Discernment is a key attribute in protecting doctrinal integrity, in safeguarding the innocent and in guiding the Church’s synodal path, Pope Francis has told members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Source: Crux.
Discernment also is needed to fight against “abuses of every kind,” the Pope said on Friday during an audience with the cardinals, bishops, priests and laypeople who were taking part in the doctrinal congregation’s plenary assembly.
“The Church, with God’s help, is resolutely pursuing the commitment to render justice to the victims of abuse perpetrated by its members, applying its canonical legislation with particular care and rigour,” he said.
“Judicial action alone cannot suffice to stem the phenomenon,” the Pope said, “but it is a necessary step toward re-establishing justice, repairing the scandal and reforming the offender.”
Thanking the members for their service “in promoting and protecting the integrity of Catholic doctrine on faith and morals,” the Pope said the congregation’s work also must be guided by the recognition of “the dignity of every human person”.
“In our time, marked by so many social, political and even health-related tensions, there is a growing temptation to consider the other person as a stranger or an enemy, denying him or her real dignity,” he said.
In protecting human dignity, the doctrinal congregation can help create the “necessary condition for fraternity and social friendship to be realised among all the peoples of the earth”.
Christians need to learn the art of discernment to deal with “new and complex questions” and offers of forms of spirituality that “do not always find their point of reference in the Gospel,” the Pope said.
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Doctrine must be safeguarded by discernment, faith, pope says (By Junno Arocho Esteves, CNS via Crux)
