Pope Francis claims it’s ‘heresy’ not to ‘translate’ Gospel into modern ‘ways of thinking’

[Stone]

In his annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Pope Francis claimed that “true heresy” involved not only “preaching another Gospel” but in neglecting to “translate it into today’s languages and ways of thinking.” [...]

Reiterating his argument for some kind of development of doctrine in “form,” Francis employed the words of Scripture and placed his own interpretation on them, stating:

True heresy consists not only in preaching another gospel (cf. Gal 1:9), as Saint Paul told us, but also in ceasing to translate its message into today’s languages and ways of thinking, which is precisely what the Apostle of the Gentiles did. To preserve means to keep alive and not to imprison the message of Christ.

The Pontiff did not expand on what imprisoning the message of Christ might look like, or how the Roman Curia was to change the “form” of the Gospel while somehow keeping the “substance” the same.

However, he did use the address as a means to promote both the Second Vatican Council and his current Synod on Synodality, both of which marked a key moment of change for the Church, according to Francis.

“What was the Council if not a great moment of conversion for the entire Church?” he asked. “As Saint John XXIII observed, ‘The Gospel does not change; it is we who begin to understand it more fully.’ The conversion that the Council sparked was an effort to understand the Gospel more fully and to make it relevant, living and effective in our time.” [...]

Again, at the root of nearly everything Pope Francis advocates for comes right from the Vatican II playbook, as he himself frequently references. A few pertinent examples, taken from here:

- Vatican II's pastoral teaching always articulates its two basic policy lines and how they are connected, that is:
1) the clerical aggiornamento (or updating) in all of its components to be in line with modern, contemporary culture in all of its forms-humanistic, scientific, technical, artistic, etc.-,
2) the "ecumenical" collaboration of priests and faithful with the so-called "separated brethren," with other religions, with all men, not in order to convert them to the one true faith, but to ally with them on behalf of mankind's progress and unity.


- Vatican II sports an erroneous concept of Sacred Tradition as a complex of teaching, thanks to which as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her (Dei Verbum§8).


- Bishops rather than the Holy See are granted control over the translations of the Holy Bible into the vernacular (SC §36:4; Dei Verbum §25).


-It is ordered that the reading of the Bible during the liturgy be "more abundant, more various, more adaptable," and that all the faithful have a broad direct contact ("broad access") with the Holy text (SC§§35, 51; D7§§22, 25). This order is contrary to all preceding teaching which, as against Protestants and Jansenists, always surrounded this reading of the Bible with prudence because of the notorious difficulty of many of the passages of the Old and New Testaments, in all cases entrusting them to the mediation of the liturgy, catechesis and preaching (Dz 1429, Clement XI in the condemnation of Quesnel, 1507, and Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei).


- The directive to translate the Holy Scriptures in collaboration with "the separated brethren" (DF§22): "And if, given the opportunity and the approval of Church authority, these translations are produced in cooperation with the separated brethren as well, all Christians will be able to use them."


- In Dei Verbum §25,the order to "compose editions of the sacred Scriptures, provided with suitable footnotes, [which] should be prepared also for the use of non-Christians and adapted to their situation."