Breaking: Britain's Leading Theologian: reform canon law to allow pope’s doctrinal errors to be established.

The Catholic Herald reports Fr Aidan Nichols, a prolific author who has lectured at Oxford and Cambridge as well as the Angelicum in Rome, says that Pope Francis’s exhortation Amoris Laetitia has led to an “extremely grave” situation.

Grave enough for the top theologian in the country to call for the re-writing of canon law to include a juridical process to correct papal errors!!

Such a process would “dissuade popes from any tendency to doctrinal waywardness or simple negligence”, and would answer some “ecumenical anxieties” of Anglicans, Orthodox and others who fear that the pope has carte blanche to impose any teaching. “Indeed, it may be that the present crisis of the Roman magisterium is providentially intended to call attention to the limits of primacy in this regard.”

In other words – because of Pope Francis' approach, it appears to the orthodox and Anglicans and others that the pope can change anything, even if it contradicts previous teaching and Sacred Scripture.

Fr Nichols said that bishops’ conferences had been slow to support Pope Francis, probably because they were divided among themselves; but he said that the Pope’s “programme would not have got as far as it has were it not the case that theological liberals, generally of the closet variety, have in the fairly recent past been appointed to high positions both in the world episcopate and in the ranks of the Roman Curia.” 

Fr Nichol's has shown great courage in speaking out about this. Will his words result in some real momentum towards a proper correction of Pope Francis? We will have to wait and see. What is clear is that there is a serious problem, and Pope Francis does not seem interested in addressing it at all.