Regarding Pope Leo’s controversial words and actions this week, many people are either overreacting or underreacting, with both hysterical extremes feeding off of one another. The cycle is routine on social media, and tiresome. The reality, I would say, is this. On the one hand, the impromptu answer the pope gave in response to the question about the Durbin affair was manifestly bad and scandalous. It gave aid and comfort to those who want to minimize the intrinsic and uniquely grave evil of abortion by treating it as merely one of several “life issues,” no more urgent than any other. And in seeming to equate abortion and the death penalty, it gave aid and comfort to those who claim that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong, a position which contradicts scripture and tradition and the adoption of which by the Church would thus undermine her credibility. Even though the pope’s remark was off the cuff and has zero magisterial significance, the average person doesn’t understand that. Popes need to be extremely careful whenever they say anything that touches upon doctrine. It is perfectly legitimate, then, for faithful Catholics respectfully to note the problems with what he said.
On the other hand, it is quite absurd to suppose (as some worried Catholics and critics of the Church alike are doing) that this episode in any way casts doubt on Catholic claims about the papacy. Papal statements are infallible only when they are issued ex cathedra, i.e. when in a solemn act a pope formally declares and defines a doctrine as absolutely binding on all Catholics for all time (or, naturally, when he is simply reiterating something that has already been taught infallibly by the Church, as when he discusses Christ’s divinity or original sin or whatever). Ex cathedra statements are very rare. They don’t typically occur even in official teaching documents like encyclicals or catechisms, and they certainly never occur in off the cuff remarks to reporters. So, the fact that the pope said something bad in such a context, while highly regrettable, has exactly zero relevance to questions about papal infallibility.
It is also rash confidently to conclude that such off the cuff remarks show how Pope Leo is going to teach when he does issue official magisterial documents (which are all that ultimately matter where doctrinal issues are concerned). Yes, it is possible that the documents that emerge from Leo’s pontificate will be problematic in the way some of the documents issued during Pope Francis’s pontificate were (such as Amoris Laetitia, Fiducia Supplicans, and the 2018 change to the catechism). But this is far from certain, and indeed, I doubt it will happen.
Official magisterial documents are of their nature much more cautiously formulated than remarks made in interviews, press conferences, or even homilies and other official public addresses. They are thought through over a long period of time before being promulgated, with multiple people having a hand in composing them, suggesting alterations, and the like. That does not guarantee that they will be unproblematic, as Francis’s pontificate showed. But it does make it more likely that they will be. Much depends on a pope’s personal temperament and vision, and on who he appoints to the DDF. Pope Francis had little patience with theological precision and was keen to shake things up. And, especially later in his pontificate, he appointed people to positions of influence on doctrine who shared these traits.
Pope Leo appears to be different. He seems genuinely concerned to restore to the Church the unity that was damaged during Francis’s pontificate, and he seems to have at least a somewhat more academic temperament. That doesn’t mean everything he says off the cuff is going to be well thought out. He was not trained as a Scholastic theologian, and the era in which he was formed was in general not conducive to producing priests and bishops habituated to thinking in a theologically rigorous way. The effects of that era are, regrettably, going to be with us for some time, until the subsequent generation (whose theological formation was generally better) comes to dominate leadership positions in the Church.
It does suggest, though, that Leo will be more cautious about who he appoints and about what gets issued by way of official magisterial documents. His appointments to offices relevant to doctrine will be much more indicative of the direction of his pontificate than any impromptu remarks. We will see. What is certain is that while respectful criticism has its place, right now the pope needs our prayers more than such criticism.