Dogma "ex voce"

It seems to me that there are certain dogmas or declarations of the Catholic Church that some in the Magisterium wish they could forget about. I'm thinking of declarations like those found in Unam Sanctam (1302),  the Syllabus of Errors, the Council of Florence, etc. These declarations on issues such as the reality and eternality of hell, the necessity of membership in the Church for salvation, the permanent invalidity of Jewish ceremonial law, the condemnation of secular political concepts and many other such un-ecumenical positions stand out to them as embarrassing monuments of a bygone era. I think many in the Church would like to get rid of these declarations, if they could - and I am speaking not only of liberals, but of mainstream, even certain "conservative" members of the hierarchy. These teachings are like antiquated family heirlooms that one can't get rid of but effectively hides by stuffing them in the attic.

Obviously and thankfully, these declarations cannot be gotten rid of. They can be ignored and wished away, but they will not go away. Definitive, infallible ex cathedra statements remain for all time and are irreformable of their very nature. No matter how much any bishop or cardinal would like to contradict or get rid of these dogmatic heirlooms, they cannot.

Yet, though these declarations will not go away, there is a way that the hierarchy has found to get around this problem. I have noticed that, in areas where the modern hierarchy takes vastly different positions than the traditional Church, novel positions are not given to the faithful by means of encyclicals or dogmatic statements, but are found throughout lower-level pronouncements, such as speeches, letters, addresses, bishops' statements etc. By repeating these novel positions again and again in very low-level pronouncements, the faithful get accustomed to hearing certain novelties "from the Church" and over time come to accept them as "Church teaching."

A classic example is the death penalty. Granted, JPII called for a lesser application of the death penalty in Evangelium Vitae; but besides this, most of the very strong words offered against the death penalty have come from bishop's committees, papal speeches, statements and letters and articles in publications like L'Osservatore Romano and on Zenit. Many of these statements condemn capital punishment absolutely, in contradiction to Church teaching and tradition. The Catechism, the official teaching of the Church, of course says that capital punishment is licit and that the state cannot be denied the right to wield it. That is the official teaching and it cannot be altered. But, at every level lower than official teaching, capital punishment is condemned absolutely, and with such frequency that many orthodox Catholics no longer know that capital punishment is allowable. They have heard the voices of the popes and the bishops (in low-level pronouncements) condemn it so much that this erroneous position has effectively become "the Church's teaching," leading to a situation where something other than Church teaching takes the practical place of Church teaching while allowing the contrary and official position to remain in place.

Thus the strategy for "changing" Church teaching seems to be this: If you want to teach something contrary to what the Church has always taught, just do it at low enough levels of authority and eventually people will start to accept your low-level declarations as "Church teaching" if they are trumpeted about long enough.

Let me offer another example: Balthasar's concept of an "empty hell." This idea can in no way be said to be orthodox and (in my opinion) is a very nefarious doctrine. It is condemned by the constant opinion of theologians throughout the ages, who argued not only that hell is real but that people do actually go there - of many private revelations of the saints, especially those of St. John Bosco, Sister Lucia and St. Teresa of Avila, who said that she saw souls falling into hell "like snowflakes." Yet, despite this, we find persons within the heirarchy teaching the Balthasarian empty hell theory, not on the level of official teaching, but in personal letters, books, speeches, etc.

For example, the late Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote in his book New World of Faith, which is meant to be an exposition of Catholic teaching in a way understandable to the modern world, Cardinal Dulles, in his section on hell, mentions Balthasar's theory and gives it credence by citing several arguments in its favor while not providing any arguments against it, thus leading the uninformed reader to suppose that Balthasar's theory is a credible one and on par with the traditional teaching. Only one sentence is given mentioning the teaching of the "Latin theologians from Augustine until recently" while a whole page is given to expound and defend Balthasar's theory. Is this not a veiled way of "teaching" Balthasarian heresy, at least as a hypothesis, without actually teaching it officially?

Cardinal Ratzinger gave Balthasar's theory similar credibility at Balthasar's funeral when, despite Balthasar's novel teaching on hell and his bizarre notion of Christ's atonement, Ratzinger said:

"What the pope intended to express by this mark of distinction [elevation to the Cardinalate], and of honor, remains valid, no longer only private individuals but the Church itself, in its official responsibility, tells us that he is right in what he teaches of the faith" (see here).

This isn't officially teaching the empty hell theory, but it is endorsing it in an unofficial way. The Church's endorsement of Balthasar continues in the elevation of Balthasarians to the cardinalate (Scola, for example).

But this is just one example. My point is that theologians, bishops, cardinals and even popes regularly teach novelties in unofficial organs with such frequency that the faithful mistake these pronouncements for the teaching of the Church. The main reason for this is a confusion between a Church official and official teaching. When an official of the Church speaks, it is taken for granted that what he is speaking is official Church teaching. For example, it usually doesn't occur to people who would read Cardinal Dulles' book that what he is presenting in his section on hell is not the official teaching of the Church but his own opinion; why should they? Dulles is a Cardinal and his book is on Catholic teaching. It is natural that they should make this assumption, just like it is natural that they should assume that what the bishops' say on the absolute prohibition of the death penalty is the Church's official teaching. The conflict between what officials say and what the real teaching of the Church is can lead to much confusion.

Thus, I fear, we have come to a place where instead of taking our bearings by teachings given ex cathedra we are now accustomed to assimilating teaching "ex voce," from statements repeated over and over again in low-level pronouncements. Novelties are put forward as teaching, absurd hypotheses are given credence and things abhorrent to the Christian faith are stated as matter of fact (a great example is Kasper's sloppy Reflections on Covenant and Mission regarding Judaism). Basically, I see a working out of the old dictum that anything repeated long enough is believed. It is really quite disingenuous, because everybody knows that lay people expect to hear official Church teaching from members of the hierarchy - the hierarchy also knows that, if they are using means of communication that are considered "low-level" in their authority, they have much more leeway to introduce their own opinions.

This is what I refer to as the Church's underground or "unofficial" teaching, its ex voce teaching, which is a means of subtly introducing modernist interpretations into the deposit of faith. I'm sorry this post is so sloppy; this concept needs to be thought out more. Maybe some of you can give some insight.

"I wait for thy salvation Lord" (Gen. 49:18).