from an article in America on the new encyclical from Pope Francis, Rejoice and Be Glad
“We cannot claim that our way of understanding this truth authorizes us to exercise a strict supervision over others’ lives,” he writes, reminding believers that “in the Church there legitimately coexist different ways of interpreting many aspects of doctrine and Christian life; in their variety, they ‘help to express more clearly the immense riches of God’s word.’”
“For those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance,” he says, “this might appear as undesirable and leading to confusion.”
He insists, however, that “doctrine, or better, our understanding and expression of it, is not a closed system, devoid of the dynamic capacity to pose questions, doubts, inquiries… The questions of our people, their suffering, their struggles, their dreams, their trials, and their worries, all possess an interpretational value that we cannot ignore if we want to take the principle of the incarnation seriously.”