Deacon Keith Fournier

I agree wholeheartedly with my friend Professor Larry Chapp. There comes a point when the desire to avoid disruption risks perpetuating a far more damaging instability: the erosion of confidence in the Church’s doctrinal authority. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith exists to safeguard and articulate the deposit of faith, not to generate further uncertainty about its meaning. The appointment of Fr Thomas Joseph White OP would signal something profoundly important about the direction of this pontificate: that theological precision, intellectual seriousness and fidelity to the Church’s perennial teaching are once again paramount. As Larry rightly observes, this is not fundamentally a question of theological factions. It is about restoring the distinction between authentic doctrinal development and ambiguity masquerading as development. Unity cannot be sustained indefinitely by managing competing interpretations of the truth. Authentic ecclesial unity is founded upon the truth itself. Pope Leo has increasingly supplied the theological clarity the Church so urgently needs in his preaching. The time has come for that clarity to find expression in the governance of the Church.