Madam, - At last, Cardinal Connell has provided a definitive answer to this debate. What is paramount is the guidance of our legal advisers. - Yours, etc,
KEVIN O'SULLIVAN, Ballyraine Park, Letterkenny, Co Donegal.
Madam, - Joseph F. Foyle (January 18th, February 4th) could not be more wrong in his blanket assertion that it is sinful to dissent from papal teaching that is authentic. There is a significant list of teachings from which theologians dissented and for which dissent some were sanctioned; however, subsequently, the dissenting positions were accepted and are now part of standard Catholic teaching. Far from being sinful, such dissent was courageous and beneficial to the Church.
With reference to Humanae Vitae, when Pope Paul VI, who accepted responsibility for that document, was entrusting it to Cardinal Lambruschini to deliver it to the press, he explicitly said: "Please tell them it's not infallible." If the author said that then it is, technically, authentic and one may in good conscience dissent from it.
In the aftermath of the promulgation of the encyclical many bishops' conferences said something similar to what the Belgian Bishops taught in their declaration on Humanae Vitae: "If someone competent in the matter and capable of forming a well-founded judgment - which necessarily supposes sufficient information - after serious investigation, before God, reaches different conclusions on certain points, he/she has the right to follow his/her convictions in this matter, provided that he/she remains disposed to continue his/her investigations."
In saying this the Belgian bishops and others were repeating traditional Catholic teaching on the appropriate response to all authentic teaching emanating from the papacy. The bishops were also, post factum, exercising the teaching responsibility denied them during the council when the Pope reserved the matter to himself. - Yours, etc,
(Fr) PAUL SURLIS, Crofton, Maryland, USA.
Madam, - Please let me quickly correct Brendan Butler's view (February 4th) that "Mr Foyle is subtly threatening all dissenters from Humanae Vitae with hell fire".
For the record, let me say I believe that people of all creeds - secularists included - are on their way to Heaven. Whether our dissent, in principle or in practice, from official Catholic teaching relates to sex, money, testimony or whatever, our concern should, I believe, be with the extent of the "undeniably painful transformation" (the words of Pope Benedict XVI in his December, 2007, Spe Salvi letter) we shall need to after death to enjoy the fullness of Heaven. - Yours, etc,
JOSEPH F. FOYLE, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.