Madam, - Brian Hickey insists that no Pope can reinterpret the "deposit of faith", while Joe Foyle once again insists that everyone's conscience is captive to the catechism (May 13th). It is basically the same argument: there is an unchanging and unchangeable certitude in the official teaching of the Catholic Church.
Why, then, did the papacy still hold galley slaves chained to their oars in 1799, although the the Catholic hero of the anti-slavery cause, Bartolomeo de las Casas, had died over three centuries earlier? Was Bartolomeo wrong and were all the popes who defended slavery right?
In 416 St Augustine wanted to find a justification for the use of state power to crush the Donatists in North Africa. He found it in the parable of the man who sent his servants to find guests for his son's wedding, with the order "compel them to come in". This formula became the justification for the Inquisition, which Pope Innocent IV authorised to use torture in 1252.
Is Augustine's misinterpretation of St Luke's gospel part of a fixed "deposit of faith"? Of course not - because Vatican II stated the contrary principle of religious freedom, a principle the church now needs to defend the rights of Catholics in Vietnam and China. It wouldn't be in Joe Foyle's beloved Catholic Catechism otherwise.
At any given time official Church teaching is stated by fallible human beings, who, too often in the Church's history, have been drawn from social élites. It is the free conscience of individuals that eventually enables the Church to grow past the moral myopia of any given era. - Yours, etc,
SEAN O'CONAILL, Greenhill Road, Coleraine, Co Derry.