TwitterPope vs. Master Catechism?

Mr Seng has a radical idea. Perhaps Francis should check MasterCatechism to see what the Church actually teaches before taking to Twitter to spew his heresy.

From Crisis

By Aaron Seng

A new catechism tool could help even Vatican officials better understand the Catholic Faith.

It remains anyone’s guess as to whether sainted pontiffs of the past would have descended into the mire of the Twitterverse or other social media.

What’s quite certain, however, is that they would never have employed such tools for the dissemination of false or ambiguous teaching—something which, alas, is repeatedly done by the current bishop in white.

Just last month, @Pontifex gainsaid the teaching of Jesus Christ that divine power over human life is legitimately entrusted to civil authorities (see Jn 19:11), instead claiming that: “The #DeathPenalty is always inadmissible, because it attacks the inviolability and dignity of the person.” Sadly, such off-the-cuff departures from official Catholic doctrine have been rather numerous in recent the years.

The current Vatican might benefit from a Catholic fact-checking team.

As such, the Tradivox project is pleased to refer them to MasterCatechism.com, the only digital search engine that limits its results to the official catechisms of the Church: those tidy summaries of faith and morals that voice her common and received doctrine across time and space.

It should be simple enough for any Vatican staffer to use. One simply enters a question, and receives concise answers from the likes of Aquinas, Bellarmine, Canisius, Gasparri, Pius X, and dozens of other canonically-approved catechisms (Trent, Baltimore, Maynooth, etc.) throughout the last millennium. Operating in ten different languages, even the less linguistically-inclined should benefit, and they can click to read every original source directly in the citations. Furthermore, if they prefer older sources to those of more recent vintage (the default setting is “all”), they can simply toggle off “contemporary” sources when submitting queries.

We might suggest a few starting points for review, by contrasting a range of recent pontifical soundbites with the common doctrine of Catholic catechisms around the world:

• Is every religion a way to arrive at God? ANSWERED.
• Should Catholic politicians advocating for abortion be denied holy communion? ANSWERED.
• Is the death penalty always inadmissible, because it violates the dignity of the human person? ANSWERED.
• In certain particular situations, may adultery, fornication, or homosexual relations be considered morally good, or even required by God? ANSWERED.
• May public adulterers be admitted to the sacraments? ANSWERED.
• Do Catholics and Muslims together believe in and worship the same god? ANSWERED.
• Are women eligible for any degree of holy orders? ANSWERED.
• May same-sex amorous couples receive the priestly blessing of the Church? ANSWERED.
• To safeguard public health and show charity to my neighbor, do I have a moral obligation to inject myself with an experimental serum? ANSWERED.
• Does a pope or bishop have authority to command me to receive a vaccine? ANSWERED.
• May the celebration of Mass or administration of other sacraments ever be prohibited in the interest of protecting public health? ANSWERED.
• To avoid sinful disobedience, must I comply with every command of church officials, in all circumstances? ANSWERED.

The above might serve as helpful starting points for promoting greater dialogue. After all, every Successor of Peter is established as the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity on earth, guarantor that the apostolic doctrine remains “believed and held by all the faithful in accordance with the ancient and unchanging faith of the whole Church.” 

It would therefore be scandalous to an unprecedented degree, if such a pontiff’s talking points were to regularly contradict this same doctrine—that teaching consistently reflected in the Church’s many catechisms, from across the centuries and around the world.

Tolle lege!