Whether teaching changes

Has the Church changed its mind?

On what it teaches as revealed, the Church says it has not and cannot: the First Vatican Council condemned the claim that a dogma might one day, as knowledge advances, be given a sense other than the one the Church has understood. Dei Filius 18 On how its teaching is worded, and on judgments that rest on circumstances, it says change is possible, and it has named cases.

Revelation is complete, but “it has not been made completely explicit”, and the Church’s grasp of it grows through study, the experience of believers and the bishops’ preaching. CCC 66; CCC 94 So a dogmatic truth may be “first expressed incompletely (but not falsely)” and later receive “a fuller and more perfect expression”. Mysterium Ecclesiae 5

Not everything is taught at the same weight. What is declared revealed asks the assent of faith; a teaching not given definitively asks “the religious submission of will and intellect”. Donum Veritatis 23 In prudential matters “some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies”, and “only time has permitted discernment”, though the Magisterium is not, for that, “habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments”. Donum Veritatis 24

The death penalty is the case the Church has classified itself. In 2018 the Catechism was revised to call it inadmissible, and the letter to the bishops calls this “an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium”, the older teaching having been formed where it “was more difficult to guarantee that the criminal could not repeat his crime”. Letter to the Bishops Regarding the New Revision of Number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Death Penalty 7; Letter to the Bishops Regarding the New Revision of Number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Death Penalty 8

Usury and slavery are the cases readers bring. In 1745 Benedict XIV condemned, in a loan, “any gain which exceeds the amount he gave”, while allowing gain from titles outside the loan and from “contracts differing entirely from loans”. Vix Pervenit 3 On slavery, Leo XIII listed in 1888 the popes who had condemned it, from a letter of Pius II in 1462. In Plurimis 16; In Plurimis 17 Earlier bulls of 1452 and 1454 had been used to justify enslavement, and in 1866 the Holy Office held that slavery in itself was not contrary to natural and divine law; the Second Vatican Council counted it among the infamies that dishonour the Creator. Wikipedia: Catholic Church and slavery

"The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ." DV 4; cf. I Tim 6:14; Titus 2:13 Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.

Thanks to the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the understanding of both the realities and the words of the heritage of faith is able to grow in the life of the Church: - "through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts"; DV 8 # 2; cf. Lk 2:19, 51 it is in particular "theological research [which] deepens knowledge of revealed truth". GS 62 # 7; cf. GS 44 # 2; DV 23; 24; UR 4. - "from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which [believers] experience", DV 8 # 2. The sacred Scriptures "grow with the one who reads them." DV 8 # 2. - "from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth". St. Gregory the Great, Hom. in Ezek. 1, 7, 8: PL — Patrologia Latina (Migne)D.

Letter to the Bishops Regarding the New Revision of Number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Death Penalty Aug 1, 2018
Donum Veritatis May 24, 1990
Mysterium Ecclesiae Jul 5, 1973
In Plurimis May 5, 1888
Dei Filius Apr 24, 1870
Vix Pervenit Nov 1, 1745

From the Catechism

From the Magisterium