News from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith

The walls of the Palace of the Holy Office will have to be pushed back since the appointment of the new consultors of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) was announced on September 23, 2024, in the Bulletin of the Holy See Press Office.

Twenty men and eight women have been chosen to support Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the DDF, in his task of “the promotion and protection of the doctrine of faith and morals,” as stated in the official profile of what was once the most important Dicastery in the entire Roman Curia.

However, the backgrounds of the new consultors are not without question: first and foremost, that of Bishop Antonio Staglianò, President of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, a prelate who has made a name for himself with a series of books devoted to an unconventional popular theology, dubbed pop theology, which aims to present the Church's teaching “in contemporary language,” as he himself claims.

Catholic essayist Stefano Fontana believes that “The backbone of the new Consultors is made up of theologians who have always contested John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis splendor; prepared and supported the novelties of Amoris laetitia; [...] affirm that Humanae vitae is reformable.” In this document, promulgated in 1968, Paul VI recalled several elements of the Church's traditional teaching on conjugal morality.

Noting the presence of Aristide Fumagalli and Maurizio Chiodi, Stefano Fontana adds that these two men played a key role in “liquidating John Paul II's teaching on these topics, transforming at the root the physiognomy of the Institute he brought about and which bore his name.”

Giacomo Canobbio is also one of the newly promoted: this renowned academic advocates for an evolution in Church governance, where power would be exercised like in a democracy...

As noted by the religious news website La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana [Daily Compass], the new consultors “are perfectly in line with the synodal demands of the neo-Church, they talk a lot about conscience and discernment assigning to it the same importance that natural and divine law plays in moral life, they reject the concept of natural law thinking of it at most as a sedimentation of the many historically successive acts of discernment.”

Meetings of the consultors will normally be held on a weekly basis. The questions handled and the opinions of the consultors are examined by the members of the DDF, with a deciding vote. Their decisions are then submitted to the Holy Father for approval during a special audience.

With such a profile, the DDF has not likely finished causing controversy in the Catholic world.