Doctrine of Discovery

No doubt you have heard about the Pope’s visit to Canada. As part of this event, there were calls to revoke the Doctrine of Discovery. Relevant to this document, I saw this article on the CBC web site.

Note that this article discusses something called a papal bull. A simpler term would be an announcement or a policy statement. Likewise, it uses the term rescind. The word withdrawal or retraction would be more normal. Recall that the church never uses the technique of rescindment. Instead, it uses the principle of supercession, which means replacement. In fact, many of the papal bulls have been replaced.

A good compromise between what people want and what the church provides, would be for the church to publish a list of policy announcements that have been replaced, either in whole or in part. They could accompany it with a list of policy announcements that are still in effect.

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