Vatican City, Mar 13, 2018 / 13:12 pm
Promoting and defending Catholic teaching is itself a pastoral practice, said Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
"There is clearly a pastoral dimension," the archbishop said in a Vatican News interview published March 10. "We have the task of promoting and defending the faith, preaching the faith. This is an eminently pastoral role. It involves promoting the Catholic faith so that it is increasingly known and, when there are problems, defending this faith as well."
"Many times I heard Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger and Prefect of the Congregation, say that 'we must defend the faith of simple believers, not the faith of theologians.' They already have their ways of knowing how things are! It seems to me that this is a very valid and correct intuition," Archbishop Ladaria said.
Pope Francis has described the congregation's work as having a "pastoral face."