So what we want is Balance. And we got it from Papa Ratzinger:
"The human being will be capable of respecting other creatures only if he keeps the full meaning of life in his own heart. Otherwise he will come to despise himself and his surroundings, and to disrespect the environment, the creation in which he lives. For this reason, the first ecology to be defended is 'human ecology'. That is to say that, without a clear defence of human life from conception until natural death; without a defence of the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman; ... we will never be able to speak of authentic protection of the environment."
Some of the writings of the current Roman Pontiff could be read with the help of such a hermeneutic; for example Laudato si (ex. gr. paragraphs 118; 120; 155).
A Hermeneutic of Continuity, involving the reading of Bergoglio's many, long, straggling, incoherent and opaque statements against the background of the Regula Fidei succinctly established in so many areas by his two greater predecessors, would sift out the idiosyncratic dross from the Papal Magisterium. I do not mean to diminish the binding force of the Magisterial statements of all the Pontiffs over two millennia; but the last two popes were manifestly engaging with a 'modern' world recognisable as the world of Bergoglio, so that a claim of "changed circumstances" could have little plausibility.
No plausibility whatsoever, despite the false assertion from the ecclesial hit-man Cdl. Maradiaga, who claims that 2000 years of sacramental teaching must be cashiered, because they don't apply to the new society, and that none of the pathologies of contemporary society were visible 30 years ago.
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