the infallible and very fallible

Despite the divergent views about the existence of the infallible pontifical teaching in the encyclical letters, there is one point on which all theologians are manifestly in agreement. They are all convinced that all Catholics are bound in conscience to give a definite internal religious assent to those doctrines which the Holy Father teaches when he speaks to the universal Church of God on earth without employing his God-given charism of infallibility. Thus, prescinding from the question as to whether any individual encyclical or group of encyclicals may be said to contain specifically infallible teaching, all theologians are in agreement that this religious assent must be accorded the teachings which the Sovereign Pontiff includes in these documents. This assent is due, as Lercher has noted, until the Church might choose to modify the teaching previously presented or until proportionately serious reasons for abandoning the non-infallible teaching contained in a pontifical document might appear. [59] It goes without saying that any reason which would justify the relinquishing of a position taken in a pontifical statement would have to be very serious indeed.

http://www.catholicapologetics.info/thechurch/encyclicals/docauthority.htm

How would you know if the Pope ‘s encyclical this Thursday were to come via a special revelation, that is, direct from the divine clouds or from some Hadron atom splitting eighth dimension.  How would we know it, he speaks general truths all the time, admonishing, encouraging, the Dalai Lama does the same thing.  But what if this Thursday the words the world reads actually do come, direct, from God, for us, today? 

Would it, could it, be considered a new revelation?  Of course. And we'd know it.   If it's the same old same old and he has just jazzed things up with new adjectives and so forth, how and why would anyone expect to listen?  How and why would anyone expect to act, save the planet, lets go and reclaim the forest and the sea and the deserts, nature is divine, he says, and we have been exploiting the old globe from day one because another book, Genesis, says we have dominion over everything. 

And the writers of Genesis, and the One who inspired the man, men, women, to jot it all down for us, would they have written anything differently today?  7 billion strong we are, alive in the sixth extinction, we look a little different four thousand years later. And what is different aside from the obvious?  That our ravenous exploitation of earth exacerbates the suffering of the poor. 

I tell ya what I don’t like in this paragraph above is the Church can, if it chooses to, modify the teaching.  The Pope is the pope, modify, sure in hindsight I guess some of the really lame butt popes had to be modified but six hundred years ago the Pope was just a little nuttier and corrupt and was something more than the leader of the church, so I beg forgiveness if distinctions are made between these turkeys and the present pontiff.  The encyclical we read this week cannot be torn up and tossed aside.  It cannot be modified for a pluralistic population, it can’t.  The legitimacy of this man rests in my belief, in my fallible opinion, he communicates closer and more intimately with God than the rest of us. 

The baby pigeons were born today and they look like yellow stained cotton balls.  Mother, father take turns sitting on them.  Soon they will grow up to be ugly machine shitters.  What is their role again in the chain?  Are they food for anyone, cats can’t catch them.  There ain’t no dogs around here.  I rarely see falcons or hawks.  The birds don’t eat insects I see, if they could they’d be eating the cockroaches that are multiplying in my kitchen and they had to come in from outside. 

I graded 32 final exams today, to horrors.  No, the students didn’t do terribly bad, the exam itself was chockful of erroneous errors and complicated irrelevant questions and I left the office begging anyone for high blood pressure medicine.  Three hours later I still have a headache.  I made the right decision to resign.  Even if for some unknown reason I don’t get on a plane and fly two hours north of here in five weeks time, I won’t miss this nuthouse. This is what happens when an ‘English dept’ doesn’t have a testing committee, this is what happens when someone whose English bulls are full of grammar mistakes is allowed to cut and paste an exam worthy only under the birds who nuzzle outside my glass window, surrounded by piles and piles of dry shit, cigarette butts and a pigeon carcass. 

If I spoke Spanish and worked in a Spanish department do you think any native Spanish speakers would let me get away with the kinds of mistakes I had to endure in today’s exam marking?  The students, poor kids, not only is the exam hard, but questions are written so badly, they begin to doubt their ability though they shouldn’t be doubting their ability.  I feel bad for them.  Hey!  Students, I’m behind you, I’ll fight for your rights until it’s time to stop fighting.   

Goodness, I’d like to go to bed now and it’s not even eight.