‘Fiducia Supplicans’: Can the Catholic Church calm the controversy?
THE Catholic Church has always been a controversial and schematic church due to its controversial declarations and the doctrine of papal infallibility. In Catholic Church there is no democracy, the Pope’s word is final and anyone who challenges him is challenging the Holy Spirit and the theology of the Catholic Church is that, there is one sin that is not forgivable and that is the sin again the Holy Spirit. Challenging the Pope’s authority is tantamount to insulating the Holy Spirit and its unforgivable sin and the member faces expulsion from the church.
The December 18 Declaration, known by its Latin title Fiducia Supplicans (Supplicating Trust) has been untimely announced. It came at a time when Catholic Church is being ditched for Pentecostal and African Independent Churches. The church is currently with fissures emanating from charismatic theology and the Super Roma gaining momentum.
The controversy in the Catholic Church at a certain point in time stopped history. The historians failed to significantly find anything worth recording hence the term dark ages. During the early Catholicism, the history stopped due the two key aspects: the fall of Rome whose myths said it housed the angels of God, the iconoclastic and the investiture dispute where the Church had become immoral and worldly. The history of immoral theological position can be traced back to this period.
It is no longer news when the Pope continues to issue controversial Papal decrees which unfortunately are immune to any form of challenge. During the “dark ages” there was high anticipation of Parousia, meaning the end of the world. The Catholic Church strongly believed that the fall of Rome was the end of the world which proved to be a theological lie.
In 1054, the Church has a serious split commonly referred to as the 1054 schism. Again, Luther had written 95 thesis challenging the controversial Catholic doctrine, and the papal infallibility caused the formation of the splinter groups Lutheran Church, Anglican, among others. We are dealing with an adamant Church void of democracy and rule of law which they are too vocal that Member states must practice.
The Catholic Church also made a very controversial doctrine of discovery, which authorised slave trade and colonisation of the world. It is not member states that came up with the idea of colonisation and slave trade, but it is the Catholic Church. It is an undisputed fact that is glaring on the Internet.
The missionaries, world over, played a key role in facilitating colonisation because it was part of the Papal decree to conquer and colonise. The world was made to understand that it was a will of God that slave trade, colonisation, and conquest took place. The history of human rights violations by states is traced back to the Catholic Church. In fact, the Doctrine of Discovery influenced the USA Constitution to date. It was never an organic policy by any Western world. Whilst Catholic doctrine of discovery influenced USA conquest policy, the Anglican Church influenced the Monarch in Britain.
The formation of the African Initiated Churches was a result of protest over Catholic Church’s involvement in colonisation, land grab which started during the investiture controversy era, and racial segregation where the liturgy was purely English and Latin. No black person could either be a nun or a priest during the time in question. The African independent churches won their fight in 1962 when the Vatican 11 declaration was made. The doctrine saved the church from extinction. Since then, black involvement has been witnessed and Catholic Church’s theology was localised, indigenised, enculturated and it became orthopraxis theology. This became appealing to locals who now felt the sense of belonging in the foreign churches.
In the late 90s, another theological controversy started, that is, the role and position of speaking in tongues, which is known as charisma. In most parts of Africa, the Catholic Church, in some ecclesia, became charismatic because the bishops wanted to prevent its members who were leaving the church in search of charismatic in Pentecostal and African independent churches. The Roman Catholic Church to date is subtly a splited Church as a result of charismatic doctrine, which is not sanctioned by the Pope, hence its still viewed as heresy. The Catholic Church is trying by all means to tone it down.
Post 2000, the Catholic Church began to be hit but a series of lawsuits. The priests, especially in Europe, were accused of sodomy and some cases received justice while others were swept under the carpet. The 18 December 2023 Declaration that allowed the Church to bless the same sex marriages should be viewed systematically and dialectically. Is it not a cover-up or a genuine desire to respect people’s fundamental sexual rights. This doctrine will kill the already dwindling Church that is continuing to be ditched by its members.
It is no longer clear whether this declaration and future declarations by the Vatican are Church or state pronouncements. But whatever the case might be, the Catholic Church will soon be a ghost church. The aura of religiosity has diminished significantly, especially after this latest declaration. There are two options left to review it or the end of the Catholic Church, especially in Africa.