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I don't mean to be condescending or snippy about this Magisterium definition thing. It's a concept ordinary Catholics don't use every day, and it's abstract so it's easy for any of us to garble.

I myself can get tripped up by mishandling abstract words, for sure.

Here's an example or two which may clarify things, because --- due to having a pope right now whose expressed theological opinions are sometimes bogglingly imprecise and ambiguous --- we're having to debate "meanings" and "levels of authority" which were never considered debatable before.

If you perceive that Pope Francis has been setting off flashbangs all over the Church, you're perceiving right. He's a strangely anti-papal Pope such as we haven't seen for generations, maybe centuries.

So here's one example quite relevant for today:

1. Doctrine: Legitimate civil authorities have from God the lawful authority to justly carry out capital punishment in order to protect society from evildoers.

2. Doctrine: God has not made capital punishment mandatory, e.g. He didn't require the execution of Cain (for murdering Abel), David (for murdering Uriah), or Saul (for murdering the early Christians) so therefore there are at least some circumstances where you don't have to, or even must not, execute murderers.

3. This statement could be a permissible exercise of the Magisterium. "Capital punishment should be carried out very rarely."

4. This statement could be a permissible exercise of the Magisterium. "Capital punishment should not be carried out on women who might possibly be pregnant."

5. This statement could be a permissible exercise of the Magisterium. "Capital punishment should not be carried out on minors."

6. This statement could be a permissible exercise of the Magisterium. "Capital punishment by methods W, X, Y, and Z should never be permitted because they are too cruel and sadistic."

... now, how about these examples:

7. "Capital punishment is inadmissible unless there is absolute moral certainty that the convict is actually actually guilty of this crime, and did it when there was zero question of cognitive deficit or mental/emotional illness."

My opinion? This could be a permissible exercise of the Magisterium, even if it resulted in practically no executions being done ever --- or, say, one per century! --- because of uncertainty of fact.

8. "Capital punishment is inadmissible because the Death Penalty is intrinsically morally wrong: civil authorities have no right, ever, under any circumstances, to carry it out."

I would argue strongly that this could NOT be a permissible exercise of the Magisterium, because it would directly contradict #1, which is a settled doctrine of the Church. It is part of what we call the Ordinary Magisterium.

The reason there's a bunch of controversy right now, about Pope Francis' altering a paragraph of the 1997 Catechism, is because of the ambiguity of the word "inadmissible."

It's an "import" word from civil law; it's not found in any previous Catechism, and it hasn't been clarified whether "inadmissible" here

means "prohibited always, for everyone, everywhere, under all circumstances ,"

or whether it means

"prohibited right now, under present circumstances, but that could change under different, exceptional circumstances."

And here's the kicker:

If it's "a", it can't have any Magisterial authority, even if Pope Francis put it in the Catechism,, because is directly contradicts #1.
it's "b", it's not in the precise form needed for a doctrine, because it doesn't spell out what those "changed", "different", "exceptional" circumstances might be.

So what do we do?

Well, we can petition Pope Francis for a clarification, but he's already notorious for refusing to provide direct answers to direct questions.

That leaves us with an axiom of Catholic Moral Theology called "Probabilism": a doubtful law is not binding ("lex dubia non obligat"). That's a heck of a position to be in, if you're dealing with a literal life-or-death question.It leaves you with a section of the Catechism which cannot be said to be binding law.

I am personally convinced that this is dereliction of duty on the Pope's part. I am quite angry that the Pope ("this Pope, this present Pope") has once again thrown in a flashbang and left us all in controversy. And I fear he does this deliberately.

And no, I'm not in mortal sin for saying that.

I have never hears ANYONE say that, except you.