LifeSiteNews interview on the ‘Death Penalty’ address of Pope Francis with Dr. Josef
Seifert, founding rector of the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein.
October 20, 2017
Read report here: Scholars raise concerns over Pope Francis remarks on how doctrine
develops
LifeSiteNews: Can there ever be a "new understanding" of Christian truth that
is contrary to a previous understanding?
Seifert: Of course not, if we speak of a true understanding and not just of a new
opinion. If it is true that Jesus Christ is true God and true man, which the Church
has defined as dogma in the first Nicean Council, as revealed by God, this can
never change or become untrue. Of course, a “new understanding” in the form of
the Arian heresy could develop that denies this truth, but this “new understanding”
of Christ, contrary to the Gospels and teaching of the Church, can never become
true nor can it constitute a “development of doctrine”. The Arian denial of the true
divinity of Jesus Christ is precisely this: heresy, an enormous error directed against
the two most central dogmas of the Holy Trinity and the incarnation of the GodMan. Relativizing, obscuring or denying them can never be a “development of
doctrine”.
Or if the eternal natural law tells us and Holy Scripture in countless passages
implies that acts such as adultery, homosexual acts, rape, perjury, condemning
consciously an innocent to death, and countless others are intrinsically evil and
must not be committed under any circumstances, this cannot develop such that its
negation would now become true or that the moral teaching of the Church could
“develop” into the new “understanding” that none of these acts are always wrong or
that there are no general rules that determine whether a whole class of acts is
morally wrong, which would amount to the denial of intrinsically wrong acts and
would totally contradict the essence of moral goodness, the divine commandments,
the Holy Scripture, and the dogmatic teaching of Veritatis Splendor, and other
encyclicals of St. Pope John Paul II. See the excellent article here.
Or if the Gospel and the Church in several dogmatic declarations have taught that
the unrepentant sinner who has committed freely and consciously mortal sins will
go to hell which is an eternal punishment, it cannot suddenly become true that
there is no hell and that the souls of the wicked will be annihilated instead of going
to a place of eternal punishment. That is not a new interpretation but a heresy. And
so it is with all other truths handed down to us by the Gospels and Church
teachings.
If something is a matter of changeable commandments of the Church such as that
you should not eat meat on Friday, this could, and has, changed. But also this
never can mean a change of truth. It remains true that once it has been forbidden
and now is not anymore.

 Likewise, the claim that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong and that the Gospel
and the Church rejected it always, is a “new understanding” opposite both to
historical and Scriptural evidence. If one were to discuss the question of the
intrinsic wrongness as such (not church-historically) and claimed that our new
understanding is superior to the Word of God itself, one would sit in judgment over
Scripture and claim that our understanding of truth is superior to that of the Bible.
Can even a Pope make such a claim? One thing is certain: Claiming an intrinsic
wrongness of death penalty contradicts many passages in The Holy Scripture and
several Church teachings about death penalty of the ordinary Magisterium of
Popes, some even accompanied by anathemas. (I personally have some doubts
whether each and every anathema uttered by a Pope over an opinion, makes this
opinion a heresy and whether all anathemas are valid or infallibly exclude a person
from the community of the Church. For example, if a Pope anathematized the
whole city of Florence, because its Prince went to war against the Papal army, was
this valid? Hence if a Pope anathematizes (as it happened) everybody who denied
that it is right to burn heretics, does this make such a denial a heresy? Is this
statement of the Pope concerned with a “grave matter of doctrine or morals” which
is one of the conditions for pronouncing a dogma. What seems evident is that both
the Old and the New Testament are full of texts that approve death penalty in some
cases.
Even St. John Paul II, who leaned towards rejecting death penalty totally (as his
friend and disciple Tadeusz Styczeî did), and only emphasized the protective
function of the death penalty in some circumstances which today practically never
exist, never said that imposing the death penalty is intrinsically and always wrong.
Also, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states its legitimacy in some
circumstances. Hence, obviously, all these Papal teachings of 2000 years refute the
historically wrong claim that “the Church always rejected death penalty” or
“regarded it as intrinsically wrong”. Moreover, its categorical rejection as intrinsically
wrong by a present Pope and its defense by previous Popes and Councils cannot
both be true or be a development of doctrine, because they contradict each other.
LifeSiteNews: What is the deposit of faith?
Seifert: This signifies the treasure of revealed truth, as contained in the Holy
Scripture, in the oral tradition preserved since apostolic times, and in the dogmas
declared by the Church as well as in the oral tradition of the contents of this
depositum fidei. It can also be defined thus:
“The Deposit of Faith is the body of saving truth entrusted by Christ to the
Apostles and handed on by them to be preserved and proclaimed. Jesus ordered
them to teach the nations "everything I have commanded you" and assured them
"know that I am with you always, until the end of the world." (Mt 28:18-20).  The
metaphor of a "deposit" suggests that this teaching is an inexhaustible treasure,
that rewards reflection and study with new insights and deeper penetration into the

 mystery of …God's plan for saving mankind. Although the Church's understanding
of this teaching can and does develop, it can never be augmented in substance.”
And of course it cannot change.
LifeSiteNews: Is the deposit of faith something static, or can it be added to? 
Seifert: Since the general divine revelation ended with the death of the last apostle,
there can be nothing added to it that would be binding to believe by all Catholics. In
this sense it is static, not only because truth can never change but also because
God chose that the general divine revelation ended with the death of the last
apostle. This does not exclude that ever new treasures may be discovered in this
deposit of faith, nor does it exclude that God can reveal, in private revelations, such
as in Fatima, events, requests of our Lady, etc. that are not part of the general
revelation.
LifeSiteNews: What is doctrine? 
Seifert: Doctrine is primarily the official and infallible teaching of the Church of what
God infallibly revealed in Sacred Scripture itself or in His oral teachings preserved
in the oral tradition of the Church. In this sense, doctrine is solemn Church teaching
on divinely revealed truths. And in this primary sense, the doctrine of the Church is
infallibly true, be it through the general infallibility of the Church as a whole, to
which each Catholic, through the grace of faith and the sensus fidelium (sensus
fidei) can gain some access, be it more explicitly through dogmatic formulations by
Councils or by Popes who define this doctrine with precision and clearly. Even more
properly speaking, the universal ordinary magisterium, if it is in complete
agreement with the faith of the Church since apostolic times and with Holy
Scripture, possesses the gift of infallibility. In this sense, many have argued, rightly,
I believe, that the teaching of Humanae Vitae, though not dogmatically pronounced,
is infallible Catholic doctrine.
In a wider and less precise sense, one could also call any pronouncement of the
Pope or of a council “ordinary Magisterium” and call it “doctrine,” but this is not to
be recommended because in all of these can be errors and the name “Catholic
doctrine” should be restricted to the truth.
LifeSiteNews: How does doctrine genuinely develop?
Seifert: It can develop genuinely in different ways: by the Church expressing clearly
in dogmas revealed truths which have been always believed by the faithful, but
which, in times of confusion and error, need to be clearly expressed such as in the
dogma of Jesus Christ being wholly God from eternity, and wholly man in time, and
that the same person is both the Second person of the most Holy Trinity and man,
without separation and at the same time without confusion of the divine and the
human nature. Or the dogma of Mary being truly “the Mother of God”. She is of

 course neither a person of the Trinity, as the Koran attributes mistakenly to the
Christian faith, nor is she mother of God’s divinity as such, but by being mother of
the same person who remained eternally God but became man in time and was
born of the Virgin Mary, she is truly the mother of God. In this way the doctrine of
the Gospels developed by being rendered in a more precise and clear language,
for example, through the dogmas of the Councils of Ephesus and of Chalcedon.
The development of doctrine can also refer to something else. It can mean revealed
truths that were not laid down in the sacred Scriptures themselves but only handed
down through the Sacred oral tradition of the Church. Being nowhere fixed in
written form, some of these doctrines have been denied even by great doctors of
the Church and thus were not explicitly held by all faithful. Thus their being fixed in
a dogma constitutes a development of doctrine in another sense. For example the
Immaculate conception was denied by St. Thomas, affirmed and defended by
Blessed Duns Scotus, and defined as dogma only six centuries later. This dogma,
declared by Pius IX, or that of the bodily assumption of Mary solemnly defined by
Pope Pius XII, a Catholic is obliged to give his assent to. The truth of these two
Marian dogmas, however, are only “shyly intimated” in the Holy Scripture but could
both be identified in the tradition of the Church (especially of the Fathers), and
logically derived from revelation. Such a legitimate logical deduction of doctrine was
expressed in the formula with which Blessed Duns Scotus summarized his defense
of the Immaculate Conception, that Mary was conceived free of original sin and
remained free of any personal sin prior to Jesus’ death on the Cross. Scotus won in
Paris the solemn dispute with the Thomists about the Immaculate conception and
summarized his defense in a kind of logical deduction of the Immaculate
Conception from the premises that God was able to exempt Mary from all sin in
view of the future redemption, and that this was the most fitting thing to do: potuit,
decuit, ergo fecit.
In this sense also the declaration in the first Vatican Council that human reason can
know the existence and some attributes of God with certainty, was a development
of doctrine in the sense that what the Old Testament and what St. Paul taught in the
letter to the Romans was solemnly declared as a philosophical truth that is at the
same time revealed by God. In this case, the dogma was declared in order to reject
the many philosophical errors that denied this truth of a natural and rational
knowledge of God.
The same is true of the moral teaching of the Church about the intrinsece malum in
Veritatis Splendor. As a matter of fact, each solemn Church Teaching and dogma
constitutes a “development of doctrine” in this sense, not as if the doctrine changed
or something not revealed by God prior to the last apostle’s death would now be
added and “developed” but in the sense of greater explicitly, clarity, precision,
consciousness.
LifeSiteNews: Is it true that doctrine cannot be tied to an interpretation that is
immutable? 

 Seifert: First off, a doctrine is not the same as its interpretation. And if a doctrine of
the Church is presented to the faithful as true and binding, of course its truth, like
any truth, is immutable.
An interpretation of a doctrine can mean – without changing its content – explaining
it better, adding other truths, relating it to the Scripture, etc. And as long as these
interpretations do not change, deny or reject the truth of the doctrine, they can be
like sermons on the doctrine and be different in each interpreter but of course they
must never contradict the doctrine or each other to be adequate interpretations.
Therefore, as soon as you speak of “changing interpretations” and attribute them to
the Holy Spirit, such as denying the doctrine of original sin, claiming that all children
are born in the state of grace without being baptized, or denying the dogma of the
reality and eternity of hell, or rejecting the existence of intrinsically wrong human
acts by claiming that there are no general rules according to which some actions
are objectively, by their nature and end, morally wrong, you misuse the word
“interpretation” calling denials of doctrine “new interpretations”.
Since many of these “new interpretations” opposite to the clear doctrines of the
Church are attributed to Pope Francis or seem to be expressed by him in
documents, sermons, or Interviews, we can only hope that Pope Francis clarifies
soon that he means something entirely different from what the “ordinary Catholic
public” is led to understand to be his “new interpretations”.
Let us hope and pray that Pope Francis will no longer let the dubia Cardinals and
other concerned Catholics wait for an answer but promptly pronounce Catholic truth
in its whole splendor and thus reassure the concerned and afraid flock of the
faithful that he, as successor of St. Peter and representative of Christ, truly is the
rock on which Christ has built his Church.