| > With Pope Francis reviewing and moderating a lot of traditional doctrine, and with a large group of those within the church opposed to it (particularity those from the first world), I could see this edict being "modified" going forward There are many "liberal Catholics" in the world, and organizations dedicated to "modernizing" Catholic doctrine. They're pushing and hoping for things like ordaining women as priests, allowing abortions, gay marriage, etc. [1] But they'll never succeed. Doctrines can't be changed because they're inherently immutable. [2] So by definition it's impossible. Yes, there will always be polls trying to demonstrate that doctrinal change is possible given a strong enough public voice [3], but this is and will always be impossible. All those polls do (and I would argue are meant to do) are make people think they're on the right track with their dissent, and that it's not really apostasy, just a harmless opinion. [1]: http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/dissent/dissorg.htm [2]: http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/can-the-church-change... [3]: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/11/16/2943221/rise-pr... EDIT: more idiomatic formatting of sources |
If doctrines couldn't change, we wouldn't need to have dogmas (which are doctrines which have been infallibly proclaimed and which, therefore, are, in principle, immutable.)
More importantly than the theoretical questions, church teachings do change, even if that means retrospectively reinterpreting doctrine to change how it is taught while maintaining the pretense of consistency, or reinterpreting something that was previously viewed as doctrinal as something other than doctrine.
This is particularly visible in the area of, say, "when a morally cognizable human exists in pregnancy", a relatively important matter on which Church teaching has changed radically over its history.