio Gera (1924–2012) and Rafael Tello (1917–2002). Peronism is known for its nationalist and populist principles and hostility to elites. Pope Francis is said to have been heavily influenced by the Teologia del Pueblo. Unlike some other forms of liberation theology that discourage popular piety on the grounds that it distracts the uneducated from political activism, the Peronist variant of liberation theology affirms popular piety as an element of the populist culture. In an essay published in 1977 entitled ‘Popular Culture: Pastoral and Theological Considerations’ Juan Carlos Scannone claimed that People’s Theology ‘regards both the popular culture and the pastoral care of the people as the hermeneutic locus, that is, the sphere of critical reflection, interpretation and knowledge, of the Christian message’ (Scannone 1977: 161). Specifically he refers to the cultural ethos of the ‘Juan Pueblos’ (a Spanish version of the English common Joe’s) as a source of wisdom which has not been subject to ‘the distortions which, among the privileged, stem from ownership, power and learning’ (Scannone 1977: 163). Scannone posits this as a general theological principle, not limited to Argentinian ‘Juan Pueblos’. It is, he asserts, ‘the poor of all the nations to which the people of God is sent who most naturally possess the living wisdom which, in either case, constitutes the kernel of the Christian ethos and that of the cultural ethos of each people’ (Scannone 1977: 170). According to Michael R. Candelaria:

Scannone’s unique theology is geared toward an interpretation of popular culture. The key elements of this theology include making a break or epistemological rupture with conventional ways of doing theology; positing popular culture as the locus of interpretation; and conceiving the people as the authentic subject of theology. (Candelaria 1990: 50)

Professor Loris Zanatta of the University of Bologna has published an article entitled ‘Un papa peronista? ‘ in which he makes the claim that Pope Francis has used the word pueblo or people some 356 times in his papal speeches, that Pope Francis believes that poverty bestows upon people a moral superiority and accordingly, that for Pope Francis, the ‘deposit of the faith’ is to be found preserved among the poor living in ‘inner city neighbourhoods’ (Zanatta 2016: 240–249).

The Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016) has been the most controversial of the documents of Pope Francis, apart from the recent Dicastery of the Doctrine for the Faith’s Fiducia supplicans. It affirmed elements of the nuptial mystery theology found in John Paul II’s Catechesis on Human Love in the sense that this theology was well expressed in the earlier sections of the Exhortation. However chapter 8 of the document generated a high level of controversy because of its ambivalent treatment of the issue of communion for the divorced and remarried. The issue was addressed in footnote 351 which stated that believers can be allowed to receive the sacraments ‘in an objective situation of sin’ ‘because of mitigating factors’. It has been described as the most famous footnote in the history of the Church. At a theological level the debate is over first – what precisely is meant by footnote 351, and secondly, if footnote 351 is construed to mean that in certain circumstances (other than situations of a Josephite relationship) a person who is divorced and re-partnered may take Communion, how can this be consistent with previous magisterial teaching? Paragraph 84 of John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris consortio and paragraph 29 of Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis both expressly rejected the practice of allowing Communion for the divorced and remarried. The ambivalent nature of the document has allowed it to be given different interpretations in different dioceses. The bishops in the Buenos Aires region have produced their own guidelines for interpreting the footnote and in a letter to the Argentinian bishops dated September 5, 2016, Pope Francis personally endorsed the guidelines and said that there ‘there are no other interpretations’.

The controversy surrounding Amoris Laetitia has its roots in different approaches to fundamental theology. For some theologians, revelation does not include a specific truth content. For some revelation simply means the awakening of the human spirit to divine love. If this is so, then the theological tradition that recognizes a common set of doctrines and moral principles is obsolete. Moreover, if doctrinal unity is no longer necessary, then this has repercussions for the understanding of the Petrine Office. It loses its charism as a principle of unity. If the power of the keys is limitless, which is another way of saying that the exercise of the power of the keys is not circumscribed by the deposit of the faith, by Scripture, or by Tradition, classically understood, but is a kind of papal prerogative, then this represents a seismic shift in the field of ecclesiology. Within the field of moral theology itself there are different interpretations of the relationship between moral theology and dogmatic theology and different understandings of the notion of conscience. It has been a general orientation of the pontificate of Francis to ‘read down’ the defence of moral absolutes found in previous magisterial documents, such as John Paul II’s Veritatis splendor (1993) in favour of an approach to moral theology that is more casuistic in the sense of more open to finding ‘loop holes’ in the tradition or exceptions to the general principles.

Debates about moral and sacramental theology have been at the epicentre of various Synods held during the pontificate of Francis, especially the Synods on the Family (2014) and (2015) and the Synod on the Pan-Amazon Region (2019). While the issue of communion for the divorced and remarried dominated the Synods on the Family, the issue of clerical celibacy dominated the Synod on the Pan-Amazon region, along with what is called the ‘Pachamama affair’. The latter refers to the appearance of images of Pachamama (a pagan idol) on the altar of a church inside the territory of the Vatican during the Amazonian Synod as part of the celebration of the culture of the peoples of the Amazon Basin.

A Synod on Synodality is currently in operation show-casing a number of the principles embodied in the Teologia del Pueblo, including the inclusion of delegates without any formal theological training. The concept of synodality has been fostered by German theologians following the lead of Cardinal Walter Kasper and promoted by supporters of the Teologia del Pueblo. From 2019–2023 Germany led the way in the practice of a new form of synodality that includes participants who oppose perennial Church teaching and lack any theological training with a meeting known as Der Synodale Weg. An on-going issue is the relationship between the German ‘Synodale Weg’ and the Roman ‘Synod on Synodality’.