Assenting to Fiducia Supplicans

At some point in my spiritual pilgrimage to the full communion of the Catholic Church from an Evangelical Protestant upbringing, it became apparent to me that the only way that I could infallibly believe the deposit of divinely revealed truth was to believe it in union with the infallible teaching of the Catholic bishops and the Pope ordained in apostolic succession. I had been looking for a guarantee, some form of certainty that what I believed was actually the doctrine of Christ and his Apostles, and to my surprise I had found it in the Catholic Church. I soon recognized that there are different levels of teaching and certainty within Catholic doctrine in general, but also that it has an infallible core which is coextensive with the divine deposit of faith and morals.

Once I understood that, I found that I could believe everything in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition which the Church has defined as divinely revealed truth. I also had no problem accepting any of the Catholic truths definitively proposed as following by logical or historical necessity from Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the natural law. The only question that remained was whether I could give assent in my mind and heart to the teachings of the Catholic bishops and the Pope even when they have not proclaimed them infallibly by a definitive act. It seemed logical and necessary for all the faithful to do so. Every other option seemed to collapse into a very fallible process of deciding for myself what does and does not belong to the deposit of faith and morals, and I had no good reason to prefer or privilege my own judgment.

At the time of receiving instruction for full communion, for example, I did not see anything morally wrong with the practice of marital contraception, but then I learned that the papal magisterium in Humanae Vitae had informed the faithful that such acts were intrinsically wrong and inconsistent with a Catholic way of life. Therefore I had to decide whether to follow Humanae Vitae or my own judgment. After my wife and I discussed the matter, we stopped contracepting, and I entered the full communion of the Catholic Church, trusting for the first time that the judgment of the magisterium was more reliable than my own private judgment. Most of my Protestant friends considered me naïve and foolish for trusting the magisterium of the Catholic Church.

When Fiducia Supplicans was issued by the Dicastery (formerly Congregation) for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF or DDF) in 2023,¹ I likewise assented, and this time not only my Protestant friends but also my Catholic friends considered me naïve and foolish for trusting the magisterium of the Catholic Church. Many so-called “progressives” do not like Humanae Vitae, and many so-called “conservatives” do not like Fiducia Supplicans, but the Catholic principle of assent is the same for everyone. It is necessary for Catholics in general to maintain and express support for the magisterium, especially in evangelization and catechetical contexts, where people who are sympathetic to the Catholic faith often need to gain more confidence in Catholic leadership and are seeking various reassurances and clarifications. Unfortunately, many zealous but confused Catholics nowadays think that they can evangelize effectively while manifesting little to no confidence in their bishop or the Pope. We must encourage catechumens and candidates to have an attitude of confidence toward Catholic bishops and the Pope, and we must assist all the faithful to have a religious submission (obsequium) of mind and heart to non-infallible magisterial judgments and pastoral decisions. At the same time, we must also make it clear that there is never any requirement to assent to any non-magisterial misguided personal agenda that their bishop or the Pope may have.

Catholic bishops and the Pope sometimes make errors in pastoral judgments, but in addition to their infallible level of authority and their prudential level of authority, they also exercise a non-infallible and non-prudential level of authority to which all the Catholic faithful are obligated in faith to give religious submission. This intermediate or third level of authority includes all authentic interpretations and non-revealed expositions of the deposit of faith and morals that are potentially but not actually infallible and are ordinarily taught non-infallibly by the magisterium, either universally or non-universally. In the “Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity,” for example, which must be taken upon accepting the responsibility to exercise of an office within the Catholic Church, a member of the Catholic faithful must state, “I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.” This intermediate or third level of Catholic doctrine includes all authoritative interpretations of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and natural law, found for example in the documents of Vatican II and in papal encyclicals. Even though such interpretations have not been taught infallibly, they are binding on the Catholic faithful, who are obligated to give them internal assent of the mind and heart and to prefer them to all personal judgments to the contrary. It is our Catholic duty to adhere to these teachings, for they are far more reliable than any personal or theological opinions, and because otherwise schism is inevitable. For examples of truths of the faith taught at each level of doctrine, see Ad Tuendam Fidem and the accompanying “Doctrinal Commentary on the Professio Fidei,” issued by John Paul II through the CDF in 1998.²

If we want to be certain that we have not fallen into doctrinal or moral error, and that we are believing what Christ actually revealed, then we need to accept the teaching authority of the Catholic bishops and the Pope and to follow their guidance. As St. Ignatius of Antioch told us in his letters written at the very beginning of the Church, it is the will of Christ that we all admit our own sinfulness and place ourselves under the authority of his Apostles and their successors, who like all the faithful are prone to sin and error individually but together are uniquely preserved from error in their formal teaching of the divine deposit. For our personal act of faith in Jesus Christ to be complete and reliable, we need the Catholic Church, the Catholic bishops, and the Pope, in the fullness of their authentic magisterium. If we prefer or privilege our own judgment or conscience in opposition to the authentic magisterium of the Catholic Church, then we cannot consistently claim to be fully Catholic, and we no longer have grounds for certainty that we are actually following the teachings of Christ and his Apostles. A lack of agreement with the authentic magisterium of the Church constitutes a probable doubt in every personal judgment of the content of faith and morals. Such personal judgments at odds with the authentic magisterium therefore remain objectively improbable even when they subjectively appear probable. They are improbable insofar as they contradict the authentic magisterium, regardless of whether they are made by laity, clergy, theologians, or even cardinals. Such judgments at odds with the authentic magisterium cannot be objectively trustworthy in themselves, even when they subjectively appear probable or possess credibility by virtue of the character and sincerity of the persons who make them. Even if it turns out in fact that the non-infallible magisterium was in error, it was not objectively probable for it to be in error. We should attempt to clarify this Catholic principle and apply it to Fiducia Supplicans.

Avoiding scandal as well as the appearance of giving approval to sin is always very important, and if for that reason a Catholic priest or deacon decides to grant a blessing to a couple in an irregular union separately rather than together, then he can do so, but according to Fiducia Supplicans, to bless such a couple informally is not thereby to bless their irregular union as such. Blessing an irregular union as such is never permissible, either formally or informally.³ In Fiducia Supplicans, Pope Francis is granting that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with informally blessing couples in irregular unions without first conducting a personal interrogation of their morality, but it is still true that the Church cannot bless sin as such. The informal blessing itself could and sometimes should include an explicit prayer for the couple to achieve and maintain chastity. It depends on the circumstances, but this consideration is not an exercise in situational ethics. It is appropriate and prudent for some bishops in some dioceses to regulate or prohibit the clerical practice of giving such informal blessings to couples in irregular unions, but in other dioceses such a restriction would be inappropriate and imprudent. In accord with the preceding apostolic letter Ad Theologiam Promovendam,⁴ Fiducia Supplicans intentionally contextualizes the decision about whether or not to give an informal blessing to a couple in an irregular union. To me, informally blessing such couples is like the annual blessing of the Bock Beer Parade that a pastor in one of the parishes in my diocese used to give. It was an informal blessing of the people drinking the beer and included a prayer that they would all use the beer temperately and avoid drunkenness and other sin. Drinking beer is a delightful good, but it can also be a near occasion of sin or an addictive behavior, and if the people asking for such a blessing are already drunk and disorderly or addicted, then it becomes scandalous to bless them. The signs of disorder must be judged on a case-by-case basis in order to decide whether an informal blessing would give the impression of an approval of sin.

Certainly a faithful Catholic could have a psychological impediment to giving assent to Fiducia Supplicans, Humanae Vitae, Dominus Iesus, or any other magisterial teaching, but he or she should seek clarification and remain docile to a proper formation of conscience in accord with the legitimate teaching authority of the Pope and the bishops in union with him. Sometimes the language of magisterial documents is ambiguous and in need of clarification, but a Catholic bishop, priest, or deacon cannot in good conscience advise the faithful to withhold their assent from a magisterial doctrine as such. In Fiducia Supplicans, it is sufficiently clear that we are being asked to assent to a development of doctrine about the nature of blessings, a development that existed even before Francis became the Roman Pontiff. It is also clear that Catholic bishops, priests, and deacons are being asked to exercise prudence and discretion in practice. They must balance the legitimate concern not to give scandal with the legitimate concern not to be rigid. Of course, some will give scandal and materially cooperate with evil in ways that seem unjust to others.

As a Catholic deacon, I can assent to Fiducia Supplicans and at the same time avoid giving blessings that in my opinion would cause scandal. I am not being asked to do anything that would violate my conscience. Not giving my internal assent or religious submission of intellect and will to the document, however, would in fact violate my conscience and open a door in my mind and heart that would eventually take me straight back to Protestantism by setting my own personal judgment above the authority of the Pope. We must never tell anyone to withhold assent from a magisterial teaching. We also must not assume that anyone who is withholding assent from such a document is in sin or schism by that very fact, but those who refuse obedience to the Pope and reject Vatican II are apparently in schism. We must pray that they will accept discipline and remain in the full communion of the Catholic Church.

It is true that the Pope could make a mistake and be in error in his non-infallible authentic magisterium, the content of which goes beyond the deposit of faith and morals and does not necessarily follow from it. He would then need to correct the error, but in the meantime we would still owe the document religious submission of intellect and will. Sacred Scripture is divinely inspired and formally inerrant (even though it contains material errors), but the non-infallible papal magisterium is not. There are essential differences between theological assent and the assent of religious submission. We are not bound to assent to non-infallible magisterial teaching in the same way as we assent to Sacred Scripture. We are bound to assent and submit to non-infallible magisterial teaching as most probable, not as totally inerrant. It can contain errors that are not merely prudential mistakes. Defenders of the living Roman Pontiff are sometimes accused of ultramontanism — the position that would hold past or present ordinary papal magisterium infallible as if it were ex cathedra proclamation or universal magisterium — but to defend ordinary papal magisterium as being authoritative and more probable than any other teaching is not to assert that it is infallible. The living Roman Pontiff is bound to pre-existing non-infallible magisterial teaching like everyone else, but he has the magisterial authority to identify and eliminate any errors in it. The perennial problem with theologians and other members of the laity and clergy who attempt to identify and eliminate errors in non-infallible magisterium is that they often end up becoming their own pope. A Roman Pontiff could materially teach heresy in his non-infallible magisterium, but even if he could also do so formally, which is very doubtful given the promise Christ made to Peter, non-infallible authentic papal magisterial teaching is still the most probable interpretation of the deposit of faith and morals that exists. It is important for us to recognize that to be potentially in error is not equivalent to being potentially heretical or schismatic. It is not probable that God would allow a living Roman Pontiff to be a formal heretic, and even if God did permit it, no one except God could judge the Pope to be one.⁵

As things stand, there are no adequate grounds to believe that Pope Francis is even a material heretic in his non-infallible magisterial teaching. We must listen to what he actually teaches magisterially and stop treating him as a straw man, and we must give his non-infallible teaching an internal assent of religious submission of intellect and will, even though it possibly contains errors. Both he and his successors can make any needed changes, qualifications, and revisions to their non-infallible doctrines and to those of their predecessors. Some doctrines will never change, such as those concerning the immorality of contraception and homosexual conduct. All the Catholic faithful owe religious submission of intellect and will to all authentic papal magisterial teaching. We are not allowed to withhold assent from any such teaching, and the submission owed is an internal assent to it as most probable. We need not assent to it as inerrant, but we are not permitted to give it merely external assent or no assent at all. The internal assent that is owed is not to it as true and clear but to it as authoritative and obligatory. We must give it internal assent even though we know that it could contain error. All the Catholic faithful should be clear about that duty.

Authentic papal teachings such as Fiducia Supplicans are not at the same level as Catholic truths (de fide tenenda), and dissent from them does not ipso facto constitute schism, but it is still a lesser form of disobedience. Often it is inculpable. Among Protestants it is ubiquitous yet usually inculpable. But simply refusing to do anything that violates one’s conscience or causes scandal does not constitute dissent. An act of dissent from Fiducia Supplicans would, for example, be maintaining that no priest or deacon can ever licitly bless a couple in an irregular union, not merely maintaining that under most conditions such a blessing is scandalous. In becoming or remaining Catholic Christians, we must recognize the intellectual need to be completely consistent. In my own journey to the full communion of the Catholic Church, I came to the conclusion that all such dissent from authentic papal magisterial teaching is unjustified, even when the teaching is non-infallible and seems like a mistake. So in becoming fully Catholic I readily agreed to accept all non-infallible papal magisterial teaching as more probable than my own judgment or the judgment of my peers. It was the only path to unity that made sense to me and seemed completely coherent.

Consistency is what requires Catholics not to dissent. Fiducia Supplicans binds the faithful to believe an authentic magisterial teaching about the nature of blessings. Catholics who withhold assent from it as obligatory are at some level being inconsistent, but they are not necessarily culpable or in mortal sin or heretical. They are simply in error, but the spiritual danger here is to make one’s own private judgment the principle of assent and thus implicitly to reject papal authority and fall into schism, as many have recently done. The assent of religious submission of intellect and will is an obligatory internal assent to non-infallible magisterial teaching that might contain error. Fiducia Supplicans is non-infallible authentic magisterial doctrine, like the documents of Vatican II, for that matter. As Catholics we owe all such documents religious submission of intellect and will, which is an internal assent of the mind and heart, not merely an external compliance with prudential pastoral judgment. To withhold internal assent on the basis of conscience is to dissent. Such withholding assent from any authentic magisterial teaching gets things backwards. As Catholics we owe internal assent even when we do not fully understand the content of the magisterial teaching. Fiducia Supplicans, like the documents of Vatican II, including Dignitatis Humanae, are clearly an exercise of authentic magisterium. Even when it is non-infallible, every legitimate exercise of the authentic magisterium must be interpreted with a hermeneutic of continuity and a principle of charity. Even if a particular exercise of the authentic magisterium could possibly be in error, it is nevertheless not probable for it to be in error unless and until the authentic magisterium itself acknowledges that it made a mistake. Anyone who teaches that Vatican II, Amoris Laetitia, or Fiducia Supplicans is not in continuity with Sacred Tradition is advancing a non-magisterial doctrine and is clearly in error insofar as he or she is preferring a non-magisterial judgment to the authentic magisterium. Such persons are not necessarily in schism, but they are clearly in error.

No member of the clergy is being asked by Pope Francis to violate his own conscience or to do anything that would give people serious scandal. But like all other popes, Francis is certainly asking all Catholics to assent to his authentic papal magisterium, and as Catholics we owe him that obedience. If on the basis of conscience we claim the right to withhold assent from the Pope’s third-level teaching, then we must on pain of consistency grant the same right to all those who are withholding assent from Dominus Iesus, Vatican II, or some other third-level magisterial teaching. How is that not a hermeneutic of private interpretation? And if we prefer the magisterial judgment of some bishop besides the Pope on some particular controversial third-level teaching, how is that not making the magisterial authority of someone who is not the Pope equal to the magisterial authority of the Pope? And how is that not personally picking and choosing which bishops to whom to give religious submission of intellect and will? The norm of religious submission thus becomes our own personal judgment about which bishop is the most reliable, rather than the Pope’s own magisterial judgment about that to which we owe submission. Thus we all become our own popes and fall into disunity. The trajectory toward disunity has been around long before Francis was elected to the papal office. Many well-intentioned Catholics nowadays are inadvertently and privately preferring their own judgments to those of the Pope, but to do so is always objectively incoherent with being Catholic. Those who do so publicly thereby make themselves agents of disunity.

We must let our conscience be our guide whenever it is certain, but we must not let our conscience be our guide whenever it is doubtful. Since a Catholic is someone who believes that the teaching of the Church regarding faith and morals is either infallible or at least probable if non-infallible, his or her own judgment of conscience cannot be morally certain if it does not agree with the judgment of the Church, because a lack of agreement with the Church constitutes a probable doubt in the judgment of conscience. For example, since the Church teaches that marital contraception is morally wrong, a Catholic can never be morally certain that marital contraception is morally permissible. The same is true of all the moral teachings of the Church, even when they have not been solemnly defined or infallibly taught. Thus a Catholic can never morally follow his or her own conscience if it does not agree with the infallible and non-infallible authentic magisterium. Such an act is objectively incoherent. Being Catholic entails not trusting private or personal judgments of conscience more than the infallible or non-infallible teachings of the authentic magisterium. Modernists and Liberalists find this requirement offensive, but it is a requirement for all Catholics, nonetheless. The spiritual danger of accusing the Pope of Modernism or Liberalism and rejecting his magisterial authority is that the very act of doing so is a probable sign of falling into Modernism or Liberalism.

On pain of consistency, we cannot withhold assent from Fiducia Supplicans as magisterial and authoritative. The fact that its content is non-infallible, or that some theologians or members of the clergy suspect that it contains an error or ambiguity that needs magisterial correction, does not justify withholding assent from it. We must give an internal assent to it out of respect for the legitimate though non-infallible magisterial authority of the current Roman Pontiff, even if we suspect that it contains an error or ambiguity that he or a subsequent Pope will need to address. To believe that a Pope has made a mistake in a practical pastoral or liturgical decision or directive should never be conflated with dissenting or withholding assent from an authentic exercise of his magisterial authority. No Catholic has the right to withhold assent or to dissent from any third-level magisterial documents, even though they are non-infallible and thus can contain mistakes and ambiguities. As Catholics we must internally assent to what possibly contains error and remains magisterially reformable. Protestants find this submission very puzzling, but they have no real basis for maintaining doctrinal unity. As Catholics we must assent to third-level teaching not as inerrant or infallible but merely as probable and reformable, and we must assume that the intentions of the Pope and his representatives are honorable even if we happen to believe that they have chosen ineffective or counter-productive means to moral and Christian ends.

Priests and deacons often find themselves in situations where they do not know what level of disorder is actually present in a particular human relationship that holds between people who are asking for an informal blessing. Whether the act is simply a blessing of the people in an irregular relationship, and not a blessing of their disordered union as such, essentially depends on the intention of the minister giving the blessing. It does not depend merely on whether the sign of the cross is made over them individually rather than together. We should always charitably presume that a priest or deacon has no intention of blessing sin in blessing sinners. All human acts are combinations of form and matter, and the form and the matter both matter. We should not reduce human acts either to exterior acts (as in physicalism) or to interior acts (as in intentionalism). St. Thomas Aquinas says that the specification of the act is taken formally from the proximate end for which it is done.⁶ He is referring to the end internal to the act itself, not the extrinsic end to which it is a means. That which makes a blessing of a couple or group in an irregular relationship not to be a blessing of their disordered relationship is the intention which the minister has in giving the blessing, which may not be apparent. Blessing their disordered union as such is always wrong, but blessing the couple or group is not always wrong. Blessing the couple or group is not intrinsically wrong but can be wrong in particular circumstances for extrinsic reasons such as giving direct or indirect scandal. The material circumstances must always be considered in order to know whether the act of blessing any couple is a morally permissible act.

Fiducia Supplicans asserts a difference in kind between formal and informal blessings, and it clarifies the material conditions required to make acts of blessing couples to be morally and pastorally permissible. With informal blessings, priests and deacons are not morally required to inquire about the chastity of the couple before giving the blessing, regardless of whether the couple is opposite-sex or same-sex. Ceteris paribus, the minister is morally required to avoid giving scandal and materially cooperating with evil, but he is not morally required always to manifest his intention to bless only the couple, not their irregular relationship or their sin. He is thus not morally required, for example, to bless the members of the couple or group individually rather than together. If a priest or deacon believes that in certain cases he ought to make it explicitly clear that he has no intention of blessing an irregular union as such, then he can act accordingly and include such an explicit sign in the blessing. But even if he chooses not to include one, we should always assume the best about the intentions of others, even when we might be mistaken. Sometimes, of course, we cannot help but suspect that a Catholic minister is formally cooperating with evil, and if we become certain that he is, then we ought to practice fraternal correction appropriately and charitably in accord with Matthew 18:15–17.

Fiducia Supplicans does not contradict the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas about indirect scandal.⁷ Indirect scandal in the act of blessing a couple or group in a disordered relationship is one in which the sin of the people receiving the blessing is not intended by the minister either as an end or as a means. There is no moral obligation to avoid all blessings or actions that might indirectly give scandal to others. Indirect scandal is permitted by St. Thomas whenever it satisfies the four conditions of the principle of double-effect. Those who are claiming that indirect scandal is never permitted are thereby imposing a stronger moral requirement than St. Thomas does. We must not uncharitably suppose that a priest or deacon who informally blesses such a couple as a couple without also clearly manifesting his intention not to bless the sinfulness of their relationship is thereby unjustly causing scandal and is thus guilty of sin. Many ministers and lay people become scrupulous in the moral obligation to avoid scandal. We may justly be appalled by the material cooperation with evil that becomes acceptable to Christian clergy who are attempting to be merciful and to work with political regimes motivated by secular ideologies, but sometimes our inclinations are too biased and too intolerant. All Christian pastors and ministers ought to be concerned to provide good moral guidance to all persons and couples, but it is not always appropriate to condemn sin that is apparent in others. Sometimes it is pastorally appropriate to condemn sin in others, but sometimes it is better and more effective overall to affirm what is good in others.

If a couple in an irregular union informally and spontaneously asks a Catholic minister for a blessing, and the minister informally and spontaneously blesses them without clearly communicating to them at that public moment that their relationship is irregular, it is not self-evident that the minister is guilty of the sin of scandal. What is self-evident is that the minister might have a legitimate reason to take the risk and to permit indirect scandal according to the principle of double-effect. The principle of double-effect can and often does justify remotely materially cooperating with evil and giving scandal indirectly. Some people interpret the moral demand to avoid scandal more rigidly than others do. There is no moral obligation always to avoid giving scandal indirectly. Pope Francis maintains that some but not all informal blessings of couples in irregular unions morally require a clear manifestation of the Catholic minister’s intent not to bless the irregular union as such. The Pope wants to leave it up to the minister to decide on a case-by-case basis whether such an external sign is necessary, which requires the minister to apply the principle of double-effect correctly and carefully. We ought to condemn sin in general, consistently pointing out the immorality of homosexual or contraceptive conduct for example, but we ought also to be careful about publicly manifesting our suspicions that certain individuals, couples, or groups are personally and culpably guilty of such sins. Perhaps part of the intent of Fiducia Supplicans is to encourage the faithful to stop entertaining groundless suspicions and to stop making false accusations in word and deed and in mind and heart.

In Catholic moral theology, it is a standard exercise to apply the principle of double-effect to any act that gives indirect scandal, in order to determine whether it would be morally permissible and thus not a sin. In the interest of understanding Fiducia Supplicans correctly, suppose that a couple in an irregular union spontaneously asks a Catholic minister for an informal blessing. The principle of double-effect would then apply to the informal blessing of the couple because the act in itself is not evil by its very nature. If we maintain that it is evil in itself, then we are begging the question. The minister has no intention of blessing their sin or their union as such, but he foresees the evil effect and the genuine risk that the act of informal blessing will potentially be mistaken as an approval of their sin and thus might give indirect scandal to the couple or to someone else who observes his act of blessing them. Blessing the two people individually does not effectively eliminate this bad effect, by the way, since to most people such an act still has the external appearance of approving the sin or irregular union of the couple and thus still has the potential to mislead people. The good effect can be recognized in the fact that the minister intends “to support their faith, whether it be small or great, to assist them in their weaknesses with a divine blessing, and to channel that openness to transcendence which could lead them to be more faithful to the Gospel,” as Cardinal Fernández of the DDF explained in his clarification of Fiducia Supplicans.⁸ This good effect is not caused by or accomplished through the sin or irregular union of the couple. The evil effect is merely permitted and is not directly intended. The minister must believe that he has a proportionate reason to permit the evil effect. The minister should try to minimize or eliminate the risk of indirect scandal, but that is not always possible or appropriate to do. It is impossible to avoid all scandal whatsoever, and it is likewise impossible to avoid all actions that give real indirect scandal. Actions that give real indirect scandal are not ipso facto intrinsically wrong. Sometimes they are morally permissible. The principle of double-effect can never morally justify an intrinsically wrong kind of act, and we must judge on a case-by-case basis whether acts that are good or indifferent in themselves are morally permissible whenever we foresee the possibility or probability of unintended evil consequences. This kind of analysis is typical for treatments of real indirect scandal covered in traditional Catholic manuals of moral theology. If all acts that give real indirect scandal were ipso facto wrong in themselves, such manuals would not apply the principle of double-effect to such acts.

Catholic moral theology helps us to understand clearly what Fiducia Supplicans both is and is not teaching. Consider by analogy the famous trolley problem solved by the principle of double-effect. Judith Jarvis Thomson rejected this solution and argued that there is no moral difference between actively causing a person’s death and merely permitting a person’s death in diverting a runaway trolley away from five other people and thus necessarily toward that one person.⁹ Ironically, critics of Fiducia Supplicans who argue that there is no moral difference between directly causing scandal and merely permitting scandal by blessing a couple in an irregular union for a sufficient reason are making the same mistake as Judith Jarvis Thomson. There is in fact a moral difference between directly causing and merely permitting, which the traditional doctrine of double-effect recognizes and conserves.

As faithful Catholics, we must defend the authentic papal magisterium as a matter of principle. Such a defense is essential for maintaining Catholic unity. Every Catholic must be concerned about maintaining unity through religious submission to authentic papal magisterial doctrine. For this reason, we must assent to Fiducia Supplicans and assist others in doing so. Pope Francis has the authentic magisterial authority to guide the faithful in such matters, and in order to remain faithful we must trust and submit to his pastoral guidance, regardless of our personal opinions or inclinations. All people are morally permitted by natural law to foresee the potential of giving indirect scandal in a particular act that is morally good or indifferent in itself and to apply the principle of double-effect to justify performing that act for a proportionate reason. The evil effect is only permitted; it is foreseen but unintended. We are not always morally obligated to avoid foreseen evil effects. This is simply the traditional solution to the moral problem of the indirect voluntary. Thus we do not always have a moral duty to avoid acts that we think will give indirect scandal. Everyone is capable of understanding this traditional moral principle. It is true ceteris paribus that we ought to avoid appearances of evil and avoid giving indirect scandal, but such a moral duty does not apply unconditionally, and the principle of double-effect often justifies such acts. Pope Francis has implicitly invoked this traditional moral principle in his analysis of informal blessings of couples in irregular unions, and he has the magisterial authority to do so.

In accord with Donum Veritatis,¹⁰ we should also emphasize that merely having personal difficulties with a non-infallible magisterial doctrine or directive and personally believing that it is false or imprudent does not constitute dissent. After all, we are here talking about the act of giving religious assent or submission to a magisterial doctrine that admittedly is possibly false, so such an act of internal assent or submission does not entail believing that the doctrine is absolutely true. Indeed, religious submission of intellect and will is a kind of internal assent that is compatible with personally believing that a non-infallible magisterial doctrine is false or unclear. It is logically possible for the Catholic faithful to assent or submit to a doctrine which they personally suspect is false or unclear but nevertheless accept as magisterial and obligatory. A non-infallible doctrine is not guaranteed to be true just by being magisterial. The term “assent” may mean to believe to be true, or it may mean to accept as authoritative and obligatory.

We therefore need to distinguish between those two senses of the term. The refusal to assent to non-infallible magisterial doctrine has two forms: a person may simply find himself or herself personally unable to believe that a non-infallible doctrine is true, or a person may hold that he or she is not personally bound to adhere to the doctrine because it is not infallible and thus does not have an obligatory character. In the latter case, the person believes that the Catholic faithful are “totally free to raise doubts or reject the non-infallible teaching of the magisterium, particularly in the case of specific moral norms,” typically with the goal of “making a contribution to the development of doctrine” (Donum Veritatis 33). Only the latter case is necessarily an instance of dissent. If people simply find themselves psychologically unable to believe that a non-infallible magisterial doctrine is true, they are not ipso facto in dissent. A person can have some prudential reservations about non-infallible magisterial documents such as Fiducia Supplicans without being in dissent, just as a person can have some prudential reservations about the documents of Vatican II without being in dissent. Dissent is an act that assumes a false theory of freedom and then denies the obligation of the faithful to adhere to a magisterial doctrine and to accept it as authoritative, as if it were not binding on anyone who happens to have prudential reservations about it or suspects that it is false or unclear.

In that specific sense, consistency requires us to affirm that the faithful are not permitted to dissent from Fiducia Supplicans, just as they are not permitted to dissent from Humanae Vitae or the documents of Vatican II, even though they may have some personal reservations about these doctrines and directives. The point of Fiducia Supplicans was related to the preceding magisterial call for contextual moral theology in Ad Theologiam Promovendam, which grants that particular circumstances often determine what ought or ought not to be done, but without thereby relativizing intrinsically evil acts or compromising universal moral precepts. Some circumstances and contexts require greater precautions than others do, and the moral judgments of some people will be more or less strict than the moral judgments of others in the same circumstances or contexts. A disagreement about how best to apply Fiducia Supplicans in various circumstances and contexts does not constitute dissent from it so long as we are not universalizing or absolutizing our personal assessment of what is morally required in a particular case of permitting or forbidding indirect scandal, and then regarding our judgment as obligatory or binding on others.

Fiducia Supplicans adheres to the legitimate magisterial standard of contextuality without compromising any moral precepts. Indeed, leaving pastoral decisions about informal blessings of couples in irregular unions up to individual bishops, priests, and deacons in particular contexts, cultures, and circumstances seems to be one of the main goals of the DDF document. Some bishops, priests, and deacons will be more conservative than others in the evaluation of the circumstances and the estimation of the proportion required to justify such a blessing according to the principle of double-effect. That contextual outcome is exactly what the DDF document anticipated and facilitated. Such local pastoral applications are acceptable and should not be misconstrued as acts of dissent. It is long past time for us to stop criticizing and infighting and to direct our attention instead to evangelization and works of mercy and charity. May God bless all the deliberations and practical endeavors of our Catholic pastors and keep all the faithful confident in their divinely ordained leadership in the communion of the Holy Spirit.