I found your previous comment chain on the matter, in which you conflated Catholicism and Conservatism, the second of which I'm sure you have your own personal definition, as there is no Conservative church that decides on doctrine.
Catholic social teaching, which this encyclical is grounded on, has it's roots in Rerum novarum (1891) by Leo XIII (the Pope's namesake) and it dealt with the changing conditions of people due to the industrial revolution. We are potentially in the midst of another revolution (I suspect it will be less significant the the IR), so it is prudent of the church to develop a house view.
I mean, the commenter you're responding to has assumed the position of sedevacantism, so I don't think you're going to be able to justify Vatican 2 to them from first principles. :)
The Second Vatican Council movement has had "popes" that seem to directly attack previous Catholic teaching; I expect this will resolve to the council being rejected as a false council like the "robber council" of Second Council of Ephesus, as well as the papal claimants being declared invalid or "not popes" since that time.
The analogy would be like if, since the world cup of soccer is going on, FIFA had a meeting and decided every goal was worth 3 points instead of 1 point. Some people might accept that this is "true soccer" and some "legitimate change to the game". Others would denounce the organization and set up their own leagues to preserve "traditional soccer", and declare the FIFA leadership has no "true authority", and that the meeting deciding on 3 goals has no "binding authority" on "true soccer fans". Something like that has happened.
Section 20 of the new "encyclical" reads:
> The Second Vatican Council expressed this principle with particular precision in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, whose sixtieth anniversary we remembered and celebrated with gratitude on 7 December 2025: “If by the autonomy of earthly affairs is meant that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values… then the demand for autonomy is perfectly in order.” [10]
I don't believe this is the former Catholic teaching on "autonomy"; man is not "autonomous" but subject to God's laws. Autonomy would be a "license to sin": you could set your own "law" that it is ok to do this or that thing contrary to Catholic teaching. This is therefore the wrong understanding of "autonomy", and they are ambiguous about what they mean by "true autonomy" (which would be a "freedom within limits"; much like in Genesis, Adam and Eve had total liberty to eat from whatever tree, except for that of the tree which yielded "forbidden fruit").
I believe the document contains more errors like this, continuing this heretical movement of modernism.
GS 36 is just reaffirming Aquinas and his doctrine of primary and secondary causality. Primary cause being God is the source of all being and sustains everything, secondary cause being that God created a universe where created things have real, intrinsic causal powers. A fire burns because it has the natural property to, not because God is directly performing an action to burn the wood.
"enjoy their own laws and values" is affirming that the natural world has an objective structure that can be studied on its own terms. Denying that autonomy is occasionalism, which is a heretical view that created things have no real power or nature of their own.
Genisis supports the statement about autonomy. Adam is given the task to subdue the earth, name the animals. To name them means to understand their specific natures. God did not dictate the names, he left that to Adam's human intellect. That's exactly what Gaudium et Spec refers to. Humans utilize their reason to discover the laws of creation and organize human society. We have genuine liberty within the overreaching metaphysical boundries.
Here's the issue: the documents are deliberately vague, so for many years it's been said they can be read "through the light of Tradition" to mean things like you say which sound "traditional".
However, the documents themselves do not speak clearly in a traditional way, but must be evaluated as "objectively ambiguous".
Consider some teaching could be of three options: clearly Catholic, ambiguous, or clearly non-Catholic; what category are we to put ambiguous statements in, if we collapse this to either "clearly Catholic" or "clearly not Catholic"?
It seems they must be considered as "clearly non-Catholic" then, since they cannot be in the category of "clearly Catholic". Or else ambiguous teachings would have to be considered to be equivalent to clearly Catholic teachings, which makes no sense.
It's kind of like "pass / fail" in school: do we "pass" the ambiguous teachings, or "fail" them? They seem to "fail" when considered rigorously: if we ask - Catholic or not? They are judged as "Not Catholic".
Can even someone claiming to be a pope make something ambiguous into a Catholic statement? It doesn't seem that's possible. Hence, the Vatican 2 statements, being "objectively ambiguous", are judged as "clearly Not Catholic", logically implying a pope could not have taught them.
(This is something of the reasoning process I propose when trying to evaluate these ambiguous statements which defy simple binary categorization; it is an ongoing effort of "research and dialogue")
If you're a Catholic, then the choice of interpretation is clear: you must accept the Pope's interpretation. That's what it means to be Catholic. The Pope is God's representative on Earth. To defy him is to defy God.
The alternative would be to declare him a False Pope and to select an alternative divine representative. Of course, that would make you a heretic. If you ditch the pope as soon as he says something you don't like, you're not much of a Catholic. The Church is not a democracy.
> If you're a Catholic, then the choice of interpretation is clear: you must accept the Pope's interpretation…
cf. Hyperpapalism
Thankfully, Hyperpapalism is a misunderstanding of the role of the teaching-governing authority of the Bishop of Rome, and Catholics can be and remain good Catholics while disagreeing with the Pope on a variety of matters.
Pope John XXII publicly taught erroneously re: death and the Beatific Vision. Jean Gerson threatened to burn him at the stake and in general there was much public resistance, from royalty to common folk.
"Erroneous" is an opinion. Papal doctrine is the word of God until a subsequent pope says otherwise. Jean Gerson is entitled to his opinion, even if speaking that opinion made him a heretic.
> Papal doctrine is the word of God until a subsequent pope says otherwise
No, that’s Hyperpapalism, which is an error.
The Pope does not have the authority-power to transform error into truth, nor can he make “new truths” (of the Faith), whatever that might mean. He does have the solemn duty to faithfully hand on and explain the Apostolic Tradition. In an extra-ordinary act of his office, the Pope can, without error, define the proper understanding of Catholic teaching on a matter of faith or morals.
In the case of John XXII he proposed something false as pertains to Catholic doctrine, repeatedly, in public sermons. He was rebuked for it and recanted before he died. What he taught was not somehow “intermittently true”, it was an error through and through, and it was completely right that his subjects called him out on the matter.
> The Pope does not have the authority-power to transform error into truth,
The problem with your argument is that it is "left as an exercise for the reader" to determine what is actually true. If that were the case, then the Pope, as the representative of God on Earth, serves no purpose: everyone can individually determine what is true and what is an error. That does not agree historically with the role of the papacy.
If everyone has a right to their own interpretation of doctrine, what does the Pope do, and why should anyone listen to him?
Your position that absolute faith in the word of the pope
is a fallacy is itself a self-supporting fallacy, which you hold only because you don't believe in the correctness of the pope.
> he taught was not somehow “intermittently true”
Yes, it was. God would not allow a Pope who spoke in error.
a few comments back, you stated a Catholic must accept the pope's interpretation; I think this is generally true?
The problem here is, we're saying the person who claims to be pope has contradicted past teachings that popes infallibly taught already. So the only way out then would be to consider they were never popes in the first place or else you have the contradiction of a pope taught error or that the pope is not infallible.
For example in Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Liberty) in the Vatican 2 documents it states: "This Vatican synod declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. Such freedom consists in this, that all should have such immunity from coercion by individuals, or by groups, or by any human power, that no one should be forced to act against his conscience in religious matters, nor prevented from acting according to his conscience, whether in private or in public, within due limits."
This is obviously contrary to the Catholic understanding of conscience and coercion - the "due limits" and "religious freedom" are never defined, when they were already somewhat clearly defined.
Hence being ambiguous, we would understand these in themselves to not be Catholic teachings. Consider if someone asked a person if they are a Catholic and they answered "I am a Christian". In itself, their answer does not explain if they are Catholic or not: some Catholics might argue that "only Catholics are Christians" and that the statement could mean "I am a Catholic"; some protestants might argue that "only non-Catholics can be Christians" so that the statement means "I am not a Catholic". Hence, in itself the statement is "objectively ambiguous" - the Vatican 2 statements are of this character, and if you had to categorize them as either "Catholic or not", it seems they would resolve to being considered as "clearly not Catholic". In any event, it seems we would be forced to reject the language as it stands and new documents that are clearer would have to be drawn up and agreed to.
For example, a person does not have the right to declare they have the "religious freedom" to be a "Pirate" and that they are free to steal from other people "conscientiously"; they are allowed to be "coerced" to not steal, if they try to steal.
Regarding John XXII from the other comment, I believe St. Robert Bellarmine in De Romano Pontifice examined all cases of alleged papal heresy and explained why no popes had been heretics. John XXII simply speculated as a private theologian about an issue that had not been defined by the Church yet, hence did not enter in to error in doing so.
Considering the Catholic Church also teaches that ecumenical councils are infallible, if you propose that Vatican II taught error, then you must also reject a church doctrine which predates that council.
ecumenical councils where a pope presides with bishops are infallible (something of what you are saying);
Vatican 2 appears to be such a council but also taught error contrary to teachings of infallibility (seemingly impossible);
The only proposition we can think of as to how Catholicism can be consistent without falling in to contraction with the above facts then, would be to conclude that such a "pope" that taught error could not have been a pope in the first place, but was an heretic who then taught those heresies in a false council
(There are some other arguments about popes who can fall in to error or heresy but they are more speculative)
Thus the OP document about AI we wouldn't expect to be reliable from a Catholic standpoint and it goes out of its way to make all kinds of statements not related to AI which we are also critiquing here in this comment chain
I think the thing here is that if you're simply declaring yourself to be in a different religion than Popes Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV, there's not much to be gained arguing with them. Like, a Zaidi Shia Muslim would also disagree with Vatican II. There's nothing wrong with that. They're just, you know, in a different religion.
Right, so that's initially how I thought this would resolve itself: sedevacantists elect a pope for themselves and just have a separate religion and let the Vatican be (see "conclavism")
Except it doesn't seem to have happened like that and seems to be more in character in my view like the Western Schism, where there was confusion about who the pope was or if there was a pope for 40 years (except this time it's longer and there is added confusion with a false council and false teachings that appear to come straight from the "pope")
Hence I argue since a lot of people seem to think these teachings came "from the Church", there is "legitimate confusion" and more of something where the Vatican will have to be straightened out as reverting to previous norms in order for things to move forward.
It's possible it could resolve in this direction though of just separation (but, from "our" view, all the Catholic churches are practically possessed by a false movement; not unlike the East-West Schism though where half the churches went in a non-Catholic direction)
I'd just say that none of this has much to do with "Catholicism" in the sense that the overwhelming majority of people worldwide mean when they use the term. It's not jarring or problematic or controversial to believe in some adjacent but incompatible Catholic-like religion; at this point we're literally just discussing names.
