Fr. Hunwicke on Pope Francis’ “Deathgate” UPDATED

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Fr. John Hunwicke’s observations on Pope Francis apparently changing the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on capital punishment.  Hunwicke has not disappointed me.  He rarely does.

First, to my surprise, he posits that the situation might not be quite as bad as I and others have feared.  For the official text of the revised R. C. Catechism has not yet been published.  Hunwicke:

I can't see much point in making substantive comments on the "changes made to the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) on the death penalty" until the new text is published. All I can so far find on the Internet are some vernacular versions.

This, in itself, I object to. The world has been given the impression that the Catholic Church has changed its teaching when nobody has the wherewithal to judge whether or not this is true. I can only call this sort of behaviour in matters of faith and morals disgracefully frivolous. Can it be that PF wants to make an immediate impression on world opinion without giving theological professionals the prior opportunity to weaken by their analyses that impact?

But Hunwicke expects that once the official Latin text is published, capital punishment won’t be so completely “inadmissible” after all. 

By the way, he is very much opposed to capital punishment, yet shares my concern about how this apparent change in teaching has come about.

…such an arbitrary change in a documentary henotikon, in which X has metamorphosed into not-X in a very few years, and without (as far as we know) a detailed collegial consultation with the whole College of Bishops (such as Pius XII conducted before defining the Assumption), leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth. It is because I have been driven to the unhappy conclusion that the present pontificate is manipulative and dishonest, that I wonder if this change in the CCC may be preparing the way for some of Senor Bergoglio's other private opinions and personal convictions to be given spurious Magisterial colouring.

That is my chief concern.  I doubt that Francis will confine himself to capital punishment in arbitrarily changing church teaching.

UPDATE: The official Latin text has been released.  I will comment at a later time.