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The Pope's teaching authority and its limits in the public space
Abstract
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The presentation of the Church as a subject of debate in the public space, anchored in the papal office by a teaching authority that has the potential to influence a wide audience beyond its visible boundaries.
THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The article poses the problem of the authority of papal teaching in the public space and its limitations, resulting from the rules adopted in it. The method used is a critical analysis of sources, using existing studies.
THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The public status of the Church, which excludes the possibility of political activism, provides many opportunities to carry out the religious mission. One of them is to promote Christian axiology outside the confines of the religious community. The authority of the Pope, with the privilege of infallibility, is a value in the ecclesial space, but outside of it it must accept other rules of credibility, developed in secular culture. They constitute a boundary, the crossing of which carries the risk of losing its own identity and fidelity to centuries-old tradition. Secularism, with its different conception of rationality, and pluralism, implying mutual evaluation of participants in the debate and the search for consensus, are difficult for the Church to accept today.
RESEARCH RESULTS: three papal documents of the last fifty years addressing issues important to the public debate: marriage ethics and the regulation of conception, the protection of life from conception to natural death, and the role of men and women in the structure of the Church have used traditional arguments and proposed solutions, without taking into account the demands articulated in the public space.
CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The implemented model of the Church’s presence in the public sphere requires constant evaluation, in the context of the effective promotion of Christian axiology.
Keywords
Church, pope, authority, secularism, pluralism, public sphere
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