Fiducia Supplicans: an exercise in smoke and mirrors, where spin becomes substance and appearance reality

St John Henry Newman once considered the possibility of the crisis that would emerge if a Church council or a pope introduced a doctrine that contradicted a previous council or a pope. It would shatter the notion of doctrinal development.

At first sight the recent document Fiducia Supplicans suggests that this might have happened. Commentators have been trying to square its content with the previous declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 2021 that it was not licit to bless homosexual relationships.