ABSTRACT
So in a sense we are facing an ongoing practice. However, recently there has been a shift in the rules of the game relating to this practice, the subtle architecture of the magisterial authorities and the way in which what it presents to the faithful to believe and to hold is described. One can even ask what the priority now is. Is it a particular problem that has to be resolved – contraception, ordination reserved exclusively for males, etc. – and the discernment of the pontifical magisterium on it? Or is it the establishment of a new regulatory system to indicate the obedience due to the official response? If the centre of gravity of the Roman interventions is in fact shifting increasingly from their content to the formal relations between those who hold authority and those who must obey it, must we not see at work here a subtle strategy of immunization aimed at preventing the debate from continuing and disturbing the Christian people, not to mention a way of hiding the weakness of a particular argument? Clearly one would need to examine, case by case, these doctrines proposed ‘definitively’ and evaluate their arguments in order to confirm or disconfirm what is only a suspicion. However, that is not the object of this article. I want, rather, to reflect on the significance of the actual establishment of a new rule of the game, published for the first time in 1989 and recently introduced in the 1983 Code of Canon Law.35 Why this change, and what diagnosis of the historical situation of the church by its supreme authorities does it represent?
