[thewebguyd]

GS 36 is just reaffirming Aquinas and his doctrine of primary and secondary causality. Primary cause being God is the source of all being and sustains everything, secondary cause being that God created a universe where created things have real, intrinsic causal powers. A fire burns because it has the natural property to, not because God is directly performing an action to burn the wood.

"enjoy their own laws and values" is affirming that the natural world has an objective structure that can be studied on its own terms. Denying that autonomy is occasionalism, which is a heretical view that created things have no real power or nature of their own.

Genisis supports the statement about autonomy. Adam is given the task to subdue the earth, name the animals. To name them means to understand their specific natures. God did not dictate the names, he left that to Adam's human intellect. That's exactly what Gaudium et Spec refers to. Humans utilize their reason to discover the laws of creation and organize human society. We have genuine liberty within the overreaching metaphysical boundries.

[erelong]

Here's the issue: the documents are deliberately vague, so for many years it's been said they can be read "through the light of Tradition" to mean things like you say which sound "traditional".

However, the documents themselves do not speak clearly in a traditional way, but must be evaluated as "objectively ambiguous".

Consider some teaching could be of three options: clearly Catholic, ambiguous, or clearly non-Catholic; what category are we to put ambiguous statements in, if we collapse this to either "clearly Catholic" or "clearly not Catholic"?

It seems they must be considered as "clearly non-Catholic" then, since they cannot be in the category of "clearly Catholic". Or else ambiguous teachings would have to be considered to be equivalent to clearly Catholic teachings, which makes no sense.

It's kind of like "pass / fail" in school: do we "pass" the ambiguous teachings, or "fail" them? They seem to "fail" when considered rigorously: if we ask - Catholic or not? They are judged as "Not Catholic".

Can even someone claiming to be a pope make something ambiguous into a Catholic statement? It doesn't seem that's possible. Hence, the Vatican 2 statements, being "objectively ambiguous", are judged as "clearly Not Catholic", logically implying a pope could not have taught them.

(This is something of the reasoning process I propose when trying to evaluate these ambiguous statements which defy simple binary categorization; it is an ongoing effort of "research and dialogue")

[hackyhacky]

If you're a Catholic, then the choice of interpretation is clear: you must accept the Pope's interpretation. That's what it means to be Catholic. The Pope is God's representative on Earth. To defy him is to defy God.

The alternative would be to declare him a False Pope and to select an alternative divine representative. Of course, that would make you a heretic. If you ditch the pope as soon as he says something you don't like, you're not much of a Catholic. The Church is not a democracy.

[michaelsbradley]

> If you're a Catholic, then the choice of interpretation is clear: you must accept the Pope's interpretation…

cf. Hyperpapalism

Thankfully, Hyperpapalism is a misunderstanding of the role of the teaching-governing authority of the Bishop of Rome, and Catholics can be and remain good Catholics while disagreeing with the Pope on a variety of matters.

[hackyhacky]

I never said that you can't disagree with him. I said you can't defy him.

You have a right to your opinion. You don't have a right to apply your interpretation of doctrine in place of the Holy See's. That's heresy.

[michaelsbradley]

Pope John XXII publicly taught erroneously re: death and the Beatific Vision. Jean Gerson threatened to burn him at the stake and in general there was much public resistance, from royalty to common folk.

[hackyhacky]

"Erroneous" is an opinion. Papal doctrine is the word of God until a subsequent pope says otherwise. Jean Gerson is entitled to his opinion, even if speaking that opinion made him a heretic.